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Book 1: Mercenary
 
$14.99
Average Rating:3.9 / 5
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Book 1: Mercenary
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Book 1: Mercenary
Publisher: Mongoose
by Michael B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/01/2020 17:10:07

Contains an amazing amount of information, especially for the standard "Third Imperium" universe. Great value.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Book 1: Mercenary
Publisher: Mongoose
by Megan R. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/01/2015 08:55:32

Within the Traveller universe, many people - or at least, many player-characters - decide to earn their living utilising their combat skills. This book is aimed at the specialised mercenaries such as private military companies available for hire, and provides a wealth of detail for creating such characters and running mercenary operations. The Introduction explains this, and the role of mercenaries in Mongoose Traveller, in detail.

Then we move on to character generation, which starts with some enhancements to the military careers offered in the core rulebook. Now characters can begin their careers in the sort of navy that sails in boats or in the air force. There are also extended Mishap and Events tables for those who are in the army or the marines. This is followed by detailed information on creating a mercenary character. Here it's assumed that the would-be mercenary has already served some time in the military before choosing (or being forced) to leave and join an established mercenary group. This system is designed to allow the character to gain some experience in that trade through serving one or more standard terms before entering play. If you are intending a mercenary-focussed game, with the characters as active members of a mercenary group, you might want them to take at least one term as a mercenary to model their initial involvement in the profession and perhaps to establish their prior relationships with each other. There are several different areas of mercenary activity to choose from, depending on the sort of background you want your characters to have. These include being a guerilla as well as more 'legitimate' forms of mercenary activity which include security work as well as out-and-out combat units. There are even opportunities to become a gun-runner or arms dealer!

Next comes a section on new skills and specialties. Although they mostly have a mercenary aspect, most might be made available to any character. Suggestions are given for incorporating some of them into the Core Rulebook system if so desired for characters interested in mainstream military careers.

The next section is called Mercenary Tickets. This is the core of the system used to generate missions for mercenary characters - the Ticket is the contract that someone makes with their mercenary company for their services. It also serves as the mercenaries' legitimacy, much like letters of marque were all that distinguished between a privateer and a pirate... and your enemies may not take a blind bit of notice if they have decided that whoever hired you is a legitimate enemy or a terrorist organisation! However it does detail what the mercenaries are required to do and what they'll be paid for doing it. There's an entire set of game mechanics to model the process, well worth reading through for ideas even if you decide not to use it in its entirety. It also allows you to generate random tickets if you do not have a specific mission in mind. There are plenty of examples and explanations to help you keep the whole process on track.

Then comes a section called Recruiting Unit Members, which looks at the recruitment process in detail. Perhaps the characters have been sent to find new recruits for their mercenary group... but it also serves well as an aid to Referees wanting to create entire groups, whether to be other members of the group the party belongs to or the opposition (or even that bunch of mercs you run into every so often in your travels).

We then move onto a section of New Combat Rules. As well as enhancements to those in the core rulebook, there's an extensive unit-based system to model the larger battles that might occur in a mercenary campaign or indeed if war breaks out around the characters. This is followed by a section on Mercenary Headquarters and Military Bases. After all mercenaries - and indeed all military personnel - need somewhere to call home, and this section shows you how to provide such locations. They can also, of course, be the target of an attack! There's an interesting discussion of how such places have developed as technology levels have increased, so you can pick ones appropriate to the planet on which they are situated. Finally, there is a section of New Equipment - everything the well-povided-for mercenary might dream about!

This book fills an interesting and specialised niche - and is quite unlike the original Mercenary book of the original Traveller ruleset which contented itself with expanding on the army and marine careers. Even if you do not want to run mercenary campaigns, there's quite a lot of useful material - especially if you decide that the party might run into some mercenaries at some point in the campaign - which makes it worthy of consideration for inclusion in your library.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Book 1: Mercenary
Publisher: Mongoose
by Glen W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/28/2013 10:33:52

When I purchased this book I thought it was going to be more like the original Mercenary book. However, it was not. The thing I liked most about the original was the in depth treatment of creating military characters such as Army or Marines. This book took an entirely different tack and created all new classes of mercenaries that began from Army, Marine or another branch first. Although I understand it I am still disappointed that further detail for Army and Marine characters was left out. I enjoyed rolling histories and missions, earning ribbons etc for my characters with the original rules. That often helped to flesh them out.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Book 1: Mercenary
Publisher: Mongoose
by Daniel H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/07/2010 20:55:16

Once again, Mongoose has re-issued and re-detailed a previous CT era book, in their own image. A perfect score here is avoided by the various weapons data errata (ranges that are way short for TL8 Mortars for example, having used them, they can get 3.5kms without a booster charge). The meat of the book however and so far many of the reviewers have missed the point: a Mercenary outfit IS a BUSINESS, and runs like one, with certain respects. Mongoose does not fail to touch upon this point, and even gives various TL advantages and disadvantages for theese unit's upkeep and bases. Mongoose also maintains a wider range of D66 results in the career building/ career events tables which is better than 2-12 choices for variety's sake (roll up a platoon of mercs and see what I mean if you've more choices, your NPCs wn't all look like cookie-cutter straw dogs)! Definitely a must-have for players and GM's alike with the roll-dice-blow-stuff-up crowd!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Book 1: Mercenary
Publisher: Mongoose
by William H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/18/2008 11:51:39

The PDF itself shows Mongoose's disregard for quality control; it is at least better than the paper copies. There are numerous layout errors that can be caught by an experienced editor in 5 seconds (I know I did), including issues with chapter headers on chapter title pages. The writing in this one is amateurish, shows a lack of grasp of military organization and tactics, and a total disregard for reality. ¶

As stated in another review, this almost totally fails to emulate the original.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
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Book 1: Mercenary
Publisher: Mongoose
by David S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/12/2008 17:37:11

This book continues Mongoose's policy of reusing the names of the original Traveller books but failing to emulate them in any way.

The book is softback but seems well bound, black and white interior with illustrations that are a matter of taste.

The books starts well by adding an number of additional careers to character generation and some extended event and mishap tables. In fact if you are a Mongoose Traveller player this section alone is worth the investment, there are regular service careers like airforce and wet navy as well as more merc orientated specific ones like guerill and warmonger.

There are some new skills and specialities, useful enough but not mind blowing.

The section on mercenary tickets proves to be very interesting, expanding and improving on the rules found in the Classic rules. Here there are rules for running an SF mercenary unit, playing out their contracts from engagement and recruitment to getting the hell off the planet now that your employers are no longer in charge.

To help with the resolution of these ticket we are also presented with a quite nice mass combat system, very abstract and containing what I believe to be a few flaws/typos in unit size tables. A very handy addition to the rules.

The are additions to the combat rules range from the welcome ("Kill Shots") to the horrendously flawed and poorly written ("suppressive fire" was patently written by someone that did not understand the concept).

A strange but not unpleasant chunk of the book is devoted to rear echelon life, unit headquarters and facilities. Nothing wrong with this section but it doesn't seem to gel with the rest of the book, like a magazine article shoved in as filler. Yet this is possibly the best written part of the book.

Now for the biggest let down of the book. Equipment. I was fully aware that this was a "generic sf" MGT product and was looking forward to some alternate tech from that normally presented in the Traveller Universe. The preview including the outrageously devastating railgun was a little worrying, spinning disks do not make great penetrators but they look good on video games. The whole equipment section left me feeling cold. Worst of all for me was the complete lack of understanding of artillery and its use on the battlefield. Bizarre definitions and poor descriptions abound; mortars firing energy balls anyone? Perhaps I was expecting too much from this section but to me all the gems (and there are gems) are hidden by the utter crud that dominates it.

This is not a bad product, just terribly let down by the equipment section. The fact that this reader's (and many others') expectations of it were so high means what is overall quite a sound product feels just average.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Book 1: Mercenary
Publisher: Mongoose
by John G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/12/2008 07:43:18

The much awaited Mercenary by Mongoose Publishing hits most of the marks: it has new character generation, a process for creating mercenary tickets and a whole host of other useful information. But the one area that lets this book down is the weapons section. Some of the ranges of the weapons are clearly wrong, even by today's standards, and the inclusion of weapons not normally found in the official Traveller universe has caused some controversy. However, all things considered, this is a book well worth its price.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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