After creating the Index to Traveller: Out of the Box, I have been reading. I started reading some of the “big picture” articles, like this one… TRAVELLER: Out of the Box–The Peculiar Lack of Science-Fiction in Original Traveller.

There’s a lot to talk about in this article. His point, made in numerous of his posts, that Traveller was originally intended to have no published setting, always strikes home with me.

I have often said that when we (our group) was playing Traveller in highschool we didnt' know what we were doing. We didn’t know the rules. Our referee, who had an incredible imagination and ability to flow and improvise, didn’t seem to know the rules that well. And I’ve said that while we had fun with our games, the games probably weren’t that good.

I think I’ve changed my mind. I think that even with all our lack of whatever it was we lacked our game were actually great. Our referee was great. In my hubris I didn’t understand the he was using the rules exactly as they were intended.

By the time we started playing, the Third Imperium setting was certainly at least partially published. I don’t think we had any of those books. I might have had Research Station Gamma, but that was about it. We had the LBBs, Mercenary, and High Guard. And Citizens of the Imperium.

Our referee gamed with some older guys. In classic late 80s/early80s nerd style, one of those guys had created a computer program to randomly generate planets and create the star map. That’s what we used. That’s it. No lore. No Cannon. No bullshit.

Our characters flew around in their ship, visited multiple planets per game, got into trouble, caused trouble, and had fun. Once we all read some of the Well World books by Jack Chalker. We decided to seek out the Well World and get transformed into minotaur’s or mutants or whatever. It wasn’t in the rules but we did it anyway. One guy had a sword that was 1 molecule thick and could cut through nearly anything. That also was not in the rules, but again we did it anyway.

We, the players and the referee, filled in the science fiction blanks in the tech level charts and did the kind of SF we wanted to play.

I think the campaign I currently run is really good. I think it’s the best RPG campaign I’ve ever run ( think the same about our D&D 5e campaign that I run). It is really our campaign. The players add just as much to it. I just set the stage. I love it, and the idea of ever NOT running it simply doesn’t compute for me. I mean - to the point I want to live as long as possible just to keep the campaign going. But thinking about it in relation to my new understanding of our old games from high school, I’d like to channel a bit more of that youthful chaos into it. Those - were - good - games.