It is 3:48pm Sunday afternoon. I have a list of things I wanted to do for my Traveller game today, but apparently I’m incapable of really working on anything before about 8pm at night. Not sure why. So I’m writing this blog post instead. Most people reading this will already know everything I’m about to write. That’s fine. This is really just me thinking “out loud.”

In a previous post I wrote about the Cepheus Engine. When I returned to the world (universe?) of Traveller back in 2016 I found variations on Traveller very confusing. What was Mongoose Traveller? What was the Cepheus Engine? What was all the stuff coming from Omer Golan-Joel? Independence Games? The list of things to be confused about seemed endless.

It took a while to sort this stuff out. Now I understand that the “mess” I had encountered is actually a thriving, healthy, vibrant ecosystem of gaming material all inspired by the original Traveller game. While we now have publishers like Stellagama and Independence and others who’ve diverged sufficiently from Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition that they are really their own things, they all still share a love of science fiction roleplaying.

Since really exploring the online Cepheus Engine Reference Document for the last week I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I have owned a hard copy (seen in the image below) of the SRD for several years now. I’ve imported several of its useful systems into my Classic Traveller campaign.

Rather than writing a crappy explanation of what The Cepheus Engine is, who who publishes what, I’l just link to this page from Paul Elliot Books. It shows that the original SRD came from Jason Kemp, and is available on a pay what you want basis.

Conversion of the SRD to this hypertext document really made it pop for me. I have actually downloaded the entire hypertext SRD from GitHub in case it should ever disappear

Maybe it’s because the online version just looks so good on my computer and my iPad. Like so many people, I feel like the internet has destroyed my attention span. I think it more likely, however, that the way it’s presented in the online version is just easier on my eyes. It’s very easy to navigate. Like - super easy. Easier, I think, than flipping through a book. The stripped-down nature of the SRD certainly facilitates this. This is the basic DNA of an SF RPG campaign. You supply the setting and all that.

The Cepheus Journal online fanzine has this great page with a random subsector generator.

Actually, I just figured out why I can’t get this out of my head…

Imagine.

A 15-year old with no money for expensive game books finds this stuff. They download the SRD and/or bookmark the online version on their computer, tablet, or phone. They go to the generator page and create a random subsector. They save the star map to their device, along with a screen shot or the text of the subsector details. They look at those numbers and rules. They share this with a few friends. The friends generate characters using these free materials. The original kid uses imagination to give life to that subsector. They steal a few six-sided dice from a sibling’s board game. Suddenly you have a whole new gaming group born with zero expenditure of money.

That’s powerful. That is accessible. Even a kid with no computer, tablet, or phone could go to the public library and print out everything they need.

A few years ago we had the OGL debacle. The potential revocation of the Open Gaming License held great peril for the publishers who’ve come to depend on it. Disrupting all of that would be been bad for those businesses. At least inconvenient, potentially disastrous.

But when I consider that averted calamity in light of my little story above – I think that would be the real loss. To sell professional gaming materials companies need gamers. And the old ones are…old. We need new gamers. We need new 2d6 SF gamers. Allowing these inexpensive or free materials to exist and flourish is an investment in the future. Those kids will grow up and buy your hardbacks if they are nice.

It’s the beauty of that original Traveller box, with three little black books and two tiny dice, for a very small price. BUT it’s even cheaper, and a kid with no gaming or comic store nearby can get it.