14 May 2012

Traveller 2300

I haven't done any RPG gaming for literally decades, since High School really, but I still have a range of books I have kept for background material and interested reading.  My favourite all time setting is Traveller 2300.  This is a "Hard SF" style setting based on a Human Diaspora but still operating within rather rigid nationalistic framework.  It was produced by GDW in the lkate 1980s with a range of supplements and adventures, mostly set in an arm of the Galaxy colonised by the French and besieged by a hostile alien race.  Technology was very much along the lines of the movie "Aliens".
Cover of the new Mongoose Edition
Good news for 2300 fans is that Mongoose Publishing has now re-released Traveller 2300 using its core Traveller rules.  I got mine today and am loving the rebirth of an old favourite and the 'reimagining' of some aspects of the background.  I would love to use the background for SciFi gaming in the future - both ground and space based, though the latter is most likely.
1st Edition, 1986.
2nd Edition, 1988



4 comments:

  1. I played Traveler a few times. When I would go to Dragoncon I would sign up for it every year if someone ran it. I usually always won some place for best RP'er.

    One game we had to stop an assassin from breaking up a peace treaty....so we broke into two groups to stop the plan, the active team to directly stop the shooter and the infiltration team to get close enough to stop it directly and not appear that we was trying to kill the target...heh, best part was beating the hell out of the guards in the bathroom and stealing their uniforms only to find out they had cameras in the bathroom watching the event...so we had this huge chase. Ironic it was my team that saved the target in the end...

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  2. I have heard of it but had never played or read it!

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  3. Don't forget a lot of the old 28mm GZG resin which was very 2300Ad inspired is available from Demonscape.com (suspect shipping might be a tad high to Oz)

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  4. I only played 2300 a couple of times, but I really liked the whole Near Space/Stutterwarp Drive/Factions in Space background. I think GZG's Future History draws a lot upon this background, though obviously going off on its own tangent.

    If you don't like the traditional Old World domination of the 2300 Future History, you can always take a steer from Heinlein, and later, Pournelle, who postulated that a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war in the late C20th/early C21st (Twilight 2000 anyone) would result in China, India and the South American countries being the dominant powers of the 2300 era, with the SouthPac block making up in tech what they lacked in numbers.

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