Retrospective: Snapshot

I've never made any secret of the fact that Traveller is without question my favorite roleplaying game. In large part, that's due to my lifelong love of science fiction – some of my earliest memories are watching Star Trek reruns with my aunt in the early 1970s – but I firmly believe that my affection is also due to the elegance of the game's design. Traveller's rules are straightforward, wide-ranging, and expandable. Time and again, GDW showed how relatively easy it was to add to, subtract from, and modify Traveller for various purposes.

A good example of what I'm talking about is evident in the various boardgames derived from Traveller that GDW published, such as  Snapshot. Snapshot first appeared in 1979 in a black and green box of similar size to the 1977 Traveller set. A second edition released in 1983 came in a larger, 8½" × 11" box. I owned the second version and, like so many RPG products of that era, I played it until the box literally fell apart. 

Snapshot is an adaptation of Traveller's combat rules for the purposes of simulating, as its subtitle proclaims, "close combat aboard starships in the far future." Inside the box is a 28-page rulebook, a collection of counters, and a sheet featuring the deckplans of a Type-S scout vessel and a Type-A free trader (scaled for use with either the included counters or 15mm miniatures). If you're already familiar with Traveller's combat system, Snapshot is easy to understand. Newcomers might find it takes a little effort to comprehend, but not much. Compared to most miniatures wargaming rules, Snapshot is refreshingly simple.

Make no mistake: that's what Snapshot is – a set of science fiction miniatures wargaming rules. Like other wargames of this kind, it's played in conjunction with scenarios, several samples of which are included in the rulebook. For example, one scenario deals with alien animals destined for an imperial zoological park that get loose while in transit; another deals with an attempted hijacking of a starship. All of the scenarios include victory conditions for one side or the other, as well as options for altering their basic parameters. Of course, referees and players of Traveller would likely have no trouble coming up with scenarios of their own.

Snapshot would seem to have had two audiences in mind. The first is people just looking to play a quick miniatures game and who might, through playing the game, become interested in Traveller. The second is people like myself, who already played Traveller and were keen to get our hands on counters and appropriately scaled maps for use with our RPG adventures and campaigns. It was in that capacity that my boxed set fell apart. Over the course of several years, I made regular use of Snapshot to adjudicate hijackings, boarding actions, and many other combats in and around starships. I can't begin to tell you how many hours my friends and I spent doing this, but it was a lot. I suppose any kid who thrilled upon seeing the opening scene of Star Wars would have a natural affinity for this kind of thing.

A few years ago, when I was refereeing my Riphaeus Sector Traveller campaign, I regretted that we were playing online, because I was keen to pull out my old Snapshot maps and counters whenever the characters became involved in combat aboard a starship. We made do with virtual tools that allowed us to do the same thing, more or less, but I can't deny it didn't quite feel the same to me. They say nostalgia is a hell of a drug and perhaps that's so. On the other hand, the fact that a little box containing cardboard squares and a fold-out map still exercise a hold over my imagination decades later has got to be worth something too.