Wednesday 14 May 2014

Photos of MM Traveller RPG





My print copy of Marc Miller’s Traveller has arrived. :)
Reprint of the 1995 text print-on-demand soft-back from DriveThruRPG. http://bit.ly/T4MMTraveller
Haven’t read much yet - just skimming and loving the visuals.
I didn’t expect the interior Chris Foss illustrations to be in colour - which is a real bonus. There’s quite a few black and white pieces by D&D artist Elmore as well. This all seems just slightly closer to The Traveller RPG -Starter Set- I had back in the early 80s (basically a reformat of three -five?- original rule books by GDW), closer than the Mongoose edition, for example. The system of task resolution and combat still looks sublime in it’s simplicity. I’m fascinated by the human-Imperium centric Traveller canon -perhaps influenced by Asimov Foundation et al sci-fi, but it still seems so different from much of the sci-fi that I’ve read in books or seen in the cinema (I must add that I’m very under-read when it comes to classic sci-fi). And yet, varying “tech levels” on planets and interstellar trade makes me think of modern TV series like Firefly and Farscape, not to mention the Iain M Banks books with Culture operatives doing to exact opposite of the Prime Directive by manipulating politics and influencing battles on low tech worlds. Modern students of the genre will also appreciate that vast “sandbox” campaigns can be run using a subsector map and a handful of random tables.

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