Re: Traveller Inspirations

E.C. Tubb's Dumarest of Terra series was THE original inspiration
for the original three-book, black-boxed Traveller game. Lots and
lots of the detail in those first three books came from the Dumarest
series, including the concept of a "traveller", an adventurer who
made his way from planet to planet, looking for enough credits to
buy passage off planet on the next free trader.

Traveller borrowed directly high, middle, and low passage, slow drug,
fast drug, mesh armor, free traders, subsidized traders, psionics (and
it's underground status), and all kinds of other details, using the
exact names and descriptions given in the Dumarest books. I first read
the Dumarest books after I'd had Traveller for some years, and I thought
I was reading a rather blatent, uncredited ripoff of the Traveller rules
and concepts.

As Traveller developed, it picked up other detail from other sources.
Poul Anderson has already been mentioned as the inspiration for many
of the alien races that developed later (although GDW did change the
names and some detail. I suppose someone had had them look up the definition
of "plagery" by then ;^) ).

Steve Deemer
[email removed]