Traveller

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In 1977 Marc Miller, bored with the Chess Club at Illinois State University, made his way to the Strategic Games Club…the rest they say is history.

Ok, for those of you that have no idea who Marc Miller is or why the fact that Chess is boring matters I’ll go a little deeper.

Marc Miller, Frank Chadwick, John Harshman, and Loren Wiseman created the roleplaying game Traveller, that’s with 2 L’s by the way, in 1977 born out of games at that Strategic Games Club.

Traveller is the quintessential sci-fi roleplaying game, building on the science fiction novels of the 1960 and 70’s and coming onto the scene just after Dungeons and Dragons and before Star Wars.

My first dive into Traveller started in 1983 with the Classic Traveller Starter Edition. I still have the boxed set buried somewhere in a pile of old games. I remember stumbling across it in my friendly local gaming store and being taken by the cover art. Three heroes wearing golden armor with a space ship flying overhead.

I had just watched the Return of the Jedi a few days earlier in the theatre so I had to get the game, and boy it did not disappoint.

What disappointed me was all my friends. I couldn’t find anyone to play it with me. But that was ok, because the character generation portion of the book was so good it was like a solo game all on its own. I made so many characters…or at least tried to make so many characters, a lot of them didn’t make it. But we will come back to that.

Fast forward a few decades and finally I get to run a Traveller game.

It was a blast and if you want to hear all about it listen to our “Anatomy of a Campaign” series.

Christina, do you remember the first time you ever heard of Traveller?

[kick to Christina]

There are a lot of versions of Traveller out there, many of them still being played, and while we might discuss bits and pieces from the other versions, we are going to focus this discussion mostly on the new caretaker of the Traveller Legacy, Mongoose Publishing and their 2nd Edition Version of Traveller.

Christina, before we dive into Traveller give us the disclaimer.

[Kick to Christina] – We aren’t getting paid for this. They didn’t give us any games or material or support. We actually played the game, a lot.

Now that the official stuff is out of the way, what do you like best about the system?