Traveller (role-playing game)
Traveller is a tabletop game where characters journey through star systems, engaging in exploration, ground and space battles, and interstellar trading.
The game's history also features the Ancients, a highly advanced race that left behind ruins and artifacts scattered throughout the universe.
In this setting, the human-dominated Third Imperium is the largest interstellar empire in charted space, a feudalistic union of worlds, where local nobility operate largely free from oversight and restricted by convention and feudal obligations.
In addition to Humaniti, the standard list of major races includes the honor-bound catlike Aslan, the winged lizard-like Droyne, the sixfold-symmetric and manipulative Hivers, the centaur-like militant vegetarian K'kree, and the wolf-hybrid Vargr.
An early publication from GDW notes that "The minor races, of which there are hundreds within the area of known space, will be largely left up to individual referees."
Taken together with aliens casually mentioned or introduced in separate scenarios or adventures—often arbitrarily—there is therefore no indication that the number of minor races is limited in any sense.
The Ancients were a major race in the distant past; their ruins dot planets throughout charted space and their artifacts are more technically advanced than those of any existing civilization.
The main rules were detailed in three such booklets, sold as a boxed set while the same format was used for early support material, such as the adventures, supplements and further books.
Published by QuickLink Interactive (QLI) in 2002, this version uses the d20 System as its base and is set at the time of the Solomani Rim War around Imperial year 990, about a century before the era depicted in the original game.
After the company's license to the Traveller brand and setting lapsed, the purely mechanical elements of this game were republished as the generic SciFi20 system.
T4 is set in the early days of the Third Imperium (Milieu 0), with the small, newly formed empire surrounded by regressed or barbaric worlds.
The core rules originally came as a box set of three black digest-sized books, and were later compiled into a single volume rulebook.
In the April–May 1978 edition of White Dwarf (Issue #6), Don Turnbull gave a strong recommendation for the new game, saying, "Altogether, what is here is very satisfactory and much of it is stimulating.
The box lid and covers of the three booklets are done in a simple but highly effective combination of red and white lettering on a black background.
"[11] In the inaugural edition of Ares (March 1980), David Ritchie was enthusiastic about Traveller, giving it an above average rating of 8 out of 9 and commenting, "This game starts off where Dungeons & Dragons left off, but, if there is any justice, will end up being more popular than that venerable relic.
28), Forrest Johnson gave a good review, saying, "Traveller is the best game of its type, recommended for the sophisticated science fiction gamer.
"[13] In the November 1980 edition of Ares (Issue #5), Eric Goldberg called Traveller "a most impressive achievement from a design standpoint...
Freeman gave this game an Overall Evaluation of "Good", concluding, "For experienced players wishing a truly open-ended, science fiction, role-playing campaign, there is no real alternative.
On the downside, Swan thought that "The inclusion of anachronistic weapons like swords and crossbows can turn combat into a bad episode of Star Trek."
The magazine's editor Paul Pettengale commented: "Although originally intended as a generic science fiction system, Traveller quickly became linked with the Imperium campaign background developed by GDW...
This background offers a great degree of freedom for individual referees to run campaigns of their own devising, while providing enough basic groundwork to build from, and has proved to be immensely successful.
Everything from political intrigue to action-packed mercenary actions, trading or scientific exploration is possible, and a lot more besides.... Traveller [is] one of the true classics of the roleplaying hobby".
[21] Scott Taylor for Black Gate in 2013 rated Traveller as #2 in the top ten role-playing games of all time, saying "Packaged in a plain black jacket with some simple bars of color, there is nothing inherently fancy about Traveller, and yet it has remained a viable source of entertainment to gamers through ten editions and six gaming companies that have controlled its license.
The original Traveller still stands as one of the most significant traditional sci-fi RPGs, thanks in part, to its proximity to the dawn of the hobby, but also to both its scope and the crisp simplicity of its systems.
[26] The Imperial Data Recovery System is a computer program published by FASA in 1981 as a play aid to speed up bookkeeping for Traveller, and assist with game aspects such as sector maps, records of characters and ships, and in-game encounters.
[36] The concept album Traveller by heavy metal band The Lord Weird Slough Feg is based on the game.
Originally published by GDW as an updated replacement for Traveller[citation needed], eschewing classic space opera to take inspiration from the grittier contemporary hard science fiction media of the 1980s.
It is presented as a future extrapolation of the speculative World War III of GDW's popular military role-playing game Twilight: 2000.
In the 2300 AD setting, interstellar travel is relatively new, Earth is still divided into nation-states, and the most powerful nations are competitively exploring and colonizing the fifty light-year sphere of surrounding space.
The most famous case involved Douglas Lenat applying his Eurisko heuristic learning program to the scenario in the Traveller adventure Trillion Credit Squadron, which contains rules for resolving large space battles statistically.
