One of the coolest things that I heard at GenCon was a rumor that I desperately want to be true. Someone is possibly doing a new version of Space: 1889. I was unable to get independent confirmation of this, but I heard the rumor several times from people who would know.
Originally created by Frank Chadwick and published by GDW in the late eighties and early nineties, Space: 1889 is a game of Victorian imperialism in a Jules Verne inspired reality where Edison invents an ether propeller and mankind ventures into the "out of".
Space: 1889 was notable for a couple of reasons. One, I really loved the background. It seems to combine the best of the Victorian stereotypes. There are brave British soldiers in sun helmets, adventuresome ladies in full Gibson regalia, cool Martians, and great visualizations. It was also notable because it also had one of the worst systems in RPGs. The system didn't seem to be able to reinforce any of the tropes of the genre. Six weeks after the game debuted my local group had converted everything to GURPS and rarely, if ever, used the published rules.
Still the setting alone was enough reason for me to love it and buy nearly everything for the game. Just think how excited I was to learn that not only was the game being redone, but also the rumor went on to state that the game was going to be developed for Savage Worlds. The emphasis on speed of play and reduced prep time, as well as the emphasis on story over realism and detail, make the two ideally matched in my mind.
In a perfect world Marcus Rowland would write this book. Most well known for his Forgotten Futures RPG but also the original author of Canal Priests of Mars, Marcus has a unique experience in this type of Victorian “Scientifiction”.
A persistent rumor over the last few years, Canal Priests of Mars, an adventure set originally published in abbreviated form by GDW, was rumored to be restored to full-length and reprinted by Heliograph several times over the last six years. Sadly, that has never happened. So to recap, a new SPACE: 1889 in Savage Worlds, the particulars are vague, but the possibility is awesome.
760 Patrons & Mercenary
Though I know the book had been available for some time, GenCon was the first time that I got to see 760 Patrons for Mongoose Traveller up close and personal. I was very impressed. 76 Patrons was one of my favorite supplements for what it now called Classic Traveller. It provided a wide range of ideas for the various campaigns that I ran over the years. It almost became like a prayer book. I'd just read it while I was thinking of other ideas, nearly memorizing the words as I went.
When Mongoose set out to reboot Traveller one of their goals was to make a book ten times as good as 76 Patrons. While I may not consider it ten times the quality, it is ten times the size in terms of ideas. Not that I do not like this book very much, I do. I just don’t think it is ten times better than 76 Patrons.
Not only is this book a great addition for Mongoose Traveller, I think it is also an excellent resource for any SF RPG. It could easily be used for Thousand Suns, BASH SF, or even Starblazer Adventures. More on that later, but I think 760 Patrons is a must-buy for SF roleplayers of almost any game.
More than a few people have had differing opinions regarding whether 760 Patrons is a Traveller supplement at all. Apparently they felt it wasn't "Traveller enough". I think this is a weak argument for a couple of reasons. First, I think that complaining that a book isn't evocative of a setting is valid, but I also think there are many parts of Traveller that are very generic in terms of SF. There are significant features of Traveller Canon that are lifted wholesale. From H. Beam Piper, who might have objected to the wholesale theft of his Sword Worlds, without attribution or acknowledgement. From E.C. Tubb, who's Dumarest Saga coined the term Traveller and who may have also found many similarities. I could go on with a dozen more examples, just off the top of my head.
Traveller is the most documented and longest running RPG setting extant, but complaining about the “purity” of Traveller is like arguing the “purity” of the English language. Which calls to mind one of my favorite quotes, “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” If you were wondering that’s from James Nicoll. However H. Beam Piper had a similar quote, he said “English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results.”
It is no less important to note that Mongoose has intentionally positioned Traveller to be the core of a line of SF RPGs which will eventually include Starship Troopers, Judge Dredd, Babylon 5 and several others. Many of those other settings are evocative of Traveller, and vice versa. So while it doesn’t make sense in a Traveller book to have rules for a Shuriken Canon (from Warhammer 40k). It should show the versatility of the system and allude to the flexibility within. However that doesn’t mean that all of their experiments will be as successful as 760 Patrons.
Traveller Book 1, Mercenary is the aforementioned book that includes rules for a shuriken cannon. A great many Traveller fans weren’t happy with the book. While I don’t think it was bad, per se, I do see why they were upset.
The original Mercenary was the first in a long line of supplements for Traveller. There were eventually seven of these major supplements covering things as diverse as Navy personnel and ship battles to Robots. Mercenary was the one that dealt with the soldiers of the Imperium and their gear. These were splatbooks before the term was used.
The original mercenary had an expanded character generation system as well as the gear they carried. If I recall correctly, it is also the first place Imperial Battle Dress is discussed at any length. The advanced character generation created wildly imbalanced characters for Classic Traveller. So for many years almost everyone played either a character from Mercenary or High Guard because those were the only books with advanced character generation. Not doing so resulted in quick death and/or ridicule. There was no discussion of being true to the character, we were all just munchkins at some level.
Mongoose Traveller doesn’t have an advanced Character Generation system. While on balance this was a great idea it does make the character part of the book that the players were expecting a lot shorter. It does deal more specifically with characters that are or will be mercenaries, and it does include some neat ideas. What it doesn’t allow you to do is generate John Christian Falkenberg, or his Sergeant Major. So not having advanced character generation disappointed many people.
Mercenary also lacks a significant and coherent weapons and equipment section. Classic Traveller was one of the original gearhead games. One of the reasons that the game seemed so coherent and believable is that the people who wrote about guns for Traveller really knew about guns, the people who wrote about the navy knew a lot bout the navy, and so on. The people who wrote about guns and hardware in this version of Mercenary felt like they weren’t really paying attention, or they didn’t care. It may just be that they were more focused on the other parts of the book, in any case it was an unfortunate outcome.
The best part of this book is the ticket generation system. Mercenary tickets are an important part of the military SF campaigns that Traveller is known for. This is a fantastic addition and one that all previous versions of Traveller have lacked. So on balance while I liked Mercenary overall, I didn’t like it as much as I had expected to. Possibly it just wasn’t what I was expecting.
A note on the physical characteristics of the book, I think that the cover stock used on both 760 Patrons and Mercenary is much too thin. The cover stock seems to also be very prone to curling. I’d love to see Mongoose switch to a much heavier cover stock as soon as possible for their softcover books.
One final note, I had hoped to cover Starblazer Adventures in this column as well. However at about 600 pages, it is an awful lot to digest. The book looks amazing, and what I have had time to read feels good, and hopefully we can talk about it more next time.
See you soon...
