[1] GDW created the popular science fiction role-playing game Traveller in 1977 with themes taken from Space Opera short stories and novels of the Golden Age of SF.

In 1984, GDW published the unrelated and much grittier post-apocalyptic role-playing game Twilight 2000, set in the year 2000 following a nuclear war.

In an attempt to ride this wave, GDW published Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook in 1989 to give 2300 AD a cyberpunk theme and also return the focus of the game to Earth rather than space.

Also, practical means of faster-than-light (FTL) travel have been discovered, leading to the exploration and colonization of planets orbiting nearby stars.

The dominant power, both on Earth and in space, is France, recently reorganized (in 2298) as the Third French Empire, and incorporating much of Africa.

France was able to survive the nuclear war relatively unscathed by abandoning its NATO allies and officially withdrawing from hostilities at the start of the Third World War, retaining enough assets and skilled people to develop a significant head-start in the race for postwar rebuilding, political leverage, and technological development.

Mankind has met with several intelligent alien civilizations, all of which are decidedly strange and non-human, from the genetically-engineered Pentapods to the reflexively bellicose Kafers.

A faster-than-light device called the Stutterwarp Drive allows mankind to achieve practical travel between planetary systems.

The primary limitation of the Stutterwarp Drive is that it can only propel a ship up to a maximum of 7.7 light years before it must enter a gravity well to discharge accumulated lethal radiation that would otherwise kill the crew.

Because ships need to reach a world within this distance, the effect of this limitation is the creation of lanes along which travel, commerce, and wars are conducted.

For example, most personal combat is still conducted with guns that fire chemically propelled rounds, even though energy weapons do exist.

Also, no form of gravity manipulation exists, so spaceships must be designed to account for Micro-gravity conditions, and transferring from orbital space to a planetary surface (or vice versa) remains expensive.

These would involve both internal and external physical changes, such as Dry World Adaptation, where a character would retain all their water and urinate crystals.

Some of these mysteries can help humanity in its "battle for the stars", while others are simply curiosities, and a few are dangerous and even potentially disastrous for humankind.

The background history of 2300 AD is a continuation of the nuclear war depicted in the Twilight 2000 role-playing game by the same company.

He also questioned the priorities of the authors, who only included 30 pieces of equipment but spent a lot of that space on four types of satellites and organic contact lenses.

He concluded, "if you like detailed background and don't mind filling in major gaps in rules, Traveller: 2300 is the game for you.

"[9] Four issues later, in a full-length review, Woods was still impressed by the setting and detail, but felt that after an in-depth examination, the game was badly let down by the rules system.

"[10] In the May 1987 edition of White Dwarf (Issue #89), Jim Bambra reviewed the original Traveller 2300 game, and found the rules "somewhat tedious reading".

"[12] A year later, in the May 1989 edition of Dragon (Issue 145), Jim Bambra had a chance to revisit the game with the publication of the updated 2300 AD, successor to Traveller 2300.

"[14] Steve Wieck reviewed 2300 AD in White Wolf #13 (December 1988), rating it a 3 out of 5 and stated that "Overall, 2300AD is game for true sci-fi fans who are looking for role-playing in a realistic human civilization of the future.

"[16] In a retrospective review in Shadis #28 (October 1996), Matt Staroscik remembered 2300 AD favorably because of its cultural ties to present-day Earth.