2300AD Product Recommendations
for various Campaign Themes

Here is a list of how I rate the various 2300AD products released by GDW ( and now owned by FFE), which depends, in part, on the type of campaign you want to run.
 

All Campaigns

• 2300 AD Boxed Set -- This is the second edition/version of the game.  You get double the background material, plus GDW fixed the broken rules that were in first edition ( Do NOT buy the first edition/version called "Traveller:2300", unless you are a collector).


Note that the last batch of 2300AD boxed rules released had a free copy of the module "Kafer Dawn" included inside -- so it might be cheaper to get them in one box, versus as separate items.

• Ground Vehicle Guide ( a few were from the main RPG rules 15%)
• Equipment Guide ( although about 40% is a repeat from the main RPG rules -- so if on a tight budget you could skip this one to get something else).

• Colonial Atlas

 

Starship Combat campaigns

• Star Cruiser ( a boxed boardgame with cardboard ship counters).
• Ships of the French Arm ( more starship's for use in the game).

 

Military Campaigns

• Kafer Sourcebook
• Aurore Sourcebook
• Invasion  -- details the Kafer Invasion of Human space in 2301.
• Mission Arcturus ( my favorite adventure module)
• Kafer Dawn ( adventure module that was included in some of the boxed main RPG rules)
• Operation Overlord ( adventure module published by 3W, also has some details on game's history, after the Invasion supplement ).

Adventure Campaigns

These two are terrific:

• Ranger -- Texas Rangers on a frontier world dealing with friendly alien species that starts acting uncharacteristically violent.
• Nyotekundu Sourcebook -- a less violent mix of Outland meets 2001, taking place on an ice asteroid mining station.

• Bayern -- science vessel voyage to the Pleides constellation/star cluster, the basis of a campaign, but leaves most of the encounters/adventures along the voyage to the referee to invent.  You will need to detail about 80% of it, if you try to run it as a full campaign ( they give you the ending, plus two encounters on the way).

• Beanstalk -- adventure dealing with sabotage on a space elevator ( from planet surface to orbit).  Note: If you plan on running a lot of campaigns in the French Arm and think your players will visit Beta Canum Venaticorum frequently you may want it for the few pages it has detailing the world.
• Energy Curve -- your ship crashes, can you make friends with a new plant based alien race, and survive the harsh winter.

• Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook -- But you can get by without it.  It was not my favorite supplement since it was the start of GDW trying to make the game more 'cyberpunk-ish', which was all the rage back in the late 1980's.  They added netrunning and cyberlimbs, but the rules were poorly done compared to say Cyberpunk 2020 by R.Talsorian.  After this supplement was released, all the modules that followed it were also unfortunately 'cyberpunk', and very poor adventures.
• Deathwatch Program
• Rotten to the Core

Conclusion

Hope this helped.