Traveller (role-playing game)

Traveller

Designer(s)	Marc Miller
Publisher(s)	Game Designers' Workshop Imperium Games (Marc Miller's Traveller) Steve Jackson Games (GURPS Traveller) QLI/RPGRealms Publishing (Traveller 20) Mongoose Publishing Far Future Enterprises
Publication date	1977 (Classic Traveller) 1987 (MegaTraveller) 1993 (Traveller: The New Era) 1996 (Marc Miller's Traveller) 1998, 2006 (GURPS Traveller) 2002 (Traveller 20) 2007 (Traveller Hero) 2008 (Mongoose Traveller) 2013 (Traveller5)
Genre(s)	Science fiction space opera
System(s)	Custom, GURPS, d20 System

Traveller is a series of related science fiction role-playing games, the first published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop and subsequent editions by various companies remaining in print to this day. The game was inspired by such classic science fiction stories as the Dumarest Saga series by E. C. Tubb, the Foundation stories of Isaac Asimov, H. Beam Piper's Space Viking, Larry Niven's Known Space, Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium, Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic League and several other works of science fiction literature.^{[citation needed]}

Characters typically journey between various star systems and engage in activities such as exploration, ground and space battles, and interstellar trading. Traveller characters are defined less by the need to increase native skill and ability and more by achievements, discoveries, or obtaining wealth, gadgets, titles and political power.

Originally Traveller was intended to be a system for playing generic space opera-themed science fiction adventures in much the same sense that Dungeons & Dragons was a system intended for generic fantasy adventures. Marc Miller, one of the original designers of the Traveller RPG for Game Designer's Workshop, said that the idea for creating Traveller came about when he said "I want to do Dungeons & Dragons in space."^[1] Most published supplements for Traveller deal in some way with a default setting called the "Third Imperium", (sometimes referred to as the Official Traveller Universe (OTU)), but the main rules are generic enough so that a campaign can be played in any setting the referee chooses.

Key features

Key features derived from literary sources are incorporated into the Traveller game in all its forms:

Human-centric but Cosmopolitan

The background of the OTU features a human-dominated universe. As such, the core rules primarily focus on development of human characters touching only briefly on a few non-human species. Despite the dominance of humanity, a large number of aliens was always implied to exist, inside and outside of Charted Space. There are numerous Traveller publications with rules and extensive information on playing aliens.

Interstellar travel

Interstellar travel is through the use of the jump drive, which moves a ship through "jump space" a few light-years at a time. Each jump always takes about one week.

Limited communication

There is no faster-than-light information transfer – meaning no ansible, subspace radio or hyper-wave. Communication is limited to the speed of travel.

Feudalism

Relatively slow communication speeds mean that local rulers cannot be directly controlled by central authority. Therefore, affairs are managed by independent nobility, who make use of classic titles such as Baron, Duke and Archduke.

Non-utopian future and No Prime Directive

The human race never evolves into a superior state. People remain people and continue to show courage, wisdom, honesty and justice, along with cowardice, deceit, and criminal behavior. Planets fight out internal wars, and capitalism is the major driving force of civilization. The same factors that shaped Earth shape the Traveller universe.

Characters

Traveller introduced the 'lifepath'-style character generation system to role-playing games. Traveller characters get their skills and experience in a mini-game, where the player makes career choices that determine the character's life up to the point right before adventuring begins.

A character can be human, robot, alien, or of a genetically engineered species. A character can be civilian, military, or noble, young cadet or a tried-and-true veteran, each with strengths and weaknesses.

Characteristics

In most versions of Traveller, characters have six primary characteristics which range in level from 1 (feeble) to 15 (superhuman):

• Strength (Str) - the character's raw muscular power
• Dexterity (Dex) - the character's physical coordination and agility
• Endurance (End) - the character's resistance to physical stress and damage
• Intelligence (Int) - the character's mental prowess and intuition
• Education (Edu) - the character's experience and knowledge
• Social Standing (Soc) - the character's ability to influence others and their place in society (high scores indicate nobility)

Players roll randomly for these characteristics (typically on 2d6) during character creation. Characteristics modify task rolls, thus higher values represent more capable individuals.

Optional characteristics include Psi (a character's psionic strength) and San (a character's sanity). There are also analogs to primary characteristics, such as Charisma or Caste in the place of Social Standing, to add nuance to alien characters.

Task systems

Each rule system has its own task mechanic for resolving character actions. Target numbers are typically determined by the referee, and take into account task difficulty, skill level, and a characteristic. Situation and equipment used can introduce Dice Modifiers (DMs), which provide a bonus or penalty to a roll (e.g. a DM+2 means add 2 to the roll, and a DM-4 means subtract 4 from the roll).

Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller, and Mongoose Traveller

In these systems, two six-sided dice (2d6) are rolled equal to or above a target number for success, although occasionally the roll must be below the target number.

Traveller: The New Era

Traveller: The New Era (TNE) used a modified version of the Twilight 2000 rules, where a twenty-sided die (d20) was rolled below a target number for success.

Traveller⁴ and Traveller⁵

In both these versions, the number of dice rolled represents task difficulty ("Average" is 2D, "Difficult" is 3D, etc.), and the target number is characteristic + skill + typical DMs. The roll must be equal to or below the target number for success.

Traveller, version 4 (T4), has levels of difficulty which call for a "half-die" to be used; for example "Difficult" is 2.5 dice and one die result (rolled as a different color die from the rest) must be halved when counted. Traveller, version 5 (T5) does not use a half-die.

GURPS Traveller and Traveller HERO

GURPS Traveller (GT) uses the GURPS character creation and task resolution system developed by Steve Jackson Games, and Traveller HERO (TH) uses the HERO System developed by HERO Games for character creation and task resolution. Both systems use three six-sided dice (3d6). The roll must be equal to or below the target number for success.

Traveller²⁰

Traveller²⁰ (or T20) is the d20 System-version of Traveller, developed by Quicklink Interactive. Task checks roll a twenty-sided die (d20). The roll must be equal to or above the target number, for success.

Equipment

Equipment in Traveller typically emphasizes wilderness exploration, hazardous environments, and combat. As a result, equipment lists are heavy on vehicles, sensor equipment, communicators, rations, personal armor, and weapons. Since primitive worlds exist near technological worlds, primitive weapons are also typically included, such as swords, shields, pikes, bows, and so on. And since high technology is available, cybernetic implants and non-sentient robots typically also show up in equipment lists, as well as artifacts from ancient, vanished technological civilizations.

While there are energy weapons in Traveller, there is also a strong presence of slug-thrower weapons such as rifles and pistols. The prevailing theory is that (usually) the most efficient way to stop someone is with kinetic energy (e.g. bullets).

Starships

Traveller's rules for starship design and combat are like games unto themselves with a complex balance of ship components fitting within certain hull volumes, technology levels, and modifiers based upon characters' skills. It is complex enough to be able to generically represent most starships used in role-playing games, and flexible enough to support custom add-ons to the system. (GDW published several board games allowing Traveller space battles to be played out as games in their own right - Mayday using the Classic Traveller rules, Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider using the Traveller: The New Era rules.)

Typical Traveller starships consist of control space (i.e. one or more bridges), a central power plant, a maneuver drive for in-system travel, a jump drive for interstellar travel, and payload space (weapons, living areas, etc.). The power plant and jump drive together require significant amounts of fuel. Alternate power plants, realspace drives, and interstellar drives exist for modelling different settings.

All of this equipment is fit into an armored hull of a given volume. Starship volumes are measured in "displacement tons" (also "D-tons" or just "tons"), equal to the volume of a metric ton of liquid hydrogen, or about 14 cubic meters.

Computer programs have been created to model and predict starship combat using Traveller rules. The most famous case involved Douglas Lenat applying his Eurisko heuristic learning program to the scenario in the Classic Traveller adventure Trillion Credit Squadron (TCS), which contained rules for resolving very large space battles statistically. Eurisko discovered exploitable features of the starship design system that allowed it to build an unusual fleet that won the 1981 TCS national championship. This prompted GDW to change the tournament rules, but Lenat applied Eurisko to the changes and won again in 1982. GDW threatened to cancel the tournament if Lenat entered a fleet again, so Lenat retired from competition, and GDW gave him the title "Grand Admiral" as consolation.^[2]

Worlds

Worlds represent a wide spectrum of conditions, from barren planetoid moons to large water worlds, from uncolonized territory to planets with tens of billions of people. Most worlds tend to be only modestly colonized, though some worlds may be dangerously overcrowded.

The world generation system in Traveller is geared to produce a highly random mix of worlds. Extensions take solar system generation into account, and modify the process depending on the fecundity and history of the targeted area of space. Similar to the use of the UPP for characters, worlds are represented by an alphanumeric Universal World Profile that encodes key physical, social, and economic properties of the world.

Adventures

Adventures in Traveller tend to come from a few key themes:

Merchant Free Traders

The players travel the stars trading and adventuring along the way in their very own starship.

Exploration

The players are scouts, academics, or adventurers who want to find (or rediscover) uncharted worlds. There are new cultures to encounter, exotic flora and fauna to catalog, and ruins and artifacts to excavate and study.

Struggle against Nature

The players are pitted against an alien environment, with or without the help of outsiders.

Rescue

People are lost or stranded and the players are tasked with recovering them.

World-hopping

The players are itinerant workers, interstellar business travelers, or tourists on holiday that are always going to unfamiliar and exotic places.

Patron

The players are skilled freelancers hired by a client to perform a job for them that requires their particular skills and experience. Their performance affects their standing with the client and whether the client will hire them for future jobs or recommend them to other potential clients.

Escort Mission

The players are bodyguards protecting a person while taking them to their destination. Alternately, they are hired to kidnap or kill the person or prevent them from reaching their destination.

Courier Mission

The players are transporting a package containing goods or information. Alternately, they are hired to intercept the package.

The Heist

The players plan to infiltrate a secure facility to acquire information or goods. Alternately the players are hired to guard the facility before the target is acquired or retrieve the target after it is acquired.

Mercenary

The players are military veterans who have been contracted to serve in the armed forces of a local or planetary government. Typical tasks would be to create and instruct a training cadre, lead or advise indigenous units, or provide a corps of experienced troops familiar with advanced technology.

Enigma

Something unexplained is going on, and the players have to find out what it is.

Setting

Originally, Traveller had no established setting, and was promoted as a rules system for running general science fiction role-playing games. It was published at a time when role-playing games did not typically feature a well-defined fictional universe, but instead offered rules appropriate to the conventions of a particular genre. Each role-playing group used and altered published rules to suit their setting and play style.

Within a short time, however, a default setting was crafted to take advantage of all aspects of those rules, which has come to be known as the Official Traveller Universe (OTU), also known by the primary political entity in the setting, The Third Imperium. The starting point for this appears to be the board game Imperium.

The OTU details a small piece of the galaxy, known as Charted Space. Within this space once lived a race called the Ancients, who died out in a massive war 300,000 years ago.

More recent history details the Third Imperium, which is the largest and human-dominated interstellar empire in Charted Space. Logically, it was preceded by two previous human-dominated empires. The Third Imperium is a feudalistic union of worlds. Local nobility operate largely free from oversight, restricted by convention and feudal obligations.

Most Traveller adventures take place between the Imperial years 1100 and 1125, in or near the Third Imperium. Some adventures take place in the "New Era" years of 1200 to 1248.

Intelligent species

Despite the dominance of the human race, the Traveller universe is cosmopolitan, and is divided into a handful of major races and an unbounded number of minor races.

Major races

A major race is defined as one that developed jump technology independently, and thus got an early start on establishing itself in interstellar society. In the setting it is generally agreed there are six major races, but how they are defined varies a little. The standard list includes the honor-bound felinoid Aslan; the winged reptilioid Droyne; the sixfold-symmetric, and manipulative Hivers; the centaur-like, vegetarian K'Kree, and uplifted wolf-hybrid Vargr. There are also various descendants of humanity (collectively called Humaniti): Solomani ("people of Sol"; Terran humans), Vilani ("people of Vland"; humans that founded the Imperium), and Zhodani ("people of Zhodane", psychic humans ruled by psychically-gifted nobles).

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. For unknown reasons, they transplanted humans from Earth to dozens of worlds, uplifted Terran wolves to create the Vargr, and undertook many megascale engineering projects before destroying their civilization in a catastrophic war.

The "Solomani Hypothesis", an anthropological and archeological theory, states that Terran humans were the basis for Humaniti. An unknown advanced race (perhaps the Ancients) transported humans to sites all over the galaxy for an unknown purpose. This theory is supported by the genetic relation and inter-fertility between the myriad human races and the lack of a fossil record connecting the non-Solomani human races evolutionarily to the native lifeforms on their homeworlds. The "Solomani Movement", a human racial supremacy group, believes that Humaniti is superior to the other Major races because it was shown special favor by the Ancients. They further believe that the Solomani, as the "pure stock", are racially superior to the other humans and are more fit to rule. The Vargr "Church of the Chosen Ones" carry the theory one step further by stating that since the Ancients selected and uplifted the Vargr that they are the true "master race".

Minor races

Any species which was contacted before they could develop Jump Drives are considered minor. A few have significant background material, such as the Ael Yael, which appear to resemble humanoid pterodactyls; Bawapakerwa-a-a-awapawab, (Bwaps for short) which are bipedal amphibians; and the Ithklur, an aggressive race of warm-blooded, humanoid reptilians that exist in Hiver-space.

Most, however, are only hinted at or lightly mentioned.

Number of Minor Races

An early publication from Games Designers' Workshop noted that The minor races, of which there are hundreds within the area of known space, will be largely left up to individual referees. GDW's quarterly publication, The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society, sketched out about one race per quarter, starting with Aslan in Issue 7, with no signs of letting up. 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.

Publishing history

Overview

The original Traveller gamebooks were distinctive half-size black pamphlets (the so-called "Little Black Books" or "LBBs") produced by Game Designers Workshop (GDW). 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. Currently these LBBs are available in collected reprints from Far Future Enterprises. Later supplements and updated versions of the main game system introduced full sized booklets, complete re-writes of the game system and significant changes to the Third Imperium. The second edition of the game, titled MegaTraveller, was published in 1986 and attempted to collect and collate the various rules of the system and offer new political twists in the Third Imperium, such as the assassination of the emperor and the rebellion which followed. The last GDW produced version of Traveller was the third, Traveller: The New Era, which broke completely with the previous rules system and presented a setting in which interstellar civilization had been completely destroyed by the rebellion. GDW went out of business before this iteration was completed.

Subsequently, in 1997 Imperium Games published Marc Miller's Traveller, often referred to as T4, which returned to the classic setting and game system, though not without some major alterations. For instance the default setting was "Milieu 0", set about 1200 years prior to the time period laid out in the original Traveller. It was intended that other "Milieux" would be described in following supplements, but T4 proved to be a failure both critically and financially before this could happen. The game was left briefly idle until the publication of GURPS Traveller. Once again the game system was replaced, this time with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games, but the setting was returned to the one laid out in the original Traveller, albeit as an alternate history in which the assassination and subsequent fall of the Third Imperium never happened. To confuse matters further there was another version of the game being published simultaneously with the GURPS edition, Traveller 20 or T20, which used the same setting but integrated into the popular D20 role-playing system and was set a century earlier than either Classic Traveller or GURPS Traveller.

Editions

Traveller (1977, GDW)

(1977–1986) Published by GDW. Nicknamed "Classic Traveller" and often shortened to CT. The core rules originally came as three distinctive "Little Black Books" (see Overview above), in a boxed set. Supplemental booklets included "advanced" character generation, capital ship design, robots, and more. Eight boxed wargames were released as tie-in products.

Most of the Classic Traveller books are available in compendium volumes from Far Future Enterprises, which is the current copyright and trademark holder of all forms of the Traveller game. Far Future Enterprises also sells a CD-ROM containing scans of all the canonical Classic Traveller material in PDF format, including the rules, counters and maps from the boxed games.

Traveller was inducted into the Origins Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame in 1997.

MegaTraveller (1987, GDW and DGP)

MegaTraveller (1987–1992), often shortened to MT, was published by GDW but designed by Digest Group Publications which published the popular Traveller's Digest (later the MegaTraveller Journal) Traveller support magazine. The game system used revised versions of the Classic Traveller mechanics with ideas first developed in the Traveller's Digest (and later also adapted to Traveller: 2300).^[3][4]

The game was set during the Rebellion era which shattered the Imperium. Supplements and magazines produced during this era detailed the progression of the Rebellion from the initial assassination of the Emperor in 1116 to the collapse of large-scale interstellar trade in roughly 1124 (the beginning of the supplement Hard Times).

Digest Group Publications also produced a number of MegaTraveller supplements, including alien modules detailing the Aslan, Vargr, Vilani and Solomani for MegaTraveller and the World Builder's Handbook, which expanded greatly on the world-building system found in the main rulebooks.

Traveller: The New Era (1993, GDW)

Traveller: The New Era (often shortened to TNE) was a GDW publication from 1993 to 1995, set in the former territory of the Third Imperium after interstellar government and society had largely collapsed—effectively "rebooting" the setting—but leaving a pocket of the Imperium preserved to allow games with a "legacy" feel to them.

TNE introduced the AI Virus, a life form based on silicon that infected and took over alien silicon computing technologies. The game mechanics were changed to GDW's house rules system, derived from Twilight: 2000, 2nd ed. The game used a more realism-centered approach to science fiction, doing away with reactionless thrusters, shortening laser ranges to a reasonable distance, etc.

Several supplements were published for TNE covering most if not all of what the year 1201 was like, but before any of the meta-events could start to advance the timeline, GDW fell on a string of bad luck and finally was forced to close its doors, after twenty two years in which it had published one new product every 22 days on average (not counting magazines).

In 1994, Traveller: The New Era won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1993.

Marc Miller's Traveller (1996, Imperium Games)

Marc Miller's Traveller (1996–1998), often referred to as T4, was published by Imperium Games after GDW dissolved and the rights to Traveller reverted to Marc Miller, the creator of the original game. It returned to a heavily modified version of the original rules and was set in the early days of the Third Imperium (Milieu 0). This edition is currently available on Marc Miller's website. Miller has stated that T4 was "plagued by rush," explaining that the books were released without enough editing. He also stated that in spite of the quality issues that resulted from this, he does not believe that T4 is the least popular or most controversial edition of the game.^[1]

GURPS Traveller (1998, SJG)

GURPS Traveller (1998–present) was "Created on a handshake with Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games." The game uses the GURPS (Third Edition) system and takes place in an alternate timeline in which no Rebellion occurred and the AI Virus was never released. Steve Jackson Games produced numerous supplements for the line, including details for all of the major races, many of the minor races, interstellar trade, expanded world generation, the military forces of the Third Imperium, and starships. The game is often referred to as "GT".

• GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars

GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars is the second GURPS-driven version of Traveller. It concentrates on the 22nd and 23rd centuries, much earlier than the usual Traveller setting, at the time when Earth first started to send out interstellar ships and had just encountered the Vilani Imperium. This setting book uses the 4th Edition of the GURPS rules, and hence is referred to by some as "G4T" or "GTIW." The Interstellar Wars book features extensive notes on period Earth society, Vilani culture and values, and updated spaceship construction and combat rules.

Traveller 20 (2002, QLI/RPGRealms)

Traveller 20 (2002–2006) was published by Quick Link Interactive/RPG Realms Publishing. The D20 system version 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. The preferred setting is the Gateway Domain region of the Imperium.

Traveller Hero

Traveller Hero was a port of the Traveller setting to the Hero System, produced under license by Comstar Games.

Mongoose Traveller (2008, Mongoose Publishing)

Mongoose Publishing produced a major revision of the original Classic Traveller game, offering it both in a traditional format and as an open-source SRD around which other games may be built. It stems from Classic Traveller and Traveller5,^{[citation needed]} using a form of the 2D6 task system, and updating the careers, aliens, and technology found there.

The core rule book was released in April 2008, with a regular series of supplements following, including setting-related resources for the classic Third Imperium, Babylon 5, Hammer's Slammers, 2300 AD, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog and others, including a Traveller version of the Prime Directive Star Trek-based role-playing game that is currently in development. Mongoose Publishing holds the license for ten years.^[5]

Traveller⁵ (2013, FFE)

Traveller⁵, or "T5", is the fifth edition of Traveller. T5 draws concepts from previous versions to produce a consistent whole. Currently released is the Core Rulebook (656 pages), containing much more detail than that present in the original "Little Black Books". The intent is to account for (nearly) every situation in the Traveller setting.^[6] The core rules include integrated mechanics with enough depth to support Traveller's "OTU", and several focused design systems called "Maker" systems, for creating vehicles, armor, weapons, robots, alien races, animals, and equipment. A star system generation system expands on the same basic planet statistics as classic Traveller to add in social, economic, and strategic details about the mainworld and its system.

The playtest release was made available in February 2009, and revisions incorporating playtested errata were made available to playtesters on a chapter by chapter basis.^[7] The playtest open-beta phase effectively ended on May 31, 2012, when Miller launched a Traveller 5th Edition Kickstarter project. The project was funded at 1227% of its initial goal, with a final pledge level of $294,628 on Sunday 1 July 2012 and breaking Deadlands Noir's $117,648 record for most funded tabletop RPG Kickstarter).^[8] The finished T5 game went to the printers in December 2012. The Kickstarter project does not overlap with the earlier beta-test program.^[9]

The book and CD-ROM were distributed to Kickstarter participants starting in March 2013, and were available directly to game shops by June 2013.

Traveller5 and Mongoose Traveller

Mongoose Traveller and Traveller5 share many core concepts. There are two reasons for this: first, when Mongoose Traveller was being written, Mongoose Publishing used a 2008 draft of the Traveller5 rules to develop some of its core rules. The second reason is that rules were often vetted by people who were also directly involved in Traveller5's development. This subtly allowed both rule systems to inform each other. For example, some MgT personal armor values were vetted as Marc was also developing the armor build rules for T5. At this point, a correlation was established between MgT and T5's armor and weapon damage ratings, to gauge whether or not the armor ratings were reasonable (especially for edge cases). This occasionally resulted in suggestions for value tweaks.

Traveller5 in Mongoose Traveller

The careers in MgT come from T5. The list is slightly different (adding the interesting "Drifter" career, and dropping a couple others), and the method is MgT's take, but the list is otherwise the same.

The skills list comes from T5. It is slightly shorter in MgT (48 vs 64), and folds in some concepts (e.g. persuasion) which in T5 were moved under the task system in general, but the two lists are much closer to each other than to other Traveller skill lists.

Mongoose's basic starship design system stems from a draft of T5, blending in a bit of other rulesets (e.g. for armour, which wasn't written for T5 at the time) and some of their own innovations (drones). Some parts are verbatim from Early T5—the hull, bridge, drives, fuel, and the drive performance table. Some parts are simply influenced: the sensor packages and computers are not the same, but show Early T5's influence.

MgT in T5

On the other hand, MgT has also influenced T5. One example is in the "Luxuries" section. That didn't exist in Early T5, but has been adapted into the final document. Another example is on the next page, with "Fixed" weapon mounts. In Early T5 that didn't exist, but showed up in a modified way as "Firmpoints".

Related game systems

Traveller: 2300

This GDW role-playing game is a clear rules-descendent of Twilight: 2000 and Striker, using ten-sided dice. It was a hard science fiction alternative to the looser space opera of Classic Traveller. Presented as a future extrapolation of the speculative World War III of GDW's popular military role-playing game Twilight: 2000, in which the various nations of Earth were only just beginning to explore and colonize the 50 light year sphere of surrounding space. Some buyers mistakenly thought the game was intended to depict the year 2300 in the standard Traveller universe using Traveller rules; to disambiguate it from Traveller, the 2nd edition of the game was retitled to 2300 AD and this second edition introduced some cyberpunk rules and adventures.

A third version of the setting, 2320 AD was released as a supplement to the Traveller T20 ruleset.

2300 AD has been release as a setting under the Mongoose Traveller rules.

Traveller in other media

GDW licensee Paragon produced two video games based on the Traveller universe: MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy (1990) for Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS operating environments, and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients (1991) for Amiga and MS-DOS.

Several novels have been specifically set in the various Traveller universes:

1. Death of Wisdom Book 1 of 3 by Paul Brunette. ISBN 1-55878-181-1
2. To Dream of Chaos Book 2 of 3 by Paul Brunette. ISBN 1-55878-184-6
3. The Backwards Mask Book 3 of 3 by Matthew Carson. (finally published March 2011 though only for Kindle)
4. Marc Miller's Traveller: Gateway to the Stars by Pierce Askegren. ISBN 0-671-01188-X
5. The Force of Destiny by Dale Kemper ^[10]
6. Diaspora Phoenix by Martin J. Dougherty
7. Tales of the New Era 1: Yesterday's Hero by Martin J. Dougherty

In addition, Jefferson Swycaffer has written several novels set in the "Concordat" fictional universe he originally developed for his Traveller campaign.

Gregory P. Lee's "The Laughing Lip" series acknowledges the influence of Traveller in the development of the three novels published to date. Mr. Lee also wrote the Gamelords' supplement "Lee's Guide to Interstellar Adventure" in the early 1980s.

Heavy metal band Slough Feg issued a Traveller based concept album, appropriately titled Traveller in 2003.

Gaming magazine White Dwarf ran a comic strip called The Travellers by Mark Harrison from 1983 to 1986. The strip spoofed Traveller and other space opera settings.^[11]

In March 2011 IngZ Inc announced the upcoming release of Traveller AR in Summer 2011. Traveller AR is an iPhone based port of the Traveller RPG brand.^[12]

Copyright infringement lawsuit

In 1982 Game Designers Workshop sued software publisher Edu-Ware Services for infringing upon Traveller's copyright.^[13] Edu-Ware admitted to using Traveller as the basis of its role-playing video game Space, and in an out-of-court settlement, made a cash settlement and removed the video game from the market, turning all copies over to GDW.^[14]

References

Further reading

• Chadwick, Frank (1978). Traveller Book 4: Mercenary. Game Designers' Workshop. 
• Fugate, Joe D. Sr; Timothy B. Brown (1986). Traveller Book 8: Robots. Game Designers' Workshop. ISBN 0-943580-10-2.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)
• Masters, Phil (February 1983). "Open Box: The Traveller Book". White Dwarf (Games Workshop) (38): 12. ISSN 0265-8712. 
• Miller, Marc William (1980) [1979]. Traveller Book 5: High Guard. revised by Marc William Miller, Frank Chadwick and John Harshman. Game Designers' Workshop. 
• Miller, Marc W (1983). Traveller Book 6: Scouts. Game Designers' Workshop. 
• Miller, Marc W; John Harshman, Loren Wiseman, John Astell and Frank Chadwick (1984). Traveller Adventure 12: Secret of the Ancients. Game Designers' Workshop.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)
• Miller, Marc W; J. Andrew Keith (1985). Traveller Book 7: Merchant Prince. Game Designers' Workshop.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)
• Miller, Marc W (1988). Rebellion Sourcebook. Game Designers' Workshop. ISBN 0-943580-63-3. 
• Slack, Andy (February 1983). "An Introduction to Traveller Part III: Scenarios". White Dwarf (Games Workshop) (38): 10–11. ISSN 0265-8712. 
• Slack, Andy (March 1983). "An Introduction to Traveller Part IV: Scenarios". White Dwarf (Games Workshop) (39): 18–19. ISSN 0265-8712. 
• Slack, Andy (December 1983). "Open Box: Traveller Starter Edition". White Dwarf (Games Workshop) (48): 10. ISSN 0265-8712. 
• Smith, Lester (1996). Milieu 0. Imperium Games. ISBN 1578281245. 
• Wiseman, Loren K. (1981). Traveller Book 0: An Introduction To. Game Designers' Workshop. 
• Traveller Book 1: Characters and Combat. Game Designers' Workshop. 1977a. 
• Traveller Book 2: Starships. Game Designers' Workshop. 1977b. 
• Traveller Book 3: Worlds and Adventures. Game Designers' Workshop. 1977c. 

External links

• Mongoose Traveller
• GURPS Traveller by Steve Jackson Games
• Traveller Bibliography

v t e Role-playing game systems 3D&T Advanced Fighting Fantasy Alternity Amazing Engine BRP CODA CORPS Cortex Cortex Plus d20 D6 EABA Fate Fudge Fuzion GUMSHOE GURPS HARP Hero Interlock Masterbook MEGS Megaversal/Palladium Omni One-Roll Engine Powered by the Apocalypse QAGS Risus Rolemaster R&K (L5R 7th Sea) SAGA Savage Worlds SIEGE SilCore SRS Storyteller/Storytelling Traveller Tri-Stat True20 TWERPS Ubiquity Unisystem