Here are my suggestions for someone who got their Traveller 5 book or CD-ROM 1. In the file on the CD-ROM called Master Text Old, a version made just before their release, you may want to print out a one-page table called Small Craft (for VehicleMaker) and a chapter on Terrain (illustrating the terrain types). These were omitted from the final book. 2. Get a hold of a tentative Errata .pdf file . Currently they are up to version 0.71 . You can get it from <a href="http://travellerrpg.com" rel="nofollow">http://travellerrpg.com</a> by registering with Citizens of the Imperium and going to the Traveller5 forum. It's at the beginning of the sub-forum called Traveller Errata and it is compiled by Don McKinney, subject to final approval by Marc Miller His Own Self. 3. Note that some important errata has to do with Character Generation . The Citizen Skills table has been completely revised. I had to handle that by printing the corrected table and pasting it on in my book, but you may not have to go THAT far! There are also a few careers with non-officers who can get a Commission to turn into officers. The order of what you have to do every "term" of character generation is not quite correct, for Merchants, Soldiers, Marines and such. The correct order is, after checking Risk and Reward: --check (for an Officer) for Promotion to the next-highest Officer rank first, --then check to see if a non-Officer can get a Commission to an Officer, and then --check (for a non-Officer or enlisted) whether they get a Promotion to the next highest non-Officer rank. The order must be this way to prevent someone getting a benefit for both Commission and Promotion (to Officer) in the same term. You get a free skill upon Promotion or Commission, and some skills are gained automatically with some ranks (but check for errata on this). I am going to add "annotations" and "comments" to the .pdf file to keep track of these errata and have a still-readable .pdf that is correct. 4. A player's priority is to read the following chapters (others are more the GM's concern:) Dice , p. 22 (Never mind the big, long probability tables. If you have to ask for your chances, chances are bad!) Characters and character generation , pp. 58-111 Tasks (p. 128-141) Skills (look up descriptions only as needed) Personal Combat (p. 210-235) Some Skills are actually Knowledges. If you gain one you are only gaining a sub-set of the skill on the first and second award of that skill. On the third award, you get Skill level 1 (in every sub-set). If you get more awards, you can add a level to the whole skill, and get better in every sub-set. For example, if you are learning to drive and get a lot of Driver skills, you may pick the first one as Wheeled-1, then next you can either learn to drive Tracked vehicles as well to get Tracked-1, or take Wheeled again and get Wheeled-2. On the third round, you can pick the entire, all-inclusive Driver-1 skill, but you will always be better at driving wheeled vehicles if you end up with Driver-1 Wheeled-2. Since you can combine the skills (in a "cascade"), you get a positive modification of 1+2 = 3 for driving Wheeled vehicles, and 1 for any other type of ground vehicle.
