We are entering a strange time now. There are now two editions of Traveller on the market, the Mongoose version and now, in 2015, a new version from Far Future Enterprises, the inheritor of Game Designers' Workshop intellectual properties.  This one is designed to be a new edition of the Traveller 4 edition and thus an "unbroken line" from Classic Traveller.

I have the Traveller 5.09 version I grabbed from Far Future Enterprises and the 5.10 version from DriveThruRPG.  For the purposes of this review, I am going to be considering the 5.10 version.

T5 Traveller5 Core Rules 3-Book Set

As with Classic Traveller, this version is split up into three books.  They are not little, and the covers are not included, but they do have the same names.  So that is fine.

Each book has a comprehensive table of contents of all three books.  

Book 1: Characters and Combat

PDF. 208 pages, black & white and color interior art. 

Starting out this has a different feel than other versions.   We start with the the typical "What is a Roleplaying Game" bits and "What is Traveller" under the Traveller is a Role-Playing Game section with an example of play. What follows is a bit on the Galaxy (weird to see how little of it is charted in Traveller), A Brief History of the Universe, and The Foundations of the Universe.  The feel here is one of situating the characters in the Traveller Universe first as opposed to having the character operating in the universe as Classic Traveller does.  Thematically (not rule-wise) this makes it a bit closer to MegaTraveller.  

Traveller Uses Dice takes us back to the real world.  There seems to be some new dice mechanics being introduced here in the form of "Flux Rolls." We get bits on Money, Ranges, and Humanity.  I have to admit I admit I am not liking the organization so far.  The topics seem to come at random. 

Ok. We finally get to a chapter Characters are the Central Focus of Traveller, but not till page 46. 

Characters still have the same six basic characteristics/abilities but there are an additional two added, Psions (Psi) and Sanity. Then there are another eight that are also used that are combinations of the regular six. I can't help but feel that something that was elegant is not needlessly complicated. 

Eleven pages later we get to Characters and Careers. This covers the careers that we see in many versions of Traveller.  I do like the art on the various medals a character can get while in the service, nice touch.  The careers are comparable to previous versions.  Each carrier gets a single page of detail which is nice really, print it out and staple it to your character sheet card. There are also many tables for backgrounds.

There is a new section on Genetics. There are some lists and diagrams for family trees (genetic trees) but I am not seeing the in-game application to this yet.  I guess if your character is genetically modified this would be good. Sections on Chimeras, Synthetic Lifeforms, and Clones follow. 

Tasks are next and deal with how you do things in Traveller.  We are back to a Roll Under task resolution.  A few pages discussing how tasks are determined with an example of three character with low, medium and high dexterity. 

Skills is introduced with a Master Skill list, though "Massive Skill List" would also be appropriate. There are a lot of skills here.  Skills and their descriptions take up the next 40 pages.

Equipment is given the acronym QREBS for Quality, Reliability, Ease, Bulk/Burden, and Safety. 

We jump back to character focus with Intuitions, Personals, and The Senses. 

We get to the second half of the title 2/3 of the way into the book. Combat. Up first is Personal Combat. This covers all sorts of types of combat, conditions, environment, movement, and more. There is even an example of combat between two groups of five combatants. This is good, because I still have no real good notion of how combat works in this system. This follows by a list of weapons.

Dice is next and covers all the rolls for 1D to 10D and the Flux die.  Look I have a Master's degree in Stats, I like math, I like numbers. But this feels needlessly complicated to me. 

The book ends in an Index (but hyperlinks and the PDF is not bookmarked).

Book 2: Starships

PDF. 304 pages, black & white and color interior art. 

One of the things I love about Traveller has been their starship-building rules. It's like character building and I don't feel bad about min-maxing or even meta-gaming it.  

We start out with the basic anatomy of a stellar hex grid. Ok, that is useful. This introduced us to the section on Star Systems. We get some brief overviews of systems and some helpful charts and tables to describe them.  This is followed by Star Ports (places to go in the system) where the adventures usually begin.

Starships are next and cover all sorts of starships. The same sorts of details are here as in other versions of Traveller. I would need the rules side by side to see the differences, but it feels more like Traveller T4 than anything.  Lots of color art for the various types of ships are a nice touch.  Our old friend the Beowulf-class Free Trader is present. 

Starship Design and Construction covers how to build and pay for these ships.   All of this is recorded on the Ship Card, like a character sheet for ships. This is a feature that goes back to the beginning. 

Maneuvering is next, or how your ship is a ship and not a space station. This includes interplanetary travel.  Jump covers interstellar travel. 

Plenty of sections on how Power, Sensors, Weapons, Defenses, Fuel, and Space Combat work. Far more detail than I recall in any version of Traveller so far.

Trade and Commerce Between the Stars section is next. Traveller is built on the reality that goods and people need to move between the starts and there is an economy based on that. 

Technology and Tech Levels are discussed in detail. Followed by Lifespans of intelligent species (why wasn't this in Book 1?), Interstellar Communities, Computers, and Robots.

This book was a bit better organized than Book 1, up till the end that is.

Book 3: Worlds and Adventures

PDF. 304 pages, black & white and color interior art. 

This covers Worlds and Systems.  It seems that some of the System material from Book2 would have been better here. 

If Book 1 creates characters, and Book 2 creates Starships, then Book 3 creates worlds and systems. Again pretty detailed with charts and graphs galore. This covers the first 94 pages or so.

Makers or building things run the next 80 odd pages.  Seems like this should have been in book 2. 

Special Circumstances are next for the next 70 pages.  This includes Psionics. This covers psionic characters and their powers. This also covers the Zhodani.  

There is an interesting sub-section on Sophonts, or intelligent non-humans.  Again, this would have been better served in Book 1 I think, but I do see why it is here. 

We don't get to Adventuring until page 270 and then it is only 10 pages. Very underserved in my mind.

Each book ends with book specific Appendicies and Indexes.

--

So. 816 pages of PDF rules for Traveller 5.10.  (FYI my Traveller 5.09 weighs in at 760 pages).

What do I know?  Well. This version of Traveller is an interesting view of divergent evolution.  In 2015 to 2019 (and still) there are two in print, live versions of Traveller out there. Traveller 5 and Mongoose Traveller.  Both have the same ancestor, Classic Traveller, but each went on a different path.

We also live in a world now where ALL versions of Traveller are easily available in PDF, Print, and POD versions. 

Given all of this, I just can't see myself playing Traveller 5. There is a LOT here I can see myself using though.  I do not regret buying it at all. Far from it. I think my goal here is to grab anything I can find that is useful that is still roughly compatible with the Classic Traveller Core.  

My issues with Traveller 5 are largely from the organization of the material and the over-complication of the rules.  I am not a fan of roll-under systems, but I can get over that for the right game. 

I give Far Future Enterprises credit for trying to expand the game in a new direction, it's just a direction I am interested in going in these days. At nearly $45 for three (four if you count the "Read me" pdf, which I don't) PDFs and no POD option is a bit rich for most people's blood. 

Still, I am a perpetual sucker for the sunk cost fallacy, so I am always looking for an excuse to use all my books. 

BTW: This is also my 5,000th post here at the Other Side!

We are getting to the end of our journey into the various editions and versions of Traveller.  Today I am bringing us to the modern era and will spend some time with the various Open Gaming editions of Traveller.  That's right. Traveller has hit the retro-clone stage of development.

2008 was not all that long ago.  This blog was up and running at this point and I was beginning work on a lot of the projects you know me well for. So consequently I was not really paying all that much attention to what was going on in the world of Traveller. 

While I mentioned that we are hitting the "retro-clone" phase of Traveller's development, it was not (as far as I can tell) Mongoose that released the Traveller SRD. That was the work of Jason Kemp.  But I will get to all of that in a bit when I review the Cepheus Engine.

Traveller Main Rulebook (2008)

PDF. 192 pages (plus covers). Black & White art with a red accent.

Traveller has had a long history. This new version from Mongoose celebrates that history by essentially going back to the beginning with the look and feel of Classic Traveller. 

How much does this feel like Classic Traveller?  So much so that I am kinda struggling with what to say other than "wow this is like Classic Traveller!"  Not in a "they copied The Traveller Book" way but more in a "These are people that began playing this game 30 years ago and now want to introduce new gamers to that game" way.

Everything about this book is a serious nostalgia trip.  And given that I have been spending all this time with all versions of Traveller, a serious case of déjà vu.  

Introduction

Our introduction to the Traveller game.  There are some minor references to "The Third Imperium" but much like the LBBs this game is largely setting-free.  Some examples of play are given and the various Technology Levels (TL 0 to 15) are given.

Character Creation

This is very, very similar to the Classic Traveller Character Creation even down to our good friend Alexander Jamison returning.

Side note: I have decided that once a character musters out of one of the services (Army, Marines, Merchant Marines, Navy) they are gifted a sword. Seems like something that should happen and explain why Jamison here has a cutlass in a universe full of lasers.

The big changes here (and see throughout this book) are better layout for looking at options and checklists and guides.  This version does an amazing job of getting a new player up and going fast. 

You can't die in character creation, but there is still a lot going on.  Also there is a point-buy feature for assigning your points to your six abilities.  We are again back at an average of 7 for abilities and the UPP is back. 

There are still a lot of careers to choose from, more than in The Traveller Book.  Life events follow. Someone close to your character can die, but not your character.  Though you can muster out and be in medical debt.  

There is a section on aliens. Here we get the Aslan, Droyne, Hivers, K'kree, Vargr, and the Zhodani.  Given the way the rules of this version are written, I can't see why the older Alien Modules couldn't still be used here. 

Skills and Tasks

Skills are very familiar but seemed to be pared down a little. Die Modifiers (DM) are discussed as well as how to do a task check right away.  Each skill is detailed along with any specialties under that skill. 

Combat

This chapter gets an upgrade in my mind and shows the familiarity Mongoose has had with d20 and other modern systems.  Actions are divided into Minor and Significant Actions along with Reactions and any number of Free actions. These are made very clear.  Combat actions (a significant action) is detailed on what needs to be rolled.  All of this was in previous versions, but now they are more upfront and bolded.  

Encounters and Dangers

This is the analog to the older Encounters and Animals sections. Plenty of charts and boxed text to help a referee out when building encounters.  Encounters are more than just strange new animals on weird worlds. There are rivals, other humans, and corporate actions just to give some examples. Quite a lot really.  True to Traveller there are plenty of d66 tables for all these encounters.

Equipment

Your characters' shopping lists. It looks like this is very similar to other equipment lists of other editions.  I will note (because this is me) that computers finally feel right.  They, and a lot of the other equipment here feel like futuristic equipment.  Computers are tiny and powerful. There are "smart guns" that help you hit your target, holographic displays, and robots and drones in their own sub-section.

Each bit of equipment comes with a TL rating.

Spacecraft Design

Distinctions are made between interplanetary and interstellar spacecraft.  Like character creation, there is a helpful checklist. 

Common Spacecraft. This is less of a chapter section and more of a sub-section of Design.  This list of common ships with their details, some maps, and a picture. 

Spacecraft Operations

An alphabetical listing of everything (mostly everything) that can go on in a ship. 

Space Combat

Similar to other versions and the combat chapter above. This details how ships can fight including movement, targeting, and firing phases. Along with damage and reactions.  The chapter is not large but remarkably detailed.

Psionics

Ah. Psionics.  Stuck out into the back half of the book again. Psions are given a "career" write-up as the other character types. 

Trade

Covers basic trade between the worlds/systems/colonies.

World Creation

This chapter feels more like Classic Traveller than the others. Sadly no equations to apease the math geek in me but a lot of information all the same. 

Index

A pretty good index (not hyperlinked), a character sheet, and a hex grid.

--

So this might be the best version of Classic Traveller to date.  Same rules more or less (I admit I could not spot any major differences), the feel of Classic Traveller and in a cleaned up and reorganized fashion.  I know there is a 2nd Edition coming up (I have already started on that) but there is a simple elegance to this edition.

There is also a Book 0 to get you started.  It is a cut down version of the Core Rules at 32 pages and is Free.  I have both in the same three ring binder I have The Traveller Book in.  

We are now in another new decade. In fact a new century and a new millennium in fact. And of course another new edition of Traveller.  Interestingly enough we are now 25 years out from the Little Black Books. But we are now nearing the end height of the d20 boom.

Traveler, for the first time in its history, is now using the same system as Dungeons & Dragons.

Traveller for d20, also called Traveller 20 or even T20 used the d20 system under the OGL and d20 STL.

Since this is the 20th day of SciFi month, let's do Traveller for d20!

There are two versions of this game, one out in 2002, which I remember was a single hardcover book.  The other, available from DriveThruRPG is the 2007 edition and made up of three books (and a handbook).  I had the 2002 version briefly but ended selling it off in an auction. Why? I can't recall. I had a baby and another one on the way, I bet I needed money.

Both versions have similar cover art.

For the purposes of this review, I am going to consider the 2006-7 version from DriveThruRPG and from Far Future Enterprises where I got my copy from. 

Traveller20 Core Rules Set (2006-7)

PDF. Four files. Color cover art, black & white interior art.

Ok. I want to start with this. I like d20. I do. My favorite version of the Star Wards RPG is Wizard's Revised d20 version. I know that sounds like blasphemy to so many, but I don't care.  Star Wars and D&D are so wrapped up into my childhood that bringing them together under one system was a no-brainer for me.  Now if I can add some Traveller bits?  Well I don't know if I can just yet, but the idea is so tempting, so tantalizing I just can't help it.  Seriously what could be more Summer of 1977 than Star Wars + D&D + Traveller?   What does that mean for you?  Well.  I am likely to cut this edition a lot of slack. Maybe even to the point of excusing some things I shouldn't.  Forewarned is forearmed.

The Traveller's Guidebook

PDF. 234 Pages, Color cover, black & white interior art with blue accents.

This is the "Book 0" OR the Book 4 of the 2006-7 Traveller d20 line.  This book covers all the basics for the Traveller Player. 

We get out Introduction which tells us what we are in for here.  It is written for the point of view of anyone new to RPGs or new to Traveller (any version). 

We get brief overviews of the d20 mechanic. How to set your Difficulty Levels (DCs) and even a little on success levels.

Character Creation is next.  What follows is pretty standard for all d20 games.  Roll abilities, choose races, select classes, set skills, add feats, roll up hitpoints.  This is Traveller so there is a bit more added on.

D&D/d20 has six Character Abilities. Traveller has six.  T20 has nine. These are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Education, Wisdom, Charisma, Social Standing, and Psionic Strength.  Ok a mix of both systems.  Not exactly what I would have done, but hey.  Ability scores are d20 standard, modifiers are as well.   

Hitpoints are split between Stamina and Lifeblood. Or what other games might call wound points and health points.  One slows you down the other represents how much you have till you die. Loosing either is not good.

Races are discussed and the standard humans are given with variations. You can also choose Vargr, Aslan, Ursa, and Virushi. 

Since this is Traveller you have your homeworld to consider.  There are plenty of random tables to help you figure this all out.  Tech Levels from previous editions remain here. It's a nice touch of course.  Also you have your prior history, or what you did before you decided to live the glamorous life of a Traveller.  Turns of service enter here with various paths and what that all means in terms of your character (background, credit earned, and skills).   I am not sure but it seems like there are a lot of careers here. More than other editions.

Once that is figured out you can choose a class. XP values are the same as D&D 3.x so that is easy enough. There are 12 core classes: Academic, Athlete, Barbarian, Belter, Entertainer, Martial Artist, Mercenary, Merchant, Noble, Professional, Rogue, and Traveller.  Nine "Service" Classes: Army, Convict, Corsair, Flyer, Law Enforcement, Marine, Navy, Sailor, and Scout. And eight Prestige Classes: Diplomat, Engineer, Medic, Ace Pilot, Ancients Hunter, Big Game Hunter, Psionicist, and TAS Field Reporter.

Skills are covered and as expected there are a lot of them. A lot. Nearly 30 pages worth.  Same goes for Feats (this is d20 after all).  Now I prefer a smaller list of skills myself, but I see why the authors did what they did.

Equipment and Starting Funds cover the next 40 pages or so.  Imperial Credits are still good here!

Combat is the d20 system with a few twists, but nothing the average D&D 3.x+ player couldn't figure out.  The covers personal, vehicle and ship combat.

Adventuring covers quite a lot from what the characters do, living expenses, environments and their dangers, weather dangers, movement, vision, and on to Psionics (which really should be it's own chapter).

We now get into what could be reasonably called the Traveller Black Books of d20.

Book 1: Characters and Combat

PDF. 209 Pages, Color cover, black & white, and color interior art.

I will admit I am confused. This book looks older than the "Book 0" above.  No problem.  Ok. So I get the idea these textbooks are actually separate from the first one. Not sure what the logic here is, but works for me.  I'll take these three books as a group, like the Little Black Books of old.

We start out with some game fiction. Move right on to an introduction from Marc W. Miller, but I think that is all he did for this particular version.  This moves on to the Introduction to RPGs section and about Traveller in particular.  So while it is similar to the book above it also goes into far more detail.

Characters cover character creation.

There is an overview with page references to where they are detailed later in this book.  Most interestingly there are now eight (8) Abilities.  The standard d20 ones plus Education (EDU) and Social Standing (SOC).  

You generate your abilities first, examples are given of how EDU and SOC work in the game.  Determine your race/species included here are humans (with sub-types), Vargr, Aslan, Luriani, Sydites, Ursa, and Virushi.  Mentioned ar the Droyne, Hivers, and K'Kree.

As always your homeworld stats are determined and character adjusted as needed.  This also helps with skills and what classes are available to you. 

Classes are next and there are a lot of them. This time they are better explained.  We have the core classes: Academic, Barbarian, Belter, Mercenary, Merchant, Noble, Professional, Rogue, and Traveller.  The  Service Classes: Army, Marine, Navy, and Scout. And Prestige Classes: Ace Pilot, Big Game Hunter, and TAS Field Reporter.  Classes work like the d20 standard. 

I do admit I have a desire to run a game with TAS field reporters.  If nothing else this is giving me a load of ideas for my Star Trek: Mercy campaign. 

Skills are up and we also get a note that this section is Open Game Content. Nice touch.  There are quite a lot of skills here, more than the d20 standard of the time.  A lot of these are also limited to particular classes or backgrounds.  Unlike standard d20 and more like some other games, some skills can be used with more than one ability. Pilot for example can be INT or DEX.  I think my favorite addition though is the "Dealing with Bureaucrats" DC table.   As expected this section is rather large.

Feats (this is d20 after all) is also a long section.  There are also some Final Details to figure out like age, height, and weight. 

Oddly, but maybe it makes sense, Prior History is after all of this.  Reading through is does actually since it modifies what the character is like. In truth it is like a rather robust "Backgrounds" from D&D 5th Edition, just 10+ years before that.

Combat is up. The book says that combat is pretty much the same as d20 standard except in a few   cases.  Mostly Traveller universe specific examples.  Where things are different it is noted.

After combat, the Prestige Classes are covered.  And at the end as always (more or less) is Psionics.

The Appendices follow.  Their page numbers start as if all three books are combined.  Nice really. So Appendix I starts on page 426.  The last page is the OGL and Product Identity information.

Book 2: Equipment and Design

PDF. 164 Pages, Color cover, black & white interior art.

I just want to say right now that I am loving this Classic Traveller presentation of the Traveller 20 rules.  I wish I had a POD of this. 

This book continues, page numbers and all, from Book 1. 

This book covers all the Technology and Equipment (about two dozen pages), the design of vehicles and starships, and some standard designs.  All of it is largely what you would expect it to be.

Technology and Equipment.  This discusses various TLs (Technology Levels) and the character "shopping list" so lots of weapons.  We do have sections of drugs, medical care, food and living expenses, as well as cybertechnology (somewhat that started in Traveller just a decade ago) and cloning.  Interestingly enough I did not see a lot on robots save that they can be built like vehicles.  I do appreciate the conservation of rule space here, but more might have been nice.

Computers are more advanced, but you are all sick of me harping on that.

The Appendices repeat here as well as the OGL information.

Book 3: Worlds and Adventures

PDF. 107 Pages, Color cover, black & white interior art.

Ok, I have to admit I am enjoying this system. 

This is the smallest of the three. 

This book covers Travelling (Chapter 14), Starship Encounters (Chapter 15), Universe and World development (Chapter 16), Campaigns (17), and Traveller Adventures (Chapter 18).

The design here is one of characters living in a giant Galactic Imperium that is full of adventure and lite on the details of the Imperium itself.  Oh there is information here on it anyone with any knowledge of Traveller can easily fill in the blanks.  The focus of this game though is more like Classic Traveller, on the characters and what they do.  There is more here than Classic Traveller, but not as much as say MegaTraveller.

I can gather from reading that this takes place sometime prior to the timeline of the LBBs, before 1000. But not much more.

--

Ok so this bundle has two separate versions of the T20 game. For my money, I would rather the Three Books and add in details from The Traveller's Guidebook where needed. 

The Three Books cover the same material as The Traveller's Guidebook save for where the TGB goes into additions (more classes, more abilities).   I am not 100% convinced that the additions to TGB are better. 

I am not going to lie. I like the 3.x d20 system, warts and all.  I like the idea of a huge Galactic Empire.  So if I am going to play a non-Trek game then some flavor of d20 is likely going to be my choice.

Call me crazy, but I like this one. 

Part of me wants to find a copy of the Traveller d20 dead tree book online to buy another part of me wants to print out what I have to put into a binder with other d20-based SciFi games.  I know there is d20 Starfleet Battles / Prime Directive and more. 

We are now up to 1996.  Games Designer's Workshop, unfortunately, had folded at the end of February 1996. At this time the rights to Traveller reverted back to Mark Miller.  So Mark started Imperium Games to produce a new game called "Marc Miller's Traveller" but most called T4 online.

It has, as far as I can tell, the least amount of supplements for its game line but that is not a huge surprise. 

T4 Marc Miller's Traveller (1996)

PDF. 194 pages, color covers and color inserts, black & white art.

For the purposes of this review I am only considering the PDF from DriveThruRPR. There is a softcover POD that includes the color plates, but I do not have that. 

There are a lot of familiar names here including Larry Elmore doing some of the interior art.  

This game is set at the dawn of the Third Imperium, so in the opposite direction timewise the latest versions were going.  It makes it pretty clear that setting wise at least is that this is not a sequel or continuation of MegaTraveller or Traveller: The New Era.

I will note I am not coming into this one blind. Even back then I had heard how this particular edition was riddled with errors and it there is a page (or two dozen pages) of errata out there.  I am not going to consider that, nor do I even know if they are included in this file. I am going with no, but I'll check them out later. 

Chapter 1: Roleplaying in the Traveller Universe

This is the typical "what is a role-playing game" and "what is Traveller" sections.  It is all very similar to the Traveller Book.

Chapter 2: Character Generation

This feels an awful lot like Classic Traveller. In particular, again, the Traveller book.  There are more careers here and you get more skills.  It also doesn't look like you can die in character creation anymore, but you can be injured and discharged. You still go through background, homeworlds and advanced education, and more.  Very familiar I am sure to the seasoned Traveller player.  Speaking of familiar, our good friend Alexander Jamison is back.  An error, on page 24 Ranks are mentioned (ok, cool same as CT), but in the tables on 29-32 have ranks of E1 to E9 and O1 to O10, Enlisted and Officer. 

Chapter 3: Skills

For the first time, the skill list seems a bit smaller than in the last two editions.  The chapter not huge and the skills are explained well.  

Chapter 4: Task

This is a short and sweet chapter.  Only 2 chapters. BUT a couple of things. First, we are now using a "Roll under" system which I am not a fan of.  And there are all these "x.5" die rolls.  I had forgotten about all the weird-ass die mechanics the late 90s flirted with.  This is not the worse, but it is certainly no fun. I mean the task resolution is not terrible, but there are better ones. Much better ones. 

Chapter 5: Ground Combat

This is a bit larger than tasks but still smaller than other versions.  While there are changes due to the task resolution system it still reads a lot like Classic Traveller.  In fact the range bands are now back! 

Chapter 6: Equipment

The shopping chapter! One thing I notice is that computers (I know I harp on this, sorry it's my thing) seem to have really advanced.  Though I have to point out the "advanced" computers of the Dawn of the Third Imperium are on par with the one I use now to write this. Minus the holographic display.   But all in all a big improvement.

I am getting the feeling that somewhere between CT and T4 there is a great Traveller game.

What I am not getting yet is how the tech of this time differs from Classic Traveller's implied tech. This is supposed to be 1100 years before the LBBs.  

Chapter 7: Surface Vehicle

This covers vehicles that are not starships.  I do want to take a moment and comment on the improved art of this edition.  Traveller never really had what I would call inspiring art. It had functional art and it had good descriptive art, but never anything like "wow that looks awesome."  Some of the art here is of the awesome category.  

Chapter 8: Spacecraft

One of my favorite chapters of past editions.  Again starship computers are better handled.  Creating a ship is a little like creating a character.  There are even some nice photo-like pictures of starships.  This section reads a bit differently than the others. Also the tables are organized by layout space rather than how they need to be consulted.

Chapter 9: Space Travel

Guess what is back? Yes! The equations! This whole section is very reminscent of the Classic Traveller books.  Though I will admit I do not recall the grisly "Low Lottery" from previous editions.  This isn't Star Trek folks.  

Chapter 10: Space Combat

This chapter covers combat and it is a bit different. I'd like to say it looks faster, but I have not tried it out at all. Again I'll need to stat out a few ships and give them a trial run. Maybe I could run that Freetrader Beowulf rescue mission I have wanted to try.

Chapter 11: Psionics

Each edition Psionics gets a boost. The material here is again largely similar to Classic Traveller, but now there is a Psiconist service. That's new. I wonder if Babylon 5 was any influence here. 

Chapter 12: World Generation

This is also a copy (more or less) from Classic Traveller. No world forms here though.

Chapter 13: Encounters

This is a combination of both the Encounters and Animal Encounters sections. This makes sense really. This is also all word for word from The Traveller Book. The more I red the more déjà vu I am getting.

I mean, can you tell which book these two sections are from.  There is a small hint.

Now I am not complaining here.  In 1996 when this came out the original Classic Traveller was 20 year old. The books were long out of print and GDW was gone. For someone who say played Traveller in High School, skipped all the other editions due to college and now was, oh I don't know, sitting on the train commuting from home to Chicago and back to home every day, this had to be a very welcome sight. 

Chapter 14: Referee's Introduction

Our Game Master section.  Not word for word from the Traveller book, but close enough.  OR at least the feeling is the same. This does include some details on improving skills.

Chapter 15: Running Adventures and Campaigns

This is similar enough to the Traveller Book's "Referee's Guide to Adventuring."  I am not sure is the authors (and there is plenty of evidence that there is more than one voice here) wanted to ignore everything after MegaTraveller OR were not allowed to use anything.  I don't mean text I mean ideas. I think I wanted to see more here.

Chapter 16: Trade and Commerce

Again similar to other editions of Classic Traveller. Did text search and found it is largely the same text as Book 7, Merchant Prince. And again not a complaint here.

Chapter 17: Exit Visa (Adventure)

This is the same adventure from the Traveller Book. 

Chapter 18: Rubicon Cross (Adventure)

This one is completely new as far a I can tell. In fact my online search for it pulled up references to T4 and the errata sheets. Guess I'll grab that. 

Library Data and Index

The Library Data is pulled from Classic Traveller. Is it a copy? Yes. And sadly it preserved the focus on the current year being 1105 and Year 0.  So the entries on "Dating Systems" and "Holiday Year" only make sense from a later perspective.  Ok, I suppose it was possible that Cleon I proclaimed the current year as the Holiday year when he assumed power. 

The Index is pretty good.

What do we know?

Well. Let's extend my D&D analogy here to the breaking point.

Original LBB Traveller is OD&D's LBB.  I called the Traveller Book the "Holmes Basic" of Traveller, but in retrospect I think Moldvay Basic & Cook/Marsh Expert is a better fit.  That makes Traveller Starter Edition the Mentzer BECMI D&D.  Traveller 2300 is SPI's DragonQuest, Mega Traveller is AD&D 2nd Edition, and Traveller the New Era is 4th edition.

So what then in Marc Miller's Traveller? Since it is closest to the Classic Traveller line it is the 1991 Black Box or The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game produced in 1994 and edited by Doug Stewart.

So who is Marc Miller's Traveller for?

In 1996 that answer was easy. It was for anyone that wanted to play Traveller that did not have access to the older Classic Traveller books and did not care for the New Era.

In 2022? Well. That is a harder one to answer. Today Classic Traveller is easily available in a variety of formats and editions.  And I have not even started with Moongoose Traveller or the Cepheus Engine materials. IF there had been more material on the start of the 3rd Imperium here then that would give it a solid reason for setting alone. If the rules had been updated more with that 20 years of Traveller experience then that would have been a solid reason.  Sadly neither of those are true enough. That added to the errors, the typos and some weird design choices make this a Traveller for the die hard fans only.  That is NOT a bad thing.  Just for my money I still prefer my Traveller Book.  

Now what I might do, since I have the PDF and this is easy. Is go through it all and just print the updated sections I like and slot them into my Traveller 3-ring binder. I have a tab for "4" I could use AND I put in, or pencil in, all the errata I want or need.

I do want to point out again that the art in this book is phenomenal. There are some seriously good pieces that look like they come right off the cover of some great sci-fi novel. I like to think that was the intent.  I am sure it makes for a gorgeous PoD book. 

"Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Don't stop, it'll soon be here
It'll be better than before
Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone."

Fleetwood Mac's 1977 hit "Don't Stop" came out the same year as Classic Traveller.  It was also, more or less, the theme that covered the intro the 1990s.  Newly elected Bill Clinton had used it as his campaign theme song and even Fleetwood Mac got back together long enough to play it at his inaugural ball in 1993.  Think about the start of the 90s for a second.  Everything seemed possible then.  I was in Grad School, working part-time (only 60 hours a week) for the Navy writing code. I was taking classes, and teaching. I had broken up with my long-time girlfriend and soon started dating someone who would in just a few more years be my wife!  So yeah the future was full of endless possibilities in 1993.

Traveller: The New Era feels like the most "1993" game ever.  Tomorrow was here and Yesterday (Classic Traveller if you will) was gone. 

For this review, I am only considering the PDF I just downloaded from DriveThruRPG.  My original one was corrupted and I was wondering if I was even going to get to do this one today.  I saw the PDF in DT was updated back 2014, so I grabbed a new one.  Glad I did.  I remember my first one was very hard to read and the text was blurry.  This new one is much clearer. I also recall that some of the pages had a green background, this one does not.

Traveller: The New Era (1993)

PDF. 386 pages, color covers, black & white interior art.  Oddly there are no PDF bookmarks in this file. The book is also available as a softcover PoD.  I have no idea which printing this is. I understand the first printing had a few errors. 

This book is a beast. I think (not 100% sure) that this was a boxed set of different books. 

One of the first things I noticed about this edition is that Frank Chadwick and Dave Nilsen are listed for Game Design and Marc Millar is only listed for Design of the previous version of Traveller.  I remember some of this back in the day, but for now, I am going to focus on just what is in the book. 

The book is divided up into various large sections. The table of contents seems to deny my guess that this pdf was separate books at one point. Ok, no problem.

Introduction (and History)

This is our introduction to the Traveller Universe. The History section is the most important for this edition since it sets up how this is different than the previous editions.  For starters, the Imperium has completely collapsed.  Classic Traveller was taking place roughly around 1110 of the Imperial Calendar. MegaTraveller dealt with the aftermath of the Emperor's assassination in 1116.  This Traveller jumps ahead by 85 or so years to the 1201 "The New Era."  Honestly from a design/edition perspective, this makes a lot of sense. 

It is a neat background and welcome (in a manner of speaking) to older players but new players likely won't care about this.  The "world" of TNE is very different than that of MegaTraveller of Classic Traveller. Even at just a few pages it is still more background than we got in the LBB of Classic. 

Characters

Character creation in TNE feels similar and different at the same time. You are still rolling 2d6, though now it is a 2d6-1. This changed the average from 7 to 6. There are still six attributes that are roughly the same. TNE has Strength, Agility, Constitution, Intelligence, Education, and Charisma. Classic Traveller had Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social. So similar.  TNE also offers a point spread of 36 to distribute if you prefer.  We are still using the UPP, only now a 666666 denotes an average character instead of 777777. Abilities are determined, then the background generation begins.  Like previous versions of Traveller, you decide on a homeworld (which can affect some abilities) and work out your starting careers.  

This version seems to have more careers than previous versions, but keep in mind I am only looking at core books for now. Character generation covers about 43 pages total. So quite a lot really.  NPCs cover about 8 pages, with a nice playing card system to determine motivations. 

The character creation rules now make no assumption of species or gender, so that is left to the player. Thre are 5 pages of alien templates to add to characters at the end of this section.  There are Hivers, Vargr, Aslan, Zhodani, and Droyne.  

The New Era

This covers what is, well, new for this version of Traveller's universe.  These are the AI Virus, the Star Vikings, and The Wilds.  I don't need to know much about Traveller or TNE to know these elements were not well received.  The Virus reads like how we looked at computer viruses in the 90s.  The flowchart looks like something you would find on a Mac Quadra 900 (btw I consider that a Feature, not a Bug).

I can see a smart AI virus attacking all sorts of computers, but even today we have good anti-virus software and still a couple of dozen operating systems (I count 7 or 8 different ones in my house alone) that do not transmit viruses to each other even when networked.

The Star Vikings seem like an inevitable addition to the game.  The Wilds, likewise.

All of this seems like an attempt to provide a little more chaos around the "edges" of the star systems.  That is, give the PCs more to do and ways to make it through or hinder them in some ways.

Referees

A little more than a quarter of the way through we hit the Referee's section.  The system seems closer to that of Traveller 2300 than it does of Classic Traveller or MegaTraveller. There are now d20 rolls added to the rules. Reading through in detail now there are a lot of d20 rolls. More details are given on how to make the rolls than I recall in MT or CT.

Skills are discussed in terms of what they can do. And the Referee gets some adventure ideas.  This section is only about 70 pages. I was expecting a bit more. 

Worlds & Travel

Now, this is a meaty section of about 100 pages. The world generation system feels similar-ish to other Traveller games, no point reinventing everything I guess. Though there is a lot more detail here.  It does look like it can create worlds much the same way as MegaTraveller.

This section also includes the Encounters and Animals sections from previous versions with some modifications.  Same with space travel. 

Interestingly enough the Psionics section, usually stuck into the back of the book, is now here. I still think it should be with Character creation, but ok. It is also expanded.  In the realm of purely new-to-a-core-rules material, there is a sections robots. Even if it tells us there are nearly no production facilities for robots still operational outside of the Spinward Marches in the New Era. 

Combat

The next nearly 100 pages deal with all forms of combat. From personal to space combat. The rules are updated and seem to cover most situations. Hard to tell without doing it. I am still thinking I need to run simulated combat for each version to see how they are.  Do something silly like a Borg Cube vs the Death Star or a Colonial Viper vs an X-Wing vs. a Buck Rogers Thunderfighter. 

Combat is different than other versions of Traveller.  

There is some advice here too on using minis in a game. Their recommendation is to paint them all white to make them easier to see.  "Step 5 Admire your Work" is something I do naturally!

Equipment & Technology

The section covers roughly 40 pages. I can't help but notice the effect that Star Trek: The Next Generation has seem to have had here.  Med bays and medical scanners look like they were taken from a Federation garage sale. Ok...it's not that bad. Excuse a little levity on my part here.  We still have a section on drugs. 

We are keeping the same assumptions (and rules) about Technology Levels which is still hanging out at TL 16.

Computers have fared a little better in this edition. At least the batteries of the future are closer to what we have right now. I hate to harp on this, but my phone today can do nearly everything on pages 340 to 343.  I am being unduly harsh here I know.

The section of Starships though once again fills my heart with longing for the stars.  Many of these I am familiar with.  You may not have been on the internet talking about Star Trek or starships, but I certainly was.

Flashback to when I called the ending to S2 of Picard nearly 30 years ago.

The last few pages are worksheets for Characters, Combat charts, and the Index.

--

So. My feeling on Traveller TNE is that it was an attempt to keep Traveller moving forward.

I have gone through the TNE book more and compared them to my "Gold Standard" the Traveller Book and I am now seeing a lot more differences in terms of rules than I did on my first couple of read-throughs.  This is the issue with reading a gamebook vs. playing the game.  Further research outside of this book lets me know that other GDW games of the time were using the same rules.  This is expected really.  Game companies began to discover that using one system in-house was much cheaper in the long run.  Not only did it mean you could hire fewer people to write, but you could also lift large sections of text from one game to fill in for another.  This does create an issue though.  There are two different writing "tones" here. I have no evidence but I am going to say the older-ish material was Frank Chadwick and the newer stuff was Dave Nilsen. 

Rereading the rules prior to this post it dawned on my why I felt so much of it was familiar. It was Traveller-speak, but the rules were an old favorite of mine Dark Conspiracy.  I rather liked that game back in the later 90s when I first encountered it and was looking for a new horror game to be my "home game" (spoiler, it was CJ Carrella's WitchCraft that won that battle!)

This an interesting idea though. Dark Conspiracy + Traveller The New Era would make for an interesting BlackStar-like game.  I am sure I am not the only one who did that.   Given the post-apoc feel of TNE I am not sure that hoards of undead would not feel so out of place, to be honest. 

So we have a system that the older players don't like and newer players can't get into in a setting that the older players hate and the newer players have no investment in.  Sound about right?

Still. There are some ideas here that I might mine.  I am glad I have the PDF but I am not picking up the PoD anytime soon.

It is 1987.  The year I graduated from High School and my first year in University.  I knew about MegaTraveller, anyone that read Dragon Magazine even as infrequently as I was then knew about it.  But again it is not a game I played.  I do recall seeing it* played at a local con (SIU had a bunch of them) but (and this is the asterix) I could not really tell if it was Classic Traveller or MegaTraveller at the time.  They had a lot of cool spaceships on a black hex map.

I would not actually read MegaTraveller until the late 1990s.  I was working on my Ph.D. and commuting all over Chicago.  I found a local library that would honor my U of I Chicago library card and they had a copy of the MegaTraveller Player's Manual.  I can't recall my impressions of the time all that much, just a memory of being on the commuter train and reading it.

Rereading it now I find the rules are largely similar to Classic Traveller.  I know some clarifications and changes have been made but I am not qualified enough to pick them out. 

The thing that is most obvious is the setting.  The Emporer has been killed along with all his heirs and his assassin is claiming the throne.  And so are about half a dozen or more people.  So the empire has fallen and this is called the "Time of Rebellion."   Does Traveller have...Star Wars envy??  I am sure that is not 100% true.  

I have NO data to back this up, but my perception is that MegaTraveller was a hit. I think it appealed to people that wanted to play but not have to get into 10 years worth of back product.  In many cases my D&D analogy extends here with MegaTraveller as AD&D 2nd Edition.  The Jim Holloway art certainly helps that along. 

My understanding is that MegaTraveller came as a boxed set. With Players's and Referee's books. Today you can get them as PDF via DriveThruRPG or from Far Future Enterprises.  I will be considering the PDFs from DriveThruRPG for these reviews.  It is nice to have these now after so many years.

In general, the scans are ok to good.  Some attempt has been made to clean them up, but they are obviously scanned from printed products and not the original files. They are OCR'ed and have bookmarks.  The scans look fine on my PC and on my iPad, but I don't think they would work well for Print on Demand yet.

MegaTraveller Players' Manual

PDF. 108 pages. Color covers, black & white interior art. 

This book covers everything the player needs to create a character, including Basic and Enhanced options, learn about the core mechanic (and the Universal Task Profile), skills, combat, and psionics. 

Reading through this I do get the feeling that this is a cleaned-up and updated version of Traveller.  While I can see the larger changes, the subtle ones are less clear to me.  My impression is that a MegaTraveller character could operate in a Classic Traveller game. 

Layout and rule-wise there are a lot of clarifications. For example, Page 9 details Task Resolution and the Universal Task Profile.  This would be called setting a difficulty level in other games.  There are the levels of difficulty and what you need to roll over (3, 7, 11, and 15) which is different (slightly) than the "just 8 or better" of Classic Traveller.  Rolls can also be altered by skills, risk, time, and other factors.  This page gives a great overview and the first place I see a real improvement.  Now my understanding is that many of the rules here came about in various publications, both books and supplements from GDW (Merchant Prince and Mercenary seem to be prime sources here) as well as periodicals.  IT IS POSSIBLE that by 1986 people were playing with rules that resembled this.  This the codification of all of those rules.

Character creation, both basic and Advanced/Enhanced are covered.  This is largely similar to what I saw in Classic Traveller (CT) except I did not see anywhere where you can die before mustering out.  The tables have been expanded to include military and non-military careers including Scouts and Merchant Princes.  Even the example is a Doctor now. 

Skills are detailed and this list seems to get larger with each new edition.  What I like about MegaTraveller is that skill advancement is right after this section and much clearer. 

Character creation and skills take up half the book.

SIDE NOTE:  A lot of the tables and other character creation details (like character flowcharts) are set to one page or two pages.  So printing out material from your PDF is easy.  I can take a page with me to know what my character needs to do to advance for example or keep a list of all the skills with me.  Page 9, the UTP is a prime example of this layout feature.

Combat comes up next.  Again not a surprise since combat is an important part of Traveller.  I don't think I expressed this before, but maybe MegaTraveller makes it more obvious, but combat looks like it is a deadly affair.  Again, no practical experience here, but going through the numbers I am surprised I did not notice it before.   There are charts of weapons and damage, but not the catalog of guns we found in Traveller 2300. 

The last dozen or so pages cover special rules, like mapping and special types of combat.

At the end, where it always is it seems, is the section on Psionics.

Throughout the book, there are little boxed texts that give some more background on the fallen Imperium.  Little bits of history and background to add flavor.  This new time period is the big deal with this edition. 

The inside cover maps of the Spinward Marches and the Third Imperium look like they were taken from a previous version of Traveller.  The Imperium map is dated 1115 and this game takes place in 1116 and beyond.

MegaTraveller Referee's Manual

PDF. 108 pages. Color covers, black & white interior art. 

The Referee's Manual opens with the various factions vying for control in the Imperium.  Just a page, but it really set the tone for me. I can see how this would be a great game to play with the various factions working with and against each other for ultimate control while the PCs work whatever angles they can to either get more power or just stay alive.  I was skeptical of change when I first read it, but now re-reading it many years later I am very excited about it. 

This book covers similar territory as the Players' book, save from the game master's perspective.  Again I am drawn in by the parallels of the format and layout of this game as AD&D 2nd Ed. which will hit the stands in another 2 years.  I am not suggesting TSR copied GDW but instead that this was something that was a logical extension of many 2nd Edition games released around this time. 

There is a longer breakdown of Tasks and resolutions here that makes me happy to see. I never ran a Traveller game, but with this book I think I could.

Star System and World Creation is next including a discussion on world profiles. It is detailed, without being overly so, and will get any Ref going on world creation.  It doesn't have the same feel to me as the Classic Traveller section doing the same thing, but I think that is fine.  Lots of tables here and no equations to solve.  Kinda miss that. 

Sections on Animals and Encounters are similar to their Classic Traveller counterparts.  Detailed enough to keep you going for a while  

Trade and Commerce cover the next 10 pages.  Again, brief but enough to start. I imagine that entire books can (and maybe have) been written on this topic. I also imagine that this is an area where the Imperium's fall would also be a prime place for adventures.  Smuggling cargo, protecting shipping lanes, getting something like medical supplies to another part of the system but other factions want to stop you or steal what you have?  Yeah, lots of ideas.

Craft Design and Evaluation cover the next 34 or so pages. More craft seem to be available to the MegaTraveller character/group than the Classic Traveller ones. If this review is late in posting it was because I was making starships again.  With CT I like system building more, here I like starship building more.

This is logically followed by Starship Combat. 

We end with a couple of stellar maps. 

Reading through these now I kind of lament not getting in on this fun back then.  Classic Traveller with all its supplements, and add-ons, and alien modules, and board games seemed like a steep hill to climb.  I erroneously felt MegaTraveller was the same way.  Just looking through was DriveThruRPG and FFE have on their sites it doesn't seem to be that much to me know.   It is still far more than want to buy right now and far more than I'll ever play, but it is nice to know it is all there. 

More Notes

It appears that MegaTraveller, in addition to being a pencil and paper RPG was also a couple of video games, as if my Traveller Envy wasn't enough already. MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients were released in 1991 for the Atari ST and MS-DOS systems and in 1992 for the MS-DOS and Amiga systems respectively.  These might be fun to try and find for the retro-gaming computer I built over the winter. 

GURPS Traveller

GURPS Traveller was released in 1998 for GURPS 3rd Edition.  It covers the same time span as MegaTraveller, but there was no rebellion.  I guess the idea was to preserve the feel of Classic Traveller. 

I like GURPS well enough, but I have stated before that GURPS has no soul to it; at least not to me. IT's too bad really since I do enjoy a good Universal game.  Their supplements have always been top-notch though. I have never been so happy to spend money on game I know I won't play.

A new week and a new set of rules to read over.  This week I am going for a span of 20 years. Traveller, in its first 10 years, stayed pretty consistent and took me about two weeks to work through.  The next 20 years are going to be much faster.

I am going to start off with one today I only know very little about.  Traveller: 2300 also known as 2300 AD.  

Before getting into any books or research here is what I do know.  This was supposed to be the start of a new line for GDW.  It dealt with the earliest time in the Traveller Universe, specifically 2300 AD on Earth. There was a tie-in with their Twilight 2000 game line.   In 1986 I was very deep into AD&D to exclusion of all else save for college prep. 

So this one is 100% new for me.

2300 AD or Traveller: 2300

Ok. Let's do this one right from the start.  This is not really a Traveller game.  While I am sure many people worked it out so it could be the past of Traveller, my very, very limited understanding of the history of Traveller's Imperium suggests that likely isn't.  But I am sure people with better knowledge than me can say for sure.   Since I have a sci-fi game set more or less in the 2300s I figure why not pick this up to see what it is like. 

For this review, I am only considering the PDF available from DriveThruRPG.  I *thought* I had bought it from FFE years ago, but I can't find my copy.

PDF. 131 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art.  The scan is OCRed and bookmarked.  The scan of the cover is rough, but the interior looks better. 

The Introduction reads like many RPG books. "This is an RPG", "here are some expectations." And so on. 

Player's Manual

History covers the history of this setting with the horrible nuclear war in 2000.  I must have been sleeping. I am kidding of course, RPGs are great fun but they have not been great at predicting the future really. Now I have no way of telling, but I think this is basically the same history as GDW's other game Twilight 2000. It certainly feels the same. I never played the game myself.   This history section covers the fall and rise of humankind as they venture out into space by the year 2300.  Wars and geo-political rivalries are also covered and how they still affect the day-to-day lives of humans on Earth and in Space.  This flows into the next section.

Political Geography talks about Earth and beyond of 2300.  America is split up (ok that one is not so far-fetched) with Texas as its own republic (which seems to be a reoccurring theme in a lot of things I am reading right now) and other "American" nations. Mexico is split up. Europe ie, well Europe.  I think the authors overestimate the older rivalries a little.  Germany reunited long before 2000 in a largely peaceful integration and the European Union has been going pretty strong if you ignore Brexit.  

In space we colonies at L-4 and L-5 (LaGrange Points), Mercury (not likely, but I'll go with it), Mars, the Asteroids (much more likely), the moons of Jupiter, and just beyond Saturn.  No mention of Lunar colonies at all here. 

The chapter on Technology is interesting. By 1986 we had seen nearly 10 years of Moore's Law in effect for computers, so the authors of this game give computers a bit more power.  I would argue it is not really enough still, but getting there. There is a bit about AIs and psychosis that feels like something I just read in Robert A. Heinlein's Friday.  There is some detail on transportation and medical sciences as well.

Colonies cover the fifty-five colonies on twenty-nine inhabitable worlds.  Since these colonies are largely extensions of Earth-based interests they are classified by which "Arm" they are in (American, Chinese, French) or which "Finger" of the Arm (Canadian and Latin for America or the French Frontiers).   This is followed by Foundations that provide services for citizens after the collapse of the governments in 2000.

Twenty pages in we finally get to Character Generation.  If you didn't know this was "not Traveller" before then you learn it here.  There are four physical attributes: Size, Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, and four psychological ones: Determination, Intelligence, Eloquence, and Education.  You roll a 4d6-4 (generating a score between 0 and 20) and you can re-roll one physical and one psychological attribute.  Strength and Dexterity are altered by homeworld and gravity type.

Like Classic Traveller you have skills that can be determined by Background and Career.  But no hint of dying in Character Gen (is this even Traveller then???).  

This all takes us right to Skills and Careers.

The "Shopping sections" Equipment, Weapons, Vehicles, and Armor follow.  Weapons cover all sorts of guns (as expected) and a few laser-based ones. Vehicles does not cover starships.  The currency of choice is the French Livres (Lv). 

We get some star charts and tables of the nations of the systems.

Referee's Manual

While this is all one file, it was obviously once a boxed set with separate books.  Pages 54 to 105 cover what was the separate Referee's Manual.  I will also point out that the Bookmarks in my PDF stop working well at this point.  There are bookmarks, but they don't always go where they should and are indented oddly.

What would have been the back cover of the Referee's Manual has some really great insight.  It credits Marc W. Miller (Traveller) and Frank Chadwick (Twilight: 2000) as two of the "big name" designers of 2300.  The implication here is that 2300 was something of an in-house game combining elements of Traveller and Twilight:2k.  As a designer myself, I find that fascinating.  Maybe, just maybe, more fascinating than the actual game!  Internally they called it The Game. And it sounds like that played it out from 2000 to 2300 in turns of 5 or 10 years to get us where we were then.

Life on the Frontier covers the implied setting of the Traveller 2300 game. 

Tasks and Combat are largely the same sorts of sections, with combat a special case of task resolution.  Clue #2 that this is not your father's Traveller: 1d10 for task resolution and not a 2d6.  Here you need to roll higher than a 7 with every 4 points above or below that as a target number difficulty. You add your plusses from skills to your roll and if needed an attribute divided by 4 (+0 to +5) range. 

Both Tasks and Combat have charts of successes and failures and what you do with each.

Star Travel finally gets off of the Earth and out into the colonies.  The stutterwarp is travel mode of choice to get to distant stars. There are limitations.  The drives of these ships can travel great distances but have to jettison their spent radioactive fuel in the gravity well of a system.  This process takes some time.  So there is a limiting factor on how far a ship can practically travel.  There is some detail on tinkering with your starship, but not at the level I have come to associate with Traveller.  Space Combat follows right after this.  What is nice about this one is there are some photos of ships on a space hex-grid.  

Ship Listing is the "shopping list" of Starships.  It lacks the "used cars" feel of Classic Traveller. 

World Generation is next.  It covers quite a lot of detail to be honest. More than I expected.

NPCs are next, followed by World Mapping and Animal Encounters. 

There are some star maps, star charts, and some blank forms for Star Data, World Data, and Colony/Outpost Data.

Also included is a sample adventure, The Tricolor's Shadow.  It has maps, adventure ideas and two scenarios to run. 

Two alien species are introduced in the end, The Kafers and The Pentapods.  They are presented as NPCs only, not as playable species.

--

Traveller 2300 is not a bad game to be honest, it just isn't really Traveller is it?  I would be better with it IF I could try to figure out a way to make it work with more up-to-date history. But by that point, I could instead use it as a guide and run a Classic Traveller game and limit it to this time period and location.  

There is another issue with playing this sort of game.  Traveller 2300 suffers from our collective inability to really predict the future.  That is no slight on the designers, that is just human nature.  Compare the tech in this game to that of The Expanse RPG.  Both cover humanity's first step to the solar system and beyond.  Both cover roughly similar time periods (2300 vs. 2359) and both can play the same sorts of games.  In Traveller 2300 you have the stutterwarp to get to extra-solar planets and int he expanse has the ring gates.  The differences lie in the subtle predictions.  Computers are much more powerful in the Expanse, but FTL tech is non-existent (save for the ring gate).  Traveller 2300 has FTL (in a limited fashion by design).  Compare both to say Star Trek of the same period, neither has anything at all like the Ambassador Class Enterprise-C. 

Still this is a good game for a grittier version of Traveller, if you don't mind the system change, or for an advanced version of Twilight 2000.

It's Friday the 13th! Something of a holiday here at the Other Side.  

May is SciFi month and for the first two weeks here I have dedicated it all to Classic Traveller. I find myself at a bit of a crossroads.  Do I continue with the Classic Traveller OR do I go along to the progression from Classic to Mega Traveller and beyond?  Choices. Choices. 

In the mean time since today is the scariest day outside of October 31st (well, than and Walpurgis Night) let go to a discussion you all know I LOVE and that is horror in Space.  In particular, the Mythos flavored Cosmic Horror of Lovecraft AND the exploration of Space ala Star Trek.

Since I am going to look a few ways to do this I am going to put it under the banner of Plays Well With Others.

My "Star Trek meets Cthulhu" campaign is known as BlackStar and I have detailed the ideas I have had here.  

The game started out as a combination of various OSR-style games because that is what I was playing a lot at the time. But as time has gone on I have given it more thought and explored other RPG system options.  Every combination has its own features and its own problems.   Let's look at all the options I have been considering.

Basic Era/OSR

The first choice was the easy one really.  I went with the two main books for their maximum compatibility, Starships & Spacemen and Realms of Crawling Chaos.  Both are based for the most part on Labyrinth Lord.   This gives me a lot of advantages. For starters, and the obvious one, there is just so much stuff for this.  If I don't like the Cthulhu monsters from Realms, I can grab them from Deities & Demigods, Hyperborea, or so many more.  The Lovecraft/Cthulhu stuff is covered.  The "Weakest" link here is Starships & Spacemen.  Well, it's not weak, but it is not my favorite set of Trek-like RPG rules.

Given the rules, I could add in bits of Stars Without Number. That *might* fill out some of the rough spaces (for me) of S&S.  There is a lot, I mean really a LOT I can do with all of this.

It would also make running The Ghost Station of Inverness Five much easier. 

D20 Systems

I'll admit it. I like d20. I enjoyed d20 games. There are LOT of options if I want to go 3.x d20.

Pathfinder, Starfinder, d20 Call of Cthulhu, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos.  All of these are great and at least 90% compatible. Again, I am sick with riches when it comes to Cthulhu/Lovecraftian materials here. Starfinder is good...but it is not Star Trek.  In fact my preferred Sci-Fi d20 game is the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars.  I know. I am strange.  

Certainly, the d20 Cthulhu books would be easily converted to OSR, but they already have analogs in the OSR world.   But having all of these is certainly helpful.

Since my weakest link seems to be Trek-like rules, maybe what I need is a good set of Trek rules.

Star Trek RPGs

Currently, my two favorite flavors of the Star Trek RPG are the classic FASA Trek and the newest Mōdiphiüs' Star Trek Adventures.  Both are great. Both are really fun. AND there is even a Mythos/Lovecraftian game using the same system, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20.  Now this game is set in WWII, but that is not a problem. 

Here I have exactly the opposite issue.  There is a LOT of great Trek material and limited on Cthulhu/Lovecraft material.   I could add in material from Call of Cthulhu as needed. Also, I have the PDFs for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 but none of the physical books. The 2d20 system is also much newer for me and I don't know it as well as some of the others.

Traveller

I have been talking about Traveller all month long and it would remiss of me not to try something with that.  Thankfully things are well covered there.

So I have not even touched ANYTHING yet regarding the Cepheus Engine or new Traveller, but to jump ahead a bit there is a game setting for Traveller Chthonian Stars. It takes place in 2159 (a date I can use!) and there is a lot to it, but the basic gist is Humankind has begun to explore the Solar System and that is about it.  Then we introduce Cthulhu Mythos material to that!  Sounds a bit like BlackStar: The First Generation.  I'll get a proper review up later in the month, but there are a lot of great things in this setting.  Reading over it it really makes me want to try this using just Traveller.  They really make it work well.  Plus I could still use the Classic Traveller system, more or less.

This provides me with a solid sci-fi game with great mythos support too. The publisher has since updated this game to their more inhouse version called The Void. Not sure if it uses the same system as their Cthulhu Tech RPG or not. 

AGE System

I really love Green Ronin's AGE system. I also LOVE the Expanse.  So I grabbed their Expanse AGE-based RPG and am hoping to do a lot more with it.  So imagine my delight when they ran a Kickstarter for Cthulhu Awakens an AGE-based Mythos game.   The Solar System spanning of the Expanse is nowhere near the Galaxy spanning of Star Trek, but maybe I could run it as a "Prequel" game.  Get a ship out to Pluto to discover something protomolecule-like but instead make it mythos-related.  A prequel to my Whispers in the Outer Darkness.  A Star Trek DY-100 class pre-warp ship would fit right in with the ships of the Expanse.  I should point out that the Expanse takes place in the 2350s, the same time frame as my proposed BlackStar campaign in the Star Trek timeline. 2352 for the launch of the Protector and 2351 for the Expanse RPG.

Maybe this "First Mission" might explain why Star Fleet is building its experimental ships at Neptune Station and not Utopia Planitia.  There is something they discovered on Yuggoth/Pluto that makes the Warp-13 engines work. There is my protomolecule connection!

It is possible I could retweak my "At the Planets of Maddness" for this system/setting. Though in my heart I really wanted Shoggoths and Elder Things for that adventure.  Pluto and Yuggoth clearly imply the involvement of the Mi-Go.

--

I have all those choices listed above and that is also not counting games like Eldritch Skies that also combine space travel with Cthulhu/Mythos.

Chthonian Stars might have an answer for me.  What if this story is not being played out over a single campaign, but multiple lifetimes?

I could do something like this.  Note, this is only a half-baked idea at this point.  

Victorian Era:  Scientists work out the means of travelling the Aether to the stars. (Ghosts of Albion*, Eldritch Skies, Space: 1899. Using Ghosts to make the Protector connections a little clearer).

1930s: Scientist found dead with brain "Scoped" out. Investigate. (Call of Cthulhu)

2150s: Travel to Yuggoth discover an advanced civilization was once there.  Items from 1890s and 1930s are there. (Expanse, Chthonian Stars, Cthulhu Awakens)

2290s: Star Trek Mercy (this one is pure FASA Star Trek). Maybe this can be the one with the Klingon Skelleton ala The Creeping Flesh.

2350s: These are the Voyages of the Experimental Starship Protector. (OSR or Mōdiphiüs 2d20)

I could even do an epilogue in the far future of the Imperium.  

And some other stuff to include all my BlackStar adventures.

Maybe all of these are tied to the "Black Star" an artifact that makes space travel possible and is at the core of the Asymetric Warp-13 engine?  Some was found on Earth but there is a bunch of it on Pluto.

Too many ideas, too many systems.  Gotta narrow it all down at some point.  But one thing is for sure, the system used will depend on what sorts of adventures the characters will have. Mōdiphiüs 2d20 is best for adventures and exploring. OSR games are good for monster hunting. FASA Trek does a little of both.  AGE would be suit the New Adventures in Space theme well.

In all honesty, you have my wife to thank for this one.  

I was talking with her about Sci-Fi month (she is a huge scf-fi fan) and Traveller and how I learned of the game via Dragon Magazine.  She suggested that it was high time I did another "This Old Dragon" and focused on Traveller.  So I have spent this week going through some of the Dragons I left and some of the articles I have already "liberated" from various Dragons.

Remember that a lot of the Dragons I have water damage or are other wise in bad shape.  A few were so mildewy I dropped them in favor of the Dragon Magazine CD-ROMs.

There are a few Traveller articles, TSR/Dragon was very eager to embrace other companies' products more in the early days. This is good for me since I really wanted to focus on Classic Traveller. 

I am not going to hit *every* Dragon article about Traveller, but I do want to hit the big ones. I am, for obvious reasons, going to feature the ones I still have in my collection.

The Dragon Days

William B. Fawcett is up first with The Asimov Cluster in The Dragon #20.  This area of space is an attempt to emulate various Science Fiction novels while keeping everything within the scope of Traveller.  There are 10-star systems described here.  I have the feeling that if I had read more classic sci-fi I might recognize these worlds a bit better. 

The Dragon #25 has New Service Options for Navy Characters by R.D. Stuart.  Now the date on this is May 1979 so I am not sure what is happening with the Supplements at this time so no idea if this information had been rendered redundant at any point.  I will assume it had at some point.  But until then it is not a bad set of charts. If you are still using the 3 LBBs this is still good stuff.

We move on to The Dragon #27 and two articles from Gary Jordan. Up first he gives us another take on his Tesseracts article from TD #17 (and famously in The Best of Dragon II).  Where that article was used to confuse map mappers, here it is a boon in Traveller since the area is hyperdimensional.   What does that mean for Traveller characters? You can cram more into your hold.  This is followed by a Star System Generation system. 

The Dragon #35

This is the first of a couple of Traveller-themed issues.  This one comes to us from March 1980.  We get an article on the "Space FBI" from Kenneth Burke in IBIS: Profit and Peril. Alexander von Thorn, famous for his "Politics of Hell" article, is up with one of two articles on new skills.  The other is from Charles Ahner & Rick Stuart. More Clout for Scouts from Anthony Previte and Jame Cavaliere is next and establishes that this article, in particular, takes Mercenary into consideration.   The Traveller universe is growing!  In a switch from characters, James Hopkins is next with Block Holes! about, well, Black Holes.  This one would have been very welcome to me back then having just seen the Disney "Black Hole" movie at the "67 Drive-In Theatre" back in 79.  

This was 1980 though. I was firmly entrenched in my newest obsession, Dungeons & Dragons, and I barely knew other games existed, yet.

Dragon #51

The next, and also sadly the last, issue to have a Traveller featured section was Issue #51 from July 1981.  Though there is a lot here.  And a lot of that is quality.

The heading for this feature is "The Future is Here."  Trust me living in the 80s felt like the future was just right around the corner.  No wonder Traveller attracted me so.

Up first we have Dragon vet Roger E. Moore with Make Your Own Aliens. The Aslan and Vargr are still a bit off for Traveller fans at this point, but Moore takes Andy Slack's article series from White Dwarf #13 to #16 and expands on it.  The article is interesting and feels a little more like a "create your own monster" for D&D or mutant for Gamma World.  The rolls on the charts are d% and not d66.  On the plus side it would also work for something like Gamma World or Star Frontiers.

I do find it entertaining that the art for this article features what can only be described as "Dralasites."

Jeff Swycaffer is next with Plotting a Course for Choosy Players. This takes out some of the randomnesses of character generation by adding a Point-Buy system.  It looks like it could work well enough and I am sure something similar was added to future versions of Traveller. Point-Buy systems were all the rage in the 1990s.

Paul Montgomery Crabaugh is up with a few articles. First is New Ideas for Old Ships. The art and the article give this a full "Used Cars" feel to these ships, but to be honest this feels right.  Characters just completing their terms of service are not going out to buy a brand new Porsche 911 with the heated leather seats, heads-up display, and personal wifi.  No, they are getting an 11-year-old Honda Civic with all after-market parts and a rattle that no one can figure out.

Next, he gives us In Defense of Computers and tackles the two biggest issues people had with computers then; they are too expensive and do too little. First I never felt the computers in Traveller were too expensive, at least not for what they are supposed to do on a Starship.  I do agree they do too little by today's standards. But anymore I of the frame of mind there are computers in Traveller and there are Computers. 

Crabaugh delivers two shorter articles. The first is Planet Parameters which details various features, mostly gravity, of an alien world.  It works...for the game, but actual stellar data is wildly different.  I think we are fine with the size, G, Vesc, and Mass columns, but the P (rotational period) we know can vary wildly.  Earth and Venus are roughly the same size (say Size 8 and 7 respectively). Earth's rotational period is 23 hours, 56 minutes, or one day.  Venus has a P of 116 days, 18 hours. Mars, a Size 4 or 5 planet has a P (day) of 24 hours, 37 minutes.   Jupiter, which is off this scale, has an M of 317 (the chart goes to 2.4) and a P of 10.  In his defense, he does say that rotational periods can be slowed due to gravity.  The Earth's is slowed by our relatively large moon, Venus by the Sun and Mars none really at all. 

Next, he deals with Masers, or microwave band lasers (and points out the lasers are really visible light masers, but hey).  

Lastly, we get an article from none other than Marc Miller. The Miller Milk Bottle is, I think, an attempt to be the Towel of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for Traveller.  Half a page on how useful the mundane milk bottle is.

The Jon Mattson Articles

Over the next several months we get a number of articles from Jon Mattson.  These are also usually longer articles and add more details to your Traveller game.

Filling in Skills from Dragon #55 does exactly that. This one details a "learning by doing" system of skill improvement. I never got to play enough games to know what my character would have done long-term. So I have no practical experience here. 

Moving on to February of 1982 in Dragon #58 we have Anything But Human, another attempt at creating aliens for Traveller.  Again this one is heavy on the d% rolls. 

Later that year in August we get Robots in Dragon #64, with some nice Larry Elmore art showing us where the VR-X9-4-M2 Galactic Probe, Government Issue Robot was made.  Like the Alien article above it has a lot of random tables.  Also it could be used with Star Frontiers if you wanted to. 

The Luna Series

In the early to mid 80s Dragon's Ares Section, which was devoted to Sci-fi, ran a series of articles on Luna, the Moon, and how it fit into various science fiction games.  I thought it was a great series and I loved reading all the different takes on it.  It had a side effect on my developing the moons of my D&D worlds in more detail.  But today we are looking at Dragon #87 and Luna: A Traveller's Guide by the first Traveller himself Marc Miller.   Note this article was copyrighted 1984 by GDW, so I imagine this is as close to official as it could get.  It is a library computer readout of Luna and it's place in the Imperium and to Terra. 

The Later Years

Post-1984 Traveller and all sci-fi began to see subtle changes.  These would be complete by the late 1980s and early 90s when Sci-Fi became darker and more cyberpunk.  I enjoyed the change myself, but also at this time I was drifting away from sci-fi and fantasy and more into dark fantasy and horror.

A sign of the times could be seen in Igor Greenwalds' Rogues of the Galaxy in Dragon #97 (May 1985).  Called a character "class" these are essentially characters who came up via organized crime instead of military, merchant, or other services.  It also features art from Jim Holloway, so maybe a sign of MegaTravller to come?

We get more Jim Holloway art in September of the same year (Dragon #101) with The Stellar Diocese from Michael Brown.  I know as a D&D player I talked about my Traveller Envy before. But I am getting some serious "D&D Envy" from the Traveller fans here.  Or...maybe these are the articles that Dragon printed since they knew they might appeal to D&D fans.

High Tech and Beyond from James Collins in Dragon #108 discuss some issues that were brought up all the way back to The Dragon #20 and that is that a lot of sci-fi media is much higher tech than the TL 16 depicted in Traveller. This article introduced some things that we take for granted in scifi like planet-destroying weapons, antimatter and transporters.

Michael Brown is back in Dragon #109 with The Double-Helix Connection or Mutants in Traveller.  Gamma World Envy? 

Put on "Bad Boys" because Terrence R. McInnes gives us Star Cops! in Dragon #113.  This article is also one of the reasons why I don't have a Dragon CD-ROM for issues past 250.  This article is copyrighted by McInnes, so likely there were never any second-run or reprintings allowed.   Anyway, this article deals with character creation for police forces. It actually looks rather fun.  This one also cites an earlier article from The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society #14.  That is an entire universe left unexplored at present by me!

So we have done Gamma World and D&D with Traveller, why not Top Secret?  John Dunkelberg, Jr. has Space-Age Espionage in Dragon #120.  This is presented as a new career (not class) for Traveller characters.  The article is in-depth and in my very untrained eye, it looks like it could work out well.  Interestingly enough the following article is from Douglas Niles about the new Top Secret game.  

This is also the last article in Dragon about Traveller until Dragon #270 (April 2000) and even then it is only to convert it to Alternity. 

1987 is my personal cut-off date for Classic Traveller.  I am sure others share that, but 87 was also the year I went to University and my tastes moved from Sci-fi to Horror.  I still LOVED Star Trek and that was the bulk of my sci-fi roleplaying.  These last two weeks have given me so much Traveller information that I honestly could stop right here and be very happy.  But I have to admit there is Traveller 2300, MegaTraveller, T5, T20, and more out there I need to learn about and figure out. 

This is going to be a fun trip.

Yesterday I covered the first three Alien Modules for Traveller.  The three I was most familiar with.

For Part 2, I want to cover the next five.

Alien Module 4 - Zhodani

PDF. 52 pages, color cover, black and white interior art.

Ok, I have heard of this one, it just, at the time, didn't grab my attention as much as the first three.  The Zhodani are a race of psionic humans that established themselves on their homeworld about 300,000 years ago.  That is the same time period as the Vargr. No idea if there is a connection yet.

This Module is much like the first three save there is no comparative anatomy section.  The psychology is expanded and the character creation section is altered from the Traveller standard to deal with a race of psionic humans.  

There is a small section on the Zhodani "Thought Police" that I thought could have been larger, given their role in Zhodani society.  Still though, an interesting take on an "Alien" for Traveller.

Alien Module 5 - Droyne

PDF. 52 pages, color cover, black and white interior art.

We are getting into very unfamiliar territory for me. The Droyne are an ancient race that had Jump Drive technology long before (at least 50,000 years before) the other major races.  Though they tend to placid lives on pastoral planets.  They don't seem to have the desire to get out to other worlds like the races covered so far. 

They are a smaller race, standing under a meter tall, reptile/bird-like, with small wings.  The original homeworld of the Droyne is believed to have been a low gravity one to allow their relatively small wings to work.  Droyne are divided into six main castes and this affects their psychology and their physiology.  In one example the Droyne have three genders and all three are needed to gestate a clutch of fertilized eggs.  Certain genders belong to certain castes and rarely are there exceptions. Droyne can also be high psionic.

There are the typical sections on worlds, there is no longer a Droyne "homeworld", starships and service.  This includes a character creation section that also differs from Traveller standard to cover the unique qualities of the Droyne species. 

The biggest "Feature" to alien is where did they come from? How did they develop jump drive technology and why are they not spread out over known space more given their 50,000 year head start?

I can see where playing a Droyne character would be an interesting challenge.

Alien Module 6 - Solomani

PDF. 52 pages, color cover, black and white interior art.

This "alien" species has a familiar name and a familiar look.  The Solomani are space-adapted humans. Maybe "space-adopted" humans is a better term.  Like the Vargr and the Zhodani, the Solomani were from Terran stock, human in the case of the Zhodani and Solomani. While the Zhodani (and other humans) developed on other worlds, the Solomani or Terrans stayed on Earth and then went out to the stars on their own.   

This book has much more history and background details than all the other Alien Modules.  It also gives us some starting insight to the various other human races in the galaxy (45 total according to the internet).  There is also quite a lot on the Solomani Rim Sector of space.

Like the other Alien Modules, this covers some new character creation details, but is not too different than the Traveller standard which assumed human. 

We end with an adventure about a lost colony and the deaths of thousands.

Alien Module 7 - Hiver

PDF. 52 pages, color cover, black and white interior art.

Back to another very alien species and one I knew nothing about till I bought this.

Where the other books typically opened with a comparative anatomy/physiology this one opens with just an overview of the hiver physiology as there are no reference points for comparison. 

They are called Hivers due to their hive-looking cities, but they are not really hive-mind creatures (say like bees), they are cooperative and work together well but respect the individual (otherwise we could not have characteristics of them). 

This book follows the outline of the other Alien Modules, with details on the Hiver's homeworlds, their government, and technology.  Likewise, there is detail about their starships and the world they inhabit.

As expected there is a bit more on their psychology as a completely alien species.  The rules for character creation are present for both "Basic" Traveller (LBB and such) and "Advanced" (High Guard, Mercenary, and beyond).  Special attention is given to their unique physical and psychological differences.

There is an adventure included at the end to introduce these aliens to players.

Alien Module 8 - Darrians

PDF. 50 pages, color cover, black and white interior art.

Our last Alien Module of the Classic Traveller series and one of the last books before the big edition change.  The Darrians are of human-ish decent and would be a minor player in the game of Galatic politics save for two reasons. While the majority of the Imperium is TL15 (tech level) the Darrians are TL 16 and have been for a long time.  Also they have the knowledge of the "Star Trigger" essentially a weapon that causes a star to go supernova.  

For a major power player the Darrians only occupy a small subsector of space. So this make talking about their history into space shorter.  This Alien Module covers all the same basics as the previous ones. Again, as expected, since the Darrians (more on that) are from human stock seeded by the Ancients 300,000 years ago there is no comparative anatomy or physiology presented.

"Darrian" can mean many things, a gentic Darrian are the ones that were seeded 300k years ago and evolved on their own in their sector of space. It can also mean someone living in the Darrian Confederecy.  It can be anyone that is a citizen of the Darrian Confedercy. These details are explored more in the History and has an effect on Basic and Advnaced character creations.  Darrians are golden skinned, tall but slight of build and have pointed ears.  If you are thinking "Space Elves" then I am right there with you.

Darrians can be fairly described as the academics of the Imperium.  A "Darrian vacation" is going to the library. Or something in the pursuit of knowledge.  I kinda like these guys. 

We get the usual background information on their history, technology, starships, worlds, society and government. 

There is also an adventure, "The Secret of the Star Trigger", included at the end. 

--

So. For SciFi month this ends my little jaunt into Classic Traveller.  By my estimation there are over 300 Classic Traveller related products out there.  That is not counting anything published using the Cepheus Deluxe rules or the Mongoose rules.  I know in two weeks all I have done is (barely) scratch the surface.  I could spend the rest of this year talking about Traveller to exclusion of all other topics and still not get to everything.

While I might be done with Classic Traveller (for now) I am not done with Traveller AT ALL.  I have a couple of other posts coming up and then I want to get into the Traveller2300 vs MegaTraveller fray.

Before I get into the next phase of Traveller evolution I thought it behooves me to spend some time with the major Alien races we encounter in Traveller.  Indeed, it was the aliens and the ads for the first three books in Dragon Magazine that made me want to go back and check out Traveller some more.

All of these are available via DriveThruRPG and Far Future Enterprises.

Alien Module 1 - Aslan

PDF. 44 pages, color cover, black and white interior art. 

While not the first Traveller alien I encountered, this is the first module or data file for the various aliens Traveller has to offer.  This one seemed like a no-brainer to me at the time.  I had read Joan D. Vinge's "psion" earlier that year and between the Caitian and Kzinti (introduced to me by Star Trek) I was primed to want a Cat-like race in space. 

The book covers the basics. Aslan physiognomy, which includes some evolutionary details and how it plays into their current civilization. Their political structure (or almost lack thereof) is also discussed. While the Aslan (named such by the first human explorers to make first contact) are described as proud warrior race, they are not really a unified one. 

We are given a bit of their history and their forays into space and their encounters with the Imperium. We get a bit on their psychology, which includes the territorial nature of the males (explained the loose confederacy) and their ritual duels.  

The next large section is Aslan character creation. This covers the basic character creation going back to the 3 LBBs and "Expanded" character creation for other types of characters. 

We are also given background on the Aslan homeworld, worlds within the Imperium, and a bit on starship design.  There is even some detail on the Aslan language, at least in terms of names.

For 44 pages it is pretty well packed.  There is not a lot of "fluff" here, mostly all "crunch."  So no fiction from the point of view of an Aslan mercenary or a human living on an Aslan world.  Just the basics and enough to get you going on to your own adventures. Honestly, it is all you need. 

This was the Alien Module I wanted the most back in the day.  Researching it now I see that a lot of people did what I was going to do with it; mix in liberal amounts of Kzinti and some Caitian as well.  Plus I was going to have psionic ability be a bit stronger in Aslan women. A nod to a lot of the scifi I was reading at the time.  I also noticed just as many people complaining about others doing exactly what I wanted and described!  Yes, the Aslan are fine just as they are but I also like my ideas too.  Thankfully this book lets me do all of that.

Alien Module 2 - K'kree

PDF. 44 pages, color cover, black and white interior art. 

These aliens were very alien to me.  While I could relate to the Aslan and the Vargr, these centaur-like aliens were very different and thus pushed a lot lower on my "wish list."  I don't even think I had read any of this book until I picked up the PDF ten years ago.

This book is set up much the same as the Aslan book and the future books in the line. I found the bits on K'kree psychology most interesting. As herbivores, they tend to be peaceful (ETA unless you are a meat eater). This combined with the race's inherent claustrophobia goes to explain that while they had Jump technology they had not expanded as fast as other races.  

We do get the sections on history, politics and governments, space travel and starship design, and the language section on creating K'kree names. There is a section on character creation as well.

This Alien Module also gives a few pages on adventures with or about the K'kree.  So a little bit more background here than on the Aslan, but I think needed since this species is so different.

Reading this 10 years ago I was not overly impressed I think.  Today I am of a completely different mind and would like to see these guys used more.

Alien Module 3 - Vargr

PDF. 50 pages, color cover, black and white interior art. 

While I knew about the Vargr, they were the big three alien races GDW was advertising back in the day, my first *real* interaction with them was way back in the early 2010s when I was looking for new ideas for Ghosts of Albion adventures.  I stumbled on one from White Dwarf #62, "An Alien Werewolf in London" about a Vargr in Victorian London.  It was an odd adventure, but I gave it go for Ghosts and always wanted to try it again with Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space. 

This book is a bit larger than the previous two, largely because there is a lot you can do with these guys.  Also they are the most fun in terms of history.

Vargr look like Terran wolves because generally speaking that is what they are.  They were transplanted from Terra (Earth) to their homeworld by the Ancients over 300,000 years ago.  Now 300k years is not enough to evolve any stock into something like the Vargr so they had been artificially engineered for intelligence and survivability.  They share a number of physical characteristics of both humans and canine stock but have some minor differences as well.  They still have the psychology of pack hunters following a charismatic leader and working in small, but somewhat unstable, groups.  Pack membership can change and leaders can be followed or discarded at any time.  This has had two effects on the Vargr. One their history is a confusing affair with no one narrative of what happened.  Most of their 300,000-year history is largely unknown to them.  Also it leaves them with no central government nor even any type of government that could be considered "typically Vargr."   See why these aliens can be fun!

We get the now usual sections on character creation along with a brief language update for names. Some basics on the Vargr worlds and space travel.  

We also get a section called "Gvurrdon's Story" which is given to us from the point of view of a Vargr.

This makes up the "Big Three" in my mind.  I know more were introduced soon after (and I will get to them) but these are the ones I associate the most with Traveller.

If there was a "Golden Year" of classic RPGs then I am willing to put my nomination in for 1983.

By now what I considered to be the "Big 3" were well established; AD&D/D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Traveller.  Indeed there were even alternatives to these that were very good games in their own right; Runequest, Chill, and Star Frontiers respectively. While Edition and System Wars have always been with us, it was a great time to be a gamer.  

1983 also gave us a "new" version of Traveller.  Well, not really new at all, but certainly reorganized and edited again.   To keep up my analogy of Classic Traveller = Original D&D and The Traveller Book = Holmes Basic D&D (although with the inclusion of The Traveller Adventure a better one is Moldvay Basic/Cook & Marsh Expert D&D) then the 1983 Traveller Starter Edition is Mentzer BECMI D&D.

The Traveller Starter Edition was the version I saw the most in the pages of Dragon Magazine.  No surprise.  My prime Dragon reading years were 1982 to roughly 1991 and then not again until the 2000s.  Until Mega Traveller came onto the scene this was the Traveller book that GDW was pushing.  Easy to see why.  The cover of the Traveller Book, despite how much I love it, was always more "sci-fi novel" cover.  The new cover?  That's Star Wars meets Dune meets Battlestar Galactica.  This was a cinematic cover, even if the rules were the same.   I could not tell then, and in fact it was only today I noticed, but that ship looks like the Azhanti High Lightning from below.  Or maybe it isn't.  Either way that cover says Space Adventure.  The Traveller Book says "Space is Dangerous and I got bills to pay!" to me.  Both are perfect.

Traveller Starter Edition (1983)

For this review, I am considering the PDF I bought from DriveThruRPG split into three separate files.  The front cover and the back cover of the original book are not preserved here. 

Book 1: Core Rules

This PDF is 68 pages and features black & white interior art with black & white covers with red accents.  They look very much like the classic Traveller covers. 

This book features all the rules from the Classic Traveller system.  It is largely the Traveller Book but reorganized and edited for clarity.  Some sections read a little differently, but for the most part, it felt the same.  There is some new art here, but a lot of art from previous editions remains. The new art is, as expected, better and gives more detail. The red accents to some of the art have been removed.  Character creation reads faster, but it could also be that I have read this section many times now in one form or one book or another that I am "getting it."  

A trained or expert eye could spot the rule differences, but that is not me.  This largely feels the same.  This is not a bad thing mind you.  The difference feels the same as that between Moldvay Basic and BECMI Basic.  Two books for the same game are designed to do the same thing only in slightly different ways.

Book 2: Charts and Tables

This 28-page PDF covers all the charts and tables. References to the charts are in Book 1. 

Book 3: Adventures

This is a 23-page PDF with two adventures; Mission on Mithril (from Double Adventure 2) and Shadows (Double Adventure 1). 

Thoughts

When it comes to learning how to play Classic Traveller then either this version or the Traveller Book would be fine since they cover the same ground.  The analogy of The Traveller Book = B/X D&D and Traveller Starter Set = BECMI D&D extends here.  The trade dress of all future Traveller books will follow the Start Set design.  This will hold until Mega Traveller and 2300 later in 1987.

Which one should YOU buy?  That is entirely up to you.  The Traveller Book has the advantage of also being out in POD format and this one does not.  But this version is a little more friendly to newcomers.

I can't really talk about Traveller without mentioning my history with the game, or more to the point, my non-existent history with at least one aspect of the game.  The Traveller Boardgames.

I remember reading ads for Traveller in Dragon and White Dwarf Magazines and among the RPG books and very cool looking minis, there were the board games.   I remember reading about Azhanti High Lightning in particular. This was a board game and yet it could be used WITH the Traveller RPG. It even included material that could be added to your Traveller RPG OR played completely on its own.  Then imagine my surprise that this was not the only one.

Long-time readers will know this was the start of something I call my "Traveller Envy."  Even then in the early 80s, I was blown away by the amount of material for this game.  RPGs, Boardgames, starship minis.  It was enough to make a die-hard D&D player like me jealous.  Sure, I had Dungeon! but that is not quite the same is it? 

Sadly, and long-time readers know this too, I never got the chance to play any of them.  

Fast forward to, well, last week.  I picked up three of the board games from DriveThruRPG.  These are PDFs, but they are, as far as I can tell, complete.  They are PDFs though.  

I want to review them, but I really have no context for them save they are, to me, worth everything I paid.  Honestly just to see what they are all about was worth it even if I never get to play them.  

General Overview

I picked up three games, Imperium, Mayday, and Azhanti High Lightning.  All three share similarities. There is s set of printed rules that are easy to read.  There is a board game that really doubles as an awesome map.  And there are counters.  If anything is the weakest link here it is the counters.  I have, with other games, tried printing and gluing to cardstock (gotta wait for the ink to dry), but that is time-consuming.  I have been considering a completely futuristic plan.  I would use my HDMI projector to project down on a table and use 3D printed starships.  I have found a few online and I am 100% certain there are more.  It would be far more time-consuming than laser printing and gluing, but it would be 1000x so much cooler.  Thankfully the ships would not need to be huge so I could do a few at a time. I wouldn't even need to spend a lot of time painting them, just a solid color the same as the counter. 

Imperium (1977)

This PDF features a 16 page rulebook, 3 pages of rule summaries, a turn tracker, 7 pages of background on the Imperium which may or may not reflect the same history as Traveller*.  There are also 3 pages of color maps/boards, 2 pages of counters, and an additional page of a counter manifest that looks like a page from Excel. Missing is the d6.  Bet I can dig one up.

This is a game of interstellar war. It actually predates Traveller by a bit, but obviously has similar DNA.  While the original 1977 RPG lacked an explicit setting, this one involves the Imperium (natch) and the forces of Terra (Earth).  The phases in the players' turns can include buying equipment, moving, and attacking.

This was published the same year as Traveller and the ideas of the Imperium had not been added to the RPG yet, so there are differences between the events of this game and future Traveller products. 

My issue with this set is I have no idea how big the map needs to be.  I can assume it is some multiple of the box size, but this is not a big issue.

Mayday (1978)

This one seems to be more explicitly linked to Traveller and is in fact Game 1.  The Mayday in question is the infamous "mayday" of the Free Trader Beowulf.  This is a game of ship-to-ship combat.   It was part of GDW's Series 120 games.  These were designed to play in two-hours or less. 

The Mayday is presented as a single PDF. Thre are 15 pages of rules. 1 page of counters. And a counter manifest/inventory (Excel printout). A board/map of a space hex-grid, and a scan of the box cover.

In general, this scan feels much more useful than Imperium did.  I can get a blank hex grid like this from my favorite local game store and I can print out all the counters I need, as I need, or use the 3D printing idea I have. 

While this game is more explicitly linked to Traveller, I see it could be used for any sort of ship-to-ship combat. I could even try my MCRN Barkeith vs. the USS Protector.  Might take some work, but the Barkeith would be a lot easier to do in the Traveller universe. 

Azhanti High Lightning (1980)

This is where it all began for me. Well. At least my Traveller Envy began here.  This is Traveller Boardgame 3 and it is a companion to the S05 Supplement Lightning Class Cruiser.

This game is personal combat on a starship.  This PDF package includes 3 PDFs.  The first is the complete game of 118 pages. This includes 40 pages of rules which includes six different sorts of "Incidents" (read Scenarios).  The next section (40+ pages) of this PDF is S05 Supplement Lightning Class Cruiser.  So if you are looking for this supplement for Classic Traveller, then here it is. 

The next 16 or so pages include the counters and the deck plans for the Azhanti.   Again these counters are good, but I would like to use minis or something like that.

I have been told this game is a lot of fun.  I'll have to endeavor to get it all printed out into a playable shape.

--

It is hard to give these a proper review since the only proper proof is playing them.  One day maybe, but for now I can honestly say my curiosity has been satisfied.  

Links

Imperium

• DriveThruRPG (PDF)
• Board Game Geek
• Wikipedia
• Traveller Wiki

Mayday

• DriveThruRPG (PDF)
• Board Game Geek
• Wikipedia
• Traveller Wiki

Azhanti High Lightning

• DriveThruRPG (PDF)
• Board Game Geek
• Wikipedia
• Traveller Wiki

The Traveller Adventure is the companion piece to The Traveller Book I reviewed earlier.

I always wanted this book. It would have looked so great next to my Traveller Book. But more importantly it would have given me some more ideas of what to do with Traveller.  At least Traveller was better for me than Star Frontiers, which tended to be D&D in Space.

I did pick this up on DriveThruRPG as a PDF almost as soon as it came out. 

This book (well. the cover) was my first experience with the Vargr.

The Traveller Adventure (1983)

For this review, I am using the PDF from DriveThruRPG.  154 pages, color cover, black and white interior art with red ink accents.

This book is a collection of connected adventures which today would be called an Adventure Path.  See I told you Traveller was ahead of its time. 

The conceit of the adventures is the player characters are all members of the merchant vessel, the March Harrier, where they befriend a Vargr (a fantastic way to introduce an alien species btw) and leads them on a series of adventures.  Additionally, we (or me rather, it could have shown up earlier in another book) were introduced to the Spinward Marches, the frontier of the Imperium.  Even someone only tangentially familiar with Traveller has heard of the Spinward Marches.

So yeah already a lot in this book.

The book begins with all this information as well as background on the Aramis Subsector and some Referee notes.  These notes include details on the overall plot and what all the major NPCs want. There are even some Pre-Gen characters to use.  Seriously. This thing is so much better than I expected it to be.

There are about a dozen and a half or so adventures here of various sizes and types.  Each moves the plot forward in a different way and each can have an effect on the other.  They did not appear to be overtly linear to me, so there is a lot freedom of how these can be used.

There are also deck plans for the March Harrier and a bit on using Vargr as player characters.

There is just so much information here and just so much of value that I am really kicking myself for not getting this back then.  It really would have changed my Traveller experience.

Reading through this now I also really get an appreciation for how deep and rich the Traveller lore is.  

This was *MY* Traveller.  In 1982 I could not get enough Science Fiction.  All the books I read were sci-fi, I was eagerly anticipating the third Star Wars movie that we had heard was called "Revenge of the Jedi" and video games were all the rage.  When I saw this book in the Mail Order Hobby Shop catalog (or maybe it was Games Plus) I thought I had to try it out.  In my recollections, I had ordered both Traveller and Pacesetter Chill at this time, but logically with my paper route money at the time I am sure I only got one at a time.

It came in the mail, it was summer I recall, likely near my birthday, and I jumped right in. 

It was not what I expected.  

By this point, I had been playing D&D for nearly three years, and in earnest (every weekend) for the last two. There were no classes here, no levels, just skills.  It was a shift, but it was a lot of fun.  I recall I had more fun making planetary systems than characters really. I even wrote some BASIC programs for the TRS-80 to do some of the math.

Sadly like those cassette tapes I stored my BASIC programs on, my Traveller book was lost to the sands of time.  I can't even really recall what happened to it. Sad because today it goes for so much on eBay!

Thankfully for me, and everyone else, you can get the PDF and Print on Demand (POD) of the book from DriveThruRPG.  I grabbed it as soon as the PDF was out.  I wish I had gotten the original POD though.  The newer PDF and POD has been replaced with a far better scan, but the cover is the Black and Red of the earlier Traveller books and not the "blue book" I came to know.

Much like Holmes' Basic D&D "Blue Book" combined the Original D&D "Little Brown Books" and other material into a single volume, this Traveller "Blue Book" combined the three "Little Black Books" into a single volume with new material.  This new material included Book 0 "An Introduction to Traveller," some of "Double Adventure 1," and more material. 

The Traveller Book (1982)

160 pages, PDF (Hardcover PoD; original softcover) Color cover art, black & white interior art with red accents.

The Traveller Book was published in 1982 and was the follow-up to the highly successful Traveller boxed set.  Since the boxed set printing and reprints there had been a number of well-received supplements, in particular, Supplement 0 An Introduction to Traveller, DA1 Double Adventure (Shadows), Book 04 Mercenary, and Book 05 High Guard.  These made up what I largely felt was the core of Classic Traveller (or Original Traveller as I thought of it then). Much like how D&D combined their Original game with many supplements to make Holmes' Basic D&D (and later AD&D) these materials were re-edited and re-combined into a new book/game.  This became the Traveller Book.

At the time nearly everyone claimed it was not just a step up in terms of learning Traveller, it was an advanced leap in playing Traveller.

The Traveller Book contains everything from the Little Black Books of the Classic Traveller boxed set as well as new introductory material from Book 0.  

You can read my review of the Classic Traveller boxed set here, https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/05/review-classic-basic-traveller.html. Today I want to talk about what makes this book new and special. 

For starters, there is a lot of text here that is familiar, but not exactly the same.  The editors took some time to clean up the text and make things a lot clearer. Additionally, there is more art; both of the decorative sort (Captain Alexander Jamison now has a ponytail) and of the help sort (images of weapons and starships).

Among other improvements in text, there are also plenty of redesigned tables and charts.  While the LBBs had charm they did not have a lot of space formatted for digest-size (5½" x 8½").  The Traveller book is a full-sized 8½" x 11".  At the time people even commented that it was a proper sized RPG now to go with the likes of AD&D.

 The sections on worlds and encounters are also expanded. Animals in particular get more text and even more examples.  Trade and Commerce also get more text. My Classic Traveller boxed set had very little on this.  This is closer to the 1980s reprint.  The one the new Facsimile Edition is based on.  It also looks like the Psionics section is more detailed.

There is a "new" (new to anyone coming from the boxed set) section on the Referee's Guide to Adventuring.  Since this is really pre-Traveller as a system AND a setting, there is some good advice here on running any sort of Sci-Fi/Space Adventure game.  There are hints of Star Trek, Star Wars and lots and lots of Classic "Hard" Sci-Fi like you would see from Clarke or Asimov. But it is also none of the things entirely.  I did say "Pre-" but in reality, Traveller was building its universe right before our eyes. Again, much like D&D did.

Also reprinted here is the adventure Shadows from Double Adventure 01. 

The last section, The Traveller's Guide to the Universe introduces us to The Imperium. This is the important setting for Traveller and what sets it apart from other Sci-Fi RPGs.  The history, both in-game and real-world, of the Imperium is impressive and much like that of Dune, Star Wars, or Star Trek, absolutely daunting.  I will admit I read this section many, many times and wondered what would fiction set in any period of this history be like?   Back in 1982-3 I did not have much other than this book, some friends that had played (but were not looking for new players), and a growing case of what I call "Traveller Envy".  Today there are wikis and blogs and entire websites devoted to Traveller and the Imperium.  My cup is full, running over and there are still more cups on the table waiting for me to pick them up.

Recommendations

For ANYONE who is interested in the Classic Traveller, I would say get this book first before looking into the vast catalog of older Classic Traveller books.  There is so much out there and I am going to only scratch the surface this month.  In fact "The Traveller Series" in this book (page 159) covers everything published to this point and where they all fit in.  Including all the board games.   I am going to need to spend some time talking about those as well.

Here we are at the end of another April A to Z Blogging Challenge. I "won," that is I completed the Challenge.  That's not such a stretch for me since I tend to write every day anyway.  For me success is whether not I had an interesting theme (I think I did) and whether or not I got some interaction on the posts (I did).  "Success" for me in this case is about the journey and not the end.

This year's theme Conspiracy Theories was suggested to me by my wife and I really had a lot of fun with it.  The conspiracy theory part was for all the visitors from the A to Z, but the NIGHT SHIFT RPG applications were for my regular audience.   

I do hope that both audiences enjoyed both sections.  

Ultimately I hope that some of my regular audience found some new blogs thanks to the A to Z AND I hope some of the A to Z folks looked into the NIGHT SHIFT RPG.

I have not crunched all the numbers, but my hits were significantly higher this past month.   My Twitter engagement was also quite higher.

Like previous years, I made a Pinterest board for all my posts so if you want to see what I did you have a visual guide.

Follow Timothy's board "April 2022 A to Z of Conspiracy Theories" on Pinterest.

Though this one is less visual than last year's Monsters.

Also, unlike last year, there is no book these are all going in.  It was just a bit of fun.  Though I did do enough research on the side for a new book, that will wait until other projects are complete.

Once again I am considering what to do for 2023.  No ideas yet. I suppose I could do what I had originally planned for this year, but I have less excitement for that now.  I DO however know exactly what I am going to do in 2024!  

So until then!

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

Oh.

I suppose that I shouldn't let "May the Fourth" go by unremarked.  It is Sci-Fi month here after all.

So for my small contribution here is the most Science Fiction of all musicians, Thomas Dolby featuring George Clinton on "May the Cube Be With You."

May the Cube and the Fourth and the Force be with you!

It's May and I want to spend the entire month talking about Sci-Fi RPGs, and most of this month talking about Traveller.   Traveller has a long and storied history in both the RPG world and for me personally. It is the second (or the third, more on that) RPG I ever owned after D&D.  

I say second but my memory is foggy and it could have been Traveller or it could have been Chill.  I think for my horror cred I like to claim it was Chill, but in the early 80s, I was all about Science Fiction.  So really it was most likely to be Traveller.  I picked up the Traveller Book and tried to teach to it to myself, but my groups were very D&D focused and no one wanted to play it.  The groups that did play it were all older than I was and they did not want some "D&D kid" in their "Serious Sci-Fi" groups.  I was able to more traction on Star Frontiers a few years later.  Must have been the TSR bias of the time.  I do wish I still had my original Traveller Book though.   I did manage to score an Original Traveller boxed set of the "Little Black Books" so I guess that is even better.

Today I am going to review Traveller and start at the very beginning.  There is just no way I could through everything for Traveller.  I'd need more than a month, I'd need a whole new blog, so instead, I was going to going to concentrate on some core products to get people into the game and a few choice ones that have meaning to me. 

I will admit right up front that I am no Traveller expert.  So it is very, very likely I will miss a few a things.  Just let me, and others, know in the comments.   

Ok, as my friend Greg said on Sunday, let's get this party started!

Classic Traveller

For this review, I am going to be referring to my 1977 Game Designers' Workshop edition of the boxed set of Traveller.   I am also joining to be comparing them the PDFs of the Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition from Game Designers' Workshop / Far Future Enterprises on DriveThruRPG. 

Side Note:  Far Future Enterprises bought the rights to various GDW games a while back and published this pdf as far back as 2001.  They own the rights to republish Traveller, 2300 AD, Twilight: 2000, and Dark Conspiracy. They also work with Mongoose and other publishers of Traveller material.  But more on that in future posts.  Suffice to say that from my point of view they have been carrying the torch of Traveller high since 2000.  Among other things they publish a full CD-ROM of Traveller material that I would love to grab someday. 

The Boxed Set

The Traveller Boxed Set from GDW was released in 1977.  GDW was located in Normal, IL which is along what I learned was a trail the lead from Lake Geneva, WI, and Chicago, IL all the way down to the University of Illinois in Urbana, IL, Illinois State in Normal, IL down to Southern Illinois Univerity in Carbondale, IL.  Tim Kask was an SIU grad, GDW was in Normal, Mayfair would later be founded in Skokie just outside of Chicago, and Judges Guild was founded in Decatur, IL.  I basically grew up surrounded by the growing Table Top RPG scene. 

Much like Dungeons & Dragons of the time, Traveller came in a digest-sized box with three books.  Instead of there being "3 Little Brown Books" there are "3 Little Black Books."   Also, like D&D future printings would combine these books though in different ways. 

PDF Note: The Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition also includes a preface for the whole set of books and gives a brief history of their publications.  This is a great value-add for the PDF.  According to it what I am reviewing today is "Basic Traveller" and published in 1981.  Basic Revised was published in 1981 and the Traveller Book (my first purchase) was in 1982.  

Book 1: Characters and Combat

This is the character generation book and maybe one of the most famous bit of RPG lore ever.  Yes. In Traveller you can die in Character creation!  

I should also point out that very, very often in my conversations with people over the years that Character Creation for Travelller was very much in line with what we would call "Session 0" today.  Everyone worked on their character, developed a back story (yes in 1977) and then got together.  Even the starting character example is a 42-year-old with a pension (and a cutlass it seems). Trust me, at 42 I already had backstory (and a wife, kids, a mortgage, bills...)

Character creation is largely a random affair, but not wholly so. There are choices to be made along the way.  How a character acquires skills and expertise largely depends on which service they were in and how they got there.  You can enlist or you can be drafted. At this point, all characters were assumed to have served in some form of the service. Citizens don't mortgage their pension on a beat second-hand starship to go galavanting across known space. 

As you work through character creation you can go for a few terms of service. This gives you more skill, more experience, more credits, and makes you older.  As in real life, there are benefits and detriments to age.  

Skills are detailed next.  This is going to come up again and again, but let's talk about it here first. The Computers of Traveller are the computers of 1977.  Not very advanced and require special expertise to use them.  Today of course I am writing this post in one window, monitoring email and chat in another, watching the weather in another, and reading the PDF in yet another.  I have dozens of active programs running that I am paying attention to and who knows how many more running in the background.  I am not going to apply 21st-century biases though to these rules.  Let's just leave them as-is for now and see how future versions of this game treat it.   For me I am going to assume there are computers (with a lower case c) that do all the work we think of today and anyone can use and then there are specialized Computers (with an upper case C) that do specialized work, like today's supercomputers.  

Side Note: The best super-computer of 1977 was the 80mhz, 64 bit Cray-1. It cost $8M and was capable of 160 MFLOPS. For comparison, my three-year-old smartphone runs at 130ghz and is capable of 658 GFLOPS. Newer phones are more than double that. 4000x's the power at 1/10,000th of the cost. And I can put it into my pocket. 

After your terms of service are figured out along with your skills then comes the time to learn combat.  Combat always gets more ink than say hacking a computer since there are so many things going on and a failure usually means death.  Also, as an aside, there are a lot of bladed weapons in Traveller. I attribute this to two different elements. The first and obvious is Star Wars, though Traveller obviously draws more from Dune than Star Wars which only came out in May of 77.  The other and likely more important source is D&D.  For the obvious reasons.  The end effect is that officers in Traveller often carry swords in my mind. 

Combat gives us our basic roll for the game and the introduction of the Traveller basic mechanic. The PDF is a little clearer on this than my print book. Roll 2d6 and beat a roll of 8.  This is modified by various skills and experiences.  

Wounds affect the character's Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance. The more wounds you get, the worse those stats are.  D&D would not do this in earnest until 4th Edition. 

PDF Notes:  My copy is dedicated "To Mary Beth" and the PDF (and I think the Traveller Book) are dedicated "To Darlene."  There are other minor differences as well. The PDF for example has a "Personal Data and History" aka a Character Sheet on page 28 (36 for the PDF). 

Book 2: Starships

This is what makes Traveller, well, Traveller. There are two types of travel dealt with here, Interplanetary (worlds within the same star system) and Interstellar (different star systems). Also if you are afraid of math this book is going to give you a bad day.   

The main focus of this book in my mind is buying a starship and keeping it running.  Starships are expensive and in Traveller, those expenses are more keenly felt than say keeping up a castle in D&D.  If your castle runs out of food you can leave to go buy some. In a starship, in space, your options are more limited.  In space, no one can hear your stomach grumble. 

I have no idea if the economies of Traveller work. I mean is 2 tons of fuel really worth the year's salary of a gunner?  No idea. I am going to handwave that and say it works.

There is also a lot on Starship construction here too. Before I could get anyone to play I would write up sheets of starships and their costs based on what I thought was cool.  Kinda wish I had a couple of those. The only one I can remember was the FTL Lucifer.  It was designed to be small, but fast.  It would later make it's way into Star Frontiers, but that is another tale.

We get some details on starship combat and some basic world data.

Book 2 also covers experience and various drugs.  I get the feeling these were put here to pad out Book 2 so all three books were the same size; 44 pages. 

PDF Notes: The PDF has more art, in particular how to orbit a planet and the necessary equations made more clear.  Like Book 1 for Characters, this volume has sheets for ships. The PDF also adds a Trade and Commerce section.

Book 3: Worlds and Adventures

This book covers worlds.  And if there was one thing I did more than creating starships that never traveled to other worlds, it was to create worlds that starships would never travel to.  World creation was fun.  

This book also covers various personal equipment and various encounter types.

Note at this point there are no aliens, no Imperiums, and really nothing other than the most basic adventuring outline.  Very much like OD&D in that respect.  I like the psionic system in Traveller and maybe I should explore the differences between it and the one in Eldritch Wizardry for D&D. 

The last part of this book covers Psionics. Maybe one of the reasons I like to draw a pretty hard line between Magic and Psionics is that one is for Fantasy (and D&D) and the other is for Sci-Fi (and Traveller).

PDF Notes: The PDF again has more art (vehicles) as well as hex maps for working out star systems.

Final Notes

How does one review a classic like Traveller?  How does one compare an RPG from 1977 to the standards of 2022?  It's not easy under normal circumstances, but with Traveller it is easier.  Why?  Because so much of this game was ahead of its time you could brush it off, get some d6s and play it out of the box as is today.  More so than OD&D is I think.

But both games are classics, no, Classics. With that capital C. It is no wonder that now, 45 years later, Traveller is still the goto science-fiction game.

As I move through the editions and versions I'll also talk about all the other materials that have been used with Traveller (board games for example) and how these "3LBBs" expanded to cover an entire universe. 

Nice meeting of topics here today.  It is May which this year will be the start of my Sci-Fi month.  We have the normal May the Fourth celebrations, and Mayday for Traveller was yesterday.  Plus we get Star Trek Strange New World premiering this week.  AND there is a new D&D Spelljamer on the horizon. So there are a lot of great reasons to celebrate SciFi. 

I also just got finished with my A to Z Challenge for April where I did Conspiracy Theories.  I leaned heavily on a lot of UFO-based ones.  So my appetite has been whetted for more.  And today is Monstrous Monday!  So I thought I would bring all of these ideas together today into a special Monstrous Monday!

Greys (Zeta Reticulians)

Of all the alien species that have purportedly visited the Earth few are as popular as the Greys.  These creatures are also known as Zeta Reticulians since they supposedly come from the Zeta Reticuli star system, approximately 40 ly from Earth.  This is based on a drawing from one of the most famous alien abductees ever, Betty Hill.  

Greys are called such due to their skin color. The skin seems to be a uniform grey.  While some are depicted as not wearing clothes, others have suggested that they are wearing skin-tight suits of the same color as their skin to protect them from Earth's atmosphere.  They typically stand 4 to 5ft in height (1.2 to 1.5 meters), are hairless, with large black eyes.  They have no ears nor a nose, save for small slits or holes where such external sense organs would be.  Their bodies are small, thin, and somewhat elongated. Their heads however are large with large foreheads giving the impression of large brains inside. Their hands are long with long delicate fingers. They typically only have four fingers (three fingers and a thumb) per hand, though there are reports of "hybrids" that appear to be greys with human eyes and five fingers per hand.

They do not speak but instead communicate via a form of telepathy. 

Their purpose with humanity is still unknown.  They may not even know themselves just yet since all evidence seems to point to them observing and experimenting on humans. Their experiments in removing eggs and sperm as reported by abductees, and the existence of hybrid forms at least point to an interest in our reproductive abilities.  It is postulated that they are using humans to help deplete their own lessening numbers.

Grey (Dungeons & Dragons 5e)

Grey (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 3-12 (3d4)
AC: 6
Move: 30 ft.
Hit Dice: 2-4
Special: Cause fear, psychic abilities (chosen at random), telekinesis, telepathy, Can't use magic
XP Value: Varies

Greys are aliens from the Zeta Reticuli star system. They have enhanced psychic abilities, but are vulnerable to all forms of magic.  They never speak but communicate via telepathy.  A group of Greys are typically a scouting party with various scientists onboard their spaceship. They will abduct humans or cattle, do experiments on them, erase their memories and return them to where they found them.

Grey (OSR)

Frequency: Very Rare
Number Appearing: 1d4+3 (1d10+2)
Alignment: Neutral [True Neutral]
Movement: 90' (30') [9"]
Armor Class: 7-5 [12-14]
Hit Dice: 
   Scientist: 2d8+2* (11 hp)
   Monitor: 3d8+3** (17 hp)
   Leader: 4d8+8** (26 hp)
To Hit AC 0: 18, 16, 15  (+1, +3, +4)
Attacks: 0 or 1
Damage: None, stun 
Special: Cause fear, paralysis, mind blank, telepathy, vulnerable to magic
Save: Monster 3
Morale: 10 (10)
Treasure Hoard Class: Special
XP:
   Scientist: 35 (OSE) 47 (LL)
   Monitor: 100 (OSE) 135 (LL)
   Leader: 275 (OSE) 290 (LL)

Str: 7,9, 11 (-1, 0, 0) Dex: 16 (+2) Con: 14, 14, 16 (+1, +1, +2) Int: 22, 18, 18 (+5, +3, +3) Wis: 16 (+2) Cha: 14 (+1)

Greys come in three castes; Scientists, Monitors, and Leaders.  Scientists perform the experiments, leaders lead the missions, and are the fighters of the group.  Monitors are a blend of the two, acting as leaders amongst the scientists.  The castes are not hierarchical, they are designed so that each role is filled by the most capable individual.  A group of greys encountered outside of the ships will all be scientists with at least one member a monitor or leader. 

Greys have psionic abilities to cause fear, paralysis by touch (save vs. Paralysis or be frozen for one minute), and to erase the memories of their victims.   Scientists do not attack. They leave this to the Leaders and if needed the monitors. 

Additionally, greys have no concept of magic, they save at -2 against all spells and take an additional +1 point damage from magical attacks. 

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I might tweak these a bit more, but so far they look great to me.

Mayday! Mayday! 

It's May and Sci-fi month at The Other Side!

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: Z is for Zecharia Sitchin

Here we are at the end, which is back at the beginning for me and the topic of my A to Z for this April 2022.

Before I begin I do want to say this one went much better than I expected. I'll get to all of that in the Reflections post coming up.

So Zecharia Sitchin.  

Sitchin was the author of many books on the topic of Ancient Aliens and the Anunnaki of the Sumerians. He was also the creator of the idea of the planet of Nibiru where the Anunnaki supposedly come from. He called this the "12th Planet."  

Much like Margaret Murray, Sitchin took the archaeological record as well as astronomical history.  Also, like Murray, he completely botched his research including some of the translations. 

The conspiracy comes from, as expected, the Government, the Church, and NASA are all hiding the truth. Sitchin's theories remake the history of humanity and of course, everyone is going to hide all of that.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Sitchin's work is not science.  BUT it could make for good science fiction.  

For NIGHT SHIFT I would like to REally go deep on this. Have aliens come Nibriu and try to start some crazy-ass religion or something.  OR maybe it is just people saying they are. 

Sitchin, among other things, is indirectly responsible for a number of UFO Cults.  Bringing a couple of these (or a made-up one) would make for an interesting game I think.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

And there we go.  Another April A to Z for the history books.  Join me next month for Sci-Fi month!