(specifically Mongoose Traveller 1&2E)

I'd forgotten how much I genuinely enjoy the system behind it, and its iconic character creation.

I'm generally not a fan of character creation as a group activity, but Traveller makes it work in a way others... don't.

I also appreciate how open it is about house rules. Alternate character creation rules are in the 1E core, right after the standard rules, and 2E's Traveller Companion is about 50% alternate rules for things.

This is especially important because of how monumentally stupid some of the standard rules are, particularly the "you can only spend 2000 credits of your starting money" one.

The limited benefits you can get for equipment are underwhelming, and they're really the only way you can get even halfway decent gear at creation, RAW. Which is why I flagrantly ignore that rule.

There was an even more stupid equipment rule in... I believe it was one of the iterations of Shadowrun. There, regardless of how much money you were supposed to start with, you could only keep a very small amount of it, so there was no way to start with any kind of savings.

That complaint aside, Traveller's creation system is lovely. It takes a lot of pressure off both the player and the GM in terms of determining character background and details.

All you really need going into creation is a decision on if you want to play an alien, whether or not you want to engage in a pre-career activity like university or a military academy (the two core options), and what career you want to start with.

Everything from there on plays out over the course of 4-year terms and dice rolls, interspersed with the occasional decision-making event or forced career-change.

Unlike previous incarnations of the rules, in Mongoose Traveller you can't die in character creation (unless using the Ironman alternate rule). I'm generally neutral in my opinion there, as the Mishaps/Injury tables are just as interesting to me as the potential for character death as a risk/reward system.