Traveller 2300ad (GDW 1988) | Retro RPG

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Description: 2300 AD is a science fiction tabletop role-playing game created by Game Designers' Workshop.

Game Designers Workshop (GDW) had created their popular Traveller with themes taken from Space Opera short stories and novels of the 1950s Golden Age of SF. Now GDW wanted to replace Traveller with a game that had a more contemporary hard science fiction edge. They had already published Twilight 2000, a realistic and hard-edged role-playing game set in the year 2000 in the aftermath of an apocalyptic World War III. In 1986, GDW published a new roleplaying game system called Traveller 2300 set 300 years after Twilight 2000. However, the similarity of the names Traveller and Traveller 2300 caused confusion since the new game was entirely separate from Traveller, and used neither Traveller's rules system nor the setting.

To lessen the confusion, in 1988 GDW released an expanded second edition of the game renamed 2300 AD. However, 2300 AD never reached the same level of popularity as Traveller, and while GDW continued to publish new supplements and versions of Traveller, in contrast 2300 AD became only a secondary line, and eventually GDW dropped it.

The game was revived twice, first in 2007 by QuikLink Interactive as a supplement titled 2320 AD for the Traveller20 game (based on the d20 System), and then in 2012 by Mongoose Publishing as a 2300 AD setting sourcebook for their version of Traveller.

The game setting follows on from that of GDW's military role-playing game Twilight: 2000, in which a worldwide conventional war with limited nuclear exchanges at the end of the 20th century nearly brought about the end of civilization. In the intervening three centuries, mankind has rebuilt and returned to space. A Space Elevator orbital interface has been constructed, connecting the city of Libreville, Gabon to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Also, practical means of faster-than-light (FTL) travel have been discovered, leading to the exploration and colonization of planets orbiting nearby stars. The post-Westphalian nation-state remains dominant, and most space colonies are considered the territories of various nations back on Earth, resembling the European colonial era of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The dominant power, both on Earth and in space, is France, recently reorganized (in 2298) as the Third French Empire, and incorporating much of Africa. France was able to survive the nuclear war relatively unscathed by abandoning its NATO allies and officially withdrawing from hostilities at the start of the Third World War, retaining enough assets and skilled people to develop a significant head-start in the race for postwar rebuilding, political leverage, and technological development. Competing powers include the United Kingdom, Manchuria, Germany, and an alliance between the weakened United States and Australia. All of these control certain extrasolar planets themselves. There are three major lanes of explored space, called Arms, named after the nations which dominate them (the French Arm, the American Arm, and the Chinese Arm). Lesser routes leading off the arms are called "Fingers".

It is still early in mankind's expansion into space, and exploration has reached little beyond 40 light years from Earth. As of the time period of the game, each of the three Arms is saddled with a particular difficulty. The French Arm is the route along which the alien Kafer are pushing an aggressive invasion into human space. The Chinese Arm is beset by an insurgent terrorist faction. The American Arm has reached a dead end, further expansion along it impossible under available technology.

Mankind has met with several intelligent alien civilizations, all of which are decidedly strange and non-human, from the genetically-engineered Pentapods to the reflexively bellicose Kafers.

#rpg #2300ad #traveller2300