Traveller Classic Reprints

moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:35 pm

About a week or so ago, I decided to order myself the reprints of the books and supplements for the Traveller RPG originally done by GDW. To my surprise Far Future Enterprises is having a half-off sale during the month of August so I decided to throw a bit of money their way.

Shipping charges are excellent to boot!

At any rate, it's a good way to get the rulebooks and supplements on the cheap. They compile the various books (volumes 0-8) in one book and they do the same with all the supplements. Both these book compilations together amounted to $31.50 plus shipping. If not interested in the supplements, just the rule book compilation comes to a mere $14.

Worth checking out... they are softcover and the only awkwardness is the format of the book. Since these were originally digest sized, these books show two regular pages per page of the compilation. In other words, the book will be wider than it's height... like the old Battletech manuals that FASA used to put out. But hey... it's a lot cheaper than trying to get the originals.

Here's the link:
http://www.farfuture.net/hardcopy.html

M
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Traveller · Post by **Traveller** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 1:20 pm

They happen to be one of the five Classic Traveller rule sets I own and are a great source of role playing goodness. I stopped picking them up after purchasing The Classic Adventures when formatting errors crept into the product, most notably pages out of order in one short adventure in The Classic Short Adventures making that adventure unreadable.
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concobar · Post by **concobar** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 2:09 pm

I picked these up a few years ago. I like them ok but find i prefer either my hard bound Traveller book or more recently the MGP Traveller.
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moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:40 pm

My first glance into Traveller was the Free RPG day Quick Start done up for 2008. I knew about it for years prior but to be honest, my first exposure to anything GDW was the Twilight 2000 game. I eventually saw a copy of the Mongoose rulebook but I admit I was a bit wary at first having been exposed to earlier Mongoose material.

It's nice to see that they've improved things. The hardback looked interesting enough but I wasn't sure if I was willing to make the investment. I was of the opinion it was another RPG that I would end up picking up that would line my shelf and be untouched.

Then much earlier this year, I noticed the Pocket Edition of the core rule book that Mongoose put out. I saw it new at a very good price (below the US cover price) so I decided to pick it up. Looking through it, I thought this is great stuff but I was dismayed at the job they did to turn this into a pocket book. Obviously everything is shrunk down which shouldn't be too much of a problem but it becomes a problem when the font used for the ship diagrams and charts were smaller than the regular text to begin with. In a couple instances, they are almost unreadable. Thankfully these don't detract much from the rest of the rulebook.

I had thought about just biting the bullet and picking up the hardcover copy since I liked what I saw. I wasn't sure if I should try and recoup some losses by selling off my pocket copy to put a few bucks towards the new purchase. However, since Mongoose was doing other supplements in a manner similar to class Traveller, I decided to just stick with what I had and not make the additional investment.

A few months later, I had heard about the reprints. I knew about the CD compilation that was being sold but not the reprints. I thought that these reprints would satisfy my need for the additional material I would want to have inexpensively. It was dumb luck to make the decision to purchase the reprint compilation when I did since I waited till I had some extra cash banked up in my Paypal account. With the sale, I was able to get all of the material I did (books 0-8 and the 13 supplements) for a price less than the cover price of the Mongoose hardback.

I like the Mongoose version... it seems friendlier and is nicely illustrated looking it over quickly. However, I appreciated the text of the classic version of the game when I started reading it. Both are winners but the hardback is nicer when compared to the slightly unwieldy format of the reprints.

At any rate, I've got a lot of reading ahead of me.
M
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moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:46 pm

Traveller wrote:
They happen to be one of the five Classic Traveller rule sets I own and are a great source of role playing goodness. I stopped picking them up after purchasing The Classic Adventures when formatting errors crept into the product, most notably pages out of order in one short adventure in The Classic Short Adventures making that adventure unreadable.

I wonder if that is part of the reason these are currently OOP. Maybe they were part of a smaller print run... Not sure. However it is good to know -- I had seen this on NKG and thought about getting a copy. Now I'm not so sure. I figure that between the classic books and the supplements, I have enough material to source from to develop all manners of scenarios. That is assuming I actually find the time to play.
M
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moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:48 pm

concobar wrote:
I picked these up a few years ago. I like them ok but find i prefer either my hard bound Traveller book or more recently the MGP Traveller.

Are MGP's and Classic Traveller rulesets close enough to allow for simple conversions? I've only begun looking at the system so I'm understandably curious.

M
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concobar · Post by **concobar** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 6:35 pm

yes. IMO MGP and CT are very very close.
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CKDad · Post by **CKDad** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 11:31 pm

CT to Mongoose Traveller (usually abbreviated MGT, since MegaTraveller has been called MT for years) conversions are really easy. If you stick with the concepts and don't bog down in mechanics, MegaTraveller to MGT conversions should be pretty easy too.
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