Marc Miller's Traveller 5 Kickstarter

Marc Miller has introduced a Traveller 5 Kickstarter project. 

This is exciting news, for those of us who fondly remember classic Traveller, and Marc has promised to update and modernize this fantastic old-school game.

Alien: Intruder And Xenophobe

Between the release of Chevski's Thousand Suns and Ridley Scott's Prometheus trailer, 2012 is shaping up to be the year of the science fiction old school renaissance.

Ridley Scott is directing Prometheus, and directed the original Alien movie. H.R. Giger gave us the look of the Alien antagonist, the Xenomorph. The above Giger image inspired Alien's Xenomorph.

That antagonist later makes its appearance in all sorts of unauthorized spin-offs.

The first of those two is the Xenomorph's appearance in a Task Force microgame from 1980, entitled Intruder.

Intruder was designed by Dennis Sustare, known for having designed the much beloved Bunnies and Burrows RPG and Dwarfstar's engaging, if somewhat arcane, Star Smuggler microgame.

Intruder is set in the near future, on the Deep Space Station Prometheus, orbiting the star Sigma Draconis.

An exploratory team brings back an alien life form, and is directed to keep the creature alive for study. When the creature escapes from the lab, this directive proves to be a deadly mistake.

If the premise sounds familiar, it may be because it is. That is the same premise that informs the first two Aliens movies.

The second unauthorized spin-off is a Bally Midway Arcade game from 1987, entitled Xenophobe. Xenophobe is obviously inspired by the Alien movie franchise, as the goal of the game is to rid various ships, bases and planets of alien infestations.



The game allows you to play one of nine different characters. Among them: Dr. Kwack, sporting a duck head; Mr. Brace, with a Quasimoto face; Col. Truth, the spock-eared; Mr. Fogg, crazy scientist hair and a Geordie visor; Dr. Udderbay and Col. Poupon, two female chaaracters; Mr. Eeez, with a green bug head; Mr. Zordiz, the James T. Kirk of the game; and Col. Shickn, with white hair and an eye-patch. The characters wear yellow, blue and red tunics, Some also wear black slacks, given the characters a look reminiscent of early Star Trek attire.

Traveller: Zhdits Destroyer Escort

A failed experiment in screening Zhodani Destroyers from enemy fire, the Zhdits Destroyer Escort is nevertheless one of my favorite Traveller starship designs.

The thin neck and forward bridge, along with the winglike aft, gives the Zhdits a vaguely Klingon bird-of-prey or Romulan warbird vibe.

Since my early science fiction indoctrination was heavily informed by original Star Trek, the Zhodani initially became a convenient stand-in for the Klingons and Romulans.

Once I put my hands on the full-sized Zhodani Traveller supplement, my view of the Zhodani became more nuanced.

But I still think of Zhodani starships in Zhdits / Klingon / Romulan terms, and am slightly annoyed to see other, non-needle-shaped starship designs promulgated for the Zhodani.

Traveller's Appendix N: Ensign Flandry

Though it may exist, i'm unaware of a Traveller version of "Appendix N" -- a recommended reading list, providing a list of authors whose works inspired the development of our favorite science fiction role playing game.

I've mentioned in the past that I was fortunate to come across a large collection of old paperback fiction. Not all of it was of the swords and sorcery variety. I also obtained some old science fiction novels from the 60's and 70's. One of those novels was Ensign Flandry, by Poul Anderson, which was published in 1966. This is not the first published Flandry novel, but comes earliest in the chronology of the series.

If a Traveller Appendix N does exist, I imagine Poul Anderson's Flandry series ranks as one of the more significant inspirations. Here are a selection of quotes from Ensign Flandry, which may have been inspirational to the Traveller designers.

"Everyone knows the Empire was won and is maintained by naked power, the central government is corrupt and the frontier is brutal and the last organization with high morale, the Navy, lives for war and oppression..."

"The sky illumination had now formed a gigantic banner overhead, the sunburst alive in a field of royal blue..."

"They crowded into the flier. It was a simple passenger vehicle which could hold a score or so if they filled the seats and aisle and rear end. Flandry settled himself at the board and started the grav generators."

"People say 'hyperdrive' and 'light-year' so casually. They don't understand. A series of quantum jumps, which do not cross the intervening spaces, therefore do not amount to true velocity and are not bound by the light-speed limitation..."

"'Lord Hauksberg is continuing to Merseia in another couple of days,' said Commander Max Abrams, of the Imperial Naval Intelligence Corps. 'I'm going along in an advisory capacity, so my orders claim. I rate an Aide. Want the job, Ensign?' Flandry goggled. 'You've shown yourself pretty tough and resourceful. A bit of practical experience in Intel will give you a leg up, if I can convince you to transfer to the Intelligence Branch.'"

"The starship Dronning Margrete was not of a size to land safely on a planet. Her auxiliaries were small spaceships in their own right. Officially belonging to Ny Kalmar, in practice, a yacht for whoever was the current viscount. She did sometimes travel in the Imperial service: a vast improvement with respect to comfort over any Naval vessel. Now she departed orbit and accelerated outward on gravitics. Before long she was clear enough into space that she could switch over to hyperdrive."

"The ship whispered. Powerplant, ventilators, a rare hail when crewmen passed each other in the corridor."

"'Come, come,' Hauksberg said. 'A galactic government is impossible. It'd collapse under its own weight. We've everything we can do to control what we have, and we don't control tightly. Local self-government is so strong, most places, that I see actual feudalism evolving within the Imperial structure.'"

Well I could go on, but I think you see the picture. The Ensign Flandry series is not the only science fiction source from which GDW may have drawn, but it certainly captures the flavour of many of the Traveller game elements, such as character generation, assumed setting, equipment, organization, starship design, and government and nobility.

Edit: You can find a recommended reading list from Space Frontiers on Dennis' What a horrible night to have a curse blog.

Traveller: Firefly Class Frontier Trader

Okay, i'm a geek, but one of the things I loved about Traveller and other science fiction roleplaying games was the starship blueprints.

My love affair with starships began, as was the case for many of us, with Star Trek. While I became acquianted with Star Trek through the television reruns, it was the Starfleet Technical Manual that cemented our relationship. I remember from 1975, my brother bringing home the Starfleet Technical Manual. Within that book were page upon page of blueprints for everything from Starships to Spacesuits, Planetary orbits to Phasers, Tricorders to Tridimensional Chess. I pored over that book for hours, carrying it with me to elementary school, and dreaming of being a starship captain.

I discovered Dungeons and Dragons via my brother in 1976, finally permitting the stuctured role-playing I craved. Traveller soon followed in 1978. I never played Traveller as much as I played Dungeons and Dragons, but I always had a soft-spot for that game. My favorite supplements were the ones with starship blueprints. Leviathan. Traders and Gunboats. Broadsword. Azhanti High Lightning. My favorite starship blueprints, by far, were for the Zhodani: many of those starships had a winged, spidery, almost Romulan quality to them. As I recall, Judges Guild produced some nice starship blueprints, though my collection of Traveller stuff is largely official GDW material.

Which brings me to Firefly. I missed Firefly while it was in distribution. I suppose the fact that Firefly was the brainchild of Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, kept me away. Having since purchased and watched the entire series and the related movie, Serenity, I can confidently say that, as far as science fiction television goes, Firefly is probably the closest we have ever, or will ever, see of a Traveller series.

As a fan of Traveller, I really like the Firefly universe. I also like the starship, Serenity, which has a high tech/low tech quality to it that I always identify as Travelleresque: in the Traveller games we played, we were always living hand-to-mouth, scrapping every last credit together to pay for the repair of a broken engine part or the fuel we needed for our next jump. In Firefly, the same desperate hand-to-mouth struggle exists.

Several free blueprints for the Firefly starship exist on the internet. Some are designed to fit with the standard 1.5 m x 1.5 m blueprint grid used in Traveller. But my favorite Firefly blueprints are the ones found here, in this booklet. Though costlier than free, I absolutely love the level of detail they have provided, which brings me, full circle, to the Starfleet Technical Manual. The level of detail being provided in the Firefly Reference Pack seems absolutely decadent. But its the sort of decadence that only someone who would pore over a Starfleet Technical Manual at the age of eight can appreciate.

Wanderer RPG: Traveller Fantasy

Of course, Wanderer RPG, is not, as far as I know, in production, although you just know that some DIY publisher would have a runaway OSR hit on their hands (that is, by selling at least 100 copies) if they actually published a playable version of a Traveller-based Fantasy game.

I won't rehash the genesis of this Wanderer RPG mock-up. You can find several threads talking about it on various role playing boards. Over at the OD&D board, they have a thread devoted to the creation of Wanderer RPG. There are several threads speculating on what Wanderer RPG would look like, over at RPG.net here and here. There is even a thread on the travellerrpg boards which you can find at the link here.

In a fit of nostalgia, I just broke out my old Traveller LBB's. Ah, the memories.

The Zhodani Are Coming! The Zhodani Are Coming!

One of my great pleasures, as a blogger, is in reading the blogs of other old-schoolers. Even when we don't agree with each other, there are pearls of wisdom to be gleaned from what those other bloggers are saying and playing. I don't get to comment on as many of your posts as I would like (real-world responsibilities intrude, unfortunately) but I do spend several hours a week catching up on what people are doing and saying.

In addition to reading the blogs of my current blog-roll, I sometimes discover a new blogger, quite by accident, while looking for the answer to some arcane RPG question. Other times, a blogger will comment on one of my posts, or will start publicly following my blog. In those instances, I will "check them out", and that almost invariably leads to them being added to my blog-roll.

There was some recent unpleasantness in the blogosphere, about old-school bloggers being an insular and elitist lot. While I don't believe that to be the case, any one of us could, on occasion, come across that way. For what it's worth, i'm a populist, not an elitist: I want to see more bloggers talking about OS games, not fewer.

I say this as preface to a recent (reverse) discovery. Trev of The Bits Box started following my blog. Trev has been posting regarding the Zhodani, a topic close to my heart. The Zhodani was one of my favorite Traveller aliens: human, yet so alien to their Vilani and Solomani cousins. Mostly though, I just loved their clamshell helmets, turbaned nobility, and organic looking spaceship designs. Trev has painted up some 15mm miniatures to resemble the troops, robots and grav tanks of a Zhodani strike force.

Almost makes me want to go buy the original Striker rules and play some tabletop Traveller battles.

Mongoose Traveller

In an earlier post, I reported my good fortune at discovering I still owned some classic Traveller books, and wondered whether the Mongoose version of Traveller was a worthwhile update to the classic rules.

Last weekend, I visited my FLGS and bought the "Pocket Rulebook" version of Mongoose Traveller. This version is 5.5 x 8.5, the same size as the old classic Traveller little black books.

Having given it a quick read, i'm actually rather pleased with Mongoose Traveller, as it retains the classic Traveller rules and materials almost completely intact. And the price was right, at $20.

My only quibbles -- from my admitedly cursory read -- are that Mongoose Publishing chose to ape the classic Traveller look, rather than putting their own stamp on it ( an understandable decision, considering that they want the product noticed, and purchased, by those waxing nostalgic for classic Traveller ) and they watered down the risk of death in the character generation process. However, they do provide you with an "Iron Man" character generation option in the book, allowing you to risk it all on your survival roll, so the old-school character generation approach is not entirely jettisoned.

Mongoose Traveller greatly expands the available career options to 12, from the original six. That expansion of the career options may have been a feature of MegaTraveller or Traveller: The New Era, but it has been so many years since I last possessed any of those materials that I cannot be certain.

You still have the options of the Navy, Marines, Army, Scouts and Merchants careers. The sixth career, "Other", has been expanded, to include Agent, Citizen, Drifter, Entertainer, Nobility, Rogue, and Scholar. I have no complaints about the expansion of careers, as I don't recall even rolling up a character using the "Other" career path. Providing some definition to that "Other" career path may make that more appealing to players.

Since it's been several years since I last looked at Traveller, I am hard pressed to see any significant differences in the game mechanics between this version and classic Traveller. Thus, considering the modest price, and the handy booklet format, I don't see much downside to using Mongoose Traveller pocket version as your basic Traveller ruleset.

Now, if only I could find time to boilerplate Mongoose Traveller to the 2320 universe near-star map...

Traveller 2300: Near Star Map

Traveller 2300 was only distantly related to classic Traveller: they both shared the Traveller name, and were both published by GDW.

Otherwise, they differed significantly from each other, in nearly every facet of their game design.

For example, while the Traveller star-map was hex-based and the game used jump-drive technology, the 2300 Universe had a real near-space map, and a "stutter-warp drive" technology that limited per-trip travel to a maximum of roughly 7 light-years.

What I loved about 2300 was that near-star map. I had always wanted to play a sci-fi rpg that used actual starmaps. I remember spending countless hours poring over the star-data spreadsheets that accompanied the near-star map, and built my own stutterwarp route map.

I noticed that Far Future Enterprises / Quiklink Interactive announce that they are developing 2320, which is a sequel to 2300. I don't see a lot of evidence that the game or support materials are available yet, though.

Traveller's Love Child: Diaspora

In an earlier comment, Robert Saint John put me on to Diaspora, published by VSCA, out of (I gather) Vancouver, Canada.

It's now on my "buy before Christmas" list.

Curious if it would be a good "Firefly" rule-set, and setting?

Classic Traveller

I was surprised, today, to find that I still have a rather large collection of classic Traveller "stuff".

Several years ago, I sold most of my Traveller collection, as I had not played the game in a decade, and the books were commanding a high price on eBay. That collection included what I thought was my full collection of LBB's, all eight of the full-size Alien Modules, a lot of MegaTraveller and Traveller: The New Era stuff, and a number of very nice Digest Group Publications materials.

In rummaging through some boxes in the basement this afternoon, I discovered I still have a quite a collection of the Little Black Books, including the original boxed set, with Books 1 through 5 inside (unfortunately missing my two favorites, Scouts and Merchant Prince, which I no doubt sold), Adventures 1 through 4, Double Adventures 1 and 2, Supplements 1 though 7 (except 5), and Journals 2 through 8. I also found my boxed sets of Mayday, Snapshot and Azhanti High Lightning, and about 30 of the 15mm Traveller miniatures.

Traveller has been on my mind lately. Recently, I was looking at James Malizewski's Thousand Suns at my FLGS, but in a moment of nostalgia, purchased the Far Future Enterprise / Quik Link Interactive reprint of the classic 3 LBBs instead, for $12, not realizing I still had the classic Traveller rules at home. I have since read elsewhere that the Mongoose re-imagining of the Traveller rules is very good. I'm curious about the differences between classic Traveller and the Mongoose version, and whether the changes they made improved the game.