Traveller - A Bold Old Frontier

Time to get Travellin'!

For about 40 years, I've had the three books of the Striker Rules and Traveller Book 4 Mercenary laying around. I've always wanted to do something with them, but finally, in a motivating drive of nostalgia I pushed to get fully into Traveller 1st Edition as a combination nostalgia project and full-spectrum game project.

Nostalgia Project

Well, what is there to say except that I never did any Traveller, but I was curious about getting into the game as a visit to 1980s, which is my 7-12 grade years. I figured the style and mechanics may be a bit dated, but wanted to check it out.

My first big break was discovering that Traveller is alive and well on Facebook, with a busy forum full of helpful people.  I was pointed towards Drive-Thru RPG and there I discovered that Marc Miller, the original designer, still has control of his IP and makes all of it available in all the editions, including 1st edition!  Most of the books go for $5 pdfs, but I got books 1-3 in the Black and White edition ...

with errata and addendum...

... for $8 as a pdf AND hard copy, then paid a few bucks to have it shipped; it quickly arrived  in the white book above left.  This gave me an easy intro to the game system at low cost.

Reading the rules wasn't too difficult - the style and layout is a bit old-fashioned, but hey, I'm used to that!  I quickly realized that for an experienced gamer, even the first edition is a treasure-trove of great mechanics and useful stuff!  Books 1-3 have everything you need to create your own adventures in space, from characters, to combat, to space ships [and the *economy* of space ships] to space fights to world building. Many of the mechanics are tried and true and old enough at 40 years that they are pretty much new again!  Books 1-3 come with engaging and interesting mechanics for everything, and the combat and space combat rules are solid.  More on this in the future. But basically, with these rules, you could play almost any skirmish game period you want.

Full-Spectrum Game Project

Looking to get even more into the mood, I went to the Traveller Wiki [CLICK] for sci-fi novel inspiration in the Recommended Reading section [CLICK].  A raid of the local county library index found some of the old classics they recommended. I read three of them as I continued my quest to 'get into the game'.

 

Next, I started looking for more of the LBBs [Little Black Books] which flesh out the Character "classes" which are really branches of Service: Merchant Marine, Scouts, Navy, Marines, Army, Other [ne-er do-wells and Jacks of All Trades]. They also provide supplements for various systems, adventures, and resources to run games [everything from forms to pre-gen characters, etc].  I managed to find some on-line stores with large collections they wanted to move.  As I didn't want just one book, I bargained for some great deals!

One vendor also had several boxed board games, so I got some of them with a load of LBBs for a very nice price:

The combine the Grand Strategic, Strategic, Operational, Grand Tactical and Tactical levels in one way or another.  So this is a:

FULL SPECTRUM GAME PROJECT!

Armed with these tools, I realized that I had what was quite unusual: 

- an RPG with a great set of skirmish rules, 

- a great set of ship combat rules, expanded in Book 5 to squadron combat,

- a universe to fight in, 

- crazy good amounts of hard-science fluff and novels, 

- several directly related board games, 

- a set of miniature combat rules I already owned [Striker - Frank Chadwick's precursor to several board game systems and his Command Decision WWII miniature rules],

- a bunch of original 15mm Ral Partha, Martian Metal, and RAFM miniatures,

- Amazing possibilities for different games with different people and clubs, including the RPG, Miniatures, and Board Game scenes.

The gaming potential is mind-blowing!  I may never be stuck without a choice of opponents ever again, and the games are just fine for solo play.

In 41 years of gaming, I've never yet successfully merged character, land battles, and naval battles, but it is finally going to happen...Time to get Travellin'!