A setting of subtle brilliance.

Pugmire would make the perfect first setting for a young roleplaying group. That said, it's got a lot of hidden depth and would make for a great campaign setting for adults who commit to the premise.

Initially it's a 5e lite romp with players trying to be "Good Dogs" fighting low stakes monsters - ideal for a smart 8-10yo. Exciting without being nightmare fuel.

As the players mature, you can introduce more morally ambiguous characters (cats) the stakes can ramp up to meet the age group - any 5e compatible Monster Manual should be adaptable.

Finally, the players will be asking the big questions like "What happened to humans? Why is the sea acid?" which would lead to a fascinating capstone quest to actually discover the answers. The book doesn't give them but I'm sure everyone can come up with a satisfying ending to a great and memorable campaign.

The author was at pains to point out that this is unnofficial, but you'd be hard-pressed to tell by looking. It is beautifully designed to match the Ironsworn rulebook and the quality is outstanding.

This has substance behind the style though. Ironsworn Reign adds moves and rules for running and developing settlements. If your story heads in that direction, pick this up, you will NOT be disappointed.

A great start, I look forward to seeing what this debut writer produces next.

Mongoose have been systematically mapping the Imperium with their add-on settings. “The Rift” fleshes out 5 (Five!) whole sectors. However, as these sectors are mostly empty it’s not as generous as you’d imagine at first sight. There are some new rules to cover navigating the distances – which weren’t as innovative as I’d originally envisioned – secret military bases in otherwise empty sectors is part of it. A couple of new alien species are sketched out, a few pages are devoted to new equipment but at its heart it’s an atlas. Some planets have more detail than others and here are some story hooks but no fully fleshed out adventures – although there are three you can buy set in this region “Flatlined” is particularly noteworthy (one of the best introductory Traveller adventures I’ve ever read) but Flatlined is not predicated on being set in the Rift and could easily be purchased separately & re-homed somewhere else as a campaign-starter.

The production quality is typically Mongoose – excellent. There’s a lot of material here so I’m not going to quibble about the price – it’s fair for the amount of effort that clearly went into it.

The issue I have is that the area itself is fairly unengaging. When I read “The Pirates of Drinax” I could imagine a great campaign. Reading “Behind the Claw” (re)introduces you to two of the most fleshed out sectors from the Classic Traveller era – the greatest Sci-Fi setting in RPGs. Reading this, all I can see is a tedious series of (harder than normal) jumps to get anywhere worthwhile while in contrast the “Spinward Main” promises a new adventure every jump.

It's something a hardcore Traveller GM is going to want to own and I have zero regrets about buying it, but I can’t see it being the home to many great campaigns and as such I’d recommend you buy it after Drinax and Behind the Claw. You do probably want to own it if you want to run “Deepnight Revelation” though as that campaign kicks off in a sector mapped in this set.

3 stars seems unfairly low for a product of this quality and 4 too generous compared to other Mongoose products – let’s call it 3.5 stars.

This is the single best Sci-Fi system I've ever read. It successfully bolts together D&D 3d6 characteristics and d20 combat with Traveller's skill system. The real killer feature is the extensive, yet approachable set of "generators" that allow you as a GM to "wing it" and generate planets etc. quickly on the fly. The Faction system (a metagame used to generate realistic plot hooks) is stunning in it's depth and simplicity and is usable in any sci-fi rpg - worth the entrance fee for that alone.

The best bit is, there are many different supplements focussing on different types of campaign so you only need to pay for the ones that inspire you or your players. Spies, merchants, mercenaries, naval ships on a "five year mission" - all are possible, and one reasonably priced supplement away. Even Magic rules can be added in if you want to go full "Starfinder" or "Warhammer 40,000".

The starship mechanics and skill system are compatible enough with Traveller's (without copying them) to allow you to easily play SWN in the Third Imperium searching for "Twilight's Peak" - if that's what you want.

Wonderful job Kevin. I cannot recommend this higher.

Note this review refers to version 5.09 last updated 7th June 2015 bought 2nd September 2018.

Traveller 5, oh how I wanted to love you.

Background, 1978 - Traveller was the first RPG I bought and I bought a most, if not all of the LBBs over the next few years. We drifted apart as I moved on to FGU's "Space Opera" and I never kept up with all of the subsequent versions.

Fast forward to around a year ago, I have a Sci-Fi loving, Fantasy hating son who's approaching "RPG age" so I decide to introduce him to RPGs via Traveller. I still have my LBBs but digging around on the internet I find out about all of these new versions. My interest is piqued in T5, but ultimately I go for Mongoose 2 because of a special offer on DTRPG but the Traveller 5 itch is still there, so, a few months on, I've taken the plunge.

First impression - Where's the Cover? Why did you not include the iconic Black and Red cover? When I double clicked on the pdf - that's what I was expecting - and not getting that thrill was a major disappointment. Not a good start.

Anyway, to give you an idea of the issues I've encountered so far, scroll through to the Contents page and have a read. Combat, page 210, so you type 210 into Adobe Acrobat and you are propelled over 30 pages into the Combat section. So, the Contents haven't been updated, but the page numbers have, and what's worse, the conversion factor isn't a constant - the further you go into the book, the more innaccurate the contents page is. I think the main reason for the discrepancy is moving the various early sections like Dice, Ehex, ranges and Distance to appendices - which seems to be a good idea. But, because it's not constant that's not the whole story, I feel - although as this is the only copy of T5 I have ever seen I can't be sure - as if section splash pages have also been deleted because the actual start of Combat is pretty abrupt with an unheaded page containing a description of the Combat round, followed next page by the heading "Personal Combat" So, in summary, the contents section is useless, and I have a strong suspicion some pages are missing.

But there is now an index the ommission of which caused much rage upon the release, let's look up "Combat" - Accurate but useless for anything significant. Let me explain; "Combat" has ten lines of page numbers with a mixture of individual pages and page ranges, clearly machine generated but not human-edited so the actual Combat section, the bit you're probably looking for, starts on line three of the combat entry and reads thus: 176-180, 182, 184-188, 191, 200... etc. What about pages 181 & 183? They're about Armor and don't happen to have the word "Combat" on the page, so they're not part of the index entry for "Combat" - logical for a computer. So, to actually find the Combat section you either have to "know" that you subtract 34 from the Contents page entry (210), or you have to "know" by looking at the ten lines of page numbers in the index which are the relevant ones. Good luck with that.

Oh, and whoever generated the PDF either didn't bother or didn't know how to generate bookmarks so you can't navigate that way.

So, in summary, you have a 759 page book with a reputation (according to reviews I've read) for having the content scattered a little haphazardly and there is no way to navigate the pdf... and FFE haven't updated since June 2015 - over three years ago. So, a potentially wonderful reference for Traveller referees regardless of their preferred flavour has been crippled by bad execution. Please guys, regenerate the table of contents and add hyperlinks to the contents page entries, add the Chapters as bookmarks at an absolute minimum, Re-add any missing pages and the iconic cover (which is the thumbnail used to actually sell the thing on DTRPG), and finally, if at all possible, send some brave soul through the index to actually do it properly - for obscure terms, it's great (e.g. "Waterskins" has a single, correct (but unlinked), page reference), for less obscure things, like Combat, it's useless.

With all of the poor editing, poor navigation, and missing cover/pages the general impression is of the sort of thing handed out free to Beta testers; not the full price ninth revision of a book published over five years ago. There is no excuse for this lack of polish at this price. Mongoose do far more polished products, heck, even veritable minnows like Gypsy Knight games display infinitely better commitment to the ongoing support of their products. As I write this, R. Talsorian games seem to be updating all of their Cyberpunk stuff from the early '90s (adding bookmarks) as I'm getting regular e-mails saying that new versions of the books I've bought are available.

Finally, an offer. Send me a copy as a "Word" file and I'll do as much tweaking as I have time for as a labour of love and thank-you for those LBBs back when I was a teenager. Contact me if you want to take me up on it.

I'm old enough to remember v1.0 coming out but I've only just bought it as part of a Bundle of Holding deal.

This is astonishingly good. This book is the best "reading" RPG rulebook I've ever encountered. It's enjoyable enough just to read as a reference book on the Romantic Arthurian era. Coupled with the Great Pendragon Campaign, you will be able to experience the richest, most complete feudal RPG ever written.

Greg Stafford cannot get enough praise for this acomplishment.

If you're wavering, just buy it. You will regret every day you didn't have this once you have read it.