# Traveller - Mongoose 2e *Created:* 2026-11-01, *Modified:* 2026-11-02 ![[Traveller - Mongoose 2e (cover).jpg]] The current **Traveller** is Mongoose's, and the 2022 **Core Rulebook** is the edition in print: the same six characteristics, the same four-year careers, the same jump drive rated in parsecs per week — with the one thing **Classic** never had, a **task system** that covers everything the rules didn't think of. That sounds like housekeeping. It isn't. Most of the arguments about **Traveller** over the last fifty years have been arguments about what the game's core roll *is*, and this edition settles it: 2d6, a difficulty ladder, and a boon-or-bane die for circumstances. Everything else in the book is the accumulated furniture of the line — careers, ships, trade, psionics — rearranged around a rule that finally holds still. ## Setting The default universe is still the **Third Imperium**: the Far Future, thousands of worlds, a feudal nobility, an Imperial bureaucracy, and the Charted Space maps the line has been filling in since 1977. Characters are **Travellers** — capitalised in these rules — serving out careers before play and then working the margins of that empire as free traders, scouts, mercenaries, or whatever their mustering-out benefits will fund. ## Mechanics ### Task checks Roll **2d6**, add the relevant **skill** and the **characteristic DM**, and beat a target set by difficulty: Simple 2+, Easy 4+, Routine 6+, **Average 8+**, Difficult 10+, and upward. If no difficulty is given it is Average. Circumstances adjust the throw two ways: **Boons and Banes** add a die and keep the better or the worse result, while **Dice Modifiers** shift the total outright. The margin counts. **Effect** — how far past the target the total landed — drives damage in combat, and elsewhere distinguishes an action that worked from one that worked *well*. ### Characters Characteristics are the familiar six, rolled on 2d6 and carried forward from **Classic**: **Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, Social Standing**. Careers run in **four-year terms** with qualification, survival, event and advancement rolls; a mishap ends a term early, and a **Traveller** who fails to qualify anywhere can be drafted or fall out as a Drifter. The important break with the 1981 rules is that a failed survival roll no longer kills you. Careers injure, embarrass and dismiss; they do not delete the character sheet. ### Ships, and the rest of it The core carries the expected apparatus — starship operation and combat, trade and commerce, world generation, psionics, equipment — and points outward at the books that expand each part: the **Traveller Companion** for alternate and experimental rules, **High Guard** for the full spacecraft design system. It is a deliberately complete game that assumes you will probably want more. ## Editions - **Traveller** (2008, Mongoose 1e) — the first Mongoose edition, and the ruleset the open-licensed **Cepheus Engine** was forked from. - **Traveller** (2016, Mongoose 2e) — the rebuild: reorganised, cleaned up, and the basis of the current line. - **Traveller Core Rulebook, Update 2022** (2022) — the current printing of 2e, with errata and revisions folded in. *In the library.* ## Supplements - **Explorer's Edition** (2021, 74 pp) — the rules cut down to a starting set rather than everything the game can do. *In the library.* - **Central Supply Catalog 2023** (2023) — the equipment catalogue for the current edition. *In the library.* - **Field Catalog** — its field companion. *In the library.* - **Reach Adventure 1: Marooned on Marduk** (33 pp) — a short scenario. *In the library.* - **Reach Adventure 2: Theories of Everything** (39 pp) — a short scenario. *In the library.* - **Reach Adventure 3: The Calixcuel Incident** (41 pp) — a short scenario. *In the library.* - **Reach Adventure 4: Last Flight of the Amuar** (57 pp) — a short scenario. *In the library.* - **Death Station** (2021, 27 pp) — a short scenario for the current edition. *In the library.* - **The Glorious Empire** (162 pp) — a regional sourcebook on one of the Imperium's neighbours: its history, its slave trade, its military forces, its worlds, and campaigns set inside it, including the **Hierate Campaign** and *The Fall of Worlds*. *In the library.* - **The Pirates of Drinax** (2017, 281 pp) — the line's flagship campaign, and the reason the Drinax shelf exists. *In the library.* - **The King is Dead** (46 pp) — a Drinax campaign book opening on the death of a king and the scramble that follows — royal physicians, the Keeper of the Royal Seal, and a runner carrying the sealed note to court. *In the library.* - **Shadows of Sindal** (121 pp) — two linked Drinax adventures, *Plague of Sindal* and *Prince of Sindal*, travelling through Caldos, Tyr, Hecarda, Acis and Sagan. *In the library.* - **The Drinaxian Companion** (225 pp) — the campaign's companion volume. *In the library.* - **Rachando** (57 pp) — a Drinax campaign book. *In the library.* - **The Once and Future Prince** (57 pp) — a Drinax campaign book. *In the library.* ## References - [Traveller RPG — Mongoose Publishing](https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/collections/traveller-rpgs) - [Traveller (role-playing game) — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_(role-playing_game))