I subscribed to Dragon from issue #68 (December 1982) till #127 (November 1987). During that five-year period, my favorite section of the magazine – by far – was the Ares Section, which appeared in its pages each month from issue #84 (April 1984) until issue #111 (July 1986). That's because the Ares Section, as its name suggests, was devoted entirely to science fiction roleplaying games and, being even more of a sci-fi nerd than I am a fantasy one, this held a great deal of appeal for me. As you'll know doubt learn over the course of the coming weeks, many of my favorite and most beloved articles of Dragon appeared in the Ares Section and left a lasting impact on both my memories of the magazine as a whole and one my youthful imagination.
One of the interesting things the section's editors occasionally did was run series in which a topic was given an article devoted to showing how that topic was handled in a particular science fiction RPG. One of the first one (and one of the best) concerned Earth's satellite, the Moon. Over the course of five articles, the Ares Section treated readers to depictions of the Moon in Gamma World, Star Trek, Space Opera, Other Suns, and, finally, Traveller, the last of which is the subject of today's post. I found all these articles incredibly interesting, though, as you'd expect, the one for Traveller, appearing in issue #87 (July 1984), is the one most dear to my heart.
To begin with, the article in question was penned by none other than the creator of Traveller, himself, Marc W. Miller. That immediately lent it a high degree of importance in my young eyes. Miller was to Traveller as Gary Gygax was to Dungeons & Dragons: the final authority. Consequently, when his byline appeared on an article – which was rare, much rarer than Gygax – I took it very seriously. I took "Luna: A Traveller's Guide" as absolutely official and duly incorporated the information contained in it into my Traveller adventures and campaigns.
Furthermore, the article described the Moon – or Luna, as it's called here – within the context of GDW's Third Imperium setting. For those unfamiliar with the intricacies of that setting, Earth (or Terra) is the homeworld of the Solomani, the "original" human race that evolved naturally on that planet. All other human races, like the Vilani and the Zhodani, descended from Terran humans transplanted to other worlds by the mysterious Ancients, a technologically advanced alien race that once roamed the galaxy 300,000 years ago. Terra and Luna are currently under military occupation by the Third Imperium, a consequence of losing the Solomani Rim War more than a century ago, when the Solomani attempted to secede from the Imperium.
It's against this backdrop that Miller presents his vision of Luna as a lightly populated scientific colony in orbit around the homeworld of humaniti (as Traveller spells the name of the human race taken as a whole). Miller provides information on the population and demographics of the Moon, its settlements and transportion, its politics, and, of course, its history. The latter is especially interesting, as it helps to provide additional details about the deep background of the Third Imperium setting, such as the Solomani discovery of jump drive and its role in the Interstellar Wars against the Vilani First Imperium. As a teenager, this was catnip to me, both as a Traveller fan and as someone who'd grown up in the afterglow of the 1969 Moon landing.
Funnily enough, I recently discovered a photocopy of this article in an old folder. That's how much I liked that article.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite articles in Dragon was also by Marc Miller, in issue 51 (my own first issue of the magazine), and might be the funniest thing Miller ever wrote. It was titled "The Miller Milk Bottle".
ReplyDeleteTraveller location content has to run the narrow thread between providing too much detail and not enough to be useful. The later GT book "Rim of Fire" had the most content on Terra, because the author presumed most players would want more information on the world they are most familiar with.
ReplyDeleteI loved the Ares Section 'Moon series', though honestly the only entry I remember in any detail is the Star Trek one, 'The Federation Guide to the Moon' I believe it was titled. I read it over and over many times over the course of several years. Really miss Ares.
ReplyDeleteI remember this series of articles about the Moon fondly as well. Wasn't there also one (or two?) about the Moon for Top Secret?
ReplyDeleteThat said, to address the question you raised in the article, it it my decades-old lingering impression that the article I enjoyed the least was the one for Traveller because, as someone who never played the game, in skimming the article it came across as ultra-dense with references to the lore and history and other events in the 'Traveller Universe,' with which I had almost no familiarity.
I didn't manage to get my hands on Traveller until I was at university, so when this article came out I all my sci-fi gaming was with Star Frontiers. I was fascinated by the article, even though I didn't understand any of the references, but it didn't matter. I used it as the moon of one of the frontier planets (Gran Quivera, I think... it was 40 years ago!) and converted all the mysterious references into SF terms: GASbAG was just another mega-corp (possibly a secret subsidiary of Streel), Imperium=UPF, Solomani Rim War = 1st Sathar war, etc. I had no clue what Solomani actually meant, so the references to the political parties just became dissident factions, but the line "Rumors are told of scattered Solomani bases" obviously had to be Sathar listening posts -- I didn't see the need to make 1:1 conversions in every case. The only other thing that needed adapting was the bits about grav vehicles, but normal highways made an easy fix.
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