The Articles of Dragon: "Greyhawk's World"

In my younger days, I was a big fan of The World of Greyhawk setting, for reasons I've discussed in other posts on this blog. Sometime during 1982, probably starting with the appearance of "The Deities & Demigods of the World of Greyhawk" series, there was a significant uptick in the amount of Greyhawk material in the pages of Dragon. I loved this, of course, as I was eager to learn more not just about Greyhawk but also perhaps the direction Gary Gygax was planning to take AD&D, as rumors of an expansion first began to circulate. Just as each new character class or collection of spells provided hints about where AD&D might be headed, so too did his elaborations on the Greyhawk setting (or so I thought anyway).

Consequently, when issue #71 (March 1983) came out, I was pleased to see that it included multiple articles penned by Gygax, two of which specifically dealt with Greyhawk. While one was simply another installment of deities and demigods, another presented something adjacent but nevertheless slightly different. Entitled "Greyhawk's World," the article presented three "quasi-deities" and one "hero-deity" – entirely new concepts for AD&D, as Gygax himself explains at the start of the article.

Gygax defines a "quasi-deity" as "above the status of important characters, by and large, but not quite demigods." Included in this class are "personages" such as Daern, Heward, Johydee, Keoghtom, Murlynd, Nolzur, and Quaal, all of whose names should be familiar to anyone who's read the Dungeon Masters Guide, because they're associated with various magic items and artifacts (Heward mystical organ, Keoghtom's ointment, etc.). Some of these characters were once player characters and are now retired from adventuring in the usual sense. For the most part, "their exalted status moves them in other realms," but they may occasionally become involved in more mundane matters, hence Gygax's description of three of them in this issue: Heward, Keoghtom, and Murlynd.

Heward is a high-level bard named for Hugh Burdick, Gygax's cousin. Whether Burdick ever actually played Heward or D&D, I don't know, but I am sure my better informed readers can provide that information. Keoghtom possesses high levels in multiple classes – cleric, magic-user, illusionist, monk, bard – and is an homage to Gygax's deceased childhood friend, Tom Keogh. Murlynd is the former character of another deceased of Gygax, Don Kaye, who was also one of the original founders of Tactical Studies Rules. Of the three, Murlynd was the one who most interested me, because, in addition to having levels as a paladin, magic-user, and illusionist, he was also "typically clad in garments of another time and world, that of 'the Old West'." Murlynd also carried a pair of six-shooters that nevertheless worked in the Greyhawk setting, despite their otherworldly technological nature.

In addition to the three aforementioned characters, Gygax presents a fourth, Kelanen "the Prince of Swords," whom he calls a "hero-deity." A hero-deity would seem to be a step closer to true demigod-hood, given that "some who live by the sword pay him homage." Like the quasi-deities, Kelanen possesses high levels in multiple classes, in addition to having a number of unique magic items and special abilities that set him apart from mere mortals. Unlike the three quasi-deities, Kelanen is more reclusive and singularly devoted to his narrow interests. He's also neutral in alignment – the others are all good – and dedicated to "balance."

When I first read this article, I was instantly taken with it, primarily because it provided some additional details about the high-level NPCs of the World of Greyhawk. I, of course, recognized the names of Heward and Keoghtom right away, while Murlynd and Kelanen were unknown to me. Of the two, Murlynd caught my attention, because of his cowboy-like appearance and his use of firearms, something that, up to that point, was quite uncommon in AD&D, outside of oddities like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I found Murlynd simultaneously appealing and repellant – appealing because who doesn't find the idea of a magic-using cowboy cool and repellant because I was a terrible stick in the mud generally opposed to genre bending. I preferred to color within the lines, even in my fantasy.

The other aspect of the article that I found compelling was one that Gygax didn't much develop. He mentions offhandedly that 

Using these three as guidelines, it should not prove too difficult for the DM to act to bring very special "retired" player characters, and possibly some of your most successful NPCs too, into the realm of the quasi-deity. By means of dual-class work, special situations, successful quests, and the completion of defined tasks, the former PCs can be elevated to the new status. 

Gygax provides no details of precisely how to handle this, leaving up to each Dungeon Master to adjudicate, which strikes me as wise and probably a better approach then what we got in the Immortals Rules. Though I never took this up in any of my own campaigns, I was intrigued by the idea, as well as by the implication that perhaps, in the future, AD&D might carve out more space for high-level characters. High-level play is one of those things that's always existed in theory, but it's never, in my experience anyway, been all that satisfying – just more levels, more hit points, more spells, etc. without any real purpose beyond it. Maybe that's an inherent flaw in the structure of D&D itself, I don't know. From time to time, though, I caught glimmers of something more than that in Gygax's Dragon columns. I'll be sure to point out what I'm talking about in future "The Articles of Dragon" posts.

Modifications to Traveller (Part I)

Deluxe Traveller, a boxed version of the game released by GDW in 1981, included Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller written primarily by Loren Wiseman. Book 0 was intended to be "a guide to the world of Traveller, written especially with the beginner in mind." It's written in a straightforward, conversational way, eschewing the dry, technical manual style that's common in RPG rulebooks, in order to reach an audience who might have no experience with this kind of game. Consequently, it provides some insight into how GDW saw Traveller as a game and what they felt important to convey to newcomers to it.

There's a section in Book 0 titled "Modifications" that focuses, more or less, on house rules. Though it's not quite two pages long, it nevertheless contains material worth pondering. The section begins:

In the process of playing scenarios, or while preparing to adapt a specific science fiction literary mythos to Traveller, many referees will wish to change the rules to a greater or lesser degree, either to expand some aspect which is not adequately covered in Traveller, or to modify some section which does not fit in with the referee's universe.

There's a couple of things here worthy of note. To start, there's the reference to "a specific science fiction literary mythos." I've been saying for years that Traveller is almost entirely inspired by SF books, particularly those written between 1945 and 1975, and that televisual and cinematic sci-fi had minimal impact on its design. It's always good to see further confirmation of this fact. That said, Wiseman couches the idea of modifying the rules first in the context of adapting the game to prior art and then in the context of a homebrew universe. 

Referees should feel free to modify any rule to whatever extent they see fit, providing they bear in mind that:

— The rules are interlinked to a great extent. If you change one section, you must also be willing to change all other sections, which are then rendered inconsistent. Naturally, radical departures from the rules will have greater and more far-reaching effects than minor changes. Referees who modify the rules without regard to the repercussions are doing themselves and their players a grave disservice.

Traveller's rules are very elegant in my opinion. Marc Miller put much more thought into their design than did Arneson and Gygax when creating Dungeons & Dragons. Consequently, Traveller is not as easily modified or house ruled. It's not impossible by any means, but, as Wiseman notes here, doing so without reflection can have ripple effects.

— The balance of play should not be destroyed. A common change many newer players make (particularly those with backgrounds in fantasy role-playing) is to increase the occurrence of psionic talents, and permit training on a much higher level than the basic rules. This may seem like fun at first, but when any character can kill with a single burst of mental energy, where is the challenge? Psionic talents are best used sparingly.

Wiseman's reference to "newer players" and "those with backgrounds in fantasy role-playing" are intriguing. I wonder if GDW was seeing an expansion in Traveller's player base by 1981. If so, that would certainly explain some of the reason behind the publication of Book 0.

— All of the changes should be rational, logical, and scientifically sound (after all, Traveller is a science fiction role-playing game). A typical example is a suggestion we receive about three times a year for some form of anti-matter small arm (usually a pistol or rifle, but once a hand grenade). These suggestions always seriously underestimate the amount of energy necessary to maintain a magnetic bottle around the anti-matter for any length of time, and almost always have a maximum range of considerably less than the burst radius of the projectile. 

I love hearing little anecdotes like this one! When I spent time with Loren Wiseman at GenCon back in 2001, he shared many stories about dealing with fans of Traveller over the years. They weren't all like this one, but many were. 

— The speed of communication should never be allowed to exceed the speed of travel. This is a basic tenet of Traveller, and its violation will irrevocably alter the balance of the rules.

This one surprised me, not because I disagree with it – quite the opposite – but because, up until now, Wiseman had implied that any aspect of the game could be changed, provided the referee is willing to deal with the consequences. Here, though, he is emphatic: the speed of communication should never be allowed to exceed the speed of travel. This is a topic to which I'll return at greater length in a future post (or, more likely, posts), but I'm glad it was mentioned here.

— Do not expect other Traveller materials to match your universe if you engage in large-scale modifications.

This is, of course, the eternal danger of house rules. On the other hand, referees who make extensive use of house rules generally aren't using many official supplements and rules expansions, at least in my experience, so it's not a huge problem. 

(To be continued ...)

Be of Goodly Order

Long ago, I wrote about a fantasy art book that fascinated my childhood friends and I. Called Down in the Dungeon, the book featured color illustrations of a locale called Zarakan's Dungeon. Because there's very little text in the book, there's almost no context for anything depicted in it, beyond this overview of the subterranean complex.

It's a very cool illustration, especially because all of the artwork included in Down in the Dungeon can be placed within it. In fact, if you look carefully at the overview, you can even make out smaller versions of some of the scenes found elsewhere in the book. For example, in the upper right hand portion of the overview, you can see a bunch of pillars. Those pillars – and what's around them – can be seen more clearly in a pair of other illustrations.

In the book, these two illustrations are side by side, as you can see from the creature passed out from intoxication in the first piece, whose hand can be seen in the second one. In the book, a captain accompanies them, reading "Neutral Ground. Be of Goodly Order." Clearly, this is meant to be a bar or tavern located within the dungeon, where all its various inhabitants, monstrous or otherwise, can rub shoulders not only with one another but also with adventurers – so long as they all are "of goodly order."

It's a pretty strange concept, a bar within a dungeon and yet I can recall at least one dungeon I played in as a young man that included such a thing. The bar was explicitly a "safe area" where characters could rest and even re-supply, though to a limited extent. I don't know where the referee, whom I met at a "games day" at a local library, got the idea for such a thing. I'd never seen anything like it before (since I hadn't yet encountered Down in the Dungeon) and I recall finding it odd. However, my fellow players and I went along with it, since there were all sorts of weird NPCs in the place with whom we enjoyed interacting. Plus, as I said, the bar was a place where our characters could rest up, heal, and get more food/water, arrows, and other similar things. I suppose the referee intended it as a mercy of sorts, since the rest of the dungeon was pretty brutal.

Has anyone else ever encountered something like this in a dungeon? Are there any examples of it in fantasy literature or perhaps in a fantasy RPG? I can't shake the feeling that I'm failing to remember something obvious.

Found It!

Last week, I mentioned a computer program called TravGen that I used to have and lost in the process of upgrading my computer. After poking around online, I found a link to the program on Frank Filz's Wine Dark Rift Classic Traveller Campaign website. I've downloaded it and have been having fun playing around with it over the last few days. It's a great little mini-game with which to procrastinate when I should be doing other things and I highly recommend it to anyone else looking for something similar. I also recommend Frank's website, which has lots of interesting ideas and resources for players and referees of classic Traveller.  

Merry Christmas!

Deathwish

Like Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller assumes that a new character is generated through a series of dice rolls – 2d6 in this case rather than 3d6 – for each of his six characteristics (Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing). The results are recorded, in order, on a character sheet. Book 1 of Traveller recognizes the possibility that these random rolls may result in "a character with seemingly unsatisfactory values." However, the text states that "nevertheless, each player should use his character as generated," since 

The experience procedures and acquired skills table offer a genuine opportunity to enhance value, given only time and luck. 

This is true. Most characters, over the course of the terms of service, will gain one or more bonuses to certain characteristics, which will raise them higher than the initially generated scores. However, the 1977 edition of Book 1 – and only this edition, so far as I can tell – does include an "escape hatch" for players who are still unhappy with the characteristics they've rolled.

Should a player consider his character to be so poor as to be beyond help, he should consider joining the accident-prone Scout Corps, with a subconscious view to suicide.

Considering the poor survival rate of Scout characters, I find this amusing. 

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Falling Damage"

And so it begins.

Issue #70 of Dragon (February 1983) saw the appearance of "Falling Damage" by Frank Mentzer, the first of what would turn into several articles discussing this strangely contentious subject. I say strangely contentious because, until this article appeared, I don't think the "right" way to adjudicate falling damage was ever a topic of serious conversation, at least not among the gamers I knew. The LBBs provide rules for falling damage hidden away in the section on aerial combat in Volume 3, where it's stated simply that

for every 1" of height a rider must throw one six-sided die for damage occurring from the crash, i.e. a crash from 12" means twelve dice must be rolled and their total scored as points of damage

That passage is the basis for what was the standard interpretation of falling damage in every form of D&D -- 1d6 damage per 10' fallen. That is, until this article, where Mentzer claims that the rules in AD&D were hastily written by Gary Gygax and were, as such, unclear as to his actual intent. Instead of 1d6 damage per 10' fallen, the claim is advanced that Gary actually meant 1d6 damage per 10', with the dice being cumulative in effect. That is,

1d6 for the first 10' feet, 2d6 for the second 10' (total 3d6 for a 20' fall), 3d6 for the third 10', and so on, cumulative. The falling body reaches that 20d6 maximum shortly before passing the 60' mark.

According to Mentzer, this new system -- which in fact Gygax had "always used" -- is "definitely more realistic." (emphasis mine) There's that dreaded word, the hallmark of the Silver Age. It's something that, at the time, meant a lot to me, but that, as the years have worn on, I find myself caring less and less about. In a game where people can throw balls of fire from their hands and adventurers become tougher to kill as the result of slaying monsters and looting treasure, fretting over whether a 60' fall or a 200' fall deals 20d6 damage seems bizarre. More to the point, after nearly a decade of "doing it wrong" (Mentzer's words), did the difference matter enough to make the change?

Regardless, the claim that Gygax had "always used a geometrically increasing system for damage in AD&D games" strikes me as somewhat suspect. I suppose it's possible that, sometime after the LBBs were published, Gary changed the way he dealt with falling damage in his home campaign. But, if so, I find it surprising that he never noticed that in every other D&D product published after 1974, the 1d6 per 10' rule is the norm. Indeed, I'd hazard a guess that, if one were to look through the various modules and articles Gygax penned between 1974 and 1983, we'd find instances where the 1d6 damage per 10' rule was in fact used. There's a fun project for an enterprising soul out there!

Roleplaying Adventure in a Techno-Fantastic Age

Though DGP's The Travellers' Digest was very well regarded among Traveller fans in the late '80s and early '90s, it wasn't especially lucrative for the company. That's why, when GDW announced it would end the MegaTraveller line and proceed with Traveller: The New Era, DGP saw it as an opportunity to forge its own path by publishing an original roleplaying game called A.I. Here's an advertisement for it from issue #59 of Challenge (April 1992). 

A.I. is set on "an alien, future Earth" some 1500 years in the future, after rampant artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology have made it nearly unrecognizable. I adore settings like this, where technology has become indistinguishable from magic – "secret science fiction," I call them. Needless to say, I was very excited to see A.I. and ads like this one only increased my excitement.

Alas, a series of unfortunate events, including a catastrophic hard drive crash, resulted in A.I. becoming RPG vaproware. Soon thereafter, DGP itself was no more. It's a pity, because DGP did great work on Traveller and I would have loved to have seen what they'd imagined for a wholly original science fiction setting. But, even in 1992, there were already more roleplaying games in existence than I could ever play, so I didn't waste too much energy mourning this one. Seeing this again, though, briefly took me back to a time, more than three decades ago now, when I not only looked forward to this game but first began to ponder the possibility of trying to make a living as a RPG writer. Simpler times! 

Starship Geomorphs

It's yet 2025 yet and I've already started to make good on two resolutions for the new year: to post more (though not exclusively) about Traveller and to draw attention to other RPG blogs whose content I like. Today, I've decided to combine them by highlighting Robert Pearce's superb Yet Another Traveller Blog. Though it's not updated regularly, what sets YATB apart from other blogs devoted to Traveller is its focus on providing lots of incredibly useful resources for play, particularly deckplans. I made regular use of these maps when I was refereeing my Riphaeus Sector campaign years ago.

Among the most useful resources on the blog are its two collections of starship geomorphs. The first of these was released more than four years ago and is available as a free PDF and as a hardcover print-on-demand book through DriveThruRPG. The second was only just recently released and is currently only available as a free PDF. This second set of geomorphs was "specifically designed to recreate the feel of the smaller, classic Traveller starship designs," whereas those in the original collection are more eclectic and include plenty of geomorphs for larger vessels. 

Both collections of geomorphs are excellent. I urge anyone with an interest in Traveller, particularly referees of Traveller, to take a look at them.

D&D and Traveller

I think we tend to underestimate just how old Traveller is.  

Consider that original Dungeons & Dragons, the very first roleplaying game ever published, was released sometime in late January 1974. Traveller first appeared less than three and a half years later, in late May 1977 (before the wide release of Star Wars, which is a very important fact to bear in mind).  Less than a dozen other RPGs were published between these two dates and, of those that were, almost none of them are still published today. That alone sets Traveller apart from its contemporaries. 

I mention this because, as I was thumbing through my 1977 Traveller boxed set, I was struck by just how similar in format and content the game is to the 1974 OD&D boxed set. This is not an original thought and indeed it's one that I've had before. I nevertheless think it's worthy of further examination. We are, after all, closing out D&D's semicentennial year and, while I'm reducing the attention I'll devote to that game for the foreseeable future, there really is no escaping its gravitational pull. Like it or not, discussions of almost any roleplaying game will inevitably lead back to Dungeons & Dragons. 

In the case of Traveller, the most immediately obvious connection to D&D is its format. Like OD&D, Traveller was initially released in a boxed set containing three digest-sized booklets. Each of these booklets focuses on a different aspect of the overall game rules. OD&D's first volume is entitled "Men & Magic" and provides the rules for character generation, combat, and spells. Traveller's first volume is called "Characters and Combat" and covers very similar ground. The second volume of OD&D is "Monsters & Treasure," while that of Traveller is "Starships." The difference between these two volumes is stark, since there's not much commonality of subject matter here and not merely because OD&D has no need of rules for space travel. However, the obvious connections between the two games return with the third volume of each. OD&D has "Underworld & Wilderness Adventures" and Traveller has "Worlds and Adventures." 

As I said, there's nothing novel about these observations. They've been made for years on OSR blogs and forums and were probably noted at the dawn of the hobby, too. I would not be at all surprised if Marc Miller and/or other notables at Games Designers' Workshop made them as well. When I attended Gamehole Con in October, one of the many amusing stories Marc Miller told about the early days of GDW concerned the release of Dungeons & Dragons. He said that the company's staff was so taken with the game that they soon spent all their time playing it. So enamored were they with this weird new game that Frank Chadwick, GDW's president at the time, established a rule: "No playing D&D during office hours."

It's a very funny story in its own right, as well as a reminder – as if we needed one – that the appearance of Dungeons & Dragons on the wargaming scene in 1974 forever changed the face of that hobby and, in the process, created an entirely new one. Though primarily a historical wargames publisher, GDW was no stranger to science fiction. Prior to the release of Traveller, the company had already published two science fiction games: Triplanetary in 1973 and Imperium in 1977. The latter game initially had no connection to Traveller, which, upon its release, included no setting whatsoever. It was only later that the background of Imperium. with its series of Interstellar Wars between the Vilani and the Terrans, was folded into the much more successful Traveller. 

OD&D was thus a significant inspiration for Marc Miller in creating Traveller, since it showed him not just what was possible with a roleplaying game but also the form such a game might take. Admittedly, this is likely true of nearly every RPG published in the last half-century, but, in the case of Traveller, it's especially so, since, by his own admission, he and the other designers at GDW were playing a lot of D&D in those days. Miller even contributed some D&D comics to The Strategic Review, which testifies to his early devotion to the game. When I spoke to him in October, he repeatedly emphasized the debt we all owe Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson for having created a form of entertainment unlike any that came before. Miller even included Gygax in his deck of cards as a "king" of GDW, since the company published his Dangerous Journeys game in the '90s.

The connections between D&D and Traveller were not apparent to me in my youth, in large part because I didn't come across a copy of OD&D '74 until I was in high school, by which point Traveller was already well on its way toward becoming MegaTraveller – a much more mechanically complex game published, like AD&D, in a conventional 8½ × 11" format. Now that I am aware of the myriad connections, they're impossible to un-see. To be honest, I'm glad of that. As I have no doubt written here dozens of times, Dungeons & Dragons was my first love, but Traveller is my true love. They're both very special to me and, while there's no question which one is my favorite, I would prefer not to have to choose between them. For the moment, though, Traveller has my attention. I very much look forward to sharing my thoughts and memories of this great roleplaying game.

Three Dimensions

I mentioned in yesterday's post about my favorite science fiction roleplaying game map that Traveller's star maps are two-dimensional and that that's long been an issue for some fans of the game (though it mostly doesn't bother me). In the comments to that post, several readers mentioned the three-dimensional star maps included in GDW's 2300AD (né Traveller: 2300) and SPI's Universe. Here's the Near Star Map from the former, which covers a volume of space within 50 light years of our solar system:

Even at this small size, you can see there are a lot of stars included on this map. As it turns out, there are, in reality, even more stars within 50 light years of Sol, but GDW didn't have the benefit of our current astronomical knowledge. They worked from the then-quite good Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars from the '70s, which has since been updated many times (and perhaps even superseded). Still, I loved this map, which included XYZ coordinates for hundreds of stars, which provided lots of scope for exploration and adventure in the 24th century.

Much as I loved that map, though, my absolute favorite 3D star map came from SPI's Universe:

This map included far fewer star systems and covered only a volume of about 30 light years from Earth. However, I probably spent far more time poring over this map than 2300AD's. The reason for this is quite simple: I encountered the Universe map first, making it perhaps the first three-dimensional star map I'd ever seen. Unlike 2300AD, I never actually played Universe, but I read the one-volume, softcover edition of the game released by Bantam Books cover to cover multiple times. The pull-out star map left a lasting impression on my thirteen-year-old self.

I love the idea of using a properly three-dimensional star map in a science fiction roleplaying game. Nowadays, the availability of much better astronomical data and personal computers with useful software, employing 3D maps is probably easier than it's ever been. Despite that, I've never refereed or played in a long-running SF RPG campaign that made use of them. I don't know why that is or if it's likely to change anytime soon. I have very vague ideas of following up my ongoing Twilight: 2000 campaign with a 2300AD one, but that's still some years in the future, if ever.

Has anyone reading this made a good use of three-dimensional star maps in their roleplaying games?

Ode to a Classic

One of the things I miss about the early days of the Old School Renaissance is how many blogs there were and how interconnected they all were. There was a lot of discussion back and forth between this blog and that one. Someone would make an interesting – or controversial – post and the next thing you knew, there were lots more posts commenting on it. This created a really dynamic ecosystem of personalities and ideas that gave those early days a distinct vibe that I just don't feel anymore, but I'm old, so that might just be me.

Sadly, I don't read as many other blogs as I used to do in those heady days. Consequently, I often miss really excellent posts, like this one, which was pointed out to me by Geoffrey McKinney, a longtime reader of this blog, as well as an accomplished old school game writer. The post, over at the A Knight at the Opera blog, talks at length about "the best RPG cover of all time," namely that of the 1977 Traveller boxed set. It's an excellent post with which I completely agree and I'm grateful to Geoffrey for pointing out to me. 

Since I've been talking a lot about Traveller here lately, I thought it'd be worth sharing more widely. Head on over to A Knight at the Opera and give it a read. Be sure to leave a comment, too, if you like it. I'm sure the author would appreciate knowing that something he's written is being enjoyed. I know I always do.

The Best Map Ever (Take 2)

Long ago, at the dawn of this blog, I declared Darlene's exquisite map of The World of Greyhawk to be "the best map ever." To be fair, in the linked post, I qualified my hyperbole somewhat, saying that no "map for a fantasy RPG setting has ever captivated me the way" this one had – and I stand by that. Darlene's map of the Flanaess is one of the greatest maps ever made for use with a fantasy roleplaying game. It's beautiful simply as a work of art, eminently usable, and, for me at least, almost as iconic as Dave Trampier's AD&D Players Handbook cover.

However, there is another map of which I am equally fond. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's this one:

I apologize for its small size. The original is quite large and the width of a blog post is inadequate to show its true glory. The map depicts the portion of Charted Space in which the Third Imperium and its interstellar neighbors exist, along with a couple of important astrographic features, like the Great and Lesser Rifts. Each of the rectangles represents a single sector, an area of space equal to 32 × 40 parsecs. Some of the sectors are named, like the Solomani Rim, the Beyond, and the Spinward Marches, but many of them are not. 

The map was, I believe, originally produced by GDW as a freebie to give away at conventions and to mail order recipients. I received mine in a large envelope after I'd written to the company to request their latest catalog. I was ecstatic to get it, because I'd previously seen a black and white reproduction of the map in a British book about RPGs whose title escapes me now (a No Prize to anyone who can tell me which one it was in the comments). I liked the map so much that I hung it on my bedroom wall, belong the Darlene Greyhawk map and there it stayed for years, even after I'd gone away to college. Unfortunately, the map was lost when I removed it from the wall some years later. 

Unlike the Greyhawk map, this one is simple in its presentation and lacking in detail. Nevertheless, I'd still say it's quite beautiful. There's an elegance to it that I have always found incredibly appealing, an elegance that's very much of a piece with the elegance of Traveller itself. It uses only three colors – black, white, and red – just like the original Traveller boxed set, which I think contributes to rather than detracts from its attractiveness. In science fiction, minimalism is often a very solid esthetic choice and it's one that classic Traveller embraced from the very beginning (more on that particular topic in a future post).

The map's not without a couple of problems, the first of which being that it's a flat, two-dimensional depiction of three-dimensional space. That's an issue Traveller has always had and there's no easy way around it, though some fans have tried over the years. I've never been much bothered by it myself, since properly 3D star maps tend to be very complex and difficult to use in play. The bigger problem, in my opinion, is that most sectors of Charted Space are claimed by one or more large interstellar empires, which makes it feel fairly cramped rather than wide open. For many types of sci-fi campaigns, this is fine. If you're looking for one in which exploration is a central activity, it's less ideal, though there are some ways to fix this.

Even so, this remains one of my favorite RPG maps and one to which I regularly return for inspiration.

Solitaire

On page 2 of Book 1: Characters and Combat of the original 1977 edition of Traveller, there's a section entitled "Playing the Game." This section discusses the "three basic configurations" in which the game may be played. Two of them are obvious and should be familiar to most people who play RPGs today – the scenario and the campaign. The first of these is a simple "one-time affair" that "ends when the evening of play is over or the goal is achieved." The second is a series of "continuing, linked adventures in a consistent universe." While the scenario "is like a science fiction novel, the campaign is like a continuing S-F series." As I said, there's nothing here that wouldn't be familiar to most contemporary gamers.

The third "configuration" of Traveller is solitaire and is described in this way:

One player undertakes some journey or adventure alone. He handles the effects of the rules himself. Solitaire is ideal for the player who is alone due to situation or geography.

I started playing Traveller in 1983, around the time that The Traveller Book was released – more than four decades ago now. In all the years I've played the game, I've never known anyone to play the game solitaire as described here. In fact, until the last few years, I don't think I recalled that solitaire was even mentioned as a possible way to play the game. That's not to say that Traveller isn't suitable for some degree of solitaire "play." The Traveller Book, in its section on "Basic Traveller Activities," notes that "many of the subordinate game systems lend themselves to solitaire ... play." This is absolutely true in my experience. 

Traveller's character generation system is, in my opinion, one of the best ever devised, beautifully blending randomness with choice while also evoking the thrill of gambling. The system is so good that it's probably worthy of several posts about it, but, for now, what's important is that generating characters in Traveller is fun. You never quite know what you're going to wind up with, thanks to the unpredictability of the dice rolls. But no matter how things unfold, you (generally) wind up with a character who has a rough history of what he was doing between the age of 18 and when he enters the campaign after some period of time in service to one or another interstellar career, usually military.

Indeed, character generation is so fun that, to this day, I sometimes still generate a character or two as a way to pass the time. I used to have a nice little computer program that helped with this. It was called "TravGen" or something similar, but I lost it when I got a new computer and have never been able to find a functional version of it on the Internet since. Even without the program to speed things up, generating characters for Traveller is enjoyable as an activity in its own right – the kind of solitaire play I associate with the game.

Another form of solitaire play in which I still regularly engage is generating subsectors. This is a bit more involved than generating characters, but it's still a lot of fun. The last time I did this in earnest, I wound up creating an entire sector and starting up a non-Third Imperium Traveller campaign that I refereed for three years. That's the "danger" of generating subsectors: after a while, ideas about the various worlds you create, their inhabitants, and their relationships to one another start to percolate and the next thing you know, you're imagining an entire setting for a campaign. None of this is bad, of course – far from it! – but it is dangerous, in the sense that it can very easily feed gamer attention deficit disorder, something to which I was once very prone.

A third potential source of solitaire play within Traveller is trade and commerce. Choose a starship, pick a starting world in a subsector (whether published or one of your own creation), get some cargo and/or passengers, and then set off to try and turn a profit as you direct your ship from world to world. This is a great way to learn the speculative trade system in Traveller, as well as to better understand the economic ties that connect the worlds of one region of space. I have a vague recollection that GDW itself released a computer program in the 1980s that handled trade and commerce, but perhaps my aged brain imagined it. Regardless, trade is another fun way to play Traveller by oneself.

Compared to OD&D, which was released just three years prior, Traveller is a design of considerable elegance. All of its rules systems work well with one another and support and encourage its intended gameplay styles. Many of these systems, like the three I mentioned above, are enjoyable in themselves as separate "min-games" that can be "played" between sessions and that generate additional content for use in an ongoing campaign. It's absolutely brilliant design work and a big reason why I keep coming back to Traveller.

The Lord Weird Slough Feg

No discussion of Traveller is complete without mentioning the 2003 album of the same name by the heavy metal album band, The Lord Weird Slough Feg. 

I'm no aficionado of metal (or indeed any other kind of popular music), but I own a copy of this and enjoy it. The album's especially fun for all the references to aspects of the Third Imperium setting. 

If you visit the band's website, you'll see what looks like an announcement of their next music endeavor, to be released in 2025:

Retrospective: Leviathan

When I first shifted the focus of my Retrospective posts toward classic Traveller, I hadn't consciously decided to look at those adventures included in my Top 10 Classic Traveller Adventures about which I'd not previously written separate posts, but, after last week's post on Duneraiders, I realized that's exactly what I'd been doing. Rather than fight it, I've decided to lean into it, which is why I'm turning my gaze to Adventure 4: Leviathan, which I placed at the lofty rank of number 2 out of 10.

Leviathan is a very unusual adventure for a number of reasons. First published in 1980, it was written by Bob McWilliams a name many of you might recognize from the pages of White Dwarf, where McWilliams had a regular column called "Starbase" devoted to Traveller. "Starbase" was a favorite – or should I say favourite? – feature of mine and one of the primary reasons I read White Dwarf in my youth. Unlike Dragon, where Traveller (and science fiction more generally) was mostly an afterthought until the advent of the Ares Section in April 1984, White Dwarf gave pride of place to Traveller, making it very appealing to a young sci-fi nerd like myself. 

In many ways, Leviathan is as much a product of Games Workshop as it is of Game Designers' Workshop (GDW). In addition to McWilliams, the adventure credits Albie Fiore (another WD stalwart), Ian Livingstone (nuff said), and Andy Slack (ditto) as having edited it. Furthermore, the book includes illustrations by Fiore and the incomparable Russ Nicholson. Strengthening the overall Britishness of Leviathan is its use of UK spellings throughout the text, which is perhaps unintentionally appropriate, given the game's use of the double-l orthography for Traveller (whose origin, Marc Miller told me at Gamehole Con, lies with E.C. Tubb's Dumarest of Terra series). 

Traveller's default playstyle could probably be described as a "hexcrawl in space," quite literally, given what the game's interstellar star charts look like. Leviathan takes this a step further, with the characters hired by the large multi-system trading cartel, Baraccai Technum, to participate in the exploration of a region of space known as the Outrim Void. The Void lies to rimward of the Spinward Marches sector and gets its name not from its emptiness but from its relative lack of civilization, at least compared to the Imperium. The terms of the characters' contract require them to sign on as crew for the exploratory merchant ship Leviathan on a voyage of about six months.

This is a very interesting and unusual set-up for a Traveller adventure, one that's been relatively rarely used in the game's history. One would think, given the history of popular science fiction, that interstellar exploration of an unknown area of space would be a fairly common subject for scenarios. That's generally not been the case with Traveller, at least not within the official Third Imperium setting. A big reason for that, as that setting evolved over the years, it's been extensively – even exhaustively – mapped, with literally thousands of worlds placed, named, provided with stats, and often more. That's been a blessing and a curse for referees over the decades and remains so today. 

But, at the time Leviathan was written, that wasn't the case. The Third Imperium was then a very loose framework individual referees could shape to their own preferences and needs and the presentation of the Outrim Void demonstrates this. The worlds of the region are only briefly described and precisely what the characters will find as they explore them is largely left to the referee to fill in. Much like the Imperium itself, the Void is a loose framework for adventure, making it usable for all manner of encounters and scenarios. That's a big part of its appeal: it's a great tool for referees who want to do their own thing without having to invent an entire universe from whole cloth. 

Interestingly, Leviathan spends almost half of its 44 pages to information on the titular 1800-ton Leviathan-class merchant cruiser. We get not only keyed deckplans, but also game stats for the ship and its entire 56-man crew (not counting the player characters). Equally useful are 26 rumo(u)rs about the Outrim Void to entice the characters, as they explore. The five pages of library data serve a similar purpose. This is not an "adventure module" in the sense players of Dungeons & Dragons or other RPGs would recognize. Instead, it's a collection of aids to the referee to aid him in building a wide variety of situations that might arise as the characters travel from world to world throughout the Outtim Void. 

Leviathan is thus a reminder of an earlier period of the hobby, before gamers expected companies, in the words of OD&D's afterward, to do the imagining for them. Like The World of Greyhawk, Adventure 4 provides referees with an outline to which they are expected to add whatever details they needed or desired. And those details could vary widely from referee to referee and campaign to campaign rather than being bound up in a rigid canon, a concept that was, if not completely unknown, at least highly unusual in those days. By today's standards, then, Leviathan is something of a throwback and why I rate it so highly. 

Done with Dungeons & Dragons?

As I alluded to yesterday, I increasingly feel as if I don't have anything interesting left to say about Dungeons & Dragons. On some level, that's understandable. There are nearly 4500 posts on this blog and, though I haven't done an inventory of just how many of them are specifically about D&D, I think it's safe to wager that more than half of them – that's over 2000 posts – pertain to the game in some fashion. With that much virtual ink spilled over a single roleplaying game, even if it is the single most popular and successful one, what more is there for me to say?

Part of the problem, though a small one, is that it's been some time since I actually played any version of Dungeons & Dragons. I kicked the then-current edition of D&D to the curb in 2007, right before I began my OD&D journey and started this blog. I never played either 4e or 5e, as I was perfectly happy, when I wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons, to make use of one of the TSR editions of the game, whether the Little Brown Books, AD&D, or B/X – except that I rarely did so. It's ironic that this should be the case, since Grognardia began in large part as an exploration of the history of D&D and, by extension, the larger RPG hobby. 

Of course, one might reasonably ask, "But weren't you playing Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry and Lamentations of the Flame Princess and [insert your favorite retro-clone here]? Aren't they just D&D with the serial numbers filed off? Indeed, wasn't that the whole point in their creation?" Similarly, "Haven't spent the last decade playing Empire of the Petal Throne, whose rules are basically OD&D with some changes added?" For that matter, "Isn't Secrets of sha-Arthan, your personal science fantasy game, just like EPT, another variant on good ol' D&D? How can you say you haven't been playing Dungeons & Dragons?" 

These are all fair questions, but, as I noted, my not playing D&D is only a small part of the problem. A much bigger one is simply that, for whatever reason, I don't think I've had any genuinely original insights into the game in a very long time. Sure, I can – and do – mine old Dragon articles or TSR era products for little tidbits of trivia, but it's rare that any of this is insightful. They're mostly exercises in pure nostalgia, exactly the kind of thing detractors of the Old School Renaissance have been criticizing for years. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong in indulging in nostalgia from time to time, especially when your readership is made up overwhelmingly of middle-aged men who remember the glory days of our hobby. However, I don't want that to be the only thing this blog is known for.

2024 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Dungeons & Dragons. My intention was to devote a lot of time to looking at OD&D and its rules and history. Here we are, almost at the end of the year, and I've done very little of that. I've started and deleted more posts about OD&D and D&D generally than I have about any other game or topic. In almost every case, I either discovered I'd already written about the topic before or that what I wanted to say was rather trite. In a moment supreme irony, even the topic of this post is one I broached only a couple of months ago. It really does seem as if, when it comes to D&D at least, I've done it all – or at least all that I find interesting enough to devote the time to write about.

This is why I'm now looking to spend more time writing about Traveller in the new year. It's a game I've played almost as long as Dungeons & Dragons and about which I am still very passionate. More than that, it's a game about which there's still a lot more I could say. The well of Traveller commentary is far from dry, whether I'm writing about its rules, its history, the Third Imperium setting, or my own involvement in the game's fandom or publications. I feel as if I could write about Traveller for a very long time and not repeat myself than I often do with D&D.

As always, I wrestle with the issue of just how interesting non-D&D topics are with many readers. My most popular posts continue to be those that touch on Dungeons & Dragons in some way, while those that stray farthest from it aren't nearly as well liked. It's a frustrating conundrum. Ultimately, though, I've concluded that, if I'm to continue writing the blog, I need to write primarily for myself, which probably means I'm going to dial down the number of D&D-centric posts – not eliminate, mind you, just reduce. To a very great extent, Dungeons & Dragons is the hobby, so there's no way I could remove coverage of the game entirely, even if I wanted to do so (which I don't). However, I do want to get back into writing insightfully about older games that interest me, hence the increase in Traveller content.

I assure you: I'll write about more than Traveller. As much as I adore the game, I don't think I could make it the subject of every post. Plus, Grognardia began as and remains a broader blog than any one game. The shift I'm making now and into next year is simply a rebalancing of focus rather than the wholesale rejection or closing off of other options. 2025 will certainly bring changes around here, but being "done with Dungeons & Dragons" in a definitive way is not one of them.

Crypt of the Undead

Did anyone own this game? I ask, because I very vividly remember the advertisements for it, like this one that appeared in issue #69 of Dragon (January 1983). Epyx was a very prolific publisher of early computer games, some of which I did actually played, but Crypt of the Undead was not one of them. From what I've been able to gather from online sources, it wasn't all that good. If so, that's disappointing, given how evocative this ad is. I'd much rather learn that it's a forgotten gem, so, if you owned or played it, I'd like to know more.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Charting the Classes"

One of the characteristics of what I call the Silver Age of D&D is an obsession with mathematics, using it for a wide variety of purposes, from determining the best way to model falling damage to proving if one's dice "be ill-wrought." In issue #69 (January 1983) of Dragon, Roger E. Moore offered up yet another new field for mathematical analysis: class "balance." Many old school gamers think worrying about such matters is a peculiarly modern notion, but it's not. For almost as long as I've played the game, I've known players who fretted over whether this class or that class was "overpowered" or "underpowered" compared to the others. It's a concern I've never really worried about myself, partially because I think all but the most egregious mechanical differences take a backseat to what actually happens at the table. Nitpicker and hair splitter I may be about many topics relating to D&D but this isn't one of them.

However, I'm hardly representative of anyone but myself and I expect that, when Moore wrote this article he was speaking on behalf a sizable number of gamers who had a sneaking suspicion that some AD&D character classes were better (or worse) than others -- and he was going to prove it. Moore's analysis hinges on comparing the classes according to accumulated experience points, not level. His thesis is that, by examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each class at certain XP benchmarks, he might get a sense of which classes are more (or less) potent than others. In doing this, Moore discovers that, for the most part, AD&D's classes are reasonably balanced against one another, with two significant exceptions, along with a third point of discussion.

The first anomaly concerns druids, which Moore says are unusually tough compared to other classes. Compared to clerics, they advance very quickly and, more importantly, they continue to gain full hit dice all the way to 14th level, which also nets them more Constitution bonuses as well. Druids thus wind up being comparable to fighters at mid-levels and even surpassing them at higher levels. Consequently, he recommends increasing the druid's XP requirements to compensate. The second anomaly concerns monks, which Moore says are too weak in terms of hit points for a class that is supposed to fight hand-to-hand. He recommends that they have D6 hit points. Finally, Moore says -- along with nearly every AD&D player I knew back in the day -- that bard, as presented in the Players Handbook, needs to go. He recommends Jeff Goelz's bard as a replacement.

In the end, "Charting the Classes" is actually a very modest and limited analysis of AD&D's character classes and Moore's suggestions are all quite reasonable. I believe I even adopted his recommendation regarding druids, as I know from experience that they were more potent than they had any right to be. Still, I largely find the idea of "balance" between the classes a Quixotic obsession that's played a lot of mischief with D&D in its later incarnations. But it is, unfortunately, a long and deeply held concern of many gamers and I don't expect it to ever go away.

A Random Demon

Being a big fan of the humorous illustrations of Wil McLean, I thought I'd share this fun little comic from issue #20 of Dragon (November 1978). 

Starting with Classic Traveller

Toward the end of last month, I mentioned that Mongoose Publishing, the new owners of Traveller, had released a few 72-page Starter Pack for the game in PDF form. It's a good introduction to the current version of Traveller, giving newcomers a taste of both the rules and the kinds of adventure scenarios with which they can be used. 

However, not everyone's interested in Mongoose's edition of Traveller. Many people would prefer their introduction to the venerable science fiction roleplaying game be through the "classic" version published by Games Designers' Workshop between 1977 and 1986. In fact, since I got back from Gamehole Con, I've received several emails from people asking me my opinion about the best introduction to Traveller, specifically which edition of the rules and what supplements and adventures I'd recommend. Since this is a common question I'm asked, I thought it might be useful to write a post devoted to this topic.

My standard response to this question is to direct people toward The Traveller Book, which I've previously called the perfect RPG book. I stand by that assessment for all the reasons I mentioned in my original post, but one of the biggest is that it's still in print and available for only $20 from DriveThruRPG. For a 160-page hardcover book, that's an incredible bargain, all the more so, because it includes everything you'd ever need to play Traveller under one cover – rules, encounters, patrons, adventures, and an overview of the Third Imperium and the Spinward Marches sector. Truly, this is still probably the best way to familiarize yourself with Traveller.

That said, there are another couple of options worth considering. The first is Starter Traveller, originally released as a boxed set in 1983. This version of the game includes the same rules as The Traveller Book, but formatted as a 64-page book, The reason it's shorter is that all of the relevant charts relating to gameplay have been removed and placed in their own separate 24-page book. Also included with the set are two adventures, Mission on Mithril and Shadows, both of which had been previously released. 

Another possibility is the Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition, which presents the three little black books of classic Traveller as a single digest-size 160-page book. Like The Traveller Book, the Facsimile Edition is available in print from DriveThruRPG and it's even less expensive – $9! This version has the advantage of preserving the original layout of the 1981 edition, while the other two options have been updated and improved in various ways. This is the edition you'll want to buy if your interest in primarily in getting a sense of what the game like in its early days. (To clarify: this is not the original 1977 version, though it's very close).

Each of the three options above has its advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you're looking for. Overall, I continue to favor The Traveller Book as the best all-around intro to the classic game, but I have an affection for Starter Traveller, because it was the first edition I owned. And, as I've already said, the Facsimile Edition is best for those hoping to get a sense of what the game was like in its earliest stages, before the Third Imperium setting had begun to take over the line and become not merely an example of a setting but the setting for the game.

On the question of what to buy after obtaining the rules, I'd recommend avoiding any of the volumes with "Book" in the title, like Book 4: Mercenary or Book 5: High Guard – not because they're bad supplements but because they're very specific and unnecessary to all but the most dedicated players. Newcomers have no need of them. Instead, I'd recommend focusing on adventures, especially those I've included on my Top 10 lists of the same. All of them are still available in PDF form through DriveThruRPG and are good options if you want to get a sense of what classic Traveller is all about.

As I've noted several now in recent weeks, I'll be talking a lot more about Traveller here, since it's a game and a topic about which I remain quite passionate and about which I feel I still have interesting things to say – unlike Dungeons & Dragons, but that's a topic for an upcoming post ...

Questions and Answers

With the end of my House of Worms Empire of the Petal Throne campaign in sight after nearly a decade of regular play, I've started thinking about not just its conclusion but what happens after the conclusion. Since nearly all of the players have agreed they'd like me to referee a new game, it's clear that our little circle of gamers will continue to meet each week after the final curtain falls on this particular campaign. And while the question of precisely what game we'll play next is an interesting one – I may post about that later – what I want to talk about now is something quite different.

House of Worms began in early March 2015. When I started it, I simply wanted to give Empire of the Petal Throne another whirl. I'd refereed the game a couple of time prior, but neither of those campaigns lasted very long. Considering how rich and compelling the world of Tékumel is, I felt I owed it to myself to give EPT another shot. I was quite fortunate that, this time, in the words of Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, it all came together and remarkably so. We're now just shy of the ten-year mark, which makes House of Worms the single longest continuous RPG campaign I've ever refereed by a wide margin.

At the start, though, I had no idea how long the campaign would last. Based on my past experiences with Tékumel, I had no expectation that House of Worms would last even a single year, let alone ten. As a result, I didn't plan too far ahead. I had some basic ideas of how to kick off the campaign and where it might go after that, but most of my ideas were pretty sketchy and that's being generous. I relied pretty heavily on player decisions to guide where the campaign went and what I developed for it. I tried to stay a few steps ahead of the players at all times, but, even then, I regularly created and discarded ideas at a fairly quick pace, responding in equal parts to what the players did and my own changing interests.

In my campaigns, I try to give the impression that the end results are what I'd had in mind all along. Of course, it's a parlor trick, misdirection in which I get the players to focus on what worked rather than what didn't. In the past, I've described my campaigns as being a lot like that scene in the movie Ghostbusters, where Bill Murray's Peter Venkman attempts to pull the tablecloth out from under the place settings on a table in the dining room. He fails utterly but is undeterred, boasting, "And the flowers are still standing!" even as everything else falls to the floor. That's what I do much of the time.

Despite that, I still do have ideas I purposefully introduce into the campaign and that prove important. It's not entirely an illusion. Some of these ideas bear fruit and some do not, while others morph into something I'd not originally intended. I imagine that's not a phenomenon unique to me. Any long running campaign is likely to include plenty examples of all of the above. In fact, I have a hard time imagining how a roleplaying campaign could go for more than a few weeks before it starts to diverge from what any of its participants consciously had in mind. That's one of the main joys of this form of entertainment: you never know where's going to wind up.

So, when House of Worms finally does end, I'm going to devote the next session to a wrap-up in which I'll encourage the players to ask my anything about the campaign and how it developed. What ideas did I originally have and how did they change? What was going on with some character or plot that was left dangling at the end? How much did their choices to zig when I expected them to zag derail what I might have had in mind? And so on. I greatly value transparency in most things, including RPGs. Letting the players see "behind the curtain," so to speak, is important, especially in a campaign as long-running as House of Worms. 

Needless to say, I'll do a post or two about the players' questions and my answers to them. I feel the process of refereeing is often too opaque and writing about what I did and why over the course of the last decade will undoubtedly be useful to other referees (and probably players as well). The end of House of Worms is a major event for all involved. Expect to see quite a few posts devoted to it in the weeks and months to come.

Retrospective: Duneraiders

My look at classic Traveller adventures and supplements continues this week with 1984's Duneraiders, a scenario I ranked as number 8 on my list of the top 10 scenarios published for the game. Like last week's Nomads of the World-Ocean, Duneraiders was written and illustrated by the Keith Brothers (with William H. Keith credited as its primary creator) for Gamelords. That's not the only similarity between the two adventures, as I'll soon explain. 

Before getting to that, I'd like to take a moment to talk briefly about Gamelords and its place in the history of both roleplaying and the hobby. Headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, DC), the company is probably best known today for Thieves' Guild fantasy products. For me, though, it was their many excellent Traveller releases that most captured my attention. 

Along with pre-Battletech, pre-Shadowrun FASA, Gamelords was a GDW-approved licensee, given a region of the Third Imperium setting to develop through their scenarios. This region included the Reavers' Deep sector, a frontier bounded by the Imperium, the Aslan Hierate, and the Solomani Confederation. The Deep features mostly independent worlds, some of them joined together into about a half-dozen small interstellar states that contend with one another and the aforementioned larger powers. It's a great setting for Traveller campaign, especially the particular style of Traveller campaign in which the player characters work primarily as mercenaries and agents provocateur.

In the case of Duneraiders, the characters find themselves on the backwater world of Tashrakaar, a desert planet in the Drexilthar subsector. While hanging out at its primitive, class-D starport, they witness a firefight on the loading dock. Duneraiders – human inhabitants of the open desert – are attacking a massive orecrawler with the obvious intention of destroying or at least severely damaging it. This is noted by bystanders as unusual behavior. Though the Duneraiders have no love for the mining companies that extract minerals from "the Flats" region of Tashrakaar for sale offworld, nearly all of their attacks are against the companies' operations, not permanent settlements. 

The adventure assumes the characters will inevitably intervene against the Duneraiders. In doing so, they also rescue a young woman, Arlana Jeric, whose father, Gill, is the owner and operator of Jericorp Mining, a small resource extraction business. It doesn't take long to realize that the "Duneraiders" are, in fact, goons in the employ of Jericorp's bigger and better capitalized rival, Dakaar Minerals, who are attempting to mask their involvement by disguising themselves as the desert dwellers. Unfortunately, the goons are successful in damaging the orecrawler, which was one of several owned by Jericorp. Without it operating, Jericorp may be unable to prove its claim on a stretch of the Flats believed to hold a motherlode of minerals.

That's when Arlana suggests that perhaps the characters would be willing to hire on as freelance troubleshooters for Jericorp, providing security for another orecrawler as its crew desperately attempts to locate the rich veins of ore they suspect are there. If the characters agree, this is where the adventure proper truly begins. The bulk of Duneraiders' 60 pages are devoted to describing the Orecrawler (with deckplans) and its 12-man crew, Tashrakaar and its ecology, and, of course, the titular Duneraiders and their culture. It's a very impressive package, providing the referee with everything he needs to run many sessions on this single planet of the Reavers' Deep sector.

If this sounds familiar, it is, because, in broad outlines, Duneraiders is another example of a very common classic Traveller scenario: the characters involve themselves in coprorate shenanigans on a backwater planet whose environment and native inhabitants are equal parts challenges and assets – just as we saw in Nomads of the World-Ocean. There's nothing wrong with this; it's a very fun set-up for an extended adventure. Furthermore, the Keith Brothers are very imaginative and each of the worlds presented in their work is genuinely unique. However, I suspect that a Traveller referee would be wise to avoid using too many of these scenarios in his campaign, lest they seem overdone. 

Duneraiders is a very good adventure about which I have fond memories playing rather than refereeing. That partly explains why I think so highly of it. The other is that there's something inherently compelling about the characters fighting against an exploitative corporation, aided by locals who better understand the hostile environment in which the battle must be fought. Unsurprisingly, Frank Herbert's Dune series was probably a major inspiration for this adventure, but I also expect the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia also influenced the Keiths in imagining Tashrakaar and its inhabitants. Though not quite as good as Nomads of the World-Ocean, Duneraiders is a fine example of classic Traveller adventure design and well worth a look.