The 2026 update to Aliens of Charted Space: Volume 1 dropped yesterday and looks to be a sweet refresh with tweaked mechanics and completely new art. I had the opportunity to help with the Aslan chapter and I’m very happy with the results. Three of the more noticeable changes are adjustments to Aslan core characteristics, simplifying SOC generation, and dropping the Territory characteristic altogether.
Over the years many have complained that a -2 DEX penalty was much too harsh for a species renowned as hunters and warriors, and after kicking this problem around we ended up reverting to the more balanced modifiers used in Classic Traveller. As explained in the original Alien Module, dewclaws “and the general nature of their body structure make the Aslan somewhat clumsy by comparison with humans, but what they lack in dexterity they make up for in strength and endurance” (2).
In previous versions of Mongoose Traveller, Aslan SOC scores were derived from rolls on separate Ancestral Deeds and Past Deeds tables. While I liked that these tables provided interesting backgrounds for the Aslan Traveller, I also found that this additional complexity sometimes confused newer players.
Further, the average SOC score generated with these tables was only a little over 3.5, which made the subsequent Rite of Passage roll harder and unfairly disadvantaged female Aslan, as many skills in female careers use SOC as a modifier. Better, I felt, to use a straight 2D roll to generate SOC, and then generate a family background from that.
I’ve never been a huge fan of introducing new, specialized characteristics to Traveller like Agility or Grace—preferring instead to use broad, flexible definitions for the six core stats. Over the years I really tried to make TER work, but in the end concluded it’s just not worth the effort and worse, has serious balance issues.
I appreciate that TER was intended to be a mechanical incentive for Aslan Travellers to gain lands, but its operation was completely binary. Once an Aslan reached TER 1 there was limited mechanical incentive to continue to increase that score.
TER also, of course, excluded female Aslan—and female Aslan should be just as hungry for territory as males, but for different reasons. For females, Territory represents resources to exploit and enrich the family, pride, and clan. Also, a young male with TER 1 and SOC 3 really shouldn’t automatically trump a female senior executive with TER 0 and SOC 12 on all social interactions.
Territory also acts a little like the inverse of a Sanity characteristic in Call of Cthulhu: once SAN reaches 0 or TER reaches 1+, it’s probably time to retire the Traveller, since the travelling lifestyle will be harder and harder to justify.
So instead of tracking a separate TER characteristic, we reconnected territory to SOC, once again following the example of Classic Traveller.
There are many other smaller tweaks throughout the Aslan chapter, and Chris Griffen did a really nice rewrite of the lore section to reflect a more contemporary perspective on this complicated species. I also love that the artwork and deckplans in the High Guard section mark a return to the more organic, rounded Aslan craft of older editions.
I haven’t had a chance to do a deep dive into the chapters on other species, but at a glance it looks like there’s a lot of new detail to the Vargr. So even if you have the previous version of this book, the 2026 update is probably well worth your consideration.
