The Traveller Saga
by Douglas & Kirsten Berry
music: "American Pie" by Don McLean
A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how the first game stirred my soul
Known Space on the StarForce map
A fist of stolen dice and that
Was all it took to make my dreams take flight
Every weekend at the game store
With my ten hard-earned bucks to buy more
Now twenty years have flown past
With wars and life and mishaps
I know I'm not that wide-eyed teen
But I still look up and I still dream
Whatever comes I do believe
I still will play this game
(Chorus)
So bye bye, I'm goin' Travellin' tonight
The rules set may be changing
But the concept's all right
And it lets me travel through the stars and through time
Saying: Gonna play this game 'til I die
Gonna play this game 'til I die
Do you remember when CT
Was only Books 1,2, and 3
and a homespun setting that you wrote
Do you recall Bill and Andrew Keith
Early FASA and JG
All the products out to help us play
And slowly the Imperium came to light
With enemies for us to fight
Then in Supplement 3
We met the Zhodani
It was a glorious time of change and growth
And we couldn't ever get enough
So we sat down and wrote our own stuff
And I still played this game
I told my mother...
(Chorus)
Then came some folks called DGP
About as passionate as you or me
About this universe we'd made
They filled in all the holes and cracks
They fixed some rules, they wrote a patch
And changed the way the game was played
But GDW had a plan
Strephon died at an assassin's hand
The Imperium fell to war
Much worse than before
And in '87 we got MT
To play through this galactic catastrophe
But the new rules didn't mean much to me
'cause I still played the game
I told my girlfriend.
(Chorus)
For six years, we played through Hard Times
While pretenders fled and planets died
And we wondered how it all would end
Then we got the horrid news
about a Virus that would use
any means to kill humaniti
TNE made its bright debut
While the Old Timers hissed and booed
Much dissent was spoken
The TML was broken!
And while X-Boat waxed on days gone by
GDW up and died
The hard core fans sent up a cry
They can't have killed our game
They told their children...
(Chorus)
Then Marc Miller took back control
And promised Traveller like we had before
But did they try to push too fast?
For T4 was a sorry mess
Barely edited and the rest
Of the releases, well they didn't shine much more
The authors grumbled we've not been paid
Imperium Games quietly sped away
Then Loren brought our reprieve
A deal with Evil Steve
A return to all those Classic themes
Of hard-sf and future dreams
It may be GURPS, but what the beans?
I still will play this game
We'll tell our grandkids...
(Chorus)
(slowly)
Now twenty years and more have past
From first edition to the last
But the setting is the game to me
I went down to my local store
Where I bought the first books years before
But that store now is part of history
And nowadays the kids play Magic
Glitterboys or Vampires tragic
No more the sound of parties-
Instead, the hum of PCs
And books for which I once did lust
Sit on the shelf collecting dust
But I have them and that's enough
For still, I play this game
(Chorus, slowly)
(Chorus)
by Douglas & Kirsten Berry
music: "American Pie" by Don McLean
A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how the first game stirred my soul
Known Space on the StarForce map
A fist of stolen dice and that
Was all it took to make my dreams take flight
Every weekend at the game store
With my ten hard-earned bucks to buy more
Now twenty years have flown past
With wars and life and mishaps
I know I'm not that wide-eyed teen
But I still look up and I still dream
Whatever comes I do believe
I still will play this game
(Chorus)
So bye bye, I'm goin' Travellin' tonight
The rules set may be changing
But the concept's all right
And it lets me travel through the stars and through time
Saying: Gonna play this game 'til I die
Gonna play this game 'til I die
Do you remember when CT
Was only Books 1,2, and 3
and a homespun setting that you wrote
Do you recall Bill and Andrew Keith
Early FASA and JG
All the products out to help us play
And slowly the Imperium came to light
With enemies for us to fight
Then in Supplement 3
We met the Zhodani
It was a glorious time of change and growth
And we couldn't ever get enough
So we sat down and wrote our own stuff
And I still played this game
I told my mother...
(Chorus)
Then came some folks called DGP
About as passionate as you or me
About this universe we'd made
They filled in all the holes and cracks
They fixed some rules, they wrote a patch
And changed the way the game was played
But GDW had a plan
Strephon died at an assassin's hand
The Imperium fell to war
Much worse than before
And in '87 we got MT
To play through this galactic catastrophe
But the new rules didn't mean much to me
'cause I still played the game
I told my girlfriend.
(Chorus)
For six years, we played through Hard Times
While pretenders fled and planets died
And we wondered how it all would end
Then we got the horrid news
about a Virus that would use
any means to kill humaniti
TNE made its bright debut
While the Old Timers hissed and booed
Much dissent was spoken
The TML was broken!
And while X-Boat waxed on days gone by
GDW up and died
The hard core fans sent up a cry
They can't have killed our game
They told their children...
(Chorus)
Then Marc Miller took back control
And promised Traveller like we had before
But did they try to push too fast?
For T4 was a sorry mess
Barely edited and the rest
Of the releases, well they didn't shine much more
The authors grumbled we've not been paid
Imperium Games quietly sped away
Then Loren brought our reprieve
A deal with Evil Steve
A return to all those Classic themes
Of hard-sf and future dreams
It may be GURPS, but what the beans?
I still will play this game
We'll tell our grandkids...
(Chorus)
(slowly)
Now twenty years and more have past
From first edition to the last
But the setting is the game to me
I went down to my local store
Where I bought the first books years before
But that store now is part of history
And nowadays the kids play Magic
Glitterboys or Vampires tragic
No more the sound of parties-
Instead, the hum of PCs
And books for which I once did lust
Sit on the shelf collecting dust
But I have them and that's enough
For still, I play this game
(Chorus, slowly)
(Chorus)
