Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Classic Traveller

I was surprised, today, to find that I still have a rather large collection of classic Traveller "stuff".

Several years ago, I sold most of my Traveller collection, as I had not played the game in a decade, and the books were commanding a high price on eBay. That collection included what I thought was my full collection of LBB's, all eight of the full-size Alien Modules, a lot of MegaTraveller and Traveller: The New Era stuff, and a number of very nice Digest Group Publications materials.

In rummaging through some boxes in the basement this afternoon, I discovered I still have a quite a collection of the Little Black Books, including the original boxed set, with Books 1 through 5 inside (unfortunately missing my two favorites, Scouts and Merchant Prince, which I no doubt sold), Adventures 1 through 4, Double Adventures 1 and 2, Supplements 1 though 7 (except 5), and Journals 2 through 8. I also found my boxed sets of Mayday, Snapshot and Azhanti High Lightning, and about 30 of the 15mm Traveller miniatures.

Traveller has been on my mind lately. Recently, I was looking at James Malizewski's Thousand Suns at my FLGS, but in a moment of nostalgia, purchased the Far Future Enterprise / Quik Link Interactive reprint of the classic 3 LBBs instead, for $12, not realizing I still had the classic Traveller rules at home. I have since read elsewhere that the Mongoose re-imagining of the Traveller rules is very good. I'm curious about the differences between classic Traveller and the Mongoose version, and whether the changes they made improved the game.

4 comments:

Rognar said...

I have heard that character generation is no longer potentially lethal, although I don't know that for a fact.

Robert Saint John said...

Aww, you really should have picked up Thousand Suns! No, wait, strike that. A revised edition of TS is due next spring, and I think it'll have a lot of improvements. Even in its current form, though, I think it's a great game and I've come to prefer it to Traveller (even the Mongoose version).

In the meantime, track down Diaspora if you like the FATE system at all. It's an exceptional attempt to reimagine Traveller, and very well written and designed.

Aaron E. Steele said...

Thanks for the Diaspora suggestion.

I visited the Diaspora website and found it quite interesting.

I think you could run a Firefly campaign quite easily with that system, and the creators are Canadian to boot?

I will likely pick up the revised Thousand Suns as well.

Aaron E. Steele said...

@Rognar: If true, that's a shame. I enjoyed the risk of having your character getting killed one term before mustering out!