I keep ending up with Cepheus Universal open when the campaign does not want to be free traders.
It is the one that actually tries. Not another Imperium with the names changed. More like the little black books if they had just kept going. Cyberpunk, hard SF, near future, space opera, time travel, post-apocalypse. The lifepath reveals the game's intent. It feels like it walked out of a classic cyberpunk book more than a classic Traveller one. Random, a little mean, writes the character for you instead of letting you build the perfect skill package.
That is the part I like. Street-level job in a sprawl one night, capital ship the next, same book. The capital ship rules are abstract enough that you can sketch a Star Destroyer or a Constitution-class and put it on the table without a three-hour design session. Same combat system as the smaller ships. You do not learn a second game just because the tonnage went up.
Star Wars and Star Trek both work here without much arguing. Fighters, capital ships, away teams, the occasional weird alien. The pieces are already in the book. You are mostly deciding what the Force looks like, or what the Federation's tech base is, and then the 2d6 does the rest.
Magic is the thing it leaves on the table.
There is psionics, and there is enough weird tech to fake a lot, but if you want actual sorcery, mutations, corruption, or a sword that should not exist, you are reaching for something else. Sword of Cepheus, the Fantasy Companion, whatever you already own that uses the same engine, but that is not a downside since you can borrow from any 2d6 game, and you are not locked into one system. You can run a whole campaign without ever missing it. The moment someone wants a wizard who is not just a guy with a weird gadget, you open the other book, or DIY something enough that it works.
I have done both. The cyberpunk nights feel at home. The capital ship nights feel at home. The nights where someone wants to cast a spell and have it go wrong feel like they belong next to it, not inside it. That is fine. The engine is still the same throw. The book is still closed most of the time. You are just deciding which chapter is open when the weird thing shows up.
This is probably the best 2d6 Star Trek or Star Wars simulator out there, the "I don't care about the licensed game" game ever created outside of GURPS. The OG Traveller LLBs wanted to run these settings with a wink and a nod; CU actually does, including capital ship combat. The only other thing this game may need is the tables in Stars Without Number for planetary generation and mission hooks.
After we pick our game, we get back to whatever the session was actually about.
The dice are already out.
The system stays invisible.
