The future starts here for the Traveller science-fiction role-playing game.
This is a long review, I know, but I've tried to make every word count -- whether you're a Traveller fan, or a curious newcomer.
If you're a younger rpg gamer, you've probably heard of Traveller, but never played it. Designed by ex-navyman Marc W. Miller, the original Traveller (now typically referred to as Classic Traveller or CT) first appeared just a few years after Dungeons and Dragons, and quickly established itself as the pre-eminent SF rpg.
Other SF rpgs which came later (such as FGU's Space Opera) owed more to the science-fantasy flavor of Star Wars, but Classic Traveller kept the science in science fiction. While no game with starship jump drives and artificial gravity can claim to be the oxymoronic "hard SF", Classic Traveller owed more to Starship Troopers and Dune (the books), the Foundation trilogy, and movies like Alien, Outland, and Aliens, than to George Lucas' popular space fantasy.
As I have written elsewhere, the setting for Classic Traveller -- the Third Imperium, under the benign Emperor Strephon -- was a nearly perfect SF setting because it accomodated almost any sort of playstyle in the breadth of its setting. Frontier adventures? Check. Mercenary warfare? Check. Piracy? Yup. Exploration? You bet. Political intrigue and galactic plots? Yes. Captaining a ship a la Serenity's Malcolm Reynolds, sliding around on the shifty doing jobs out on the raggedy edge? Hell, Classic Traveller practically invented this story mode. To this day, Firefly/Serenity fans speculate that Joss Whedon was once a CT player. Last I heard, Whedon remains (wisely) silent on this topic.
And then, after a few years, Classic Traveller's publisher blew it all up. Literally.
Classic Traveller was followed by Megatraveller (MT), which plunged Charted Space and the Third Imperium into a massive civil war. It was great for those who wanted all-out space warfare in their games, but the flexibility of the published Traveller setting was sacrificed. Certain gamestyles became harder to justify against a fragmented background of Imperium-wide war.
Publisher GDW folded, and the next incarnation of Traveller was Traveller: The New Era (TNE). TNE is a hotly-debated topic among Traveller fans. Some hate it and refuse to acknowledge it as canon, while others love it above all other forms of Traveller.
Basically, TNE explored a fractured, fallen galaxy, post-Civil War. The Third Imperium destroyed, and huge sections of known space falling into barbarism and low-tech regression.
Both MT and TNE were interesting as stories, but neither setting was as flexible (and thus, as useful) as that of Classic Traveller's Third Imperium.
Put bluntly, the vast CT Third Imperium setting could accommodate both civil war player campaigns and fallen space, low-tech, restorationist player campaigns within its huge setting -- but neither MT nor TNE could accommodate other types of play anywhere near as easily within their galaxy-spanning storylines.
But now, we have 1248 Sourcebook 1: Out of the Darkness, by Martin J. Dougherty, and it looks like the best hope for the future of the Traveller setting.
1248 refers to the year in the Traveller dating system -- 1248 years after the founding of the First Imperium. More importantly, this sourcebook describes the current state of Traveller's Charted Space, some 130 years after the Third Imperium gave way to the bloodshed of MT's Civil War, and the dark, apocalyptic times described in TNE.
This is future humanity on the upswing. Sure, Charted Space is still fragmented, with pocket star nations of various sizes on the galactic map, but the Fourth Imperium has been founded, and alliances are being made. While space is still frontier-ish and dangerous, galactic civilization is returning and strengthening. It's the perfect time for adventure-seeking spacefarers to get out there and seek their fortune -- or build their legend.
Most importantly for players and for gamemasters (called "referees" in Traveller). the sense of a broad, accomodating setting is finally returning to the game. Elements of the Civil War era and the dark times still exist in the setting, but author Dougherty has created a vision of Charted Space which promises to be as flexible and as multi-purpose as the Third Imperium of Classic Traveller.
If you're an SF gamemaster, and you've ever been curious about the Traveller game setting, this is the sourcebook to buy. The sourcebook is effectively rules-neutral, so whether you're using the Traveller d20 rules; the Classic Traveller rules from farfuture.net; the GURPS Traveller rules; Megatraveller; The New Era; or even a "Traveller-ized" home version of the d20 Future rules, you can use this sourcebook without fear. It's background and setting data -- dice barely required.
Even if you have no Traveller experience at all, this sourcebook is a great introduction to the Traveller universe. It does presume you have some knowledge of what Traveller's major races are, and who the great personages of the Traveller setting might be, but if you're willing to take these as things to be Googled or Wikipedia'd later, you can still follow the setting information to good effect.
The 1248 Sourcebook is divided into three large sections and two appendices. The first section starts off with a color overview map of Charted Space in 1248, and then presents a detailed history of Charted Space from the time of the Civil War and the Collapse to the present-day. While this history section is certainly more interesting to existing Traveller fans, new gamers who want a look at how an intricate mega-plotline can play itself out might find some ideas and inpiration here.
The second section of 1248 details the major races (human and otherwise) as they now exist, as well as describing the major political states in Charted Space at this time. All of the significant races are described, but not pictured, unfortunately. Readers new to Traveller will have to rely on the text descriptions. Traveller fans might be interested to learn that the fascist, xenophobic humans of the Solomani ("men of Sol") regime have become even more racist and fascistic over time. Yet, in one of the small ironies author Dougherty delights in, Earth itself is now an enlightened world, and is no longer under their control.
The third section of 1248 covers a number of unresolved plot threads left over from the TNE plotline, and provides some not-necessarily-canonical suggestions as to how Traveller referees might want to build on these revelations in their home campaigns. The Omicron Virus, which precipitated the technological collapse during TNE; the so-called Vampire Fleets of marauding self-aware Virus-AI vessels (and their captive biological crews) which terrorized the spaceways during the Collapse era; the psionic "Empress Wave" phenomenon threatening to engulf Charted Space. All of these dangling plot threads are addressed, and more.
The first Appendix talks about how to generate Traveller planetary statistics for worlds in the year 1248. Classic Traveller d6 statistics are used, but the section is designed to be useful to anyone with a set of Traveller rules. Unfortunately, the details will be less useful to readers unfamiliar with Traveller, although the basic gist of the planetary modifications should be detectable.
The second Appendix provides a starting area near the edge of the Fourth Imperium as a jumping-off point for players who want to get out there and explore Charted Space circa 1248. The three main worlds of the tiny "County of Ukse" (literally, an area overseen by an Imperial Count -- although planets in the Imperium do, as ever, have their own governments). The three main worlds are described -- complete with orbital-view surface maps and planet graphics -- and other, nearby worlds are also described, although in less detail. Ten planets, in total, are presented.
Author Dougherty also presents ten Adventure Seeds linked to details about this frontier region, ranging from bounty work, trade and commerce, military work, to vaguely criminal work, and more.
This has been a very long review, and I extend my sincere thanks to the one or two people who may have actually read this far.
I wrote long because I feel this product is very important to the resurgence of Traveller as an SF rpg, and I wanted to make the "why" of that clear to both Traveller fans, and to those curious gamers who know nearly nothing about Traveller, except the name.
Traveller started it all, and more-recent SF game settings (d20 Future, Star*Drive, et al) owe much of their science-fiction style to Traveller -- some to the point of pure plagiarism.
Author Martin J. Dougherty has done an excellent thing with 1248: Sourcebook 1: Out of the Darkness. Not only has he allowed the Traveller timeline to continue past the grim catastrophe of the TNE Collapse era, Dougherty has brought the Traveller setting back to being a broad-based gaming universe, as it was in the Classic Traveller era. This campaign setting is large and inclusive in a way not seen since the heyday of CT. Many different types of far future adventure are possible once again, and can co-exist easily in an ever-widening game universe. Dougherty has restored the Traveller universe as a place rich with storytelling possibilities, and diverse in the sorts of adventures it can contain.
The author has indeed brought the Traveller universe "Out of the Darkness" with 1248 in more ways than one, and I salute him for it.
Fire up your starship. Strap on your sidearm. I have seen the future, and it looks good.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: See above!<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: [EDIT] Since I originally posted this review, ComStar has released an updated version of the PDF (free to previous purchasers, I believe) with a new cover and additional interior art -- thus rendering my previous "lacks interior art" complaint irrelevant. On the downside, the new cover has the TNE logo emblazoned boldly across the top. I'm not sure that this product counts as a TNE product, in the strictest sense, since it has moved beyond what TNE means to most Traveller players. Also, given how many Traveller fans automatically reject anything to do with the TNE name, I can't help but wonder if this was a wise decision on ComStar's and Avenger's part. Perhaps "Fourth Imperium" would have been a better choice?
** As a sourcebook, this product plays to author Dougherty's strengths as a fiction writer and an "idea man". Adventures set in the 1248 Fourth Imperium are promised, but I confess this makes me nervous. All the previous Traveller adventures by Dougherty I've purchased have had great plots and ideas, but they have all been a serious burden to run -- essentially, all they've been are plot and outline. If area maps or building layouts are needed, or opponent statistics, or other game details to make the adventure ready to play, too often this time-consuming "grunt work" is left entirely to the gamemaster.
The overview approach works perfectly for this sourcebook, but I hope any future adventure modules set in 1248 will take a more "table-ready" approach.
<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>
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