Originally posted by Char Aznable:
A few days ago I recieved the Traveller d20 book in the mail. I've never had any experience with Traveller, but I must say that I am impressed. I think I've gotten most of the rules down pat, I've even created my own Subsector.
My question regards the Background of Traveller- where can I get any information regarding this? It is intriguing, but there is scant reference to it in the Rule book, and there is mention of a Official Traveller universe book coming out for T20, but when will it arrive? Is there anything in the meantime that I can use to flesh out my own proto campaign ?
Welcome to Traveller!
There are several background resource options, listed here in no particular order of preference...
1) You could hold out for the T20 Gateway Domain Setting book, which is due soon (January 2003, I think?). But if you really want more info NOW...
2) Get the Classic Traveller Supplement reprints (the others aren't all that necessary for you, since they cover CT rules, which you don't really need). The Supplements are very handy though - you have Library Data, Subsector maps of the Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim Sectors, and a few other useful background bits. Bit of a mixed bag though.
3) GURPS Traveller books are excellent resources. A lot of people here spit blood when GURPS is mentioned, but frankly the system is irrelevant. There's still plenty of very useful background information written into the books that's adaptable to any Traveller setting. There are books on Trading, Scouts, Militaria, and the Alien Races books are a must, though you won't be able to use them as PCs in a T20 game without figuring out their d20 stats. But still, the background info is useful.
The only caveat is that GURPS Traveller is set a bit later than T20 is at the moment - in the year 1120 (a few years after the default Classic Traveller setting, but essentially it's the same universe as that), and an alternate universe where the Imperium didn't collapse as it does in MegaTraveller and TNE (you don't need to worry about this, it all happens long after the period in which T20 Gateway is set, though obviously you're perfectly free to adapt other time-periods and timelines to T20! )
4) Look for MegaTraveller and The New Era stuff. Harder to get hold of, but it's yet another angle on Traveller - in these incarnations of Traveller, the Imperium is torn apart by civil war (MegaTrav) and ultimately falls apart when an AI Virus is released at the end of it, and pockets of it are in the process of rebuilding (TNE). This all takes place over a hundred years or so in the future from when T20 is set, but there's a lot of info potentially available on these settings.
5) Avoid T4. It's poorly written, badly edited, and set about a thousand years BEFORE T20 is set.
6) Look online. One other place that others haven't mentioned is the JTAS magazine at:
http://jtas.sjgames.com
It's like CotI, an online magazine about Traveller in all it's incarnations (though it's a bit more focussed on GURPS, since it's at SJG, but certainly not exclusively so) with discussion boards and so on. It's got much lower traffic that here, probably mostly because it's subscription only (if you subscribe before 1/1/03, the subscription rate is $15 for TWO years. If you subscribe after 1/1/03, it's going up to $20 for two years. Damn good value I think - even if you don't check it every day, it's still hardly expensive). The JTAS magazine is updated once every two weeks with general Traveller articles written by subscribers, but the traffic is lower than here, so it's not quite as much of a hive of activity and discussion. It's as useful as you make it, basically.
7) Ignore Traveller alltogether
. T20 in particular is pretty useful as a general sci-fi rules toolkit, so you can always make up your own setting using the rules and screw the 'canon'.
Good luck!
