Traveller
The game that I probably have the most "stuff" (books, games, magazines, PDF files, bookmarked websites, etc) for is Traveller. Its even greater than my collection of GURPS books and SFB items.Classic Traveller and MegaTraveller are my two favorite versions, followed by the GURPS version. T4 comes next simply because its fairly similar to Classic Traveller and its got that neat Pocket Empires book that appeals to the emperor-wannabe in me. I've seen some T20 stuff, but never got around to buying the book.
Like GURPS, CT and MT are very flexible systems. With a little modifications to the rules, any number of different settings can be handled. Also, I'm one of those people who can spend hours entertaining myself by designing worlds, star systems, vehicles, and other items. Most might never be used, but some find their ways into other campaigns.
Things I like to do with Traveller --
- Design vehicles. I can be a real number-crunching gearhead sometimes. Most of these I do for fun, like trying to design a military vehicle or starship within a series of limitations (or one with no limitations to see what the "best that money can buy" would be).
- Design star systems. Not just regular star systems, but something different and unique. A star with only one planet, a huge gas giant. Or maybe a bianry system where there's nothing but asteroids and small, airless rockballs. Some of these I've used in various campaigns or adventures.
- Creating characters. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun to just run through one of the character generation systems in Traveller. T4 isn't that much fun, but CT and MT are my favorites.
- Running a merchant vessel. Taking a few different types of ships in different areas tying to find a right combination of trips to make the most money. Yeah, that's real geeky.
- Coming up with new rules or variants. I have a whole list of various house rules and variants for CT and MT. Most are designed to tailor the game for a specific background, while some are attempts to fix the 1970s view of the future that CT had.
I haven't had as much time recently to play with the system, but every once in a while I look at the Traveller bookshelf and find myself wondering if there's anything else I could play around with in that universe. Traveller is another game that I'm thinking about using on the message boards.
