The Traveller Central Supply Catalogue Page by Page: New Rules and Armour
Traveller Rule 0 is, roughly, “The Referee Can Make S…tuff Up.”
Even so, in the case of equipment, it’s handy if somebody else has worked out the details, and if the stuff doesn’t just break the universe.
Edgar Rice Burroughs could put in Radium Rifles — fantastically accurate at fantastic distances — and then ignore the logic of their existence and write a Sword and Planet romp. However, if RPG players find a loophole, they will “exploit” it; and in a simulationist game such as Traveller, that’s what they’re supposed to do anyway. You can’t tell players, “be creative in your problem solving, but not in this or that area”.
This has to be especially true for rumbustious teenagers… which takes me to my son’s gaming group, for whom I’m planning to referee later in the summer. They’re not really interested in narrative or genre conventions, or even schooled in them. (Some of them — shock! — haven’t watched Firefly yet.) So they’re bound to break what’s breakable.
With this in mind, I asked Mongoose to send me a review copy of the Traveller Central Supply Catalogue.
It’s a 150 page hardback, with nice authoritative binding. There’s an index at the back (hurrah!), nice illustrations throughout, and a lots of equipment with supporting rules.
The expanded equipment lists also include items from the Core Rulebook, making it self-contained enough to just hand the thing over to players when they want to go shopping. The “players’ reference” angle more than justifies the use of paper real estate for amusing adverts and flavour images: the book is the game’s user end.
I have a few quibbles.
Most of us have, at one time or another, been given the advice “write what you know.” Even people who don’t write themselves have heard it. Sometimes this advice gets people writing furiously away – and sometimes it leaves them scratching their heads, saying “But, um, I don’t know anything.”
