# RPG A DAY 2025: Day 04 - Message tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2025 #game/rpg/traveller ![[RPG a Day 2025 (illo).png]] I think everyone that knows me knows that I'm an immense **[[Traveller]]** geek. I don't mean that as I'm a huge aficionado of the setting, though I'm somewhat an aficionado of the setting. I'm an aficionado of the premise, the setup, the underlying idea, the core that the game starts with, or at least used to start with, and how it evolves. ![[Traveller - Mayday (cover, illo).jpg]] The cover of the first edition box set is evocative in a way that very few covers manage to do, and it's black. There's no imagery here. There's nothing drawn. All it is is a stark message received in the blackness of space, broken, professional, scared. You can imagine yourself in a ship with your crew, picking this up, staticky, no video attached, and it's just you and nothingness for cubic light years around. It's you or nobody. You're on your way somewhere, pursuing your own interests, and this person, perhaps. Minutes away, perhaps moments away, perhaps hours away, is in fear for their lives with legitimate cause. What do you do? There's an entire character backstory right here on the cover of a box and on the cover of multiple books over the ensuing decades. The decision your character makes right now, right here, before you've even put a character together, before you've even opened the book, before you know anything about characters, your character has already made a decision. You know what you want to do. You know where you're going to go. And you know you're going to live with that decision. That's the hook. That's the message. That's why, from day one, **Traveller** grabbed people by the throat, shook them back and forth, and didn't let them go. No matter how the setting got updated or mutated, expanded or contracted, shifted or pulled, added to or carved away, this was the message. This is it. This is the critical moment. This is make or break. In a really strange way, my entire gaming life, collecting this ridiculous library of games I have to reference, this weird history of games I've evolved through and become familiar with, is because of *this* message on the front of a box. With no art. Stark black, white, and red. I'm chasing the dragon of the way I felt the first time I read: *"This is Free Trader Beowulf … Mayday …"* Maybe I always will be.