What is the Traveller rulebook called? There's so much Traveller stuff, but I never have any clue which ones are the actual rules.
THat depends upon edition.
CT Core Rules:
Traveller (includes
Book 1: Characters and Combat,
Book 2: Starships, and
Book 3: Worlds and Adventures)
Deluxe Traveller (as above, and adds
Book 0: An introduction to Traveller and
Adventure 0: The Imperial Fringe)
The Traveller Book Includes portions of Bk 0, all of Books 1-3, and 2 smaller adventures [
Shadows and
Exit Visa] in a single volume. Both hard and softcovers have been produced.)
Starter Traveller (
Starter Traveller Book 1: Rules,
ST Book 2: Tables,
ST Book 3: Adventures [
Shadows and
Mission on Mithril]
Non-core but usually treated as such by most groups:
Book 4: Mercenary (for extra weapons and for the training rules, sometimes also for advanced Army/Marine char gen.)
Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium adds 12 new careers... plus bows.
Book 5: High Guard (Alternate/expanded ship design, alternate ship combat system. Advanced Navy Char Gen)
Not as universal:
Book 6: Scouts (Expanded system generation - easily allows one to turn a single system into a raft of worlds. Also includes Advanced Scout Char Gen. OTU Setting fluff for the IISS)
Book 7: Merchant Prince (Alternate trade and commerce rules. Advanced Merchant Char Gen. OTU setting fluff for merchant megacorps)
Alternate for the weapons:
Snapshot (boardgame version of Book 1 combat, but includes the Book 4 weapons.)
Alternate for the Supplement 4 material:
The Spinward Marches Campaign (The S4 careers and bow rules are in the back. Also includes the contents of
Supplement 3: The Spinward Marches, somewhat expanded even.)
Alternate for Book 2 ship combat:
Mayday (Boardgame instead of minisgame version of the Book 2 combat system. Later printings include options for using it as alternate movement rules for High Guard combat system.
Alternate Personal Combat:
Azhanti High Lightning (board game) and
Striker (15mm Miniatures rules for Bn level and smaller). They are fully intercompatible, with each other, but use a very different method of dealing with armor and damage from Book 1 and snapshot.
MegaTraveller Core
MegaTraveller (Boxed set:
Players Manual,
Referee's Manual,
Imperial Encyclopedia - Each was available separately or in the boxed set. Note that the combat mechanics are derived from Striker and AHL, not Bk 2/Snapshot, which throws many. Includes all 18 CT careers and 4 Advanced careers in the PM, and the majority of CT Books 2 and 3, and a slightly expanded Bk 7 trade system in the RM. The IE includes CT supplements 7 & 11: Library Data and portions of Book 7.)
Non-core, but often treated as such:
MegaTraveller Referee's Companion (adds large scale combat, research, and some other good stuff.)
Starship Operators Manual, Vol. 1 (SSOM - expands the IE rules for travel considerably, and gives a lot of tech fluff. While published by a 3rd party, that third party just happens to have been the contractor for the core rules....)
Traveller The New Era Core
Traveller: The New Era (Softcover. Monolithic Uses CT Bk7/MT trade rules. No ship construction, simplified ship combat)
Deluxe Traveller: The New Era (
Traveller: The New Era book,
Fire, Fusion, & Steel: Traveller Technical Arcitechture )
Not core, but often treated as such:
Brilliant Lances (Boardgame, boxed. Ship combat rules from which the corebook's system was simplified, and a subset/preview of FF&S for ship design only.)
Marc Miller's Traveller aka T4 Core:
Marc Miller's Traveller (hard or soft cover book)
Fire, Fusion, and Steel II (softcover, sold separately.)
T5 Core:
T5 Playtest Vesion 5.01 (CD-Rom PDF, monolitchic)
T5 Playtest Version 5.09 (PDF, sent to backers and sold on CDrom. Monolithic)
T5 Playtest version 5.10 (PDF, sent to backers, sold on CD Rom, monolithic)
T5 Release - 3 volume slipcover set. Don't have it on this machine at the moment to check the titles.
Mongoose Traveller 1E:
Traveller Core Rulebook (hardcover. Monolithic Covers about the same turf as CT Bks 1-3. Not exactly compatible, but readily convertible on the fly to/from CT)
Mongoose Traveller 2E:
Traveller Core Rulebook (Playable but slightly limited core)
High Guard (Ship design; I've not looked at it since playtest. Not the same as 1E's design system, either)
Central Supply Catalogue (Technically, not core per se, but the equipment in MGT2 CRB is pretty limited.)
Note that overall compatibility with MGT1E and CT is about the same as MGT1 and CT... conversions on the fly doable. For many, that's good enough; for others (me included) it's a total pain.
GURPS Traveller:
GURPS Traveller (Includes GURPS 3RE lite; includes Traveller specific ship building. Includes a simple trade system comparable to CT's)
GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars (for GURPS 4E; I don't recall if it includes G:Lite 4E. Covers the same rules space as GT, but for 4E, much earlier in the OTU setting.)
Not core, but treated as such:
GURPS Traveller: Far Trader (a more complex trade rules option, and the insanely complicated alternate alternate from which the simpler was simplified. Many of the decisions in this, combined with Marc's "All editions are canon" approach means that about 1/3 to 1/2 of all Traveller OTU GM's preferred inferences went straight out the window... For the GURPS fanbase, this is fairly definitive.
D20 Traveller: T20 Traveller's Handbook:
T20 Traveller's Handbook: 2 versions; one is monolithic, the other is a 3 volume set. Contents are identical except for page numbers and TOC/Index. If you know how to build d20 characters from D&D 3.x, you don't actually need the D&D PHB... it's an almost total revamp of the whole thing.
Traveller for Hero
CD-ROM includes the whole published content.
and, for completeness.
Traveller: 2300 Core:
Traveller 2300 (1E) or 2300 AD (2E) no ship design, no trade rules, but otherwise monolithic in either edition; both editions 2 volume (Player's Manual and Referee's Manual in T:2300, Player's Guide and Director's Guide in 2E). Ship design in the Star Cruiser boardgame, sold separately. Not the OTU setting. Different FTL drive paradigm. Feels about as far from CT and from MT as MT feels from CT, but makes a number of more player-felt changes, including attribute scaling (1-20 10 norm instead of 1-15 7 norm). Note that I'm unaware of any Trade & Commerce rules for it; many (myself included) adapted either CT Bk2 or CT Bk7/MT Trade and Commerce when it felt relevant.
2300 was mistakenly billed as the history of the OTU in some pre-release reviews, leading FLGSs to conflate it with the then forthcoming MegaTraveller (which is the first OTU specific Coreset). It's instead a setting built upon the GDW staff and local gamers playing out a wargame building the setting out of the Twilight 2000 1E core. It is, mechanically, related to Traveller and T2K 1E; T2K 2E is mechanically derivable from a mix of T2K 1E, 2300, and CT/MT.
Note that T2K 2.2 becomes the basis for the T:TNE core rules; all the GDW RPGs (except Dangerous Journeys) are interrelated in various ways mechanically. Elements of Traveller can even be seen in the 1975 semi-RPG En Garde! - still in print, BTW, from Margam-Evans - with its enlistment in the Regiments and background generation. It's also a prototype to a degree for T2K 1E.
