Traveller General--Interservice Rivalry Edition

Traveller is a classic science fiction system first released in 1977. In its original release it was a general purpose SF system, but a setting was soon developed called The Third Imperium, based on classic space opera tropes of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, with a slight noir tint.
Though it can support a wide range of game types, the classic campaign involves a group of retired veterans tooling around in a spaceship, taking whatever jobs they can find in a desperate bid to stay in business, a la Firefly or Cowboy Bebop.

Previously on Traveller GeneralLibrary Data: Master Archive:
mega.nz/#F!lM0SDILI!ji20XD0i5GTIUzke3iv07Q


Galactic Maps:
travellermap.com/
utzig.com/traveller/iai.shtml

Resources:
1d4chan.org/wiki/Traveller
zho.berka.com/
travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/
wiki.travellerrpg.com/Main_Page
freelancetraveller.com/index.html

Traveller General Homebrew:
pastebin.com/G1kb29aT

Music to Explosive Decompression to:
>Old Timey Space music
youtube.com/watch?v=w34fSnJNP-4&list=RD02FH8lvwXx_Y8
youtube.com/watch?v=w0cbkOm9p1k
youtube.co/watch?v=MDXfQTD_rgQ
youtube.com/watch?v=FH8lvwXx_Y8
>Slough Feg
youtube.com/watch?v=ZM7DJqiYonw&list=PL8DEC72A8939762D4
>Goldsmith - Alien Soundtrack
youtube.com/watch?v=3lAsqdFJbRc&list=PLpbcquz0Wk__J5MKi66-kr2MqEjG54_6s
>Herrmann - The Day the Earth Stood Still
youtube.com/watch?v=3ULhiVqeF5U
>Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene
youtube.com/watch?v=nz1cEO01LLc
>Tangerine Dream - Hyberborea
youtube.com/watch?v=9LOZbdsuWSg
>Brian Bennett - Voyage
youtube.com/watch?v=1ZioqPPugEI

Servers:
Discord:
discord.gg/3bcgzB

Navy, Army, Marines, or Scouts, which is the best branch and why?

Other urls found in this thread:

frank.bol.ucla.edu/le.html
astrona.blogspot.com/2007/08/chris-foss-illustrations-and-sci-fi-art.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

>which is the best branch and why?
Hunter 4 lyfe my friend

...is that guy laser cannoning a fucking T-rex? that is awesome!

Marine Noble Dilettante

Post cool floorplans if you got 'em

No actually, he is not. Sorry user.

>Navy, Army, Marines, or Scouts, which is the best branch and why?

The answer, of course, is: It Depends. I've had great fun playing PCs from each branch listed. It all depends on the game.

Now that is a picture to build a campaign around.

>Marine Noble Dilettante

Thank you Mongoose for inserting D&D's multi-class dipshittery into Traveller and killing it just a little more.

Silliness aside. Has anyone been using Solo and do they want to share their experiences with it? I'm thinking of buying but would like to read about a few test drives first. (Yes, I know I can get by other means. I'd rather give the author a few bucks.)

I tried it once, but it's not as fun as a group, IMO

Marine (any branch) 5+ terms, Noble (Dilettante) 1+ terms
Retire and enjoy it.

Thanks. I wouldn't expect it to be as good as the "real" thing, but did you find the solo experience "worth" the time you spent?

Then again, you said you played it once, so I guess you answered my question already!

And haven't career changes been part of the game since like, MT? Or was it later?

I don't know. I do know it was possible in T20,so predates MgT. It definitely wasn't something Mongoose added in.

After further looking, it appears to be TNE. I couldn't find a reference to it in MT. It was definitely in T4.

It was worth it, but I wouldn't do it again

Before you all sperg anymore on the subject, perhaps you should read this part of the post?

"Silliness aside"

It was a jest, a joke, something written tongue in cheek. Have the closest 'tard wrangler explain the concept to you.

Okay, I'll give it a pass for now. Thanks.

Humor doesn't translate well over a message board. "Silliness aside" could also imply the idea of multi-career characters was a silly notion.

Yeah, I did misunderstand it. But the answer from does tell us when they recognized the fact that people do swap careers over their lives.
I wish I had cool deckplans.
On the other hand, I should track that deckplan I made for the 50dton space rv I statted up.

>Humor doesn't translate well over a message board.

No. humor doesn't translate well for spergs.

Have the nearest human read the post in question and then ask them if they think it was a joke.

Remember the best way for you to fit in is to copy the behavior of normal people even when you don't understand it.

>On the other hand, I should track that deckplan I made for the 50dton space rv I statted up.

Please do. That kind of "down market yacht" is something the game doesn't have enough of.

Sorry for crap quality. Also needs to track down the stats, but I think I posted them before.

Crap quality? Perish the thought. That looks just like the deck plans, maps, and other diagrams we use all the time.

Thanks!

Quick notes: built using MgT 2e, aquaponics reduces life support costs to just the staterooms (so 2k/month total), and removes the life support costs for four people (meaning the 1-2 person crew has surplus food to sell to belters). Actual math on the fuel supply gives it a 13 or 17 week ops time (I can't remember which, but pplant is 1.75 tons so do it yourself). M-Drive gives 1g. M-Drive, p-plant, and hull are budget models. Second airlock can be removed if desired. Cargo hatch on fore hull.
Anything else?

down market yatch?

>Anything else?

Wow, I can't think of any. That's a great, low cost, backwater, cargo hauler. It's built for a specific situation, but that's what makes it "fit" so well. Just the kind of in-system hauler/trader you'll see working a marginal belt in some remote system.

The "selling belters produce" angle is great too. How much would some rockhound whose been eating ration packs for months pay for a real tomato?

IIRC, there's a Classic adventure or AZ about smuggling food.

Like a McMansion, but on the water. Sold to folks who got a little bit of money and think they're rich people now.

thanks

Exactly. I wasn't going to bother answering because the question was so painfully stupid. Couldn't be arsed to google/bing "down market" or spell "yacht".

Anyway, it could either be a spaceship version of a McMansion. It could also be kit-bashed or re-purposed in some manner. For example, you see people in the States who buy old school buses and convert them into caravans in various ways. I saw a bloke who had one he converted into half-motor caravan and half-stake bed lorry. He drove between state and local fairs for a good part of the year, working as a smith, living in the caravan part, and lugging all his smithing equipment on the other.

Yeah, its great for grocery runs and retirement. I remember going super comfy with them several threads back - its the rv where the typical crew is a retired couple and the belters call them "grandparents"

that's adorable! ...and also awesome, because Traveller is RED the RPG

Kitbash IMTU. My ships have a 75% discount for everything except the jump drive (which is 150%), so small craft are cheap as hell.

Yeah. Make one them a medic/dentist and the other Mr. Fixit and you've got either a great campaign or some really memorable NPCs.

A guy at COTI often mentions a retired IISS NPC he used in many campaigns. The NPC was a doctor (Medic-3 I think in Classic?) and had a detached duty scout/courier crewed by robots. Pilot, Nav, Eng, even "nursing" was all handled by the 'bots while the Doc worked at being a doctor.

IIRC, he had the guy flying around District 268 calling at backwater systems and the remote parts of other systems "fixing" and "curing" folks for little more than food, spare parts, and a handshake.

If you ever messed with him, you had an entire SECTOR of people looking for you to fuck you up.

you happen to have a link, this sounds like an idea I might steal--I mean, borrow

Sorry, it's just a memory of an old COTI thread. I'm pretty sure he didn't post stats, 'bot designs, deckplans, and the like because using attachments at COTI is pretty hit or miss.

It was more along on the lines of a "That reminds me..." or "I once did..." kind of thing.

bump

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This one's the only one I got, user.

As a side note, I so wanna go to the taco truck here in town. Shit's awesome, dude.

Good taco trucks usually are.

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Don't know if everyone has seen it yet and I suspect most of you have. Anyway, we all seem tn enjoy sci-fi pictures here as adventure and campaign "prompts" and some kind user had started a thread devoted to them.

It's here

That looks suspiciously like the "MacArthur" from MiGE.

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...

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Was it also used for that?

Yup. IIRC, that's the first iteration.

The story is something like this. AMF puts out the Ericson model in the mid or late 60s. The Space race is on with heavily publicized launches happening every month or so. Trek, Lost in Space, and others are on the tube. Kids actually built models rather than watching porn on their tablets.

Pournelle, Niven, or both get one and use it first as just as a thought exercise, i.e. If the ship is shaped like this, what can infer regarding tech, capabilities, etc? That game starts them spitballing ideas for a book and that book becomes MiGE in 1974.

In the meantime, AMF or whoever holds the molds rebrands the design a few times and fiddles with the included stickers to spark sales. Among others, it's renamed "UFO Raider" or something like that in the hopes someone who bought the Ericson model won't realize it's the same, will see it as "new", or just wants a variant. The model goes through a few iterations. All the versions as shaped the same, but have different stickers to apply, different stories included in the instructions, different names, and one which even included glow-in-the-dark parts. It's never sold as "MacArthur" from MiGE though, probably because they'd have to cut Pournelle & Niven in on whatever pittance they were making.

Again, IIRC, there's a fairly exhaustive site online detailing all this. The guy collects famous old models like we collect RPGs, got his hand on all or most of the variants, and discusses it all.

Here's one site discussing the model's history and providing various links, pictures, etc:

frank.bol.ucla.edu/le.html

It's interesting to read that AMT had also sold models of the 3 iconic ship designs from TOS: Enterprise, Bird of Prey, and Klingon Battle Cruiser. It seems the Ericson was an attempt to extend the line.

It's very interesting to read that Matt Jefferies, the man who designed the TOS ships, also designed the Ericson! The design never got into TOS, but made it into the storyboards for the Trek cartoon.

am I the only one who uses Winchell Chung's Atomic Rockets to add some depth to MTU?

No.

Definitely not

how do you use it, anons?

Does anyone know of a good source for T4 starships & deckplans?

The one thing i really liked about that version of Traveller was the colorful Chris Foss designs.

astrona.blogspot.com/2007/08/chris-foss-illustrations-and-sci-fi-art.html

Though lately, I've been thinking of using either Cepheus or MgT2 for the character and starship rules and making quick n' dirty conversions of the old T4 designs.

>The one thing i really liked about that version of Traveller was the colorful Chris Foss designs.

You have to understand that the Chris Foss pictures used in T4 were only that; pictures.

They weren't actual ship designs for the T4. They were just fairly cheap because they're old, eye grabbing, fluff art. There were no T4 stats for Foss' famous "asymmetric lobster claw attached hand held vacuum cleaner belching diesel smoke" style of ships.

More's the pity though. I would have loved see someone try to stat some of Foss' weirder ships.

you could try it user?

There were some designs in the T4 Starships book. But they were disappointing in how inaccurately they did when scaling the deckplans to the paintings.

>how do you use it, anons?

Winchell Chung's site? Mostly like a writing prompt except for adventures, encounters, and campaigns.

You've seen those lists or booklets, hundreds of single sentences you're supposed to flesh out into a full essay? And out of maybe 100 essays you get a short story or novela? That's a writing prompt. Writer's also used to use what were called "commonplace books". They'd carry around notebooks to jot down single sentence idea as they came to them. Across every hipster in every coffee shop in the the world is doing that now.

I like to scroll though Chung's site mostly looking at illustrations and occasionally reading the text until something catches my eye. Then I try to turn it into a hook or gimmick or something.

The tech at Chung's site doesn't mesh well with Traveller. Trav has magic gravitics, thrusters, jump drive, etc. I've cadged bits and pieces of infrastructure ideas from there, but the "real science" focus doesn't fit the game to well. While I have stole entire ships to give rarely visited, low tech systems some kind of indigenous space flight capacity, those systems are rare, rarely visited, and the Atomic Rocket stuff is even more rarely used.

asteroids, and...orbital kingdoms are the most use I've got out of it

No, you couldn't. T4 rules are meant to design Traveller spacecraft and not Foss' wonderfully whimsical designs.

>There were some designs in the T4 Starships book. But they were disappointing in how inaccurately they did when scaling the deckplans to the paintings.

Exactly, and the reason was that the rules were never intended to recreate Foss' illustrations. They messed around and something in the same area code, but the rules and Foss' illustrations were never meant to fit.

What you're still failing to understand was that Foss wasn't hired to produce illustrations for T4. Miller didn't go to him and say "My game's ships work like this, please draw some." Instead, Miller and IG bought the right to use PREVIOUS Foss work as illustrations for the T4 line.

Foss had ALREADY painted all those pictures, in some cases decades ago, and for completely different customers with completely different requirements. Miller and IG were simply using Foss' work secondhand because it looks cool and catches the eye and not because any of it had any relation to T4.

Apart from the "writing prompts" I bloviated about earlier, that's basically what I've got from the site too. A quick primer on how to make an asteroid or moon of comet come across as more realistic.

>What you're still failing to understand

Don't get too hipster on him now, user. Nothing in his post indicated a failure to understand that.

>Nothing in his post indicated a failure to understand that.

He complained about how inaccurately the deckplans scaled to the paintings, user. That indicates he thought they should scale which means he thinks he can recreate Foss' work with the T4 design system. He can't and he needs to know that.

Complaints about the "lack" Foss" vehicle and ship "designs" in the T4 books were part of the general grousing about T4 and IG from the start. People complained that Foss' work didn't fit Traveller. That's a matter of taste. People also complained, and rightfully IMHO, that if T4 was using that art then T4 better be able to recreate it in the design process. Miller and IG didn't think so.

They bought Foss' art as stock art. While decades old in some cases, it was still eye catching and the price was right. It's just a shame it gave some folks a false impression.

I try not to. Winch is good folks, but too much science in the wrong places puts a harsh on my Traveller buzz.

>Foss had ALREADY painted all those pictures, in some cases decades ago
Including the B/W pics that did get associated with Traveller ship classes?

>People complained that Foss' work didn't fit Traveller. That's a matter of taste.
Since T4 was covering a different era of the timeline, I had no problem wth most of the Foss art that got linked to actual ship classes.

>Including the B/W pics that did get associated with Traveller ship classes?

From what was shared on the TML at the time, Miller and IG chose pre-existing work. Foss produced nothing specifically new. It was all stuff from his stock art portfolio.

The problems arose when Miller and IG chose, for example, an existing piece to be the free trader illo for T4 only to have the T4 rules unable to duplicate it.

>Since T4 was covering a different era of the timeline, I had no problem wth most of the Foss art that got linked to actual ship classes.

Neither did I. It's set over a thousand years before Classic and at a lower TL too. Stuff should look different. The problems began when the design system couldn't keep the "promises" the art made and that happened because the design system and the art were never meant to work together.

Folks definitely got a false impression and you can't blame them.

>but too much science in the wrong places puts a harsh on my Traveller buzz.


Agreed.

I ran a couple games, it's quite rare to see people get into it. I'm not a fan of the d6 system myself.
I've actually the rulebook and maps more for a D&D/Traveller hybrid game set in space, than actually playing Traveller.

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I've been hankering for a space opera campaign, and Traveller seems like a fun system to toy around with. Is there a consensus on what edition is "best"? Which sourcebooks are considered to be the most useful for general purpose lore and info?

well when you look for something that's cheap, rule efficient and catches the ground idea behind traveller, download cepheus engine, it's free, and pretty much c100% compitable with the Mongoose traveller 1e material.

Also prepare for an incoming MgT1e vs MgT2e shitstorm.

First place I'm aware of it is in the Vargr write-up in The Traveller Adventure for CT (1983), removed in the Vargr Alien Module (1984)

While there's some consensus on the "worst" version, there's no real consensus on the best version. It will depend on the preferences of you and your group. That being said.

- MgT1e/2e are the latest. They contain more of what current players think RPGs should have and play more like current players think should do.
- Cepheus Engine is an open source, OGL version of MgT developed from MgT SRDs. It doesn't (yet) cover as many bases as MgT
- Classic was OSR decades before the term OSR had even been dreamed of. It's minimalist and is more about the referee making rulings than quoting rules.

As for "lore" (I hate the fact a term from WH40K has infected other RPGs) and info, GURPS has the best group of sourcebooks. While other versions have one or two examples which top the GURPS efforts, it the GURPS line which has the best overall quality. The trouble with the GURPS books is that they're for GURPS. When GURPS lore is translated into GURPS rules, everything goes "herp derp GURPSy".

Classic's "lore" cannot be overlooked, every other version is supposed to follow and build from it. The problem with Classic is that it's lore is scattered throughout all Classic products in bits and pieces as small as sentences. GDW published very few "lore-only" products and regularly wove "lore", info, and rules together in a such a way that 30-40 years on people still have troubled separating them.

MgT's "lore" was written by Mongoose. That means Mongoose mindset of "Change stuff for the lulz" and "We don't need no stinking editors" fucks it from the start. Overall, MgT "lore" is the worst. While there are worse versions of the RULES and while there are a few example of good MgT lore, Mongoose lore can be safely ignored.

TL;DR - Your needs will make your choice.

Having a prior career track that looked like the modern reality of job hopping started in TNE for everyone. Vargr were doing it earlier, as noted, because Vargr.

While Traveller was one of the first games to use the idea of the lifepath it would also eventually learn from later examples and grow out of the "one career and out" model it started as. CT and MT characters had, for most purposes, a class and level. Marine Lt., 5 terms. With TNE and most later editions that changed to become more of a narrative and resume'.

Nothing wrong with that unless you are one of those stingy "skill expansion BAD" types.

Good starts include the MGT1 version of Spinward Marches, and MegaTraveller's Imperial Encyclopedia (which doubles as one of the better equipment books).

Of course it would be Vargr who had carer changes first.

>"skill expansion BAD"
The argument seen most often is that a larger skill list encourages player thoughts of "This is what I can do", while a shorter more general list encourages more "this is what I do WELL".

The problem is that this is localized, subjective, and ultimately bullshit. Players are all different. Game designer overthink IS the cancer slowly strangling gaming.

>The argument seen most often is that a larger skill list encourages player thoughts of "This is what I can do", while a shorter more general list encourages more "this is what I do WELL".

While that's an excellent explanation, many will never understand it. It's like ruling versus rules. It's outside most experiences today.

You also correctly point out that neither is better or worse than the other, they're just different.

I'd advance the argument that larger skill lists make characters weaker. Splitting Engineer up into Engineer (M-Drive/J-Drive/Electronics/Life Support/Power) means now you need five points to match the old character's one. Characters become less capable and a skill point worth less than when skills were broad umbrellas for a variety of jobs.

Eventually this trend winds up with the GM saying "sorry, you can't tie the ship up because you don't have Rope Use(Naval:Dockworker), what you have is Rope Use(Naval:Ship Rigging)" and silliness like that.

What's the key differences between MgT1e and 2e?

Is MgT2e the more widely played edition of the game?

>I'd advance the argument that larger skill lists make characters weaker.

While I agree with that, I can also understand the desire to have more skills and skill points when you're playing a RULES games instead of a RULING game. The difference between rolling and "role-ing" is pretty much the same too.

Classic's Navigation, for example, meant you could plot a jump course AND perform celestial navigation in the surface of a planet - here's the kicker - providing you had the proper equipment on hand.

In an OSR/Rulings game a player and I can that plotting a detailed course across Bumfuck-III that would need a sextant and planetary starcharts which they don't have, so their course isn't going to be as precise as they would like.

In a "modern"/Rules game, the same player would immediately start looking for loopholes until I finally dug out other rules explaining that Navigation is only used for jumps now.

When you start emphasizing die rolling over roleplaying, people are going to want more skills and more skill points.

Anyway, all systems break down at their extremes, just as your Rope Use example showed.

>What's the key differences between MgT1e and 2e?

PDF created by a kind user here in this thread.

>Is MgT2e the more widely played edition of the game?

Hard to say. MGT2 is fairly new, MGT1 has a pretty big base by now, and all the third party publishers from MGT1 have jumped ship to Cepheus Engine over the MGT2 licensing changes.

>What's the key differences between MgT1e and 2e?

Many many threads ago, an user put together a one page sheet listing most of the differences. Hopefully someone has a copy.

>Is MgT2e the more widely played edition of the game?

Hard to say. Very hard in fact. I'd hazard a guess - guess mind you - that 1e is played more often than 2e because existing 1e players could just borrowed what they wanted from 2e and ignore the rest.

Whether MgT is most widely played is also hard to say. It's more visible certainly. Most new players will likely use it, although CE is eating into that. Then there are the "legacy" numbers for older versions.

Traveller is here is mostly MgT. Over at COTI, the biggest numbers are those who've been using their various homebrew versions of Classic for decades. They'll borrow from newr versions, but they aren't going to drop the rules they've been using since Carter or Reagan were president.

TNE has a hard core group too, especially for the wargame side of things. They hang out on their own sites, lists, and forums and could care less about new or old versions.

None of these groups are large in the way 3.5E, Pathfinder, and the like are. Most are dedicated though. Most of the MgT crowd won't stick around because most RPG players don't stick around. Hard core long term Trav groups had been playing something else well before MgT came out. Most borrowed bits and ignored the rest. You'll most likely see MgT slowly meld into the Classic - MegaTraveller - Homebrew mixture many groups use.

Whatever makes a nice character.
I like Support Marine into Merchant Marine or Free Trader.

My favorite character was a 66 Year old Journalist 6 Diplomat 5

Newbie to Traveller, probably gonna play MgT 2e. What are some sourcebooks (or anything else, really) to get my hands on to learn about Traveller lore?

>What are some sourcebooks (or anything else, really) to get my hands on to learn about Traveller lore?

user mentioned two good ones; MgT1e's Spinward Marches book and MegaTraveller's Imperial Encyclopedia. Classic has two Library Data books. All in in the Archive.

Now a caution about Traveller canon. (I'm not going to use "lore", I fucking hate the fact that a WarHamster term has infected RPGs.)

There is TOO MUCH Traveller canon. There is 40 years of materials from ~100 writers, several different publishers, several different versions, several magazines, several mileaus, and now several settings. Even the people who get paid to deal with it can barely keep track canon.

There's so much canon you can't use it all. There's so much canon that, if you try to use just a simple majority of it, you, you group, and your game will drown in it.

Read canon, don't memorize it. Get a feel for canon, don't study the trivia. Use only as much as you need and think before adding any more.

Make the game your game.

The other user gave some good advice, I'd also recommend Agent of the Imperium, in the fiction section. It's mostly set in the core worlds rather than the more popular frontier, but it gives a nice star-hopping view of various parts of the setting and is a pretty great book, too.
Players will probably be more down-in-it than the book's view from on high, but it wouldn't hurt a referee to see the bigger picture like that.

Is there any material for Mongoose Traveller for alien races that aren't anthropomorphic animals? Specifically for K'kree

No. Mongoose hasn't touched the K'kree yet. Hopefully the never will. I don't know if the MgT Zho books touches on the Droyne/Chirpers but I'd guess not.

That being said, all the other resources are in the Archive. You've got all the Classic AMs, which introduce them all, and the GT ARs, which do a great job adding more details and further explaining others.

Unless you planning on K'Kree PCs - and that would be an astoundingly bad idea - you don't MgT rules from them. All you need is the canonical information and fluff.

>Probably going to play 2e
Don't.

What this user said CAN NOT BE OVERSTATED!

Why not?

see
It's been """Modernized""" and it, aside from a few specific cases, is universally a bad thing.

Remember: classic was written for a particular style of game: on the frontiers of weak and dying empire. It pulls from the old pulps, and stuff like Norton's Star Rangers, and Stubb's (or who evers) Dumarest of Terra, and tons of other stuff where space travel and trade are hard.
That's why the old trade income made it hard to make a profit, let alone make your expenses. You were supposed to adventure to make the payments and maintenance, grab what cargo and passengers you could, maybe grab some widgets you could sell on the next planet, and hope like hell you didn't take a loss.
And in the 77 edition, if you made a run often enough, the slowly expanding shipping companies would take over your run with a trade route they controlled.

>if you made a run often enough, the slowly expanding shipping companies would take over your run with a trade route they controlled.

Cool, I didn't know that

>Remember: classic was written for a particular style of game

Let me fix that for you:

"Remember: classic was ORIGINALLY written for a particular style of game."

That original style of play - which you correctly explained and gave examples - was diagnosed with terminal cancer the day GDW when to see "Star Wars". The style play you're talking about essentially DIED in that movie theater. Not a single copy of the game had been printed yet, let alone sold, and GDW was already thinking about a new direction.

Now, the paste-up and proofs for the first three Little Black Books were already at the printers so no changes could be made. This back when all that stuff was done physically and not in computer files.

LBB 1, 2, and 3 were printed, went out in their Little Black Box, and sold well enough for the already planned army/merc supplement to be written. That sold well enough too, so LBB5: High Guard was green lit and, despite taking two tries to get it right, High Guard caused what is now called "Proto-Traveller' or "4-4-4" to kick the bucket.

Some concepts hung around for a while causing which persist right up to the present, but the Pulp-Norton-Dumerest Traveller was dead and gone conceptually for GDW in 1979.

Of course, that didn't keep folks like you and me from still playing Traveller that way ever since!

Don't forget that initially Traveller was still pretending to be a lore-less, generic SFRPG. From 1977 to 1980, the game added nuggets of lore only to flesh out whatever Adventure they were selling, much of it created without any concern with how they all fell together. In the 80's, with the popularity & interest in RPGs ascending, GDW began to try to weave it all together into a cohesive whole. You also can't dismiss to contributions of FASA and Judges Guild to help with some of the heavy lifting on the world building. It's that milieu (lore) that is the legacy of the game as rule sets come and go.

>Don't forget that initially Traveller was still pretending to be a lore-less, generic SFRPG. From 1977 to 1980, the game added nuggets of lore only to flesh out whatever Adventure they were selling, much of it created without any concern with how they all fell together.

Pretending, not succeeding. And the word is CANON. Leave "lore" to fucking Warhamster.

While canon came together in almost a sedimentary process than a planned one, the bits GDW added after LBB5 were all big ship, big 3I, big budgets, big trade bits and not the Norton, Dumerest, etc. stuff of old.

>>You also can't dismiss to contributions of FASA and Judges Guild...

Yes you can because their stuff was thrown down the memory hole and decanonized.

>Yes you can because their stuff was thrown down the memory hole and decanonized.

By the brain surgeon that gave us T4. For it's time, the FASA was both popular and fairly well done. The 4 sector packs that JG produced were VERY nice (covering the areas in between the Imperium and the Two Thousand Worlds) hold up well and let's be honest, GDW and FASA were joined at the hip pre-MegaTraveller.

Anything the Keith brothers wrote is canon, as far as I'm concerned.

>The 4 sector packs that JG produced were VERY nice
Eh. JG was cheap shlock back then, and a lot of it has not aged well. The writer of T20, Hunter Gordon, LOVED the JG Traveller stuff, but with a few exceptions it was merely voluminous.
The sectors JG did have only slightly more detail than the original Spinward Marches book, which is not much.

>GDW and FASA were joined at the hip pre-MegaTraveller.
And the best parts of FASA, the Keith brothers, remained so even after the rest of FASA decided to abandon their license for that oddly successful little game they did called Battletech.
FASA's fingerprints were still all over Traveller as late as TNE.

Cepheus System or The Traveller Book?

Those are the only options entertained, though if someone could pitch MegaTrav as a sensible option, I'd take it.