Overview

History: 1996-1997

GDW, the original publisher of Traveller (1977) closed up shop on February 29, 1996. But, Traveller would not be without a publisher for long. A new company called Imperium Games, headed by Ken Whitman, was already on the rise. It would have Marc Miller's Traveller (1996) or more colloquially T4 out in time for Gen Con '96.

With a new game also came a new magazine, or sort of an old magazine: Imperium decided to resurrect Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society, to be edited by Jean Rabe. The magazine would pick up the numbering from the original run by starting with #25. Which made sense other than the fact that Challenge magazine had already picked up JTAS' numbering with #25 — and had even featured a special "JTAS" section with its own cover for the first four issues.

Readers were able to subscribe to Imperium's new JTAS for $30 for a one-year subscription of 8 issues, with shipping free. They were told to expect the first new issue, JTAS #25 shortly after the release of the rulebook. That time was eventually pinned down in October, but months went by and there was no magazine. Some subscribers eventually got a mailing in mid-December ... but it turned out to be an invoice charging them an extra $11.20 for the subscriptions they'd already purchased! Following a change in leadership at Imperium, moneyman Solomon Courtney had decided the magazine couldn't ship for free. (Fandom was not happy, and increasing the price of an already sold item was likely not legal.)

JTAS #25 finally came back from the printers around Christmas 1996 and likely didn't make it to anyone until the New Year. Meanwhile that change in Imperium's leadership had also resulted in a brief slowdown in products, so JTAS #26 was rescheduled for March. It'd finally appear in the back half of May. Four additional scheduled issues of JTAS, all to appear in 1997, didn't appear that year — and in fact would never appear, as Imperium Games' Traveller license was not renewed when it expired at the end of 1997.

JTAS #25 had a number of other problems, prime among them that a lot of its content didn't fit with the Traveller universe: multiple uses of FTL radios were the most obvious canon failure. Much like the T4 rules themselves, it also wasn't well-centered in the new Milieu 0 setting that Imperium was theoretically developing. Instead, adventures were set on generic or otherwise unknown planets with little reference to the overall setting.

Another notable problem with that first issue was that it published at least one article without permission of the author: "One Hundred Cargos" by Jo Grant. Though Grant had indeed submitted the article to Imperium Games as a possibility for a supplement, and though he'd entertained the idea of placing it instead in JTAS, he'd required a contract before agreeing, which Imperium had never supplied. Grant and BITS UK thus ultimately published 101 Cargos (1996) as a standalone book in October for OrkCon in Germany ... and then it showed up in JTAS #25 as well. JTAS #26 was somewhat better received than its predecessor (though still considered fairly average). This was likely a result of the change in leadership at Imperium, with Whitman still being in charge when #25 was produced and Courtney more directly in charge for #26. The articles were more in tune with both the T4 game system and the Milieu 0 setting ... though some of the material was still fairly generic. John Snead's article on The Suerrat, a minor human race in Ilelish, had the strongest foundation in the setting, though there was concern that it contradicted previous fan material: a common issue in that era of both HIWG and the TML, when fans were producing prolific content.

There were also some stylistic changes between the two issues, behind the Chris Foss artwork that fronted both. The first issue was printed entirely black and white on stiff white paper with a color cardstock cover, which was similar to the style of most of Imperium's books. The second issue instead was printed on flimsy, glossy paper with a color signature on the outside enclosing black-and-white pages within.

Despite the new leadership, JTAS continued to face problems of professionalism. Six months after publication, John Snead was asking if anyone else was having problems with late payment. It turned out that he'd never even received a contract for his Suerrat article. (He had however received a contract for an article for the unpublished JTAS #27.)

By early 1998, JTAS v2 had officially been put on hold because "material wasn't seen as supporting game so much as publishing what came in." There was talk about reviving it with the publication of T4.1, which was by then months over due. What wasn't known at the time was that Imperium had already lost its Traveller license at the end of 1997: it would not be renewed.

And that's the whole story of the second JTAS: just two issues over a year and a half of publication. They were quite different, but the overall magazine tended to be rated poor to average.

Obtaining the Magazines

This index is © Copyright 2023 by Shannon Appelcline. It is released under a cc-by-4.0 license, allowing reuse with attribution.

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1. Printed without permission from the author shortly after it was published in 101 CARGOS (BITS, 1996).

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