CT materials: Mike Basinger Req.

>Mike Basinger Writes;

>I just got into Traveller since the release of Traveller:The New Era.
>What supplements and adventure for Classic and Mega Traveller for
>people suggest I pick up, if I can find them.

Good Luck finding them!

Much of the info in the basic books (1: Characters & Combat, 2:Wolds and
adventures, and 3:    ) is simply straight rules: all are also contained
in The Traveller Book.  (I should explain that I see the value in the CT
materials as adventure background material and rules not included in the
current rules).

Other Books: Mercenary (book 4) containes "extended" traveller character
development rules (for army, marines) plus rules (sketchy ones) for large
scale combat.  Also some long-awaited (by some) heavy weapons specifications.

 High Guard (book 5) is for large scale ship to ship combat and extended
character development for Navy Characters.  Also rules for design and
construction.

Book 6: scouts has ext. character info for, you guessed it, scouts.  Also
extended world detail generation stuff (further extended by Grand Survey
and Grand Census, Third party products).

All of the above seem IMHO to be of limited use to a TNE or MT player, but
are essential if you wish to play CT.  Now for some more useful stuff.

Book 7: Mercenary Prince: lots of trade and commerce info.  Very useful for
its "Cargo Contents" charts to a MT or TNE player.

Book 8: Robots:  I was so excited when this first appeared.  I wasn't
disappointed either.  Rules here for creating any robot you wish and
the costs associated with them.  I have not checked compatibility with
TNE (I don't think I want to know) but to me the rules seem to stand
perfectly well on their own two feet (or however many feet you wish to
add).  Volume is expressed in liters and weight in Kg, so adding TNE
equipment to a CT generated robot shouldn't be a problem.  (the problem
actually is lack of reactionless drive in TNE for CT robots using grav
as motive power).

Supplements:  of course I do not remember all of these; There were something
 like 20 of them.  I will break them up by usefulness.

Useful;

76 Patrons: Quick adventure ideas with introductions and a character sketch
for each Patron, plus 3-4 possible outcomes.

Traders & Gunboats: Deck Plans for several standard trading vessels, a System
Defense Boat (with a jump module) Close Escort (Gazelle) and scout service
vessels (X-Boat, X-Boat Tender, Scout/Courier).

Azhanti High Lightning contains Supplement 5 and is an excellent source
for adventure and has detailed, large deckplans for a 60,000 ton cruiser.
(a pretty good MT adventure called Arrival Vengence uses the same ship and
also provides _some_ of the deck plans in a much smaller format).  I have
also heard that the AHL boxed set is very expensive when it is available
at all.

The Spinward Marches : starmaps for said sector

The Solomani Rim : as above; both are, of course, pre-rebellion but are
perfectly serviceable in MT and TNE.

Library Data A-M
Library Data N-Z  : one is diminished in value without the other, lots of
data is simply good source material for adventures.  Some is voided by
the MT and TNE history.


Not so useful (Unless you're playing CT)

Citizens of the Imperium : character generation for several non- or
para- military careers.

Fighting Ships : lots of military vessels in High Guard format.  Some neat
some silly.

Animal Encounters : I didn't use this too much when I _was_ playing CT.  That
may be my fault though.

Veterans :  A list of characters with their stats in CT format.  Good for
off-the-shelf heavies.

That's all I can remember at the moment; I have probably missed at least one
important one; perhaps others can fill in my memory.

Adventures;

I have not found a single adventure that _could_ not be useful.  Every one
of them had either deck plans or maps which could be adjusted to some other
venue.  Here are a few tested ones;

Adventure 1: Kinunir : setting is a 1000 ton frontier cruiser.  An excellent
vessel with drop tubes, several subcraft (including a fusion armed G-carrier)
two particle accelerator barbettes.  Good ship.  Unfortunately a bit too
good for characters to use.  Makes a great setting, however, and if you
do a bit of damage and allow a substandard character engineer to do repairs
everything can malfunction constantly-restoring some game balance.
Incidentally inserting quite a measure of amusement (at least for the GM).

Nomads of the World Ocean : the cultures in this one seemed to play
especially well.  It included specs for a few water-craft too.

Signal GK : contains deck plans

Research Station Gamma : deck plans for lab ship.

Annic Nova : good aventure ideas, deck plans and ideas for a totally
alien vessel

I'm sure other people can review other products so I'll stop now

Hope this helps...Pete

"The opinions expressed certainly have nothing whatever to do with
the University of Chicago or the Department of Biochemistry (I just
work there and use their toys)."

Peter Brenton   [phone removed]
Biochemistry & Molecular [email removed]
The University of Chicago