Hi there

> On 25 Apr 2014, at 17:43, Douglas Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> After nine months of recovery, I'm finally able to get out and have a social life again.

Great news. Well done...

> This means gaming. Big shock, those interested want me to run Traveller.

... and even better news!  Trust that goes well.

>
> Many of you may remember my two Great Sales, where I dump most of my RPG stuff into your greedy hands to declutter my life. That means that apart from some legacy stuff and things I wrote or contributed material to, I own very little.
>
> I do have the Core Rulebook for RTT. I was thinking of doing a skip-tracer game set in District 268 in 1105. What books (Mongoose and second party) would y'all recommend as essential?

Essential?  The Core Rulebook - so you're good to go? :-)
But you might helpful for skip tracing type adventures Book 5: Agent
and for District 268 - The  Spinward Marches book to some extant.  I'm
also quite partial to the Spica Career Book particularly 3 which let's
you determine physical features and family background of characters
but it's hardly necessary.  Spica have also produced the Nemesis-class
Pursuit Ship book which could be just the thing for your party.  One
other third party book I love and might well fit into your campaign
either for pcs to need or to find is Technical Manual 1:
Reprieve-class escape pod book from DSL Ironworks.

For ships to trace you'd probably want to look at Supplement 2:
Traders and Gunboats or Supplement 10: Merchants and Cruisers.  If
you're going to get out and about on the ground you might want the
Vehicle book - but I'd get the revised Supplement 5-6 rather than Supp
5 or Supp 6 which had more complicated design rules which have been
superseded.

Depending on how much you want side adventures and plots it might be
at worth looking at Spinward Encounters, but to be honest, if you just
want some ideas along those lines rather than fully fledged things, I
would definitely check out Supplement 13: Starport Encounters and
Supplement 15: Powers and Principalities - the former has loads of
patrons, passengers and plots and the latter has governments,
corporations and religions.  They're the BITS 101 books repackaged but
the only downside is they're not in print yet.  (The five plots books
from Gypsy Knights Games have similar - 21 Plots, 21 Plots Too, etc.
despite their more recent moves into an alternate setting, these are
generic enough to use pretty much anywhere.  Their Quick Worlds can be
really useful too for instant detail even if you file off their names
and transplant into thre OTU).

Difficulties with it aside, it would be hard not to use Little Black
Book 9: Library Data unless you're content to use online sources for
the same.  Hard to know whether you would need the Alien volumes or
things like Animal Encounters or Cybernetics.  I'm guessing not.

If you only have a few PCs and need NPCs to round out a ship's
complement, 13Mann have put out a dozen or so 'Crew for Hire' booklets
of 'cards'.  Christian Hollnbuchner has also published dozens of ships
(and vehicles) which you could use to the players to chase down.

There's more I could point to but without knowing your (or your
player) precise interests, I'd probably better shut up now.

Hope this helps.

>
> Also, right now I have three players. So any locals who are interested in a San Francisco area game, let me know.

Oh, I so wish I could teleport over...!

Hope it goes well though.  Keep us posted.

tc