Advertise on podcast: Signals from the Core - A Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition Podcast

How would you run a Traveller campaign about local cops or private investigators? Inspired by a listener’s question, Capt. Aurelius talks examines law and order in the Core Sector of the Third Imperium. We look at choosing an agency and creating a home base, how to build cases around clues, informants, technology, and recurring characters. Plus, get suggestions on a few great options in the Core for setting your campaign and a new Core Seed: “The Wrong Teeth,” a murder investigation scenario set on Aarza Kand, as an example to get you started. As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media on Linktree. If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Can’t find a group or a Referee interested in running Traveller adventures in the Core Sector of the Third Imperium? Paul Elliott’s SOLO Second Edition from Zozer Games gives you a way to play it yourself!  In this episode, we look at how its rules let a crew’s decisions and dice rolls grow into an ongoing story and examine some Core-specific situations and conflicts to help bring its encounters to life.  We also rank SOLO’s six campaign types for Core play, from travelling patrons and star traders to wreck hunters and a possible campaign for a lone Scout courier. SOLO is fully compatible with Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition and is available in digital and physical formats. Purchase the SOLO Second Edition PDF from DriveThruRPG HERE. Print copies are available to order on the Zozer Games website HERE. Learn more about Zozer Games and the other settings and rules they produce HERE.  As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media on Linktree. If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Crime in Traveller's Core Sector is best defined by access, proximity to power, and institutional complexity, often hiding behind wealth, status, bureaucracy, and legitimate business. In this episode, we look at what makes crime and corruption at the center of the Third Imperium distinct, and how Referees can build it into their campaigns. Then we shine a Subsector Spotlight on Shinkan, a fascinating area of the Core Sector that offers Traveller referees and players a ready-made hive of scum and villainy to play in.  Read more about Organized Crime in the Core by Christopher Griffen in Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society Volume 10. As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore. If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The Core Sector in Traveller roleplaying game is often described through its great institutions, but what about the people, races and cultures who actually live there? In this episode of Signals from the Core, we introduce Core Cultures, a new recurring segment exploring the people and societies who give the sector its complexity, tensions, and character. Our first deep dive examines the Syleans, the once-oppressed human minor race whose cooperative spirit and political ambition helped lift Charted Space up out of the Long Night and establish the Third Imperium. Drawing from both Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition and GURPS Traveller Humaniti, we explore Sylean history, physiology, spirituality, language, and customs, including the Thar Ven Successors, the Maar Zon faith, and the struggle to preserve a distinct identity at the center of the empire they helped create. Check out the Third Imperium Sourcebook from Mongoose Publishing here. Check out the GURPS Traveller Humaniti PDF here. As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore. If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

It’s often said that trade is the lifeblood of the Third Imperium. And in the Core Sector, it operates on an extraordinary scale. In this episode of Signals from the Core, we examine how to run the traditional merchant and trade-based campaigns players of the Traveller roleplaying game are so familiar with when set in the Imperial Core. We explore the Sylean Main, the corporations competing to control it, the political forces and situations shaping commerce, and whether an independent crew can still make a living in the Imperial heartland. Plus, Captain Aurelius answers the question, “Could you really run a Firefly-style campaign here?”  As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore. If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In this episode of Signals from the Core, we open with a review of Core Adventure 2: Last Call at Eneri's Cantina by Christopher Griffen for Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition, where saving a starport bar on the Sylean Main means getting dragged into an authoritarian power grab dressed up as public safety. From there we chart the Chant subsector and a rejuvenation project as compromised as the region it's supposed to be fixing. Then, a System Spotlight on Tell, a waterworld of barely ninety thousand people carrying the technological weight of Chant's whole recovery, where four rival corporations run TL15 laboratories next door to each other and treat industrial espionage as table stakes. Plus, our Patron Profile of Aelric Durellian, trillionaire tech oligarch founder of Aeternus, a man convinced the Imperium is holding Humaniti back, and who may or may not still be entirely human himself. As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore And check out the new Traveller News Service wire out of Capital: Signals from the Core Dispatches at: https://signalsfromthecore.micro.blog/ If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

What does the Core do for fun? We explore how people across the sector consume entertainment, from bootleg holo-vids and immersive VR to luxury tourism, gladitorial bloodsports, and noble safaris. Get tips on turning ordinary hobbies into extraordinary circumstances. Plus, System Spotlights on Dudin and Alekvadin, and a review of Core Adventure 1: Invasive Species by Christopher Griffen.  As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In this episode of Signals from the Core, we open the mailbag for a round of CORE-espondence: listener questions, messages, and ideas that sent me down new routes for thinking about the Traveller roleplaying game and the Core Sector. We talk interstellar mail and communication lag, the darker side of the Imperial Core, Perpetual Traveller, useful JTAS articles for Core campaigns, and a possible new direction for the show as an audio ‘zine touring the worlds of the Core one stop at a time. As always, follow along on Bluesky at signalsfromthecore.bsky.social  Send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore Find more on Perpetual Traveller here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/149834066407611 Pick up the Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society here: https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/collections/jtas

In the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition roleplaying game, news crawls across the stars at the speed of jump, and fame travels the same way.  In this episode of Signals from the Core, we look at how celebrity works in the Third Imperium, with a special focus on what happens when all of it gets amplified in the Core Sector.  As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: ⁠https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore⁠ If you enjoy the show, please consider rating and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also in this episode: we look at what published Mongoose Publishing source materials give us on celebrity and fame in the Third Imperium Sourcebook, the Singularity campaign materials, the new Infinity Suite campaign, and Mongoose Traveller 1E's Book 8: Dilettante to trace how a reputation gets made, sponsored, and sustained. We talk the business of spectacle, the Ministry of Information, and sort celebrity into four working types Referees can put straight to use.  Plus, we profile a new NPC patron, Ansel Drevane, celebrity chef, cultural envoy, and unwitting Imperial mouthpiece, along with an adventure hook that drops your Travellers between his appetite for danger and an Amber Zone world that bites back!

In this episode of Signals from the Core, we take our first deep dive into Capital, throne world of the Third Imperium. Twenty billion people. A Grand floating palace, Cleon, the Moot Spire … These are the things we always hear about Capital and learn from sourcebooks that tend to cover the whole planet in just a handful of pages. We dive into the Third Imperium Sourcebook by Christopher Griffen and how you can interpret a few fixed points provided in it to turn one spot on the subsector map into a vibrant, textured setting of many diverse locations where Travellers can find work, trouble, and adventure, meeting new contacts, enemies and allies. We tackle the population puzzle, compare the Traveller Wiki information to what Mongoose provides, and explore the throne world city by city across the municipalities marked on the published world map. Plus, how I learned to stop fretting and love the vague nature of Traveller's UWP and the scant info provided in many of its sourcebooks. Send your signals to [email protected], or find us wherever you are: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore

In the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition roleplaying game, an established crew brings something a fresh group can't. Shared history. A ship. A reputation. Patrons, contacts, rivals, and a running storyline the players that should continue even with a new campaign on the table. In this episode of Signals from the Core, we look at how Referees can launch Christopher Griffen's Singularity campaign for a veteran team. We walk through a three-beat recruitment escalation built for crews who already know the score. Then, for groups that need a sharper push, we dig into the design logic for misfortune-based hooks. Group-level pressure on shared assets designed to shift the status quo. We explore ways to balance collective motives with personal ones and the emergent storytelling opportunities in the gaps between. As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore

In the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition roleplaying game, character creation does half the work of building adventures before the first session even begins. The dice generate careers, mishaps, events, and connections, handing the player a person they didn't fully design and asking them to make sense of it. In this episode of Signals from the Core, we look at how Referees can extend that same logic into the launch of Christopher Griffen's Singularity campaign, specifically for groups starting fresh with newly rolled-up Travellers. We walk through two approaches to running the Act 1 opening sequence. First, a series of individual recruitment vignettes, one per player, where the recruiter knows things about the Traveller they shouldn't. Second, a random-roll capper at the end of muster-out, with 2D6 tables that hand each player a specific reason for heading off to Capital. Then, we hand the question back to the players. Why are you going? Exploring some sample answers to spark the conversation, each one a thread the Referee can pull at later. Plus, listener responses on how Referees prep their players for new campaigns, with thoughts from the Traveller community on Facebook and Reddit. As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore

In this episode of Signals from the Core, we take a deep dive into Mongoose Traveller’s massive Singularity campaign, written by Christopher Griffen, and explore why it may be one of the richest resources yet published for running adventures in the Core Sector. We look at how the Singularity Sourcebook and its Companion material can fuel a high-status Core sandbox full of intrigue, prestige, and emergent chaos. If you’ve been curious about the Singularity campaign for Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition, or you want sharper tools for running elite passengers and touring the center of the Third Imperium, this episode is packed with material to mine. As always, send your signals to [email protected] or find us wherever you are on social media: https://linktr.ee/signalsfromthecore

In the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition roleplaying game, the Imperial Bureaucracy is the machine that holds eleven thousand worlds together through paperwork, procedure, and pencil pushers. In this episode of Signals from the Core, we explore how the ministries, jurisdictions, and civil servants of the Third Imperium create one of the richest and most overlooked sources of adventure in the setting. Learn how Referees of Traveller can use the audit trails, procedural complications, and the sheer weight of Imperial red tape in the Core Sector to generate friction, intrigue, and consequence at the table. Plus, we look at a new Bureaucrat career for Mongoose 2nd Edition and take the Diplomat skill into the Referee's Workshop. Have questions, comments, or want to submit an idea for a future episode? Reach out at [email protected]

In the Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition roleplaying game, the nobility of the Imperium shapes politics, precedent, and the flow of power. In this episode of Signals from the Core, we explore the hidden machinery of Imperial society. Inside the Moot Spire and beyond, influence moves through committee reports, whispered deals, and family rivalries that never fade. Referees and players alike will see how ceremony and intrigue create adventures unique to the Core. Plus, we debut new segments: The Referee’s Workshop, System Spotlight, and Core Creatures, each adding new tools and inspiration for your Core-sector Traveller gameplay. Have questions, comments, or want to submit an idea for a future episode? Reach out at [email protected]