It is the Golden Age of the Third Imperium. Starships are able to travel faster than light, although communication still lags behind and information can only reach those speeds if starships carry it from sender to receiver. Frontiers are expanding and as civilization spreads through the galaxy, so does slow-burn intrigue. When a long-dormant, godlike alien intelligence known as the Naalir is found floating in a derelict ship, trapped in an Imperial research station, it pleads to the Travellers for help. A computer more advanced than anything the peoples of Charted Space have ever been able to create, Naalir warns the player characters of a disastrous future—unless the events leading up to the galactic cataclysm are averted.
Whether the Travellers choose to aid or oppose Naalir, their decisions will likely send shockwaves through known space as The Singularity Campaign carries them from the opulent heart of the Imperium to its farthest reaches. They will voyage to legendary core worlds – such as the Imperial throneworld of Capital and the vast archive-world of Reference – and beyond, ultimately traversing the whole of Charted Space in pursuit of answers.
Throughout the Travellers’ quest, they will have to grapple with tough ethical questions as the morality of dealing with artificial intelligence and the nature of humanity need to be tackled on a scale grander than ever before.
Traveller is a tabletop roleplaying game (‘tabletop RPG’ or ‘TTRPG’), a collaborative storytelling effort with players usually working together towards a common goal. Newcomers often compare TTRPGs to popular games like Dungeons & Dragons, but Traveller offers a science-fiction twist—instead of wizards and dragons, you’ll find starships, aliens, and cosmic mysteries. The focus is on creative problem-solving, teamwork, and story. You don’t win or lose in the traditional sense; the goal is to collaboratively experience an exciting narrative.
Roleplaying games usually have at least two players controlling a character, while one person takes on the guise of referee (often called the game master or ‘GM’, but dubbed ‘the referee’ in Traveller). That being said, it is possible to enjoy an RPG session with just the referee and a single player, particularly if the referee likes to delve deeper into a character’s history or downtime in between adventures from time to time. There really is no clear limit to the maximum number of players that can join in, but experience indicates that 6 players and a referee is a good upper limit, as characters should get roughly equal opportunities to be in the spotlight, and referees often find it more difficult to juggle more player characters at once. Of late, solo play has become quite popular as well, but obviously The Singularity Campaign focuses on a more open-ended type of storytelling that requires a referee.
In Traveller, players each create one character by choosing careers and combining random rolls with thoughtful choices to come up with well-rounded characters, each with their own attributes and skills, which all help the referee quantify how good they are at different tasks. Perhaps even more importantly, all of these stats serve to get a sense of who that character is, what kind of life they have led, what their motivations are, and so on.
Much of the fun an RPG has to offer comes from improvisational acting. Players take on the roles of their characters—threatening, intimidating, seducing and convincing other characters, pleading with them, talking to them, and doing any other thing a real person would be able to do. One of the major differences with regular acting is that they don’t usually act out their actions. Instead, they describe them and use the RPG’s rules to determine if their characters are actually able to accomplish what they’re trying to do. Other gamers prefer to focus on the tactical or game aspects of TTRPGS, on problem-solving, or any of the many things that make TTRPGs so much fun.
Of course, rules also need an arbiter—and that’s the referee. While each player only plays a single character, the referee controls everyone and everything the player characters get to meet. They are also supposed to know the game rules well enough to let a game session flow fluidly, so that the RPG doesn’t grind to a halt every time there’s a rules discussion or something needs to be looked up.
Referees act like the characters’ senses: they tell them what they’re hearing, touching, smelling, feeling and seeing. Players tell the referee what their characters are doing and are in charge of their characters’ voices. Good referees usually come in prepared: they’ll have an outline of the story, maps and/or descriptions of the places the characters visit. The Singularity Campaign even offers everything they will need to run their sessions, allowing for the most immersive storytelling possible.
The Singularity Campaign is a TTRPG adventure module (a pre-written story and setting) that provides the framework for many sessions of play. Even if you’ve never played a TTRPG before, the Singularity Kickstarter provides an opportunity to dive into this form of entertainment, with guidance and materials to get you started on your own spacefaring adventure, Mongoose said.
Traveller is an iconic science fiction roleplaying game, first published in 1977 by Game Designers’ Workshop. Designed by Marc Miller, it became one of the pioneering RPGs in the sci-fi genre, earning a loyal fanbase with its realistic spacefaring setting and open-ended gameplay. In Traveller, players create characters who explore a far-future universe of star empires, trade routes, alien cultures, and adventure—a universe called the Third Imperium. Notably, the game’s setting embraces an “age of sail” feel, which fosters a sense of isolation and discovery across distant star systems.
Today, Traveller is published and revitalized by Mongoose Publishing (now in its second edition under Mongoose’s banner), which has modernized the rules while honoring the rich legacy of the game. Traveller’s enduring popularity lies in its flexibility and scope—from gritty survival tales on the fringe of space, to grand military campaigns and diplomatic intrigues, the game covers it all. It has been cited as a standard-setter for science fiction roleplaying and continues to thrive with an active community worldwide. For many, Traveller is not just a game but a living universe of adventure that has stood the test of time.
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