The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I love Traveller. It was one of the first games that I played after Dungeons & Dragons. I can still remember pulling the wrapping paper off of a small box, and pulling three little black and red books out. Later that day I had created dozens of characters, some starships, and had even created a sector of space, with planetary descriptions and animal encounter tables. This game was complete, fun, and an excellent solitaire experience.

Traveller soon grew up, destroyed its baseline universe, making it into a post apocalyptic wasteland. Yet as ugly as the setting got, the rules were even uglier. Recently Imperium Games tried to resurrect Classic Traveller, but it failed under the weight of a criminally underdeveloped basic rule book. It was a hideous monster, with pages and pages of errata posted to the web.

When I heard that Steve Jackson Games was going to produce a GURPS version of Traveller my heart beat faster and my hope soared. If any company could put a decent set of rules together, well heck that had already been done in GURPS, now all that had to be done would be to recreate the background, which they have done to a "T." It was to be a return to the classic space opera type of Traveller, not the wasteland of later models.

Now very often I like to review games quickly. Things keep coming in, and there is a certain virtue toward keeping my desk clean. Yet sometimes when waiting the bloom can wear off, and flaws can become more apparent, as they did with GURPS Traveller. When I received this book I felt that this was the best thing to happen to me since chocolate milk...needless to say that opinion has changed. This book's cover echoes the wonderful covers of Traveller past, and within it contains virtually everything that a Traveller player or GM would want to know. Yet there are significant problems within these pages.

First of all there's a brief introduction to Traveller, and a nice library data section follows, which does a nice job of explaining some of the mysteries within the Traveller universe. Mysteries which have remained unsolved for many of us once we stopped buying Traveller stuff in the early eighties. This section also does a wonderful job of setting up the baseline Traveller universe.

Then there's a whole bunch of character templates, which cover all of the bases for your basic Traveller game. You've got belters, lawyers, farmers, and a full assortment of military types. Yet I was disappointed that there wasn't any kind of career development system, like in the old Traveller, or the new Star Trek: The Next Generation game. In the old Traveller game you could spend hours in solitaire play imagining a career for your character, sadly this is no longer the case.

There's another section on equipment, weapons and travel. Its nicely done, and covers all of the old Traveller standards. GURPS does tend to excel in this area though, which is nice because in Traveller there were almost no rules for vehicular combat or design. There are some conversion tables and information for moving characters and planets between the two systems, but at least one major chart is missing which drastically reduces the utility of this section.

The book closes with sections on starship design and combat. The starship design rules are extraordinary in that David Pulver has managed to simplify the too complicated GURPS Vehicles system into a nice Traveller package. Yet there are dropped explanations and holes in these rules. What exactly does heavy or total compartmentalization do for a ship, except to increase its mass and cost? Why don't the starship designs match the design sequence in the book?

These are only the tip of the iceberg. The errata for this game is growing day by day, and this is significant errata. This is the type of errata which drastically effects how ships are designed, and other key areas of the game. The overall effect of all of these corrections is that the book just feels hurried. If they had waited another few weeks then I feel that these bugs would've been squashed!

And they left a lot of stuff out! As Ken Hite pointed out in his review on Mania.com (just go there, click on mania magazine, then click on Out of the Box, to read a great column every Friday), the library data section uses the old Traveller Universal Planetary Profile, yet this isn't supported in the new game. It uses the nomenclature from GURPS Space, but doesn't translate what those old UPPs used to stand for. The book is also missing the nice animal encounter section in the old Traveller. Using these tables any novice GM could create a somewhat realistic ecosystem for any planet at virtually a moments notice. All sorts of grazers, pouncers, and scary stuff could torment players. Traveller created whole shorthand ecosystems for worlds, and no other game has done this ever since. This was truly a missed opportunity.

I feel tempted to flunk this book. I know I cannot recommend purchasing the Traveller hardback. Why buy a nice hardback that you're going to have to write dozens of notes in? Wait for the second edition, then purchase the hardback. I'll give this book a "C." No other space opera game does a better job of placing you in a big universe. There may be thousands of planets in Star Wars, but they're all catalogued in Traveller. This is a big wonderful universe done in by a hurried presentation of the rules.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)

GURPS Traveller
Author: Loren K. Wiseman Category: game Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Cost: 22.95 Page count: 178 ISBN: 1-55634-349-3 Capsule Review by Scott Shafer on 10/31/98. Genre tags: Science_fiction Historical Far_Future Space	I love Traveller. It was one of the first games that I played after Dungeons & Dragons. I can still remember pulling the wrapping paper off of a small box, and pulling three little black and red books out. Later that day I had created dozens of characters, some starships, and had even created a sector of space, with planetary descriptions and animal encounter tables. This game was complete, fun, and an excellent solitaire experience. Traveller soon grew up, destroyed its baseline universe, making it into a post apocalyptic wasteland. Yet as ugly as the setting got, the rules were even uglier. Recently Imperium Games tried to resurrect Classic Traveller, but it failed under the weight of a criminally underdeveloped basic rule book. It was a hideous monster, with pages and pages of errata posted to the web. When I heard that Steve Jackson Games was going to produce a GURPS version of Traveller my heart beat faster and my hope soared. If any company could put a decent set of rules together, well heck that had already been done in GURPS, now all that had to be done would be to recreate the background, which they have done to a "T." It was to be a return to the classic space opera type of Traveller, not the wasteland of later models. Now very often I like to review games quickly. Things keep coming in, and there is a certain virtue toward keeping my desk clean. Yet sometimes when waiting the bloom can wear off, and flaws can become more apparent, as they did with GURPS Traveller. When I received this book I felt that this was the best thing to happen to me since chocolate milk...needless to say that opinion has changed. This book's cover echoes the wonderful covers of Traveller past, and within it contains virtually everything that a Traveller player or GM would want to know. Yet there are significant problems within these pages. First of all there's a brief introduction to Traveller, and a nice library data section follows, which does a nice job of explaining some of the mysteries within the Traveller universe. Mysteries which have remained unsolved for many of us once we stopped buying Traveller stuff in the early eighties. This section also does a wonderful job of setting up the baseline Traveller universe. Then there's a whole bunch of character templates, which cover all of the bases for your basic Traveller game. You've got belters, lawyers, farmers, and a full assortment of military types. Yet I was disappointed that there wasn't any kind of career development system, like in the old Traveller, or the new Star Trek: The Next Generation game. In the old Traveller game you could spend hours in solitaire play imagining a career for your character, sadly this is no longer the case. There's another section on equipment, weapons and travel. Its nicely done, and covers all of the old Traveller standards. GURPS does tend to excel in this area though, which is nice because in Traveller there were almost no rules for vehicular combat or design. There are some conversion tables and information for moving characters and planets between the two systems, but at least one major chart is missing which drastically reduces the utility of this section. The book closes with sections on starship design and combat. The starship design rules are extraordinary in that David Pulver has managed to simplify the too complicated GURPS Vehicles system into a nice Traveller package. Yet there are dropped explanations and holes in these rules. What exactly does heavy or total compartmentalization do for a ship, except to increase its mass and cost? Why don't the starship designs match the design sequence in the book? These are only the tip of the iceberg. The errata for this game is growing day by day, and this is significant errata. This is the type of errata which drastically effects how ships are designed, and other key areas of the game. The overall effect of all of these corrections is that the book just feels hurried. If they had waited another few weeks then I feel that these bugs would've been squashed! And they left a lot of stuff out! As Ken Hite pointed out in his review on Mania.com (just go there, click on mania magazine, then click on Out of the Box, to read a great column every Friday), the library data section uses the old Traveller Universal Planetary Profile, yet this isn't supported in the new game. It uses the nomenclature from GURPS Space, but doesn't translate what those old UPPs used to stand for. The book is also missing the nice animal encounter section in the old Traveller. Using these tables any novice GM could create a somewhat realistic ecosystem for any planet at virtually a moments notice. All sorts of grazers, pouncers, and scary stuff could torment players. Traveller created whole shorthand ecosystems for worlds, and no other game has done this ever since. This was truly a missed opportunity. I feel tempted to flunk this book. I know I cannot recommend purchasing the Traveller hardback. Why buy a nice hardback that you're going to have to write dozens of notes in? Wait for the second edition, then purchase the hardback. I'll give this book a "C." No other space opera game does a better job of placing you in a big universe. There may be thousands of planets in Star Wars, but they're all catalogued in Traveller. This is a big wonderful universe done in by a hurried presentation of the rules. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 3 (Average)