The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I've been a Traveller player most of my life. In fact, I bought the old, orignial edition of Traveller in the teeny tiny black box, marked only with the distress signal of Free Trader Beowulf because I didn't have the money from my allowance to buy FASA's Star Trek: The Role Playing Game. Over the course of my gaming years, I've run, played, and collected as much Traveller as I could get. Yes, I'll admit, I am a Traveller junkie.

This isn't to say that I've always been 100% happy with the universe, or the products. The early Traveller to me quickly being very static and boring- every character wanted to go merchant trading and make a killing buying and selling across the galaxy (and occaisionally trashing the local authorities who said that they couldn't bring Arcanian snotweevils in system.) This was fine, but how could I really explain how one planet was a state of the art, libertarian anarchy, and just one parsec over another society is an industrial dictatorship? And vectors- while I had a background in physics, it was always impossible to explain the concept to my friends, who just wanted to blast things.

In a word, Traveller, in the old version, was more of a GM game, than a player's game.

Then came MegaTraveller and after that, the New Era. The dramatic changes that GDW was willing to do to their 'classic' game universe brought a new life to the game for me. The Final War, and the collapse of instellar civilization because of Virus, created broad struggles against which the individual character HAD to be a hero, the stakes were so large.

As you can see, what makes a game work for me is the extent to which the background material helps the GM tell dramatic plots. Maybe Im a little darker than most- I did run a 'War Against the Chtorr' game once...- but a universe without conflict is boring.

Thus, I was a little leery of GURPS Traveller. I had seen Imperium Games new slant in T4, and been less than impressed. The idea of going BACKWARD in time, to a 'kinder, gentler' age of Roleplaying, to me seemed to lack a strong sense of vision, a resting on the laurels of the past. And when I heard that Wiseman's Traveller would be the old game universe, but without the Rebellion, I was afraid that all this would be was an excuse to reprint old GDW stuff.

Well, rest assured, this is not the case. Yes, it is the old universe. Yes, Emperor Strephon is alive. Yes, Dulinor dies in a shuttle accident before launching a genocidal war. However, this is not going to be a boring ride. Taking a line from modern Science Fiction TV shows, Traveller appears to be setting up an 'arc plot' which will guide all future supplements into a coherent background, allowing GM's to integrate their particular stories into a greater whole. I won't give away my suspicions here, but to anyone who knows who the Dark Robed Figure was on the cover of the TNE book, the future should be a little forboding.....

While this first book primarily provides the basics needed to convert from Traveller to GURPS, and therefore lacks much background material that I would have liked, there is enough new material to make it a good buy even for a collector who has everything. Also, the recent list of new releases for the game on the Steve Jackson web pages shows that this will be supported, and not just a 'one shot' worldbook, like so many of theirs.

If you are looking for a good, detailed, and very interesing science fiction world, I can suggest no better world system than Traveller- but then again, I AM biased.... *grin*

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

GURPS: Traveller
Author: Loren Wiseman Category: game Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games Cost: 22.95 Page count: 120 Capsule Review by William Boykin on 11/02/98. Genre tags: Science_fiction	I've been a Traveller player most of my life. In fact, I bought the old, orignial edition of Traveller in the teeny tiny black box, marked only with the distress signal of Free Trader Beowulf because I didn't have the money from my allowance to buy FASA's Star Trek: The Role Playing Game. Over the course of my gaming years, I've run, played, and collected as much Traveller as I could get. Yes, I'll admit, I am a Traveller junkie. This isn't to say that I've always been 100% happy with the universe, or the products. The early Traveller to me quickly being very static and boring- every character wanted to go merchant trading and make a killing buying and selling across the galaxy (and occaisionally trashing the local authorities who said that they couldn't bring Arcanian snotweevils in system.) This was fine, but how could I really explain how one planet was a state of the art, libertarian anarchy, and just one parsec over another society is an industrial dictatorship? And vectors- while I had a background in physics, it was always impossible to explain the concept to my friends, who just wanted to blast things. In a word, Traveller, in the old version, was more of a GM game, than a player's game. Then came MegaTraveller and after that, the New Era. The dramatic changes that GDW was willing to do to their 'classic' game universe brought a new life to the game for me. The Final War, and the collapse of instellar civilization because of Virus, created broad struggles against which the individual character HAD to be a hero, the stakes were so large. As you can see, what makes a game work for me is the extent to which the background material helps the GM tell dramatic plots. Maybe Im a little darker than most- I did run a 'War Against the Chtorr' game once...- but a universe without conflict is boring. Thus, I was a little leery of GURPS Traveller. I had seen Imperium Games new slant in T4, and been less than impressed. The idea of going BACKWARD in time, to a 'kinder, gentler' age of Roleplaying, to me seemed to lack a strong sense of vision, a resting on the laurels of the past. And when I heard that Wiseman's Traveller would be the old game universe, but without the Rebellion, I was afraid that all this would be was an excuse to reprint old GDW stuff. Well, rest assured, this is not the case. Yes, it is the old universe. Yes, Emperor Strephon is alive. Yes, Dulinor dies in a shuttle accident before launching a genocidal war. However, this is not going to be a boring ride. Taking a line from modern Science Fiction TV shows, Traveller appears to be setting up an 'arc plot' which will guide all future supplements into a coherent background, allowing GM's to integrate their particular stories into a greater whole. I won't give away my suspicions here, but to anyone who knows who the Dark Robed Figure was on the cover of the TNE book, the future should be a little forboding..... While this first book primarily provides the basics needed to convert from Traveller to GURPS, and therefore lacks much background material that I would have liked, there is enough new material to make it a good buy even for a collector who has everything. Also, the recent list of new releases for the game on the Steve Jackson web pages shows that this will be supported, and not just a 'one shot' worldbook, like so many of theirs. If you are looking for a good, detailed, and very interesing science fiction world, I can suggest no better world system than Traveller- but then again, I AM biased.... grin Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

GURPS: Traveller