* The First Key To The Traveller Universe * The Nine Classic Traveller Rules Books... * Compiled Into One Comprehensive Volume "Traveller, the science-fiction role-playing game... chronicles the events of the far future... the golden age of the Third Imperium. Now this award-winning series is again available... the rules, the adventures, the supplements, the source books, and the board games, compiled into convenient individual reference volumes.
Volume One in the Classic Traveller Reprint series contains all nine original rules books. 0- Introduction to Traveller 1- Characters and Combat 2- Starships 3- Worlds and Adventures 4- Mercenary 5- High Guard 6- Scouts 7- Merchant Prince 8- Robots"
Miller was one of the founding partners of the Game Designers' Workshop (GDW), and the original creator of the Traveller science-fiction role-playing game. After GDW folded, the Traveller rights reverted to him, resulting in three more editions of the game, administered by his company Far Future Enterprises:
Possibly the most versatile, stripped-down RPG ever, if you're willing to do very little tweaking. I played a couple of times at Marc Miller's table and can assure you that you don't need to go through the (long and tedious) process of character creation. The version he ran at the table was stripped to the bone and it was in those sessions that I realized just how versatile this system is. It need not be anchored to science fiction - you can use it for anything. When I introduce new players to RPGs, I like to use this as the quick and dirty system for getting people into what roleplaying is all about.
And, yes, the setting and all the gewgaws and doodads are cool, too.
Even more than Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller was my jam back in the heady days of junior high and high school. I hadn't looked at any Traveller-related material in years, and this collected volume of The Classic Books was a wonderful nostalgic ride.
Traveller is often derided for the somewhat complex character creation process, but I always thought (and still do) that it encourages players to work through a back story for their characters, and think about how they came to acquire their initial skills and possessions. It doesn't make much sense to create characters at the gaming table, but creating those characters in advance gives players a chance to flesh things out before gameplay begins.
As others have noted, the collective rules presented in The Classic Books are complex, but they are also well-designed to allow for a graduated level of complexity. For example, the first three core books present a collection of character skills that is enough to play the game. Subsequent books introduce additional skills that can be used (or not) as appropriate for a particular gaming group. The complexity is there for those who want it, but it's not required.
So many years after it was first written, Traveller holds up well, and some of its anachronistic quirks (room-sized computers!) end up adding flavor, since the game system is more rooted in science fiction that in science fact (although it has touches of the latter to be sure). It's a thoughtfully designed system, and still every bit as playable as it was back in the day.
There are some role-playing books that I pick up and I want to drop everything else in my life and run a game RIGHT NOW. Traveller is not such a game. This reprint of the classic game's first 9 books (yeah, book 0 is in there) gives you a solid foundation with which to run Traveller, which bills itself as a sort of generic Science Fiction RPG. Want to play something along the lines of Asimov's Foundation books? How about something based on Andre Norton's Forerunners? Maybe Niven's Known Space? You could do it with this game, no prob. You could. And I think, for a certain type of gamer, this will be perfect. I am not that gamer. About half-way in, I found myself skimming more than reading carefully, because it all started to resemble stereo instructions. Charts and graphs and modifiers to charts and more graphs...Gah. It is of its time. Anyway, I could actually see playing this. I think I could have fun with it as a player, if I were in the right mood. But running it? No way. There's something of a video game in it, like its 'procedurally generated,' as opposed to made by humans.