Whereas the original Traveller box had presented a mostly generic set of rules (albeit one whose systems presented an implied setting which the Third Imperium ended up closely resembling, much like the original D&D rules presented an implied setting that the likes of Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms would closely follow), over time the product line had become more and more intertwined with the Imperium, so this change made sense. Then there was MegaTraveller, an ambitious revision of the rules which incorporated much more Third Imperium-focused material into the core set.
Edition wars were unknown, the game sold extremely well – easily becoming the dominant science fiction RPG in the English-speaking world – all was golden. Once upon a time there was just Classic Traveller – available in many forms (the original boxed set, the expanded Deluxe Traveller box, the Traveller Book which edited together all the stuff in the boxed set and sprinkled on some extra Third Imperium setting material and adventures, the Starter Traveller set which provided a basic version of the rules…), but basically the same game in all its iterations. If you just look at the system, though, that’s had a convoluted history of its own. GURPS? Why, some people swear that GURPS Traveller is their absolute favourite presentation of the Third Imperium! I admit to losing track of which of all these variants are still in print, but I do remember getting the impression a while back that the answer was probably “too many” – although each licence probably gave Miller a nice injection of royalties, at the same time I do wonder whether they have been a double-edged sword: each successful adaptation can only have fragmented the fanbase further (with a big question mark as to whether it grew the fanbase sufficiently to compensate for that), whilst each unsuccessful one can’t have done much to build the fanbase further. Hero system? There’s a Traveller for that. This is particularly the case if you consider that actually the term Traveller refers, in the minds of many, to two connected and distinct things: there’s Traveller in the sense of the game systems that have carried that name, and then there’s Traveller in the sense of the Third Imperium campaign setting which became the default setting of the game reasonably early on in the lifetime of its original incarnation (known today as Classic Traveller).Īs far as the setting goes Marc Miller, its creator and custodian of most of the old Game Designers’ Workshop RPG back catalogue, has been very generous with the licensing rights over the years, so if you want to play in the Third Imperium there are an embarrassment of choices available. As with many games that have been revised and reissued regularly since the 1970s, Traveller is in the precarious position of having a rather startling number of different versions of it available.
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