BITS

SJG

GRIP

Downport

Jump Points

Uakye

Image by the awesome Jesse DeGraff

Anyway, Traveller was fairly well represented with the Quiklink Interactive booth.  They had a large booth with several computers running GRIP and Marc Miller was their guest of honor.  What more could you ask for?  They had a tourny slated for today, but if I am not mistaken the GM became ill or was unable to show, I am sure they got a back-up in there, the final part is tomorrow.  They were going to have 4 players from the Con play with people from around the country to show its versitility.  Although the GRIP booth was great, there was not much else supporting Traveller.  Steve Jackson Games had a GURPS booth with mostly just retail stuff and no celebs, and Traveller is just a small part of their thing.

The was a Traveller Live Action Role Play(LARP) scheduled for Thursday afternoon, but I didn't get there till Friday so I have no idea how that turned out.  Unfortunately the only other official game of Traveller being run was the one planned for the GRIP tourny.  That was a major disapointment for me.

On a more personal level it was very satisfying for me because I got to meet Marc Miller (original designer of Traveller) and Hunter Gordon (Quiklink Interactive) in person.  Marc is a very gracious and friendly guy and I was very impressed with his demeanor and gaming expertise, not to mention just a great guy to talk Traveller with.  It made my trip! If anything he was better than I imagined.  

He did share some of his thoughts and ideas for where things Traveller are going.  The Vilani font should be finished in the next month and it is a lot more than I expected, he has developed punctuation and the whole nine yards.  The supplements are being produced by Marc's own publishing company and are slated for every two months, more on that below.  Marc has ideas for where he wants to take the game, it is just a matter of implementing them into a usable system, T5 of whatever you want to call it is not really in any sort of serious development stage, more on a conceptual stage still.  He would like the game to have the versitility to be able to cover any situation and idea that you might have for a SciFi environ. 

Cornered Rat is still in the design layout phase of development and Marc talks to them regularly.  Plans right now for the massive online RPG version of Traveller  to cover the Spinward Marches and anything beyond that must be explored and mapped out the old fashion way. With a starship and plotters.  It sounds very exciting but also sounds pretty far on the horizon timewise.  Thanks for the being there Marc and for being such a fantastic guest host!

I was also looking forward to meeting Hunter Gordon, with whom I had talked with several times online via chat room or by email.  He was also better than expected!  What a ball of energy!  He is very friendly and very excited about getting Traveller going for his company.  I really enjoyed hanging out with Bruce and the other guys and gals in the booth and wish I could have spent more time with them.  Thanks for making my trip a success!

I learned a few things about going to cons...pre-register for the days you want and the games you want to play...make reservations early for your hotel, or you might not get one at all, just about every hotel in the city was booked solid.  Eat at regular intervals and try to get there the evening before the con starts if you can.   Bring a friend to hang out with and to swap stories of what cool freebie you got or who you met etc.   Lets see, of these things I actually only accomplished one, that was pre-registering for my entry tickets, the rest are things I wish I had done, so take it from me they will make your con much more enjoyable!!

Edition	Ships
Traveller Collectors' Edition 1:Books 0-8	Mar 2000
Traveller Collectors' Edition 2:Supplements 1-13	Jul 2000
Traveller Collectors' Edition 3:Adventures 1-13	Oct 2000
Traveller Collectors' Edition 4:Short Adventures 1-6+	Dec 2000
Traveller Collectors' Edition 5:Games	Feb 2001
Traveller Collectors' Edition 6:Journal of the TAS 1-12	Apr 2001
Traveller Collectors' Edition 7:Journal of the TAS 13-24	Jun 2001
Traveller Collectors' Edition 8:Journal of the TAS 25-33	Oct 2001
Traveller Collectors' Edition 9:Modules	Aug 2001
Traveller Collectors' Edition 10:Alien Modules 1-4	Dec 2001
Traveller Collectors' Edition 11:Alien Modules 5-8	Feb 2002
Traveller Collectors' Edition 12+ New Adventures???	???????

THE SECOND VOLUME (Ships July 1)
  The series continues with the Classic Traveller Supplements: a perfect bound volume reproducing the thirteen Supplements in their entirety. The book cover retains the classic Traveller appearance… a solid black cover with the white type and ORANGE stripe.
   Supplements (1-13). Includes 1001 Characters, Animal Encounters the Spinward Marches, Citizens of the Imperium, Lightning Class Cruisers, 76 Patrons, Traders & Gunboats, Library Data (A-M), Fighting Ships, The Solomani Rim, Library Data (N-Z), Forms and Charts, and Veterans. $35.00 (plus $4.30 Priority Mail US Shipping).

THE THIRD VOLUME (Ships August 15)
  The series continues with the Classic Traveller Adventures: a perfect bound volume reproducing the thirteen Adventures in their entirety. It includes several pages of annotation, and printing/production numbers. The book cover retains the classic Traveller appearance… a solid black cover with the white type and YELLOW stripe.
   Adventures (1-13). Includes The Kinunir, Research Station Gamma, Twilight's Peak, Leviathan, Trillion Credit Squadron (the High Guard space combat tournament system), Expedition to Zhodane, Broadsword, Prison Planet, Nomads of the World Ocean, Safari Ship, Murder on Arcturus Station, Secret of the Ancients, and Signal GK. $35.00 (plus $4.30 Priority Mail US Shipping).

THE FOURTH VOLUME (Ships October 15)
  The series continues with the Classic Traveller Short Adventures: a perfect bound volume reproducing the six Double Adventures in their entirety, plus additional short adventures and three Special Supplements. The book cover retains the classic Traveller appearance… a solid black cover with the white type and GREEN stripe.
   Adventures (1-13). Includes Shadows / Annic Nova, Mission on Mithril / Across the Bright Face, Argon Gambit / Death Station, Marooned / Marooned Alone, Chamax Plague / Horde, Divine Intervention / Night of Conquest, Plague of Perruques / Stranded On Arden, Memory Alpha, Special Supplements (1, 2, 3), The Imperial Fringe (from Deluxe Traveller). $28.00 (plus $4.30 Priority Mail US Shipping).

MORE VOLUMES
   We anticipate producing additional volumes in the series until the entire Classic Traveller canon has been reprinted: Games. Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (1-12). Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (13-24). Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (25-36). Modules (1-5). Alien Modules (1-8).

My intention is to provide a serifed and non-serifed downloadable font through JTAS, and to provide an article that details the specific meanings (numbers, letters, punctuation, etc.)

Meanwhile, there is a sample of the basic upper and lower case letters in a hand-written font at

http://members.aol.com/Traveller/T505-00.html

This is great news and I know it will be at least a year before we get any real news about this but it is very exciting and I hope they can pull it off. This is an edited version of the press release.  You can see the whole thing here:

PLAYNET, INC. ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL INTERNET GAME PROJECTS 

BEDFORD, TEXAS May 11, 2000

Cornered Rat Software (CRS www.corneredrat.com), a division of Playnet Inc., today announced a new massively multi-player game title scheduled for development. CRS acquired the exclusive license to develop and publish the online massively multi-player game version for the book-based Sci-Fi role-playing game known worldwide as Traveller™. 

CRS is taking the development of massively multiplayer RPG's to a higher level with their multiple-platform design and implementation of an assortment of never-before-seen features for the Traveller™ universe.   The title will employ the state of the art Unity 3D Engine™ developed by Cornered Rat Software which allows simultaneous game play in three separate geophysical dimensions – land, sea and air. 

Word from the several people I have talked to seem to think it is a bit overpriced for what you get.   Nobody has seen the programs that come with it yet though so the jury it out.

May 31, 2000 RPGRealms is releasings its Traveller version of GRIP.   It costs $55 plus shipping and comes with a couple of programs that might be handy, a planet/sector/subsector generator and a character generator.  It also has an electronic library and a few adventure modules.  It comes with Classic Traveller Books 1 (Character and Combat), 2 (Starships), and 3 (Worlds and Adventures) in Windows Help File format.   You can see the entire thing at the URL below.

http://www.rpgrealms.com/Traveller/griptrav.html

What is GRIP?
GRIP (Generic Roleplaying for Internet Players) is a set of software tools that lets you play ANY traditional tabletop, or paper and pencil role-playing game over the Internet or a LAN (Local Area Network). The Game Master, running the GRIP iGM Module, acts as the 'host' for the game on their computer, and may 'invite' up to 8 players to join in his or her game. The players each use a copy of the GRIP iPC Module to connect to the Game Master's computer and play. The GRIP iPC is a free download that anyone can use, but someone needs to pony up for the GM version.

The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society was first published in 1979 by GDW, Inc. to provide additional material (rules, variants, adventures, equipment and background development) for Traveller and related products, and to keep Traveller fans informed on what was happening with the game. The hardcopy version of JTAS ceased publication in 1985.  Imperium Games published an edition in 1998 I think it was, but that was very short lived.

In February 2000 Steve Jackson Games released the first of the renewed JTAS online.  It is published weekly and is edited by Loren Wiseman, the original editor for the magazine. You can find the JTAS at the button to the left or here. It does require a yearly fee of $15.

Because of continuing demand for copies of the Classic Traveller Little Black Books, Far Future Enterprises are planning on publishing the Classic Traveller Collector's Edition: reprints of the books from Classic Traveller assembled in convenient reference volumes.

THE FIRST VOLUME Available Now! $28
   The series begins with the Classic Traveller Books: a perfect bound volume reproducing the nine Books in their entirety with two digest-size pages on one 11x 8.5 inch page (in landscape format). It includes several pages of annotation, and printing/production numbers. The book cover retains the classic Traveller appearance… a solid black cover with the white type and red stripe.
   Books (0-8). Includes Introduction To Traveller, Characters and Combat, Starships, Worlds and Adventures, Mercenary, High Guard, Scouts, Merchant Prince, Robots.

FUTURE VOLUMES
   They anticipate producing additional volumes in the series until the entire Classic Traveller canon has been reprinted: Supplements (1-13). Adventures (1-13). Double Adventures (1-6) and More. Games. Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (1-12). Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (13-24). Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (25-36). Modules (1-5). Alien Modules (1-8).