Mongoose did release Book 9, the 1st Classic Traveller book published in decades. It harkens back to the old-style and, while I've yet to receive a physical copy, the PDF is very similar to the original LBBs in terms of size and style. They even used black & white line drawings.
Of the 4 authors I only "know" Rob Eaglestone, and I respect the knowledge and work he has put into Traveller over the years. The others I probably should know but alas, I really don't keep up with a lot!
The Quick Overview
The table of contents reflects the classic progression, an introduction giving the overview of things. This takes a couple of pages. The chapter on pirate characters is 4 pages, and of course includes background, generation, pre-enlistment options and so forth. Skills introduces some new skills and lists the various cascading skills. This covers the actual details of pirate character generation, along with the skill tables and mustering out. As well as a generation checklist. We have 4 pages devoted to pirate organizations as well as the Vargr (forever linked to piracy and corsairs). A largish chapter on the practices of piracy covers 8 pages. Two corsairs are detailed, a human and a Vargr ship. 4 pages cover various equipment updates for people and ships, and then we round out the 48-page book (including covers) with deatils on the Khukish subsector in Corridor. Where I've never played or run a game.
Longer overview
Foreword
Marc Miller wrote the forward, which is nice. To quote:
We present here more than rules about piracy: they are tools for creating new roles in the role-playing environment. New career paths. New skills. The pirate in Traveller isn’t just a raider: they must marshal many different skills in order to succeed.
Introduction
This introduces that piracy has been around forever. While COTI will argue forever about the economics of piracy, I like my Traveller to be a bit pulpy and I see no reason not to have pirates. Space is really big, and our imaginations should be as big as we want. Piracy then can exist in the Traveller universe, even the 3rd Imperium as not everyone of course plays there.
This section could be straight out of the original books: required materials being Classic Traveller books 1-3, pencils, paper and of course 6-sided dice. Die rolling conventions are covered again. At least not as complicated as T5 which really has a LOT of die rolling conventions, Classic just has 1: roll 2 dice and apply any modifiers as needed.
Pirate Characters
This overview of "what is a pirate" explains that there is no single pirate force but rather collections of pirates, noting that space is unforgiving and the "there are bold pirates and there are old pirates, but not too many old, bold pirates" spiel. It covers the general overview of creating a pirate character. There are no pre-enlistment options, noting that most pirates do not come from affluent backgrounds. But it does note if you have an y of the extended character generation books, those are options you can use. Your pirate may have gone to a university.
Piracy starts at 18 otherwise. 7+ to get in, with +1 if Social is 7- and +2 if Endurance is 9+. It does note that there is no formal entrance to get in: getting abducted is one way. The example is given of using the Other character generation as your entrance to becoming a pirate, or just plain GM fiat. There is an interesting note that "unlike other professions, pirate draftees are able to be promoted in their first term of service". Ahh, yes, the other advanced character generation the 1st term is basic training. So not so odd other than there is no basic training for pirates: into the deep end first!
As per the other advanced books, pirates also serve 4-year terms of service. This section covers the same basic info. Though there is basic training after all, but apparently still a chance to get promoted. The process is the same as the other books: roll for assignment, resolve the assignment, check for survival, and if you are still alive check for promotion. They can go from E1 to E4 once per term, and E4 rolls into O1. At that point you can only get promoted once per term. The "ranking" system is thus a bit different but that is really to be expected: just as the Scouts have no formal ranking system, pirates have their own informal ranking.
Details of special duty are outlined, and interestingly there is a jailed option that may take 1-2 years instead of the 1 year of special duty. This reduces their social rank, and of course there is the chance of getting killed in jail. I do like the loot special duty - you take a year off relaxing with all your ill-gained loot!
Skills
This covers a lot of existing skills, but if you only had books 1-3, you would not have all the skills the pirate career gives you. They cover all those skills, and I did not notice any new skills being added. But it is nice for those who do not have all the classic books (I do have most of them in print and all of them via PDF. Somehow, I managed to hold on to all my Traveller stuff for 40+ years!) Cascade skills (gun combat and the like) are explained.
Pirate Generation Tables
Then we have the character generation tables. While this is very similar to the older books, the spacing in the PDF just seems off to me. It seems that they tried to emulate the look of the classic books, but the formatting is just off to me. Maybe it will look better in print.
There are no rank-based skills, and the ranks are fun:
TABLE OF RANKS
Rank
E1 Apprentice Henchman
E2 Henchman
E3 Corporal
E4 Sergeant
O1 Second Lieutenant
O2 First Lieutenant
O3 Captain
O4 Leader
O5 Group Leader
O6+ Varies
The tables are laid out the same as Books 4+, so nothing new there. Which is what we want in a Classic book! The only formatting difference is cascade skills are listed in bold to help indicate you need to expand it a bit. Which is nice.
Pirate Organizations
This section covers forming a pirate company (step 1: obtain a ship). Though, like one of the old JTAS books, you really could be a pirate in a non-traditional sense of the word: hijack cargos at the port itself. And as per many conversations, to be an effective pirate you need to know if the ship has something worthwhile aboard, as well as its schedule. Perhaps this book covers that, we shall see. Like the Vargr, maintaining leadership is a bit different when you are a pirate, and the details in maintaining discipline and leadership challenges are covered.
A section on privateering is covered, which amounts to government sponsored piracy. Think one of my college games I gave the players a Letter of Marque. But that was a long, long time ago!
The book covers trade wars in the Imperium (fitting in our current political climate!) Of course, Imperial megacorporations version of a trade war is significantly different than ours: "The practice brings companies into direct violent conflict, industrial espionage and practical piracy". Well, at least for the moment at any rate (and I'll stop there...like COTI, real-world politics have no place in my games or blog).
The Practice of Piracy
Covers how pirates operate, a very brief history, safe havens and the like. The economics of piracy are covered and lets us know that it is not always as lucrative as fictional stories portray. Of course, this is a fictional universe...This section covers the various forms of loot and what you can get. At least we now have a rule for stripping a ship:
Pirates can pull everything of possible value from the ship (drive components, electronics, cabling), leaving a useless hulk. Every 100 tons of ship stripped in this way takes 1D hours to produce 10 tons of cargo with a value of Cr50,000 per ton. Small craft are looted separately and not included in this total. This is most efficiently accomplished at a friendly port but can also be done in space, if time allows.
Other activities are covered: raids, smuggling, extortion and the like. Opposition is also covered and expands bit on systems to determine an Imperial or local force. I have used the Space Patrol book to do the same sort of thing.
Mercenary Tickets
Apparently, worlds will hire pirates as mercenaries. Some example tickets are given.
Corsairs
Two ships are detailed. Sadly, one is just the 400-ton trader we've seen before. While it makes sense, it would have been nicer to have something new. On the bright side, the picture looks like it came from the 70s!
The Vargr Glory Corsair is covered as well and has the classic Vargr wings.
Ironmongery
New equipment is covered here: cargo movers, chaff cannisters, and a few other things that have been done in other books in other versions of Traveller. Nice to have them here. There are some personal equipment items added, such as a breaching charge and both a grappler round and a rescue round. Even a "prize crew robot" is defined. New software is added. Though to be honest, even when I was playing in the 80s I had most of this stuff already vaguely defined as I was a computer science major! Comm encrypt, chindi to mislead sensors and a few other things that would come in handy in the life of a pirate.
Khukish Subsector
This sparsely populated subsector straddles Corridor and has Imperial, Vargr, Client state and non-affiliated systems. So ripe for a variety of systems where piracy could work.
At first glance, Khukish Subsector is home to four different political groups. Two organised Vargr polities to coreward, the Irrgh Manifest and the Glory of Taarskoerzn, are constantly in conflict over religious and political matters. Both are sources of traditional Vargr corsairs raiding into the subsector, preying on the non-aligned worlds, the Imperial worlds and clients and each other. The raiders of the Glory are somewhat more ruthless and known to have a penchant for terror attacks against the Manifest and their perceived allies. The corsairs of the Manifest follow a more traditional Vargr approach to the non-Vargr in the region but hold particular rancor for the ships and personnel of the Glory.The Third Imperium holds the rimward half of the subsector. It maintains a client state relationship with several worlds in the non-aligned zone within both the New Vland Cluster and the Ushamla Main.The non-aligned systems are a sparsely populated and equipped collection of independent worlds. Some lean toward the Imperium, though generally in vain, while others attempt to keep their dependence on outsiders to a minimum.
So rich in possibilities!
Conclusion
So, is it worth the money? As the first Classic book in a long, long time, for me it was. Sadly, while I am not quite a completionist I do love classic Traveller. You may have noted I do like career books. Which in fantasy games translates to all the race and class books I keep getting. And will use some day!
For me, it is worth the money as I really do love Classic Traveller. And I hope they produce more stuff, I've noted before I really don't like where Mongoose is taking Traveller: while I liked 1st edition a lot, their subsequent versions are going too far off the path I consider Traveller. And that is fine: different people like different things, and I have all the old books. They are not taking anything from me and the market is a lot different now. But I hope that they will see value in the Classic line and continue to publish for that as well as their version of Traveller. Well, technically both are their version as they now own Traveller.
I'll save my final "is it worth it" when the physical book shows up. While the PDF has some formatting issues in my eyes, I am hoping the physical book is the same quality as the original books. Honestly - they should have hired that guy on COTI who is basically recreating the classic books and he (I assume he for some reason) has it down just about perfectly, including the tables. The tables in the PDF are the weakest point: they just don't "look" right. Perfectly functional, but sort of like the uncanny valley in terms of visual impact to me.
And yes, I will see about generating a pirate character or two in another post. This weekend both my gaming plans fell through, so suddenly I had more time than expected. Though I did take my old gaming buddy to lunch - we've known each other 40+ years. Sadly, he is now mostly wheelchair-bound, and my house is inaccessible to him as I'd love to have him over to play as he has always played interesting characters. I've run 2 Traveller games with him: one he played a Scout, the other a barbarian. From planet Bob (it had an entirely different name in Imperial records).
And also working on painting scenery stuff. Test fit a few things, but these are all now painted. Archon makes some nice stuff.
And watching squirrels eat off their picnic table we just got. Yes, I am easily amused! And so is Fiskerton, one of my cats.
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