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From: Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Mongoose Traveller or Cepheus Engine
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2024 12:49:08 +0200
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I was thinking about using playing some Traveller again some day soon. I 
have started playing that with Mongoose Traveller 1st edition, but I 
never switched to 2nd edition because 1st seemed to be doing just fine.
I found MgT to be the perfect mix of playability and hackability for 
that kind of game, although I wouldn't use it for every RPG possible.
Lately I encountered Cepheus Engine though, which is basically just MgT 
1st edition with the serial numbers filed off, for the most part.
It seems there were some license contentions when MgT 2nd ed. came out 
and people reacted by just cloning their own system that was slightly 
closer to 1st by using the SRD released for that one.
It's a serviceable system from what I can see, but it of course doesn't 
have the usual product identity things that were not released in the 
original SRD.
Namely it doesn't have more than generic descriptions of the ships 
involved (and well, no art), and it doesn't have the career events 
tables from MgT, of which the MgT system only released the scout as a 
reference.
Instead it has perfectly serviceable career tables that are equivalent 
to a lot of those, but without the additional events tables.

Which is a pity because those were one of the best things about MgT. 
Thew way how the system helped one create an actual character was 
fantastic. Unlike other systems Classic Traveller was famous for being a 
game in which you could die in Character generation on a failed Survival 
roll (a feature Cepheus Engine tries to emulate), MgT had this changed 
to eject the character from the career and maybe settle them with 
injuries. Not quite as survivable as people often claim, as I had 
multiple characters die during character generation when multiple failed 
Survival rolls killed them anyway.

In any case the main reason I am looking at both of them is that I would 
love to make my own document of rules for the game I plan on running. 
But while both have similar options I am not sure if it is not just a 
lot of wasted effort, when instead I could just make a shorter houserule 
document.