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How did you get started in Traveller?

No longer a contributor to this board.
 
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I saw the coolest box in the (only) store selling fun games when I was in middle school. Then I kept buying the LBBs as they came out.

Anyone else have to tape the bindings on the books?
 
I first came to Traveller via TNE, at the time I was deep into Dark Conspiracy, so got it for a more sci-to angle! Anyway after the group and campaign splintered I regressed and started looking to the original and found CT and never looked back or forward! Bought MgT, and T20 when they came out, but by that time RL got in the way, but im back on the LBB's now writing a campaign, have a couple of interested players, and having good 'ol fun generating stuff!
 
Assigned to Hill AFB in 1979. Nice gaming store just outside the West gate had a gaming room set up for whatever the guys/gals wanted to play. We did a lot of D&D then I saw Traveller on the shelf and bought it instantly. I'm a SciFi fan from way back in very early grade school. I read the rules and made a character. Scout of course as I was one I could relate. The D&D guys transitioned easily so we played each about 50%. One of many things I liked was that playing over time didn't turn you into a demi-god like D&D. I picked up tons of GDW stuff over the years and still have most of it tucked away somewhere. Computer age has made it hard for me to find other round the table rpg gamers but I still pick up books here and there just to read and dream. I'm really looking forward to T5. Hopefully I can track down some gamers.
 
Track me! Track me!

I started in '81 when a friend found the Red Book for Dungeons & Dragons.

After about 3 years of this, a new addition to the group introduced the LBBs and my first character was a Baron.

Since then, I have accumulated a few LBBs myself, along with smatterings of TNE, MegaTraveller, T4, and most of the CT reprints. The FloppyBlackBooks!

I have ran some AD&D play-by-posts, but I crave the around-the-table experience again.

In the meantime, I solo. Am currently, and painfully slowly, kneading together my own bastardization of a Traveller 'verse.
 
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I'm just getting into Traveller with the 5th edition kickstarter. I haven't played any version of it, but I've looked over some of the stuff and it looks interesting enough to buy iy
 
Traveller

1981. Was in a AD&D group (version..LOL) and someone brought Trillion Credit Squadron. 6 months later at ISU met a guy who could ref it. Soon we had a Traveller and AD&D or other RPG game group. It beat partying constantly like my roommate.

I think i started going over to GDW, play testing, etc in 84-5.
 
1977. Spring, after school at the house of a friend home from college. We played Space Pirates who successfully hijacked a passenger liner, then surrendered it after failing to make a getaway with it, then we were promptly thrown out the airlock without vacc suits...
 
My absolute first contact with Traveller must have been early-to-mid 80s. I'd done a lot of random RPGs previously - D&D, Star Frontiers, some homebrew systems - and had a get-together with a bunch of guys from a BBS I frequented. Spotted a copy of Mercenary, recognized it as a game, flipped through it, and promptly forgot about it.

A couple years later, I was wandering through a bookstore, waiting for my mom to finish browsing, and noticed a stack of books with something on the cover about "Free Trader Beowulf". I didn't make any connection to that BBS party, but it was an RPG with rules for creating worlds. I had to have it. I don't remember whether I convinced my mom to buy it or if I saved up and bought it myself, but I got my GDW boxed set and spent many happy hours rolling characters and subsectors, but, for some reason, I never actually got anyone else interested in playing it.
 
1995.

In 1979 or 1980, I visited a local gaming store weekly named the "Sci Fi Emporium" in Phoenix, and saw and browsed a couple of the LBBs. Traveller was all the rage, with their newsletter/flier advertising gaming sessions in-store. I was too young, too cautious to realize how much I would love it. 15 years pass.

1995. A friend at work suggests I would like Traveller. I find out it is the RPG I've been missing all these years. I ended up trading my Magic, The Gathering cards for his secondhand copy of The Traveller Book, and started buying up every used LBB and MT book I can find. Ran games and campaigns weekly from 1995 until 2001. And now I'm brewing a new game for my old group.
 
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Still got any of those subsectors? It's always interesting to see them.

Sadly, no. That would've been mid-to-late 80s and the only thing I have left from back then is the GDW Charts & Tables book, which has seen service in many campaigns, both Traveller and non-Traveller.
 
I think it must have been '78 or '79. I had read a review of Traveller in Panzerfaust magazine and on the basis of that ordered the LBB. I was so excited when Mercenary came out!

Since then I probably bought most of the GDW catalog...
 
Back in the late 70's, my gaming group at the time had been playing a great deal of D&D and AD&D. We were always on the prowl for something new to add to the games, when I came across the little black box version of the game. Being also quite familiar with GDW from my board gaming hobby, I had no trouble deciding to pick it up. And since I was the one who bought it, I got to be the first game master as well. :)

I remember everyone really loving the character generation. I still do to this day. And we had a great deal of fun with many adventures in the Spinward Marches and the 3rd party areas of The Beyond and Vanguard Reaches.
 
Late 70's. Had seen some role-playing done at science-fiction and fantasy conventions in New York City, already subscribed to Strategy and Tactics, and bought Snapshot and the Dungeon boardgame one weekend. Took them home and played with my little brother. His contribution was to buy the Holmes Bluebox D&D game. We played that a little, but my real rpg gaming didn't start until I joined a D&D group in 79. I think I bought the LBBs in 80 or 81, after I'd started running my own 1st Ed AD&D campaign. It ended up going into my campaign rotation, which included AD&D, Gamma World and Call of Cthulhu. Various of my group also started running different games, but I never got to be a Traveller player; always the GM.
 
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