Traveller

Traveller
RPG published by Game Designer's Workshop Steve Jackson Games Mongoose Publishing
Authors	Mark Millar, followed by many others
First Publication	1977

Traveller is a science fiction game that is older than you are. It's always tried to be a science fiction instead of science fantasy, and it manages to pull it off... most of the time. It's grounded in '60s and '70s science fiction like Issac Asimov, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Poul Anderson, and other people who are not George Lucas and not Gene Roddenberry.

There are eight major star-faring races, three of which are human: the Vilani who are the decadent old empire who grew up on a world where you had to ferment everything to make it edible (their beer tastes like gym socks); the Zhodani who are all too-tall telepathic middle-eastern types (but they love their Thought Police! Honest!); and the late-to-the-show Solomani, who it turns out grew up on the planet humans actually came from (which makes them BETTER than ANYONE! TERRA FIRST! FUCK YEARRRAGH!). The other races are herd-centaurs who are fanatic vegetarians ("they eat meat? burn the planet from orbit"), the territorial Aslan (meow), the pirate Vargr (woof), the hexapodal Hivers (walking starfish made of "just as planned") and highly specialized Droyne (insect-y lizard-y families of six).

The setting is the "Third Imperium," after the Vilani First Imperium collapsed, and the Solomani 2nd imperium flared and then imploded. Humaniti is in the middle of the eight races mentioned above (except the Droyne, who are anywhere but don't care about conquest), and getting pushed on all sides. Furthermore, stellar travel takes a week for each "jump," which could be 1 to 6 parsecs -- your engine increases the range of the jump, but it's always one week per jump. Since it can be months to get a message from the capital to the frontiers, and because of reoccuring dark ages, the Third Imperium is mostly a feudal state, with local governors, barons and the like. The post office run is an unmanned jump-4 "x-boat" ship that pops in, bursts an upload of mail, downloads new mail, and then jumps out. Even these ships could take 15 months to get from the capital to the borders where a typical adventuring party would be.

A typical Traveller campaign is players who own the mortgage on a small merchant frigate, moving cargo from point A to point B and doing odd jobs that may or may not be legal. Yes, very "Firefly," but this came first and Firefly has it's own role-playing game.

Traveller was unique at the time, and still unusual, in the fact that your character could die during generation.

There were many editions of Traveller, because people just won't let it die:

• Traveller "Classic" (1977) came in a black box, with four 5"x8.5" booklets with solid black covers and white letters. Stats were from 0 to 15 (you used hexidecimal for everything, so "0" to "F"). They made a bunch of expansions, and you could fit them all in the box until the alien race books. Everyone had a military background, and your stats and starting equipment were modified by bonuses you got during your terms of service. The splatbooks would go back and redo the original character generation rules.
• Traveller:2300 (1986) was supposed to be the Solomani before discovering the other races. Used d10 instead of 2d6. Got confused with MT the next year.
• Megatraveller (1987) folded all the splatbooks back into the basic rules, and the setting changed with a huge civil war in the Third Imperium with the assasination of the emprah. Most Traveller fans thought this was made of fail and faggotry, and decide to ignore this bit of history. These books were bigger, and there was no black box.
• Traveller: The New Era (1993) The Imperium gets ripped to shreds by a virus that sends every jump-capable ship into the nearest star. Every planet is cut off from interstellar travel, and there's anarchy. Whoever has the most tech tends to become the local lord. New game mechanics, no more needing to learn about the setting since you aren't going anywhere. Game Designer's Workshop went under before they could make this space game about space again.
• Marc Miller's Traveller (1996) (aka "T4") is when the original authors got the rights after GDW went under. He rolled back the clock to the start of the Third Imperium, no more assasination, no more Virus, but he totally failed at getting a good editor to review his work and his book needed twenty-five pages of errata.
• GURPS Traveller (1998) happened because Steve Jackson is a nut for the original. No assasination, no Virus, and he got the original splatbook authors to come back and rewrite the alien races books and adventures.
• Traveller 20 (2002) is Traveller using the d20 System. Takes place during the war that happened when Solomani met their neighbours.
• Mongoose Traveller (2008) is new, and it doesn't suck. Mongoose bought the rights to publish stuff for at least ten years. The setting is roughly equivalent to the original.

OK, you see how on the front cover up there a ship is basically doomed? Yeah. Expect that. Traveller is not a forgiving system. In older editions, it was possible to literally die during chargen (due to the life-path generation system). This is now impossible, but the life-path generation system is of such a nature that all characters end up either being cripples or Bastard Hard. Within the game itself, combat can mess you up, especially ship-to-ship combat. I hope you took Vacc Suit and Zero G as skills.

Links

• Traveller Wiki fanboy drooling
• GURPS Traveller fanboy drooling with a printing press
• Travellermap mashup of Google maps and Traveller's setting