Q: What is this site for?
A: This is site contains background material and information for a new Traveller Role Playing Game (RPG) Campaign, similar in some ways to the one I ran at BU in the mid-80's.  I am also in the process of writing a novel based on some the background material here (but not necessarily Traveller), and I wanted a place to store and organize that material for my own purposes.  (The novel is in it's first draft, and is about 60% complete.  I haven't put as much time into it as I've wanted, though.  Someday maybe I'll finish it, we'll see.)

Q: What is Traveller?
A: For those who are unfamiliar, Traveller is a Role Playing Game similar to Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), but with a science-fiction setting rather than a fantasy setting.  Traveller was originally the property of Games Design Workshop (GDW), but has gone through several publishers.  It is currently in it's fourth incarnation (T4), and is available through Imperium Games. Steve Jackson Games also owns a license to create a Traveller supplement to GURPS (Generic Universal Role Playing System), and if/when I run a future campaign, I plan to use the GURPS system.  In my opinion, the GURPS system offers a much better game system than the current and previous Traveller systems, and has a much larger library of reference material to draw from.

Q: When will this Campaign Begin?
A: I have no idea when, or even if, this will ever be a real game I run.  I'm currently involved in another RPG session, and have lots of other stuff going on.  I'd like to do it at some point, given time and players, but it doesn't look like it's going to be right away.  The alternatives to this include some sort of game run on-line, or some combination of on-line and live play.

Q: What's the relationship between this Campaign and the previous one?
A: For anyone who may know something about the previous campaign, here are some details about how it relates to this one.  First, the setting for this campaign is in a different time and place in the universe than the previous campaign.  None of the player characters from the previous campaign will appear in the new one, at least to begin with (anything of course is possible in a SF campaign).  There may be NPC characters from the previous campaign in the new one, but this too will be very limited.  Some of the concepts, technology, and ideas from the previous campaign will carry over into the new one as well.   Another difference is that in the previous campaign, I strived to create all material myself, including adventure settings, ships, worlds (partly because I had the time, and mostly because I didn't have the money to buy lots of supplements).  I do not have anywhere near that amount of time now, but I have collected a lot of stuff over the past 15 years, so I plan to weave in pre-designed material from various sources, including various versions of Traveller, GURPS, and other SG game systems.

Q: I'm interested in the Campaign, but I can't make it to a live game session.  Can I still be involved?
A: Absolutely.  There are several possible scenarios here. Someone could assume the part of an organization or group in the campaign, and provide regular input and decisions on behalf of that area, perhaps through some web-based mechanism we could invent (Xboat news service).  Another possibility is networked gaming; we have experimented with having people use regular and/or voice chat as part of our regular D&D game, and it's worked to varying degrees of success.  The last possibility is to create a totally web-based campaign, but that's probably not something we could do right away; it involves a lot of development I can't get done quickly.

Q: Where does the material for this web site / Campaign come from?
A: Many sources. Most of the details in the reference material come from the background of the book I've been working on, however it has been mixed with pieces of existing Traveller settings, particularly Traveller: The New Era concepts and ideas.  Some planet reference info, including many of the (as yet unpublished on this site) sector and subsector maps come from original Traveller and third-party game references, including data from Group Digest Publications survey data.
    Background artwork is largely courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Hubble Heritage Museum.  Planetary globe artwork is original by me, developed using Corel Draw and Photopaint.  Other figures and pictures were lifted off the net and other places in modified and unmodified form; SF artwork by various artists usually retains it's signature where shown (like on this page, for example)
    Background music (yes, there's music - if you can't hear it, you're missing the fun, try IE instead of Netscape; it's a little better about running multimedia plugins) comes from various sites around the net, all of it supposedly free but probably used without permission from it's authors.