Support The Wertzone on Patreon

STICKIED POST

After much debate (and some requests) I have signed up with crowdfunding service Patreon to better support future blogging efforts. You can find my Patreon page here and more information after the jump.

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Conman Moist von Lipwig is sentenced to death-by-hanging, but is saved at the last second by Ankh-Morpork's Patrician, who then tasks him with resurrecting the Post Office (this passes for a career path on Discworld). Moist finds his task complicated by a tiny staff, a headquarters overrun by decades' worth of undelivered mail, and competition from the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, who can send a message across the entire continent in the time it takes a mailman to have his first cuppa of the day. It falls to Moist, several golems and a very punctual cat to save the Post Office and restore a decrepit Ankh-Morpork institution to greatness. Or something adjacent to it, anyway.  

Going Postal, the thirty-third Discworld novel, is a super red-hot, contemporary piece of timely fiction. It's Sir Terry Pratchett's exploration of zeitgeisty ideas like late-stage capitalism and ensh!tt!f!cat!on, the way a beautiful and amazingly convenient idea/business is taken over the money people and the product is made ten times worse in the relentless pursuit of extra profit, and any attempt to compete with it is ruthlessly crushed by lawyers or the competition just being bought out.

Of course, Pratchett had no truck with the linear progression of time, hence this hugely topical piece of modern metafiction actually came out in 2004, which may indicate that Pratchett was a peerless seer of the future or he was just engaging with constant truths of human nature.

Most book series, let alone fantasy book series, struggle when they're thirty-three volumes deep. The author can be forgiven for phoning things in, settling back on their laurels or employing thinly-veiled cover versions of their earlier character and storylines and collecting the cheque. After teetering a little on the precipice of that in the mid-twenties of the novels, Pratchett decided to go the more difficult route of challenging himself with new characters and new audiences, such as the YA focus of the Tiffany Aching sub-series. Going Postal appears to be familiar, with the story once again exploring the introduction of a real life concept to the fantasy metropolis of Ankh-Morpork and the resulting mayhem (one of the oldest standby plots in the series), but it's got a much sharper bite than some of the earlier novels in the same vein, and the protagonist - an unrepentant conman and charlatan - is a bit darker than Pratchett's norm. Pratchett's protagonists are sometimes well-meaning bumblers who end up becoming heroes reluctantly, or older, more established, overly-cynical veterans who are dragged back into being in the thick of events, or hyper-competent people constantly bewildered by the incompetence of everyone else in the world. Moist von Lipwig is different, and maybe a bit more challenging than most of Pratchett's characters, being a lot more selfish and less sympathetic.

This all combines to make Going Postal feel incredibly familiar and quite new and fresh, which is an impressive achievement. The book also makes a statement by starting with a bang and just keeps going, with Moist plucked from certain death into uncertain-death-by-tedious-bureaucracy and the story moving like a freight train, despite its (by Pratchettian standards) generous 470+ page count. We get cameos by the City Watch and Unseen University wizards, but for once they don't take over the book. We also get a bit more of Patrician Vetinari than normal, and more insights into how Vetinari keeps the messy engine of the city running without going stark raving mad. The semaphore towers - the "clacks" - have been a key part of the background worldbuilding for quite a few novels now but here take front and centre, with plenty of exploration of how the service works and its own arcane customs (like the memories of deceased tower operators kept alive in the network, zooming back and forth along the network).

Pratchett packs a lot in, including further exploration of the golems and a potential romance between Moist and the chain-smoking Adora Bell Dearheart. Maybe even too much: the romance doesn't get a huge amount of development and he seems to lose a little bit of the thread with what to do with the villain at the end, who first appears to being set up as an ongoing antagonist to Moist but Pratchett seems to change his mind at the last minute.

But it's hard to argue with the results. Going Postal (****½) manages to feel safe and edgy at the same time, bringing in ideas both new and old and unfolding with some vigour. Pratchett is on fine form here, and with Moist von Lipwig he has created a compelling new protagonist whom you'll look forwards to seeing again.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Doctor Who: Season 16 - The Key to Time

The Doctor and his new companion Romana, a fellow Time Lord, are summoned to a meeting with the powerful White Guardian and is given a tremendous task: to track down the six missing pieces to the Key to Time, one of the most powerful artifacts in the universe. Their quest will take them across all of time and space, but also into a confrontation with the sinister Black Guardian.

Season 15 of Doctor Who was a bit of a mixed bag, as new showrunner Graham Williams struggled to meet the BBC's mandate to remove the horror from the show that had attracted significant complaints without completely gutting the show of its tension as well. The result was probably the most variable season of the show since the black and white era, if not ever.

For Season 16 (airing from 1978 to 1979), Williams decided to take a different tact by giving the season a much more serialised arc than normal. Whilst Seasons 8 and 12 had explored loose story arcs, the first about the Master and the second about the team being separated from the TARDIS and having to explore time and space by other means, Season 16 was going to have a more focused arc and even its own special subtitle: The Key to Time. In the event the arc ends up being a bit of a nothingburger. Aside from a bit at the start and end of each story (where some artifact, usually disconnected from the rest of the story, ends up being the Key) the arc might as well not exist, with only the end of the final story really dwelling on the Key and its powers.

The season kicks off with The Ribos Operation, by arguably the show's greatest writer, Robert Holmes. Holmes is no longer script editor, but it's clear new script editor Anthony Read knows better than to mess with a winning formula. We once again get some top-notch worldbuilding, very fine dialogue and the usual assortment of much-better-than-normal guest characters. The setting, a medieval ice planet where the people are unaware of the existence of space travel but the planet's location and resources mean a lot of aliens are undercover there at any one time, is ingenious and the plotting is pretty good, though even Holmes struggles with the "Episode 3 is mostly spent wandering around catacombs" problem, here enhanced by the "the Doctor calls in K9 and wins instantly" syndrome. Mary Tamm makes a positive first impression as new companion Romana, and it's entertaining to see the Doctor having a companion who is as smart as he is and can pilot the TARDIS as well (if not better), but is inexperienced.

The second story, The Pirate Planet, feels like it should be more momentous, as it's the first Doctor Who contribution by legendary British comic SF writer Douglas Adams. Adams had already written his famed radio serial The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy when he started work on Who and some of that humour can be found here. Adams is also clearly not one to let a good idea just be used once, as some elements of the Hitch-Hiker's series show up here with only slight modifications. The Pirate Planet isn't quite on the Hitch-Hiker's level, possibly as Williams' directive for this season was "less humour" after the previous season's Invasion of Time attracted massive complaints for being too silly. The story bounces along quite nicely and there's some good performances, but Bruce Purchase's over-the-top performance as the Pirate Captain is divisive (even if a late plot twist turns him into a much more interesting character than his earlier bombast suggests).

The third story, The Stones of Blood, is the only story this season to take place on Earth. With its invoking of standing stones and druidic ceremonies, the story recalls The Dæmons but lacks that story's warmth and banter (though it also treats its main companion much better). It's still a solid script, even if Beatrix Lehmann as Professor Rumford not only steals every scene she's in from Tom Baker (to the point where even he seems impressed) but his lunch money along with it. The story does an odd thing of completely shifting setting and tone in its final episode which a lot of people seem to hate, but I found quite intriguing, with the alien Megara (who feel like they've just teleported in from an episode of Futurama) proving to be quite amusing.

The fourth tale, The Androids of Tara, takes up to a weird alien planet where humans work alongside androids in a feudal society with kings and ceremonies, but also electric weapons. The story never really explains this oddness, and is rather stronger for it, with lots of political intrigue, scheming, insinuating and sword fights. Aside from the obvious inspiration of The Prisoner of Zenda, the story also benefits from its small stakes (the fate of the universe/galaxy/planet is not hanging in the balance) and the amusing inversion of finding the next part of the Key to Time immediately but the rest of the story is basically how the Doctor and Romana can extricate themselves from the chaos. It's also the strongest showcase for Mary Tamm, who has multiple parts to play and does so marvellously.

The penultimate part of the saga, The Power of Kroll, is the weakest, though still entertaining. The Doctor and Romana arrive on the third moon of Delta Magna where they run into a conflict between the owners of a methane refinery and the indigenous population. Complicating matters is the apparent return of the natives' god, a mile-wide squid called Kroll. Cue lots of running around as the Doctor has to mediate between the two sides, manage a gun-running rogue agent, find the next part of the Key to Time and avoid being killed by the gargantuan megasquid. As a Robert Holmes joint, the script is better than the story and premise deserves, with again some nice worldbuilding and some good dialogue, but Holmes was held back by the directive to include a really massive monster. The story also has a better guest cast than it deserves, especially Philip Madoc (from The War Games and The Brain of Morbius) and John Abineri (whose performance is compromised by the green paint he has to wear). The real star of the episode is the expansive location filming along the River Alde reed beds in Suffolk, which is actually quite successful in depicting a vast area of rivers and swamps on an alien planet, along with a surprisingly decent rubber squid monster (even if it gets a bit over-used) and even some very early attempts at computer graphics. It's just a little bit too Doctor Who-by-the-numbers, especially for Holmes (who considered it his weakest script, possibly because he'd deleted all memory of The Space Pirates from his mind).

The final story of the season is The Armageddon Factor, in which the Doctor and Romana blunder into a nuclear war between the planets Atrios and Zeos. Their quest for the final part of the Key to Time is also complicated by "the Shadow" ("the Shadow? THE SHADOW!"), a servant of the Black Guardian who is also on the trail of the Key. A potentially strong story is weakened by its six-episode length, which the story can't quite fill. However, Doctor Who fans rejoice! This the last six-parter to air in Doctor Who's history (kind of *), which will improve a lot of future episodes' pacing.

The guest cast is also splendid, with John Woodvine suitably authoritative as the Marshal and Lalla Ward making for a very charming Princess Astra, whilst cockney wide-boy Time Lord Drax (Barry Jackson) is extremely random but also entertaining. The story suffers a lot from "K9 solves all obstacles instantly" syndrome and from an ending that so abrupt you wonder if the writers' typewriter spontaneously exploded. The twenty-six episodes of buildup to the completion of the Key to Time and the final confrontation between the Doctor and Black Guardian ends up in the biggest damp squib (not damp squid, that was the previous episode) in the show's history.

Still, despite suffering from a lot of problems, like bogging down in running around caves in its latter part, the story is entertaining enough. The story feels more Robert Holmes than almost any other story not written by Holmes himself (and is mildly better than The Power of Kroll). What is interesting is that the story doesn't really betray the behind-the-scenes turmoil which was going on: Williams and Tom Baker were having an almighty barney, Baker actually quit at one point but changed his mind, and Mary Tamm decided to leave despite Graham Williams having no viable plan to replace her (again, after the exact same thing happened with Louise Jameson a year earlier).

Season 16 (***½) of Doctor Who is fine. It might be the most "fine" season of the entire show. There are no solid gold classics here, but also no total disasters either, and it's a notable improvement over the previous season (and the following). It's watchable, often fun, and the idea of the story arc is interesting, even if it ends up being mostly irrelevant and then underwhelming. Mary Tamm is a fine companion and it's a shame she doesn't come back for another season. One weakness here is Tom Baker's increasing disinterest in the show whenever he's not the centre of attention, with bursts of underacting and overacting, and few (if any) of the sonorous, well-written speeches his earlier seasons featured. This is the beginning of Baker's Latter Shatner Period.

The season can be seen right now on the BBC iPlayer in the UK, BritBox in much of the rest of the world, and is also available on DVD. The season is one of several awaiting release on Blu-Ray.

• 16.1-16.4: The Ribos Operation (****)
• 16.5-16.8: The Pirate Planet (***½)
• 16.9-16.12: The Stones of Blood (***½)
• 16.13-16.16: The Androids of Tara (****)
• 16.17-16.20: The Power of Kroll (***)
• 16.21-16.26: The Armageddon Factor (***½)

* Season 17's Shada was a six-parter but never completed due to filming strikes, though it was later completed through animation. Season 22's The Two Doctors was also three 45-minute episodes in length, so technically would work out the same as a six-parter. But anyway.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Daniel Abraham provides update on final KITHAMAR TRILOGY novel

Daniel Abraham has dropped by Westeros.org to provide a very brief update on his Kithamar Trilogy. The first two books, Age of Ash and Blade of Dream, have been out for a while, but the status of the final book, Judge of Worlds had been unclear after it missed its originally-indicated early 2025 release date.

Daniel's update is brief, but effective:

"Got stuck. Got unstuck. Turning in the MS this autumn."

From that I'd assume that Judge of Worlds is on course for an early-to-mid 2026 release.

Abraham is also publishing the second book in his Captive's War space opera series, co-written with Ty Franck under the James S.A. Corey pen-name (previously used for their Expanse series), next year. That currently has an April 2026 release date.

Blogging Roundup: 1 June to 1 September 2025

News

• Updated sales figures for Brandon Sanderson and Sarah J. Maas revealed
• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War IV announced
• First trailer for Fallout Season 2 revealed
• Original planned author of the Dragonlance Chronicles not announced for the very first time (debunked)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer sequel legacy show announces main cast
• Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 confirmed to be in production
• Mel Brooks to return with Spaceballs 2
• Star Trek: Strange New Worlds to end with shorter fifth season
• Trailer for Alien: Earth released
• Owlcat developing Expanse video game inspired by Mass Effect
• Mass Effect TV series gains showrunner, moving forwards
• Joe Abercrombie's The Devils optioned by James Cameron

Reviews

• Doctor Who: Season 15
• Doctor Who: Season 14
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
• Foundation: Season 2
• Doctor Who: Season 13
• Doctor Who: Season 12
• Doctor Who: Season 11
• Doctor Who: Season 10
• This is Free Trader Beowulf: A System History of Traveller by Shannon Appelcline
• Doctor Who: Season 9
• Doctor Who: Season 8
• Doctor Who: Season 7
• Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay
• Doctor Who: Series 15 (Season 41)
• The Alters
• Doctor Who: Series 14 (Season 40)
• The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Doctor Who: Series 13 (Season 39) - Flux

Articles

• Where to Start: Traveller Buyer's Guide
• Franchise Familiariser: Traveller
• RIP Jim Shooter
• Where to Start with Classic Doctor Who?

 

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Updated sales figures for Brandon Sanderson and Sarah J. Maas

Updated sales figures for fantasy megastars Brandon Sanderson and Sarah J. Maas show that the formidable market power of Romantasy is not stopping soon.

Back in January 2024, I assembled the latest incarnation of my "SFF All-Time Sales List," which had sales figures of 37 million for Sarah J. Maas (in 32nd place on the list) and 40 million for Brandon Sanderson (in 29th place). These were very healthy figures.

The updated figures for Sanderson (via the Edelweiss catalogue) now have him at 45 million, which would move him up to around 24th place. Very healthy and impressive. Unsurprising as in the meantime he's released his long-awaited fifth Stormlight Archive novel, Wind and Truth, and is now working on a return to his perennially popular Mistborn sequence..

But the updated figures for Maas, straight from her publisher, are eye-popping. The updated figures put her at 75 million (!), which would rocket her up to around 17th on the list and instantly make her one of the biggest-selling, living fantasy writers.

To be clear, I don't think Maas has sold another 40 million books in just eighteen months. Instead, her publisher has noted that she is now published in forty languages, and it's likely they'd been severely underestimating her prior sales. Updated sales information from foreign sales is the most likely source for this large-seeming jump.

It is worth noting that Maas published her first novel only in 2014, nine years after Sanderson published his first book. This shows the full, unmitigated firepower of the Romantasy subgenre and its enthusiastic fanbase eclipses even that of fans of hard magic systems and intricate worldbuilding.

With sales growth like this, Maas is now looking likely to catch up to the likes of George R.R. Martin (at around 95 million) and the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan (at just over 100 million apiece), and this is without any adaptation of her works. When one finally appears, I can imagine that only increasing her sales presence and profile further.

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.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs.

Franchise Familiariser: Traveller

If you’re looking into tabletop roleplaying games and want to move beyond the obvious recommendation of Dungeons & Dragons, and maybe laser cannons are more your jam than wizards casting fireball, there is at least one other very long-running candidate out there to consider: Traveller. The roleplaying game of space adventure in the distant future. But where are you travelling to? We’re here to fill you in on the franchise.

The Basics

Traveller is a science fiction, space opera franchise co-created by Marc Miller. The primary medium of the franchise is the tabletop roleplaying game, which was first published in 1977 by Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) out of Illinois, of which Miller was the co-founder and owner along with fellow designers Frank Chadwick, Rich Banner and Loren Wiseman. Traveller was primarily developed by Miller, Chadwick, Wiseman and John Harshman.

Traveller was a smash hit on release in July 1977, perhaps helped by the release of a certain movie just seven weeks earlier that saw an explosion in demand for anything with spaceships, lasers and robots. Traveller also tapped into the nascent roleplaying market, where D&D was by far the most dominant game but was already being criticised for somewhat clunky rules. Traveller was revolutionary in its approach which eschewed multiple dice types for just using six-sided dies (d6s) and not using levels for character development, instead creating a robust skill system. Traveller also pioneered what would later be called the “Lifepath” system, where players generate their characters’ backstories, skills, aptitudes and relationships before the campaign itself begins. This was usually done in a pre-campaign special session, what we would now call “Session 0.” Though prep sessions for D&D were not unknown, Traveller arguably codified them as an integral part of the campaign. Famously (though somewhat exaggerated), the career system in Traveller could theoretically kill characters during character creation, leading to the game being dubbed the most hardcore and deadly roleplaying game around, though subsequent editions rolled back on this approach.

Traveller quickly became a mainstay of the TTRPG industry and one of its best-known games and constant sellers, and possibly the first TTRPG after D&D to crack a million sales. Its initial rules were extremely well-received, with a simple core concept which allowed for a huge amount of complexity in the form of rolling 2 six-sided dice, adding positive modifiers from skills, and trying to beat a target number depending on difficulty. This simple core had a very large number of modules built onto it through expansions, allowing for starship and robot construction, military operations and exploration (a nod at creating scenarios similar to Star Wars and Star Trek), planet and sector creation and so on. This system inspired the rules of various other games, including the official Star Wars roleplaying game from West End Games that came out in 1987, which was similarly d6-based.

The original version of the game is known as Classic Traveller and is identifiable from its minimalist plain black books with striking red text in the Optima font. The first three books were released in a boxed set to form the core rules system. The main books have no other artwork on the covers, and it was only later in the early 1980s that adventures started adding artwork to their covers. Classic Traveller ran for ten years, with a large number of sourcebooks and adventures published. GDW also encouraged third-party contributions, with numerous other companies and fans (individually or in groups) writing adventures and sourcebooks, some accepted as official canon. Famed TTRPG company FASA started life publishing Traveller adventures, for example, before they developed their own BattleTech aka MechWarrior universe, partially inspired by Traveller (especially the starmaps). Games Workshop also reprinted Traveller rulebooks for the UK market and created a range of miniatures for it, some of which were later repurposed for their Warhammer 40,000 game.

Sales of Traveller began to fall off in the late 1980s and the game was replaced by a new edition called MegaTraveller (1987), in which the Emperor of the Third Imperium is assassinated, triggering a rebellion and civil war. This era saw the publication of the first (and, to date, only) Traveller video roleplaying games, MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy (1990) and MegaTraveller 2: Quest for the Ancients (1991), for the PC, Amiga and Atari ST.

MegaTraveller was supplanted by Traveller: The New Era in 1993, which adopted a full-on post-apocalyptic setting with a powerful computer virus ravaging human technology. It was controversial amongst fans and the fanbase fractured after its release, with many small groups developing third-party material ending their development of the franchise.

Game Designers’ Workshop collapsed during The New Era and the rights reverted to Marc Miller. Marc Miller developed Marc Miller’s Traveller, better known as Traveller 4^th Edition or T4, for release in 1996. The game’s setting is “Milieu 0,” set during the founding of the Third Imperium and avoiding awkward questions about canon.

Steve Jackson Games licensed the setting to release GURPS Traveller in 1998, using their GURPS (General Universal Role-Playing System) rules, which is set in a parallel timeline where the fall of the Third Imperium never happened. This was followed by Traveller 20 or T20 in 2002, an adaptation of the setting and rules to the Dungeons & Dragons, 3^rd Edition (or D20) rules system. In 2006 GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars was released, which chronicled the first contact between the Terran Confederation and the First Imperium. Comstar Games also released Traveller Hero, using their own Hero rules system, in 2006.

Marc Miller developed his own newer version of the game, called Traveller 5, for release in 2013, with a revised edition in 2019. This version of the game is incredibly deep, complex and simulationist, with less of a focus on the established setting in favour of allowing the Referee to create their own setting. The rules are broadly compatible with Traveller, T4 and Mongoose Traveller and can be used to enhance a campaign using those rules.

The current mainline development of Traveller was taken over by Britain’s Mongoose Publishing in 2008. Mongoose Traveller (an informal name, the official name is just Traveller) became the most successful line since the original edition. In 2016 Mongoose Traveller 2^nd Edition was released with hugely updated production values. In 2022 this was superseded by Mongoose Traveller 2^nd Edition Update, a minor revision of 2^nd Edition with new rulebooks. This has become one of the most prolific and best-selling modern tabletop roleplaying games, with many dozens of supplements, adventures and rulebooks released.

In 2025 Marc Miller sold all remaining IP rights to the Traveller game to Mongoose, confirming their status as the official producers of all Traveller materials. Mongoose continue to develop Traveller, including the Fifth Frontier War sub-line.

For a more detailed look at the publication history of Traveller, please check out This is Free Trader Beowulf: A System History of Traveller by Shannon Appelcline.

MUCH MORE AFTER THE JUMP:

Doctor Who: Season 15

The Doctor and Leela continue to explore time and space, but, after a series of unsatisfying adventures, the Doctor decides to return to Gallifrey on a clandestine mission of his own.

Seasons 12 through 14 arguably represent the "imperial period" of Classic Doctor Who's popularity, where it delivered certified banger after banger and many of the show's most revered stories were created. The stories were written by some of its best writers and featured the magisterial Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, along with the ultra-popular Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, the franchise's most enduring companion. Producer-showrunner Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes presided over this period of high-quality output, but the BBC was also inundated with complaints about the show becoming too scary for kids and too adult-leaning. Hinchcliffe decided to leave at the end of Season 14 and new showrunner Graham Williams had a mandate to bring back the show's warmth and humour, and maybe reduce the number of stories about, say, cracking the Doctor's skull open to replace his brain with that of a genocidal madman.

Things kick off with Horror of Fang Rock, which feels like it's just a continuation of the preceding era. The Edwardian setting, the focus of the lighthouse crew being stalked by a shapeshifting monster, and the general "classic horror movie" feel all feel like Hinchliffe is still around. The script by veteran writer Terrance Dicks, with Holmes still on board as editor, is responsible for keeping things on track. Managing to get four episodes out of a small lighthouse setting is impressive, and ably achieved by introducing new elements, new characters (via a shipwreck) and new capabilities for the invading alien force as the story proceeds. Louise Jameson also feels like she's settling in better as companion Leela, even if the writers still seem to occasionally struggle with a companion who's first response to danger is to confront it rather than run away and hide. Overall, a winner.

The Invisible Enemy follows that up by being one of the most unhinged stories in Doctor Who's canon. The opening, where the Doctor is possessed by an alien force and engages in a terrifying game of cat and mouse with Leela, is memorably creepy. The Fantastic Voyage stuff with clones of the Doctor and Leela going into the Doctor's body to eliminate the alien force is also good fun. It's the stuff between, with the alien shambolically taking over the medical space station, that is total guff, and the ending with the giant alien germ being guided around by his minions, may be among the funniest, least-threatening scenes in Doctor Who's history. In the middle we have the introduction of robot dog K9, who makes an immediate impression by shooting a guy in the groin (he was bad, so it was okay, I guess) and being sarcastic and unimpressed by the Doctor. Overall, a story that's probably worth watching only to see how absolutely bonkers it can be.

Image of the Fendahl is another location-limited story, with the Doctor and Leela confronting an alien skull that takes a bunch of scientists over in a priory. Having just had two stories where aliens can appear as other people and taken over people, this feels a bit redundant. The execution is fine, Wanda Ventham is a solid guest actor, but the plot is overly drawn out. The whole story is set in a single house and its grounds and writer Chris Boucher struggles to make the limited setting work as well as Horror of Fang Rock did (he immediately leaves the show after this, moving over to be script editor on Blake's 7, where he thrives). There's some creepy direction, but the final episode does descend into lots of running about and the Doctor spouting nonsense until he fully-expectedly wins. It's okay, but it's a bit Doctor Who-by-the-numbers.

The Sun Makers, on the other hand, is gloriously bananas. The script was basically written by Robert Holmes in an absolute fury over his tax bill, and unrestrained Holmes in full anger is a marvel. The Doctor and Leela arrive on Pluto, where the human race has been forcibly resettled to work off a debt to an alien race. People are taxed to live, eat and even die. The Doctor gets roped in when he stops a worker from committing suicide over having to pay his father's death tax (!) and is soon so enraged by the tax-collecting corporation that he happily agrees to set up a full-blown revolution.

Holmes's script isn't quite The Ark in Space or Talons of Weng-Chiang, but it is constantly witty, bristling with an undercurrent of vitriol. The cast is all on good form (even if the Doctor's motivations here are a bit lacking), especially Richard Leech as Gatherer Hade who delivers his insane platitudes to his superiors with aplomb. In fact, if you want a dictionary definition of "aplomb," Leech's performance is it. He is almost upstaged by Henry Woolf as his superior, the Collector, who comes across as Davros-from-Wish but plays it to the hilt, with his utter obsession with profit forecasts and achieving maximum business synergies (or whatever) even at the cost of thousands of lives, being genuinely repulsive. Everyone else struggles to compete, though there is a good turn by Michael Keating, soon to be immortalised as Vila in Blake's 7. Not Holmes's finest or subtlest hour, but this is a very entertaining story.

Underworld has an interesting idea, with the Doctor bumping into a bunch of Minyans, a race whom the Time Lords previously "uplifted" to greatness but inadvertently gave the tools to destroy themselves, leading to the Time Lord policy of noninterference in the affairs of other species. The Minyans therefore see the Doctor as a cursed god, a great idea that is abandoned after about one scene. The Minyans then arrive on a planet that has formed around a spacecraft they are chasing which holds the key to saving their species. There's a lot of running around in tunnels, rebels rebelling under the Doctor's tutelage (for all the Doctor's hatred of violence, he has no problem with other people doing it on his behalf) and a mad computer to cap it all off. There's a lot of interesting ideas here that aren't allowed to flower fully. The story also suffered severe budget limitations to the point where they couldn't afford proper sets, so instead built models and green-screened people into them. There are some scenes where this works really well, and some where it's a bit of a disaster.

Things are capped off by The Invasion of Time, where the Doctor arrives on Gallifrey and promptly goes bonkers, seizing control of the High Council and allowing aliens to invade for no apparent reason. Obviously there's a whole reason for it, but it's not a particularly good one. Then, unexpected Sontarans! The story is an overlong mess, but it's also oddly watchable. We don't go to Gallifrey all that often so it's interesting to see more of the Doctor's homeworld, even if it's all a bit underwhelming (the Time Lords get outfoxed by some very dumb aliens, and there's some Standard Primitives living like two miles from the city who are a problem but then not, as the plot demands). Season 15 was under huge budget problems due to the rampant inflation of the late 1970s (hence the Underworld issues), which leads to the bizarre sight of the deep interior of the TARDIS looking like a British hospital. We also have Leela leaving for no apparent reason, and the huge open-but-missed goal of not recruiting Hilary Ryan's splendid Time Lady engineer Rodan (after an initial bout of wet-blanketitis) as the replacement companion.

Season 15 (***) is well-intentioned, with some good ideas, but is ultimately a bit of a letdown after the preceding three seasons. Horror of Fang Rock and The Sun Makers are highlights, but The Invisible Enemy is enjoyable for all the wrong reasons. Every other story can be summed up as "promising but underwhelming."

The season is available on DVD and limited edition Blu-Ray. The regular edition Blu-Ray should be out later this year. The season is also available on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on various overseas streaming services.

• 15.1 - 15.4: Horror of Fang Rock (****½)
• 15.5 - 15.8: The Invisible Enemy (***)
• 15.9 - 15.12: Image of the Fendahl (***)
• 15.13 - 15.16: The Sun Makers (****)
• 15.17 - 15.18: Underworld (***)
• 15.19 - 15.24: The Invasion of Time (**½)

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.