Far Trader: Profit and Pitfalls Among the Stars (Gurps Traveller)

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not for all tastes
Review: When I first got hold of this book, I expected something similar to the original "Merchant Prince", a few essays on trade, enhanced character generation, a few ship listings and maybe an additional trade table or two for the buying and selling of cargo.

...what a difference 15+ years can make! Boy, was I surprised when I opened the covers of "Far Trader" and started to read. Detailed essays on finance and trade in the Imperium, an incredibly detailed - almost realistic - economic and trade system, and much more besides. The detail was somewhat overwhelming at first, and somewhat insulted my minimalist sensibilities as a twenty year traveller veteran. I want to play a merchant! I exclaimed, not read a book on economics! But then I started to look at the material closely - and it *is* good. The authors have started with the initial premise that interstellar trade *is* both viable and necessary and then built a "pseudo-realistic" trading and economic system on top of it. It's elegant, neat and eminently playable.

All the usual stuff is there of course, starship plans, character templates for GURPS and a host of adventure seeds. Production values are fabulous, and the books have a nifty "sidebar" format where a wealth of additional information is presented.

I'm going to give it 5 stars, its a great piece of work - I liked it, but I can imagine that it won't be for all tastes. Its not really a book you can "dip into" and start using with a cursory read - if you are going to have successful merchant characters you'll need to read and absorb a fair portion of this book. I'm afraid that the 40 page vignette books of the classic traveller period are long gone, replaced with detail, detail, detail. But with such quality of content, and production values like these I for one won't particularly mourn their passing.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not for all tastes
Review: When I first got hold of this book, I expected something similar to the original "Merchant Prince", a few essays on trade, enhanced character generation, a few ship listings and maybe an additional trade table or two for the buying and selling of cargo.

...what a difference 15+ years can make! Boy, was I surprised when I opened the covers of "Far Trader" and started to read. Detailed essays on finance and trade in the Imperium, an incredibly detailed - almost realistic - economic and trade system, and much more besides. The detail was somewhat overwhelming at first, and somewhat insulted my minimalist sensibilities as a twenty year traveller veteran. I want to play a merchant! I exclaimed, not read a book on economics! But then I started to look at the material closely - and it *is* good. The authors have started with the initial premise that interstellar trade *is* both viable and necessary and then built a "pseudo-realistic" trading and economic system on top of it. It's elegant, neat and eminently playable.

All the usual stuff is there of course, starship plans, character templates for GURPS and a host of adventure seeds. Production values are fabulous, and the books have a nifty "sidebar" format where a wealth of additional information is presented.

I'm going to give it 5 stars, its a great piece of work - I liked it, but I can imagine that it won't be for all tastes. Its not really a book you can "dip into" and start using with a cursory read - if you are going to have successful merchant characters you'll need to read and absorb a fair portion of this book. I'm afraid that the 40 page vignette books of the classic traveller period are long gone, replaced with detail, detail, detail. But with such quality of content, and production values like these I for one won't particularly mourn their passing.