Traveller LBBs x2

In December 2020 we resurrected two offers featuring the canonical Traveller Little Black Books from the 1970s and ’80s: the July 2015 LBB-1 Bundle and, from December 2015, LBB-2. Half-size manuals with elegant black covers, the LBBs established Traveller as the leading science fiction RPG. To this day these books represent, in the minds of many old-school roleplayers, the true-blue (true-black?) Traveller experience. Together these two revived offers once again presented the entire LBB line — more than 50 books for a bargain price. You can have them in any color you want, as long as it’s black.

1. LBB-1 [from July 2015]

The July 2015 LBB-1 Bundle had all eight rulebooks (the three corebooks plus Mercenary, High Guard, Scouts, Merchant Prince, and Robots) plus major supplements (1001 Characters, Animal Encounters, Library Data) and several adventures. If you’re new to Traveller — yes, even now there are new-made roleplayers who haven’t yet encountered Traveller — start with these books.

There were nine titles in this revived offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $34) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:

• The three basic rulebooks (B01 Characters and Combat, B02 Starships, and B03 Worlds and Adventures), plus SS4 Lost Rules and the Charted Space Map
• S08 Library Data A-M and S11 Library Data N-Z
• Supplements S01 1001 Characters and S02 Animal Encounters
• S12 Forms and Charts
• Our own Traveller Orientation Pack with free Traveller resources from across the web, including Loren Wiseman’s 51-page “Book 0” Introduction to Traveller (1981)

Those who paid more than this revival’s threshold (average) price also got this offer’s entire Bonus Collection with eleven more titles worth an additional $53:

• All five LBB rules expansions: B04 Mercenary, B05 High Guard, B06 Scouts, B07 Merchant Prince, and B08 Robots
• Three important supplements: S05 Lightning Class Cruisers, S09 Fighting Ships, and S13 Veterans
• Three adventures that inspire nostalgia in longtime travellers: A05 Trillion Credit Squadron, A06 Expedition to Zhodane, and A09 Nomads of the World Ocean

2. LBB-2 [from December 2015]

To complete your collection of 50+ Traveller LBBs, you also want the books in this December 2015 LBB-2 companion. There were no less than seventeen titles in this revived offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $58):

• Supplements S03 The Spinward Marches and S04 Citizens of the Imperium
• Seven early adventures: A00 The Imperial Fringe, A01 The Kinunir, A02 Research Station Gamma, A03 Twilight’s Peak, A04 Leviathan, A07 Broadsword, and A08 Prison Planet
• The first four Double Adventure volumes, containing Annic Nova, Shadows, Across the Bright Face, Mission on Mithril, Argon Gambit, Death Station, Marooned, and Marooned Alone

This companion’s Bonus Collection added eighteen more titles worth an additional $57:

• Supplements S06 76 Patrons, S07 Traders and Gunboats, and S10 The Solomani Rim
• Adventures A10 Safari Ship, A11 Murder on Arcturus Station, and A12 Secrets of the Ancients
• Double Adventures volumes 5-8, presenting Chamax Plague, Horde, Divine Intervention, Night of Conquest, Plague of Perruques, Stranded on Arden, and Memory Alpha
• Special Supplements SS01-4: Merchant Prince, Exotic Atmospheres, Missiles, Missiles Revised, and The Lost Rules (repeated from the LBB-1 collection because we, uh, forgot it was in there)

Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to these two Traveller revivals’ pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief gets 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.

(Trivia: In their December 2015 run, these two LBB offers marked the very first Bundle of Holding double offer. We felt anxious about launching two offers simultaneously. Would customers be confused? Tapped out? Angry? In the event, it all worked easy-peasy. Maybe in 2021 we’ll launch three at once.)

A few Traveller web resources

There are more Traveller pages on the web than worlds in the Spinward Marches. A few starting points:

• Far Future Enterprises, where Traveller designer Marc W. Miller sells the entire product line
• Traveller Map: Joshua Bell’s amazing, meticulously researched and documented interactive map of Charted Space
• Freelance Traveller
• Dedzone
• The SFRPG and Citizens of the Imperium discussion forums