GDW’s Traveller was the last FRP I played in High School and, in a sense, it was what I felt I graduated to after AD&D. I always respected the game and was, for some time, quite passionately attached to it.

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MOARN stands for: Map Only As Really Necessary. This acronym comes from the Traveller Kickstarter project I sincerely hope all my FRP buddies are “on board” with.

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Some have reported that Gary Gygax became concerned when saw all the different versions of D&D being played. Due to the loose, poorly organized, and suggestive structure of the original rules, players were forced to invent their own approaches and develop their own styles and unique innovations. “House rules” had proliferated to such an extent that Gygax worried that, quite soon, people who thought they were playing D&D wouldn’t be playing “the same game.” In other words, the individuals mutations derived from the original would soon become incompatible, even unrecognizable, to each other. Standardization and orthodoxy was in order – or the game and the hobby would become hopelessly fragmented.

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In my last session, a player encountered a wandering band – really a caravan – of gnomes. I dutifully looked at how many of them there would be, and rolled out some of the data on them. I got a name for the leader and took some brief notes on what they were up to and what their “back story” was.

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Yesterday, when I realized I’d forgotten the name of the goddess worshiped by a matriarchal tribe in my campaign, I started going back and writing down the details of the areas we had explored so far – so I wouldn’t forget them again – in a little purple notebook I found in my desk drawer.

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After playing OD&D yesterday, I thought about the game and how I had come to learn to trust both the original rules and the “randomness” of it all.

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While waiting while my car was being washed, I decided to amble over to the local game store. In the back, while I looked through the offerings, I overheard one of the staff giving a pitch…

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“Sheer o’re the Chrystal Battlements: from Morn
To Noon he fell, from Noon to dewy Eve,
A Summers day; and with the setting Sun
Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star,
On Lemnos th’ Aegean Ile…”

– Milton

The first thing we can find is a loud snapping sound followed by many waves of light. Then we see a tiny baby driving a golden chariot. I have my own very strong suspicions that this particular lil’ cherub is at least one quarter Korean, but that’s another story. At one point, the child lifts its chubby arm and blows on a trumpet. After that, there’s some more loud snapping sounds, and everything shuts down. When it opens again, we find that each of us has their own private universe. We are the sole and most powerful gods in these personal, infinite realms and can – for countless millennia – do whatever we wish in them. We can subdivide ourselves an infinite number of times, invade our creations or withdraw from them, and experiment and enjoy our any number of myriad worlds, in any way we want, to our hearts’ content.

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Having gone back through the original supplements awhile ago, I find myself gravitating, once again, to the ideas presented in Greyhawk. All the extra material, divided into three parts that correlate to the original three D&D booklets, is pretty intoxicating. How could you leave it out?

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“Beneath the broad tide of human history there flow the stealthy undercurrents of the secret societies, which frequently determine in the depths the changes that take place upon the surface.”

– A.E. Waite

“Philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct . . . academic scribbler of a few years back.”

— Keynes

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