"Status of GDW?" Topic

As I understand it, Game Designers Workshop (GDW) closed years ago.

Yet Traveller 5 is out, published by GDW…?

Have they come back to life?

Far Future Enterprises
farfuture.net

run by Marc W Miller formerly of GDW

T5 is a SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX PAGE RULEBOOK?!?!?!….

Oh hell no!

They still print Twilight 2000 as well

T5 is a SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY SIX PAGE RULEBOOK?!?!?!

Not really.

There are complete starship design sequences, ground vehicle design sequences, aircraft design sequences, grav vehicle design sequences, cannon design sequences, energy weapon design sequences, and so on, and so forth. There's a ton of stuff in there for the people really just want to design things. There's detailed star system generation tools for the people interested that.

All sorts of stuff that's totally irrelevant in the heat of play. A referee might generate a couple of star systems and some animals between sessions, but no one will break that out during the game.

It's as if you took all of the basic Traveller rules, rolled in Mercenary and High Guard and Scouts and Traders and Citizens of the Imperium, and parts of Striker, and added some of the other bits and pieces that were covered in other editions of Traveller, along with a big equipment catalog. Classic Traveller was HUGE when you looked at all of the publications. (Also, there are pages and pages of tables for the design sequences and so forth in here, which tends to bulk out the book.)

That said … it's a doorstop for sure.

Do they have design sequences for design sequences?

I'd be on board with T5, if it came with an Index.

Sadly, they omitted that, but apparently work has started on cleaning up all the errata, and clarifying some other stuff, so version 5.09 (instead of 5.1).

Not sure if they plan to add an Index to that one, either

Apparently, they're issuing coupons to people that bought T5, but not sure what that does for the buyers, e.g. a discount on the next version, free copy of any updates, etc.

I got an e-mail about it, but they didn't clarify anything in the message.

Seems to me they should break T5.1 up into logical sections, e.g. character creation and main rules, and add an Index. They, publish other books on things like world creation, aliens (hate that stupid "sophont" name), running campaigns, etc.

That would make the books a lot easier to hold, read, and use.

I got an e-mail about it, but they didn't clarify anything in the message.

…Somewhat like their rules?

Interesting. GDW had that same rep (for not using indexes (indices?)) back in the day ;)

"Apparently, they're issuing coupons to people that bought T5, but not sure what that does for the buyers, e.g. a discount on the next version, free copy of any updates, etc."

It is now on RPGNow, which is how the 5.09 update is being distributed. As that file is updated, everyone who has acquired it through that route will continue to have access to it as it is updated further.

5.09 has started an Index, by the way. It isn't accurate yet, but this is a mid-stream revision.

i remember getting the black box/black books traveller when it first came out. our group(bless them. i wish we could get back togeather. i hate being old…) was excited to try something differnt from our original d&d.
as dm, or gm, as it were, i remember being the guy who had to risk my kids savings to buy the black box of scifi(LOL). i went to my local shop one rainy october friday night, with the awsome feeling of something like "this is gonna be great! space exploration! space ships! laserguns!"
i remember reading the rules and thinking "this is pure crap"…
i played many, many rpg systems from 1977 to about 1995(when our group went about its way). i never understood this love for traveller.

i will allow that for scifi rpging, space master(from ice) and battlelords of the 23rd century were very good games. alot more flavor. traveller just seemed like books of dry statistics to us…

John LaCour: De gustibus non disputandem, I suppose.

The original Traveller either allowed or required, depending on whether your glass is half-full or half-empty, that the referee create the entire background for a session or campaign. Within a short time after the initial publication, GDW started releasing background material, and the depth and richness of that background caught the imaginations of generations of Traveller fans.

I got the 500 page Traveller5 tome from the Kickstarter. It came with a CD, so at least you can search the text that way. I think that book needs a good editing for continuity and labelling.

I didn't get an email about 5.09. Maybe I'll email Marc Miller about it.

I loved Traveller back in the day; just enough grit to feel real, not enough to be either nihilistic or silly. Though if I expand our current Teen Library D&D program into SF, I'll probably go with Star Frontiers or a Star Wars RPG as being a bit more accessible to our teens.

$35 USD for the CDs/download material seems like an excellent bargain, knowing what I paid for the LBBs back in the day.

john lacour, it's funny, but I recently read an article on how GDW's big mistake with Traveller was that they started to create an official universe with all sorts of detail, and that made people think that was the only way to play Traveller!

As far a flavor, I think they assumed that you'd read certain types of science fiction, like Star Viking, or that you'd seen Star Wars. Then, the ref would decide what sort of campaign he wanted to run, which might be exploration, or trade, or mercenaries, or rogues, or …

In one sense, the LBBs came with (almost) no flavor at all. On the other hand, you could say that they were a toolbox designed to limit the referee as little as possible. YMMV.

I absolutely love the Traveller background. Without it it's just A.N.Other SF RPG and would be completely bland. I'm a huge Traveller fan and rather nerdily I've collected almost every version and publication for Traveller. But I stopped short of buying into T5. It seemed to be too much rules 'crunch' and SF 'hardware pr0n' and not enough expansion of the setting.

Check out CoTI Citizens of the Imperium website. It is where all the Travellers hang out.

Have all the LBB's from first ed on Deadwood format and CD. Also have FASA and Judges guild on CD and a beta copy of T5. Much chearper to go that way

If you liked DnD 3.5 also grab the Traveller T20 CD for a retake on Traveller using those rules.

The T 5.09 book does indeed have an index. The Table of Contents is wrong but I'm pretty sure they'll fix that fairly quickly.

T5 is a toolbox for building settings. I'd probably have left out the small amounts of third imperium stuff and put in a few more examples like fully designed starships.

Before you get scared, star ship design is basically Classic Traveller Book II design with a much broader range of options tacked on. Book II style designs are really pretty simple once you've played with it enough to know what's what.

The weapon design system doesn't require you to calculate muzzle velocity or the diameter of bullets to find out how many you can fit in a pistol grip. Instead you say, I want to design a pistol, so I start with the basic pistol statistics, tack on the improved stage and heavy bulk, apply the modifiers and you've got Heavy Pistol-5 Range-3, Bullet-4 (damage), Mass 1.43kg, Bulk 2, Ease of Use 1, 330cr

Vehicle design functions in a very similar fashion. There are also rules for creating robots, androids, clones, synthetics, and aliens.

I love that they did the substructure in the core. It's not overkill it's insurance that future materials will be internally compatible instead of haphazardly made up.

Traveller may hold the record for most game systems it's been ported to.

You have the original games (Traveller, MegaTraveller, Traveller the New Era).

You have Marc Millers Traveller (T4).

You have T5 now.

You have Mongoose Traveller.

You have GURPS Traveller (3rd and 4th edition).

You have T20.

I believe there was a Traveller version for the Hero system too.

Now, if only someone had done BRP/Runequest Traveller, it'd all be good.

"Now, if only someone had done BRP/Runequest Traveller, it'd all be good."

That would be the Ringworld RPG. Lifepath character generation, percentile mechanics, and up to a two century lifespan are not a good mix.