Pulp Science Fiction Library: Deathworld

Though not my original intention, apparently I am going to be writing more posts about the stories that gave birth to the characters described at the back of the Traveller supplements 1001 Characters and Citizens of the Imperium. Taken together, these stories form something I elsewhere dubbed "Appendix T," being for Traveller what Appendix N was for AD&D: a window into the kinds of tales characters, and situations the creator of the game found notably enjoyable and/or influential on his thinking as he created it. 

A couple of years ago, I noted a "problem" with Appendix N and the putative Appendix T suffers from a similar problem. Marc Miller provides no commentary on the books and authors he cites, leaving it to us to figure out what and in what way they were inspirational to him. This is in contrast to, say, the literary appendix found in RuneQuest, which is much more explicit about the debts owed to its contents. This fact in no way lessens the value of reading any of these books, but it does sometimes make it harder to declare definitively that this or that element of a roleplaying game was based on something from a particular book.

And sometimes it's quite obvious. That would seem to be the case for Harry Harrison's 1960 novel, Deathworld, which was originally serialized over the course of six issues of Astounding Science Fiction before being collected under a single cover and published separately by Bantam in September of the same year. The book's success would result in two sequels, both of which were also serialized in Analog (the new name of Astounding) in 1964 and 1968 respectively. Though I've read all three of these novels, this post focuses primarily on the first and, in my opinion, best of the trilogy.

Deathworld follows the adventures of Jason dinAlt, a gambler with limited psionic abilities that prove useful to him in his chosen vocation. Jason travels to the planet Pyrrus after impressing its ambassador with his skill at gambling. Pyrrus possesses an extraordinarily hostile environment, consisting of high gravity, violent weather, seismic instability, radiation, and a biosphere in which every organism, from animals to plants to microbes is lethally adapted to kill humans. Pyrrus is quite literally a deathworld and Jason seeks to test his mettle against its many dangers. Gambling is not just his profession, it's also representative of his character. He's a risk taker by nature and the deadliness of Pyrrus intrigues him on almost a primal level. 

The planet's settlers survive there only through constant training and militarized discipline. Despite this, enough of them still die that their numbers continue to dwindle. Consequently, Jason becomes intrigued by why the planet is so uniformly hostile and why the colony is failing despite the extreme measures it has taken. While doing so, Jason discovers a second group of human colonists, the “grubbers,” who live in the wilderness in relative harmony with Pyrrus. Unlike the city dwellers, whom they call "junkmen," the grubbers use psionic “talkers” to coexist with the planet’s life and kill only when necessary. Jason then comes to realize that the biosphere of Pyrrus itself is psionic and reacting collectively to the behavior of the colonists who have settled on it. Thus, around the city, all life is telepathically unified in hostility, responding to their constant aggression with coordinated, evolving attacks. Attempts by the city dwellers to destroy the source of this hostility only worsen the situation, confirming that the conflict is systemic rather than merely localized.

Having discovered this, Jason theorizes that Pyrrus is not inherently a deathworld but has only become such in response to human attitudes. The city dwellers' indiscriminate violence has triggered the planet’s ecosystem into treating them as an existential threat, while the grubbers’ more balanced approach allows a degree of coexistence. Jason's solution is, therefore, not technological but cultural. He proposes the gradual integration of the two groups of colonists, with exchange of knowledge and a shift toward living in harmony with the planet's environment. In this way, Jason offers them a path by which Pyrrus can cease to be a deathworld and become a home better suited to human life.

As I said, it's pretty easy to see what this book inspired in Traveller. First, there's Jason dinAlt himself, who's an archetypal space-going adventurer, driven by a desire to challenge himself against whatever the galaxy throws at him. Second, there's the low-level psionic abilities, something Traveller has included since the beginning. Third, and probably more importantly, there's the mystery surrounding the deadly nature of Pyrrus and its environment. Traveller adventures are full of planets like this, where its society, history, or environment (or some combination of them) are presented as problems to be solved. Taken together, Deathworld strikes me as having obvious connections to Marc Miller's masterpiece.

On a personal note, I came to Deathworld and its sequels because of having read Harrison's other series of pulp sci-fi romps featuring the Stainless Steel Rat. Though different in both their content and overt style, the two series share certain traits, most notably their social satire and use of Esperanto. Though I can't be certain, I believe it was one or the other of these series that first introduced me to the constructed language and I've been an admirer of it ever since. That's why Thousand Suns employs Esperanto as a stand-in for the universal Terran language of the setting. Regardless, Deathworld is a quick, fun read and worth your time if you can find a copy. It's short and unpretentious, both of which I consider cardinal virtues in a literary age replete with their opposites.

Pulp Science Fiction Library: Demon Princes

The trouble with Muses is that, ultimately, they're in control, not you. As I continue to work on the second edition of Thousand Suns – the draft is now close to half complete – my mind has been wandering ever farther away from the more well-known varieties of fantasy. Of course, as I recently argued, there's still lots of overlap between these two genres and not merely in terms of content. Many of the most talented and influential writers of the past tried their hands at both and succeeded brilliantly.

A good case in point is Jack Vance. Vance is a paladin of Appendix N, being one of only a handful of writers Gary Gygax singled out as being one of the "most immediate influences" upon his vision of Dungeon & Dragons. Of course, Gygax did so for Vance's tales of the Dying Earth, whose magic system he adopted for the game, and not for his science fiction tales, of which there are a great many – indeed, far more than his fantasy stories. 

Among the most celebrated of Vance's sci-fi works is his "Demon Princes" series, the first of which, Star King, was serialized in the December 1963 and February 1964 issues of Galaxy Magazine before being published by Berkeley Books later in '64. The first three books in the five-book series appeared fairly quickly, with The Killing Machine also appearing in 1964 and The Palace of Love in 1967. The fourth and fifth books, The Face and The Book of Dreams, did not appear until more than a decade later, in 1979 and 1981 respectively, which was right around the time I first entered the hobby of roleplaying. 

However, I wouldn't take much note of any of these books until several years into my introduction to Traveller. That places it somewhere in the vicinity of 1982 or '83, depending on when it was that I first acquired Citizens of the Imperium. That supplement, along with 1001 Characters, is notable for having included Traveller stats for a selection of literary SF characters, ranging from John Carter of Mars to Slippery Jim diGriz to Dominic Flandry. At the time, I already knew many of these names from novels and stories I'd read. Others, though, were new to me and they sent me off to the local public library on a quest. 

Among those unfamiliar names would be that of Kirth Gersen. Citizens of the Imperium associates him specifically with the second book in the series, The Killing Machine, but also mentions it as part of a five-book "Demon Princes" series. To my youthful mind, "Demon Princes" didn't sound like the title for a science fiction series, so I was initially confused as to why it was included alongside more well-known pillars of SF. Likewise, I had not yet read any of Vance's space operas, so my confusion was only heightened. Fortunately for me, I eventually got around to tracking down Star King and its four sequels. I enjoyed them so much that I sought out more of Vance's science fiction and the rest is history.

The titular Demon Princes of the series are not supernatural entities by five interstellar crime bosses, against whom Gersen wishes to exact revenge for their past in bringing ruin upon his home planet. Having been trained by his grandfather for this purpose, Gersen dedicates his life to hunting down them down so that justice may be done. Each of the five novels follows his pursuit of one of these Demon Princes. Though the novels include plenty of action, one of the things that's most interesting about them – or at least is to me – is how much investigation and infiltration they include. Gersen's efforts to locate his quarry, some of whom have gone to great efforts to conceal their identities, is every bit as central to Vance's stories as is dealing with them once they've been found.

Though linked, each novel presents a largely self-contained exploration of a different world or culture, often shaped by the personality of the Demon Prince Gersen is presently seeking. Consequently, the series, like so much of Vance's oeuvre, is a picaresque adventure through strange societies with elaborate social codes and fragmented political systems where justice is personal rather than institutional. That makes Gersen’s quest more than just a hunt for enemies; it becomes an extended engagement with questions of identity, culture, and obsession in the far future, all of which play to Vance's strengths as a writer and storyteller.

Prior to writing this post, it had been decades since I last read any of the Demon Princes novels and that's a shame. Like so many of the books that inspired Traveller, they're fast-paced, pulpy adventures filled with quirky and memorable characters and equally quirky and memorable situations. They're not deep scientific speculations about a possible future and that's OK. Sometimes, you just want to read a fun, engaging novel about one man's quest to bring justice to some bad guys who deserve what's coming to them. In that respect, the Demon Princes series delivers and does so enjoyably.

Retrospective: The Argon Gambit

Today, I make good on a promise I made two weeks ago to write a retrospective on the other adventure included in GDW’s Double Adventure 3 for Traveller, The Argon Gambit. Compared to its companion, Death Station, it rarely receives much attention, even among dedicated Traveller fans. That’s understandable to a degree, since it is more closely tied to the Third Imperium setting and therefore less easily adapted to other contexts. Even so, The Argon Gambit is a solid scenario that plays to Traveller’s strengths as a more “serious” science fiction RPG. Rereading it, I was struck by how influential it must have been on me when I was younger, as its overall structure closely resembles many of the scenarios I’ve written or refereed over the years.

The Argon Gambit is very explicitly set in the Solomani Rim, far removed from the familiar Spinward Marches. This sector is defined primarily by human conflicts, especially the ideological tensions between the Solomani and the Third Imperium. Solomani belief in the superiority of Terran humans casts a long shadow here, shaping the sector's politics in ways that The Argon Gambit exploits for their adventure potential. 

In terms of structure, the adventure begins simply, in a way that familiar, almost clichéd, for longtime players of Traveller. The characters, in need of money, are hired to steal a set of genealogical documents from a villa in the titular city of Argon on the planet Janosz. Like all such jobs, it appears straightforward at first, but, as it turns out, the documents in question are being used for blackmail and their contents carry explosive political implications, since the Solomani Party places great emphasis on the genetic "purity" of its members. 

After the initial job, The Argon Gambit becomes a political mystery involving a three-way struggle within the local Solomani Party. A hardline supremacist, a moderate rival, and an ostensibly neutral power broker all maneuver for advantage. Behind them lurks a deeper game. The patron who hires the characters is himself an Imperial agent, seeking to manipulate events so that both major factions are discredited, leaving his own puppet in control.

It's a terrific set-up for an adventure that could only really work within the context of GDW's Third Imperium setting. That's both a blessing and curse, depending on how wedded one is to the game's official setting. For me, it was great, but I can easily imagine people less enthused with the setting finding it too obscure or focused on setting-specific minutiae to be useful. That's why I suspect The Argon Gambit doesn't get as much love as Death Station.

At the same time, the adventure, designed by Frank Chadwick, makes excellent use of the classic Traveller adventure components, like rumors, which it categorizes by source and ties to the characters’ backgrounds (e.g. Navy, TAS, noble title, etc.). These rumors are essential to understanding the situation on Janosz, though their presentation is frustrating. The referee must piece together the scenario much as the players do, only really understanding the full scope of what's happening after reading explanatory notes at its very end. That's not a problem as such, but it means the referee probably needs to read the adventure several times before attempting to run it (yes, yes, I know, that's only common sense ...).

More interesting, I think, is the moral ambiguity of the scenario. Everyone involved is compromised in some way and acting according to their own best interests. There's no obvious "right" way to proceed. The characters begin as pawns in someone else’s scheme, but, as they uncover more of what's actually happening, they, in turn, have the opportunity to bring about a conclusion that they think is best and the adventure passes no judgments on that. Consequently, it's a very open-ended and heavily reliant not just player choice but referee implementation. This is the kind of adventure that could kick off an entire campaign – or complicate an existing one.

It's a shame that The Argon Gambit isn't better known and appreciated. As I said at the beginning of this post, I hadn't realized the extent of its influence over my own personal style and preferences as a referee until I re-read it in preparation for writing this. I tend to include lots of moral ambiguity and compromised figures in my games. While I don't favor "edgy" or "dark" content, I likewise shy away from clear "good guys" and "bad guys," preferring NPCs whose motivations and actions are more muddled and, dare I say, human. I'm not sure I picked these tendencies up solely from The Argon Gambit, but there's no question the adventure played a role in my doing so, hence my continued affection for it after more than four decades.

Pulp Science Fiction Library: The Rebel Worlds

I'm sure it'll come as no surprise, given my recent posts here and over on my Substack, that I'm in a decidedly science fictional frame of mind of late. As work continues on the second edition of Thousand Suns, I'm finding it harder and harder to maintain any focus on fantasy, which usually occupies pride of place on the blog. Consequently, when I started pondering which story or novel I'd discuss today, I immediately thought of the tales of Poul Anderson's interstellar secret agent, Dominic Flandry, sometimes called "the James Bond of science fiction," even though he first appeared two years before Ian Fleming's much more famous character.

The Flandry stories have long been favorites of mine. I was probably introduced to them through Traveller, whose Third Imperium setting borrows liberally from Anderson's "Technic" future history featuring Flandry and his predecessors, Nicholas van Rijn and David Falkayn. Though I fell in love with these tales for their espionage-inflected action, what ultimately solidified their place in my affections was their understated melancholy. Flandry, as an officer of the Imperial Navy, is duty-bound to defend a sclerotic empire he knows is dying because he believes the alternative – the Long Night – is worse. Something about that spoke to me, even in my teen years, and, the older I get, the more it does so.

This theme is central to Anderson's 1969 novel of Flandry, The Rebel Worlds. The novel begins with Flandry being dispatched to Alpha Crucis sector to deal with the titular rebellion brewing there. The uprising began after Admiral Hugh McCormac, a respected and decorated officer, uncovers corruption abuses by the imperial governor of the sector. McCormac attempts to remove the governor, as is his right, but is instead arrested, along with his wife. The admiral eventually escapes custody and becomes the leader of a growing insurgency, not just against the corrupt governor but against the Empire itself. 

Flandry is ordered by Naval Intelligence to deal with this problem, but, as he investigates conditions in the sector, he finds that the rebels’ grievances are legitimate and that imperial rule there has indeed become exploitative and short-sighted. Complicating matters further, he becomes personally entangled with people connected to the rebellion, including the admiral’s wife, with whom he falls in love. Despite his sympathy for the rebels, Flandry ultimately concludes that allowing the revolt to succeed would weaken the Empire at a critical moment and hasten its ultimate collapse, an outcome he cannot countenance. He therefore works, with reluctance and increasing cynicism, to undermine the rebellion and restore imperial control, even as he recognizes that any victory he achieves for the Empire is only temporary but comes at the cost of justice. 

What I most enjoy about The Rebel Worlds is Anderson’s refusal to grant either Flandry or the reader a moral "escape hatch." The rebellion is justified; there is no doubt about that. Admiral McCormac is an honorable man responding to genuine abuses and his grievances against the Empire are real. Flandry himself recognizes this. Even so, he also believes that the consequences of successful revolt, even one undertaken for the "right" reasons, would serve as a catalyst for the Empire's collapse. The novel thus presents its central conflict as being between competing goods rather between something so simple as "good" and "evil."

This is the thematic core of the Flandry series. The Terran Empire is thoroughly corrupt and declining, but it still serves as a bulwark against the coming dark age of fragmentation and loss. Flandry is under no illusions about the Empire’s flaws. Indeed, the tragedy of the character lies in his clear-eyed understanding of them. Nevertheless, he chooses to defend it, not out of loyalty, let alone optimism, but because he judges the alternative to be worse. His is a calculus of decline, where every action preserves a flawed order at the cost of perpetuating its injustices.

That tension gives The Rebel Worlds its melancholy. Flandry’s wit, his indulgence in pleasure, even his romantic entanglement with McCormac's wife serve as a way of enduring the burden he carries. He succeeds in crushing the rebellion, but the victory is hollow. Because of his actions, the Empire endures for a little while longer. The Long Night is only postponed rather than prevented. That's enough for Flandry – or at least that's what he keeps telling himself in both this story and the others Anderson write about him.

If I may be so bold, I'd argue that The Rebel Worlds is about tragic responsibility. Though carrying himself with great panache, Flandry is not a hero who saves the day. Rather, he is a man who kicks the can of interstellar collapse down the road a little farther in the hope that, at the very least, he will never experience it during his lifetime. For Flandry, there are no clean choices, only necessary ones. Anderson's talent as a writer is that he doesn't cheer this or present it in a cool or edgy way. It's ultimately sad and tragic and that's probably why it continues to resonate with me after all these years. 

Retrospective: Death Station

GDW's Traveller is justifably lauded for the wealth of tools it provided the referee in generating his own adventures, such as procedures for generating worlds, handling trade, and creating encounters, among many others. However, the company also published a large number of ready-made adventures, too, starting with The Kinunir in 1979 and I think they deserve to be better appreciated for how much they contributed to the success of the game. Though not all every Traveller adventure is a winner, many are classics.

One such classic is Death Station, one of two adventures published in 1981 as Double Adventure 3 (the other being Argon Gambit, about which I'll talk next week). Designed by Marc Miller, Death Station exemplifies many of the sensibilities of early roleplaying adventures by being compact and largely concerned with providing a referee with a location, a problem, and a handful of dangers with which to challenge the player characters rather than much in the way of background detail. 

The scenario's premise is simple. The characters are hired by Lysani Laboratories to investigate a lab ship orbiting the world of Gadden after communication with it has been lost. Upon arrival, they discover that most of its crew is dead, while the station itself shows signs of damage. Further investigation reveals scattered clues pointing to psychochemical experiments intended to produce a new type of combat drug that heightened personal strength, dexterity, and endurance. The experiments were successful to a degree, but sabotage by a rival company resulted in the entire crew being exposed to an early version of the combat drugs that enhanced their physical abilities at the cost of their sanity. Now deranged, they pose a threat to anyone who boards the lab ship.

In a sense, Death Station offers what might be called a science fictional "dungeon,” complete with "monsters" in the form of the deranged crew. The lab ship is mapped and divided into keyed areas through which the player characters must move cautiously, examining laboratories, storage areas, and crew quarters. As in a fantasy dungeon, each location aboard ship offers the possibility of discovery, danger, or both. Logs, notes, and physical evidence gradually reveal what happened, while the deranged survivors and similarly deranged lab animals ensure that exploration is never safe.

The influence of movies like 1979's Alien is clear, I think, but, rather than resorting to an unknown extraterrestrial threat, Death Station opts instead for reckless science running afoul of corporate espionage, which fits well within Traveller's more sober approach to SF. Even so, the adventure has great atmosphere, which is a big part of why I count it among my Top 10 Classic Traveller adventures. The scenario relies less on direct exposition than on the gradual accumulation of clues. Some of that is a direct consequence of its sparseness of its descriptions and room keys, which is as much intentional as it is driven by the shortness of the page count.  

Even so, Miller includes four pages of referee's notes that help provide not only a brief overview of what happened aboard the lab ship and why but also guidelines for how to run encounters with the deranged crew and experimental animals. This is useful, since part of the fun of Death Station is navigating its cramped rooms and corridors while its inhabitants also move about and stalk the characters. Also included in the notes is a discussion of the effects of the experimental combat drug, which is also helpful in handling encounters involving the crew who are affected by it. 

My own experience with Death Station is that it’s both straightforward to run and surprisingly tense in play. The confined environment of the lab ship, combined with the unpredictable behavior of the drug-crazed crew, creates a constant sense of unease. The situation is made more tense due to the fact that, once the characters understand what's going on, they likely won't want to kill the surviving crew but instead seek a way to subdue and possibly cure them – at least, that's what has happened when I've made use of the scenario in the past.

From chatting with other Traveller fans, I've come to realize I'm not alone in regarding Death Station so highly. Its premise is immediately understandable, its structure is easy for a referee to grasp at a glance, and its atmosphere remains effective. Like many of GDW’s adventures, it provides just enough detail to establish the situation while leaving ample room for the referee to elaborate as needed. That balance between guidance and openness is a plus in my opinion and it’s certainly why Death Station has a lot of replay value, even after more than four decades since its publication.

The Emperor and I

I'd hoped to have something Halloween-y to post, but the only scare you get today is my face, when Marc Miller, creator of Traveller, kindly consented to having his photo take with me at Gamehole Con earlier this month. 

Somehow. October got away from me and I didn't get nearly as much done as I'd have liked. I suppose I simply underestimated just how disruptive attending multiple conventions in the same month would be. Live and learn. Here's to a more productive November!

An Amusement

Last night, a friend shared with me his "rebuttal" to my recent assertion that Traveller was "obviously" the best science fiction roleplaying game. 

I should add that, despite my devotion to Traveller — and, of course, Thousand Suns — I actually have genuine affection for Universe and would happily play in a game using its rules. It's an odd game, to be sure, but, much like its sibling, DragonQuest, it's got some interesting ideas buried within its complex rules, hence my continued fascination with it after all these years.

The Articles of Dragon: "Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming"

As I explained last week, the Ares Section of Dragon was an absolute favorite of mine during the period when I subscribed to the magazine. Consequently, many of the articles I remember most vividly from those years appeared within it. That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, since science fiction is my true love and, until the advent of the Ares Section, sci-fi articles in Dragon were comparatively rare. Now, I had several of them every month and I couldn't have been happier.

Issue #85 (May 1984) contained a good example of the kind of article that stuck with me for years afterward. Entitled "Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming," it was written by Roger E. Moore. Though only two full pages long, it packs a lot of great ideas and advice into it. Moore's premise is that it's easy, after years of playing Traveller, to start seeing the universe it depicts solely through the lens of its world generation tables. For seasoned players, the shorthand of the Universal World Profile (UWP) is both strangely comforting and something of a straitjacket. 

That's why Moore issued a friendly but firm warning in this article to veteran referees and players alike: don’t let those numbers lull you into a false sense of understanding. The UWP might provide a useful framework, but the real work of building compelling science fiction locales lies in what you do with that framework. In fact, he argues, the surface-level rigidity of Traveller’s world generation system presents a terrific springboard for the imagination, if you’re willing to embrace ambiguity, interpretation, and the joys of contradiction.

The article is thus something of a manifesto for imaginative refereeing. Moore gleefully dismantles the idea that a world with a size code of 0 must be "just an asteroid colony," instead proposing alternate interpretations. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s a massive orbital station or a rogue moon or even a city-sized relic orbiting a dead star. A tainted atmosphere might not just mean smog; it could signal hallucinogenic pollen, post-volcanic ash clouds, or trace gases that cause skin to fluoresce. Hydrographics might imply steaming oceans or acidic lakes or frozen continents skated across by iceships. His point is not to throw away the UWP, but to complicate it and to turn it into a prompt rather than a constraint.

What Moore suggests here is, of course, accepted wisdom among longtime Traveller referees nowadays, but, at the time, I don't recall its being so. Consequently, I found the article almost revelatory in the clever way it reminded the reader that the numbers of the UWP are just the beginning. The real act of world building comes from asking, “What else could this mean?” A participatory democracy on a low-tech world? Maybe it’s a direct voting system controlled by a sentient AI with its own motives. A law level of 9? That could mean total disarmament – or an arms-free society hiding behind widespread telepathic enforcement or ritualized violence. The possibilities are endless.

Perhaps Moore’s greatest gift in the article is his encouragement to take nothing for granted. He delights in the idea that official UWP data could be wrong, misleading, or faked. He points out that tech level is a poor predictor of what’s available, let alone what’s culturally important. He reminds us that a government can call itself one thing and behave like another. He also notes that rapid change, chaos, and revolution are just as true to a science fiction setting as any neat planetary entry in a subsector catalog.

What I found especially useful when I read the article forty(!) years ago is that Moore doesn’t reject the UWP system or advocate abandoning this distinctive aspect of Traveller. Rather, he shows how to deepen and expand it. His is not a call for gonzo chaos or narrative fiat, but for interpretive richness and contextual layering. This is particularly useful in slower-paced campaigns, where the referee has time to imbue each world with history, nuance, and surprise. A jump-2 merchant route then becomes a journey through half a dozen genuinely unique cultures, each shaped as much by what's not revealed by the UWP as by what is.

What makes “Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming” still worth reading decades after its publication is not just the soundness of Moore’s advice, but the spirit in which it’s offered. As he so often is, Moore is playful, generous, and imaginative. He invites Traveller referees to breathe life into the game by treating each world as an adventure waiting to be discovered rather than a string of stats to be decoded. As a teenaged fan of Traveller, Moore’s article gave me permission to push beyond the rules as written and encouraged me to make the Traveller universe feel as strange as I could imagine it to be. This why this article has stayed with me all these years and why it still deserves to be remembered.

The Articles of Dragon: "Luna: A Traveller's Guide"

 I subscribed to Dragon from issue #68 (December 1982) till #127 (November 1987). During that five-year period, my favorite section of the magazine – by far – was the Ares Section, which appeared in its pages each month from issue #84 (April 1984) until issue #111 (July 1986). That's because the Ares Section, as its name suggests, was devoted entirely to science fiction roleplaying games and, being even more of a sci-fi nerd than I am a fantasy one, this held a great deal of appeal for me. As you'll know doubt learn over the course of the coming weeks, many of my favorite and most beloved articles of Dragon appeared in the Ares Section and left a lasting impact on both my memories of the magazine as a whole and one my youthful imagination.

One of the interesting things the section's editors occasionally did was run series in which a topic was given an article devoted to showing how that topic was handled in a particular science fiction RPG. One of the first one (and one of the best) concerned Earth's satellite, the Moon. Over the course of five articles, the Ares Section treated readers to depictions of the Moon in Gamma World, Star Trek, Space Opera, Other Suns, and, finally, Traveller, the last of which is the subject of today's post. I found all these articles incredibly interesting, though, as you'd expect, the one for Traveller, appearing in issue #87 (July 1984), is the one most dear to my heart.

To begin with, the article in question was penned by none other than the creator of Traveller, himself, Marc W. Miller. That immediately lent it a high degree of importance in my young eyes. Miller was to Traveller as Gary Gygax was to Dungeons & Dragons: the final authority. Consequently, when his byline appeared on an article – which was rare, much rarer than Gygax – I took it very seriously. I took "Luna: A Traveller's Guide" as absolutely official and duly incorporated the information contained in it into my Traveller adventures and campaigns. 

Furthermore, the article described the Moon – or Luna, as it's called here – within the context of GDW's Third Imperium setting. For those unfamiliar with the intricacies of that setting, Earth (or Terra) is the homeworld of the Solomani, the "original" human race that evolved naturally on that planet. All other human races, like the Vilani and the Zhodani, descended from Terran humans transplanted to other worlds by the mysterious Ancients, a technologically advanced alien race that once roamed the galaxy 300,000 years ago. Terra and Luna are currently under military occupation by the Third Imperium, a consequence of losing the Solomani Rim War more than a century ago, when the Solomani attempted to secede from the Imperium.

It's against this backdrop that Miller presents his vision of Luna as a lightly populated scientific colony in orbit around the homeworld of humaniti (as Traveller spells the name of the human race taken as a whole). Miller provides information on the population and demographics of the Moon, its settlements and transportion, its politics, and, of course, its history. The latter is especially interesting, as it helps to provide additional details about the deep background of the Third Imperium setting, such as the Solomani discovery of jump drive and its role in the Interstellar Wars against the Vilani First Imperium. As a teenager, this was catnip to me, both as a Traveller fan and as someone who'd grown up in the afterglow of the 1969 Moon landing.

I loved it all, of course, but, re-reading the article now, I do wonder what people not as immersed in the Third Imperium setting would have thought of it. For example, there are lots of adventure seeds throughout the article, but almost all of them tie into some aspect of imperial history or some other unique aspect of the Third Imperium. That's not a unique "problem" to this article; the other treatments of the Moon are similar in this regard. However, it's something I noticed now and started to think about: how does one present an adventure locale that simultaneously leverages its connection to a particular setting while also providing something of interest/use to people who don't use or know much about that setting? This is a question I still struggle with to some degree and I suspect I'm not the only RPG writer who does so.

But, as I said, I didn't even notice it at the time. I was simply excited to learn more about the Moon in one of my favorite imaginary settings. From that perspective, "Luna: A Traveller's Guide" gave me everything I wanted and more. 

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: Ares

I'm going to cheat for today's installment of this series. Rather than focusing on a single article from issue #84 of Dragon (April 1984), I'm instead going to talk about Ares, the magazine's new science fiction gaming section. First, a bit of background. Between 1980 and 1982, SPI published a gaming magazine entitled Ares. The magazine included a complete game in every issue (as was once typical of wargaming magazines), along with articles and reviews. Though not limited to sci-fi by any means, Ares did have a slightly science fictional bent to its content. There were eleven issues of Ares before TSR acquired SPI in 1982, followed by five more issues after the acquisition. The last stand-alone issue of Ares was published in "Winter 1983." TSR never really knew what to do with SPI's properties and wound up frittering them away over the course of the next few years, in the process alienating the company's considerable fanbase, many of whom (quite rightly) felt that TSR had handled the situation very badly. Though TSR tried to make some use of SPI's name and products, only the Ares name survived for long – and even then, "long" is a relative term.

From issue #84 to issue #111 (July 1986), Ares was one of my favorite sections of Dragon, since I've always been more of a SF fan than a fantasy one. The section featured articles on games like Traveller and Star Trek and Space Opera, as well as Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and a host of superhero games, especially Marvel Super Heroes. Because sci-fi has always played second (or third) banana to fantasy, you'd have expected that the pool of articles would have been pretty shallow in Ares but that wasn't the case. In my opinion, the quality of the articles in this section was consistently high, higher even than that of the rest of Dragon (which is saying something). However, its appeal was definitely more limited, which is why I suspect it was eventually killed. Why devote some many pages of each issue to genres that are also-rans compared to fantasy, especially D&D's brand of fantasy?

To this day, though, when I look back on the years when I subscribed to Dragon, the Ares articles are among those that stick out most prominently in my mind. Its coverage of Gamma World, for example, was truly excellent and I used a number of its Traveller rules variants over the years. And of course Jeff Grubb's regular "The Marvel-Phile" column was invaluable if you were running a Marvel Super Heroes campaign (or even if you weren't and were just a fan of the comics). I've always thought it a pity that a non-fantasy-centric gaming mag never really gained any degree of prominence. GDW's Challenge, where my first published writings appeared, was a decent stab at such a thing, but it eventually folded, too, much to my disappointment. Like Ares, Challenge filled a hole in the hobby that needed filling. In my opinion, it still does.

Traveller Distinctives: World Generation

When GDW released Traveller in 1977, it stood apart from other roleplaying games of the time in several important ways. Most notably, it was not a fantasy game. It didn’t rely on the tropes of sword and sorcery or draw inspiration from the likes of Robert E. Howard or J.R.R. Tolkien. Instead, Traveller presented a vast, impersonal universe of interstellar trade, mercenary tickets, and political intrigue. Perhaps even more significant than its subject matter, however, was its approach to setting creation. Traveller’s world generation system, unlike the improvisational or campaign-specific methods typical of Dungeons & Dragons, was systematic, abstract, and procedurally expansive, offering something genuinely new in RPG design.

At a time when most referees were painstakingly handcrafting maps, cities, and dungeons for their games, Traveller provided a straightforward but elegant toolset for generating entire subsectors of space, one hex at a time. As outlined in Book 3 of the original boxed set, aptly titled Worlds and Adventures, each world was reduced to a Universal World Profile (UWP), a concise string of alphanumeric codes representing atmosphere, population, government type, law level, and more. Though cryptic at first glance, these codes become, in practice, powerful spurs to creativity, prompting referees to extrapolate complex social and environmental conditions from simple numeric entries.

Even before the first session began, Traveller encouraged the referee to engage in a kind of solitary, exploratory “play.” Generating worlds, assigning trade classifications, and mapping out political and economic relationships quickly becomes an absorbing exercise in its own right, as any long-time Traveller referee can attest. Indeed, it's a major part of the game's fun. Rather than merely preparing background details, the referee is, in effect, discovering the setting as he rolls the dice. The process became a kind of solo game, one where the rules and randomness combined to yield an emergent and unpredictable sector of space – varied, dynamic, and rich with potential for adventure.

The UWP itself is a marvel of minimalist design. Each digit or letter conveys essential information about a world, but does so in a way that suggests deeper histories, social structures, and gameplay consequences. A high-tech world with a low law level and a major starport hints at a bustling, semi-legal trade hub teeming with intrigue. A planet with a corrosive atmosphere and feudal government might suggest dying aristocracies clinging to power amidst environmental collapse. The referee is handed the bare bones of a world, but the system demands logical extrapolation for understanding, making worldbuilding a disciplined act of imaginative interpretation.

In contrast to the tendency of Dungeons & Dragons toward medieval pastiche, Traveller offers fewer cultural defaults. The worlds it generates are often strange, uneven, and wildly diverse in terms of tech level, population, and governance, even when separated by only a single parsec. This patchwork character isn’t a flaw. Instead, it suggests a galaxy shaped by ancient collapses, forgotten wars, and the long, staggered climb of civilization across the stars. The system invites referees to consider not just planetary conditions, but also their histories and interrelations.

Crucially, Traveller’s world generation is not mere flavor text. It directly informs core gameplay systems: trade tables, starship design, navigation, and random encounters all hinge, to varying degrees, on the specifics of a world’s UWP. A character’s ability to turn a profit, refuel a ship, or avoid entanglement with the authorities likewise depends on the values generated for each planet. The setting is not simply a backdrop, but a source of friction and consequence. Logistics and environment shape player choices in a more concrete and procedural way than in early Dungeons & Dragons (or arguably in any version of it).

This interdependence gives real weight to the act of, well, traveling from world to world across a subsector hex map. Jumping into a new system is never a formality; it’s a calculated risk. Will there be fuel available? Is the local government welcoming or hostile? Can the party offload its cargo for a profit or will they be detained and searched upon landing? The interconnected nature of the world generation tables feeds into a broader gameplay loop, rewarding both strategic planning and seat-of-your-pants improvisation.

Where early D&D encouraged a bottom-up style of worldbuilding – start with a dungeon, add a nearby village, and let the world expand outward through play – Traveller supports and even rewards a top-down approach. A referee could generate an entire subsector before the players had even rolled up their characters. This inversion suggests a different philosophy of play, one less concerned with "zero to hero" advancement and more focused on navigation (literal and figurative) through a complex and often indifferent universe.

It’s also worth emphasizing that the original 1977 edition of Traveller came with no predefined setting. The now-iconic Third Imperium, with which the game would later become closely associated, didn’t appear until 1979’s The Spinward Marches. Initially, the game offered only methods and tools for generating one’s own interstellar polities, trade routes, and points of conflict. That openness was deliberate. It invited referees to craft their own empires, borderlands, pirate nests, and forgotten colonies. Because of the inherent randomness in the system, even the referee could be surprised by what emerged, lending the process an exploratory thrill that echoed the game’s broader focus.

This is why I consider Traveller’s world generation system not only one of its most distinctive features, but a landmark in early RPG design. With nothing more than a few tables and a handful of dice, a referee could conjure up entire regions of space that are structured, coherent, and teeming with possibility. More than that, the system reflects and reinforces the thematic core of the game itself: a universe not of dungeons and dragons, but of distance, data, and discovery. Nearly fifty years later, it remains unmatched for its combination of utility and elegance.

Retrospective: Alien Module 7: Hivers

By the time Alien Module 7: Hivers was published in 1986, the Traveller role-playing game was approaching its tenth anniversary. Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) already had a great deal of experience in producing sourcebooks to the major alien races of the Third Imperium, producing some of the line’s most inventive and distinctive supplements. The Hivers, among the most enigmatic of Traveller’s aliens were a natural fit for this deep-dive treatment. Their inscrutable nature and radical departure from humanoid norms demanded a module that could capture their alien essence while expanding the possibilities of the game itself.

Unlike the Vargr, with their wolf-pack dynamics dressed in science-fictional trappings, or the Aslan, who embodied the archetype of the "proud warrior race," the Hivers defied easy categorization. They were, in a word, strange – non-humanoid, non-violent, intellectually aloof, and relentlessly meddlesome. Their radial, starfish-like physiology and their communication through color changes and body posture evoked a biology more akin to deep-sea creatures than traditional sci-fi aliens. Their penchant for subtle, centuries-long manipulation of other species felt like something drawn from the cosmic visions of Olaf Stapledon or the surreal imaginings of Cordwainer Smith (even though the book openly admits the debt owed to Larry Niven’s Pierson’s Puppeteers and Outsiders). Despite this, the Hivers were a wholly unique creation, their oddity amplified by a psychology that prioritized intricate social engineering over direct action.

The success of Alien Module 7: Hivers in giving shape and substance to such an unconventional species is a testament to the talents of its principal authors: William H. Keith, J. Andrew Keith, Loren Wiseman, and Traveller creator Marc Miller. Structured like its predecessors, the module is divided into sections covering history, physiology, psychology, society, technology, along with rules for generating Hiver characters. Yet what immediately sets it apart is how bizarre its subject matter is. The Hivers are not “rubber suit” aliens defined by a single cultural quirk. Their biology is profoundly non-human: they reproduce almost accidentally without pair bonding or even emotional investment, communicate via mechanisms no human could intuitively grasp, and perceive the universe through a lens shaped by their intense curiosity. Their society, too, defies familiar models. Rather than being organized around governments or hierarchies, Hiver civilization is a loose tapestry of individuals pursuing esoteric, often opaque "topics" – long-term investigations that might span centuries and often involve subtly steering entire civilizations toward particular ends. One cannot help but draw comparisons to the Bene Gesserit of Dune, with their millennia-spanning schemes or even Lovecraft’s Elder Things, with whom the Hivers share a faint physical resemblance, though without the malice or cosmic horror.

What further distinguishes Hivers from earlier Alien Modules is its refusal to reduce its subject to easily digestible tropes. The Hivers are not warriors, traders, or pirates; they are manipulators, schemers, and architects of destiny. Their commitment to nonviolence is not a weakness but a cornerstone of their civilization, shaping their every interaction. They are not pacifists in the conventional sense but they are deeply opposed to overt conflict, preferring to neutralize threats through careful, almost surgical social redesign. The module provides a vivid example of this approach in their centuries-long maneuvering against the K’kree, their militant, herbivorous neighbors, a species almost as alien to human eyes as themselves. 

As presented, a campaign involving the Hivers is unlikely to revolve around the familiar beats of firefights, starship chases, or planetary exploration. Instead, it gestures toward something slower and subtler: espionage, cultural subversion, and interstellar diplomacy of a particularly insidious kind. However, this is also where the module falters. While it does provide broad advice on running Hiver-centric adventures, it rarely offers the kinds of concrete examples that would help a referee bring these high-concept scenarios to life at the table. The included adventure, “Something Stinks!,” is brief and unmemorable, more a sketch than a scenario and one that never quite demonstrates how to make the Hivers’ unique qualities matter in play. This is a common flaw in the Alien Module series: strong ideas paired with underdeveloped tools for implementation.

That said, one of the book's more subtle successes lies in how it situates its subject within the wider Traveller setting without dulling their strangeness. The Hivers’ influence on the Imperium is indirect but pervasive, shaping events from the shadows through trade agreements, cultural shifts, and strategic nudges – at least, that’s what they’d like you to believe. This ambiguity is where the module’s potential becomes most intriguing. The Hivers are not just another species; they are potentially a vehicle for a different kind of science fiction roleplaying, one that rewards speculation, inference, and even conspiracy-minded thinking. The fact that they remain difficult to grasp even after 48 pages of focused attention feels less like a failure and more like a feature, though one that may frustrate as often as it inspires.

In the end, Alien Module 7: Hivers is an ambitious but uneven entry in the Traveller canon. It introduces a compellingly alien species with a richly imagined culture and worldview, yet it struggles to translate that material into content easily usable in play. The ideas are strong and the writing imaginative, but too often the referee is left to do the heavy lifting. Still, for those intrigued by the prospect of a campaign built around manipulation, subtlety, and long-term consequences, the module offers a tantalizing foundation. Like the Hivers themselves, it prefers to hint and suggest rather than declare outright. Whether that is a strength or a weakness will depend on the kind of game you wish to run.

My Traveller: 2300 (Part II)

The last Interstellar War between the Vilani Ziru Sirka and the Terran Confederation – dubbed by historians the Nth Interstellar War, because, after 200 years of sporadic, on-and-off hostilities, it was no longer clear when one war ended and another began – concluded in 2302, with a Terran victory. Though the Terrans never actually reached the Vilani capital of Vland, which was still several sectors away from the front lines, two centuries of defeats had finally toppled the already-tottering empire. Admiral Hiroshi Estigarribia, commander of the Terran forces, accepted the surrender of the Vilani ishimkarun ("shadow emperor"), thus beginning the occupation of the imperium. 

I had mistakenly assumed that this was the time period during which Traveller: 2300 would be set – the early years of the Terran occupation of the Vilani empire. In Traveller's future history, there's a 15-year period between the defeat of the Vilani and the establishment of a successor state, the Rule of Man (known to later history as the Second Imperium or "Ramshackle Empire"). During this time, more than 100,000 Terran naval officers were dispatched to worlds across Vilani space to take over the reins of government, to direct the local bureaucracies, and to maintain peace and order. In some cases, Terran ensigns were faced with governing entire worlds, while commanders of light cruisers were now administering entire subsectors. 

Terran forces were stretched seriously thin and faced with the nigh-impossible task of propping up what remained of the Vilani government, because, if it had fully collapsed and interstellar trade had ceased, billions across hundreds of worlds might have died. This is the scenario I imagined Traveller: 2300 was setting up as the backdrop for the game. I had visions in my head of player characters being assigned to a single world to govern it in the aftermath of the Vilani defeat, dealing with all that that entailed, including the culture shock of the ossified, stratified Vilani culture that had rigidly governed thousands of worlds for close to two millennia prior to this point. In short, it'd be an interstellar "domain game" in a situation reminiscent of Alexander's defeat of the Persian Empire in the 4th century BC.

But that's not all. In Traveller's history, the end of the Vilani empire precipitates changes in Terran society too. In 2317, the Terran Confederation announced plans to directly annex the entire imperium to itself, administering it and its resources as spoils of war. Doing so would have made many people on Terra very wealthy but at the cost of the Vilani people, whom the Terran Navy had spent more than a decade working with in order to stave off the worst. Many senior naval officers, including Admiral Estigarribia, were incensed by this and refused their orders. Indeed, Estigarribia and his allies launched a coup that overthrew the Confederation and installed him as "Protector of Terra and Regent of the Vilani Imperium." The Rule of Man was born.

What I was hoping was that Traveller: 2300 would have been a political game, in which the characters, whether or not they work with the Terran Navy, would have to navigate the shifting currents of the early Second Imperium, as its leaders struggled to maintain order, establish legitimacy, and manage the vast inheritance of a fallen interstellar hegemon. Such a setting would be rich with opportunities for intrigue, factional politics, and moral quandaries. Would the characters remain loyal to Estigarribia’s “emergency rule,” or seek to restore some semblance of the old Confederation? Would they champion native Vilani rights and customs or impose Terran reforms? What compromises would they make when ruling over entire worlds with little more than a couple of small starships and a handful of junior officers for support?

Imagine a campaign where the party’s ship is not just a vehicle for exploration or combat, but a traveling court or a flying colonial office. Each jump brings the characters to a different world, each with its own challenges: Vilani aristocrats playing at collaboration while secretly plotting revolt; ancient bureaucracies gumming up every effort at reform; smugglers, pirates, or rival Terran factions taking advantage of the power vacuum. Do the player characters use brute force to impose stability? Try to build consensus among local rulers? Or exploit the chaos for personal gain?

It’s the kind of campaign backdrop that combines space opera with elements of historical drama, diplomacy, and empire-building – think Birthright but in space. The chaos of the postwar period isn’t just background color – it’s the whole point. Players must grapple with what kind of future they want to build amid the ruins of the past. Of course, this is not the game that Traveller: 2300 is or was ever intended to be, but this is what I had hoped it would be and that I'd still like to run some day, because I think it's got a lot of potential.

Indeed, I almost ran a campaign along these lines maybe 15 or 20 years ago. The characters were all senior officers on the staff of an ambitious Terran admiral. As Hiroshi Estigarribia lay dying, he saw an opportunity to seize control, becoming his successor. Unfortunately, he is beaten to the punch by Estigarribia's chief of staff, who presents himself as Emperor Hiroshi II, establishing a new regime. The admiral, who is the characters' patron, now plots to find a way to achieve his original goal from behind the scenes, with the characters engaging in all sorts of political and military skullduggery. 

I never got very far into planning the campaign, in part because I soon realized that doing the concept justice would take a lot of work. I'd probably need some "domain" mechanics and larger scale starship combat rules, not to mention some system for handling influence and favors. I'd probably handwave a lot of that now, but, back then, before I'd fully immersed myself in old school play, that wasn't something I seriously considered. I also wasn't confident enough as a referee to pull it off. So, the idea still percolates in the back of my brain, waiting for an opportunity when I might make use of it.

Anyway, this is my vision for a "proper" Traveller: 2300. 

Symbol of the Rule of Man

My Traveller: 2300 (Part I)

In my discussions of GDW’s other science fiction roleplaying game, 2300AD, I’ve often mentioned that, when it was initially released under the title Traveller: 2300, I mistakenly believed the game to be a prequel to Traveller – a look into the prehistory of the Third Imperium setting. I assumed that the game presented events set in the year 2300 of Traveller’s own timeline, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become the interstellar empire familiar to long-time fans. I was wrong, of course. Traveller: 2300 was its own thing entirely, unconnected to the Traveller universe despite the branding.

That said, once I got past my initial confusion, I found Traveller: 2300 to be genuinely interesting in its own right. Over the years, I’ve had a great deal of fun playing it (and hope to do so again someday). Clearly, though, I wasn’t the only person to make this mistaken connection between the two games. That’s likely why GDW eventually changed the title to 2300AD, first truncating it simply to 2300 and then settling on the now-familiar title. As far as I can recall, only one or two products were ever released with the original Traveller: 2300 logo before the title change clarified matters.

I bring this up because, toward the end of last month, a reader left a comment on a post I’d written about Traveller: 2300, suggesting that I write a piece about what I’d do if I were to design a genuine Traveller prequel. As others were quick to point out, such a prequel already exists: Marc Miller’s Traveller, released in 1996 and now commonly referred to by fans as T4. This edition is set at the dawn of the Third Imperium – Year 0 – when Cleon Zhunastu, an industrialist turned statesman, oversees the transformation of the Sylean Federation into the Third Imperium, the third great human empire to dominate Charted Space.

The concept behind T4 is a strong one. The early days of the Third Imperium are fertile ground for adventure and intrigue. There’s plenty to do, as Cleon and his allies attempt to reestablish interstellar governance after nearly 1800 years of disunity and fragmentation following the Long Night. Unfortunately, the execution left much to be desired. T4 was plagued by a host of problems – poor editing, confusing mechanics, and books riddled with errata. Even many long-time Traveller enthusiasts found it frustrating and it never quite caught on. I was initially quite enthusiastic myself, but my excitement faded rapidly with the publication of the first few disorganized and unevenly written supplements.

Returning to my earlier confusion about Traveller: 2300, what I had expected – incorrectly – was a game set during the early centuries of Traveller’s own timeline, specifically after the invention of the jump drive by humans on Earth (later known as the Solomani) in the early 22nd century. According to the game’s canonical history, these early Terrans launched exploratory missions to nearby stars, only to discover that many had already been claimed by a powerful and ancient interstellar polity: the Ziru Sirka, or Grand Empire of Stars, ruled by the Vilani, humans of an entirely separate origin.

Inevitably, relations between the upstart Terran Confederation and the ossified Vilani empire soured, culminating in a series of protracted conflicts collectively known as the Interstellar Wars. Over the course of two centuries, the Terrans slowly but inexorably dismantled the Vilani imperium, a period detailed in GDW’s Imperium board wargame. This era of history is ripe with potential, filled with exploration, diplomacy, war, and cultural clashes – a veritable golden age for adventure.

If the name "Interstellar Wars" sounds familiar, that’s likely because Steve Jackson Games released a book by that title in 2006 as part of its GURPS Traveller line. GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars is a commendable book, well-researched and engaging in many respects. However, I’ve always felt it was held back somewhat by being tied to the GURPS system. While I have great respect for GURPS as a universal roleplaying system (and even contributed to several of its Traveller-related products), I don’t believe it’s a particularly natural fit for the kind of game Traveller is at heart. Regardless, Interstellar Wars focuses specifically on the period from 2113, when the first war between Terrans and Vilani began, to 2302, when the final conflict ended in the Vilani surrender. That puts only the very tail end of that timeline within the range I had mistakenly imagined Traveller: 2300 would cover. So, while GURPS Interstellar Wars is admirable in many respects, it doesn’t quite align with the vision I had in mind.

And what was that vision? What sort of Traveller prequel would I create if given the chance? That is the subject for Part II, which will appear tomorrow.

Traveller Distinctives: Speculative Trade

One of the most distinctive features of Traveller is its embrace of systems and procedures that actively generate adventure, rather than merely supporting it. While there are a great many of these to be found within the original three Little Black Books, none stands out more than Book 2's speculative trade rules. While some might view them as a subsystem for creating background flavor or side income, these rules can, if used properly, form the beating heart of a campaign, particularly one inspired by the traditions of classic space opera.

Unlike most roleplaying games, where economic concerns are usually hand-waved or simplified to a matter of "you have enough funds to buy equipment and live," Traveller treats interstellar trade as a central and often risky endeavor. With a starship mortgage payment looming over the heads of the player characters, the need to turn a profit is not just a narrative conceit: it's an ever-present pressure that drives decision-making and gameplay. Whether the characters are ex-navy officers, cashiered merchants, or washed-up scouts, they still have to keep the ship flying and that means finding a way to pay the bills.

The rules for speculative trade are deceptively simple: each world has one or more trade codes that influence what goods are available and in demand. Players can roll for available cargos, purchase them at one price, and attempt to sell them for profit elsewhere. However, this simple structure masks something surprisingly powerful. The trade tables and modifiers turn the Traveller universe into a sandbox filled with opportunities. Trade becomes more than a downtime activity; it becomes the reason to leave a starport, to make the next jump, to hope that those pharmaceuticals you just found for cheap on a non-agricultural world will turn you a huge profit on an industrial world elsewhere in the subsector. Speculative trade rewards exploration and fosters player-driven action within the game world, offering the crew a sense of purpose and autonomy that few RPGs can match.

In this sense, speculative trade in Traveller functions a little bit like a dungeon in fantasy Dungeons & Dragons. Like the dungeon, trade provides structure, risk, and reward. Rather than moving room by room, the characters engaged in trade by jumping from world to world, each with its own risks – pirates, overzealous officials, expensive brokers, and volatile markets. Every jump is a gamble, every cargo hauled a potential fortune or disaster. Like a good dungeon, the trade system is laced with unpredictability. The randomness of the tables means players must deal with both lucky windfalls and frustrating dry spells. This, in turn, encourages creative problem solving. Do we take on passengers instead? Try our hand at smuggling? Accept a dubious patron's offer to transport illicit cargo? The game doesn't tell you what to do, but it gives you the tools to decide.

I've talked before about the centrality of patrons in Traveller. The trade system often works hand in glove with patron encounters. When speculative trade isn't enough to cover fuel or mortgage payments, patrons become essential. They offer dangerous but lucrative alternatives to normal commerce, reinforcing the economic and moral ambiguity of life on the fringes of civilized space. A crew might thus find themselves hauling mining equipment one week and weapons for a rebel cell the next, all while trying to stay one step ahead of Navy patrol cruisers or a corporate debt collector. These intersections between trade and patronage add texture and variety to a session, ensuring that even the most mercantile campaign can pivot into intrigue, espionage, or even open conflict. Conversely, games with other focuses can benefit from making use of the speculative trading rules, as I saw time and again during my Riphaeus Sector campaign.

What makes all this so striking is how rarely I've encountered systems of this sort in other RPGs, except perhaps those that were (explicitly or implicitly) cribbing from Traveller. While some games offer crafting systems or allow players to buy and sell goods, few present trade as a campaign-shaping activity in and of itself. Fewer still provide procedures robust enough to let an entire group play as independent traders without needing to be railroaded into scripted plots. In Traveller, the ship is your character's home, his workplace, and an adventure generator. Every jump, every transaction, every roll of the dice contributes to the unfolding of a meaningful campaign built from choices and consequences.

This focus on trade also helps shape the kind of characters Traveller produces. It's a game that supports brokers, engineers, and navigators as much as it does marines or naval officers. The dream of many player characters isn't to become a great galactic hero but to retire comfortably after a few lucky runs, maybe even owning their ship outright. It is a quieter kind of success, one rooted in competence, tenacity, and a certain cynicism born from dealing with the interstellar bureaucracy and the dangers of the frontier. These characters are rarely larger-than-life icons. Instead, they're professionals, survivors, and schemers trying to make a living in a universe that doesn't care about them.

In the end, speculative trade in Traveller is more than just another subsystem. It's a lens through which the game's unique style of play can come into focus: risk, independence, grit, and the lure of the unknown. It invites players to become merchant princes, chasing profits and dodging disaster, one jump at a time. In doing so, it captures something essential not only about Traveller as a game, but about the science fiction literature that inspired it, where the stars are full of promise and fortune favors the bold.

Traveller Distinctives: The Patron

One of the fascinating aspects of early RPGs is how they slowly formalized the logic of play. Dungeons & Dragons may have established the basic parameters of what a roleplaying game was, but it often left many questions unanswered. Why do the characters delve into dungeons? Who sends them? The answers were left to the referee. The occasional NPC might offer a mission or contract, but these were incidental, tools of the moment rather than a foundation of play.

Traveller, meanwhile, took a different approach. While it certainly didn’t invent the concept of the patron – an NPC who hires the characters to perform a job – it brought that arrangement front and center. Patrons weren’t just another option; they were core to how the game was expected to be played. The “Patrons” section of Book 3: Worlds and Adventures includes a table of potential patrons designed precisely to facilitate adventure hooks through employment. The Traveller Book is even more explicit in its discussion of patrons:

The key to adventures in Traveller is the patron. When a band of adventurers meets an appropriate patron, they have a person who can give them direction in their activities, and who can reward them for success. The patron is the single most important non-player character possible.

I don't think the game could be clearer. Patrons aren't just a suggestion; their appearance in a campaign is a procedural expectation. Traveller assumes that characters, once generated and set loose in the universe, will look for patrons in starports, bars, or back alleys, seeking work. The encounter charts in the rules were tools to support this play style, providing both inspiration and structure.

The 1980 supplement 76 Patrons reinforces the centrality of the patron. Rather than present long-form adventures as Traveller had done elsewhere, it offers 76 short patron encounters for the referee to slot into his own campaign. Each comes with 2–6 possibilities, ranging from the mundane to the sinister.

The group is contacted by a newly married couple, who decline to give their names, but have reason to believe that their respective parents are not pleased with their union. They will pay Cr3000 to each member of a group who will escort them safely to a planet beyond their parents' sphere of influence.

Are the newlyweds telling the truth? Why do their parents disapprove? What happens when the characters decide to help them? The beauty of the format 76 Patrons introduces is its open-endedness. A patron encounter is not a fully fleshed-out scenario but rather a situation, a prompt that acts as a springboard for play, driven by player choice and referee improvisation. It’s a wonderful model that encourages episodic, player-directed campaigns, compatible with a wide range of activities: bodyguard duty, espionage, smuggling, salvage, courier missions, outright crime – you name it.

What’s more, this system makes sense within the larger science fictional context depicted in Traveller. The player characters are often former military personnel, merchants, or scouts, recently discharged from service with a pension, a few skills, and perhaps a ship with a mortgage. They’re not heroes out to save the world, but freelancers trying to keep the lights on. This framework gives Traveller a tone distinct from that of D&D. It's less about fighting adversaries in dangerous locales and more about negotiating contracts, weighing risks, and navigating a morally gray universe. The use of patrons supports a looser, sandbox-style approach to campaign structure, encouraging referees to present opportunities for players to involve their characters in a wide variety of interstellar hijinks.

Today, it's easy to recognize the importance of patrons in Traveller, because the idea of an NPC giving out jobs seems commonplace. But in 1977, just three years after the release of OD&D, few games emphasized this as a default mode of play. Traveller systematized the role of the patron and, in doing so, offered another way to structure an adventure, one rooted in negotiation, opportunity, and choice rather than exploration alone. That quiet shift in procedure helped lay the groundwork for decades of mission-based, open-ended roleplaying. I don't think it's any coincidence that, having played Traveller for so long, my default campaign frame includes lots of patrons to present opportunities to the player characters. The House of Worms campaign, for example, makes heavy use of patrons to this day. In my experience, it's a robust and flexible foundation that fosters engagement, supports improvisation, and sustains long-term play across almost any genre.

The Long Game (Part III)

In Parts I and II of this series, I laid out some of the principles and practices that have helped me successfully referee several long-running RPG campaigns. In my experience, flexibility, treating the game world as a living place, and investing in player choices all pay huge dividends. I also touched on my weekly routine: very light prep, frequent reuse of old material, tracking what matters, and finding ways to maintain player engagement between sessions. All of this is system-agnostic and, to some extent, it can be applied to any roleplaying game with the right mindset. However, I’ve found that certain games make this style of play easier. They either assume it from the start or provide rules and mechanics that reinforce the kind of open-ended, collaborative worldbuilding that long campaigns thrive on.

So, to conclude this part of the series – there are a few more related posts coming next week – I want to recommend a handful of RPGs I’ve played that I think are particularly well-suited to supporting enduring, player-driven campaigns.

Dungeons & Dragons

The TSR editions of Dungeons & Dragons, especially AD&D, are built on assumptions that naturally support long-term campaign play. They treat the referee as the final authority, assume player freedom of action, and offer no built-in plot or “story.” Advancement after the first few levels is slow, exploration is richly rewarded, and the game world exists beyond the player characters. These games provide excellent frameworks for the kind of emergent, faction-rich, consequence-driven campaigns that I’ve found work well over the long haul. Though I haven’t played AD&D in years, I still think it has just the right mix of elements to encourage sustained, imaginative play, especially if the referee is comfortable using his own judgment.

D&D Derivatives

While it probably goes without saying, I nevertheless want to be explicit: most RPGs that share a lot of rules or mechanical DNA with early Dungeons & Dragons are likely well-suited to long campaigns. I’m talking about games like Gamma World or Empire of the Petal Throne (obviously), as well as the many retro-clones of D&D. Particularly worth mentioning are Kevin Crawford’s Stars Without Number and related games. These not only preserve the simplicity of older systems but also explicitly support long-form sandbox play with tools for faction management, procedural content, and worldbuilding. In fact, I’d say many of the principles and practices I discussed in the earlier parts of this series really crystallized for me after I first read Stars Without Number all those years ago.

Traveller

The default playstyle of Traveller revolves around sandbox exploration, commerce, patronage, and factional intrigue, all of which are ideal ingredients for long-term campaigns. The original 1977 rules support the growth and development of an enduring campaign through a robust set of procedural tools: world and sector generation, reaction rolls, random encounters, and more. Traveller encourages players to make their own way in the universe, taking risks, building reputations, and developing relationships with factions and NPCs. Since I’ve been playing and thinking about Traveller for decades, I don’t think there’s any doubt it’s had an outsized influence on how I referee RPGs in general. Its assumptions and tools are deeply compatible with the kind of campaign play I find most rewarding.

Pendragon

For something more structured but still open-ended, Pendragon absolutely deserves mention. It’s built around generational play, where sessions span years of in-game time and characters age, retire, or die –only to be replaced by their sons. It assumes from the outset that the campaign will unfold over decades, filled with consequences and a world in motion. Unlike D&D, Pendragon places strong emphasis on character development in moral and psychological terms, not just skills and abilities. Players must contend with passions, virtues, family legacy, and political entanglements. For referees willing to embrace its tone and rhythms, it’s uniquely rewarding, which is why I consider it one of the best roleplaying games ever written.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. The games above are simply those I’ve used successfully in multi-year campaigns, but I’m sure many others could work just as well, especially if the referee and players commit to a shared style of play. In the end, I’d probably argue the “best” system for a long campaign is the one your group enjoys returning to week after week. If your players care about the world and the game gives you the tools to keep that world alive and responsive, then you’ve already got the makings of something lasting.