Traveller: 2300 is a science-fiction roleplaying game from Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) in 1986. As the title suggests, it is intended to take place in 2300 A.D. As such, most of the technology is based on reasonable assumptions of what might be developed in the next few hundred years with the exception of including a faster-than-light (FTL) drive system (because you need someway to get the characters between different star systems without it taking centuries to travel).
The background to this game is based off the setting for the Twilight: 2000 game which I blogged about last week--a WWIII breaking out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in 1995. In the aftermath of the war and subsequent recovery, the large powers--the U.S., Russia, and China--broke apart with a concomitant reduction in power. France, on the other hand, saw its star rise again. Thus, by 2300 explored space is split into three main "arms"--the French, the Chinese, and the American.
The problem this created is that GDW already had a popular science fiction game called Traveller but the background and FTL technology was very different from Traveller:2300. There was also the issue that a lot of people felt cheated because they bought the game thinking it was a prequel to Traveller, not a sequel to Twilight:2000. GDW quickly (1988) came out with a new edition that made some needed updates to the rules, added aliens and a more blatant militarized setting, and renamed the game to just 2300 AD. But probably because of the initial confusion, it didn't do very well. Seems like there is a marketing lesson in there.
The boxed set came with two rule books--a Player's Manual and a Referee's Manual (48 and 49 pages each, respectively)--a local star map (to about 50 light years from Earth), a near star list, a booklet with various forms used in the game, and a short introductory adventure called "The Tricolor's Shadow," and a set of dice.
The Player's Manual contains a historical and political background for the setting, an overview of technology and the interstellar colonies, the nations of Earth and their respective colonies, rules on character generation, rules and information about the equipment, weapons, and vehicles available to the characters, as well as information on using the near star map.
The Referee's Manual has some background about life on the interstellar frontier, before setting out the basic rules on tasks and task resolution, combat and combat resolution, star travel, space combat, listings of ships, world generation and mapping, non-player characters, and animal encounters.
The basic rule mechanic is role 1d10 with a success on a 7 or higher for routine tasks; but easier or harder tasks are multiples of 4 lower or higher, respectively. A natural role of 0 is always a failure. "Assets"--skills, attributes, etc.--can act as positive modifiers. Failure result in consulting the failure table.
Basic combat is handled with essentially the same procedure, but with some special rules for combat with firearms, melee combat, or involving vehicles. For instance, the procedure for firearms can depend on whether you are engaged in aimed fire or area fire. There are also special rules when moving and for using cover. Misses with weapons using exploding rounds (including hand grenades) results in a deviation where it strikes. And indirect fire has its own rules as well.
There are also different types of damages depending on the weapon: normal, blunt, and stun. The amount of damage depends on the hit location and can be a "kill", a "serious wound," or a "light wound." And yet, depending on the power of the weapon, you must still roll for specific weapon effects. To be honest, though, when playing the game, my friends and I would just assign a number of points of damage for each of the three results and give up the complexity of figuring out the various results.
Even though I bought this in my last year or high school, I didn't actually play it until much later after I was married and had kids and had a few friends that would get together every couple of weeks for game. I liked the idea of a near future type setting, although I developed my own background and different political situation.
As I mentioned above, other than the FTL drive, the technology envisioned is all something that is similar to what we have now or logical progression from current technologies. Although there are some laser small arms, the majority of small arms are firearms using caseless ammo. There is no antigravity. There is no artificial gravity: spacecraft have to rely on spin gravity. Although a few worlds have space elevators, rockets are still used to get items to orbit. Most spacecraft, if they have weapons, used missiles.
When I got around to the creating a background, I tweaked it a bit by adding more biotechnology (which allowed an uplifted species), Gauss weapons, drones and artificial life forms, a different history and political setting, and introduced ruins of an advanced alien civilization for the characters to find. Although the game is really intended to revolve around the characters being involved in quasi-military type adventures, I preferred something leaning more toward mysteries and exploration.
According to Wikipedia, the setting was revived under the name 2320 AD as a setting for the Traveller20 game. Most recently, Mongoose Publishing, which has been publishing an updated set of rules for the Traveller roleplaying game came out with an 2300 AD supplement. I thought it disappointing. Others must have as well, because Mongoose came out with a greatly expanded supplement, but for $99 plus shipping, I decided I wasn't that interested.
I couldn't find a good video review of the original Traveller: 2300 game from 1986. The short video about it is really just a look at what comes in the boxed set. But I found a more detailed overview of the 2300 AD version that came out in 1988.
VIDEO: "Role Playing Games - Traveller 2300"
The Dusted Game Shelf (7 min.)
VIDEO: "Traveller 2300ad (GDW 1988) | Retro RPG"
RPGGamer (23 min.)
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