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gridloreTraveller made it's debut 31 years ago today!
THE TRAVELLER SAGA
by Douglas & Kirsten Berry
(ttto: American Pie, by Don McLean)
A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how the first game stirred my soul
Known Space on the StarForce map
A fist of stolen dice and that [1]
Was all it took to make my dreams take flight
Every weekend at the game store
With my ten hard-earned bucks to buy more [2]
Now twenty years have flown past
With wars and life and mishaps
I know I'm not that wide-eyed teen
But I still look up and I still dream
Whatever comes I do believe
I still will play this game
(Chorus)
So bye bye, I'm goin' Travellin' tonight
The rules set may be changing
But the concept's all right
And it lets me travel through the stars and through time
Saying: Gonna play this game 'til I die
Gonna play this game 'til I die
Do you remember when CT
Was only Books 1,2, and 3
and a homespun setting that you wrote
Do you recall Bill and Andrew Keith
Early FASA and JG [3]
All the products out to help us play
And slowly the Imperium came to light
With enemies for us to fight
Then in Supplement 3
We met the Zhodani
It was a glorious time of change and growth
And we couldn't ever get enough
So we sat down and wrote our own stuff
And I still played this game
I told my mother...
(Chorus)
Then came some folks called DGP
About as passionate as you or me
About this universe we'd made
They filled in all the holes and cracks
They fixed some rules, they wrote a patch [4]
And changed the way the game was played
But GDW had a plan
Strephon died at an assassin's hand
The Imperium fell to war
Much worse than before [5]
And in '87 we got MT
To play through this galactic catastrophe
But the new rules didn't mean much to me
'cause I still played the game
I told my girlfriend.
(Chorus)
For six years, we played through Hard Times
While pretenders fled and planets died
And we wondered how it all would end [6]
Then we got the horrid news
about a Virus that would use
any means to kill humaniti
TNE made its bright debut
While the Old Timers hissed and booed
Much dissent was spoken
The TML was broken!
And while X-Boat waxed on days gone by [7]
GDW up and died
The hard core fans sent up a cry
They can't have killed our game [8]
They told their children...
(Chorus)
Then Marc Miller took back control
And promised Traveller like we had before
But did they try to push too fast?
For T4 was a sorry mess
Barely edited and the rest
Of the releases, well they didn't shine much more [9]
The authors grumbled we've not been paid
Imperium Games quietly sped away [10]
Then Loren brought our reprieve
A deal with Evil Steve
A return to all those Classic themes
Of hard-sf and future dreams
It may be GURPS, but what the beans?
I still will play this game [11]
We'll tell our grandkids...
(Chorus)
(slowly)
Now twenty years and more have past
From first edition to the last
But the setting is the game to me
I went down to my local store
Where I bought the first books years before
But that store now is part of history [12]
And nowadays the kids play Magic
Glitterboys or Vampires tragic
No more the sound of parties-
Instead, the hum of PCs
And books for which I once did lust
Sit on the shelf collecting dust
But I have them and that's enough
For still, I play this game
(Chorus, slowly)
(Chorus)
NOTES:
[1] My very first game was played on the map from SPI's StarForce game, using Larry Niven's Known Worlds as the setting. Yes, the very first thing Craig did was develop a three-dimensional jump system. Tells you something about him. Besides the two dice provided in the box, we raided every board game in the house for extra six-siders. Craig was the Referee, and I played Beowulf Shaeffer. I still remember how the last session ended. I was mind-controlled by a Grog.
[2] This a personal remembrance; as a teenager, I would make $10 a week for cleaning the house. I would then spend two hours on buses to blow the remaining eight bucks on Traveller products.
[3] FASA (publishers of Shadowrun and Battletech) started out as one of the tiny Traveller support publishers. The correct pronunciation (for purposes of this filk, anyway) is FAH-zah. JG, For Judges' Guild, is pronounced Jay-Gee.
[4] Digest Group Publications was yet another fan-run Traveller support company. The difference was that they did incredibly good work. For a time in the mid-80s, they were responsible for most of the quality Traveller material out there. Sadly, their work is tied up by the owner of the copyrights at this point.
[5] In 1987 GDW killed off the Emperor Strephon to ignite the misnamed Rebellion setting for MegaTraveller. The idea was to both stimulate the setting (players had complained that they Imperium was too static), and to provide a radical change to support the new rules.
[6] The eventual resolution of Rebellion was a hot topic on the early Traveller Mailing List.
[7] The use of GDW's House System, plus the odd nature of Virus, and the complete change of setting and assumptions caused a major rift in Traveller Fandom. Screaming flame wars were not uncommon. The Traveller Mailing List was actually broken into two separate lists: X-boat, for classic/MT only, and the TML for all versions of Traveller.
[8] In 1995, Game Designers' Workshop closed its doors after twenty years in business. This of course caused much debate on the fate of Traveller.
[9] Marc Miller's Traveller (aka T4) was an ungodly mess of poor editing, awful layout, questionable artwork. In edition, it quickly became evident that few of the people at Imperium Games had any appreciation of Traveller's setting and feel.
[10] To the best of my knowledge, nobody was ever paid for any freelance work done for IG. I wasn't.
[11] When GURPS Traveller was announced, some people took great exception to the very idea of learning GURPS. Others took a more casual approach.
[12] The Game Table, Campbell, California. Remains the best gaming store I ever knew. Closed sometime in the mid-eighties while I was in the Army. I still remember drawing maps of the place for my mother around Christmas time, along with detailed lists of what I had, what I wanted, and what I was going to buy before Christmas anyway.
THE TRAVELLER SAGA
by Douglas & Kirsten Berry
(ttto: American Pie, by Don McLean)
A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how the first game stirred my soul
Known Space on the StarForce map
A fist of stolen dice and that [1]
Was all it took to make my dreams take flight
Every weekend at the game store
With my ten hard-earned bucks to buy more [2]
Now twenty years have flown past
With wars and life and mishaps
I know I'm not that wide-eyed teen
But I still look up and I still dream
Whatever comes I do believe
I still will play this game
(Chorus)
So bye bye, I'm goin' Travellin' tonight
The rules set may be changing
But the concept's all right
And it lets me travel through the stars and through time
Saying: Gonna play this game 'til I die
Gonna play this game 'til I die
Do you remember when CT
Was only Books 1,2, and 3
and a homespun setting that you wrote
Do you recall Bill and Andrew Keith
Early FASA and JG [3]
All the products out to help us play
And slowly the Imperium came to light
With enemies for us to fight
Then in Supplement 3
We met the Zhodani
It was a glorious time of change and growth
And we couldn't ever get enough
So we sat down and wrote our own stuff
And I still played this game
I told my mother...
(Chorus)
Then came some folks called DGP
About as passionate as you or me
About this universe we'd made
They filled in all the holes and cracks
They fixed some rules, they wrote a patch [4]
And changed the way the game was played
But GDW had a plan
Strephon died at an assassin's hand
The Imperium fell to war
Much worse than before [5]
And in '87 we got MT
To play through this galactic catastrophe
But the new rules didn't mean much to me
'cause I still played the game
I told my girlfriend.
(Chorus)
For six years, we played through Hard Times
While pretenders fled and planets died
And we wondered how it all would end [6]
Then we got the horrid news
about a Virus that would use
any means to kill humaniti
TNE made its bright debut
While the Old Timers hissed and booed
Much dissent was spoken
The TML was broken!
And while X-Boat waxed on days gone by [7]
GDW up and died
The hard core fans sent up a cry
They can't have killed our game [8]
They told their children...
(Chorus)
Then Marc Miller took back control
And promised Traveller like we had before
But did they try to push too fast?
For T4 was a sorry mess
Barely edited and the rest
Of the releases, well they didn't shine much more [9]
The authors grumbled we've not been paid
Imperium Games quietly sped away [10]
Then Loren brought our reprieve
A deal with Evil Steve
A return to all those Classic themes
Of hard-sf and future dreams
It may be GURPS, but what the beans?
I still will play this game [11]
We'll tell our grandkids...
(Chorus)
(slowly)
Now twenty years and more have past
From first edition to the last
But the setting is the game to me
I went down to my local store
Where I bought the first books years before
But that store now is part of history [12]
And nowadays the kids play Magic
Glitterboys or Vampires tragic
No more the sound of parties-
Instead, the hum of PCs
And books for which I once did lust
Sit on the shelf collecting dust
But I have them and that's enough
For still, I play this game
(Chorus, slowly)
(Chorus)
NOTES:
[1] My very first game was played on the map from SPI's StarForce game, using Larry Niven's Known Worlds as the setting. Yes, the very first thing Craig did was develop a three-dimensional jump system. Tells you something about him. Besides the two dice provided in the box, we raided every board game in the house for extra six-siders. Craig was the Referee, and I played Beowulf Shaeffer. I still remember how the last session ended. I was mind-controlled by a Grog.
[2] This a personal remembrance; as a teenager, I would make $10 a week for cleaning the house. I would then spend two hours on buses to blow the remaining eight bucks on Traveller products.
[3] FASA (publishers of Shadowrun and Battletech) started out as one of the tiny Traveller support publishers. The correct pronunciation (for purposes of this filk, anyway) is FAH-zah. JG, For Judges' Guild, is pronounced Jay-Gee.
[4] Digest Group Publications was yet another fan-run Traveller support company. The difference was that they did incredibly good work. For a time in the mid-80s, they were responsible for most of the quality Traveller material out there. Sadly, their work is tied up by the owner of the copyrights at this point.
[5] In 1987 GDW killed off the Emperor Strephon to ignite the misnamed Rebellion setting for MegaTraveller. The idea was to both stimulate the setting (players had complained that they Imperium was too static), and to provide a radical change to support the new rules.
[6] The eventual resolution of Rebellion was a hot topic on the early Traveller Mailing List.
[7] The use of GDW's House System, plus the odd nature of Virus, and the complete change of setting and assumptions caused a major rift in Traveller Fandom. Screaming flame wars were not uncommon. The Traveller Mailing List was actually broken into two separate lists: X-boat, for classic/MT only, and the TML for all versions of Traveller.
[8] In 1995, Game Designers' Workshop closed its doors after twenty years in business. This of course caused much debate on the fate of Traveller.
[9] Marc Miller's Traveller (aka T4) was an ungodly mess of poor editing, awful layout, questionable artwork. In edition, it quickly became evident that few of the people at Imperium Games had any appreciation of Traveller's setting and feel.
[10] To the best of my knowledge, nobody was ever paid for any freelance work done for IG. I wasn't.
[11] When GURPS Traveller was announced, some people took great exception to the very idea of learning GURPS. Others took a more casual approach.
[12] The Game Table, Campbell, California. Remains the best gaming store I ever knew. Closed sometime in the mid-eighties while I was in the Army. I still remember drawing maps of the place for my mother around Christmas time, along with detailed lists of what I had, what I wanted, and what I was going to buy before Christmas anyway.
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no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 02:24 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 03:38 (UTC)The game I used? The 1977 edition of Imperium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperium_%28board_game%29), of course!
*Need you ask whether I intended the pun?
no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 03:46 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 04:05 (UTC)Alas, no room for Ogre's in CT
no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 04:31 (UTC)Hmmm....
no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 04:45 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 07:17 (UTC)But hey, at least I'm over a year older than Traveller. I played it the first time in 1997, but I owned MegaTraveller from something like 1990 or so. Just never found players for it...
no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 12:21 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 12:30 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Jul 2008 14:20 (UTC)http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Astrogators%27_Guide_to_the_Diaspora_Sector
Which I had never heard of before I found it and bought it.
cool!
Date: 31 Aug 2008 04:35 (UTC)