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Post by Wothbora on Mar 30, 2008 0:17:44 GMT -6
I never had the opportunity to play Traveller and have read various posts about this being one of the RPG's that a lot of early RPGer's really liked back in the day.
Could someone give a brief summary of Traveller (specifically Character Creation and the Combat System) of the original version? Also, is it possible to purchase the original 3 Books in PDF?
Thanks!
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 30, 2008 1:37:52 GMT -6
I never had the opportunity to play Traveller and have read various posts about this being one of the RPG's that a lot of early RPGer's really liked back in the day. Could someone give a brief summary of Traveller (specifically Character Creation and the Combat System) of the original version? Also, is it possible to purchase the original 3 Books in PDF? Thanks! Well, there were three little black booklets (sound familiar?).... -
Men & Magic Characters and Combat
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Monsters & Treasure Starships
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Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Worlds and Adventure
Stats are (mostly) familiar: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing. Roll 2d6 in order. Go on to select a career for your character before play begins. There are six major career choices for PCs: (Space) Navy, (Space) Marines, (Planetary) Army, Merchants, Scouts, and Other. Rather than starting off as a wet-behind-the-ears newbie, you actually generate your character's background before adventuring, so everybody has a past. Once you have that career generated, you muster out and start adventuring. Combat is done using a 2d6 roll (standard in the game system), to get 8+ for success. Rolls are modified by distance, armor, and cover. Strength affects melee weapons, dexterity affects ranged weapons. Damage is Xd6 (sometimes with a modifier); a dagger does 2D and a laser rifle does 5D. Damage itself gets distributed die-by-die across your strength, dexterity and endurance. Once one of those drops to zero you are unconscious; all go to zero you are dead. There's a lot more, and some of the choices and rules don't always make much sense (computers on ships need some tweaking, for example). However, it's a solid, robust and EASY TO PLAY game, and very open to individual interpretation and house rules (sound familiar?). Not sure if the first three booklets are available as PDFs; you can, however, buy an attractive one-volume reprint with everything under one cover, from here: www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/catalog/pview.pl?action=view&stocknum=ffe000&h=header_ct&s=I've bought a lot of old Traveller stuff; I think you'll enjoy it!
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Post by coffee on Mar 30, 2008 1:40:41 GMT -6
Taking your last point first, I don't know about PDF, but some company reprinted the original books fairly recently. You could get all the books (up through book 7 or so; I don't specifically recall) in one volume, and all the supplements, and all the adventures. It was pretty cool.
Anyway, the game presented a toolkit for creating your own science fiction worlds and adventures.
Book One, Characters and Combat, described creating characters and having them fight. All characters started at 18 years of age, but went through a "prior service" generation procedure. Basically, you could join the Army, Navy, Marines, Scouts, Merchants, or Other service for one or more terms of 4 years. During each term, you might get commissioned ant/or promoted, you'd earn skills or stat bumps, and oh yeah: You might get killed, and have to start over!
Combat was somewhat generic and somewhat precise; not too dissimilar to other RPGs of the day.
Book Two, Starships, described in detail how starships and non-starships were built and financed and how they travelled between worlds, whether within the same system or not. Starship combat was also discussed in detail.
Book Three, Worlds and Adventures described NPCs and Patrons, Creating subsectors of space and the worlds therein, trade (or was that book two?), Psionics, and had a generation system for the different animals one might encounter on the worlds one travelled to.
All together, it was a major leap forward in RPG design, but it still allowed the referee to come up with his own universe and rationale for same.
In the spirit of games of that time, nothing was said about how to actually run the game. But you could have quite a bit of fun creating starships, worlds, the fauna thereof, and especially rolling up characters (just for fun, try to roll up a seven term Scout. Good luck!)
I'll try to answer any additional questions you might have.
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Post by Finarvyn on Mar 30, 2008 6:31:35 GMT -6
One thing I always thought was wacky (but realistic) about Traveller was the whole thing about buying a starship. You get this 30-year loan, see, and pay in monthly installments....
Yikes! Just like buying a house!
Oh, and the fact that they got computer evolution totally wrong. In the 1970's computers were big and the Traveller folks thought they'd just get bigger rather than smaller. So, if you wanted a navigation computer, fire computer for the guns, and other types of computing power you had to designate so many tons of cargo space to it.
Still a great game, though!
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Post by James Maliszewski on Mar 30, 2008 7:46:28 GMT -6
Traveller is probably the best SF RPG ever written. It's very old school and, unlike most SF games that have come since, it's almost entirely inspired by literature rather than movies or TV, giving the game a much different tone than the stuff you'd see nowadays.
If you've never actually played the game, you owe it to yourself to do so. It's an amazing game.
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Post by greentongue on Mar 30, 2008 7:58:08 GMT -6
Following the usual trend a few sectors were provided in a supplement and the "Official" setting was born. The argument about Traveller being open or specific to the "Official" setting began.
It actually was good for the game at the time because many people didn't know what to do when they could do _anything_, and a specific common setting helped. =
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Post by James Maliszewski on Mar 30, 2008 8:07:52 GMT -6
It actually was good for the game at the time because many people didn't know what to do when they could do _anything_, and a specific common setting helped. = I can't fault GDW for the way the game developed, as it's explicitly what the fans wanted and they were trying to cater to them. Early supplements, adventures, and issues of the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society were more "generic" in content and style, with a thin layer of specificity used as color and as an example. GMs were encouraged to change this stuff to suit their own games, but, as GDW writers came up with more interesting color, fans wanted to see even more of it and thus the Third Imperium as the default setting of the game came about. It's a pity, because, much as I love the Third Imperium setting, it ultimately killed Traveller with its success.
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Post by badger2305 on Mar 30, 2008 8:10:43 GMT -6
Following the usual trend a few sectors were provided in a supplement and the "Official" setting was born. The argument about Traveller being open or specific to the "Official" setting began. It actually was good for the game at the time because many people didn't know what to do when they could do _anything_, and a specific common setting helped. = Just like with OD&D? (don't think so....) We could go back and forth about this, but I simply disagree. We had no trouble coming up with campaigns spanning hundreds of parsecs and all sorts of stuff. I recall quite distinctly how there was an on-going Traveller game that involved two empires engaged in first contact, then conflict, war, then a negotiated peace. Most of the players were longtime grognards who understood wargaming campaigns and carried that into Traveller. For some additional thoughts about this, I've got this thread to look at: odd74.proboards76.com/index.cgi?board=philosophy&action=display&thread=1206805353
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edsan
Level 5 Thaumaturgist
MUTANT LORD
Posts: 309
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Post by edsan on Mar 30, 2008 10:07:44 GMT -6
I own the reprints of the original 7 books. They are gathering dust somewhere back in my mum's house. I could never get a Traveller game of the ground but I remember having fun designing a subsector using the rules, then coming up with rationales and explanations why the worlds where as they where. Game seeds galore One brave soul did sit down with me and made a character once. A noble with such a high SOC (after a few terms) it went of the scale. We ended up saying he had become planetary governor or something. I can honestly say it was the time I saw a player get the most excited about character generation. It was not just a question of acing your rolls but of wanting to *explain* them and make entries for each term to tell of what had happened. I did manage to play Traveller once in a convention. A game run by BITS. We where playing pre-gens and since I was the last person to join I got stuck with a female character (the only time I cross-played), a tall, hard-as-nails special ops soldier. It was a simple dungeon-crawly style adventure where we all ran members of a special ops team sent into a space yatch that had been taken over by terrorists. I remember fast combat, practically invisible mechanics, nice ship's interior maps and lots of fun using grenades and stun weapons. We ended up completing the mission without any casualties except for lots of dead terrorists and the ship's captain...which as the team agreed to report "was already dead when we got there"
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Post by makofan on Mar 30, 2008 11:25:08 GMT -6
I am working on a homebrew fix so that I can run Book 2 Starships combat without miniatures and with computers fixed but scaleable up to High Guard levels. Then the game will just be just about perfect.
One of the things that is neat is you can design your own professions and tables - I designed D&D in Traveller for one barbarian world, with mages, fighters and clerics. It was totally insane.
I guess if I had to choose one word to describe Traveller, it is "clean". It is such an elegant all-around system, but is quite dry without imagination.
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Post by Wothbora on Mar 30, 2008 19:56:55 GMT -6
Thanks for the comments and overview of Traveller... Ok, you've done it. Definitely going to add it to my list of "Must Have" because it looks like early Traveller has that Old School Flavor that I can't resist!!! I've found this site: www.farfuture.net/cdrom/And has the following blip: CD ROMS from from Far Future EnterprisesClassic Traveller. the canon for Classic Traveller-- the original texts of all of the Little Black Books in the ground-breaking and award-winning science-fiction role-playing game. Each image and text PDF contains original page images and searchable text. All files are printable in whole or in part.
The Traveller Book. The Traveller Adventure. Books 0 through 8. Supplements 1 through 13. Adventures 0 through 13. Double Adventures 1 through 6. Games 0 through 6. Modules 1 through 5. Aliens 1 through 8. Special Supplements 1 through 3.
Plus: The Official Guide to Traveller - an overview of the Classic Traveller game system and its components, and the History of the Imperium - an overview of the background for Classic Traveller. Is this the one I should get? I don't mind printing up what I need and it seems like a steal for $35.00.
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Post by coffee on Mar 30, 2008 20:04:51 GMT -6
The Traveller Book contains the entire text of the original three books, plus an adventure and some supplemental material. (I think; it's been over 20 years since I saw it.)
That's the one I'd go with if I were you. Just my suggestion.
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Post by foster1941 on Mar 30, 2008 20:14:06 GMT -6
I've heard that some of the scans on that CD-ROM aren't very good. However, you're absolutely correct that the price can't be beat -- that's a ton of material (~70 books) published over an 11 year period (1977-87). You could easily do without probably 2/3 of it, but to acquire just the essentials would end up costing more than the CD so you might as well get the whole thing and just not bother to read the stuff that doesn't strike your fancy.
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Post by Wothbora on Apr 3, 2008 20:23:52 GMT -6
I bought the 3 Black Books (PDF) from www.travellerrpg.com , printed them up and read them through last night. To say I am very impressed would be an understatement. I honestly now question my response in another thread that asked "If you could have only one game what would it be?" as now I am questioning as to whether I'd still say OD&D or go with Classic Traveller... I had no idea that this was such a refined system that is so simple and yet so elegant and all encompassing that it could honestly be considered a Universal RPG System. Taken where games went (GURPS and D20) where rules became so complicated and every conceivable action became a roll it is amazing to me that Traveller accomplishes the same without being "in your face." I've always thought that GURPS was the coolest game system to read and the absolute worst to play (who wants to spend days creating a character and then have that character die in the first encounter?). Traveller is a bit more intensive in character creation than OD&D, but definitely not overly complicated. Roll and play, pretty simple. Combat is streamlined and doesn't appear to get in the way of role playing. Although Skills based it is not Skills intensive. Most Classes could be converted into a Fantasy counterpart while the Creature Section in the 3rd Book is going to give me inspiration for quite some time. Best of all? There are stats for everything I've been looking for: everything from a club to a sword to a shotgun to a laser. Awesome! All in all, heck, I think I'm going to try playing Traveller this weekend. I honestly think I can create a one-shot after having only run through the rules once... Amazing!!! Thanks again to all who encouraged me to give this a shot. I'm definitely not disappointed and can see it was well worth the $14.00 for the PDF's.
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busman
Level 6 Magician
Playing OD&D, once again. Since 2008!
Posts: 448
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Post by busman on Apr 3, 2008 23:15:45 GMT -6
I bought the 3 Black Books (PDF) from www.travellerrpg.com , printed them up and read them through last night. To say I am very impressed would be an understatement. I honestly now question my response in another thread that asked "If you could have only one game what would it be?" as now I am questioning as to whether I'd still say OD&D or go with Classic Traveller... I had no idea that this was such a refined system that is so simple and yet so elegant and all encompassing that it could honestly be considered a Universal RPG System. Taken where games went (GURPS and D20) where rules became so complicated and every conceivable action became a roll it is amazing to me that Traveller accomplishes the same without being "in your face." I've always thought that GURPS was the coolest game system to read and the absolute worst to play (who wants to spend days creating a character and then have that character die in the first encounter?). Traveller is a bit more intensive in character creation than OD&D, but definitely not overly complicated. Roll and play, pretty simple. Combat is streamlined and doesn't appear to get in the way of role playing. Although Skills based it is not Skills intensive. Most Classes could be converted into a Fantasy counterpart while the Creature Section in the 3rd Book is going to give me inspiration for quite some time. Best of all? There are stats for everything I've been looking for: everything from a club to a sword to a shotgun to a laser. Awesome! All in all, heck, I think I'm going to try playing Traveller this weekend. I honestly think I can create a one-shot after having only run through the rules once... Amazing!!! Thanks again to all who encouraged me to give this a shot. I'm definitely not disappointed and can see it was well worth the $14.00 for the PDF's. Ah, good, I'm glad you found www.travellerrpg.com, I was just going to post the link to the PDFs. Traveller was a great game. It was the first 2nd generation RPG, in my mind, much more so than AD&D. It was a ground up RPG based on the learnings of D&D/T&T etc. without all the cruft of trying to support past games or systems. It still had a lot of wargaming feel to it, so it's definitely old school.
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Post by murquhart72 on Apr 4, 2008 6:13:43 GMT -6
Wothbora, don't forget to let us all know how your first game goes!
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Post by bigjackbrass on May 11, 2008 13:12:15 GMT -6
Ah, Traveller. One of my great RPG loves Few games really threw the doors open for adventure to me like Traveller did, and the various sub-systems in the rules practically work as games in their own right (character creation, for instance.) The CD-ROM collection, mentioned earlier, does have a few issues with fuzzy, inverted and even missing pages, but even so it's a bargain and well worth getting, likewise the CD-ROM collection of the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society magazine. Most of it is perfectly fine and very often the problem pages can be fixed by using duplicate information from one of the other publications on the CD-ROM. If I may be forgiven a slight plug here, RPGMP3.com has just released the first of three audio recordings of a Traveller game, free to download from the site (you may need to register on the forum) or from the RPGMP3 Community podcast feed on iTunes. I GMed the sessions, so blame me for the occasional flub with the rules...
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Post by philotomy on Jun 30, 2008 17:30:14 GMT -6
I picked up the new Mongoose version of Traveller over the weekend. It's a pleasant surprise; very close to Classic Traveller in both rules and overall "feel." In fact, I think you can use these rules with CT material without any real conversion. The starship deck plans have a scaling error, but Mongoose has released free PDFs with corrected deck plans on their site.
If you already own the CT books, you don't need the Mongoose Traveller core book, but if you're new to Traveller, it looks like a good choice.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 1, 2008 7:06:24 GMT -6
If you already own the CT books, you don't need the Mongoose Traveller core book, but if you're new to Traveller, it looks like a good choice. True, but I no longer want anyone pawing over my 1977 Traveller little black books any more than they get to paw over my OD&D little brown books. I bought Mongoose Traveller because it's a hardback and not a collectible, and I found that it was a lot better than I had expected. They're also supposed to be releasing a free SRD of the rules at some time "soon", but no one really seems to know exactly when this will happen.
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Post by dwayanu on Jul 1, 2008 9:18:25 GMT -6
I'm interested in "Rikki-Tikki Traveller" because I like the idea of players being able easily to get rulebooks (especially at the FLGS). Who knows? -- One of them might start a new campaign, so I can play!
Price aside, the availability of LBBs is not so great. The single-volume Books 1-3 reprint looks good, but QLI can't be counted on to deliver it.
I have a couple of the Books 1-8 "big, floppy" compilations (and one of the Supplements), so players using my LBBs is not an issue.
Maybe I'll end up running both CT and RTT.
Mongoose RuneQuest is something else, though ...
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2008 10:56:08 GMT -6
The free little "Book 0" that Mongoose gave out for Free RPG day is pretty nice, too, because it gives players something to look at without having to thumb through the whole rulebook. It's a shame that Mongoose hasn't posted it online, but maybe someone will scan it and make it availible to all of us. (Otherwise, you just know that the "free" books will hit e-bay for about $10.)
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busman
Level 6 Magician
Playing OD&D, once again. Since 2008!
Posts: 448
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Post by busman on Jul 1, 2008 16:39:10 GMT -6
My understanding is that the Free RPG day elements are exclusive for 30 days by contract. Mongoose probably can't push it online until next month. I'd expect they will do that when they can.
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Post by philotomy on Jul 3, 2008 6:58:08 GMT -6
I'm rapidly falling in love with some of the basic concepts behind Traveller. The speed of the travel (and thus communication) really defines the setting (and the game) in a way I never picked up on when I was a kid. I love the way it creates a setting where every system is a de facto sovereignty, laissez faire economics is king, the monetary system is complicated by the necessity of commodities/cash/barter, the governing authority is always out of reach (very frontier/indepence/western-y), et cetera.
I'm digging the simple, old-school mechanics, too.
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Post by dwayanu on Jul 3, 2008 10:21:58 GMT -6
In my experience, faster FTL travel (usually some sort of "warp drive" with varying velocities) was a common variant in the early days. I suspect that some folks didn't give much thought to how that would affect the game. "Subspace radio," allowing communication faster than the starship rate, could have an even greater effect.
One variant I think can work well is to charge passengers and freight more for longer jumps. Another is to pro-rate fuel use for shorter jumps (IIRC that BTB a J-2 drive uses the same amount for a 1-parsec jump). I would want to modify a number of rules in consequence, though, and have not tried either.
Somehow, the Third Imperium setting came (to some players) to seem more civilized and homogenized than one might expect from the rules, or than was good for the kinds of adventures they liked. I think that helped inspire the civil war and collapse that GDW introduced in later games.
I personally never got so much into the Imperium, preferring home-made settings. Rolling up worlds tends to yield quite a variety in even a single subsector. I enjoy coming up with explanations for puzzling results.
On a similar line: It bothers some people that technological assumptions seem not to fit what they imagine now. (Heck, back in the '70s I thought fusion plants would be more efficient; hardly anyone anticipated the revolution in computers.) Some others make arguments that it depends on how you look at things (e.g., the amount of infrastructure involved with electronics aboard a Navy ship today versus a personal computer system).
I like to take an "alternate universe" view, which also frees one from concern with real-world star charts and ongoing discoveries. One might think of the classic "Lensman" space opera series, in which electronics was dominated by vacuum tubes and versatile digital computers were not a feature. That's an extreme, but if one needs a rationale to use, say, the (IMO) very fun space-combat game as written then I say go for it.
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Post by philotomy on Jul 3, 2008 11:10:43 GMT -6
In my experience, faster FTL travel (usually some sort of "warp drive" with varying velocities) was a common variant in the early days. I suspect that some folks didn't give much thought to how that would affect the game. "Subspace radio," allowing communication faster than the starship rate, could have an even greater effect. Anathema! I haven't read much about the Third Imperium; the Mongoose Core Book doesn't really go into it, much. I've been debating about how much canonical Third Imperium material to adopt, and have been leaning towards something more home-brew. Your comments nudge me farther that direction. That doesn't bother me. I like the "alternate high tech."
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Post by ffilz on Jul 3, 2008 13:29:40 GMT -6
There were two things that made me not so worried about the computers. First was that the Traveller "ton" is a unit of volume, not weight, and the volume of a computer rightfully includes operating stations. Second was a comparison of the space shuttles computer to an IBM PC (circa 1983 plus or minus). The IBM PC theoretically had more power (flops) and obviously weighed 20 or 30 of pounds or so. The shuttle computer weighed close to a ton. There's a small spaceship with a 1 ton computer! Just what the smallest Traveller ship required. And the shuttles computer doesn't have to process jumps...
Frank
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Post by coffee on Jul 4, 2008 2:45:35 GMT -6
Philotomy: Definitely go with the homebrew. The Third Imperium carries with it way too much baggage, and not all of it good. As usual, the choice is yours. But that's how I'd vote.
Frank: Part of the size of the shuttle's computer is from hardening it against the radiation out in space. It really is an old IBM (I remember hearing that it was a 286, but I may be misremembering it). They have trouble getting parts for it because the iron core memories they used haven't been manufactured in ages. This info is pretty old, though -- I haven't read anything recent on the matter.
But you raise a good point. There's more to a computer than just a cpu. In particular, there are other environmental factors like air conditioning and a clean environment that need to be in place, as well as hardening and other fail-safe and backup devices (mid-jump is about the last place you want your computer to experience a general protection fault...)
So I don't object to the sizes of the computers.
But hey, if all else fails, I'll just handwave an alternate universe anyway.
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Post by greentongue on Jul 4, 2008 7:27:30 GMT -6
That's what I was going to add... a "ton" is volume and all that redundancy, hardening and operator access takes space.
Now on a planet, computers could be much closer to what one would expect today. (You may want to include a frequent function check for any planet-side computer taken into space.) =
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Post by dwayanu on Jul 4, 2008 10:41:19 GMT -6
Note that small craft don't require (but can have) computers of the sort available for starships. I assume that a futuristic shuttle has at least the information processing power of a modern one, but in more compact form.
Once players started to own personal computers capable of multitasking, I started to hear complaints that starship computers were too wimpy in the Book 2 space combat system. I chalk that up to some players' perennial tendency to think their characters should be more powerful than the game allows them to be!
One thing about CT (at least without Striker) is that you don't get a lot of objective measures for the performance of power plants, computers and so on. To my mind, that makes it less "dated" than later versions.
Some ideas (from various sources, Traveller: 2300 coming especially to mind) concerning future armament and other technologies have been appealing enough to incorporate in some of my campaigns.
I think the "Firefly" TV series (and "Serenity" movie) is a good Traveller-esque mass-media referent. In a previous generation, the first two "Alien" movies often served the purpose. "Blake's Seven" would be better than "Star Wars."
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