Railgun XXVI vs Traveller
Compare Railgun XXVI and Traveller side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Railgun XXVI | Traveller | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Scifi | Scifi |
| Play Style | Tactical, Player-Only Rolls, Deadly, Gritty, Mission-Based, Random Character Creation, Beginner-Friendly | Sandbox, Simulation, Exploration, Deadly, Character Building, Faction Play |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d20 and add one of four stats (STR, CRD, AGI, or MND) against a standard difficulty of 12. Every roll is player-facing: players roll to attack and also roll to dodge incoming attacks, so the GM never needs to roll dice. Rolling a natural 20 banks an adrenaline point, which buys an extra action on top of the two each character gets per turn. | Roll 2d6 + skill + modifier ≥ 8 to succeed. Character generation is a mini-game. |
| Dice | d20 | 2d6 |
| Complexity | Low | Medium |
| Accessibility | Very High | High |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | MÖRK BORG Third Party License | Traveller Fair Use Policy |
| Cost | Free | $$ |
| Publisher | Nathan Freeman | Mongoose Publishing |
| Year | 2026 | 2022 |
| Best For | Groups who want short, lethal firefights on a grid and a GM who narrates enemies rather than rolling for them. Suits a few-session campaign or a drop-in mission night more than a long character-driven arc. | Hard sci-fi sandbox campaigns with trading, exploration, and realistic space travel. |
| Highlights | Every roll is player-facing, including dodges against incoming attacks, so the GM runs enemies without touching the dice. Dropping to 0 HP forces a critical injury roll that permanently reduces a stat, so downed characters degrade instead of bouncing back up. Several weapons chain into a free attack when they drop an enemy, making target order a tactical decision rather than a formality. | Comprehensive sci-fi toolkit, lifepath character creation, detailed trade/travel systems |
| Considerations | Social scenes have no dedicated stat or subsystem, so persuasion is settled by player argument rather than mechanics. Play assumes a gridded map with movement and line of sight measured in squares, leaving theater-of-the-mind groups to convert those rules themselves. Out-of-combat scenes lean on ad hoc GM rulings and a single falling-forward technique rather than a dedicated exploration or investigation subsystem. | Lifepath character creation can produce unplayable results, subsystem rules are spread across multiple supplements, steep buy-in if using official sourcebooks |