So Close, So Far: Warhammer

I was an avid reader of White Dwarf magazine in the early and mid 1980s, and I was painting miniatures when the license to produce AD&D figures moved from Grenadier to TSR to Citadel to Ral Partha over a few short years. So I had a ringside seat as Games Workshop began to transition away from providing third party support to games published by other companies such as Chaosium, Game Designers’ Workshop, and TSR. Instead, White Dwarf increasingly focused on new products from GW and Citadel under the name Warhammer.

Initially billed as the “Mass Combat Fantasy Roleplaying Game,” I really wasn’t sure what to make of Warhammer. I was certainly interested in incorporating gigantic, army-scale battles into my D&D games but I couldn’t figure out if Warhammer fit the bill. Could I use this boxed set as a D&D supplement? The early reviews were mostly positive but Warhammer sounded like a separate thing altogether. The notion of having enough money to purchase an entire army’s worth of figures, as well as having the time to paint them all seemed bonkers. 

At about the same time the art direction of White Dwarf and Citadel miniatures began to embrace a more gonzo, punky style that I wasn’t really sure I liked. Now, I was a huge fan of the artwork from the 1e Fiend Folio, which was quite a bit wilder than the art in other AD&D books. This is partly because the Fiend Folio was produced by TSR UK and as such featured UK artists such as the late, great Russ Nicholson. There was a lot of overlap between TSR UK and Games Workshop staff.

But the new Games Workshop/Citadel style was like Nicholson turned up to 11: more dynamic, bold, and cartoony, often infused with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and a grittier, post-apocalyptic look. Instead of staid, Tolkien-esque dwarven warriors we suddenly got snarling, tattooed dwarves with mohawks wearing Mad Max-style armor and wielding enormous cleavers.

Despite my reservations about the new art style, I bought a lot of the Citadel D&D miniatures in part because they included so many monsters from my beloved Fiend Folio. In general, these figures were better sculpted and better cast than anything that had come before. And the new art direction, with exaggerated elements, really helped make those tiny miniatures pop. The only thing I really disliked about these figures were the plastic “slotta” bases.

My miniature painting phase was relatively short-lived. And in 1984 TSR released an abstract mass combat system in the D&D Companion Set that adequately addressed my interest in army-scale battles. So I really wasn’t paying much attention to what was happening with Warhammer. By the time I got back into gaming in the 1990s, Warhammer was a phenomenon. I was vaguely aware of this development—local game shops suddenly had sand tables and displays of brightly painted figures—but no one in my immediate group ever took the plunge and I really knew very little about the game.

It seems strange, considering how much D&D I played over the ensuing decades, that I remained so ignorant of a hobby that had so much in common with D&D. I was always flabbergasted at Warhammer’s success: how could a game that was clearly so expensive and time-consuming have such a large following?

Flash-forward to a couple of years ago, when one of my friends bought a copy of the Harbinger Starter Set for Warhammer Age of Sigmar. He had painted up the two factions and we played out a scenario. It was a fun, fast-paced skirmish game. I was impressed by the streamlined rules and am a sucker for d6 mechanics—I also liked adding a random component to movement rates.

I’ve been watching many miniature painting videos over the last few years to try and improve my own painting skills and I’ve been frankly blown away by the work done by the Warhammer community. It’s clear that many of the next-level skills I’d like to master—color theory, wet blending, glazes—are old hat for Warhammer painters.

So given all this I picked up a boxed set of Warcry: Flesh-Eater Courts, not quite understanding the difference between Warcry and other Age of Sigmar sets. The Flesh-Eater Courts is a faction of ghouls, and many of the models would work well for the Eaters of the Dead band of ghouls in my Great Dungeon. I’d long been on the hunt for Large-sized ghouls for my Hulking Ghouls, and this Warcry set had three that fit the bill perfectly.

Opening the box, I was surprised that the models were still on the sprues and needed to be assembled. I also didn’t realize that the figures could be so customizable by swapping in a wide variety of different limbs, heads, or weapons that in some cases would produce completely different models. While I knew kitbashing was common in the Warhammer community, I didn’t know that the models were really designed to support this practice.

The models are made out of a very lightweight, fairly rigid plastic material that holds details extremely well and is roughly comparable to Bones Black. Once snipped from the sprues the parts had very little in the way of flashing or mold lines. Another surprise was that the appendages do not connect with pegs and sockets, but instead use a very clever ball and socket system. You have to get these parts aligned just right, but when they are seated properly they form surprisingly tight attachments with relatively little gaps.

I primed these models with Army Painter spray-on primer and used Reaper ghoul flesh acrylics for the base coats. The sculpts have lots of grotesque details—exposed flesh and sinew, eruptions of pus-filled boils and spikes, limbs held together with impaled bones, and so on. I didn’t try to go all-in on the gore, but did try a few different techniques to render diseased and bruised skin.

I was pretty happy with the overall experience of painting these Warhammer models. I’m not nearly ready to begin assembling an army any time soon, but I have been slowly backfilling my understanding of the game and its lore. I certainly expect to pick up a few more sets to round out my Great Dungeon of the North rosters.

Mining Dumarest for Traveller Games

I have been reading the first few novels in the 33-volume “Dumarest Saga” by the British science fiction writer Edwin Charles (E.C.) Tubb. At the outset I was not very familiar with either the man or his works, really knowing only that the Dumarest books had purportedly been influential on the Traveller RPG.

The Dumarest saga takes place in a human-dominated interstellar community that is ancient and spans thousands of worlds. There seems to be no single, multi-system government like the Third Imperium and apparently nothing like megacorporations, though the community does seem to share a common interstellar culture.

The overall tech level seems to be low interstellar, TL10 or maybe TL11, though it is hard to say: in these early books the protagonist, Earl Dumarest, is travelling through mostly backwater worlds and perhaps much higher tech could be found elsewhere. It’s not clear to me if this is a post-apocalyptic setting but there are hints that some of humanity’s capabilities are on the wane or have been lost altogether. Earl was born on Terra, the fabled homeworld of all humanity, but all knowledge of the world including its location appears to have been forgotten.

Each Dumarest book is largely self-contained and episodic. M. Harold Page has an insightful blog post on Series Architecture: The Same But Different in EC Tubb’s Dumarest that analyzes how Tubb effectively recycles a few key elements over and over again in new combinations to keep the books surprisingly fresh. It really shouldn’t work, but it does. I had planned to just sample a few entries because I was interested in the origins of Traveller, but I keep reading because the books are both entertaining and full of useful ideas for my game. I’ve only made it through the first five or six entries but so far if anything I think the influence of Dumarest on the game is understated.

Everyone notes Tubb’s distinctive use of the term “Traveller,” and can point out obvious elements such as Low, Middle, and High Passage (along with the Low Lottery) that were borrowed for the game. Other ideas appropriated by Traveller include slow drug, fast drug, and anagathics, after a fashion. I had always assumed Traveller psionics were directly descended from the Lensman series but the Dumarest books have characters with psionic talents that to my mind more closely resemble Traveller abilities.

But I think I see many other, subtler influences from Dumarest on the Charted Space setting.

The interstellar society described in the Dumarest books is highly stratified, with wealth and other resources unequally distributed across the population. M. Harold Page aptly describes it as a “Grapes of Wrath galaxy.” Most worlds have an aristocratic class of inherited nobility, a striving middle class of traders and managers and artisans, a struggling working class, and an even lower class of indigents and outcasts. As a game mechanic, Traveller’s Social Standing characteristic makes much more sense in this milieu than in, say, Star Trek, Ringworld, or even Dune.

Technology in Dumarest is similarly stratified, much like in Traveller. Although laser guns are available, slug-throwers, knives, and swords seem much more common weapons on many worlds. While there are anti-grav “rafts,” on-planet travel might also be via helicopters, planes, boats, or beasts of burden. Starships are fairly rare and expensive, and owning one is an indicator of extreme wealth.

A planetary Law Level is also an important characteristic that varies greatly from world to world. While some worlds appear to have fairly oppressive governments with correspondingly high Law Levels, others such as Scar have very low or no Law Levels at all.

Like Charted Space, the worlds of the Dumarest saga teem with native, alien life that seems (mostly) compatible with Terran biochemistry. No intelligent alien life has yet been introduced, but there are many books to come.

Just the first five or six books have given me the following random ideas for spicing up starports in my own Traveller game.

Travellers

Earl Dumarest is a Traveller, which is a slippery term to define as it’s not quite a title, profession, or status. Travellers are, strictly speaking, vagrants, drifting through the Dumarest universe from world to world without a home or regular employment or income. They are, by necessity, survivors, resourceful and clever.

Travellers generally conform to the standard sci-fi Space Bum archetype, “a spacer who wanders aimlessly; a vagrant in space; (also) a spacer who is regarded as contemptible.” As Jesse Sheidlower points out in Meet the Space Bum, ambiguous stock character of generations of science fiction, the term space bum reflects “all the nuances of the base word [bum]: idleness, aimlessness, vagrancy, worthlessness.” The Midjourney illustration attached to Sheidlower’s post really nails the romantic appeal of being a Traveller. Think Jack Kerouac, but instead of being blissed out at a Denver bus stop he’s hanging at a starport in Deneb sector, looking to score working passage to the Marches.

Earl Dumarest is a Traveller because he is on a quest to find his lost homeworld. While many Travellers are forced into the life by terrible conflict or bitter politics on their homeworld, some noncomformists might embrace the Traveller life as a way to escape the grinding tedium and control of early interstellar society.

The Space Bum archetype certainly fits with the Traveller RPG aesthetic. In Agent of the Imperium Marc Miller suggests that “Most people (indeed, whole species) never leave their homeworld: they never venture out of their gravity well, content to work, play, and even thrive on their home planet. Some postulate that there is a genetic basis for the drive of some (and the lack of drive in others) to reach beyond the bounds of a single world into the greater universe: a traveller gene.”

As most inhabitants rarely leave their homeworld, Travellers are considered inherently interesting, if maybe a little dangerous, to most people they meet. People want to hear stories of the Traveller lifestyle and the exotic worlds they’ve seen. People might seek out a Traveller for advice or aid regarding an unusual or difficult problem. In this sense they are natural magnets for patron encounters.

Travellers seem to be perpetually broke, always looking to put together enough scratch for passage offworld—and generally, that passage is going to be Low. Because they are inherently strangers, Travellers often attract suspicion from locals when dirtside, much like hobos, tramps, or bums. (Of these three categories, Wikipedia’s description of a Tramp probably comes the closest to Tubb’s depiction of a Traveller.) Their outsider status likely makes them suseptible to scrutiny and harassment from authorities, particularly on worlds with high Law Levels.

Interestingly, maybe the single best game mechanic to model a Dumarest-style Traveller is the Drifter career from Mongoose Traveller. (Note that the Wanderer assignment explicitly reads “You are a space bum [emphasis added], living hand-to-mouth in slums and spaceports across the galaxy.”) Drifter is the default career you land in when you’ve been bumped out of your desired career and can’t qualify for anything else.

Because of this I’ve always been a little disappointed when one of my characters has had to take a term of Drifter. But after reading a few of the Dumarest books I’m beginning to appreciate the “career” much more and can see the potential. And maybe the career could be spiced up with interesting events or benefits drawn from these books. The Skills and Training tables look mostly right, though I’d like to have some way to pick up ranks in Art, Gambler, and Persuade in addition to the core skills of Recon, Streetwise, and Survival.

Tourists

In the Dumarest books, Travellers are to be distinguished from Tourists. Both Travellers and Tourists are wanderers visiting new and different worlds, but from there everything else is starkly different. Fundamentally, a Tourist has a home to return to, and visiting other worlds is merely a temporary diversion from a “real life,” not a permanent condition. Many Tourists probably like to play at being real Travellers, but very few ever actually adopt the lifestyle.

Another important difference is that Tourists have money. They seem to be primarily drawn from the Nobility and travel High, dosed with Quicktime. They stay at the best resort facilities, frequent the best casinos, eat the best food and drink the best wines they can find. While Travellers are forced to engage with the worlds they visit, the Tourists stay always apart, protected by thoughtfully curated itineraries, armed guards, and secure fences.

Tourists are first and foremost consumers of goods, experiences, and people. Unfortunately, our own 21st century regularly provides all-too-many examples of clueless, exploitative, and self-indulgent Tourists. #SpaceVanLife. In the MgT system, Tourists can be modeled using the Dilettante assignment in the Noble career.

As seen in the Dumarest books, there is more than a touch of the decadent in the Tourists. The entertainments and amusements Tourists seek out are more often than not bought at the expense of the local population. Blood sports of all sorts—animal, human, and other—seem to be common.

I’m thinking the worlds of my Traveller game ought to include many more encounters with sybaritic Tourists on holiday.

Local Attractions

All of these Tourists have made a long journey to see and experience something. And so far Tubb does a good job of creating worlds that have some unique hook to draw Tourists, such as watching the fungus blooms of Scar, enjoying the arenas of Toy, or hunting Thren on Solis. One of the most gruesome attractions so far is the Bloodtime on Logis, a single day in each year when all laws are suspended to allow the citizens to run wild and settle scores. It’s very much like the Purge, but on a planetary level.

These Attractions might involve the world’s native life: a particularly strange or valuable alien species, a mass migration, or a spectacular bloom. Other attractions are cultural: a religious rite, a unique architectural style, tournament, or festival. Imagine “Burning Man on Delta IX.” Other attractions might be technological, like the Computer on Toy or the wish-fulfillment tech of Folgone. Other attractions might be natural features such as waterfalls, whirlpools, volcanos, gorges, or mountain peaks. But in any case Tubb is able to produce some unique draw that doesn’t reduce an entire world to the tired old Planet of Hats trope. 

A series of Attractions could form entire Tourist circuits that wind through a subsector; a good portion of the High passengers seeking a ship could be traveling to the next stop on the tour. “We want to catch the hadj on Umat, then hit the big harvest festival on New Epping, and by that time that’s over the resort beaches on Kaula IV should be open for the summer.”

In Classic Traveller, the typical activities checklist for starships visiting a mainworld includes “Patron encounters,” “Planetary exploration,” and “Local areas of interest.” It occurs to me that the Traveller game could really use a nice random procedure to generate interesting local attractions for worlds, something to entice Travellers beyond the safe confines of the starport extrality line and out into the world proper.

While we have nice tables for generating patrons, we don’t have anything comperable for Attractions. Just as patrons offer a pull for the PCs to undertake a job, Attractions can pull PCs to explore their surroundings. Maybe an Attraction mechanic would incorporate trade classifications, or perhaps Population, Government, and Law Level codes.

In any case, starports should be crowded with guides, drivers, barkers, and hucksters all extolling the amazing local sights and sounds of their native world. Some will be legit wonders worth the visit, others lousy Tourist traps, and some might be outright scams.

The Stranded

The opening passages of the very first book in the series find Earl Dumarest emerging from his Low Berth only to discover that while in cryosleep his starship had been diverted to Gath, an inhospitable world that was not his intended destination. After a thief steals his money Earl soon finds himself Stranded with no immediate means to leave this planet.

To become Stranded on some crap backwater like Gath is one of a Traveller’s greatest fears in the Dumarest universe. Stranded Travellers are dead broke, or at least too destitute to afford even Low Passage offworld. The stranded are often hungry, hurt, sick, and lack adequate or reliable shelter, and thus are extraordinarily vulnerable to both natural and human predators.

This fear creates a real tension through many of the Dumarest books. Earl reports having been Stranded several times, a condition so miserable that he undertakes many dangerous jobs just to avoid being caught in such a predicament again. Stranded Travellers are often forced to take dangerous or demeaning jobs for minimal wages, enter into indentured servitude or military service, or worst of all, pressed into slavery. It might take months or even years to build up enough money to buy passage, and it seems likely many Stranded are forced to turn to crime in order to survive.

Just how bad must it be, to be Stranded in the Dumarest universe? It’s so bad that it creates a viable market for Low Passage, which is literally being frozen alive and shipped like cattle with an attendant 15% mortality rate. Your cumulative odds of surviving just four Low Passages is only a little over 52%, and eight Low Passages is 32%. That indicates true desperation! While the odds are likely better in Charted Space, they still aren’t great if the Low Lottery is still a thing. As The Traveller Book notes, “Since low passengers are typically without funds (who would travel low if there were any other choice?), the low lottery provides some chance for the individual to have funds upon arrival at the destination.”

Although part of a good Referee’s job is to find new and innovative ways to separate PCs from their hard-won funds, I’m not sure it would make for a very fun or engaging game to have the PCs just living out lives of quiet desperation on a string of crummy backwater planets. “Next session: Bluron sells his kidneys for a Low Passage to Planet Jerkwater, while Brenta takes a third-shift job in the planetary waste processing center.”

But that said, many class D or E starports ought to have throngs of Stranded desperate for offworld passage—along with recruiters looking to lure these poor souls into terrible contracts for rotten pay. Such scenes could provide lots of roleplaying opportunities, but also serve as a dire warning to the PCs: this is what happens when the credits run out.

Copyright Information

The Traveller game in all forms is owned by Far Future Enterprises. Copyright © 1977 – 2023 Far Future Enterprises. Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises. Far Future permits web sites and fanzines for this game, provided it contains this notice, that Far Future is notified, and subject to a withdrawal of permission on 90 days notice. The contents of this site are for personal, non-commercial use only. Any use of Far Future Enterprises’s copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, any program/articles/file on this site cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author who contributed it.

Materials produced by Digest Group Publications (DGP) are copyright © Roger Sanger. Any use of Digest Group Publications’ copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this Web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights. Usage is intended to follow the guidelines announced by Roger Sanger on the Traveller Mailing List for preserving the overall Traveller milieu.