Fulminata reviewed Traveller by Martin J. Dougherty
Review of 'Traveller' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Half of this book is great, the other half is a dumpster fire. The sections on Droyne and Hivers do the job they need to do to make characters both playable as PCs and as NPCs. Arguably two of the strangest races, at least among the major races, of the Traveller setting. There could have been a little bit more here, especially for the Droyne, but what is presented is good.
The reason that the Droyne and Hivers don’t get more pagecount is that fully half the book is dedicated to the third race: the Solomani. Mechanically, what is here is fine, it’s in the “fluff” that things go off the rails. The Solomani are racists. They have always been presented as racists in the past. The “Solomani Cause” that their entire government and society is based on is a statement that Humans of Sol are better than any other …
Half of this book is great, the other half is a dumpster fire. The sections on Droyne and Hivers do the job they need to do to make characters both playable as PCs and as NPCs. Arguably two of the strangest races, at least among the major races, of the Traveller setting. There could have been a little bit more here, especially for the Droyne, but what is presented is good.
The reason that the Droyne and Hivers don’t get more pagecount is that fully half the book is dedicated to the third race: the Solomani. Mechanically, what is here is fine, it’s in the “fluff” that things go off the rails. The Solomani are racists. They have always been presented as racists in the past. The “Solomani Cause” that their entire government and society is based on is a statement that Humans of Sol are better than any other Humans or aliens. This results in overt discrimination against any non Solomani within the Solomani Confederation.
Taking a society like this and presenting it in such a way that players can play characters from it requires careful handling. Mongoose is capable of that careful handling, as they showed in their book on the Glorious Empire, another problematic society based ultimately on bigotry. For whatever reason, they chose to punt on this one and instead of handling the topic carefully, decided to say “nah, they really aren’t all that bad.”
This is a quote from the section on “Playing a Solomani”: “The foremost aspects of Solomani culture come not from contempt for other races but from pride in their own.” A. That doesn’t matter to the people being discriminated against, it’s still racism. B. They contradict that with descriptions of Solomani using holidays as an excuse to march intimidatingly through non-Solomani districts. C. This kind of bullshit is straight out of white supremacist literature.
The book literally says they aren’t ‘Space Nazis’, but they are! The Solomani Confederation is clearly a fascist government complete with a secret police and surveillance society based on racist ideology. It needs to be presented as such, and not whitewashed.
So, if I could split this book in half I’d give the Solomani part one star, and the remaining parts five stars. As it is I’ve compromised on 2 stars, because what is bad here is really pretty terrible.