Traveller Is 45 Years Old Today!

Traveller was first created by Marc Miller in 1977, published as a box containing three black, digest-sized books by Game Designer's Workshop. The game was the first to use a lifepath system for character creation (one in which, famously, characters could die before play even began!) These days, the game is published by Mongoose Publishing.

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[aramis erak]

It is a pretty clearly designed game. There were some other really sophisticated games out there in the mid-70s. I'm trying to recall the name of the game, where your 'character' is basically a starship. It was a very strange and fairly obscure game, lol.

Starfaring, by Ken St. Andre.
strange is a polite way of putting it

There was some really crazy stuff back then, and you'd be surprised how little the innovations of the last 20 years have added to what was tried back then! A lot of it just didn't stick the first time around...

Some of which would be better left in the past... Dallas: the RPG.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To be honest, if you're looking at it as a new-to-Traveller experienced-rpg player, don't even worry about the piles of prior edition. Pick an edition, generate a subsector, have players generate characters, and go. Just use the assumption you're on or near the border of an imperium at least 60 hexes across.

Honestly, if you haven't played Traveller before and don't own any of it, just go buy the latest edition of Mongoose Traveller. Aside from us old farts who like to nitpick various things, this is basically the same game that we were playing in 1977. Yeah, there are various tweaks and whatnot here and there, but they are overall SMALL THINGS and in any larger sense it is fundamentally the same game! Honestly, when I read various random pages of MGT I was pretty surprised at how closely most of it hues to CT, not a heck of a lot has changed.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Starfaring, by Ken St. Andre.
strange is a polite way of putting it

Some of which would be better left in the past... Dallas: the RPG.

Was it Starfaring? Because when I saw a blurb on it, it didn't sound much like what I remember. Anyway, I guess that was it.

While Dallas: the RPG did have a rather lackluster subject matter, it is actually a quite innovative game, years ahead of its time!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Was it Starfaring? Because when I saw a blurb on it, it didn't sound much like what I remember. Anyway, I guess that was it.

While Dallas: the RPG did have a rather lackluster subject matter, it is actually a quite innovative game, years ahead of its time!

Honestly, I think if the subject matter of D:tRPG was say, Game of Thrones (which it would translate to with only the most minimal tweaks) it would have sold like hotcakes 3-4 years ago. The process of play is a bit more centered on the GM than I would really prefer, you could probably mix in a bit of PbtA-style magic there, but we're talking about a game that was designed in 1979! It has some rather clever ideas in it.

 

[aramis erak]

Was it Starfaring? Because when I saw a blurb on it, it didn't sound much like what I remember. Anyway, I guess that was it.

While Dallas: the RPG did have a rather lackluster subject matter, it is actually a quite innovative game, years ahead of its time!

It fits the era, and is the only pre-77 I have seen where you play the ship... but one other comes to mind... a boxed boardgame, Star Explorer, 1978, from FGU. (Leonard Kanterman and Douglas Bonforte... Leonard is also the author of Starships & Spacemen. Both rereleased by Goblinoid.) It's not billed as an RPG, tho'...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It fits the era, and is the only pre-77 I have seen where you play the ship... but one other comes to mind... a boxed boardgame, Star Explorer, 1978, from FGU. (Leonard Kanterman and Douglas Bonforte... Leonard is also the author of Starships & Spacemen. Both rereleased by Goblinoid.) It's not billed as an RPG, tho'...

Yeah, there were quite a few wargames with this theme around at the time, or similar ones. There was Godsfire, Stellar Conquest, etc. which are basically spins on "Hammurabi in Space" (Hammurabi was a simple empire building game for one player which was invented in the '60s on some large timesharing systems and formed the basis of MANY of this ilk of games).

Starships & Spacemen was a direct response to Traveller. In fact I think their blurb even made some sly references to Traveller and trumpeted the various sci-fi themes that were better addressed by their game, supposedly (IE robots mainly, but also aliens). Of course Traveller did fairly quickly cover those subjects, and for whatever reason S&S soon faded from the scene. I don't recall that FGU even put out any adventures or supplements for that one. Frankly I've not ever even seen a copy, let alone anyone playing it.

 

[dragoner]

It was the era of games released in zip lock, I still have a few.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, there were quite a few wargames with this theme around at the time, or similar ones. There was Godsfire, Stellar Conquest, etc. which are basically spins on "Hammurabi in Space" (Hammurabi was a simple empire building game for one player which was invented in the '60s on some large timesharing systems and formed the basis of MANY of this ilk of games).

Starships & Spacemen was a direct response to Traveller. In fact I think their blurb even made some sly references to Traveller and trumpeted the various sci-fi themes that were better addressed by their game, supposedly (IE robots mainly, but also aliens). Of course Traveller did fairly quickly cover those subjects, and for whatever reason S&S soon faded from the scene. I don't recall that FGU even put out any adventures or supplements for that one. Frankly I've not ever even seen a copy, let alone anyone playing it.

You are probably conflating S&S with Space Opera. Same publisher, different times. Different designers, too.

S&S is just a D&D bashed into Star Trek with some nifty ideas about Experience. Brilliantly bashed, at that. I have dead tree of the FGU and PDF of the reprint. I've run it, within the last decade, too. It's got almost nothing in common with traveller. I suppose I could ask Leonard.

SO is Phil & Ed's "Traveller on Steroids"...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It was the era of games released in zip lock, I still have a few.

Many very interesting games were released as 'microgames', mostly by the company Metagaming, a lot of which were developed by Steve Jackson and crew. Ogre, GEV, Car Wars, Melee, Wizard, TFT (which was just more rules for Melee and Wizard, I don't recall if there was an actual microgame format of that stuff). There were some other companies that also tried to get in on the fun, though none of them ever quite surpassed the Metagaming stuff. I believe there was a version of at least one Tom Wham game that got the treatment, though not one of his really well-known ones.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You are probably conflating S&S with Space Opera. Same publisher, different times. Different designers, too.

S&S is just a D&D bashed into Star Trek with some nifty ideas about Experience. Brilliantly bashed, at that. I have dead tree of the FGU and PDF of the reprint. I've run it, within the last decade, too. It's got almost nothing in common with traveller. I suppose I could ask Leonard.

SO is Phil & Ed's "Traveller on Steroids"...

Well, FGU revisited the same theme a few times. Space Opera was a bit more extensive rendition, as there were various supplements and whatnot. Still really never actually saw anyone run it.