Journal of the Travellers Aid Society is a role-playing game magazine devoted to Traveller, commonly abbreviated JTAS. The first issue was published by GDW in 1979 and the last of the first run was #24 in 1985. It was superseded by the magazine Challenge, which took up its numbering scheme and ran from issue 25 onwards with a broader role-playing game focus.
The magazine was revived by Imperium Games after GDW folded, and JTAS 25 and 26 were published before that publisher folded itself.
After Steve Jackson Games licensed the Traveller setting, JTAS was revived once again as a weekly, then bi-weekly subscriber-supported web magazine in February, 2000. This incarnation of JTAS can be found at http://jtas.sjgames.com
The Traveller wiki has an article about the Journal, including a complete listing of all published issues.
The Journal of the Travellers Aid Society takes its name from the fictional Travellers' Aid Society (TAS) that was first mentioned in the original incarnation of the Traveller game published by Game Designers Workshop . In the original Traveller game, it was not too uncommon for characters to obtain membership in the TAS during character creation. The idea of the TAS is that it is an organization that exists to support what are basically 'transients,' or 'wanderers' around the galaxy. It does so by maintaining low-cost hostels at many of the large starports, and, most importantly, by maintaining its 'rating system,' which warns of the dangers inherent in visiting certain worlds. Under this system, a world which should be approached with caution is denoted an 'Amber Zone,' and a world that should not be approached at all is denoted a 'Red Zone.'
Famous quotes containing the words journal, travellers, aid and/or society:
“How truly does this journal contain my real and undisguised thoughts—I always write it according to the humour I am in, and if a stranger was to think it worth reading, how capricious—insolent & whimsical I must appear!—one moment flighty and half mad,—the next sad and melancholy. No matter! Its truth and simplicity are its sole recommendations.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
“As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from Southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in you: he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you have it not. You have not given him the authentic sign.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)