First Impressions - Cepheus Universal (Traveller SRD)

Cepheus Universal

First of all, this isn't going to be an in-depth look at Cepheus Universal, as I've not really got the time for that at the moment. I'm also probably not the best person to do that as I've been playing Traveller in its many forms for far too long.

Secondly, the book you see in the image above isn't what you'll get if you order a copy from Zozer Games.  I find the layout used by Zozer too big, so I have printed a personal copy as a digest sized hard cover to use at the tale. I anticipate that you won't see the green boundaries around a directly ordered copy.

This is Paul Elliott's take on the Cepheus Engine, informed by the work done on the Hostile Roleplaying game. It is a weighty book, coming in at 443-pages, containing everything you'd need for an extended campaign in a setting of your own choosing. It is more complete mechanically than Mongoose Traveller's core book in any of its editions.

The book is clearly laid out; as I mentioned above, I find the typeface too large and the font irksome, but it is an extremely clear mainly single column layout that's easy to read. The book was perfectly legible when I reduced it down in size. Examples are given in boxed text with a specific colour-fill, and tips and advice in others. There are almost no typos.

Cepheus is built from the SRD for Traveller that was available under the OGL, so it is slightly more crunchy than the current edition of Mongoose Traveller, but not significantly so. The core game mechanic is, as ever, roll 2D6 and achieve 8+ on your roll. Damage is applied directly to characteristics, as per Classic Traveller.

Things I like about Cepheus Universal:

• Character generation includes a simple point build option which I'll be using this weekend to create the characters for my games at TravCon.
• The game covers TL1 through to TL18 (so non-technological through to ring worlds and matter transfer which would seem like magic to us).
• There are coherent and simple design rules for robots, vehicles and space-going vessels, and thought has been given to scaling between the different scales involved.
• The spacecraft rules draw on Orbital 2100 to have lower technology slower-than-light vessels.
• Factions treated as characters.
• There is a light discussion throughout on how the rules would fit with various settings from media.
• It's a fast read; because it's written clearly and the sub-systems like starship combat etc are modular, the game can be reviewed and understood quickly. You don't need to dive into the detail until you need it.

Things that I'm not so hot on;

• The typeface used for the layout.
• The removal of the jack-of-all-trades skill
• The level of crunch (lots of little modifiers in combat for example - but this is no worse than Mongoose Traveller)

In short, this is a very complete game which has everything that you need for a campaign. You could easily pick up anything written for Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller, Marc Miller's Traveller (T4), or Mongoose Traveller and run it easily. Or you could easily grow your own. It is more complete than Mongoose Traveller.

Recommended. 

Hardcopy available here.

Digital copy available here.

28 September 2024