Retrospective: Alien Module 7: Hivers

By the time Alien Module 7: Hivers was published in 1986, the Traveller role-playing game was approaching its tenth anniversary. Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW) already had a great deal of experience in producing sourcebooks to the major alien races of the Third Imperium, producing some of the line’s most inventive and distinctive supplements. The Hivers, among the most enigmatic of Traveller’s aliens were a natural fit for this deep-dive treatment. Their inscrutable nature and radical departure from humanoid norms demanded a module that could capture their alien essence while expanding the possibilities of the game itself.

Unlike the Vargr, with their wolf-pack dynamics dressed in science-fictional trappings, or the Aslan, who embodied the archetype of the "proud warrior race," the Hivers defied easy categorization. They were, in a word, strange – non-humanoid, non-violent, intellectually aloof, and relentlessly meddlesome. Their radial, starfish-like physiology and their communication through color changes and body posture evoked a biology more akin to deep-sea creatures than traditional sci-fi aliens. Their penchant for subtle, centuries-long manipulation of other species felt like something drawn from the cosmic visions of Olaf Stapledon or the surreal imaginings of Cordwainer Smith (even though the book openly admits the debt owed to Larry Niven’s Pierson’s Puppeteers and Outsiders). Despite this, the Hivers were a wholly unique creation, their oddity amplified by a psychology that prioritized intricate social engineering over direct action.

The success of Alien Module 7: Hivers in giving shape and substance to such an unconventional species is a testament to the talents of its principal authors: William H. Keith, J. Andrew Keith, Loren Wiseman, and Traveller creator Marc Miller. Structured like its predecessors, the module is divided into sections covering history, physiology, psychology, society, technology, along with rules for generating Hiver characters. Yet what immediately sets it apart is how bizarre its subject matter is. The Hivers are not “rubber suit” aliens defined by a single cultural quirk. Their biology is profoundly non-human: they reproduce almost accidentally without pair bonding or even emotional investment, communicate via mechanisms no human could intuitively grasp, and perceive the universe through a lens shaped by their intense curiosity. Their society, too, defies familiar models. Rather than being organized around governments or hierarchies, Hiver civilization is a loose tapestry of individuals pursuing esoteric, often opaque "topics" – long-term investigations that might span centuries and often involve subtly steering entire civilizations toward particular ends. One cannot help but draw comparisons to the Bene Gesserit of Dune, with their millennia-spanning schemes or even Lovecraft’s Elder Things, with whom the Hivers share a faint physical resemblance, though without the malice or cosmic horror.

What further distinguishes Hivers from earlier Alien Modules is its refusal to reduce its subject to easily digestible tropes. The Hivers are not warriors, traders, or pirates; they are manipulators, schemers, and architects of destiny. Their commitment to nonviolence is not a weakness but a cornerstone of their civilization, shaping their every interaction. They are not pacifists in the conventional sense but they are deeply opposed to overt conflict, preferring to neutralize threats through careful, almost surgical social redesign. The module provides a vivid example of this approach in their centuries-long maneuvering against the K’kree, their militant, herbivorous neighbors, a species almost as alien to human eyes as themselves. 

As presented, a campaign involving the Hivers is unlikely to revolve around the familiar beats of firefights, starship chases, or planetary exploration. Instead, it gestures toward something slower and subtler: espionage, cultural subversion, and interstellar diplomacy of a particularly insidious kind. However, this is also where the module falters. While it does provide broad advice on running Hiver-centric adventures, it rarely offers the kinds of concrete examples that would help a referee bring these high-concept scenarios to life at the table. The included adventure, “Something Stinks!,” is brief and unmemorable, more a sketch than a scenario and one that never quite demonstrates how to make the Hivers’ unique qualities matter in play. This is a common flaw in the Alien Module series: strong ideas paired with underdeveloped tools for implementation.

That said, one of the book's more subtle successes lies in how it situates its subject within the wider Traveller setting without dulling their strangeness. The Hivers’ influence on the Imperium is indirect but pervasive, shaping events from the shadows through trade agreements, cultural shifts, and strategic nudges – at least, that’s what they’d like you to believe. This ambiguity is where the module’s potential becomes most intriguing. The Hivers are not just another species; they are potentially a vehicle for a different kind of science fiction roleplaying, one that rewards speculation, inference, and even conspiracy-minded thinking. The fact that they remain difficult to grasp even after 48 pages of focused attention feels less like a failure and more like a feature, though one that may frustrate as often as it inspires.

In the end, Alien Module 7: Hivers is an ambitious but uneven entry in the Traveller canon. It introduces a compellingly alien species with a richly imagined culture and worldview, yet it struggles to translate that material into content easily usable in play. The ideas are strong and the writing imaginative, but too often the referee is left to do the heavy lifting. Still, for those intrigued by the prospect of a campaign built around manipulation, subtlety, and long-term consequences, the module offers a tantalizing foundation. Like the Hivers themselves, it prefers to hint and suggest rather than declare outright. Whether that is a strength or a weakness will depend on the kind of game you wish to run.

Retrospective: Merc: 2000

The last six months of 1989 marked the beginning of the end of Communism in Eastern Europe and, with it, the Cold War. Between June, when Solidarity won Poland's first semi-free elections in decades and the execution of Nicolae Ceaușescu in late December – not to mention the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 – the world that had existed since 1945 unraveled in real time. These momentous events ushered in what U.S. president George H.W. Bush optimistically dubbed the “new world order.” For a time, many breathed a sigh of relief.

At Game Designers’ Workshop in Bloomington, Illinois, though, the end of the Cold War created a creative dilemma. Their military RPG Twilight: 2000 was built on a dark, alternate history premise: détente had failed, nuclear war had erupted, and civilization lay in ruins. Now that reality had taken a different path, that premise was suddenly obsolete. Line developer Loren Wiseman didn’t throw in the towel but instead adapted.

Merc: 2000, released in 1990, was his answer.

Rather than pivot away from military adventure, Merc: 2000 reimagined a world where the Cold War ends more or less peacefully, as it had in reality, but the peace is shallow. The Soviet Union lingers in a diminished state, the Third World seethes with brushfire wars, and the major powers, unwilling to commit their own troops, outsource dirty work to deniable assets. Enter the player characters as mercenaries for hire, plying their trade in a world where “peace” is just another illusion and every war is someone's business opportunity.

In hindsight, Merc: 2000 reads as much as a nervous exhalation from a culture suddenly unsure of who the enemy is as a RPG supplement. To varying degrees, it captures the jittery uncertainty of the early ’90s, when ideology faded but the machinery of conflict kept humming. If Twilight: 2000 was a fever dream of what might have been, Merc: 2000 was a grim-eyed projection of what was coming.

And it wasn’t wrong.

The setting anticipates the rise of private military contractors, the shadow wars of the post-9/11 era, and the morally murky interventions of the ’90s, such as Somalia, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf, among too many others. It imagines a world of porous borders, covert missions, and soldiers who work for paychecks, not flags. Its tone of weary professionalism, competence without cause, sets it apart from the more operatic tone of Twilight: 2000. In some ways, I'd go so far as to say it's aged better.

That said, Merc: 2000 isn't a standalone game. It builds directly on Twilight: 2000's second edition, also released in 1990, and inherits both its strengths and its spiky complexity: crunchy mechanics, detailed equipment lists, and an emphasis on logistics, firearms, and realism. If you liked T2K’s obsessive attention to detail, you’ll find plenty to enjoy here. If not, Merc probably won’t change your mind.

What distinguishes it is scope. Where Twilight: 2000 offered survival in a wrecked Europe (and, later, America), Merc: 2000 gives you the world. Campaigns can explore corporate espionage, peacekeeping gone wrong, proxy wars, failed states, and morally ambiguous black ops. It opens the door to adventures that blend military action with politics, ideology, and personal cost, offering a sandbox of plausible deniability and ethical compromise.

From today’s perspective, what stands out most is how little Merc: 2000 glamorizes its subject. There are no grand causes, just contracts. No crusades, only jobs. In that, it feels oddly prophetic. It foresaw a world where war became a business and soldiers became freelancers in the global gig economy of violence.

Unlike Twilight: 2000, which I played quite a bit, I never had the chance to run Merc: 2000 back in the day. By the time it came out, I’d already drifted away from T2K, thinking the real world had outpaced it. Ironically, as my Barrett’s Raiders campaign heads back to the USA, I realize how much of Merc: 2000 has seeped into my imagination after all, particularly in the types of missions, the tone, and the sense of purpose frayed by compromise that now animate that campaign. 

Thirty-five years on, I think more highly of Merc: 2000 than I probably did upon its publication, not because, like Twilight: 2000, it depicted a world that never was, but rather because it depicted one we hadn’t yet admitted we were already living in.

In Case of Fire, Break Glass

Nearly everyone who's read the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide remembers Will McLean's delightful comics that poked gentle fun at many of the conventions of fantasy roleplaying. Traveller had a few examples of its own, my favorite being this one which appeared in The Traveller Book by Loren Wiseman and John M. Morrison. 

Modifications to Traveller (Part II)

Wiseman continues: 

The most common change will probably be in the available weapons. Any additions to the weapons should be especially well thought out and rationally based. Science fiction literature contains many more weapons than could be described in the basic rules. Many of these have only the flimsiest of scientific justifications, if they are justified at all. In television and movies, weapons are often created for the visual effect they have and are not usually very well thought.

A couple of points. First, we again see a reference to "science fiction literature" as the first source of inspiration for Traveller, which shouldn't be surprising. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of E.C. Tubb and H. Beam Piper – the two most influential authors on Traveller – can easily see where the game came from. That said, sci-fi TV and movies are mentioned, albeit unflatteringly. Second, it's very clear that Wiseman at least considered Traveller to be an attempt at a "serious" game grounded in real world science. He doesn't see it as a game of swashbuckling space opera. I'm OK with that, though I know plenty of people aren't.

In addition, all ramifications of the weapon must be considered. For example, any major change in lethality of hand-carried weapons is likely to have profound effects on military tactics, at least eventually (the military is sometimes a little slow to catch on).

This is a fair point. For the most part, Traveller's weapons – at least those readily available to player characters – are all on a fairly similar plane in terms of lethality. There are differences, obviously, but, aside from some of the stuff introduced in Mercenary, they're all of a piece. 

A few question to ask might be: is this weapon really required by my universe? What is the principle of its operation? (If the weapon is taken from literature, the principle of operation may be described or well-established.) Is the principle of operation a reasonable one? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this particular weapon, and why would it be used in place of more conventional weapon systems?

All reasonable questions, so I don't have much to add. I will note, however, that a common complaint about Traveller is that it includes too many "archaic" weapons among its firearms, like shotguns and submachine guns. This has never much bothered me, perhaps because of a comment in Book 1 of Traveller that seemingly addresses this point: "the surest way to injure or kill an adversary will be to subject him to a large dose of kinetic energy, and a simple way, easy way to administer that energy is by bullet impact."

Adaptations to the jump and maneuver drive systems and to our concept of jump space should be made only with care and consideration. The effects of modifications to these areas are wide-ranging and touch almost every rule in one form or another. In designing our interstellar drive system, we tried to come up with one which fitted in with the other aspects of our proposed mythos and which was reasonably close to the literature we drew it from. It was assumed, however, that some referees would not be satisfied, whatever system we devised. It was further assumed that any referee who felt strongly enough about the matter would change what displeased him.

This section might be one of the more controversial ones, because I know that many people both dislike Traveller's jump drive and believe that the game is perfectly playable without it. Wiseman acknowledges this above. For myself, I'm a big fan of the way jump drive works, because, when coupled with the lack of any form of FTL communications, it creates a setting that's somewhat akin to the Age of Sail, at least as far as the dissemination of information. That opens up a lot of possibilities for adventures both large and small. 

We do not recommend major revisions of the trade and commerce section without considerable thought. Minor deviations from the trade and speculation table, or reclassification of certain world types are acceptable; indeed, in most cases, some deviation from the letter of these rules is desirable, but the spirit (i.e. the general system) should be preserved.

As to how integral the speculative trade system is to Traveller, I'm not sure. I'll only say that I very much love the system, not because it's a good simulator of interstellar commerce – it's not – but because it provides a terrific campaign framework and a reason for characters to travel from world to world. I'll talk more about this in a future post.

Referees are cautioned against making psionic powers too common. Players will often urge that psionics become more widespread, but this is often only because they want to have every possible advantage without drawbacks. Powerful psionic abilities would soon dominate all aspects of play and most of the excitement of Traveller (the advanced technologies) will lapse into disuse, or at least be relegated to a secondary role. 

I can't really disagree with this section, but I've also never been a huge booster of psionics in Traveller (aside from when I've used the Zhodani), so my opinion is perspective is perhaps skewed.

The cautions which apply to major revisions apply to a lesser extent to expansions of existing rules. Many referees find certain rules do not go into enough detail to suit them. Examine the manner in which Book 4, Mercenary, expands upon the army and marines, or Book 5, High Guard, expands upon the navy for general guidelines on technique. You need not (and probably should not) duplicate the systems in these two books exactly, but they will prove a source of inspiration for your own efforts.

Even as someone with a decidedly mixed opinion about Traveller Books after 3, I agree with Wiseman here. Most of the later books do provide good models for those who wish to add more detail to their adventures and campaigns, even if I've rarely felt the need to do so myself. I prefer a simpler, less baroque version of Traveller, but I understand not everyone feels this way, especially in a game that's much more laser focused on a particular style of play.

Wiseman offers up a lot of food for thought in this section of Book 0. In future posts, I'll be returning to a few of them. Stay tuned.

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 ...)

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.

Kings and Aces

Marc Miller, creator of Traveller, and one of the three founders of Game Designers' Workshop also attended Gamehole Con this year, as he does most years. I first met Marc many years ago, at the Origins Game Fair in 1991, which was, I believe, the last time the con was held in my hometown of Baltimore. I was a member of a Traveller fan organization called the History of the Imperium Working Group (HIWG) and several of us present at the con wanted to pitch some ideas to GDW for (Mega)Traveller adventures and supplements. We wound up going out to dinner with Marc, Chuck Gannon, and the Japanese translators of Traveller. We didn't succeed in our quest, but I did have the chance to meet several wonderful people, including Marc, with whom I've stayed in contact over the years.

Marc held several panels, one of which was devoted to the history of GDW. Every person who arrived in the conference room was given a deck of cards Marc had printed through DriveThruRPG. He's a big fan of specialized decks of cards and often brings them for sale at conventions. The decks he gave us were devoted to the topic of the panel. The face cards all featured important people in the history of the company, like Marc Miller, Loren Wiseman, and Frank Chadwick, while the number cards all featured games it had published, like Traveller, Twilight: 2000, or Space: 1889 (along with lots of wargames, of course). 

During the panel, Marc would go around the room, point to someone and ask them to draw a card randomly from the deck they'd been given. After doing so, the person would then read what was on the card and Marc will talk for a while about the person or game in question. In this way, the cards provided some focus for the discussion rather than relying solely on audience questions. Another benefit is that light was often shed on individuals or games that might otherwise not get discussed, like Chaco, a wargame about the 1932–1936 war between Bolivia and Paraguay. The game is one of Miller's earliest designs and was created, in part, as an educational tool to teach about South American history.

All the panels at Gamehole Con were too short – only an hour. They were all held in the same room, with a new one starting every hour on the hour, all day, every day. That meant that there was often a rush toward the end of each panel that caused a fair bit of disruption, as overzealous gamers tried to enter an ongoing panel before it was actually ended. I would have much preferred fewer, longer panels, so that we could luxuriate a bit in the stories and memories of the guests. 

In the case of Marc Miller, he has so many stories. He's now 77 years old and has been involved in the hobbies of wargaming and roleplaying for more than half a century. Yet, his memory is incredibly sharp and, with age, I think he's acquired a perspective that's refreshing in its humility. He talked a lot about how, as in the case of TSR, no one really knew what they were doing at GDW. They were making it all up as they went, having fun as they explored new ideas and took chances on making them reality. Some ideas were better than others and some approaches worked, but they learned a lot from each project, whether it proved a success or a failure. Marc expressed several times how blessed he'd been to have had the career he had, making games and making people happy. 

Not a bad legacy, eh?

Retrospective: Alien Module 2: K'Kree

Traveller's Charted Space setting, home to the Third Imperium and its interstellar neighbors, is one I know very well. It's also one that I rank as my favorite imaginary setting – a testament to its near-perfect blend of originality and pastiche. Charted Space is a setting that's expansive enough to contain almost anything you can imagine in a space opera while still feeling distinctive. That's a more impressive feat than one might imagine, especially when one considers how often others have failed in the attempt. 

One of the many ways by which Game Designers' Workshop achieved this was by subverting expectations. I mean that as a genuine compliment, not as a bit of nonsensical marketing speak. Very often, GDW would take a commonplace element of science fiction and ring a change or two on it so as to give it a different complexion, one unique to Traveller. Though they employed this technique throughout the game's product line, I feel as if they put it to best effect in their series of Alien Modules, beginning with Aslan in 1984. 

Aslan is a solid reworking of the "proud warrior race" trope, but I don't think anyone who reads it is going to be blown away by its content. That's not a knock against by any means, just an acknowledgment that it treads ground familiar to anyone who's a longtime sci-fi aficionado. From the Dorsai to the Klingons and Kzinti, the genre is replete with such races and cultures. Though I happen to think the Aslan are an interesting and well-done example of a proud warrior race, proud warrior races are a dime a dozen in both SF and fantasy. If you really want to impress me, you need to do something genuinely different.

That's exactly what GDW did with its second alien module, devoted to the "enigmatic centaurs" known as the K'Kree. Written by J. Andrew Keith and Loren Wiseman, this 40-page book was published the same year as its predecessor, but it's much more interesting. As you might notice from the cover image above (provided by the ever-awesome David Dietrick), the K'Kree are six-limbed beings, hence their nickname of "centaurs." That alone sets them apart, not just from humans or Aslan but from most alien races presented in science fiction. Of course, that's not the only thing that makes them unique, as I'll explain.

The K'Kree are the descendants of herbivorous grazers – like horses or cattle – that evolved to intelligence and eventually came to dominate their homeworld. The Alien Module explains that the K'Kree were not the only intelligent species to have evolved there. At least one other, known as the G'naak, also did so, against whom the K'Kree fought during ancient wars that also served to accelerate their technological development. The G'naak, unlike the K'Kree, were carnivores and were thus seen as an existential threat that demanded nothing less than genocide. With the G'naak wiped out, the K'Kree continued to develop, both culturally and technologically, until they eventually discovered jump drive and made their way to the stars.

The K'Kree are one of Traveller's so-called Major Races – one of the six species that discovered jump drive independently and established mighty interstellar states. The K'Kree's interstellar state, the Two Thousand Worlds, exists to trailing of the Imperium. Under its Steppelord, the Two Thousand Worlds is a deeply conservative polity dedicated to stability and protecting its people from outsiders, particularly meat-eaters, whose scent reminds the K'Kree of the long-defeated G'naak (who are akin to bogeymen in their culture). Revulsion of carnivores is so great among the K'Kree that, for example, they demand that ambassadors from other species abstain from eating meat for months before they will even receive them, among many other idiosyncratic practices.

Like their ancestors, the K'Kree prefer to travel in large groups. Among them, a desire to be alone – never mind enjoyment of it – is taken as a sign of insanity. They likewise hate enclosed spaces. All K'Kree would, by human standards, be considered claustrophobic, which is why their spacecraft are large and feature wide corridors and high ceilings. Alien Module 2 makes a good effort of explaining the mindset of the K'Kree and how it affects both their everyday behavior and the diplomacy of the Two Thousand Worlds. The K'Kree are a very alien race and rather unlike most of the nonhuman aliens encountered in popular science fiction.

That's a big part of why I hold Alien Module 2 in such high regard. At the same time, there's no denying that the K'Kree aren't really suitable for use as player characters – at least not easily. The module includes rules for doing so, along with an adventure designed to be used with K'Kree player characters. However, in my experience, it's just not practical in the long term, since K'Kree travel in large numbers, saddling a group of PCs with lots of additional servants, followers, family, and hangers-on that can get in the way of ordinary play. 

Of course, that's the price for creating a genuinely alien species, with an unusual society, culture, and psychology. The K'Kree do, however, make for very memorable NPCs and in that role they're among the most interesting beings in Charted Space. The Traveller campaign in which I'm playing is set in a region of space not far from the Two Thousand Worlds and, while we've not yet run into the K'Kree directly, their presence is nevertheless felt. Indeed, the player characters have some trepidation about the possibility that these militant vegetarians might one day take notice of what's happening in our little corner of the universe. Good times!

Retrospective: Challenge

The first issue of The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society appeared in 1979 as a (theoretically) quarterly magazine devoted to GDW's science fiction RPG, Traveller. At that time, Traveller was the company's only actively supported roleplaying game, so it made sense that its sole periodical would be devoted wholly to it. With the publication of Twilight: 2000 in 1984, however, the situation had changed and GDW decided that a gaming magazine with a wider scope was needed. 

That magazine was Challenge and its advent in 1986 was initially controversial, at least among Traveller fans. Its inaugural issue was not designated "No. 1" but rather "No. 25," on the basis that it was a continuation of JTAS rather than being its replacement. This was done in large part to assuage the concerns of Traveller fans who feared that GDW was abandoning their beloved game in favor of Twilight: 2000. To further allay their fears, issue no. 25 devoted all of its Traveller articles in a separate section in its center pages that mimicked the format and layout of the original JTAS. Loren Wiseman's opening editorial even notes that "the center 8 pages are designed to be removed" by "those not interested in Twilight: 2000," thereby preserving the illusion that JTAS still existed.

This situation did not last long, however. The combination of the popularity of Twilight: 2000 and the release of its sci-fi sequel, Traveller: 2300, later that same year put an end to this internal JTAS section after only three issues. If GDW received any complaints about this, the company could quite correctly argue that the coverage of Traveller had not decreased on an issue-by-issue basis, only that other GDW games were now placed on equal footing. Moreover, given that Challenge was appearing bimonthly rather than quarterly as JTAS had been, the amount of new Traveller material released each year was actually increasing. It helped, too, that the quality of Challenge's Traveller articles remained high, thanks in no small part to the many JTAS writers who continued to pen material for the new magazine.

Even so, the Traveller fans were correct in their original anxieties. As time went on and GDW expanded its catalog of roleplaying games, the amount of space devoted to Traveller – and eventually its ill-named successor, MegaTraveller – started to decline. The articles remained quite good, by and large, but there were a lot fewer of them, a situation that only worsened when Challenge expanded its coverage yet again, in 1988, to include non-GDW games, like Battletech, Star Trek, and Star Wars, among many others. It was around this time that the magazine changed its subtitle from "GDW's Magazine of Adventure Gaming" to "GDW's Magazine of Futuristic Gaming" (and, later, "The Magazine of Science-Fiction Gaming"), since its focus remained RPGs that could broadly be called "sci-fi" in their content.

Devoted fan of Traveller that I was – and am – I was never as put off by this expansion of scope as were some of my older contemporaries. The mere fact that I now had a gaming magazine devoted solely to science fiction games was more than enough to win my allegiance. Challenge was thus an excellent companion to Dragon, whose focus on SF had always been spotty (all the more so after the ending of the "Ares Section" not long after Challenge first appeared). Consequently, it soon became my favorite RPG periodical. 

Challenge was also where I first tried my hand at professional RPG writing. My very first published credit, "Contact: Answerin" appeared in issue no. 55 (December 1991) and, over the next few years, right up until the magazine's demise in 1995, my byline appeared quite regularly in its pages. This fact probably plays some role in my affection for Challenge, though not all of it. The magazine excelled in the area of adventures, with a good amount of its regular content being clever scenarios for a wide variety of SF RPGs. It also included equally clever rules expansions and options, which were just as welcome at my table. 

Until I started writing this post, I'd half-forgotten how much I'd enjoyed reading and writing for Challenge. As with my thoughts about its publisher, GDW, thinking back on Challenge – and the times during which it flowered – ushers in some feelings of wistfulness and melancholy in me. Ah, well ...

Retrospective: Tarsus

A common knock against the official Third Imperium setting for GDW's Traveller is that it's simply too big. Encompassing 11,000 worlds spread over nearly 300 subsectors, there's simply no way a referee can make use of it all except in a cursory way. Even a single sector, like the Spinward Marches or Solomani Rim, still contains close to 500 planets. The end result is that, for all its breadth and diversity, the Third Imperium will be little than an abstraction in most campaigns that make use of it. 

There's more than a little truth to this criticism, though, at the same time, I also feel that using the Third Imperium as a loose backdrop is exactly what the referee should be doing. Focusing too much on large scale sector-wide events, like the Fifth Frontier War, is precisely where GDW went wrong in its later development of Traveller. In my opinion, the company – and the game – would have been much better served by focusing instead on smaller scale details, such as individual subsectors or even worlds.

While the much celebrated The Traveller Adventure did the former, 1983's Tarsus: World Beyond the Frontier did the latter and did it very well indeed. Located in the unaligned District 268 subsector of the Spinward Marches, Tarsus is a non-industrial, agricultural world that's home to some 2.2 million human beings. Consequently, it's something of a backwater planet, though it maintains economic ties to both the Imperium, which it hopes to join one day, and other nearby interstellar powers, like the Sword Worlds. 

Tarsus was released as a boxed set and included a 24-page World Data book (written by Marc Miller and Loren Wiseman) that detailed the planet, its history, local government, ecology, and more; a color map of the planet; a color map of an important region of the planet (Tangle Wald); a map of District 268 subsector; five 4-page adventure pamphlets; and a dozen pre-generated character cards. It's an excellent collection of material, attractively presented. Taken together, the referee has more than enough information to provide many months' worth of adventure on Tarsus itself, even longer if the characters eventually expand their scope beyond the planet itself to its neighbors in the subsector.

With its focus on agriculture and ranching nobbles (a large, horned, grazing animal), Tarsus has a vaguely Western feel to it. The whole planet reminded me of an unincorporated territory of the 19th century United States, on the verge of consideration for statehood, with various interests lobbying one way or the other. Indeed, there's much discussion of the voting system employed on Tarsus, which not only allows the open buying and selling of votes but also the buying and selling of them by newcomers to Tarsus. By law, only individuals can hold votes, though they may hold multiple votes, and may freely vote on behalf of others, like offworld corporations, that cannot themselves legally vote. It's a situation ripe for political machinations and corruption – not to mention adventure.

Of course, there's more to Tarsus than political maneuvering. The planet is a giant sandbox, with plenty of scope for a variety of approaches to its content. Player characters could, for example, become involved in nobble ranching, working for or against a megacorporation, exploring the Tangle Wald, cataloging the planet's native life, and more. There are also several flashpoints for armed conflict, as well as mercenary company in need of new recruits. This is in addition to the presence of many local patrons, a staple of Traveller adventures and a good way to kick off a campaign or extended adventure on this frontier world.

If one were to complain about Tarsus, it's that the information it presents about the planet and its conflicts is diffuse. The referee needs to read through all the included material several times to get a good handle on it, but, to my mind, that's the job of any good referee. Having done so, the referee should have little trouble keeping things the players and their characters engaged for a long time. With so many worlds in the Third Imperium, Tarsus is thus a good example of the kind of thing I wish GDW had done more often: fleshing out a single world in sufficient detail to demonstrate how much fun could be had be spending an extended period of time there. The game is called Traveller for a reason, to be sure; that doesn't mean the characters should always be on the move, Tarsus is a world worth visiting.

Retrospective: The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society

My love for GDW's roleplaying game of science fiction adventure in the far future, Traveller, is well known. Traveller stands proudly alongside Dungeons & Dragons as the RPG I've played the most over the years and indeed whose very approach to its subject matter has thoroughly shaped my own. My very first forays into professional writing were for Traveller – technically, its 1987 successor, the infelicitously named MegaTraveller – and the my sole stab at an original game is itself a love letter to Marc Miller's magnum opus. 

I could (and have) written at length about the glories of Traveller and the company that birthed it. Among those glories is its official periodical, The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society, whose first issue appeared in 1979. Over the course of six years and twenty-five issues, JTAS provided fans of Traveller with a steady stream of new content for their adventures and campaigns, as well as fleshing out GDW's Third Imperium setting. Though the exact content of each issue varied, there were many recurring features, such as:

• Amber Zone: Taking its name from the travel classification indicating a world where travel is cautioned, this feature presented short adventure situations or scenarios.
• Contact! One of my favorites, this feature offered up new sophont races, both human and non-human.
• Bestiary: Closely related was this feature, which provided alien animals to the referee.
• Ship's Locker: Sci-fi gamers are notorious for their love of new equipment and that's what Ship's Locker served up.

In addition, many issues included answers to common rules questions, articles for the referee to aid his running of the game, and longer articles fleshing out a locale or starship, usually with maps. JTAS also occasionally provided "modules," which were pull-out sections that detailed rules expansions, such as merchants and trading or exotic atmospheres. There was such a wide variety of content, almost all of it focused on things useful in play, that nearly every issue is terrific.

Looking back on it from the vantage of the present, another thing that stands out about JTAS is the quality of its articles and the names of its contributors. In addition to GDW stalwarts like editor-in-chief Loren Wiseman, creator Marc Miller, and Frank Chadwick, contributors included future Dragon magazine editor Roger E. Moore, William H. and J. Andrew Keith, John M. Ford, Marc L. Rowland, and Phil Masters – and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Like Traveller itself, JTAS offered a sober, serious, and thoughtful approach to science fiction roleplaying that never lost sight of the need for both wonder and fun. 

If I had any serious complaint about JTAS, it's that, as time went on, the magazine was more focused on developing GDW's Third Imperium setting than in providing new material and options for use by players and referees of homebrew settings. This started to become especially noticeable around issue #9, which kicked off the Fifth Frontier War. Fortunately, editor Loren Wiseman ensured that these setting-specific articles didn't dominate the content, which kept JTAS relevant even to those who were using the Third Imperium. Mind you, at the time, I was a huge fan of the Third Imperium and ate up every scrap of information JTAS doled out about it. In fact, it was my interest in developing the setting that eventually led me to submit my own articles, the first of which appeared in the successor to JTAS, Challenge.

At any rate, The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society remains for me a good example of a narrowly-focused gaming periodical that transcended its house organ status. It did more than encourage readers to buy the latest releases from its publisher; it actively encouraged having fun playing Traveller by showing the game's many possibilities. Whether it was trading, exploration, military action, intrigue, or scientific investigation, JTAS provided it on a roughly quarterly basis for the better part of six years. That's no small accomplishment. 

Liege Lord

In my post earlier today on issue #16, I mentioned that Doug Cowie's "Illuminations" column included a hitherto unknown (to me anyway) GDW product called Liege Lord.

As I said, this is the first time I'd ever heard of the existence of this game and it sounds intriguing. Some quick digging revealed that others clearly have better memories than I and recall talk of the game from around the same time (1984). Further poking about turned up a brief mention of the game in Loren Wiseman's "From the Management" column of issue #22 of The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society (1985). (The column is also interesting from a historical standpoint, as it's at the start of the process that would eventually lead to the end of JTAS as a separate periodical and the creation of Challenge magazine)

As tantalizing as these references are, they don't provide much detail. What was Liege Lord exactly and what happened to it?

I'd recently been in contact with Marc Miller, creator of Traveller and one of the founders of the late, great Game Designers' Workshop. I figured that, if anyone would know about Liege Lord, it was he. As it turned out, he shared with me some details about not only Liege Lord but another unpublished fantasy RPG GDW was developing called Companions of the Road. According to Miller, Liege Lord was a "barony creating game" (hence its title) with a focus on "building a castle, mapping the territory, and meeting the needs of the people." Companions of the Road, on the other hand, was about adventurers following an ancient highway system (randomly generated) that led not only to other lands but other worlds (like Faerie). Miller added that, had GDW possessed the manpower necessary to pursue these projects, they would likely have been merged into a single game. Instead, they were abandoned and GDW didn't publish a fantasy game until 1992's Dangerous Journeys (né Dangerous Dimensions).

Information like this is catnip to me. I love hearing about the early development of RPGs, as well as games that never saw the light of day. I'm also an unabashed GDW fanboy. I'm not the least bit surprised that the company began development of several games that never saw the light of day, but, now that I know about the existence of Liege Lord (which sounds a bit like D&D's forgotten endgame turned into its main focus) and Companions of the Road, it's hard not to lament what never was.

Retrospective: 76 Patrons

76 Patrons isn't my favorite Traveller product by a long shot, but it's definitely one of my favorite gaming products. Written by Loren K. Wiseman and first published in 1980, 76 Patrons is, in my opinion, the ultimate supplement for running and maintaining a sandbox-style science fiction campaign. I used the heck out of my copy back in the day and, were I ever to start up a Traveller campaign in the future, you can be sure I'd be looking to 76 Patrons for ideas and inspiration.

In Traveller, you see, there's the concept of a "patron," which is little more than the game's equivalent of the mysterious stranger who meets your characters in an inn and offers them money in exchange for exploring a conveniently-located dungeon. What differentiates the patron from the hackneyed mysterious stranger is that the characters seek out patrons, not the other way around. Indeed, the finding of patrons is one of the key activities of old school Traveller adventurers, which is why there are rules for doing so -- rules, I should add, that include the possibility of the patron's finding the PCs unsuitable to his needs and failing to hire them. It's the sort of the reverse of OD&D; instead of the characters looking for hirelings to assist them, they are the hirelings.

Because of this, a Traveller referee needs to be flexible and create many different potential patrons for the characters to meet and enter negotiations with, some of which might never be used in play. That can be a significant burden on any referee, even a very improvisational one, which is why a supplement like 76 Patrons came in handy. As its name suggests, the book provides 76 different job opportunities (16 of which are actually mercenary tickets requiring the PCs to command military units of varying sizes). These jobs briefly describe the potential patron offering them -- "a newly married couple ... [who] have reason to believe that their respective parents are not pleased with their union" or "a nervous looking gentleman" -- as well as the nature of his offer and the remuneration for succeeding. Each entry also notes any required skills or equipment.

But what really made 76 Patrons useful was that each patron includes up to six different variations on the patron's offer. The referee rolls a die to determine whether, for example, the newly married couple are correct in their suspicions and what action, if any, their parents are taking. This random element not only made it impossible for players who also owned the book to determine in advance the nature of the job, but enabled certain patron listings to be reused again with a little bit of tweaking, thus extending the utility of the supplement. Furthermore, each patron entry served as a model to referees in creating their own patrons on the fly -- a skill all good Traveller referees had to master if they were to keep the campaign from grinding to a halt.

76 Patrons has its flaws, most notably a certain repetitiveness in the nature of many of the jobs offered. Many boil down to some variation on "illegally break into some place to get something," but, then, that's true of a great many scenarios for most RPGs (and literature, come to think of it). I'm willing to overlook such defects, though, because supplements like this were a treasure house of ideas and inspiration. As an inexperienced Traveller referee, they gave me the raw materials I needed to construct adventures for the PCs, as they traveled from place to place without any warning in search of employment. I've lately thought that a similar supplement for fantasy sandbox campaigns might be useful, though, lacking the patron structure of Traveller, it's harder to imagine how this might be achieved. Even so, I continue to regard 76 Patrons quite highly and see it as the kind of useful, no-frills products that we don't see as much these days as we did in days gone by.