Retrospective: Alien Module 6: Solomani

I was thinking about the next installment in my Traveller Distinctives series and thought I'd hit upon a good topic – until I realized that the topic in question was actually an aspect of GDW's official Third Imperium setting and not Traveller more broadly. However, I still thought it was a good topic, so I decided I'd discuss it in the context of Alien Module 6: Solomani, first published in 1986, which is quite late in the era of classic Traveller (Its successor, MegaTraveller, would come out the next year).

The Third Imperium setting does something I find quite interesting: it postulates that, at some point in the distant past, about 300,000 years ago, an advanced alien species known colloquially as "the Ancients," visited Earth (or Terra) and took from it small populations of its native species, which they then experimented upon and used as servitors. Among these were early homo sapiens. After the Ancients seemingly destroyed themselves in a war amongst themselves, many of the humans whom they brought to the stars were left to their own devices to adapt and evolve without further interference. Some of these lost children of Earth survived and prospered, while others did not.

The psionic Zhodani, rivals of the Third Imperium, are one group of transplanted humans who rose to greatness in the absence of the Ancients. Another group – perhaps even more significant to the history of the Third Imperium – were the Vilani, whose "Grand Empire of the Stars" once ruled more than 15,000 worlds at its height before coming into contact with the humans the Ancients left behind on their original homeworld. These humans, the Terrans, had just discovered jump drive and were expanding out into the galaxy, when they discovered, much to their surprise, that the Vilani had already laid claim to most of them. Undeterred, they launched a series of Interstellar Wars that, over the course of a couple of centuries, brought the Vilani empire crashing down. 

Like the Macedonians' conquest of the Persian Empire, the Terrans quickly established themselves at the head of a new hybrid regime, the Rule of Man, which laid claim to all of the Vilani's territory and more. To distinguish themselves from the humans of Vland (the Vilani), the Terrans began to refer to themselves as the Solomani, the men of Sol. The term Solomani thus refers to the descendants of those humans whom the Ancients did not take with them to the stars hundreds of millennia ago. Instead, they remained on Terra, to develop on their own, free from the meddling of other species.

I've always liked this aspect of the Third Imperium setting. Many science fiction settings include innumerable near-human species – Star Trek is notorious for this – that make little sense from an evolutionary perspective. By postulating that there are dozens of human species scattered throughout the galaxy by the Ancients, the setting sidesteps the need for such implausible aliens. Instead, we get three major human races (Vilani, Zhodani, Solomani), all of whom discovered jump drive independently, and a multiplicity of minor human races, who did not, but who might nevertheless have unique and interesting histories and cultures of their own.

Now, if you detect a hint of superiority in the major/minor human race distinction, you're not wrong. The question of what constitutes a major race is a contentious one within the Third Imperium setting and tinged with dark political overtones. This is especially true in the case of the Solomani, who, as the centuries wore on, came to see themselves as the "true" humans. Had they not, after all, been born on Terra herself, the mother world of all humans? Had they not achieved interstellar flight on their own and then, in short order, overthrown the Vilani imperium to found an even greater one? These attitudes eventually hardened into claims of outright supremacy over not just other humans but non-humans too.

Not all Solomani hold to these views, of course. However, a political movement, known as the Solomani Party, espouses them, even to the point of feeling that the Third Imperium – successor to both the Vilani Grand Empire of the Stars and the Solomani Rule of Man – is an illegitimate government and thus unworthy of ruling over Terra and its people. The result was the Solomani Rim War and the secession of a large portion of the rimward territory of the Imperium (though not Terra, which remained in imperial hands). Since then, the Solomani Confederation, with its human supremacist ideas, has been a thorn in the side of the Imperium, with irredentist groups on Earth engaging in terrorism and fomenting unrest.

Like all previous Alien Modules, this one provides everything needed to play and use Solomani characters in the Third Imperium setting. There's history, politics, technology, character generation, and even an adventure. Particular attention is given to the Solomani Party and its sinister enforcement arm, Solomani Security (or SolSec). Like the Gestapo or KGB, SolSec serves as both a secret police force and as a hedge against members of the Party failing to toe the official line. The Solomani government is thus set up as antagonistic both to the Imperium and any Solomani within the Confederation who hope to see it reform by moving away from its ideology. 

As enemies, I'm a big fan of the Solomani. I find them much more relatable than the Zhodani, who, despite being human, are quite alien in their thought processes and, therefore, society. By contrast, the Solomani are us – our descendants, twisted by an abhorrent ideology and seething at how far they've fallen from the glory days of their ancestors, who toppled the Vilani empire. It's a great basis for villains with intelligible motivations. They also show how to make use of the history of the Third Imperium setting to create fun adventures and campaigns – the true mark of a good setting element.

Deluxe Traveller

From issue #52 of Dragon (August 1981):

Retrospective: Invasion: Earth

By now, I scarcely need to remind people that roleplaying games are an outgrowth of wargaming, specifically miniatures wargaming. More than a half-century after the appearance of Dungeons & Dragons, this is a well-known and indisputable fact. Nevertheless, it's a fact worth mentioning from time to time, if only to provide context for how many early and influential RPGs were created and designed. It's also a reminder that, even though roleplaying games would eventually eclipse their predecessors, wargames remained an important component of the wider hobby for many years (and arguably still are, though I'm far from the best person to make that claim).

Game Designers' Workshop, best known nowadays as the original publisher of Traveller, began its existence in 1973 as a publisher of hex-and-chit wargames. Its first foray into what might be called roleplaying was in 1975 with En Garde!, though the game is closer to a dueling simulator with light character-driven elements than a "true" RPG (similar, in some ways, to Boot Hill in this respect). But, by and large, GDW's output during the first few years of its existence was tabletop wargames – nearly twenty by the release of Traveller in 1977.

Marc Miller, one of the founders of GDW, had long been a science fiction fan and among his first designs at the company (along with John Harshman) was Triplanetary, whose vector-based movement system inspired Traveller's own (and that of Mayday, itself an offshoot of Traveller). He also designed Imperium, a simulation of a series of interstellar wars between the vast, alien Imperium and the plucky, upstart Terran Confederation. Devotees of the Third Imperium setting may recognize this scenario as part of its historical background, but, at the time of its release, Imperium had no connection to Traveller – which hadn't yet been published and, when it was, later the same year, it was devoid of any kind of example setting. 

I bring all this up to emphasize that, at GDW, there was a great deal of interplay between its wargames and the roleplaying games it would eventually publish, with one influencing the other and then in turn influencing other games (or even the same ones in later editions). Thus, for example, Traveller incorporates into its official setting the scenario of Imperium, whose second edition in 1990 would then add details from Traveller. I consider this sort of cross-pollination a hallmark of Games Designers' Workshop, a company that, until the very end, was marked by fervid creativity.

1981 is a good example of what I mean. Traveller had, by that point, already been out for four years and had established itself as the hobby's premier science fiction roleplaying game (sorry, Space Opera!). GDW sought to support the game on multiple fronts, revising and clarifying the rulebooks, as well as releasing new ways to play the game, whether large scale interstellar naval battles (Trillion Credit Squadron), miniatures wargaming (Striker), or strategic wargames, like Fifth Frontier War and Invasion: Earth. GDW clearly had big plans for Traveller and its releases that year demonstrate that, I believe.

Unlike Fifth Frontier War, whose scope covers several subsectors of the Spinward Marches during a "current" war within the timeline of the Third Imperium, Invasion: Earth is both much smaller and "historical," which is to say, taking place in the past of the setting. Set about a century before the "present day," Invasion: Earth focuses on the final stages of the Solomani Rim War (or the War for Solomani Liberation, if your sympathies lie in that direction), as Imperial forces attempt to conquer Terra, a major bastion of the Solomani Cause. As the homeworld of humanity (or humaniti, according to Traveller's unique orthography), Terra holds great symbolic importance to the Solomani, who see themselves as its true children, in contrast to the Imperium, whose culture and very blood have been corrupted by contact with non-Terran aliens. 

Invasion: Earth, as its title suggests, is very narrowly focused on the attack and defense of the solar system, culminating in the planetary invasion of Terra. There's thus both space combat and ground combat, each reflecting a different theater of the ongoing Imperial invasion and Solomani counterattack. Rules-wise, it's fairly similar, both in terms of its specifics and its overall complexity, to Fifth Frontier War, which is ti say, it's a proper wargame for hex-and-chit aficionados, not something simplified for casual players like myself. Consequently, I never played Invasion: Earth, even as I admired the copy I saw in the collection of my friend's father – a common theme in my early encounters with wargames.

As I said above, GDW clearly had big plans for Traveller at the time of this game's release. Though intended primarily as a historical game, which, in the setting's timeline, the Solomani lost, there are notes in the back of the rules about how to use the game to simulate invasions of other planets within the Traveller universe. There are also suggestions on how to use the events of the war as fodder for adventures, either in the past or in the present of the Third Imperium setting. I wonder whether anyone ever took up these options for their own Traveller campaigns.

Invasion: Earth, like Fifth Frontier War, has long fascinated me. I love the idea of wargames or simulations intended to flesh out or expand upon some aspect of a roleplaying game's setting, but I've rarely had the opportunity to make use of it myself. For instance, I long wanted to find a way to play out a war in my House of Worms campaign, but I never had the opportunity to do so – or indeed a clear sense of how I'd make it work, but I keep thinking about it nonetheless.

Traveller Distinctives: Social Standing

This post is the start of a new series, Traveller Distinctives, in which I look at an aspect of Traveller's rules that I consider unique or otherwise distinctive, whether from the perspective of other roleplaying games generally or science fiction RPGs specifically. The series will be both irregular in frequency and in its subject matter. That is, I'll post new entries in it as often as I like and I won't be following any kind of clear program. This isn't a "cover to cover" series so much as a "things James finds distinct about the Traveller rules" series. Additionally, I should point out that I'll generally be sticking to the text of the original 1977 rules, with occasional references to the 1981 version.

To kick things off, I'm starting small: Social Standing. Social Standing (or SOC) is one of the six "basic characteristics" all characters possess, along with Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, and Education. While the first four have clear analogs in OD&D, as does their being six in number, SOC has no such antecedent. Indeed, I'm not sure of any other significant roleplaying games published by 1977 that includes something similar, but, as always, I'm happy to be corrected.

According to Book 1, SOC "notes the social class and level of society from which a character (and his family) come." A little later, in the section on naming a character, there's a subsection devoted to titles, which reads (italics mine):

A character with a Social Standing of 11 or greater may assume his family's hereditary title. The full range of titles is given in Book 3. For initial naming, a Social Standing of 11 allows the use of Sir, denoting hereditary knighthood; a Social Standing of 12 allows use of Baron, or prefixing von to the character's surname.

What's notable here is that Traveller associates Social Standing with nobility and hereditary nobility at that. The referenced section from Book 3 – which, intriguingly, is found in the chapter about encounters – elaborates on this a bit. 

Persons with social standing of 11 or greater are considered to be nobility, even in situations where nobility do not take an active part in local government. Nobility have hereditary titles and high standing in their home communities.  

The emphasis on "home communities" is interesting, as is the mention of "local government." This is, I think, evidence that, in 1977 Traveller at least, there's little to no notion of an immense, sector-spanning government like the Third Imperium. Instead, there are just scattered worlds or perhaps small multi-world groupings. The ranks of nobility are, as follows:

• 11 knight/dame
• 12 baron/baroness
• 13 marquis/marchioness
• 14 count/countess
• 15 duke/duchess

The list is an idiosyncratic one in that it ranks a count higher than a marquis, something not found in either the English or French systems of precedence with which I am familiar. Likewise, the pairing of the French marquis with the English marchioness is odd, but it's the future, so who cares? The text continues:

At the discretion of the referee, noble persons (especially of social standing 13 or higher) may have ancestral lands or fiefs, or they may have actual ruling power. 

This section is noteworthy, because a common knock against Traveller in my youth was that there was little to no explicit benefit to having a high SOC (and the title that went with it) after character generation. This was even true after the release of Citizens of the Imperium, which introduced an entire Noble career. In any case, what's obvious is that Traveller as written assumes a universe in which monarchy and aristocracy are still commonplace and effective – an egalitarian Star Trek future this is not!

Ranking above duke/duchess are two levels not reflected in social standing: prince/princess or king/queen are titles used by actual rulers of worlds. The title emperor/empress is used by the ruler of an empire of several worlds.

 Note "several worlds," not the thousands of the Third Imperium and other interstellar states of the later official GDW setting. Note, too, that the text states that a prince or king is an "actual ruler" of a world, again implying that space is full of governing monarchies of one sort or another.

The only other place where Social Standing plays an important role in Traveller is in resolving a character's prior service. Characters with SOC 9+ have an improved chance of gaining a commission in the Navy, while those with SOC 8+ have an improved chance of gaining a promotion in the Marines. This makes sense if the default assumption is that many, if not most, worlds have a hereditary aristocracy, since careers in the Navy and its subordinate service, the Marines, have been historically viewed as prestigious in similar historical societies on Earth. Likewise, Navy and Marines – along with the Army – can acquire improved SOC as part of mustering out, reflective no doubt of the esteem in which such services are held in such aristocratic societies.

What I find most noteworthy about social standing and the rules governing it in Traveller is how little there is of it. Consider that SOC is one of only six characteristics possessed by all characters, suggesting that Marc Miller considered it as foundational to a character as Strength or Intelligence. Despite this, there's not much present in the text of 1977 Traveller (or, for that matter, 1981) to guide the player or referee in understanding how it's meant to be used or what it means for the implied universe of the game. Instead, we get only hints here and there. The later Third Imperium setting is more explicit, in that there's an emperor and archdukes and so forth, but, even then, how this works for titled player characters is left somewhat vague.

For me, though, SOC is a distinctive element of Traveller, something we don't see in any contemporary RPG, science fiction or otherwise. It's a big part of why I don't consider the base game truly "generic" without modification. Putting social standing (and the possibility of hereditary titles) on par with other characteristics has strong implications for the kinds of settings for which it was designed. I'll return to this thought in my upcoming post about jump drive, since there are a number of connections between these topics, as I'll explain.

Retrospective: BeltStrike

Traveller was released in 1977 in a digest-sized box, mimicking the format of OD&D, published just three years earlier. During its first few years of existence, Game Designers' Workshop released several other similarly sized boxed sets to support the game, starting with Mayday in 1978. For a lot of people, myself included, Traveller is strongly associated with digest-sized books, so much so that many of the 'zines and licensed third party support released for the game were similarly sized. (Judges Guild's books were the primary exception to this.)

Beginning with The Traveller Book in 1982, GDW began a shift away from digest-sized books and toward more traditional 8½" × 11" books for the game. I'm not entirely sure why the company chose to do this, but, whatever the reason, there were soon no more digest-sized books to be had. The Traveller Adventure, the various alien modules, and even the Starter and Deluxe editions of the game were all published as standard-sized books – a size every subsequent version of Traveller has used up to the present day.

Around the same time, GDW released new versions of Mayday and Snapshot that made use of the larger size. These were the versions I owned, though I've long since lost and replaced them with the earlier digest-sized versions, because I'm silly that way. These games paved the way for additional boxed sets for use with Traveller, like Tarsus, which appeared in 1983. Then, in 1984, BeltStrike appeared in the same format – two 12-page, staple-bound booklets, four 4-page adventure folders, a fold-out map of Koenig's Rock, and some perforated cards containing the write-ups for a dozen pregenerated characters. Like most Traveller products, there's not much in the way of art beyond David Dietrick's box art.

Like Tarsus before it, BeltStrike devotes itself to the description of a single star system in the Spinward Marches, in this case the Bowman Belt, a planetoid belt located in the same subsector as Tarsus, District 268. As its name suggests, District 268 has not yet been fully incorporated into the Third Imperium, but is instead a colonial territory being developed in preparation for eventual inclusion within the empire. This gives its worlds, including the Bowman Belt, a distinctly "frontier" feel to them – which is saying something, as the Spinward Marches sector itself is something of a backwater sector located on the fringes of the Imperium. 

The first 12-page booklet is the Bowman System Reference Book. It lays out the basic facts of the Bowman system, as well as its major points of interest. There's also a map of both the entire system and of Bowman Prime (a gas giant) and its satellites, so referees and players alike have a good idea of where all the major astronomical bodies are located in relation to one another. Information about Bowman's history and place within the Marches takes up much of the booklet's page count, followed closely by library data and a key to Koenig's Rock, a planetoid settlement with a reputation for lawlessness and vice.

The second 12-page booklet is the Belter's Handbook. As its title suggests, it focuses on creating and playing belter (asteroid miner) characters. There's not only a full career for such characters (which had previously appeared in Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium), but also many practical details on asteroid mining, like the ins and outs of prospecting, claims and profits, encounters, and the effects of zero and low gravity. None of these details are exhaustive – the booklet is short, after all – but they're solid enough to provide the referee with sufficient guidance that he could pretty easily make use of them in his campaign. 

Finally, there are the four adventure folders – really just two double-sided pages – each of which presents a different situation that might involve the player characters within the Bowman system. The first one, "Lodes of Adventures," is really just an introduction to the system and its sights. The second, "On the Rock," takes place on Koenig's Rock and its shady inhabitants. Adventure three, "Claimjumpers," deals with fending off rival belters. Finally, there's "Archeology," which allows the characters to find a high-tech base of an alien civilization that's been lost in the belt for centuries. Like everything else in BeltStrike, the adventures are more sketches than fully fleshed out scenarios. While this is fairly typical for Traveller, this might prove frustrating for inexperienced referees.

In my youth, I wasn't a big fan of BeltStrike for precisely this reason. I felt there was too little information to fully exploit its potential. After all, asteroid belts are inherently interesting locales in a sci-fi setting and I simply didn't think the Bowman Belt was interesting as I had hoped it would be. Now, I look on it a little more charitably. I made good use of it during my Riphaeus Sector campaign by repurposing bits and pieces of it in my own non-Third Imperium setting. Both Koenig's Rock and the ancient alien base made great additions to the continuing adventures of the characters as they made their way across the sector. It's far from the best thing GDW ever released for Traveller, but I'm still fond of it (and it inspired me when I took my own stab at presenting an asteroid system for gaming).

Traveller and I

Since I'll be devoting more posts to classic Traveller over the next little while, I thought it might be useful to talk a bit about my own history with the game, if only to help readers understand where I'm coming from. Very little of what follows is probably new – I'm pretty sure I've touched on this before – but I'm not certain I've ever collected it all in one place. Even if I have, a refresher for the benefit of those who don't want to trawl through the 4000+ posts in the blog's archive is probably valuable.

Since I was a small child, I've always been more of a science fiction than a fantasy guy. Some of that no doubt is a consequence of my growing up in the 1970s, when the Apollo Program still loomed large and the promise of manned spaceflight and the eventual colonization of the solar system were not yet dreams too big to imagine being fulfilled in my lifetime. And, of course, there was Star Trek, whose Original Series was during this time well on its way to becoming a worldwide pop cultural phenomenon, thanks to the success of its syndication. Under the tutelage of my aunt, who was a teenager when Star Trek first aired in the late '60s, I became a huge fan of Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, Dr McCoy, and the crew of the starship Enterprise and, because of that, a huge fan of sci-fi in general.

During the '70s, I watched every science fiction movie or TV show I could, no matter how bad – and many of them were very bad indeed. I also read as much SF literature as I could, aided by the spinner racks at my local public library, some of which featured the works of authors like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, among many more. In combination, these fed my sense of what science fiction was and could be, so much so that, even today, nearly a half-century later, they continue to shape my imagination on an almost instinctual level. I suppose it's little wonder, then, my conception of sci-fi is general somewhat "old fashioned," born out of works created in the '50s, '60s, and '70s rather than more contemporary visions of the future.

I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons in late 1979, a discovery that would change my life forever. From that point on, roleplaying, in one form or another, would become my primary pastime and creative outlet. Initially, my focus was, naturally, on fantasy roleplaying games, but it didn't take long before I'd learn of the existence of Gamma World, a post-apocalyptic RPG that included a fair number of science fictional trappings, like laser weapons and robots. Unsurprisingly, I was a very enthusiastic Gamma World fan, which whetted my appetite for the possibility of a "real" sci-fi RPG, something that I wouldn't have the chance to play for a few more years yet. In the meantime, I'd have to content myself with brief forays into the genre, like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. 

Unlike my discovery of D&D, which I can recall vividly, my discovery of Traveller is a bit hazier. I tend to associate it with 1982's The Traveller Book, because that's the first Traveller product I ever owned. However, I'm almost certain I started playing the game before I owned a copy of the rules, probably with a childhood friend's older brother, from whom I learned a lot in the first few years after I started roleplaying. Likewise, I had already been playing Traveller for some time before the release of FASA's Star Trek RPG, which also came out in '82. So, if I had to guess, I probably began playing Traveller in 1981 or very early 1982, but, as I said, my memories are hazy and I can't swear that.

Regardless, Traveller quickly rose in my affections, easily displacing D&D, even if I still played it far less than Dungeons & Dragons. That's more a function of the interests of my friends than of any lack of devotion on my part. They, like most roleplayers I've known over the decades, preferred fantasy to science fiction, so, if I wanted to game, that meant playing a fantasy RPG rather than a sci-fi one. That was fine – I didn't (and don't) dislike fantasy – though, if given the chance, I'll always choose science fiction. Whenever I could, I ran Traveller or Star Frontiers or Star Trek instead of D&D, though those opportunities weren't as great as I would have liked.

Even so, I was quite thoroughly devoted to Traveller, dutifully picking up as many supplements and adventures for it as I could find. I read them all voraciously and committed the details of the evolving Third Imperium to my memory to the point where I now consider it my favorite fictional setting, beating out even Tékumel, in which I've been refereeing a campaign for just shy of a decade now. When I went away to college, I had slightly better luck with enticing people to play Traveller, which made me happy, as did my discovery of Traveller's fan scene through The Travellers' Digest and, later, the History of the Imperium Working Group (HIWG), a fan organization dedicated to fleshing out aspects of MegaTraveller's Rebellion. 

My encounter with Traveller's fan scene was truly transformative for me. Because of it, I attended Origins for the first (and so far only) time, meeting Marc Miller and some of the folks at Digest Group Publications. I also connected with many Traveller fans across the world, some of whom are now among my oldest and dearest friends. Further, my work in HIWG paved the way for my involvement with Traveller in a professional capacity, penning articles in Challenge that would eventually bring me to the attention of GDW, who asked me to write one of the introductory adventures for Traveller: The New Era (and later GURPS: Traveller).

Despite – or perhaps because of – my intense affection for Traveller as both a player/referee and as a writer, I've fallen in and out of love with it several times over the years, but I always come back to it. I regularly joke that, while D&D is my first love, Traveller is my true love. The reason for this is twofold. First, Traveller was my first "real" science fiction RPG. Second, Traveller's inspirations closely matched many of my own; the game seemed almost perfectly tailored to a kid who'd read the books I had. Taken together, Traveller has imprinted itself on me in ways I can probably never fully shake, nor would I want to, if I'm being honest.

That said, I have tried. I wrote Thousand Suns as an homage to everything I loved about Traveller, while trying to improve upon it where I could. I'll leave it to others to judge whether I succeeded, but I still consider Thousand Suns one of the few things I've created about which my feelings are largely unconflicted. My only real regret is that, as Grognardia grew, I devoted less energy to developing Thousand Suns than I had originally planned. I may have to change that, if time permits, because it's a good game that I think still has unrealized potential. If only I weren't so easily distracted ...

And there you have it: my history with Traveller, albeit in abbreviated form. I hope this will provide some additional context to my upcoming posts about the game and its history. I feel that it's an overlooked and underappreciated roleplaying game, one deserving of much greater attention and appreciation than it typically receives. I hope, as I write more about it, more readers will agree.

In Case of Fire, Break Glass

Nearly everyone who's read the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide remembers Will McLean's delightful comics that poked gentle fun at many of the conventions of fantasy roleplaying. Traveller had a few examples of its own, my favorite being this one which appeared in The Traveller Book by Loren Wiseman and John M. Morrison. 

Modifications to Traveller (Part II)

Wiseman continues: 

The most common change will probably be in the available weapons. Any additions to the weapons should be especially well thought out and rationally based. Science fiction literature contains many more weapons than could be described in the basic rules. Many of these have only the flimsiest of scientific justifications, if they are justified at all. In television and movies, weapons are often created for the visual effect they have and are not usually very well thought.

A couple of points. First, we again see a reference to "science fiction literature" as the first source of inspiration for Traveller, which shouldn't be surprising. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of E.C. Tubb and H. Beam Piper – the two most influential authors on Traveller – can easily see where the game came from. That said, sci-fi TV and movies are mentioned, albeit unflatteringly. Second, it's very clear that Wiseman at least considered Traveller to be an attempt at a "serious" game grounded in real world science. He doesn't see it as a game of swashbuckling space opera. I'm OK with that, though I know plenty of people aren't.

In addition, all ramifications of the weapon must be considered. For example, any major change in lethality of hand-carried weapons is likely to have profound effects on military tactics, at least eventually (the military is sometimes a little slow to catch on).

This is a fair point. For the most part, Traveller's weapons – at least those readily available to player characters – are all on a fairly similar plane in terms of lethality. There are differences, obviously, but, aside from some of the stuff introduced in Mercenary, they're all of a piece. 

A few question to ask might be: is this weapon really required by my universe? What is the principle of its operation? (If the weapon is taken from literature, the principle of operation may be described or well-established.) Is the principle of operation a reasonable one? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this particular weapon, and why would it be used in place of more conventional weapon systems?

All reasonable questions, so I don't have much to add. I will note, however, that a common complaint about Traveller is that it includes too many "archaic" weapons among its firearms, like shotguns and submachine guns. This has never much bothered me, perhaps because of a comment in Book 1 of Traveller that seemingly addresses this point: "the surest way to injure or kill an adversary will be to subject him to a large dose of kinetic energy, and a simple way, easy way to administer that energy is by bullet impact."

Adaptations to the jump and maneuver drive systems and to our concept of jump space should be made only with care and consideration. The effects of modifications to these areas are wide-ranging and touch almost every rule in one form or another. In designing our interstellar drive system, we tried to come up with one which fitted in with the other aspects of our proposed mythos and which was reasonably close to the literature we drew it from. It was assumed, however, that some referees would not be satisfied, whatever system we devised. It was further assumed that any referee who felt strongly enough about the matter would change what displeased him.

This section might be one of the more controversial ones, because I know that many people both dislike Traveller's jump drive and believe that the game is perfectly playable without it. Wiseman acknowledges this above. For myself, I'm a big fan of the way jump drive works, because, when coupled with the lack of any form of FTL communications, it creates a setting that's somewhat akin to the Age of Sail, at least as far as the dissemination of information. That opens up a lot of possibilities for adventures both large and small. 

We do not recommend major revisions of the trade and commerce section without considerable thought. Minor deviations from the trade and speculation table, or reclassification of certain world types are acceptable; indeed, in most cases, some deviation from the letter of these rules is desirable, but the spirit (i.e. the general system) should be preserved.

As to how integral the speculative trade system is to Traveller, I'm not sure. I'll only say that I very much love the system, not because it's a good simulator of interstellar commerce – it's not – but because it provides a terrific campaign framework and a reason for characters to travel from world to world. I'll talk more about this in a future post.

Referees are cautioned against making psionic powers too common. Players will often urge that psionics become more widespread, but this is often only because they want to have every possible advantage without drawbacks. Powerful psionic abilities would soon dominate all aspects of play and most of the excitement of Traveller (the advanced technologies) will lapse into disuse, or at least be relegated to a secondary role. 

I can't really disagree with this section, but I've also never been a huge booster of psionics in Traveller (aside from when I've used the Zhodani), so my opinion is perspective is perhaps skewed.

The cautions which apply to major revisions apply to a lesser extent to expansions of existing rules. Many referees find certain rules do not go into enough detail to suit them. Examine the manner in which Book 4, Mercenary, expands upon the army and marines, or Book 5, High Guard, expands upon the navy for general guidelines on technique. You need not (and probably should not) duplicate the systems in these two books exactly, but they will prove a source of inspiration for your own efforts.

Even as someone with a decidedly mixed opinion about Traveller Books after 3, I agree with Wiseman here. Most of the later books do provide good models for those who wish to add more detail to their adventures and campaigns, even if I've rarely felt the need to do so myself. I prefer a simpler, less baroque version of Traveller, but I understand not everyone feels this way, especially in a game that's much more laser focused on a particular style of play.

Wiseman offers up a lot of food for thought in this section of Book 0. In future posts, I'll be returning to a few of them. Stay tuned.

Modifications to Traveller (Part I)

Deluxe Traveller, a boxed version of the game released by GDW in 1981, included Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller written primarily by Loren Wiseman. Book 0 was intended to be "a guide to the world of Traveller, written especially with the beginner in mind." It's written in a straightforward, conversational way, eschewing the dry, technical manual style that's common in RPG rulebooks, in order to reach an audience who might have no experience with this kind of game. Consequently, it provides some insight into how GDW saw Traveller as a game and what they felt important to convey to newcomers to it.

There's a section in Book 0 titled "Modifications" that focuses, more or less, on house rules. Though it's not quite two pages long, it nevertheless contains material worth pondering. The section begins:

In the process of playing scenarios, or while preparing to adapt a specific science fiction literary mythos to Traveller, many referees will wish to change the rules to a greater or lesser degree, either to expand some aspect which is not adequately covered in Traveller, or to modify some section which does not fit in with the referee's universe.

There's a couple of things here worthy of note. To start, there's the reference to "a specific science fiction literary mythos." I've been saying for years that Traveller is almost entirely inspired by SF books, particularly those written between 1945 and 1975, and that televisual and cinematic sci-fi had minimal impact on its design. It's always good to see further confirmation of this fact. That said, Wiseman couches the idea of modifying the rules first in the context of adapting the game to prior art and then in the context of a homebrew universe. 

Referees should feel free to modify any rule to whatever extent they see fit, providing they bear in mind that:

— The rules are interlinked to a great extent. If you change one section, you must also be willing to change all other sections, which are then rendered inconsistent. Naturally, radical departures from the rules will have greater and more far-reaching effects than minor changes. Referees who modify the rules without regard to the repercussions are doing themselves and their players a grave disservice.

Traveller's rules are very elegant in my opinion. Marc Miller put much more thought into their design than did Arneson and Gygax when creating Dungeons & Dragons. Consequently, Traveller is not as easily modified or house ruled. It's not impossible by any means, but, as Wiseman notes here, doing so without reflection can have ripple effects.

— The balance of play should not be destroyed. A common change many newer players make (particularly those with backgrounds in fantasy role-playing) is to increase the occurrence of psionic talents, and permit training on a much higher level than the basic rules. This may seem like fun at first, but when any character can kill with a single burst of mental energy, where is the challenge? Psionic talents are best used sparingly.

Wiseman's reference to "newer players" and "those with backgrounds in fantasy role-playing" are intriguing. I wonder if GDW was seeing an expansion in Traveller's player base by 1981. If so, that would certainly explain some of the reason behind the publication of Book 0.

— All of the changes should be rational, logical, and scientifically sound (after all, Traveller is a science fiction role-playing game). A typical example is a suggestion we receive about three times a year for some form of anti-matter small arm (usually a pistol or rifle, but once a hand grenade). These suggestions always seriously underestimate the amount of energy necessary to maintain a magnetic bottle around the anti-matter for any length of time, and almost always have a maximum range of considerably less than the burst radius of the projectile. 

I love hearing little anecdotes like this one! When I spent time with Loren Wiseman at GenCon back in 2001, he shared many stories about dealing with fans of Traveller over the years. They weren't all like this one, but many were. 

— The speed of communication should never be allowed to exceed the speed of travel. This is a basic tenet of Traveller, and its violation will irrevocably alter the balance of the rules.

This one surprised me, not because I disagree with it – quite the opposite – but because, up until now, Wiseman had implied that any aspect of the game could be changed, provided the referee is willing to deal with the consequences. Here, though, he is emphatic: the speed of communication should never be allowed to exceed the speed of travel. This is a topic to which I'll return at greater length in a future post (or, more likely, posts), but I'm glad it was mentioned here.

— Do not expect other Traveller materials to match your universe if you engage in large-scale modifications.

This is, of course, the eternal danger of house rules. On the other hand, referees who make extensive use of house rules generally aren't using many official supplements and rules expansions, at least in my experience, so it's not a huge problem. 

(To be continued ...)

D&D and Traveller

I think we tend to underestimate just how old Traveller is.  

Consider that original Dungeons & Dragons, the very first roleplaying game ever published, was released sometime in late January 1974. Traveller first appeared less than three and a half years later, in late May 1977 (before the wide release of Star Wars, which is a very important fact to bear in mind).  Less than a dozen other RPGs were published between these two dates and, of those that were, almost none of them are still published today. That alone sets Traveller apart from its contemporaries. 

I mention this because, as I was thumbing through my 1977 Traveller boxed set, I was struck by just how similar in format and content the game is to the 1974 OD&D boxed set. This is not an original thought and indeed it's one that I've had before. I nevertheless think it's worthy of further examination. We are, after all, closing out D&D's semicentennial year and, while I'm reducing the attention I'll devote to that game for the foreseeable future, there really is no escaping its gravitational pull. Like it or not, discussions of almost any roleplaying game will inevitably lead back to Dungeons & Dragons. 

In the case of Traveller, the most immediately obvious connection to D&D is its format. Like OD&D, Traveller was initially released in a boxed set containing three digest-sized booklets. Each of these booklets focuses on a different aspect of the overall game rules. OD&D's first volume is entitled "Men & Magic" and provides the rules for character generation, combat, and spells. Traveller's first volume is called "Characters and Combat" and covers very similar ground. The second volume of OD&D is "Monsters & Treasure," while that of Traveller is "Starships." The difference between these two volumes is stark, since there's not much commonality of subject matter here and not merely because OD&D has no need of rules for space travel. However, the obvious connections between the two games return with the third volume of each. OD&D has "Underworld & Wilderness Adventures" and Traveller has "Worlds and Adventures." 

As I said, there's nothing novel about these observations. They've been made for years on OSR blogs and forums and were probably noted at the dawn of the hobby, too. I would not be at all surprised if Marc Miller and/or other notables at Games Designers' Workshop made them as well. When I attended Gamehole Con in October, one of the many amusing stories Marc Miller told about the early days of GDW concerned the release of Dungeons & Dragons. He said that the company's staff was so taken with the game that they soon spent all their time playing it. So enamored were they with this weird new game that Frank Chadwick, GDW's president at the time, established a rule: "No playing D&D during office hours."

It's a very funny story in its own right, as well as a reminder – as if we needed one – that the appearance of Dungeons & Dragons on the wargaming scene in 1974 forever changed the face of that hobby and, in the process, created an entirely new one. Though primarily a historical wargames publisher, GDW was no stranger to science fiction. Prior to the release of Traveller, the company had already published two science fiction games: Triplanetary in 1973 and Imperium in 1977. The latter game initially had no connection to Traveller, which, upon its release, included no setting whatsoever. It was only later that the background of Imperium. with its series of Interstellar Wars between the Vilani and the Terrans, was folded into the much more successful Traveller. 

OD&D was thus a significant inspiration for Marc Miller in creating Traveller, since it showed him not just what was possible with a roleplaying game but also the form such a game might take. Admittedly, this is likely true of nearly every RPG published in the last half-century, but, in the case of Traveller, it's especially so, since, by his own admission, he and the other designers at GDW were playing a lot of D&D in those days. Miller even contributed some D&D comics to The Strategic Review, which testifies to his early devotion to the game. When I spoke to him in October, he repeatedly emphasized the debt we all owe Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson for having created a form of entertainment unlike any that came before. Miller even included Gygax in his deck of cards as a "king" of GDW, since the company published his Dangerous Journeys game in the '90s.

The connections between D&D and Traveller were not apparent to me in my youth, in large part because I didn't come across a copy of OD&D '74 until I was in high school, by which point Traveller was already well on its way toward becoming MegaTraveller – a much more mechanically complex game published, like AD&D, in a conventional 8½ × 11" format. Now that I am aware of the myriad connections, they're impossible to un-see. To be honest, I'm glad of that. As I have no doubt written here dozens of times, Dungeons & Dragons was my first love, but Traveller is my true love. They're both very special to me and, while there's no question which one is my favorite, I would prefer not to have to choose between them. For the moment, though, Traveller has my attention. I very much look forward to sharing my thoughts and memories of this great roleplaying game.

Three Dimensions

I mentioned in yesterday's post about my favorite science fiction roleplaying game map that Traveller's star maps are two-dimensional and that that's long been an issue for some fans of the game (though it mostly doesn't bother me). In the comments to that post, several readers mentioned the three-dimensional star maps included in GDW's 2300AD (né Traveller: 2300) and SPI's Universe. Here's the Near Star Map from the former, which covers a volume of space within 50 light years of our solar system:

Even at this small size, you can see there are a lot of stars included on this map. As it turns out, there are, in reality, even more stars within 50 light years of Sol, but GDW didn't have the benefit of our current astronomical knowledge. They worked from the then-quite good Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars from the '70s, which has since been updated many times (and perhaps even superseded). Still, I loved this map, which included XYZ coordinates for hundreds of stars, which provided lots of scope for exploration and adventure in the 24th century.

Much as I loved that map, though, my absolute favorite 3D star map came from SPI's Universe:

This map included far fewer star systems and covered only a volume of about 30 light years from Earth. However, I probably spent far more time poring over this map than 2300AD's. The reason for this is quite simple: I encountered the Universe map first, making it perhaps the first three-dimensional star map I'd ever seen. Unlike 2300AD, I never actually played Universe, but I read the one-volume, softcover edition of the game released by Bantam Books cover to cover multiple times. The pull-out star map left a lasting impression on my thirteen-year-old self.

I love the idea of using a properly three-dimensional star map in a science fiction roleplaying game. Nowadays, the availability of much better astronomical data and personal computers with useful software, employing 3D maps is probably easier than it's ever been. Despite that, I've never refereed or played in a long-running SF RPG campaign that made use of them. I don't know why that is or if it's likely to change anytime soon. I have very vague ideas of following up my ongoing Twilight: 2000 campaign with a 2300AD one, but that's still some years in the future, if ever.

Has anyone reading this made a good use of three-dimensional star maps in their roleplaying games?

Ode to a Classic

One of the things I miss about the early days of the Old School Renaissance is how many blogs there were and how interconnected they all were. There was a lot of discussion back and forth between this blog and that one. Someone would make an interesting – or controversial – post and the next thing you knew, there were lots more posts commenting on it. This created a really dynamic ecosystem of personalities and ideas that gave those early days a distinct vibe that I just don't feel anymore, but I'm old, so that might just be me.

Sadly, I don't read as many other blogs as I used to do in those heady days. Consequently, I often miss really excellent posts, like this one, which was pointed out to me by Geoffrey McKinney, a longtime reader of this blog, as well as an accomplished old school game writer. The post, over at the A Knight at the Opera blog, talks at length about "the best RPG cover of all time," namely that of the 1977 Traveller boxed set. It's an excellent post with which I completely agree and I'm grateful to Geoffrey for pointing out to me. 

Since I've been talking a lot about Traveller here lately, I thought it'd be worth sharing more widely. Head on over to A Knight at the Opera and give it a read. Be sure to leave a comment, too, if you like it. I'm sure the author would appreciate knowing that something he's written is being enjoyed. I know I always do.

The Best Map Ever (Take 2)

Long ago, at the dawn of this blog, I declared Darlene's exquisite map of The World of Greyhawk to be "the best map ever." To be fair, in the linked post, I qualified my hyperbole somewhat, saying that no "map for a fantasy RPG setting has ever captivated me the way" this one had – and I stand by that. Darlene's map of the Flanaess is one of the greatest maps ever made for use with a fantasy roleplaying game. It's beautiful simply as a work of art, eminently usable, and, for me at least, almost as iconic as Dave Trampier's AD&D Players Handbook cover.

However, there is another map of which I am equally fond. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's this one:

I apologize for its small size. The original is quite large and the width of a blog post is inadequate to show its true glory. The map depicts the portion of Charted Space in which the Third Imperium and its interstellar neighbors exist, along with a couple of important astrographic features, like the Great and Lesser Rifts. Each of the rectangles represents a single sector, an area of space equal to 32 × 40 parsecs. Some of the sectors are named, like the Solomani Rim, the Beyond, and the Spinward Marches, but many of them are not. 

The map was, I believe, originally produced by GDW as a freebie to give away at conventions and to mail order recipients. I received mine in a large envelope after I'd written to the company to request their latest catalog. I was ecstatic to get it, because I'd previously seen a black and white reproduction of the map in a British book about RPGs whose title escapes me now (a No Prize to anyone who can tell me which one it was in the comments). I liked the map so much that I hung it on my bedroom wall, belong the Darlene Greyhawk map and there it stayed for years, even after I'd gone away to college. Unfortunately, the map was lost when I removed it from the wall some years later. 

Unlike the Greyhawk map, this one is simple in its presentation and lacking in detail. Nevertheless, I'd still say it's quite beautiful. There's an elegance to it that I have always found incredibly appealing, an elegance that's very much of a piece with the elegance of Traveller itself. It uses only three colors – black, white, and red – just like the original Traveller boxed set, which I think contributes to rather than detracts from its attractiveness. In science fiction, minimalism is often a very solid esthetic choice and it's one that classic Traveller embraced from the very beginning (more on that particular topic in a future post).

The map's not without a couple of problems, the first of which being that it's a flat, two-dimensional depiction of three-dimensional space. That's an issue Traveller has always had and there's no easy way around it, though some fans have tried over the years. I've never been much bothered by it myself, since properly 3D star maps tend to be very complex and difficult to use in play. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that most sectors of Charted Space are claimed by one or more large interstellar empires, which makes it feel fairly cramped rather than wide open. For many types of sci-fi campaigns, this is fine. If you're looking for one in which exploration is a central activity, it's less ideal, though there are some ways to fix this.

Even so, this remains one of my favorite RPG maps and one to which I regularly return for inspiration.

Solitaire

On page 2 of Book 1: Characters and Combat of the original 1977 edition of Traveller, there's a section entitled "Playing the Game." This section discusses the "three basic configurations" in which the game may be played. Two of them are obvious and should be familiar to most people who play RPGs today – the scenario and the campaign. The first of these is a simple "one-time affair" that "ends when the evening of play is over or the goal is achieved." The second is a series of "continuing, linked adventures in a consistent universe." While the scenario "is like a science fiction novel, the campaign is like a continuing S-F series." As I said, there's nothing here that wouldn't be familiar to most contemporary gamers.

The third "configuration" of Traveller is solitaire and is described in this way:

One player undertakes some journey or adventure alone. He handles the effects of the rules himself. Solitaire is ideal for the player who is alone due to situation or geography.

I started playing Traveller in 1983, around the time that The Traveller Book was released – more than four decades ago now. In all the years I've played the game, I've never known anyone to play the game solitaire as described here. In fact, until the last few years, I don't think I recalled that solitaire was even mentioned as a possible way to play the game. That's not to say that Traveller isn't suitable for some degree of solitaire "play." The Traveller Book, in its section on "Basic Traveller Activities," notes that "many of the subordinate game systems lend themselves to solitaire ... play." This is absolutely true in my experience. 

Traveller's character generation system is, in my opinion, one of the best ever devised, beautifully blending randomness with choice while also evoking the thrill of gambling. The system is so good that it's probably worthy of several posts about it, but, for now, what's important is that generating characters in Traveller is fun. You never quite know what you're going to wind up with, thanks to the unpredictability of the dice rolls. But no matter how things unfold, you (generally) wind up with a character who has a rough history of what he was doing between the age of 18 and when he enters the campaign after some period of time in service to one or another interstellar career, usually military.

Indeed, character generation is so fun that, to this day, I sometimes still generate a character or two as a way to pass the time. I used to have a nice little computer program that helped with this. It was called "TravGen" or something similar, but I lost it when I got a new computer and have never been able to find a functional version of it on the Internet since. Even without the program to speed things up, generating characters for Traveller is enjoyable as an activity in its own right – the kind of solitaire play I associate with the game.

Another form of solitaire play in which I still regularly engage is generating subsectors. This is a bit more involved than generating characters, but it's still a lot of fun. The last time I did this in earnest, I wound up creating an entire sector and starting up a non-Third Imperium Traveller campaign that I refereed for three years. That's the "danger" of generating subsectors: after a while, ideas about the various worlds you create, their inhabitants, and their relationships to one another start to percolate and the next thing you know, you're imagining an entire setting for a campaign. None of this is bad, of course – far from it! – but it is dangerous, in the sense that it can very easily feed gamer attention deficit disorder, something to which I was once very prone.

A third potential source of solitaire play within Traveller is trade and commerce. Choose a starship, pick a starting world in a subsector (whether published or one of your own creation), get some cargo and/or passengers, and then set off to try and turn a profit as you direct your ship from world to world. This is a great way to learn the speculative trade system in Traveller, as well as to better understand the economic ties that connect the worlds of one region of space. I have a vague recollection that GDW itself released a computer program in the 1980s that handled trade and commerce, but perhaps my aged brain imagined it. Regardless, trade is another fun way to play Traveller by oneself.

Compared to OD&D, which was released just three years prior, Traveller is a design of considerable elegance. All of its rules systems work well with one another and support and encourage its intended gameplay styles. Many of these systems, like the three I mentioned above, are enjoyable in themselves as separate "min-games" that can be "played" between sessions and that generate additional content for use in an ongoing campaign. It's absolutely brilliant design work and a big reason why I keep coming back to Traveller.

Retrospective: Leviathan

When I first shifted the focus of my Retrospective posts toward classic Traveller, I hadn't consciously decided to look at those adventures included in my Top 10 Classic Traveller Adventures about which I'd not previously written separate posts, but, after last week's post on Duneraiders, I realized that's exactly what I'd been doing. Rather than fight it, I've decided to lean into it, which is why I'm turning my gaze to Adventure 4: Leviathan, which I placed at the lofty rank of number 2 out of 10.

Leviathan is a very unusual adventure for a number of reasons. First published in 1980, it was written by Bob McWilliams a name many of you might recognize from the pages of White Dwarf, where McWilliams had a regular column called "Starbase" devoted to Traveller. "Starbase" was a favorite – or should I say favourite? – feature of mine and one of the primary reasons I read White Dwarf in my youth. Unlike Dragon, where Traveller (and science fiction more generally) was mostly an afterthought until the advent of the Ares Section in April 1984, White Dwarf gave pride of place to Traveller, making it very appealing to a young sci-fi nerd like myself. 

In many ways, Leviathan is as much a product of Games Workshop as it is of Game Designers' Workshop (GDW). In addition to McWilliams, the adventure credits Albie Fiore (another WD stalwart), Ian Livingstone (nuff said), and Andy Slack (ditto) as having edited it. Furthermore, the book includes illustrations by Fiore and the incomparable Russ Nicholson. Strengthening the overall Britishness of Leviathan is its use of UK spellings throughout the text, which is perhaps unintentionally appropriate, given the game's use of the double-l orthography for Traveller (whose origin, Marc Miller told me at Gamehole Con, lies with E.C. Tubb's Dumarest of Terra series). 

Traveller's default playstyle could probably be described as a "hexcrawl in space," quite literally, given what the game's interstellar star charts look like. Leviathan takes this a step further, with the characters hired by the large multi-system trading cartel, Baraccai Technum, to participate in the exploration of a region of space known as the Outrim Void. The Void lies to rimward of the Spinward Marches sector and gets its name not from its emptiness but from its relative lack of civilization, at least compared to the Imperium. The terms of the characters' contract require them to sign on as crew for the exploratory merchant ship Leviathan on a voyage of about six months.

This is a very interesting and unusual set-up for a Traveller adventure, one that's been relatively rarely used in the game's history. One would think, given the history of popular science fiction, that interstellar exploration of an unknown area of space would be a fairly common subject for scenarios. That's generally not been the case with Traveller, at least not within the official Third Imperium setting. A big reason for that, as that setting evolved over the years, it's been extensively – even exhaustively – mapped, with literally thousands of worlds placed, named, provided with stats, and often more. That's been a blessing and a curse for referees over the decades and remains so today. 

But, at the time Leviathan was written, that wasn't the case. The Third Imperium was then a very loose framework individual referees could shape to their own preferences and needs and the presentation of the Outrim Void demonstrates this. The worlds of the region are only briefly described and precisely what the characters will find as they explore them is largely left to the referee to fill in. Much like the Imperium itself, the Void is a loose framework for adventure, making it usable for all manner of encounters and scenarios. That's a big part of its appeal: it's a great tool for referees who want to do their own thing without having to invent an entire universe from whole cloth. 

Interestingly, Leviathan spends almost half of its 44 pages to information on the titular 1800-ton Leviathan-class merchant cruiser. We get not only keyed deckplans, but also game stats for the ship and its entire 56-man crew (not counting the player characters). Equally useful are 26 rumo(u)rs about the Outrim Void to entice the characters, as they explore. The five pages of library data serve a similar purpose. This is not an "adventure module" in the sense players of Dungeons & Dragons or other RPGs would recognize. Instead, it's a collection of aids to the referee to aid him in building a wide variety of situations that might arise as the characters travel from world to world throughout the Outtim Void. 

Leviathan is thus a reminder of an earlier period of the hobby, before gamers expected companies, in the words of OD&D's afterward, to do the imagining for them. Like The World of Greyhawk, Adventure 4 provides referees with an outline to which they are expected to add whatever details they needed or desired. And those details could vary widely from referee to referee and campaign to campaign rather than being bound up in a rigid canon, a concept that was, if not completely unknown, at least highly unusual in those days. By today's standards, then, Leviathan is something of a throwback and why I rate it so highly. 

Starting with Classic Traveller

Toward the end of last month, I mentioned that Mongoose Publishing, the new owners of Traveller, had released a few 72-page Starter Pack for the game in PDF form. It's a good introduction to the current version of Traveller, giving newcomers a taste of both the rules and the kinds of adventure scenarios with which they can be used. 

However, not everyone's interested in Mongoose's edition of Traveller. Many people would prefer their introduction to the venerable science fiction roleplaying game be through the "classic" version published by Games Designers' Workshop between 1977 and 1986. In fact, since I got back from Gamehole Con, I've received several emails from people asking me my opinion about the best introduction to Traveller, specifically which edition of the rules and what supplements and adventures I'd recommend. Since this is a common question I'm asked, I thought it might be useful to write a post devoted to this topic.

My standard response to this question is to direct people toward The Traveller Book, which I've previously called the perfect RPG book. I stand by that assessment for all the reasons I mentioned in my original post, but one of the biggest is that it's still in print and available for only $20 from DriveThruRPG. For a 160-page hardcover book, that's an incredible bargain, all the more so, because it includes everything you'd ever need to play Traveller under one cover – rules, encounters, patrons, adventures, and an overview of the Third Imperium and the Spinward Marches sector. Truly, this is still probably the best way to familiarize yourself with Traveller.

That said, there are another couple of options worth considering. The first is Starter Traveller, originally released as a boxed set in 1983. This version of the game includes the same rules as The Traveller Book, but formatted as a 64-page book, The reason it's shorter is that all of the relevant charts relating to gameplay have been removed and placed in their own separate 24-page book. Also included with the set are two adventures, Mission on Mithril and Shadows, both of which had been previously released. 

Another possibility is the Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition, which presents the three little black books of classic Traveller as a single digest-size 160-page book. Like The Traveller Book, the Facsimile Edition is available in print from DriveThruRPG and it's even less expensive – $9! This version has the advantage of preserving the original layout of the 1981 edition, while the other two options have been updated and improved in various ways. This is the edition you'll want to buy if your interest in primarily in getting a sense of what the game like in its early days. (To clarify: this is not the original 1977 version, though it's very close).

Each of the three options above has its advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you're looking for. Overall, I continue to favor The Traveller Book as the best all-around intro to the classic game, but I have an affection for Starter Traveller, because it was the first edition I owned. And, as I've already said, the Facsimile Edition is best for those hoping to get a sense of what the game was like in its earliest stages, before the Third Imperium setting had begun to take over the line and become not merely an example of a setting but the setting for the game.

On the question of what to buy after obtaining the rules, I'd recommend avoiding any of the volumes with "Book" in the title, like Book 4: Mercenary or Book 5: High Guard – not because they're bad supplements but because they're very specific and unnecessary to all but the most dedicated players. Newcomers have no need of them. Instead, I'd recommend focusing on adventures, especially those I've included on my Top 10 lists of the same. All of them are still available in PDF form through DriveThruRPG and are good options if you want to get a sense of what classic Traveller is all about.

As I've noted several now in recent weeks, I'll be talking a lot more about Traveller here, since it's a game and a topic about which I remain quite passionate and about which I feel I still have interesting things to say – unlike Dungeons & Dragons, but that's a topic for an upcoming post ...