Secrets of the Ancients: First Impressions

I recently bought the 2022 edition of Mongoose Publishing’s Secrets of the Ancients campaign for Traveller. These are my first impressions—I hope to run it one day, but it’s a long campaign and a significant time investment.

When I talked about the 2012 edition, I compared it with GDW’s 1984 Secret of the Ancients and noted how epic the new campaign was.

Well, the 2022 edition feels even more epic than 2012!

First impressions

So my first impression of this 256-page hardback book is that it’s heavy. It also looks stunning—it’s full colour throughout with some lovely artwork and deck plans. 

As for the campaign itself, while it follows the basic structure of the GDW’s original Secret of the Ancients, everything is described in so much more detail. Although, as I said before, I was originally disappointed with 1984’s Secret of the Ancients—I’m not disappointed by Secrets.

Secrets of the Ancients is split into 10 self-contained chapters, each an adventure in its own right. The introduction suggests each chapter will take 2-4 sessions to complete, so that’s around 30 sessions, or the best part of a year. When (if) I run it, Secrets will be the longest campaign I’ve ever run.

I don’t think that will be a problem, though, as there’s plenty of variety in Secrets. There’s an NPC-heavy meet-and-mingle session, a starship chase across Regina, Ancient sites to explore, Vargr to negotiate with, and even a prison to escape.

How am I going to run Secrets of the Ancients?

Secrets of the Ancients has a definite story, and a helicopter view suggests that it’s fairly linear. However, when you get into the detail, the players will have plenty of decisions to make (in parts, the adventure gets quite sandboxy), so I’m hoping the players won’t feel like they’re being railroaded.

Some of the leaps from location to location are not always super clear to me. I’ll need to summarise each section with bullet points for the overall plot, but I would need to familiarise myself with it anyway.

There’s also a fair amount of boxed text to read aloud. I’m not a fan of that, so I’ll see if I can do something different. I’m in a dilemma because the boxed text is often excellent and sets a good atmosphere, but I’m not a fan of reading to the players.

I may see if I can use Banter, which I used for Destroyer of Worlds. 

What’s going on with the handouts?

One thing I found a bit weird was how Secrets deals with handouts. Handouts are provided in a separate pdf rather than in the text, which is odd. Presumably, that’s to save space, however, it does mean that if you pick up a physical copy of the book, you need to get the handout pdf somehow. (The text doesn’t tell you where you can get this.)

Mind you, you will want the pdf copy anyway, even if you get a hard copy. That’s because there’s loads of stuff you’ll want to share here, such as numerous deck plans and pictures of people and creatures.

Comparing 2022 with 2012

Comparing the 2022 edition with the 2012 edition is like comparing chalk with cheese. With better layout and good use of colour and illustrations, the new edition is so much easier to read.

2022 (left) compared with the same page from 2012 (right)

I don’t often say this about modern coffee-table book RPGs, but I find the new Mongoose Traveller format clean and easy to read. The 2012 edition isn’t as easy to read, and the 2022 edition will probably be easier to run as a result.

This has made it longer—Secrets is now 256 pages compared to 198. And as a result, it’s more expensive, but even if I never run it, I don’t regret buying it for a moment.

2022 (left) compared to 2012 (right)

As well as colour and illustrations, the new edition has more (and nicer) deck plans--a smuggler’s station, Far Trader, Heavy Scout, a Kinunir-class ship, several Vargr ships, two Ancient ships. Some of those were in the 2012 edition, but none were as good looking as they are here.

Too many words?

As I’ve said before, I find many RPG supplements and adventures are dreadfully overwritten. So at 256 pages, can I say the same of Secrets of the Ancients?

In short, no. While long, and while I didn’t read every word (I skipped some animal descriptions and star system descriptions in the more sandboxy bits—I’ll only read those if I need to), I didn’t find myself wading through unnecessary verbiage or padding.

The could-do-better department

There are a couple of areas I’d like to improve.

• I would have liked more character portraits. I know they’re a luxury (and key NPC portraits are provided), but they’re a nice luxury.
• From what I can see, there are times when the game could stall (or die) due to some unlucky dice rolls. Yes, there are some understandably tricky challenges, but in a couple of them failing means ending the campaign prematurely—so I know I’ll be generous.

I also spotted a couple of errors:

• The section on Shimmersuits doesn’t explain that energy weapons do only 1/16th of their damage (a fairly big omission given the high-energy fights that the Travellers will get into).
• The deck plan on page 33 doesn’t match the description in the text.

Overall

I want to run Secrets of the Ancients, but the question is whether I have the patience for it. I like short games because I like playing a variety of games. So I need to ask my players if they’re up for a 30-session marathon. We can take breaks between chapters if we find it too heavy going.