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So, while the first edition is highly useful for generating colourful and interesting NPCs in a flash they contained no seeds for adventure. Therefore, bravo to Mongoose to revising their initial offering to conform to the pre-existing and established criteria.
Now, this book is also a monster of a book. Fully detailing 760 individuals each with 1-6 different ideas/seeds for adventure is a monumental task and they made it a hardcover to boot. Therefore, this book is a valuable tool for those referee that either need something in a pinch while players are in-between the main adventures to facilitate a sandbox play or simply need to generate ideas in which to construct an adventure of their own design. Either way, this is a good book for them.
One regrettable omission is art detailing the patrons. Whereas, the first book had all sorts of art some good, some bad and some just in-between. This book is almost without any art save a few sketches done or inspired by the same Careers art those who appear in the main rulebook. Fortunately, the jokey aspect has been for the most part purged. So, while, it would be nice but wholly unrealistic to expect 760 portraits without upping the price tag even more. Furthermore, it still would have been nice to have a little more art and wished they employed an artist who had a more eye to the Traveller milieu (grim, dirty realism) like a Blair Reynolds or Richard Sparke or at the very least the interior artist who did much of their Darrians book.
For what the Traveller line is missing is diversity. Hardly, any African, east Asian or Amerindian representations grace the interiors it is still have these important branches of humanity represented in the Far Future without reverting to tribal dress, after all Star Trek has done it for decades now. Anyway, enough ranting about the art
Although, I could not digest all 760 Patrons many of the seeds are credible and fit well with the description. The most important thing to remember is that Traveller in this book is a generic Science Fiction universe. Although, some of these employment opportunities would be very odd in the Original/Official Traveller Universe (OTU) yes I am looking at you Star Deity and Demon they are not entirely without precedent or enjoyment factor in the Science Fiction literature. So, if you are a player/Referee who plays a specific game either set in the OTU or another setting you will have to be highly selective in these encounters/employment opportunities. This is not say they cannot be tweaked to work within another universe say, have the Star Deity or Demon be Grandfather in disguise. But, tweaking is required which rather negates the random engine.
Also, it would have been nice, if rather than Star Base, the term Starport which would be consistent with the Main Rulebook would have been employed. So perhaps in the future we might hopefully see that builds upon this book and makes it OTU specific for all the raw material is already there. So, I think the author could have done a little more by referencing some of the Gamelords, GDW, DGP stuff that is already out there not copy but more actively reference or mimic their style and ideas.
Is this book worth the money? If you are a Referee who has long spells writers block like I am then most certainly you will find a seed or several dozen to plant yourself a venerable garden and your players will enjoy the harvest. However, if creativity is not a problem for you and that you can read a newspaper and generate ten plot points from just skimming the headlines then no. All-in-all this book is a significant improvement over the previous edition aside from the rather minor quibbles noted above. It is a solid addition to what is proving to be a solid line from Mongoose.
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