Traveller for FoundryVTT

For a while now, I’ve been working on a system for FoundryVTT which provides support for Mongoose Traveller 2e. Unlike the TwoDSix system, the aim of this was to specifically implement the Mongoose rules set. I’ve been using it for almost two years or so to run my Deepnight Revelation campaign, but haven’t released it publicly since I was waiting for either Mongoose to provide permission, or for 2e to be released under an open license.

Well now, I’ve been granted the go ahead by Mongoose to release it. The first thing to make clear, is that it does not contain any of the content, just the rules. So there are no items, spacecraft or aliens included with the system. However, there is a discussion ongoing about this.

So the big question is, why bother? Why not just use TwoDSix? Indeed, why didn’t I just use TwoDSix instead of writing my own? Given I started over two years ago on it, I don’t entirely remember my reasoning. Partly it was because it seemed like a fun project. Partly I think I initially failed to find a Traveller system on Foundry (TwoDSix isn’t a name I’d automatically associate with Traveller). Finally, once I found TwoDSix there were some things I wanted done differently.

The main thing I wanted was for skills to be baked into the character sheet, rather than as items that are dragged in.

There is full support for specialist skills; as well as for NPCs and Creatures with their simplified statistics and damage systems. Some of these things TwoDSix have added since I started.

In terms of completeness, it’s probably somewhere between alpha and beta. This was written specifically for me, so does what I needed for our Deepnight Revelation campaign. We are light on combat, don’t do any trading, and spacecraft combat is incredibly one-sided, so we don’t ever bother with the rules for that. However, there has been progress on implementations for that.

There is support for skill checks, weapon attacks and applying damage – both to Travellers with damage applied to individual characteristics, and NPCs and Creatures where they have a single Hits value.

Armour, effect, penetration, stun damage and other special weapon traits are taken into account.

If you go unconscious from stun damage, that is tracked round to round. Penalties from dodge are also applied, and automatically reset when your initiative next comes up. Augments are supported for a number of item types, so STR and DEX bonuses can be applied from Battledress, and Expert Systems can be used to provide skill bonuses.

Starships are there, though not fully implemented. I originally added them just as a means to store equipment that players were keeping on their ship. There is some support for defining a ship, as well as tracking damage and armour. Within the last few weeks I added support for adding crew to a ship, and assigning roles to them. Weapons can now be added to mounts, but they can’t be fired.

Actor Types

The following Actor types are currently supported:

Traveller – A player character, with full details for career history and detailed damage tracking.

NPC – A simplified version of a Traveller. Some of the tabs are removed for simplicity – NPCs don’t need to track their career terms or full financial details. Otherwise they are similar to Travellers. Damage is tracked on a single Hits statistic, rather than coming of characteristics.

Creature – An even more simplified version of a character, which lacks individual characteristics and has a cut down list of skills. Like NPCs, they have a single Hits chaaracteristic.

Package – Designed to implement the character packages in the Companion, a Package can also be used to represent races or used as a quick way to build NPCs. They can contain a ‘package’ of skills, items and characteristic bonuses that are applied to a character. They can also set a random height and weight (modified by physical characteristics), or completely roll a new set of characteristics using any dice desired. A package might use 1D6+2 for a characteristic rather than the usual 2D6. Or even 3D6k2 (roll three dice, keep the highest two).

Spacecraft – Anything from a smallcraft to a battle cruiser, it can be used to design and represent spacecraft. Partially implemented at this stage. Hardware can be applied to it, cargo can be placed in it, and other items can be stored in the ship’s locker. Crew and Roles can be defined. Roles set which skill checks a crew member may need to make.

Dragging an NPC or Traveller to a spacecraft sheet adds them as a passenger, and then they can be promoted to being a crew member.

Item Types

The following Item types are currently being used. Carried items are those which can be carried by a person (a Traveller, NPC or Creature) within the game world. Uncarried items are mostly ‘meta’ items that exist as part of the rules, but not within the game world.

Carried

General Item – A general item which can be carried by a character.

Armour – Anything that is worn, doesn’t have to be actual armour. Battledress, cloth armour, t-shirts and the like. They provide protection from damage and radiation. They may provide augments as well. Normally, only one armour can be worn at a time. Some armour provides extra protection against different damage types.

Weapon – Something that is wielded and does damage. They have a skill associated with them, and can have ammo which depletes. They can have special properties added (such as Armour Piercing, Auto-fire, Stun damage etc) and have a damage type (such as physical or energy damage). They also have a scale – Traveller, Vehicle or Spacecraft. The scale is mostly used to determine what type of actor ‘uses’ the weapon. A Traveller scale weapon added to a spacecraft is put in the ship’s locker. A spacecraft scale weapon is made available for mounting in a turret or bay.

Augmentation – Simply provide augmentation effects, such as software or cybernetics.

Spacecraft Hardware – Can be carried by spacecraft. Represents things such as power plants, cargo holds, staterooms, turrets etc.

Cargo – Freight and speculative cargo that is stored in a starship’s cargo hold. Later it will be possible to ‘buy’ them from star ports and do trade with them.

Meta Items

Career Term – A term during character generation. Can be assigned to a Traveller or a Package actor type. They are used to track activity during character generation.

Background Associate – A contact, ally, enemy or rival gained during character generation. Each one tracks its relationship to the character.

Crew Role – A role aboard a starship, which can be assigned to one or more crew members. Roles define skills can be performed directly from the spacecraft character sheet.

On the weekend that I was planning to release it to the public, I discovered that the Foundry system id I have been using for the last 2+ years was taken by another implementation of Mongoose Traveller a couple of months back. So I had to rewrite a lot of things (mostly it was just changing ‘mgt2’ to ‘mgt2e’, but it was fiddly). Then do more testing to make sure nothing had been broken by the re-write.

I think what I have is now stable and works. There are plenty of changes planned for the future. I need to finish support for spacecraft, including spacecraft combat. Vehicles are missing, and I have some ideas to add Starports and an implementation of the trade system. I should also upgrade it to Foundry v12, but I haven’t had a chance to test it on that yet, so I have no idea of the work involved. For now, it’s on v11.

If anyone wants to try it out, it’s available on Foundry as Mongoose Traveller 2E. If you have feedback, then please let me know.