When exactly was Traveller first published?

[geoffrey]

I know it was in 1977, but does anyone know which month?

[stonetoflesh]

I bet some of the grognards over at Citizens of the Imperium could tell you without even cracking open a book...

[eris]

May 14, 2009 10:51:31 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I know it was in 1977, but does anyone know which month?

I seem to recall buying Traveller in July of 1977 as a birthday present to myself. I might be off a month or two, but I know it was right on the heels of the release of Star Wars which was about the first of June 1977.

Eris
the Traveller Heretic!

[greentongue]

I remember there were only three books and it didn't seem unusual.
Had to be a long time ago.
=

[Finarvyn]

My black box Traveller books simply say "1977" and no month is mentioned in any of the three volumes.

I've seen several "which was the first scifi rpg" threads on various boards, and for some reason no one seems to be able to really pin down the exact month for Starfaring, Metamorphosis Alpha and/or Traveller.

I think that part of the problem was that in those days rpg books didn't really hit the game stores quickly becasue there weren't many game stores, so a lot of advertising came from magazine ads (not at all reliable in terms of release dates) and a lot of purchases came from mail order (also not the most reliable for dating purposes). An author might put a date with month in an introduction (as was seen in the OD&D supplements) but I'm not sure if those dates reflected actual writing date, anticipated publishing date, or actual publishing date. Many of the books seem only to have a year with no month. Bottom line is that we may never be able to really determine who was "first" because 30 years later the actual information may no longer exist.

Maybe someone has better info than I do?

[grodog]

There are some big Traveller collectors @ the Acaeum; asking there may be worthwhile.

[badger2305]

From my recollection, Traveller was released at Origins that year, and began to get to game stores in August or so. I remember this because the school year was about to start, and I ran into the game at the Golden Brigade gaming club, in Minneapolis.

But it was about 32-33 years ago, so my memory might be off.