SJ Games still has problems meeting its own deadlines. This after being in business for over 20 years.
It's obvious at this point that SJG is no longer going to be supporting Traveller after they publish their one 4th edition book Interstellar Wars. Worse, this book isn't even set in the same time frame as their other 30 Traveller books.
I can't complain too much though. The 30 Traveller books they have published are more Traveller books than any other company has published. (Ok GDW published more but they weren't all CT) Traveller had a good long run with SJG and they've produced a lot of good info.
The problem now is that most of the Traveller books are out of print. Many are no longer available, or will soon not be available, which will essentially eliminate Gurps Traveller as a viable version of Classic Traveller. To address this problem I suggested that SJG scan old books and put them up for sale on their electronic store e23. The response I got from this was a long and varied list of excuses. Nevermind that you can take a book down to Kinko's and they'll scan the whole thing and put it into PDF format for less than $100. Nevermind that in response to my posts at least two people offered to do it for SJG for FREE. NO, they STILL couldn't do that, and they were SOOO offended that I'd even suggested the very idea.
I really like the GURPS game system. I think that 4th edition is a great improvement over 3rd edition. I was excited when I first heard that GURPS would be doing Traveller, and I remained excited after every book came out, I bought them, read them, and was very happy with the quality of the product that SJG had produced. I love CT and I see G:T as an improvement and continuation of CT. However G:T is soon no longer going to be a viable option.
At this point if you like G:T I certainly recommend picking up all of the books you can find on eBay, but realize that there aren't going to be anymore new G:T books. I'm undecided as whether or not to recommend using a filesharing program to download all of the old GURPS books for free. I'm obviously upset enough at SJG to no longer want to give them any of my money, but if SJG quits getting money for their Gurps books they'll simply switch over to making nothing but Munchkin products full-time. (which is what it seems like they're doing anyway)
Say nothing and be content with receiving nothing. Complain and get nothing but c**p in return. Vote with my wallet and risk losing the continued existance of my favorite game system. Heck of a catch-22 huh?
