LeperColony
Traveller Card Game Dev Team
My dad encountered Traveller while in college in the late 70's. I picked it up in the early/mid 90's. TNE was how I really got in to Traveller.
Think way back - how did you discover Traveller?
- Thread starter Spenser TR
- Start date
I learned how to play Traveller at 11 years old in 1977 without help.
My father owned a hobby store called Hobby City in Oak Park, IL back in the '70s. He had died in 1973 and someone else managed it after but our family owned it for some years afterwards. During the time when we still owned it I was able to get all sorts of gaming at cost, which my allowance loved to no end. By 1977, I had a few wargames here and there like SPI's World War III and such.
I had seen Star Wars a few months earlier and The Hobbit cartoon was just on television. Do you all remember that song "The greatest adventure is what lies ahead?" So a friend of mine had this game called Dungeons and Dragons in a box we were still trying to figure out to play, so when I saw the intriguing black box with red lettering at my dad's store, I said what the hey. Can't be any harder than D&D.
But to an 11 year old, Bard the Guardsman killing Smaug with Black Arrow was cooler than Luke blowing up the Death Star. Even one who likes sci-fi more like me. I guess it's just presentation.
My father owned a hobby store called Hobby City in Oak Park, IL back in the '70s. He had died in 1973 and someone else managed it after but our family owned it for some years afterwards. During the time when we still owned it I was able to get all sorts of gaming at cost, which my allowance loved to no end. By 1977, I had a few wargames here and there like SPI's World War III and such.
I had seen Star Wars a few months earlier and The Hobbit cartoon was just on television. Do you all remember that song "The greatest adventure is what lies ahead?" So a friend of mine had this game called Dungeons and Dragons in a box we were still trying to figure out to play, so when I saw the intriguing black box with red lettering at my dad's store, I said what the hey. Can't be any harder than D&D.
But to an 11 year old, Bard the Guardsman killing Smaug with Black Arrow was cooler than Luke blowing up the Death Star. Even one who likes sci-fi more like me. I guess it's just presentation.
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Back in 1978 or 1979 a friend had introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. It was a good game, but I had always been more into science Fiction then fantasy. So he showed me a new game he had just purchased, Traveller. We spend the next week rolling characters, planets and designing start ships.
My crazy uncle in South San Francisco had too much time and money as well as too little maturity and adult restraints and probably bought every kind of board game, RPG, and miniature known to man (...or woman). He got in on the ground floor in 1977 and exposed me at a frightfully young age to fantasy, science fiction, and the gaming sub-culture in an age where such exposure would inoculate one against dating, common sense, and pretty girls. Despite this strong childhood handicap, I still managed to pretend I was a part of the conventional, mainstream culture, with no mean failure or success. And eventually geeks came to rule the world, making D&D mainstream, TSR an early success, GDW a household name amongst the nerds, and even did things like make Trek cons a thing, invent computers, BBS'es, and make pocket protectors and thick, horn rim glasses not such a bad thing (Thank you, Far Side). I miss my slide rule and calculator watch.
In such a fertile (Dare I say fecund?) nerd-o-geek-ish environment, I came to love Traveller. One of my buddies in the Cold War military, finally met the love of his life and bequeathed me a small box chocked full of gaming goodness and most of the LBB's (He was concentrating on children and a successful marriage). Out of such an age in the 1980's, my deep curiosity about Traveller was born. I started taking notes, writing stories, and building up that box of goodies into a box of RPG goodies plus many mongo Traveller / sci-fi notes. In those days, all sci-fi was Traveller to me. Flash, Buck, Wilma, Luke, Darth, Adama, Starbuck, Kirk, Spock, Trantor, Rico, dirty apes, power armor, Harkonnen, giant ants, 50-ft tall women (in bikinis), walking-talking plants, British time travelers, really bad special effects, Genly Ai... all fodder for Traveller. Not too much has changed.
I watched the Traveller wiki when it was started in the early 2000's and after a number of years watching it develop, I decided in the end of 2014 to start developing it into an even better resource. I wanted much more than it had to offer then. I pretty much learned most things the hard way and ranckled a number of Trav grognards including Don, Thomas, and Rancke (of course)... But, somehow, most of us figured out a way to get along and we all shared the same goal to enjoy Traveller and make Traveller really great again (not a presidential campaign slogan)... It's now 2016. Working on the dream and goal! LOL
"Hello, my name is Maks and I am powerless over CT."
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
In such a fertile (Dare I say fecund?) nerd-o-geek-ish environment, I came to love Traveller. One of my buddies in the Cold War military, finally met the love of his life and bequeathed me a small box chocked full of gaming goodness and most of the LBB's (He was concentrating on children and a successful marriage). Out of such an age in the 1980's, my deep curiosity about Traveller was born. I started taking notes, writing stories, and building up that box of goodies into a box of RPG goodies plus many mongo Traveller / sci-fi notes. In those days, all sci-fi was Traveller to me. Flash, Buck, Wilma, Luke, Darth, Adama, Starbuck, Kirk, Spock, Trantor, Rico, dirty apes, power armor, Harkonnen, giant ants, 50-ft tall women (in bikinis), walking-talking plants, British time travelers, really bad special effects, Genly Ai... all fodder for Traveller. Not too much has changed.
I watched the Traveller wiki when it was started in the early 2000's and after a number of years watching it develop, I decided in the end of 2014 to start developing it into an even better resource. I wanted much more than it had to offer then. I pretty much learned most things the hard way and ranckled a number of Trav grognards including Don, Thomas, and Rancke (of course)... But, somehow, most of us figured out a way to get along and we all shared the same goal to enjoy Traveller and make Traveller really great again (not a presidential campaign slogan)... It's now 2016. Working on the dream and goal! LOL
"Hello, my name is Maks and I am powerless over CT."
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
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