So I got mildly interested in Traveller recently, someone brought up to me an interesting element of Classic Traveller - all mechanical growth happens at chargen, as part of a press-your-luck mechanic in which you risk your character's life to proceed down a path until you decide against it or crash into an unceremonious death in the line of duty before play. This is potentially unmitigated genius, so of course editions since Classic Traveller have eliminated death at chargen and added a stale advancement mechanic, ruining the original intent of the game itself due to pressure by presumably players wanting less time wasting efforts due to their own failure to understand that risk/reward has to come with risk, and therefore consequences.
I found three "Best" editions of Traveller to look into and began studying. The first was the worst, Cepheus Engine is an OSR rebuild of Classic Traveller with some stuff from Mongoose Traveller 1E. It appears to be a failed middle step, because it also commits the sin espoused in the previous paragraph. As it doesn't get what it's trying to do, it should be immediately discarded from contention. As I've went ahead and mentioned it, Mongoose Traveller seems to have the best additions and simplifications to the original game. Traveller 5 is the actual newest edition of the original game, but has mired itself in cumbersome minutia and also severely dimished the chance of death at chargen (though cursory glance reveals there is no advancement system, so some original intent has survived).
In the end, I came to the conclusion that Classic Traveller is the gold standard of the entire game's history, and the best additions to said history have come out of Mongoose Traveller (1E and/or 2E, though I only looked at 2E).
Cepheus Engine was a real gut-punch because while I see there was an intent to merge Classic Traveller and the good additions from Mongoose, at some point somebody started sniffing their own farts a bit too much and lost the thread. They ended up with a weird shitbrew that is merely an alternate Mongoose Traveller without the license and therefore pointless. It crossed the line from OSR into Heartbreaker at that point. The most interesting mechanical elements of Classic Traveller are death at chargen and the only possibility of advancement being at chargen. It means that Classic Traveller is one of the few games in the universe where you play a character who's fully defined at the beginning of their play cycle, not a character on his way to becoming a completely different, super character.
On the other hand there were some very good additions I enjoyed about Mongoose Traveller 2. Specifically those in the Traveller Companion book, as well as elements within the core book I could see taking over to Classic Traveller play. I'm going to outline a few here:
Pre-Career Events & Methods: In classic Traveller it seems like you just begin entering a service. With Mongoose you either start going to a University or Military Academy. The Companion expands these origins with great additions like The School of Hard Knocks, Colonial Upbrining, Spacer Community, etc. All this is missing is a random roll. The original game kind of understood that you don't get to pick if you're smart or strong, the new edition should also understand that you don't get to pick who your parents are. Starting out as a dirt farmer on a colony or a scrapper in a spacer community will not afford you the life to decide to enter a University or Academy. Really it should be a random roll based on rarity, then splitting up that rarity based on parents. So for example say 30% chance of middle class which allows for going to University/Academy, but only 12% of those 30 will be parents allowing the choice of either, and 9% either way will only pay for specifically University OR Academy. In this way I'm OK with Psionic Community being an upbringing, because I'd hard set it to 1% or as close as I could get, maybe 1 entry on a d66 table (2.78%) is Psionic Community origin. I would of course scoot the "Choose a Homeworld" section to be after pre-career, and keep in mind the limits set by pre-career path. Probably even de-emphasize the "choose" part and make it another table based on pre-career.
Wounds & Events: In Classic Traveller, you could have a career end due to death and death alone. I like the idea of a career ending due to wounds or even ending due to events that don't cause a wound. The removal of Death was stupid but the addition of these other life-like complications is great. I'd go so far as to say mishaps should be roughly 50% death and 50% wounds/etc instead of death. This doesn't eliminate death at chargen and at the same time adds variety to characters present in these subsystems.
The Prisoner Career: Really my favorite new career addition, where you can go to prison and start the game as an ex-con. Flips the game on it's head as you have to roll to get out of this "career" instead of rolling to remain in it. Along with events the smartest element of the Mongoose Traveller game (no idea if it was actually invented in the intervening years between Classic and Mongoose, but it's not in Traveller 5).
Skill Packages: The last thing I'm going to talk about that deserves love is the first session of a Traveller campaign where the players determine what kind of adventures they want to go on. I don't think this mechanic was built correctly but it got about 90% of the way there. Basically Skill packages are taken as a group, and then each skill in the list of 8 skills are picked out by players. I don't think it was done right because it merely says "players take turns picking". I think the Skill Packages element could be a further reward for those who terminated their careers early. So I say divide the number of players by 8, then use that to determine how many "picks" each player gets, then starting with the youngest character, each player gets to make those picks. Odd picks are evenly dispersed to the youngest players. So the youngest picks first and the oldest gets the leftovers, even if they don't actually add skill ranks to the character.
Example: 3 players sit down to play a game of Traveller. At the end of chargen one player went through 2 terms (the youngest), one 3, and the last 4. Each player will get 2.67 selections, rounding down to 2 for the oldest character, the remaining two get 3 picks each. Youngest character picks his 3first, then the second youngest picks his 3, and lastly the oldest gets the leftover 2. The only special case I see is if the Mercenary Skills package is chosen, you can't leave one character with two entries of the same skill. If the youngest character doesn't get Gun Combat in this example, the second youngest will HAVE to take it as a part of their picks so the oldest can't be stuck with Gun Combat twice.
This rule will obviously take some arbitration if for example one character went through 3 terms and the others 4, etc etc. Basically try to maintain fairness between those with like terms, so if two characters are the youngest let them select simultaneously and give them equal picks, and if all characters are oldest allow them to select simultaneously and roll off for it if there are any conflicts in decisions.
This will also add a bit of grudging rivalry among the characters subconsciously, they are all out for themselves but ultimately on the same team. In the end those who went through more terms will be more skilled anyway, have more benefits, etc. This just gives the young upstarts a minor benefit for getting out early.
