1) Traveller was already more than 10 years old.

2) Essential books for Traveller was long out of print.

3) Writing anything for Traveller was a nightmare if you wanted to be somewhere close to official as a) I did not have the material covering the area I wrote about and b) old grognards pointed out that it contradicted canon.

Now more than 20 years later and more than thirty years after the 3 LBB was released we are in the very same position.

Mongoose will find themselves between a grognard and a hard place. They need to write material for Traveller, both for other settings, but also to the Official Traveller Universe (OTU). First of all, staying with canon will be impossible because 1) the material is either out of print 2) or too hard to find among the available material which is several hundred pages of background history spread of several books from different publishers.

All new versions of Traveller has tried one of two either to advance the history or stay in the past as nothing had happened. The first both MT and TNE attempted to bring the Traveller story forward. MT failed due to no coherent control over the meta campaign. Tne did maybe the only sensible thing. Erased everything and started a new with a different setting which was still in the old Imperium. One can debate if this was a smart thing or not. However, TNE was the most selling game at the time for GDW, so they must have done something right.

As recent discussions on a few forums lately show, you don't mess with the game which so many love for one reason or other (or several for that matter). It is time for a wake up call. MgT isn't for those who want to see their favourite edition of Traveller published, but for those who want a SciFi game that works.

Grognards that are too set in their ways are going to be left behind unless they either convert or pipe down before a vein burst. Forget about the rules, there is still a lot of Traveller material to mine from either existing sources or from the many different websites around the net. I have not seen any edition of Traveller that could not give me something useful I could use in my game even for way different mechanics.

As you may have noticed, I am all for TNE both in setting and mechanics. However, if I could choose now I would like to see a system where character generation and task system is more like MT. Equipment and combat rules are TNE. MgT isn't my cup of tea, and I will probably never buy any of the books. However, MgT won't fall down just because I don't buy it. Traveller will likely flourish in one form or the other long after I have set out on my last journey.

But rather than bitch about that Mongoose has cheated me I have actually several other choises. One is to just write my own version of Traveller. Another is to just use what I have and shut up. And I can, which I prefer, share my own written material wether it is houserules or setting material with other Traveller fans regardless of rulesystem/setting they prefer. Hopefully someone will find something interesting and useful. In this way I will continue to support Traveller for as long as I can.