Another two RPG bundle offers - Megatraveller and Traveller: The New Era

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These are both repeat offers, for Megatraveller and Traveller: The New Era:

MegaTraveller

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/2020MegaTrav

MegaTraveller (1987) pushed the Traveller timeline forward and plunged its default setting, the Imperium, into chaos. After a reign of a thousand years that encompassed ten thousand planets, the Imperium splintered into warring factions and a widespread Rebellion in the wake of the seeming assassination of the Emperor, Strephon. Supplements and magazines produced during this era detailed the progression of the Rebellion from the assassination in 1116 to the collapse of large-scale interstellar trade in roughly 1124 (the beginning of the supplement Hard Times). The tabletop RPG also inspired two licensed computer games from Paragon Software, The Zhodani Conspiracy and Quest for the Ancients.

This MegaTraveller Bundle presents the core rules set and almost the entire GDW support line as DRM-free, non-watermarked .PDF ebooks. (We omit one poorly-received supplement, Fighting Ships of the Imperium.) And for this revival we're adding two issues of the Digest Group Publications magazine MegaTraveller Journal. All previous purchasers of the original run also receive the new additions automatically on their Wizard's Cabinet download page and in their DriveThruRPG Library.

We provide each ebook complete in .PDF (Portable Document Format). Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these books have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices.

Ten percent of each purchase of these two offers (after gateway fees) goes to their designated charity, Folding@home.

The total retail value of the titles in this offer is US$136. Customers who pay just US$9.95 get all six titles in this offer's Player Collection (retail value $66) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete MegaTraveller rules in three books (Player's Manual, Referee's Manual, and Imperial Encyclopedia, retail $10 apiece), along with the line's most highly praised supplement, the Rebellion Sourcebook ($10) and two issues of MegaTraveller Journal (retail ($13 each, total $26).

Those who pay more than this offer's threshold (average) price, which is set at $19.95 to start, also get this offer's entire Referee Collection with seven more titles (retail $10 apiece) worth an additional $70, including the Referee's Companion, COACC (Close Orbit and Airspace Control Command), Astrogator's Guide to Diaspora, Hard Times, and the adventures Arrival Vengeance, Assignment: Vigilante, and Knightfall.

Traveller: The New Era

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TNE2020

"The Third Imperium galactic empire provides the setting for Traveller (1977) and its follow-up MegaTraveller (1986). In 1992 publisher Game Designers' Workshop adapted the Traveller setting to its House System introduced in Twilight: 2000 and Dark Conspiracy. Traveller: The New Era moves the timeline forward to show the Imperium destroyed by civil war and a deadly artificial intelligence, the Virus. (Ahem.) Trying to rebuild civilization, explorers venture across the fallen empire, making new contact with worlds cut off for decades from interstellar trade. Most planets are graveyards; the few survivors are low-tech and xenophobic. Many are ruled by TEDs (technologically elevated dictators), elites with access to a small cache of high-tech weaponry with which they control the population. But vigorous survivors are forging a better, more vibrant history across ten thousand worlds. In the New Era, the future starts now.

This offer presents the 1993 Deluxe Edition of the TNE rules along with almost all the key GDW-era supplements. We provide each ebook complete in .PDF (Portable Document Format). Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these books have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices.

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to these two offers' designated charity, Folding@home.

The total retail value of the titles in this offer is US$180. Customers who pay just US$14.95 get all five titles in this offer's Starter Collection (retail value $70) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:

• Traveller: The New Era Deluxe Edition (retail price $30): The complete 386-page rulebook plus many maps and play aids. Includes the 160-page technical sourcebook Fire Fusion & Steel.
• Survival Margin, World Tamer's Handbook, and Vampire Fleets (retail $10 apiece): Three essential setting sourcebooks.
• TNE Players' Forms (retail $10): Fourteen sheets that let you organize all the stuff in the rising new empire.

Those who pay more than this offer's threshold (average) price, which is set at $24.95 to start, also get this offer's entire Bonus Collection with twelve more titles worth an additional $110:

• The Regency government in the Spinward Marches keeps the Imperial dream alive in two sourcebooks: Keepers of the Flame and the Regency Combat Vehicle Guide (retail $10 apiece).
• The complete four-book set of Star Vikings (retail $10 apiece): Path of Tears, Smash & Grab, Reformation Coalition Equipment Guide, and the Star Vikings character collection itself.
• Aliens of the Rim (retail $10): The manipulative Hivers and their elite shock troops, the Ithklur.
• The complete Virus Redux adventure trilogy (total retail $30): 1: The Guilded Lilly, 2: Belly of the Beast, and 3: Into the Darkness.
• TNE Referee's Screen (retail $10): Useful charts and a 16-page reference booklet. Includes a .PDF version of Lady Elise, an eight-page introductoryadventure outline sold with the original hardcopy Referee's Screen in 1994."

The last time Megatraveller was on offer I wasn't yet seeing these bundles - it isn't my favourite implementation of Traveller, since I think the original game setting worked very well, and Megatraveller systematically smashes it, but if you don't want to go into that it's a reasonable version of the game and better organized than the earliest rules. But there are better alternatives out there; for example, the last all-in-one Traveller rulebook was pretty good.

Last time New ERa was on offer I said

"I like SFRPGs. I like the original Traveller setting, though it does hand-wave a lot of the problems of gigantic interstellar empires, FTL travel, etc. etc. It's probably the SF system I've played the most. I already own about half of these books in dead tree format. Having said that, I might as well be honest - I don't like Traveller: The New Era at all.

It takes nearly everything that made the Traveller universe distinctive and throws it into the bin to set up a grimdark space travel future that is pretty much indistinguishable from all of the other grimdark space travel futures out there. The reason I own so much of the T:TNE stuff isn't that I was a huge fan back in 1992 - it's because Virgin closed the RPG sections of their Oxford Street store a little later and dumped everything at a tiny fraction of the original price, and I bought quite a lot of stuff while it was available, very little of which I've ever used.

Additionally, I'm not a big fan of the revised Traveller rules (or the other systems they're derived from), since they are so heavily biased towards combat that everything else seems to be an afterthought. Their origin in a post-apocalyptic WW3 setting might have something to do with that. Original Traveller was slightly better in that respect, though far from perfect. It may not be entirely coincidental that GDW (founded in 1973) folded in 1996, having launched several increasingly unsuccessful RPGs based on this rules set, although publication of Gary Gygax's dire Dangerous Journeys fantasy system, also 1992, followed by legal battles with TSR, probably didn't help their cash flow.

I'm not saying that you should avoid this at all costs - Traveller completists will probably want it if they don't already have this material, and it can be cherry-picked for an occasional idea, and you do get a reasonable amount for the money. But it isn't a version of the game I can honestly recommend.


For both of these, you're getting a fair amount for your money - whether it's stuff you actually want may be another matter. I'd suggest looking at the original game or GURPS Traveller instead.

Comments

[dragoness_e]

We were regulars on the Traveller Mailing List during the time of MegaTraveller and Traveller:New Era, and let me tell you, the regulars (including us) didn't like what TNE did to the Traveller universe at all. Not only did it gratuitiously kill off MegaTraveller (obviously, no more supplements or storyline), but the rationalization for "the Virus" was trash and they didn't even bother to rationalize changing the basic laws of physics of their universe! (Everyone suddenly using 'magic' reaction drives with apparently FTL specific impulse ratings and yet no dangerous exhaust, having somehow forgotten how to build clunky TL9 anti-grav. Also apparently everyone over 20 died off the year before the TNE game starts, because no one remembers the technology of a mere 70 years ago, nor remembers grandparents or parents who were familiar with it.)

So yeah, a "science fiction" setting that flat-out contradicts basic physics and basic human characterization? TNE was trash. I had fun bending the vehicle design rules until they screamed, but we never bothered with the main campaign.

GURPS Traveller was, if I remember all the names in the credits correctly, at least half written by TML regulars. I think GURPS Traveller exists because the TML was collectively disgusted by what GDW did to our favorite sci-fi game setting.

As for MegaTraveller, the game rules and setting were decent enough, but GDW's editing and quality control was terrible. There's a reason the Fighting Ships of the Shattered Imperium supplement for MegaTravller (meant to parallel the original Fighting Ships of the Imperium from classic Trav) was quickly nicknamed "Shattered Ships of the Fighting Imperium"--the designs were so bad that the supplement was useless. They flat-out contradicted MT's own design rules, and were riddled with typos.
Even the basic ship designs in the main rulebooks were inefficient designs.

They did, however, inspire a flood of much-improved ship designs on the TML. I still have the ones my spouse and I did on my website.

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By that point I wasn't really doing much with Traveller except for small scenario outlines for the original game (I had my fingers badly burned somewhat earlier when I was asked to design a sector, put in quite a lot of work, and had it rejected. Unfortunately that was in the days before I owned a word processor and it was manually typed and I no longer have copies, about the only thing that survived of it was a short scenario called The Thing in the Depths, which was in JTAS (I think)) but I was as astonished as everyone else when they started to mess it up so spectacularly.