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  • Archive Panic: Between at least seven editions, official setting books and adventures, the Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society/Challenge Magazine, and many, many licensed third-party supplements, it's estimated that there are over two thousand officially published releases for Traveller. And this doesn't include fanzines and other unlicensed content.
  • Broken Base: With the release of several new editions over the years all of which drastically changed the key premise, it was inevitable.
  • Fanon: The setting practically invites players to fill in the blanks with fanon, referred to as "IMTU" for "In My Traveller Universe".
    • Not just "practically" but explicitly. Foreven Sector (the next sector spinwardnote  from the fan-favorite Spinward Marches) will NEVER be canonically explored (outside of a few references in early adventures) precisely so referees can have a place to make their own.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: The Virus to a lot of players, and just about anything to someone.
    • MegaTraveller: The meta-plot featured the Third Imperium descending into civil war after the assassination of the Emperor. Quite a few players objected to what they saw as the wholesale destruction of the setting.
    • Traveller: The New Era: Many players found the computer virus that was the downfall of the Third Imperium implausible. The gearheads didn't like the retcon of HEPLAR reaction engines replacing reactionless thruster plates. Several people had problems with the sometimes wonky game mechanics as well, like the ability of an unarmored character to survive a direct hit from a plasma gun, or the ability of someone weaing a leather jacket to be completely immune to laser fire.
    • Traveller 4: Many players didn't like the change to Milieu 0 (the Dawn of the Third Imperium) when what they wanted was to pretend the Rebellion never happened. Many others didn't like the changes in gaming mechanics, including the use of "half dice".
    • Traveller 1248: As a continuation of the New Era timeline it had all of its baggage.
    • GURPS Traveller: It made those who wanted the Third Imperium back happy, but the rules are quite different and generally more complex than other versions of Traveller.
    • T20 (d20 Traveller): Hit points and class levels in Traveller? Many fans didn't think it was a very good fit.
    • Mongoose Traveller: As it was back to the classic setting and with a rules set very similar to the original, some fans groused about how it was just more of the same, only different enough to annoy them.
    • Traveller 5: Some fans said that the massive core book was incoherent and really needed to be edited down to something more workable before release. A re-release of the .pdf with some of the rules sections shuffled around (called "version 5.09") just gave them more ammunition. Amusingly, the table of contents of the 5.09 edition was not updated, and the page numbers were rendered completely inaccurate by the re-release.
      • Marc Miller must have been listening to the criticism, because Traveller 5 was re-packaged as a more digestible three-volume set a few years later.
      • Interestingly, Traveller 5 in its introduction omits d20 Traveller and Hero System Traveller from its list of prior editions, though it does include GURPS Traveller as a "parallel edition".
  • Game-Breaker: The Jack of All Trades skill, favorite of Scouts everywhere, has some unusual abilities depending on the edition:
    • In Classic Traveller, Jack of All Trades gave a character an effective Level-0 skill in everything. It was very handy when, say, the party medic was unconscious and no one else had Medic skill. Scouts had the best access to the skill, with it appearing on 3 of their 4 skill tables, though you could also get it in the Navy, Merchant, or "Other" careers.
    • In MegaTraveller, Jack of All Trades allowed one free retry per level of skill on any task that fails. The rules didn't exempt combat rolls, though most Referees did. Most careers could get the skill through the "Inborn" skill group.
    • Jack of All Trades didn't appear at all in the New Era version.
    • Marc Miller's Traveller had Jack of All Trades work just about like it did in Classic, only it also made the skill much more widely available, with it appearing on most of the civilian career tables.
    • In GURPS Traveller, Jack of All Trades is an advantage that grants a bonus to all skill defaults, making a character better at skills he doesn't have any training in.
    • In Hero Traveller, Jack of All Trades is a limited power to offset skill penalties, typically in non-combat skills.
    • In d20 Traveller, Jack of All Trades is a feat available only to the Scout and Traveller classes that gives you a rank 0 in any class skill you have not been trained in and a rank of -1 in all cross-class skills. You can take more levels of Jack of All Trades to increase these levels.
    • In Mongoose Traveller (either version), levels in Jack of All Trades incrementally remove the penalty for trying something unskilled, giving the character a better chance at attempting something he has no formal training for. It also notes that you can't teach the skill or learn it after character generation. In these rules there is no reason to have a Jack of All Trades skill above 3, since the penalty for unskilled actions is -3 and a level 3 skill completely negates the penalty.
    • In Traveller 5 Jack of All Trades again gives a Level-0 in any skill, and also protects a character from the "This is Hard" rule, which makes outright impossible tasks merely very difficult, and reduces the chance of a critical failure. It also can't be learned after character generation.
    • In the Traveller CCG Jack of All Trades lets a crew member generate any skill token except psionic. An expert at Jack of All Trades gets to generate two skill tokens of different types. This comes in very handy for fulfilling contract requirements and removing complications, and makes these crew members primary targets of the other players.
  • It Was His Sled: The identity of the Ancients. Unless the Referee decides that in his Traveller universe it's Not His Sled.
  • Memetic Mutation: The fact that, in the first edition, it's possible (even likely, with some careers) to die during character creation. Far Future even sells a T-shirt that says "I died during Character Generation".
    • This wasn't the rule for very long. The 1980 revised version of the first edition added an optional rule that a failed survival roll meant that character generation was over and the character entered play at that point, after serving only half a term of service for their last term. MegaTraveller made entering play with a half term the main rule and dying outright the optional rule. Later editions kept this, and sometimes also gave the character that failed a survival roll a medical bill, a prosthetic limb, or some other drawback.
    • Between aging and injuries, it is still possible to die during character generation in Mongoose's second edition (the latest as of July 2018), though it's hard to accomplish unless one is trying for it (for instance, the player must choose to skip medical intervention).

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