Another Blast From The Past - Gamelords Traveller Bundle

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This is a big bundle of early third-party supplements for GDW's Traveller, mostly originally published by Gamelords:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Gamelords

This Gamelords Traveller Bundle offer presents 1980s Classic Traveller supplements from two of Traveller's earliest third-party publishers: Gamelords Ltd and Marischal Adventures. These primordial indies published many sourcebooks and scenarios by two of Traveller's most prolific designers: J. Andrew Keith and William H. Keith. Though later known for Traveller landmarks like Murder on Arcturus Station, Nomads of the World Ocean, the Alien Modules, and much more, the prolific Keith brothers started by self-publishing their own short "Folio" mini-scenarios (1981-82), followed by ten impressive booklets through Gamelords (1982-84). These titles date from the era when publishers printed their books on dot-matrix printers, yet this timeless material can still freshen any space-opera roleplaying campaign.

The Traveller community still holds Andrew, who died in 1999, in high regard; check this J. Andrew Keith Memorial hosted on Freelance Traveller. Old School blogger James Maliszewski lists several Keith titles in his December 2021 two-part blog post, "My Top 10 Classic Traveller Adventures." William H. Keith went on to become a prolific novelist, first for BattleTech and other game lines, and later with his own geopolitical thrillers including the Warstrider series. Traveller designer Marc W. Miller has recently proposed William Keith for the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame, saying "his words and images creatively shaped players' perceptions of their games and the hobby."

We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices. These are .PDF image scans of the original 1980s hardcopies. Type is sometimes fuzzy, and image quality can be murky. The published Gamelords titles have OCR (Optical Character Recognition) applied, but none of the Lost Supplements do.

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to this Gamelords Traveller offer's pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.

The total retail value of the titles in this offer is US$148. Customers who pay just US$12.95 get all ten titles (retail price $6 each) in our Gamelords Collection (total retail value $60) as DRM-free ebooks:

• A Pilot's Guide to the Drexilthar Subsector
• Three terrain survival guides: The Desert Environment, The Mountain Environment, and The Undersea Environment
• Three adventures keyed to the three Environment guides: Ascent to Anekthor, The Drenslaar Quest, and Duneraiders
• Three collections of short adventures and scenario hooks: Lee's Guide to Interstellar Adventure, Startown Liberty, and Wanted: Adventurers

Those who pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $19.95 to start, also get our entire Lost Supplements Collection with seventeen more titles worth an additional $84, including eight of the Keiths' early Marischal Folio mini-scenarios and nine titles that lay neglected until 2000, when Traveller fan Paul Sanders founded a company called Cargonauts specifically to publish them. The "Lost Supplements" sold out their 500-copy run almost immediately -- but this offer makes them available in .PDF for a bargain price.

This is, as I said, a blast from the past; most of this material is from early in the history of Traveller, when men were real men, small green alien things were real small green alien things, and production values were... a little on the primitive side. Most of them are big swathes of text and random encounter tables etc., scanned from dot matrix originals, and look it. The Cargonauts supplements are more legible, but were written a long time before 2000, so still come from the era when tables were king, and characterization and role playing more of an afterthought in game and scenario design. Having said that, there's a lot here that I haven't seen before, and some interesting ideas and exploration of environments that haven't seen much use in other Traveller material. It isn't incredibly expensive, and with the usual "I didn't actually have to pay for this" caveat I think it's worth a look.