The first true supplement for the Traveller 1248 science-fiction game setting has finally been released, and it's a worthy product.

This is another very long review, but if you want to know what you're buying, read on, brave soul ...

There's been something of a delay in 1248 releases as ComStar and Avenger Enterprises took the time to make their publishing agreement with Traveller creator Marc Miller official. Now, the products are beginning to arrive, and 1248 Starships 1: Small Merchant Ships is a good place to start.

The product offers four player-friendly classes of merchant ship for five bucks, plus details on ship purchasing and maintenance, as well as a planet writeup which I'll discuss later.

As the product description states, each starship comes with a description, a deckplan, and High Guard statistics. For anyone new to Traveller reading this, High Guard statistics refers to a short-form notation used to summarize Traveller ship characteristics at a glance. The name High Guard comes from the Classic Traveller product of the same name where the notation was first introduced.

Understanding High Guard notation is not necessary to use this product fully; it's just provided as a convenience for those Traveller gamers who do use it.

Each of the four small merchant vessels presented feature a clean, simple deckplan in black and white, and an artist's conception of each vessel. All of the illustrations are black and white as well, with the exception of a color view of the newest starship type, the 300-ton Frontier Trader.

Of the four starships provided, three are long-time classic Traveller small merchant designs, updated for the year 1248. They include:

1) The 200 ton Free Trader

This starship becomes available as early as Tech Level 9 (Early Interstellar) and requires a minimum crew of five (a pilot, an engineer, a medic, a gunner, and a steward).

For those new to Traveller, a steward is the person assigned to look after the needs of any passengers onboard. If the ship isn't planning on carrying passengers, the steward becomes optional. Often, a frontier crew will simply assign someone who has no crucial shipboard job to act as a steward during passenger runs. Obviously, characters with skills related to the task do much better at it.

The Free Trader can carry seven passengers, if need be, plus twenty more passengers in low berths (suspended animation chambers a la "Aliens")

The gunner controls the Free Trader's mixed single turret, which ships with a missile rack and a defensive sandcaster (used for refracting incoming beam weapons fire) as part of the purchase price.

Cargo space is good, with roughly ninety tons possible, stored in three separate cargo holds.

The main drawback of the Free Trader class for an adventuring party is it's limited range. With its jump drive rated at the minimum of Jump-1 -- one hex on the standard Traveller subsector maps -- and a limited fuel-tank capacity, the Free Trader does best when sticking to familiar trade routes where the distances between solar systems are shortest.

2) The 200 ton Far Trader

This TL 11 Free Trader variant has a better jump drive, and thus, a longer range than the original Free Trader design, but it gains this advantage at the cost of decreased cargo space.

With a Jump-2 jump drive, the Far Trader class can carry up to sixty-two tons of cargo, seven passengers, and six low berth passengers beyond the travelled spacelanes.

The Far Trader has the same crew requirements as the Free Trader: pilot, engineer, medic, gunner, and steward. Like the Free Trader class, it also comes with a mixed single turret sporting a missile rack and a defensive sandcaster.

3) The 400 ton Subsidized Merchant

Probably the most common privately-owned cargo hauler in Charted Space, the slow, short range (at Jump-1) Subsidized Merchant ship might be for you, if your players are more interested in turning a profit than braving the dangers of the unknown.

The Subsidized Merchant -- nicknamed the Fat Trader centuries ago -- is a very traditional ship design, which becomes available as early as TL 9. It can hold up to 213 tons of cargo, or 153 tons if five starfighters are carried aboard for security.

Despite the possibility of fighters onboard, the Subsidized Merchant is not a military craft, nor any sort of "starcraft carrier". It's a large, slow, vulnerable cargo vessel, even with its fighter option available.

Ideally, in combat, the Subsidized Merchant relies on its fighters to engage any hostile craft, while the starship itself supports from long-range with missile fire from its three missile turrets.

Even with this plan in effect, Subsidized Merchants are still vulnerable in combat, and rarely last long against pirates or other serious aggressors.

This starship requires a crew consisting of a pilot, a navigator, an engineer, a medic, 4 gunners (3 for the single missile turrets; 1 for the single sandcaster turret) and a steward. If four fighters are carried aboard, then 5 craft pilots, and 5 craft mechanics must also be on the crew roster.

Note that the optional fighters for the Subsidized Merchant class are not statted, mapped, or otherwise depicted in this product. Traveller referees will have to rely on the standard 15-ton fighter statistics and details available in most core Traveller rule sets.

The last vessel described in 1248 Starships 1: Small Merchant Ships is a new design; one uniquely suited to a crew of adventurers willing to brave the dangers of the wild and dangerous expanses beyond the borders of the fledgling Fourth Imperium.

4) The 300-ton Frontier Trader

This small merchant is a TL 11 starship capable of Jump-2. It carries three turrets: a dual turret carrying one pulse laser and one sandcaster, and two triple missile turrets.

With only sixty-six tons of cargo space divided into two compartments, a Frontier Trader ship will never beat a Far Trader or a Subsidized Merchant in a trade war -- but the Frontier Trader has the range to go places the Subsidized Merchant can't go, and the armament to hold off attackers which would overwhelm both its competitor vessels. The ability to reach far ports, and live to bring back rare trade goods, has a market value all its own.

The Frontier Trader class requires a crew of nine: pilot, navigator, 2 engineers, medic, 3 gunners, and a steward. The ship can carry 6 passengers, and 6 low berth passengers as required.

Beyond the four merchant starships discussed above, 1248 Starships 1: Small Merchant Ships also features a very useful section discussing both the purchase price discount for a used starship, depending on its age -- and the increased maintenance cost for a used starship, also tied to its age. Both values are calculated as a percentage of a starship's brand new price, something traditionally listed in each Traveller starship's basic writeup.

The last section of 1248 Starships 1: Small Merchant Ships details the near-border Fourth Imperium world of Latasel, in the Beta Quadrant of Gushmenge sector.

This writeup is clever, as it not only provides a planetary site useful for travellers looking to cross the border into the wilds (Latasel has one of the better starports in this region of space), but the planetary writeup also contains the sort of dry socio-political irony and resistance to simplistic categorization inherent in the best Traveller material.

Players expecting an obviously good/bad universe with easily identifiable sides, a la Star Wars, won't find that here. While there is definitely good and evil in the Traveller 1248 universe, and the setting isn't pretentiously dark or cynical, the game setting has more in common with Joss Whedon's `Verse, or the futures seen in the Aliens films, Outland, or even the new Battlestar Galactica. Good and evil exist, but navigating between them day-to-day is a little more complicated than Star Wars' "check this box" mentality.

So it is with the world of Latasel described here. The planet is a major interstellar thoroughfare, and its leader, Jicondo Remaii, is a staunch supporter of the new Fourth Imperium. The world has been targeted for further investment by the Reconstruction Service, and Remaii is considered to be a shoo-in for a Marquis' title at the next meeting of the Imperial Moot.

There's just one slight detail which might bother some of your players -- Remaii is a charismatic dictator. Sure, most of the planet genuinely loves him and he seems like such a swell guy. Latasel is great place to live in these troubled times; safe, secure, prosperous -- until you run afoul of the local law. Death penalties are imposed for what many worlds consider minor crimes, and leniency takes second place to security.

Remaii makes no bones about his arch-conservative policies, genuinely believing that security is paramount for Latasel in the troubled year 1248. He's not some irrational, sociopathic tyrant -- which could make Remaii all the scarier to those players who oppose his methods.

As written, Latasel can simply serve as a convenient temporary stopover on the way to other adventures -- or it can be the kind of planet where a crew of free-thinking, armed adventurers could find themselves eyeball-deep in bad, bad trouble.

As with the best Traveller materials, the choice is yours as the game's referee.

Latasel and Jicondo Remaii are discussed but the planet is not mapped, nor Remaii statted out, making the background data rules-neutral. The subsector map containing Latasel is provided, but no planetary data for the sector is given, only for Latasel itself. The book only promised Latasel, but for details on the star systems around Latasel, you'll need access to Traveller 1248 Sourcebook 2: Bearers of the Flame, also available as a PDF here on RPG Now.

All in all, 1248 Starships 1: Small Merchant Ships is a solid start to the continuance of the Traveller 1248 product line. Scout Service ships will be featured in the next 1248 Starships book, and I can't wait to see it!

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>:

*** The 1248 line has recommenced, and the first release is very table-ready for game night use. Both of these things make me very happy.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>:

Not a complaint, just a heads-up to prospective buyers:

*** The maps in this product are in the Classic Traveller style: black and grey on white with a 1.5m (5') square grid. Interior detail is kept to a minimum, with obvious and necessary details featured only. These aren't the richly detailed, artistic deckplans we've gotten used to seeing from Ryan Wolfe's Future Armada series. Then again, you're getting four perfectly useable, clean, crisp, and professional starship deckplans for five bucks. Just know what you're getting here, so you don't disappoint yourself later.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>