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Published Products - Game Designers' Workshop (GDW)

The following Traveller items were published by Game Designer's Workshop between 1977 and the company's shutdown in 1996. Information about the Collector's Edition Reprints of 2000, published by FarFuture Enterprises, can be found at the bottom of this page.

If you see this symbol Review next to a title, it indicates that the item is reviewed in Freelance Traveller, and you may read the review by following the link defined on the symbol.

Core Rules Sets

Core Rules Sets provided the basic information needed to get a Traveller game started. It is possible to run Traveller with only the core rules, but you would miss out on the richness and background of the milieu.

The version of Traveller described in items T1 to T8 is now generally referred to as 'Classic Traveller'

Materials for Classic Traveller

Traveller, now called 'Classic Traveller', was the original version of the Traveller system, first published in 1977.  It lasteduntil about 1985, when MegaTraveller was released.

Books

Books provided additional information that would be useful in Travellergames. This might be basic background information, as in books B0 to B3, below, or additional rules that supplemented or expanded on what was in the core rules.

Supplements

Supplements provided additional background information, and possibly some additional rules. They were often less complete than Books, or focussed in a slightly different way.

Board Games

Board Games took the concepts and background behind Traveller, and applied them to war gaming.

In addition to the above games, two games not published using the Traveller name, but set in the same milieu, were released.

Alien Modules

The Alien Modules provided an in-depth look at the most notable extra-Imperial societies that form part of the background in the Traveller milieu.

Adventures

Adventures provided everything from character definitions to a plot line for a referee to build into a session or a campaign.

Double Adventures

Double Adventures were two adventures, back-to-back in the fashion of some early SF novelette doubles, in a single booklet. The adventures might be, but were not necessarily, related.

Modules

Modules is a catch-all term for information or rules that didn't fit into any of the above categories.

Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society

The Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society was a magazine devoted to Traveller. While there were articles of interest in multiple subject areas in each issue, there was always one main feature article, named and pictured on the cover.

Best of the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society

These four items are compilations of selected articles from the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society.

Special Products

These were products that were available only under special circumstances.

Materials for MegaTraveller

MegaTraveller was the second version of the Traveller system to be released. It incorporated into the core rules some of the more popular extensions to the original Traveller rules, and added the Rebellion to the milieu, to provide more opportunities for player-characters to Do Something Significant. It was mostly compatible with the Classic Traveller system, so players and referees could continue to use the vast wealth of already-published material in their campaigns.

Materials for Traveller: The New Era

Traveller: The New Era was released in 1994. It represented a radical departure from the Traveller of the past, both in terms of the rule set (it used the GDW house system originally created for Twilight: 2000) and in terms of the background for the milieu (creating Virus, the Collapse, and the Reformation Coalition).  It would be the last version of Traveller published before GDW closed its doors in 1996.

Challenge Magazine

Challenge Magazine began its number series with 25 (picking up where Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society stopped with Issue 24). The change was made at the same time as the change from Classic Traveller to MegaTraveller.  Challenge was not devoted exclusively to Traveller, but did have several articles aimed at Traveller in each issue. Challenge ceased publication shortly before Traveller: The New Era was released.

Challenge 25

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Collector's Edition Reprints (by FarFuture Enterprises)

Late in 1999, FarFuture Enterprises decided to make a special collector's edition reprint of the entire set of GDW Classic Traveller materials available to Traveller fans. As described in the news item here on Freelance Traveller, these are to be 8.5"x11", landscape, with two pages of the orignal 'little black book' material per reprint page, and multiple books per volume. The volumes that have so far been published are:

  1. The Books: Books B0 through B8, representing the 'core rules' and character generation supplements, plus the supplement on robots.
  2. The Supplements: Supplements S0 through S13, representing additional rules, additional character generation supplements, and background material.
  3. The Adventures: Adventures A1 through A13, representing pregenerated adventures that referees could run a party through with a minimum of advanced preparation.
  4. The Short Adventures: Double Adventures 1-6, plus additional short adventures not originally published as part of the Double Adventures.
  5. The Games: Snapshot, Mayday, Striker, Imperium, and other boxed games published or intended for publication in association with the Traveller milieu.
  6. JTAS Issues 1-12: The original Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society, which lasted 24 issues.
  7. JTAS Issues 13-24: The rest of the original Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society.
  8. Alien Modules 1-4: Sourcebooks for information on the Vargr, K'kree, Aslan, and Zhodani.
  9. Alien Modules 5-8: Sourcebooks for information on the Droyne, Hivers, Solomani, and Darrians.
  10. JTAS Issues 25-36: These were inserts in the first few issues of Challenge Magazine.

Future volumes are expected to contain the following collections, but the order of publication and contents are subject to change:

Far Future has also issued CD-ROMs with electronic editions of otherwise out-of-print Traveller material.  See their website for more information.

 

This page last updated on 05 March 2023 by Jeff Zeitlin.  ©1998-2023 Jeff Zeitlin
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