Starfield owes its existence to Traveller, one of the first RPGs

Bethesda Softworks has finally branched out after more than 20 years of making fantasy role playing games, and reimagining Fallout’s universe. StarfieldThis ambitious space opera promises to take you on a journey through over 1,000 different worlds. It’s a tale full of adventure, discovery, wonder, and maybe — just maybe — a touch of the divine. But, to hear director and executive producer Todd Howard tell it, the new science fiction epic wouldn’t be the same without the influence of TravellerThe seminal tabletop pen-and paper role-playing games.

First published by Game Designers’ Workshop in 1977 — just three years after the birth of Dungeons & Dragons — TravellerIt is played even today. Polygon talked to several historians who spoke about the origins of tabletop wargaming and its long-lasting influence on video game design and tabletop game design.

“A lot of people wonder what would happen if Dungeons & Dragons didn’t exist,” said Stu Horvath, founder and publisher of Unwinnable, in an interview with Polygon. The book is titled “The Unwinnable Game”. Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to MothershipMIT Press will release a book on October 1st. “Would role-playing games still happen?

“I think that role-playing games were sort of inevitable,” Horvath continued. “I think that there were a lot of moving parts in the field at the time that were driving toward this sort of game, and I think that if TSR didn’t do it [then] Game Designers’ Workshop would have probably [made]The first Role-Playing Game with Traveller.”

Traveller takes place in humanity’s distant future, where ambitious entrepreneurs and adventurers make their way among the stars. It is an open-ended game, where players can create a galaxy they want. Mechanically, it shares almost nothing in common with D&D — outside of initially being published as three small chapbooks.

“It is the first role-playing game that came out that is from just a different design lineage from Dungeons & Dragons,” Horvath said. “Everything else up to that point is strictly derivative of D&D. […] It’s a hack. Traveller comes and it is completely new, and if you look at that black box, it’s really different from everything else that’s out there.”

The first printed copy of the core sourcebook for the Traveller system, Traveller: Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far Future. This first edition is signed and numbered by author Marc Miller, who loaned it to Gen Con for display at the 50th, 20 — This is the first print copy of The Core Sourcebook. *Traveller*, as shown in 2017 at the 50th Gen Con’s anniversary museum. Jon Peterson was the co-curator of this exhibit on the Lucas Oil Stadium floor in Indianapolis.

Horvath said that at its heart, the book is about a fundamental truth. Traveller It is very simple to learn. When TSR was trying to wrap players’ heads around what THAC0 meant, GDW just wanted you to roll a few of the six-sided dice that you probably already had just lying around the house.

“It’s a really simple system,” he said. “It’s just two d6. They are rolled. You add them. You have modifiers in both directions, and you’re just looking to beat an eight. That’s it. That’s the whole resolution system.

Cover art for Twilight: 2000 shows a small squad of three moving along a train line past a downed helicopter. The light is dim and blue, with a flare burning in the distance.

“It is so feather light,” Horvath continued. “If you read the original rules, it has so much more in common with modern rules-light design theory than it has with anything else that is before or immediately after it in the late ’70s. It’s just a fantastically light game.”

The team at GDW was able to achieve some amazing things in character design using that system. The key conceit behind Traveller’s character creation system is that each and every player at the table has had a full and exciting life prior to showing up to game night. The tables simulate the military experiences of players or their experience as an interstellar Merchant Marine. They learn the necessary skills to make interesting and viable characters. It’s a style of character creation still embraced by successor games, as showcased by Free League Publishing’s elegant remaster of Twilight: 2000.

“You’re signing your character up for tours of duty,” Horvath said. “Then you kind of roll through a couple options and tables that will develop, that give you skills. Then you can play in your free time or [weapon skills from learning] ships’ gunnery. You also might see action and get killed before you actually play the game.”

The game’s other legacy, explained Jon Peterson, the bestselling author of Game Wizards: The Epic Battle for Dungeons & DragonsIts focus on exploration and starship building is unique. That fixation, he said, comes from Game Designers’ Workshop’s experience in “space empire games” — sprawling, complex wargames gaining popularity around the same time.

“GDW was a traditional wargaming company that clearly just got hit by the train that was D&D,” Peterson told Polygon. “After Star TrekIn 1966, there was a bumper collection of science-fiction games. At that time, science fiction fans were already very tightly intertwined with DiplomacyPostal fandom, and in particular the players who played as postal Diplomacy.

“War of the Empires by Tullio Proni is a game, incidentally, Gary Gygax played and was engaged in as early as 1966 and indeed did his own revision to it in 1969,” Peterson said. “And these games were really kind of focused on the idea that you had multiple alien species, usually including humans, that were exploring some kind of a star system. These were 4X games, as I would argue. The first thing you did was find a new planet. You then mined it to get resources and used that for building more ships. You would colonize a planet, then you’d spread more scouts ships to explore other places. That whole colonization narrative emerged, and it’s quite an early game scene.”

“Traveller isn’t very much interested in combat,” Horvath said. “Combat’s there, but combat gets you killed. Then your character dies. And, you know, that’s not the point. It’s about travel. It’s about exploration. It’s about seeing what the galaxy holds for you. There are a different set of problems. The character creation takes care of all that. Just play! Traveller and be traders — merchantmen — and that’s cool and different.”

A unique feature of TravellerThe universe generation is an example of a pseudo-procedural system that allows entire areas of space to be detailed with just a handful of dice.

“I will be able to roll to determine whether this particular hex has a world in it and if so, what planetary system that is associated with that world,” Peterson said. “Then I’ll be able to roll for what tech level that is, and what you’re likely to find if you’re going to explore this. These sub-sectors are generated, then the players’ characters can be teamed with a starship captain. [and] make their way to these places and can have adventures in them as they explore.”

The sophisticated celestial stone tumbler that is at the core of this spacefaring video game was directly inspired by the system. Elite DangerousThis includes an accurate depiction all 400 billion of the stars that make up our Milky Way Galaxy.

The biggest impact is the one that occurs in your own home. TravellerThe concept of a continuous campaign would be a game changer for gaming in general. D&D and other early role-playing games were originally experienced very much as one-off, adversarial events with judges (called referees) adjudicating the action from round to round. The focus was on surviving the meat grinder, rather than on telling an engaging story. TravellerThis would forever change the way players view TTRPGs and their industry.

“Traveller [is among the first games that] distinguishes between a scenario and a campaign, I think very specifically,” Peterson said. “It says you can play TravellerIt’s not a scenario. You know, the people who survive seem to really love these characters and want to have them involved in other actions. People identify with these characters, which is why they have a campaign feature. Traveller.”

The game was the first to let players tell their stories in their own words.

“But there’s no prescription that the campaign has to be about anything, or if there’s any particular secret force pulling the strings — other than the referee, of course, who is always pulling the strings in these games,” Peterson said. “At least in its earliest, in its 1977 version, you don’t really get much of a sense of what [the story of Traveller is], because it’s really up to the players to sit around the table and to ask what kind of a game they want to have.”

A party stands on a desolate planet. A woman stands in front, pointing with a steady hand. Beside here is a man in combat armor and a robot holding a small SMG. To her right are two obviously alien creatures, both hairy and armored.

Later versions are also available. TravellerThe lore of the Third Imperium was imposed on them. This modern day storyline is based on the Third Imperium. It was a loosely-aligned confederation with many diverse factions. Mongoose Publishing still produces and sells content today for the fans of Traveller.

“When we came along,” said Mongoose co-founder Matthew Sprange, “we basically took the core mechanics of the original TravellerAnd polished them up, making them more friendly to the 21st Century. […] Mechanically, it’s very similar, but it’s a lot smoother to run now. As far as the Traveller universe, we’ve gone a lot heavier into storylines. Before, the adventures were usually 16 or 30 pages long and very basic. Now we’ve got these epic, sprawling campaigns that might take you two or three years to play through in real time.”

Sprange stated that one of the newest campaigns to be popular is called Pirates of DrinaxThe three-volume collectible edition is available as a slipcase and as PDF.

A two-page spread from the Traveller Core Rulebook 2022 Update. It shows a sunrise on a distant moon over a populated system. Two triangular starships race toward the terminator.

A two-page spread from the Traveller 2022 update that shows armor. Battle dress is displayer here, with a full face helm, backpack, and bright, aluminum colored armor. Also shows is a lighter form of combat armor that mainly protects the head and torso.

A two-page spread from the Traveller 2022 rules update showing how vehicles are handles. There are rules for taking on passengers, operating in deep space along, and for making repairs. A small image of a ship in drydock is included.

A sample starship included in the Traveller 2022 rules update. The mercenary cruiser has eight decks, and is roughly spherical in shape.

“At its core, [modern-day Traveller]It is a good idea to use a bilingual translator [the] age of sail in space,” Sprange said. “The distances are large. There’s no faster-than-light communication, everything travels at the speed of spaceships. What happens if there is a major war? [out] inside of an empire, the capital isn’t going to hear about it for months. And of course, it takes months to make a response to that.”

“If you think of it along the lines of Grand Theft Auto,” Sprange continued, “you’ve got a storyline running all the way through it.”

Sure, it’s the original Traveller, now called Classic TravellerFor ease of comparison is still on sale. For far less than the price of Bethesda’s next massively single-player game, you could experience one of the most influential TTRPGs of our time by building a galaxy and making it your own — just like a baby-faced Todd Howard did so many decades ago.

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