Cepheus Deluxe (Expanded Edition) is a modernized pulp sci-fi version of the Traveller game. With their stamina and lifeblood system, the combat rules allow characters to shrug off minor wounds, adding a sense of resilience and tension to the game. On the other hand, the talent system brings characters to life with its cinematic feeling, offering a deeper level of customization and engagement.
Cepheus Deluxe (Expanded Edition) is a versatile powerhouse, designed to seamlessly fit into any generic sci-fi setting. This adaptability empowers you to create your own unique universe, play established IPs, or even convert other sci-fi settings. It's a game engine that can fuel a 2d6-based Star Frontiers conversion or a hybrid mix of Star Frontiers, Space Opera, and Traveller, giving you the creative freedom to craft the sci-fi experience you desire.
Cepheus also does Star Wars, Star Trek, and other IPs just fine as a rules system. The pulp additions to characters and combat ensure you get that tension and danger in combat while brushing off light wounds and not needing medical attention for minor wounds and punches to the face. In Traveller, all wounds require medical attention. In Cepheus, there are some you can just shake off and get on with the action. The talent system helps give characters a "larger than life" feeling and allows for deeper specializations.
To me, Traveller has moved out of the "generic sci-fi game" space (which Mongoose Traveller 1E was in) and has become a very strong setting-based game for the mind-blowing Imperium setting. This version embraces the setting and merges the rules with it, just like Runequest 7th does, and gives you a great starting point for any sci-fi campaign. The key word here is starting point since the universe is designed in that Harnquest-style "one starting point" that you can take in any direction and then reset for your next campaign.
Want to do sort of a "space alien" game? Do that in one campaign, then wipe the slate clean the next. Time travel? It is not canon, but it is sci-fi, but those stories can be told here. When the campaign is done, the universe resets to "year zero," and you have a fresh slate for the next story. Time travel and space monsters may not exist in future games, but every playthrough is unique, and you make the universe "yours" every time you play it. Dimensional travel and magic? Fine, it is in your current game.
I love these "single starting point" games far more than the "constant canon" games where new metaplots, lore, and characters are added to the world with every book - like the old Forgotten Realms was in the 1990s. You would make one unused part of the world your own, and a novel would come in and overwrite everything. Players will go there and expect to see "the novel stuff" like tourists; your contributions mean little and are marginalized.
Runequest is done the same way, just like Call of Cthulhu - you get the campaign world set as the single starting point, and any direction you take from it is excellent. This is the only way to do deep game worlds these days since updating the universe for new events invalidates old books, steps on player contributions, and creates a mess of lore and dependencies, where X had to happen for Y, and all of a sudden you need to play at the "tail end" of history to have any fun.
Cepheus does generic sci-fi the best. It is free from the iconic Traveller ships and lets you create your own without scout couriers flying around reminding you that you are in "not Traveller" again. The pulp- elements create a high-action sci-fi experience, and it does a 2d6 experience for these genres just about the best. Traveller is a more realistic game.
What I love about Traveller is being able to pick any map and any star and drill down into it to read about "what is there" and dream of all the adventures that can occur there. I can't do that in D&D. I get a greater sense of wonder about a sci-fi universe where characters are relatively ordinary and discover the extraordinary than I do the "high magic Avengers" of most fantasy gaming these days. I can put an unexplained phenomenon in Traveller, and players will ask, "What is that?"
In D&D, players know the page number of what just happened.
Magic is no longer magic if it is pedestrianized.
D&D magic is just "power"—not magic. There is a massive difference between being amazed by what a stage magician does, watching the same thing, and "knowing the trick." Magic assumes wonder, not knowing how it happened, and feeling that sense of shock and amazement at something happening before your eyes that you can't explain.
The same is true for Traveller. I can set up an anomaly in which a ship "teleports" between stars using some unknown drive, and the players race around trying to find where it goes next and what it shall do. That drive isn't in the rules or the books, it is in my imagination. The players will likely only partially understand it, only the parts they need to give them an edge. I will never need to write a "technical manual" explaining how it works. Players will never be able to "replicate it" by gaining access to "high-level engineering powers."
The ship will likely never appear in another campaign. This is it. If it gets destroyed, that is the end. It is not in the "Mega Tech Guide" book. The players will never know anything else about it, its origin, or its purpose. There is no page in a book you can flip to for an answer.
It is what it is, the unexplained.
And we need space for that in our games and our imaginations.
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