Traveller was the first role playing game (RPG) I ever played (way back in 1978). It was my favorite back then, and it is still one of my favorites. Now called Classic Traveller to distinguish it from its later incarnations (MegaTraveller, TravellerTNE, Marc Miller’s TravellerT4, TravellerT20, and GURPS Traveller), it provides a simple yet sufficiently detailed (at least for me) gaming system.

"Traveller covers a unique facet of future society: the concept that expanding technology will enable man to reach the stars, and to populate the worlds which orbit them. Nonetheless, communication will be reduced to the level of the 18th Century, reduced to the speed of transportation. The result will be a large (bordering ultimately on infinite) universe, ripe for the bold adventurer's travels." - Traveller, Volume 1, 1977.

For someone who likes a far future setting with space opera flavor but still prefers their science fiction to have a realistic "hard edge", Classic Traveller is the perfect game. There are no "laser swords", FTL radios, or matter transmitters. Space combat uses a simple vector-based system that does a pretty good job of simulating the actual motion of a spaceship, unlike some other games that ignore Newton’s Laws of Motion and allow spaceships to stop suddenly or make right-angle turns. Starships in Classic Traveller don’t have "bottomless" fuel tanks either. Weapons are limited to lasers and missiles on small starships, although more exotic weapons are available to large High Guard warships (sorry, no tractor beams).

Although I have neither the time nor a suitable group of like-minded loonies for face-to-face gaming anymore, I still have a strong interest in RPGs as a mechanism for fleshing out characters and evaluating conflict in my science fiction short stories. I also like the detailed settings that good RPGs provide as settings for short fiction. The Traveller universe provides particularly fertile ground for the sorts of adventures I like. Although I use Classic Traveller as my core system, I like to "mine" MegaTraveller and TravellerTNE for details and ideas.

Anyway, enough with my boring personal opinions already. On to the kewl stuff! View my photos of an authentic type J "Low Trader" then check out my Traveller Links.

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