I was at
Spirit Games in Burton today and I found Marc Miller's Traveller there for a whole seven quid.
I played Traveller a grand total of twice back in the 1980s. It was basically a Star Wars game - the West End Games D6 game was only a couple of years away so it would have been about 1985/1986. Anyway, it was utter rubbish. The GM was basically trying to emulate Star Wars but kept throwing in Star Trek technology, and the second game wasn't much better. I didn't run a decent hard sci-fi game until
2300AD came out and I couldn't get the players.
My Dragon Warriors campaign is approaching it's conclusion and we're looking at doing a bit of a sci-fi campaign next before Jason starts his Pathfinder games. I primarily got this version because of the
Chris Foss art inside - brilliant, inspirational stuff. My wife recently bought me some old copies of
Asimov's Foundation books and Chris Foss did the covers. I grew up with this guy and his imagery is what I want to capture in my games.
So this book was perfect for me, then. Great find.
You'll want the errata, if it's knocking around on the internet somewhere, and it probably is. This edition of the game, sometimes called T4 was riddled with misprints and bugs.
ReplyDeleteYou may also want to take a look at
ReplyDeleteClassic Starter Traveller (still free on PDF
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80190&affiliate_id=4209
http://www.farfuture.net/)
and Mongoose's Traveller (free SRD in the Developer's Pack, Pocket Edition is like $20USD), to supplement T4.
As for the T4 errata, try
http://traveller.mu.org/errata/
http://traveller.downport.com/t4/T4errata.htm
and hope you got a second printing. T4 core is *ok* if you are ok with the task system, some of the supplements were just terrible. For me, Mongoose Traveller is what I wanted T4 to be, a complete, playable out of the core book Traveller that didn't require lots of house rules or supplements just to sit down and play.
The Foss art is good, but much of it is just old stuff reprinted cos they could and little of it has anything much to do with the text or book at hand (there are a few exceptions). The equipment book, the arsenal (guns) book and the Pocket Empires are likely the best of the supplements.
Thanks for the errata nods, but the previous owner kindly stuffed a copy of them in the book. Very nice of him.
ReplyDeleteLike Ghoul says, I'm getting the notion that I'm going to need a few supplements to get the most out of this. Luckily, I have a friend with Traveller stuff I can borrow and there's plenty of internet material to cannibalise.
Cheers, guys.
Yep, that's one of the advantages of playing any Traveller version. There's lots of free stuff to choose from, just get comfy and play!
ReplyDelete