This article is for house rules and gameplay changes to modify Mongoose Traveller 2e for use in games taking place in the Ealdremen System.
Career Term Duration
Career term durations listed in the book are suggestions and not necessarily hard-and-fast rules. At their discretion and with GM approval, the player may decide that a term took shorter or longer than the duration listed in the book. This rule will be applied as well with species that have different lifespans from the assumed human lifespans listed in the book.
"Mercy" Rule for Characteristics (Zrakati Insurance Rule)
After rolling for characteristics but before applying any modifiers from species (if any), players may choose to replace one roll with 11 and another with 6, or one roll with 10 and another with 7.
Players are encouraged to maintain weaknesses and flaws for their character, as Traveller works best with characters that have a mix of strengths and weaknesses. This rule is in place to ensure that players with specific character concepts in mind can execute them.
Characteristics
In contrast to base Traveller, there are nine characteristics governing character stats in these house rules. The usual characteristics of Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing remain as-is, and these house rules add Rapport, Chrono, and Fortune.
New Characteristic: Rapport
Rapport [RAP] is a character's ability to build immediate interpersonal connections with people around them or potentially talk their way in or out of situations of their choosing. These bonds may be personal and intimate, or they could be business relations built on mutual trust. Rapport does not necessarily preclude a character's ability to form relationships entirely; it is merely used to represent how good the character is at doing so in potentially difficult circumstances.
New Characteristic: Chrono
Chrono [CHR] is a character's aptitude and skill in casting spells. It is intentionally open-ended so that it can be used across a variety of characters and not be tied to a specific kind of "flavor" or idea of what that magic looks like.
A character's modifier to their Chrono characteristic is used when rolling checks to determine the success or ultimate effects of a spell. Spell burn, sustained when casting powerful spells, is also dealt to a character's Chrono characteristic, not their other characteristics, unless otherwise noted by the rules or circumstances of casting the spell.
New Characteristic: Fortune
Fortune [FRT] is a character's luck (or lack thereof), or it may be an indication of divine providence and intervention. For example, species associated with the bygone god al-Kaniali have bonuses to their Fortune characteristic to represent their ties to this god and the occasional manifestations of that bond. During regular gameplay, Fortune might be called upon for situations that are truly left up to chance, such as gambling at a casino, events during travel, and so on. Players may "burn" Fortune at a 1:1 ratio before rolling any characteristic or skill check to add +1 DM per point burned. Fortune then remains at this lower score until restored (see below).
Fortune has an additional use during character creation. During character creation only, the player can burn one point of Fortune to reroll any single roll, such as a a qualification roll, a promotion roll, a survival roll, a mishap roll, and so on. After rerolling, the player chooses what roll to keep. Fortune then remains at the new lower score until restored. Players may only burn Fortune on a given roll once. If they got an especially fortuitous result by burning Fortune and rerolling, they're encouraged to write this into the character's background — perhaps they initially failed to get into a university, but then they won a grant they didn't remember applying for, or they were initially denied a promotion in the military, but they then just happened to save the life of a commanding officer and were promoted anyways.
Restoring Fortune
When Fortune is used, either during character creation or regular gameplay, the character's Fortune gets lower and lower. This represents how, statistically speaking, no one can really avoid the reality of the universe for long; every streak of good luck eventually runs out. In terms of gameplay, it also creates a risk-reward scenario for using Fortune. If it runs out, then the player won't have access to it for a critical situation later, so they are encouraged to use it only for things that matter most to them.
Fortune can be restored after an adventure of some kind that ties to it. Perhaps a character seeks out a blessing of a god, or the character searches for a legendary artifact from a bygone era said to bring good fortune to whoever holds it. At this point, the character's Fortune characteristic is set to a value that makes sense for the difficulty and outcome of the adventure (most commonly between 6 and 8).
Fortune can also be restored during downtime between adventures in a manner similar to training a skill or characteristic. After spending a cumulative four to six months of "downtime" not learning or training skills or characteristics, or otherwise gaining experience points that could be allocated to these endeavors, the player rerolls the character's Fortune characteristic as if creating a new character of that species (i.e. positive or negative DMs from the character's species still apply).
Skills
Broad Skills: Art, Science, Profession
In the base Traveller game, Art, Science, and Profession are skills and their corresponding related fields are sub-skills, which mechanically results in characters who are good at one relatively unrelated field are good at another simply because of the structure of the game. Instead, these broad skills are separated out into skills of their own and then given corresponding sub-skills, so that someone is not necessarily good at writing a book just because they can play an instrument or that someone who is educated in physics is immediately just as good at psychology.
While this system as adapted from Traveller Companion is not perfect, it does at least make a bit more sense in that someone who is skilled in sociology would be "trained" in psychology, as they are part of a related field of social sciences. Players who wish to give their characters a skill not listed here are encouraged to identify which skill group it would fall under (e.g. a specific category of Profession or Science) and assign it accordingly.
New Skill: Performance Arts
Sub-Skills
- Acting
- Instrument
- Performing
New Skill: Creative Arts
Sub-Skills
- Exotic Media
- Visual Media
New Skill: Presentation Arts
Sub-Skills
- Holography
- Writing
New Skill: Life Science
Sub-Skills
- Biology:
- Genetics:
- Xenology:
New Skill: Magic Science
Sub-Skills
- Alchemy: How magic and chemistry can interface.
- Artifice: How magic and technology can interface.
- Chrono: The study of the essence of magic itself, such as how it can become unsafe or ways to cast spells safely.
- Dispelling: Using magic to undo or reverse the effects of existing magical effects or "counterspell" another spell as it is cast.
- Magic History: The study of magic’s development throughout time and specific important individuals.
- Leraphian: The study of an obscure language that seems able to incant spells with specific words of power.
New Skill: Physical Sciences
Sub-Skills
- Chemistry:
- Dimensional Physics: The study of physics as applied to traveling through the Ravel for interstellar navigation.
- Geography: The study of planet-based features and atmospheres.
- Physics:
New Skill: Ravel Sciences
Sub-Skills
- The Braids: The study of individual components of the Ravel known as Braids, or other planes of existence.
- Incognology: The study of creatures hailing from the Ravel.
- Metaphysics: The study of physics and laws of the universe within the Ravel.
New Skill: Robotics Sciences
Sub-Skills
- Artificial Intelligence
- Cybernetics: The knowledge and study of robotic augmentations and cybernetic enhancements to organic life.
- Robotics
- Sabarús Alpha Systems: The knowledge of the sabarús alpha species on a physical level (as opposed to sociological), typically used in maintenance of existing individuals or construction of new individuals.
New Skill: Social Sciences
Sub-Skills
- Archaeology
- Economics
- History
- Linguistics
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Sociology
New Skill: Space Sciences
Sub-Skills
- Astronomy
- Cosmology
- Planetology
New Skill: Freeloading Professions
Sub-Skills
- Scrounging
- Security
New Skill: Hostile Environment Professions
Sub-Skills
- Contaminant Specialist
- Low-G Specialist
- High-G Specialist
- Underwater Specialist
New Skill: Pastoral Professions
Sub-Skills
- Farming
- Ranching
New Skill: Spacer Professions
Sub-Skills
- Belter
- Crewmember
New Skill: Sport Professions
Sub-Skills
- Atmosphere Surfing
- Motorsport
- Racquet Sports
- Team Ball Sports
- Track & Field
New Skill: Worker Professions
- Armorer
- Artificer
- Biologicals
- Civil Engineering
- Construction
- Hydroponics
- Metalworking
- Polymers
Athletics Sub-Skills
Two sub-skills are added to Athletics: Athletics (flying) and Athletics (swimming) for species that can be expected to be native flyers or swimmers. Most of these species will have these skills automatically trained.
Magic Skill
The skill Magic is added, which governs the character's training in casting spells and knowledge of things related to magic, such as identifying magical effects or users of particular kinds of magic. Some species may have access to Magic as a background skill during character creation to represent their cultural or biological inclinations towards magic; otherwise, it is available during different career paths during character creation.
Magic has several sub-skills dedicated to specific branches of magic, which correspond to particular sub-skills listed in Flynn's Guide to Magic in Traveller.
Sub-Skills
- Hostility: The usage of magic in self-defense, assault, or other forms of violence. [Flynn's: Attack]
- Personality: The school of charms and manipulation. [Flynn's: Charm]
- Nativity: The school of creation from nothing. [Flynn's: Create]
- Mortality: The school of life and death. [Flynn's: Cure]
- Inflexibility: The school of defense and warding. [Flynn's: Defend]
- Acuity: The school of divination and knowledge. [Flynn's: Divine]
- Unreality: The school of illusions and deception. [Flynn's: Illusion]
- Temporality: The school of movement and immediacy. [Flynn's: Movement]
- Versatility: The school of transformation and change. [Flynn's: Transform]
- Inevitability: The school of suppression and termination of effects. [Flynn's: Suppress]
- Solicity: The school of summoning and calling other creatures. [Flynn's: Summon]