''Starship Traveller'' is a single-player adventure gamebook written by Steve Jackson and illustrated by Peter Andrew Jones. Originally published by

Puffin Books Puffin Books is a longstanding children's imprint of the British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s, it has been among the largest publishers of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world. The imprint now belongs to ...

in 1983, the title is the fourth gamebook in the ''

Fighting Fantasy ''Fighting Fantasy'' is a series of single-player role-playing gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first volume in the series was published in paperback by Puffin in 1982. The series distinguished itself by mixing Choo ...

'' series. It was later republished by Wizard Books in 2002. A digital version developed by ''Tin Man Games'' is available for

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, and

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Rules

This adventure was the first ''Fighting Fantasy'' title with a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

setting. It was the first title to introduce rules for (phaser) gun combat and (ship-to-ship) spaceship combat, in addition to hand-to-hand combat. The player must also manage the statistics of multiple characters (Captain and crew) and the vessel itself. It is also possible to finish the adventure without having engaged in combat at all.

Story

''Starship Traveller'' is a science-fiction adventure scenario in which the player is captain of the starship ''Traveller'' which has been pulled through a black hole, called the Selstian Void, into another universe; the captain must assemble landing parties to explore various planets to find clues to the necessary coordinates that will allows the crew to bring the ship safely back to the Earth of their own universe.

Reception

Marcus L. Rowland Marcus L. Rowland (born 1953) is an English author in the field of role-playing games, particularly games with Victorian era content. Biography Marcus Rowland owned a copy of the original boxed set of ''Dungeons & Dragons'' as early as 1977, th ...

reviewed ''Starship Traveller'' for the January 1984 issue of ''

White Dwarf A white dwarf is a Compact star, stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very density, dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun. No nuclear fusion takes place i ...

'', rating the title a 9 out of a possible 10. Rowland noted that this book was "apparently inspired by ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...

''," and that possible events in the game include "capture for gladitorial games, plague,

summary execution In civil and military jurisprudence, summary execution is the putting to death of a person accused of a crime without the benefit of a free and fair trial. The term results from the legal concept of summary justice to punish a summary offense, a ...

as an illegal alien, and mutiny".

In other media

A digital version developed by ''Tin Man Games'' is available for Android, iOS, Windows 10, MacOS, and Linux.

References

External links

''Fighting Fantasy'' Gamebooks
- the official website
''Wizard Books''
- the Publisher's site {{Fighting Fantasy 1983 fiction books Books by Steve Jackson (British game designer) Fighting Fantasy gamebooks Space opera gamebooks