Frequently Asked Questions
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Traveller is one of the oldest and best-regarded science-fiction universes in role-playing. Through four rules sets and over twenty years, Traveller has grown and prospered, creating a rich, reasonable, and self-consistent history that mingles the drama and grandeur of space opera, the circumspect logic of "hard" science fiction, and the social and political inventiveness of "New Wave" and modern sf authors.
"Classic" Traveller first appeared in 1977, published by the now-defunct Game Designers Workshop, or GDW (also famous for their wargames and the RPG's Twilight:2000, Dark Conspiracy, and 2300 AD). It told of events and adventure in the year 1105 (AD 5626) of the star-spanning Third Imperium, wracked by Frontier Wars, megacorporate intrigue, and the simple day-to-day contact of races and cultures from eleven thousand worlds. Ten "real-world" years later, in 1987, GDW updated both rules and setting with MegaTraveller ("MT"): Emperor Strephon was assassinated in 1116, and the Third Imperium splintered into civil war. 1993's Traveller: The New Era ("TNE") advanced the timeline yet again, as an advanced computer virus wrecked civilization, ending the civil war but plunging all known space into a Collapse from which only brave adventurers could rescue humanity, in Imperial year 1201. When upheavals in the RPG industry forced GDW to close their doors in 1996, Imperium Games took up the flag and, later that year, published Marc Miller's TRAVELLER (sometimes called T4), which took gamers back over a millenium, to the founding years (and birthing pangs) of their beloved Third Imperium. Now, in 1998, Steve Jackson Games returns to Traveller's roots with a new version of the game.
GURPS Traveller is a licensed adaptation of the classic Traveller setting, using GURPS' proven and detailed mechanics both to introduce new gamers to the Third Imperium and its history and to provide old fans with the wealth of detail and support which GURPS provides. (For more information about the GURPS rules set and mechanics, try the GURPS FAQ.) GURPS Traveller is an "alternate history" in which Emperor Strephon was not assassinated, and events did not sweep forward as described above. The Imperial year is now late 1120, nearly Emperor Strephon's Golden Jubilee -- but the absence of civil war does not make the galaxy a peaceful or easy place!
Loren Wiseman is the line editor for GURPS Traveller. He brings long experience with the game from its earliest days: as one of the founders of Game Designers Workshop, he had a hand in the "Classic", "Mega", and "New Era" versions of the game.
It means that he'll be supervising editor (author or guiding hand) for a whole line of GURPS Traveller books and adventures. Yes, that's right: unlike many of the one-volume worldbooks GURPS has seen published, GURPS Traveller will be an ongoing series of publications developing and expanding a single gaming universe. It's a rich setting for adventure, with lots of opportunity. We hope you join us for the voyage.
Joseph Lockett, volunteer webmaster for GURPS Traveller, maintains this FAQ, based on Steve Jackson Games press releases, ongoing playtests of material, and the occasional conversation with Loren Wiseman. All errors are his responsibility, and you can be sure Loren hasn't told him everything. Updates will appear regularly, as new information appears or new questions arise. If you have a question that hasn't been covered here, ask it -- but keep in mind, the secrets of the background remain just that: secrets.
All good alternate history stories proceed from one changed premise: what if Lee had won at Antietam, or Oswald failed in Dallas? In the universe of GURPS Traveller, the one change is this: the seminal events MegaTraveller, namely the assassination of Emperor Strephon Alkhalikoi by Archduke Dulinor of Ilelish, do not occur. (Watch the Traveller News Service to see the divergence unfold). All "past" history up to the divergence, from the Ancients to the aftermath of the Fifth Frontier War, remains the same. Only the "future" is unknown, in this new alternate universe.
GURPS Traveller doesn't "invalidate" anything: SJG's Men in Black are not going to sneak into your gaming library to steal all your copies of the original history. Many gamers, no doubt, will continue MegaTraveller or New Era campaigns under GURPS mechanics. Others will keep the GDW systems but use the new product line for information and inspiration. And that's all fine. Again, GURPS Traveller is an alternate history, not the "official" saga of the Third Imperium. It is an entertaining might-have-been, set within many gamers' favorite period of the imaginary history. Take it, and enjoy it, for what it is, not what you might fear it to be.
Again, the alternate history proceeds from one change: the assassination of Emperor Strephon. All events which happened prior to that break point remain unchanged.
Questions of this sort really can't be answered -- otherwise, what would be the point of publishing the game line? Wait, and see. Then question some more, and wait and see again. Traveller has always thrived on gradually revealed mystery, from the Secret of the Ancients to TNE's Black Curtain. Don't try to peek in the back of the book.
Certainly GURPS Traveller will offer information on familiar weapons, other equipment, starships, aliens, etc. It will also include guidelines on taking existing Traveller characters and recreating them in GURPS. The process won't be perfect, and will need some judgement calls, but it should help those looking to convert between systems, either to move over an existing campaign or to borrow GURPS material for their own use.
Questions like this are puzzling, since Traveller has already appeared under four different sets of mechanics, and character generation has veered between randomness and choice in all of them. If you want to roll up a character randomly in the old career-path system, go for it. GURPS Traveller will encourage the same archetypes, and GURPS limits on skill points will tend to make highly-skilled characters older, as in Classic Traveller. We consider the added choice and control a feature, not a bug. Though there are always people willing to argue the issue.
GURPS Traveller will use equipment and rules from previous GURPS supplements, with suitable rules-tweaks to properly model the game universe. But the game system is open enough to referee modification that, if you want to replace, say, starship construction with an older system or one of your own devising, you should certainly be able to do so.
GURPS Traveller will use GURPS tech levels, with a conversion table for consistency with the other systems and explanations for how Traveller's technology path differs from the default GURPS charts.
Traveller's Universal World Profiles (strings of alphanumeric data giving the basic characteristics of an inhabited world) will not appear. World information will be given as text, with terms such as "hydrographic percentage" translated to "surface water." That, plus a sentence or two, will amount to the coverage for most worlds in the Spinward Marches sourcebook, though selected worlds will get a page or more of discussion in detail.
Some Classic Traveller players may bemoan the absence of the venerable UWP. But, in the words of M.J. Dougherty, one of Behind the Claw's authors:
"All the world data in the book has been expanded from the Supplement 3 UWP's, and apart from a couple of worlds where the government has changed thanks to events in the past 15 years, they're still valid.But, as has been observed: law and tech levels are different in GURPS. And besides: if someone has gone to the trouple of writing out the data from the UWP, and you now know that the world has a standard atmosphere tainted by great flying lumps of cheese, why do you need to look at a bunch of numbers, refer to a table, and discover that '6' means 'standard, tainted'. It'd be a waste of space.
Forget comments about the relative sanity of gamers: there's limited space in a game book. Why waste it on printing something that's already in the text when you could use the space for something else?"
Right after the core sourcebook, one of the first releases in the new line will be Behind the Claw: The Spinward Marches Sourcebook, which will take Traveller back to its original and most popular sector of space. Soon after that comes a Mercenaries/Military sourcebook. Other publications will follow every few months, featuring aliens, weapons, vehicles, other regions of the Imperium, and adventures. Errata, explanations, chat sessions, extra tidbits, and so on will all be available here on the SJG website.
The "target audience" is anyone interested in a rich, varied, and wide-open science-fiction adventuring environment, whether they're a die-hard grognard with yellowed copies of Classic Traveller's "little black books" or a newcomer to the universe and genre. And while the game supplements will certainly be aimed at GURPS support, the information on Traveller's aliens, worlds, and events should prove useful to a gamer using any system or milieu in the fictional history.
The core product will, obviously, have to concentrate a bit more on GURPS mechanics, covering character creation and which of the myriad GURPS rules and options to use and which not to use. (If you're a Pyramid subscriber, feel free to check out the playtest files yourself.) It will also serve as an introduction to the Traveller universe and its assumptions, covering both old material and new. Future products in the line will, obviously, carry full GURPS statistics for equipment, etc., but plots, personalities, and world descriptions can be used by anyone, regardless of system.
GURPS Traveller will require the Basic Set (or, in a pinch, the new and freely-available GURPS Lite) for play. But that's it. Other sourcebooks are valuable sources for ideas, more specific rules, or helpful hints, but they aren't necessary to play the game. GURPS is a modular system: use what you wish.
Most upcoming GURPS products appear for playtest online, and are available as part of an electronic subscription to Pyramid magazine. If you're interested, subscribe now. Armed with your userid and password, you can playtest and comment to your heart's content.
Pyramid magazine online is always looking for good material: you can certainly write articles (aliens, worlds, adventures, NPC's, etc.) for them. You would need to submit a detailed professional proposal for, say, your own GURPS sourcebook.
Traveller has twenty years' worth of fans spread worldwide. You can find several web sites devoted to various versions of the game on our links page. Or, for a more organized presentation, try the following other FAQ files:
If your retailer doesn't have a book or game that you want, ask them to order it. We'll be happy to send them a list of distributors who carry our lines of games. If they can't or won't help you, then you can always order online from Steve Jackson Games. But please, if you can, support your local retailer: they're the best way to spread the hobby widely, not just among people who know where to look.
Marc Miller will be approving GURPS Traveller artwork -- which, for all intents and purposes, makes it as "Travelleresque" as they come. More to the point, the core rules have art from Tom Peters and Rob Caswell (names that should be familiar to fans of previous editions). And William Keith may be providing a cover illustration when his writing schedule permits.
