Where to Start: Traveller Buyer's Guide

So, you’ve familiarised yourself (franchisely!) with Traveller. You know your Vargr from your Hivers. You want to delve more deeply into the game. How do you do this? Where do you start? How deep down the rabbit hole do you go? How much money are you willing to part with, from “none at all” to “lots, please?” Here is a potted buyer’s guide to ease you gently into all things Traveller.

As Mongoose Publishing are the new IP-owners for Traveller (though they’ve been producing material in the setting for almost twenty years at this point), it makes sense to focus on their current, 2nd Edition (Updated) of the roleplaying game, as it is the only version currently being developed and expanded on a large scale. However, you can pick up a lot of the earlier editions of the game, especially as PDFs, from Marc Miller’s website and online sellers like DriveThru RPG.

Get Free Stuff! For Free!

Everyone likes free stuff, and Mongoose has you covered here. Last year they released the Traveller Starter Pack via their website which is completely free, and packs in a surprisingly large amount of content.

Traveller Starter Pack

The Starter Pack contains an introductory, streamlined version of the rules, including character creation and combat, and two complete adventures.

The main focus here is the Traveller Explorer’s Edition, which is a 60-page book containing the rules for creating characters, resolving skills and tasks, running combat and encounters, buying basic equipment, crewing spacecraft and even basic world and universe creation. As a concession to this being a free starter set, there’s only two Careers included: Scholar and Scout. However, Traveller’s infamously flexible skill system does allow for characters even of the same Career to be very different to one another.

The two adventures are quite generous. Death Station is a 26-page modern rewrite of a Classic Traveller adventure from back in the day, involving the exploration of a wrecked spacecraft. The rewrite is by Seth Skorkowsky, whose YouTube channel is a rich source of Traveller rules explanations and adventure reviews. Stranded is a 32-page adventure seeing the heroes undertaking a difficult cross-planet journey without their usual resources. Both adventures are well-regarded, and the Starter Pack is worth picking up to just get these adventures even for veteran Traveller players.

This free Starter Pack gives an adventuring group all they need to run a campaign lasting half a dozen sessions or so, or potentially more.

To moderately expand your options, you can add in the PDF of the Traveller Merchant’s Edition for a very reasonable 75p (or $1). This alternate, introductory version of the rules focuses on merchant adventures on a cargo spacecraft. A cut-down version of the trading rules is presented, as well as the Merchant career option. In combination with the Starter Pack, this gives you a moderate version of the Traveller experience for almost no monies. A trip to the Traveller website will also avail free character sheets, spacecraft record sheets, sector and subsector maps, and more.

The ultimate free Traveller resources are also online: Traveller Wiki and the Traveller Map website.

Core Books

The free stuff has given you a taste, but now you want the full, real deal. Where do you go from here?

Your first port of call should be The Traveller Core Rulebook Update 2022. Despite the slightly unwieldy name, this is the 100% full, complete core rulebook for Traveller 2^nd Edition Updated. At 264 pages it’s nicely chunky without being as shelf-destroying as many core rulebooks for other TTRPGs.

The book features no less than 12 Careers (well, 13 with “Prisoner”) and has the full rules for character creation, using skills, resolving tasks, operating vehicles and spacecraft, even building and designing your own spacecraft, as well as rules for using psionics and on living the rich life of a merchant. This is the full rules experience, but has little setting information: the idea is you purchase other books for setting information or create your own (or consult the Traveller Wiki, of course).

With the Core Rulebook and the aforementioned Starter Pack adventures, you already have enough materials to get off to a flying start. But there are several other core books that are worth considering, though still absolutely optional.

Players absolutely love stuff, namely weapons and equipment. What else are they going to spend their mission rewards on? This makes the Central Supply Catalogue Update 2023 an easy early purchase, featuring as it does a vast array (185 pages’ worth!) of new guns, gear and gadgets to enhance and expand any Traveller adventure.

Players also love more options, more ways of playing the game, more stats, skills and character generation ideas. This makes the Traveller Companion Update 2024 an easy recommendation. This book features ideas on how to convert the rules to handle genres such as horror or comedy (the book opens with a Douglas Adams quote), with different (and faster) character generation methods for those who want to get into the action more quickly. There are also rules for much more in-depth combat, including zero-gee vector battles, and more detailed rules for terrain, allies and recurring enemies.

The next step is spacecraft. Traveller is all about blasting into the big black on a trusty stellar cruiser, so having a variety of ships to choose from is fun. High Guard Update 2022 features tons more information on spacecraft operations, combat, ship weapons, designing new ships, crew roles, fleet actions and boarding actions. The book is rounded off by a massive 150 pages featuring numerous spacecraft from the Third Imperium setting, from tiny fighters to massive capital ships.

Other books in the core range are more specialised and you should only consider them if planning a campaign heavily revolving around those concepts. The Robot Handbook is excellent for anyone planning an adventure revolving around robots and cybernetics, but of limited utility to anyone else. The Vehicle Update 2025, due out later this year, expands the repertoire of ground and air vehicles for the setting beyond the basic types in the core book. The World Builder’s Handbook is great for any Referee (the Traveller version of a Dungeon or Gamemaster) more interested in creating their own worlds, whilst Bounty Hunter is useful for adventuring parties filled up with wannabe Boba Fetts.

 

Setting Material

Like Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller was designed as a generic roleplaying system allowing the players and Referees to create their own worlds, star systems and sectors, in their own setting. However, after a while the team found themselves adding names, locations and factions in a consistent manner. The result was Traveller’s official campaign setting: Charted Space, also known as the Third Imperium (earlier editions explored different time periods in the setting, but the current edition has returned to the original time period). Unlike D&D, which eventually developed over two dozen campaign settings joined together by a common multiverse, Traveller developed only a few settings, with the others becoming their own games: 2300AD and various ports of other science fiction universes to the Traveller rules, such as iconic 1990s space opera TV series Babylon 5. 

Getting to grips with the Third Imperium is straightforward. The sourcebook The Third Imperium gives an overview of the entire empire, with a strong focus on the planet Capital, the Sylean core worlds and the surrounding Core Sector. Whilst it’s a good book, the civilised Core Sector is more a setting for adventures revolving around diplomatic overtures, political intrigue and corporate espionage, rather than frontier adventuring. A new Traveller crew might wish to start with the rough-and-ready frontier.

Behind the Claw details the Spinward Marches and Deneb sectors, the original setting for the Classic Traveller adventures and material in the 1970s and 1980s. The Spinward Marches are Traveller’s answer to, say, the Sword Coast or Free City of Greyhawk, a highly-detailed border region between the Third Imperium and Zhodani Consulate where adventure is both frequent and dangerous. Many great Traveller adventures take place in this area, and the sector capital of Regina is the starting home of many a seasoned Traveller crew. The current meta-event campaign The Fifth Frontier War takes place partly in these sectors.

Meanwhile, Solomani Front details Terra (Earth), Sol and the entire Solomani Rim and Alpha Crucis sectors, where the Third Imperium borders the Solomani Confederation, as well as the Vega Autonomous District. This is for adventurers looking for more of a Cold War setting between rival powers, plus those who really wish to visit 57^th Century Basingstoke.

Ah, but what about aliens (even the human kind)? The Aliens of Charted Space has you covered. Volume 1 exposits on the Vargr, Aslan, Zhodani and K’kree. Volume 2 covers the Solomani, Droyne and Hivers.  Volume 3 features the Darrians, Geonee, Dolphins, Orca and Bwaps. Volume 4 explores the Suerrat, Za’tachk, Gurvin and Tezcat. Of the four books, Volumes 1 and 2 covers the iconic seven Traveller species, with 3 and 4 going into more obscure and lesser-known species. All four volumes also have information on equipment and ships developed by those species.

Clans of the Aslan is also worth a look for a deeper dive on the lion-like Aslan, a powerful alien species with mixed relations with the Third Imperium and Humaniti. The book explorers the Aslan social structure and hierarchy, the internal politics of a clan and how Aslan characters might come to be working alongside humans. This is very useful for those players who want to depict Aslan as an alien civilisation with their own motivations and history, rather than just furry humans.

Probably the last thing to look at here, though maybe not for brand-new crews, is the recently-updated Great Rift boxed set, which explores the gigantic Great Rift, a large region of lightly-settled space almost dividing the Spinward Marches from the rest of the Imperium, and dividing the Aslan from much of the Third Imperium. The set explores five entire sectors (Corridor, Reft, Riftspan, Afawahisa and Touchstone) with a large array of maps and details on worlds, alongside ideas for adventures. This is quite a lot of material and probably isn’t for the newcomer, but does provide a huge sandbox for adventures created by Referees.

 

Adventures

Of course, pre-made adventures are something a time-poor Referee may find themselves grateful for. A lot of the work is done for you, and some of these adventures are based on classic material published almost fifty years ago, with a corresponding amount of time of refinement, rewrites and Referee suggestions on how to improve them.

 

The best-place to start here is, again, the Traveller Starter Kit, which includes the Death Station and Stranded adventures for free. Even if your bookshelf is groaning under the weight of bought Traveller material, these two adventures are pretty solid and either could make a reasonable jumping-off point for any campaign.

Mongoose has many adventures for the game, and has started publishing omnibuses including five adventures at a time. These are a great way of getting a bunch of adventure content more cheaply, sometimes with exclusive new adventures added.

The Marches Adventures 1-5 is set in the Spinward Marches and includes two of the all-timer classic Traveller adventures, High & Dry (in which the party is given a starship, but has to first recover it from the crater of an active volcano) and Mission to Mithril (in which the party’s ship is immobilised, forcing them into a hazardous overland journey), along with three other solid adventures.

The Great Rift Adventures 1-5 is set in the Great Rift region and makes a great companion to the Great Rift boxed set, but can be enjoyed by itself. This includes three classic adventures, namely Islands in the Rift, Deepnight Endeavour and Flatlined, along with two other good adventures.

Not available in omnibus yet are the Reach Adventures line. This includes several notable adventures, most famously Marooned on Marduk, another well-regarded starter adventure for a new Traveller campaign.

Similarly well-regarded is Mysteries on Arcturus Station, which combines an updated version of the Classic Traveller adventure Murder on Arcturus Station with a new set-up adventure, The Hunt for Sabre IV.

Of course, these are all adventures designed for short or medium-length play, maybe between 1 and 5 sessions max. Traveller is renowned for its mega-adventures, huge campaigns that will last months or years. Again, I wouldn’t necessarily start with these (unless you are a very experienced GM from other games) but they are very impressive.

The most famous of these – and fortunately the most concisely-presented and cheapest – is Secrets of the Ancients. One of the iconic Traveller adventures, variations of this campaign have appeared for multiple versions of the game, and even inspired the 1992 video game MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients. This adventure blows open the backstory of the Ancients and explores what happened to them, over a 10-part campaign which moves from being a heist scenario to a combat adventure and even the most elaborate exposition/flashback adventure I’ve ever seen for an RPG. Seth Skorkowsky has a mind-boggling full campaign review exploring what happens in each part of the campaign (spoilers!).

Even bigger in scale, ambition and shiny stuff is The Pirates of Drinax. This is the ultimate sandbox campaign, in which the players arrive in the Trojan Reach Sector and join forces with the King of Drinax, who wants to re-establish the pocket space empire of his forebears, buffered between the Aslan and the Third Imperium. How the players accomplish this is completely up to them, from faking pirate attacks on nearby unaligned worlds (making them amenable to accepting Drinax’s protection) to fancy diplomatic footwork to blackmail to large-scale military campaigns. The boxed set includes a huge map of the Trojan Reach, several tentpole adventures (to take place at different points in the campaign), information on a new, advanced ship for the team to use, and tons of setting information and suggestions for how to guide the players, including what happens if they lose interest in working for Drinax and betray the king, or even trigger a large-scale war with the Aslan. There are also ideas on how to incorporate the Reach Adventures line into this campaign. The boxed set even has its own optional helper book, The Drinaxian Companion, which adds more ideas, adventure seeds and oversight help, and another adventure called Shadows of Sindal which ties into the backstory for Pirates and can be used to either enhance a Pirates campaign or be used as a standalone adventure. Some players play Pirates as a focused linear adventure lasting 10-15 sessions, and others as an absolutely massive campaign lasting five or more years. It may represent the ultimate Traveller experience.

For those who prefer a more Star Trek-ish experience, the Deepnight Revelation boxed set has your crew joining a long-range exploration mission into very deep space. And recently succeeding on Kickstarter is the Singularity campaign, which explores posthuman and transhuman ideas in the Traveller setting.

There is of course a lot more Traveller stuff than this. More specialised books about naval personnel and mercenary companies, books on designing entire sectors, and tons more adventures. But this is more than enough to be getting on with. Something useful to take a look at is the Journal of Uncharted Space series, which is effectively a series of magazines/compendiums of articles, background material new rules, mini-adventures and worldbuilding covering a vast array of subjects. There are now 18 editions of this tome, each adding more than 120 pages of material to the Traveller universe.

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