When I was growing up, my parents ran a mail order game business. Among the stock that I would leaf through to relieve boredom were digest-sized black books. These described adventures to happen on far-off worlds. I didn’t manage to have a copy of Traveller of my own until late, so I’ve never actually played, yet it was a childhood companion.
Shannon Appelcline’s history of Traveller is extensive and goes into a lot of detail. He starts with the history of principals of GDW getting together, going into a bit more detail than Designers & Dragons had. This applies throughout, including a bit more detail on the end of GDW as well.
Unlike those books though, this sticks with one game through multiple publishers. Better yet, it dives into fan efforts, including all sorts amateur publications, websites, and mailing lists. This gives a far more rounded picture of what was going on that Designers & Dragons does since it only covers proper companies. There’s also plenty of color images of product covers and occasional photos of products. There’s also a number of photos from conventions and the such.
In addition to the regular history, Applecline provides interesting side bits. There’s a number of “Views From the Industry” talking about what was going on in related fields, such as the one-page history of SF wargames predating Traveller‘s release. There are checklists at the end of chapters, so a collector can track just what they have out of everything that was produced. There are also a number of “What Might Have Been” pages, discussing various projects that are known to have been started in one manner or another, but never came out, such as a list of eight proposed, but never developed, role playing games from GDW. Finally, each chapter ends with an extensive list of all the sources used in it.
My main disappointment is that despite being called “a system history”, there’s no detailed look into changes to Traveller in different product and versions. Now, there is discussion of changes, but no detailed analysis. Of course that would have to get into the weeds just to start saying anything worthwhile, and the journey wouldn’t be very instructive so its just as well. But… I’d still like to see a bit more than we get.
There is also plenty of discussion of the Third Imperium setting that shortly grew up around the early rules. The setting too would change and be added to over the decades, and that process is a good part of what the book is about. The discussion of the Mongoose era has helped turn up my interest in their products, and let me know about Cepheus, which was a split-off of Mongoose’s version of Traveller when the licensing became uncertain. (However, I have heard that Mongoose made some big changes to the setting in their version, and no mention of it is made here—I don’t know if I heard wrong or what.)
Finally, one thing that stands out, and is pointed up in the Classic GDW era, is just how much Marc Miller was willing to help third party publishers of further Traveller material. This book has also gotten a lot of help from him, as he kept very good records of print runs and the like. In overall terms, Traveller is the second-biggest RPG there’s been (in terms of years and products), so it makes a great subject for a detailed history, and of course is one near and dear to my heart. In addition, this sort of history is needed, and makes a great template for further detailed looks at RPGs.
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