Thursday, June 30, 2011

A Treasure Trove of Traveller Material

(Image:  Cover art for the JTAS, Vol. 6)

Last week, I travelled to the east coast to visit family.  But the day before I left, I did a quick stop into Half Price Books, near the Tacoma Mall.  While browsing, I stumbled across several early copies of JTAS (Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society) on the very top shelf.  These were pamphlet-style booklets published in the 1980s by Game Designers Workshop (GDW), to support the role playing game (RPG), Traveller

I don't think the staff at Half Price knew what they had on their hands, because they were offering these booklets, along with adventure & supplement booklets, for $1 each.  (On-line game sites are offering them for $5-$25 each).  So I grabbed them all JTAS issues which included:  Volumes 2-6, 8 & 9, 17 and 23.  I already own JTAS Vol 11, along with the GDW adventure booklets, so I passed up those copies.

What I also passed up was the couple couple dozen, or so, issues of Travellers' Digest magazine--which I didn't have--that they were selling for $2 each.  However, I was pressed for time and wanted to save some money for my trip.  So figured I could buy these when I returned.

Big mistake.

When I went to Half Price Books yesterday, all the Travellers' Digest magazines were gone, along with all the supplement books. 

Talk about "Epic Fail."

But all is not lost.  Traveller has been reprinted by Mongoose Publishing, so a lot of original material is available once more:


Also, PDF versions of JTAS issues are available for download from Drive Thru RPG:


Although, no matter what edition of Traveller you have--adventure never goes out of style:


2 comments:

Zombie Ad said...

Traveller was my first sci-fi rpg. Fond memories indeed!

Ted Henkle said...

Mine too! I still have all the original material, along with Mega Traveller, Traveller: The New Era and T20. I've bought some of the new books Mongoose Publications has put out, but not the entire set. Well, not yet anyway. :)

Ted