Traveller (role-playing game)

Traveller is a science fiction role-playing game first published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop. Marc Miller designed Traveller with help from Frank Chadwick, John Harshman, and Loren Wiseman. Editions were published for GURPS, d20, and other role-playing game systems. From its origin and in the currently published systems, the game relied upon six-sided dice for random elements. Traveller has been featured in a few novels and at least two video games.
Traveller is a tabletop game where characters journey through star systems, engaging in exploration, ground and space battles, and interstellar trading. The game is influenced by various literary works and emphasizes commerce, sociological stratification, and a mix of low and high technology. The setting is centered around the human-dominated Third Imperium, a feudalistic interstellar empire. Despite the focus on humans, the Traveller universe is cosmopolitan and features various other sophont peoples. The game's history also features the Ancients, a highly advanced race that left behind ruins and artifacts scattered throughout the universe.
Traveller has been published in various editions since 1977. The original version, known as Classic Traveller, was published by Game Designers' Workshop. Throughout the years, the game has evolved, with notable editions including MegaTraveller, Traveller: The New Era, Marc Miller's Traveller, GURPS Traveller, Traveller20, Traveller Hero, Mongoose Traveller, and Traveller5. The current rulesets are Traveller5 and Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed., both of which draw from the original Traveller rules and rely on six-sided dice. Each edition presents different settings, timelines, and mechanics, showcasing the game's adaptability and enduring popularity.
Traveller is highly regarded for its production value, sophisticated character generation system, and consistent rules. It has received positive reviews across various editions, with some critics calling it the best science-fiction RPG. Traveller has won multiple Origins Awards and was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in 1996. While the game has faced some criticism, such as slow character growth and anachronistic weapons, it remains a classic in the role-playing hobby. Some video games and software have been based on the Traveller universe, including The Imperial Data Recovery System, MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy, and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients.

Design

Traveller is a tabletop role-playing game. Characters journey between star systems, engaging in exploration, ground and space battles, and interstellar trading. One player, the game master or referee, oversees task attempts and guides events as the players explore the setting.
Characters are defined not by the need to increase native skill and ability but by achievements, discoveries, wealth, and so on.

Influences and inspiration

Marc Miller lists a number of books that influenced Traveller and provided its key features:

Dorsai, Gordon R. Dickson, 1960
Dumarest of Terra saga, Edwin Charles Tubb, 1967-2008
Envoy to New Worlds, Keith Laumer, 1963
Hammer's Slammers, David Drake, 1979
Retief's Peace, Keith Laumer, William H. Keith, 2005
Space Viking, H. Beam Piper, 1963
The Cosmic Computer, H. Beam Piper, 1963
Key features

Some of these key features include:

Commerce: Commerce is the major driving force of civilization.
Human-centric but cosmopolitan: The core rules focus on human characters, but there is support for using and playing aliens.
Limited communication: There is no Faster-than-light communication – meaning no ansible, subspace radio, or similar. Communication is limited to the speed of travel. Decisions are made on the local level rather than by a remote authority.
Morals and mortality: People remain people and continue to show courage, wisdom, honesty and justice, along with cowardice, deceit, and criminal behavior.
Sociological: Interstellar society is socially stratified. Affairs are often managed by independent nobility, who make use of classic titles such as Baron, Duke and Archduke.
Characters

Traveller uses a lifepath-style system for character generation. Characters get skills and experience in a mini-game where the player makes career choices determining the character's life up to the point before adventuring begins.
A character can be human, robot, alien, or of a genetically engineered species. A character can be civilian, military, or noble, a young cadet, or a tried-and-true veteran, each with strengths and weaknesses. Death during character generation is possible in some editions, a mechanic that became infamous.
Characters have six primary characteristics, generated by a roll of two six-sided dice. Other characteristics also exist to add nuance to alien characters.
Some characters have extra-sensory perception, telekinesis, telepathy, and other psychic abilities, which are organized and standardized into "psionics".

Equipment

Equipment emphasizes wilderness exploration, hazardous environments, and combat. As a result, equipment lists are heavy on vehicles, sensor equipment, communicators, rations, personal armor, and weapons.
; Low-technology: Since primitive worlds exist near technological worlds, primitive weapons such as swords, shields, pikes, and bows are included. Characters often have some sort of blade skill for close combat.
; High-technology: Cybernetics and non-sentient robots also show up in equipment lists, as do artifacts from ancient civilizations.
; Hard Sci-fi Flavor: Along with energy weapons, there is also a strong presence of slug-throwing weapons such as rifles and pistols. The prevailing theory is that the most efficient way to stop someone is with kinetic energy.

Starships

Starships range from small one-person scouts, to giant planetoid colony ships. Design rules balance power, life support, and defenses for consistent ships. GDW published several board games allowing Traveller space battles to be played out as games in their own right - Mayday, Brilliant Lances and Battle Rider for example.

Worlds

Worlds range from barren planetoid moons to large gas giant worlds, from uncolonized territories to planets with billions of people. The world generation rules produce a random mix of worlds.

Setting

Early in the adventures and supplements, a default setting emerged, based on in-house play tests done for the game. In this setting, the human-dominated Third Imperium is the largest interstellar empire in charted space, a feudalistic union of worlds, where local nobility operate largely free from oversight and restricted by convention and feudal obligations.

Sophonts

The setting features descendants of humanity who are collectively called Humaniti. These include the Solomani, humans emigrated from Earth within the last few thousand years, the Vilani, humans transplanted from Earth tens of thousands of years ago by the Ancients who founded the First Imperium, and the Zhodani, psychic humans ruled by psionically gifted nobles.
Despite the thematic dominance of the human race, with most adventures taking place in human space, the Traveller universe is cosmopolitan and contains many technologically advanced sophonts, a term borrowed from earlier science fiction material. The setting principally concerns itself with six major races that developed faster-than-light travel independently. In addition to Humaniti, the standard list of major races includes the honor-bound catlike Aslan, the winged lizard-like Droyne, the sixfold-symmetric and manipulative Hivers, the centaur-like militant vegetarian K'kree, and the wolf-hybrid Vargr.
Additional minor races are numerous. An early publication from GDW notes that "The minor races, of which there are hundreds within the area of known space, will be largely left up to individual referees." GDW's quarterly publication, the Journal of the Travellers Aid Society designed by Loren K. Wiseman, sketched out about one race per quarter, starting with the Aslan in Issue 7. Taken together with aliens casually mentioned or introduced in separate scenarios or adventures—often arbitrarily—there is therefore no indication that the number of minor races is limited in any sense.

Ancients

The Ancients were a major race in the distant past; their ruins dot planets throughout charted space and their artifacts are more technically advanced than those of any existing civilization. For unknown reasons, they transplanted humans from Earth to dozens of worlds, uplifted Terran wolves to create the Vargr and transplanted them to another world, and undertook many megascale engineering projects before destroying their civilization in a catastrophic civil war.

Publishing history

Editions

Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed. and Traveller⁵ are the current rulesets. Both rely on six-sided dice and both draw from the original Traveller rules. Nearly all older versions of Traveller are available in PDF format.

Pub. date	Game	Abbrev.	Primary publisher
1977	Traveller	CT	Game Designers' Workshop
1987	MegaTraveller	MT	Game Designers' Workshop
1993	Traveller: The New Era	TNE	Game Designers' Workshop
1996	Marc Miller's Traveller	T4	Imperium Games
1998	GURPS Traveller	GT	Steve Jackson Games
2002	Traveller²⁰	T20	QuikLink Interactive
2006	Traveller Hero	TH	ComStar Games
2006	GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars	GTIW	Steve Jackson Games
2008	Mongoose Traveller 1st Ed.	MGT	Mongoose Publishing
2013	Traveller⁵	T5	Far Future Enterprises
2016	Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed.	MGT2	Mongoose Publishing
2019	Traveller^5.10	T5	Far Future Enterprises
2022	Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed. Update	MGT2	Mongoose Publishing