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Support the Toad against the Monopolistic Mongoose Traveller
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This is a decent, basic, copy of the Cepheus SRD. It has it's flaws, there is no art, and the bookmarks and hyperlinks are missing from this version. Both of these flaws should be easily remedied. On the positive side it is available as a POD, while the SRD is not. It does not suffer from having excessively large margins or border art, but there are blank sections in the book that could easily be filled with some black and white art, and the book would greatly benefit from it.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you for the review. Art is one thing I am now looking at to add, it would be a new addition. Perhaps some changes too...
Yep it does have bookmarks now.
However I will need to look at how to add the hyperlinks back.
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A paid downgrade from a free product.
Nearly identical content to the Cepheus Engine SRD but with better formatting (2 columns vs. 1) that has tragically removed all the useful bookmarks!
What we are left with is a marginally-easier-to-look-at 170 pages of text and tables (no internal art whatsoever) that is terrible to navigate and use.
A real unforced error by the publisher; avoid this and stick with the free SRD!
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Creator Reply: |
Unlike the free SRD, this has a POD option
It also contains a number of fixes for errors that are in the SRD.
Unlike the SRD this gets updated from time to time. (planning an updated SRD soon or in the next year - with more art)
Yes I will give you that, it had no bookmark, not an error but an omission,
However you will find the PDF 1.4 now has bookmarks. |
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Shoddy work. A lack of a table of contents makes finding anything difficult. Also the author lavishes page after page on stats, illustrations, and deck plans for vehicles and spaceships but not a single line could be spared for the several new creatures that are prominent encounters.
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Got this in the Keith Frye Memorial Bundle. I really enjoyed the resource. There is a lot of really useful information for a GM packed into this little book. The hooks and adventure ideas are great and can be easily inserted into any sci-fi campaign.
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Having finally dusted this off, it's even better than I imagined. You cheeky bastards poking fun at the UK's most famous export since Monty Python, the three "gentlemen" of automotive shenanigans and international travel.
For referees, there is a great deal of useful information on the ship itself, and also on how freight is transported and stored. There's good easy to use information on travel within a single star system. How long does it take to get from the primary world to the gas giant? Buy this book and plot your own in-system adventure.
Thank you for including this in the Keith Frye Memorial. This is what a busy Referee needs. A common ship, so ubiquitous that no one looks twice, but with a detailed crew and a mythology about the class of ships. Maybe the PC's served on one. Maybe this big buddy chased off the pirates attacking the PCs. Maybe her crew just landed and filled the starport bar...
Good Resources A+
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Nice deck plans, but would have appreciated deck plans of the freighter version as well.
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Finally, someone with real military knowledge writes a supplement for an RPG! Thorough, well set out and imaginative. It details the organisation and equipment of a mercenary battalion for Traveller or similar games. A gem. Well worth the money. Well done guys!
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This would probably rate 4 stars if you are getting it as a free bonus alongside the bounty hunter handbook. So if you are interested in this sort of thing, probably get that instead.
I don't think it's useful enough to purchase on its own. If you research old TV shows or do some brainstorming, you'll probably come up with more usable ideas than you'll get from the PDF. On top of that, the generation system is finicky and detailed enough that I just feel like I'd want to write a program to automate before I'd ever try to use it. These sorts of random generations systems are seldom useful for actual randomness and more useful as lists unless you can create content fast enough that you can sift through the ideas it prompts. An adventure is a big investment in time and energy and majorly impacts your players interest in your game. It's not like you are going to random these up and use the first one you roll to generate however many pages of notes you feel you need to run a story.
Maybe the most interesting aspect of the PDF is it's ideas (and indeed almost to the level of a step by step guide) for using AI artwork to generate portraits and illustrations for your games. That was fun and practical.
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Creator Reply: |
This is included with the Bounty Hunter Handbook.
Thanks for the review. We do read these and will take what you say onboard.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/413383/Bounty-Hunter-Handbook |
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Thanks to the author for making this. I found it informative and useful!
This book provides a realistic take on hunters and what they could be in the Cepheus Engine or Traveller. This book includes good premade adventures / adventure series for referees top use for their campaigns or as one shots / miniseries. The level of detail in this book is amazing, from the types of hunters to the process of the hunt, and map making material is good for virtual table tops or for making your own maps. I appreciate the addition of example Hunter Ships in the module, making it accessible to those that don't have some of the books with ships or equipment. The provided region is also a nice starting point for a new campaign.
One thing that would make the digital copy better is bookmarks. I use PDF Reader to view this, and I usually get around the digital books with bookmarks for the major sections and subsections. Just a convenience nitpick.
Another thing this book is missing is a set of tables that can be used to make your own adventures. There are some tables in the book that can help you with the difficulty of a hunt, but not a table of exact resources the mark has, or where the mark could be hiding on a given type of world, or a list of what crimes they committed and how that could affect how they hide from law enforcement. Material for this could be gotten from the adventures and side missions, but an explicit system and tables on creating a hunt would be highly appreciated.
I left a comment about this and the Author has said they are working on this, so I'll change my review when they release them.
EDIT: The author has released a booklet with a streamlined adventure generation workflow and some random tables to flesh it out. They include the tables from the main book so you dont have to go back and forth! Much appreciated! They also provide links to online resources for making target portraits if you want them.
Many thanks to the authors for this workflow and random tables!
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Nice. This 800-tonner could be very useful in a Traveller campaign. It's VERY open to modification and has a lot of potential. This one is for referees looking for "the next starship" that the Travellers could own/operate. It's a powerful ship, but not unbalanced.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you for the kind review. |
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Of all the ship books in this series, this one is the most well-executed product. The A3 deck plans for the various versions are quite well-rendered, unlike most of the supplements of this kind by other publishers. The book itself is meaty, going into detail on each version. the sample crew and adventure ideas are a nice touch as well.
Overall, I find this to be well worth the price and extremely useful to anyone who has this ship in their Traveller or Cepheus campaigns.
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Good and interesting thought on how to make space by several decks rather than the typical two. Beautifully artistic. However, entrance is provided by ramps which lead to the center of the deck. Unfortunately, the schematics show that the muzzles are placed directly in the center of the lowest deck so the ramps would lead against the engines. And...why so much space used to make two ramps. Space within the ship is a premium. I just cannot get my mind around storage. Doesn't is show that storage is on the ramps? Climb over everything for access?
Still. It's the first time I've seen several decks within such a small ship and, as I said, it is beautiful.
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Everybody thinks about fuel storage space. Never storage space given toward consumables and water. How much space is required to provide drinking, possibly showering during a one-week jump. Also, think about flushing the body waste (it happens)
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Everybody thinks about fuel storage space. Never storage space given toward consumables and water. How much space is required to provide drinking, possibly showering during a one-week jump. Also, think about flushing the body waste (it happens)
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