1 TRAVELLER CENTRAL SUPPLY CATALOGUE C REDITS C ONTENTS Classic Traveller Marc Miller INTRODUCTION 2 RULES & BACKGROUND 3 Loren Wiseman, John Harshman, Frank Chadwick, Darryl Hany, Winston Hamilton, Tony Svajlenka, Scott Renner, Doug Poe, PERSONAL & LIGHT SUPPORT WEAPONS 28 David MacDonald, Wayne Roth, Paul R. Banner. SUPPORT & ARTILLERY WEAPONS 108 Mongoose Traveller PERSONAL PROTECTION 132 AUTHOR Martin Dougherty & Bryan Steele SURVIVAL & FIELD EQUIPMENT 154 ELECTRONIC & MEDICAL EQUIPMENT 166 EDITOR Nick Robinson SUBSISTENCE & LIVING EXPENSES 182 INDEX 188 LAYOUT Will Chapman INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS Jason ‘Banditt’ Adams, James Gammel & Gong Studio PROOFREADER Charlotte Law PLAYTESTERS Adam Gulman & Andrew Welty Central Supply Catalogue ©2009 Mongoose Publishing. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All signifi cant characters, names, places,items, art and text herein are copyrighted by Mongoose Publishing. This game product contains no Open Game Content. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written permission. To learn more about the Open Game License, please go to www.mongoosepublishing.com. This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom and of the United States. This product is a work of fi ction. Any similarity to actual people, organisations, places or events is purely coincidental. Traveller is a trademark of Far Future Enterprises and is used under licence. Printed in the USA. 2 2 INTRODUCTION Welcome to the Central Supply Catalogue for Traveller. This book This book is intended for use with any Traveller setting, not just contains a varied array of, well, stuff people might want, need, or the Original Traveller Universe. Where possible, assumptions about wish they had had a few days ago. All items are for use with the setting have not been made. However, sometimes it is necessary to Traveller RPG from Mongoose but not everything in this book may make mention of background data. In this case, the Third Imperium exist in any given Traveller game universe unless the Referee says setting of the OTU has been used as a starting point. It is not diffi cult it does. to change these references to whatever interstellar polities exist in a diff erent game universe. Most of the items presented herein are drawn from the offi cial ‘canon’ publications of earlier Traveller versions. Some contradictions and This is more than a book of things to buy. It also contains information repetitions have been resolved but for the most part what is in here on the Tech Level system in Traveller, variant technologies and a is what existed in earlier versions of the game. However, there is a number of other issues surrounding the use of technological items fair amount of new stuff too. Not all of the new items are designed in Traveller. with the Original Traveller Universe (OTU) in mind. Special thanks are due to Omer Golan Joel, who compiled and Or rather, there is no mention of such items in publications up to this submitted an impressive list of gear, apparently just for fun. point. It is up to the Referee to decide whether or not any given item is available and to deal with the ramifi cations of its availability. 3 RULES AND BACKGROUND RULES AND BACKGROUND ECHNOLOGY IN RAVELLER Primitive worlds rarely have anything worth trading off world, other T T than novelty goods such as animal hides, art and exotic foods. The Traveller RPG deals with technology ranging from the very The locals usually lack the capability to exploit natural resources latest in fl aked-fl int applications to neural implants and antimatter by mining, large-scale agriculture and processing of unusual items power plants. Exactly what technological items are available to the such as pharmaceuticals. travellers, or their opponents, can make a huge diff erence to their capabilities and the diffi culties they may encounter in the course of As a result primitive societies tend to remain so. They lack the an adventure. capability to generate enough surplus to trade off world. This in turn limits the amount of investment which can be made and traps The game needs some means of quickly identifying the baseline the primitive world at that level. Of course, technology will slowly local technology and therefore establishing what it likely to be advance and there will be small-scale investment in many cases. present. This is the purpose of the Tech Level system. Most societies are capable of supporting their people with a little to spare for trade but this is more often traded by cart to the next town The Technology Level (Tech Level) of a given world or region is over than shipped off world on giant freighters. rated using a number which starts at zero and progresses upwards as technological capability increases. Tech levels are sometimes A ‘primitive’ tech rating does not necessarily mean an unsophisticated grouped into eras, such as Primitive, Stellar and so forth. society, or hordes of starving savages. Social systems are often largely independent of Technology Level, though there are some Tech levels are a general guide only. They give an indication of what obvious limitations. ‘Primitive’ people might be entirely used to is available to the locals but anyone expecting a single code to detail starships visiting their world and totally unimpressed by them everything about a world’s technology is in for some surprises. – they may be experts at fl eecing naïve off worlders of their credits and small personal items. Even within a given Tech Level there is some variation. A Tech Level designation is simply a broad guide; within each tech band there is usually some gradual progress towards higher technology. One TL TL 0 6 society might have just attained that level while another may have TL 0 equates to the Stone Ages on Terra. It spans a period from the a ‘mature’ TL 6 and be moving on to TL 7, with prototype TL 7 items earliest use of stone tools to the beginnings of metal use. Mature beginning to appear. TL 0 cultures make use of quite sophisticated shaped stone and wood tools; early TL 0 people just pick up sticks and rocks. Sometimes a culture will be referred to with a qualifi er such as ‘stagnant’ or ‘mature’. These are usually self-explanatory. For The typical TL 0 dwelling is a skin tent, cave or natural shelter example, a stagnant TL 6 world is not progressing; a mature TL 9 augmented with woven plant fi bres. Clothing is mainly rough world has been at that level for a while and has worked the bugs animal hides. Subsistence is usually by hunting, fi shing or very out of its TL 9 systems. A late TL 7 world is close to advancing to TL basic agriculture. 8; an early TL 2 world is using rather basic (and possibly less than optimal) versions of the technologies meriting its TL 2 rating. Some TL 0 cultures make basic canoes; some domesticate animals. None have writing of any sort, though oral traditions and various Essentially, a Tech Level is a broad band rather than a precise forms of art are used to store knowledge. Medicine is primitive but indication of exactly what is in use. Some worlds are very backward sometimes quite eff ective, with herbal remedies used in place of in some areas due to cultural oddities or local conditions. Others modern drugs. may be in advance of their baseline Tech Level in some areas. However, the code (and the explanation going with it) serves as a TL 1 useful generalisation until greater detail is encountered or required. TL 1 equates to the period on Terra from the earliest use of metals through to the early Middle Ages. Early TL 1 cultures use copper, The Primitive Era (TL 0–3) bronze and similar soft metals, with iron becoming more prevalent ‘Primitive’ societies range from those with no technology beyond later in the era. tools which can be picked up from the environment (sticks and rocks for the most part) to just before the beginnings of large- TL 1 societies are capable of building sophisticated towns and scale industry. Perhaps the most important factors are the lack of fortifi cations, using stone or brick. Many scientifi c principles are communications faster than a galloping animal and the unavailability understood, though often partially or incorrectly and these are used of rapid mass transportation. in warfare, engineering and navigation. Agriculture is somewhat 4 4 RULES AND BACKGROUND advanced, using irrigation and animal power is common. Water Industrial-era societies generally produce suffi cient goods to be able power may also be harnessed. to trade some of the surplus off world and conversely they make a reasonable market for off world goods. It is still diffi cult for worlds Carts and wagons are used for land transport, while oar and sail of this sort to generate enough hard cash to pay for major imports powered coastal vessels are used at sea. Open-ocean navigation is of high-tech goods, however. As a result Industrial worlds tend to not usually possible. Weaponry takes the form of sophisticated hand be a target market for the products of pre-stellar economies. This is weapons such as swords and manually powered missile weapons because goods of a slightly higher Tech Level are easier to maintain such as the crossbow and bow. Metal body armour and large siege and keep working (and thus more worthwhile purchases) than high- engines, catapults for example, may be used by organised military tech gear. forces. Although they are titled industrial societies, TL 4–6 cultures are TL 2 not always industrialised.