CORE was the
name of the Traveller product development
group formed early in 1996 to generate supplements for the
(then) new edition of Traveller (T4). Andy
Lilly was given permission to publish an adventure
('The Long Way Home') to accompany the launch of
Marc Miller's Traveller at European Gen Con in September
1996. The Long Way Home, written by David Burden
and Andy, was published by BITS,
but carried a CORE logo on the front cover - the intention
being to promote CORE as a high quality amateur writing
group in a similar manner to the near defunct HIWG
(History of the Imperium Working Group).
After the success of The
Long Way Home (later republished – but never
paid for – in two parts as Gateway! and Long Way Home by Imperium Games)
CORE expanded to include Jo Grant. Andy had already
collaborated with both David and Jo in submissions to
various Traveller magazines. Andy, Jo, and Lesley Grant
wrote 101 Cargos and 101 Plots, which
were first released at OrkCon in October 1996.
At the same time, impressed by
The Long Way Home, Imperium Games recruited CORE
to begin work on products for T4. Joe Walsh and Stuart
Dollar (from the US) joined CORE, then Dave Elrick, Michael
Barry (Australia) and Suz Dollar (US). CORE authors wrote
or contributed to key T4 products such as Pocket Empires, and wrote
several products (including Aliens I - Vargr, Aslan
and Graytch) which remain unpublished because of
the collapse of Imperium Games. However, although
credited as coming up with the concept, CORE did not
write the awful – and canon busting –
Annililik Run.
Regrettably, various pressures led to some writers leaving
CORE in 1997, but an increasing number of
BITS members (Sarah Lilly, Martin
Dougherty, Dominic Mooney, David Thomas, Timothy Collinson
and many others) and other Traveller enthusiasts have
continued to contribute to CORE such that the 101 series
continues to expand with new releases each year.
It is important to note that CORE is a very flexible
venture - essentially it is simply a collection of writers
who create Traveller material which is then edited
(massaged, mangled, hacked, twisted, etc.) into a form
suitable for publishing by BITS. However,
the legal entity behind the production of licensed
Traveller products is
BITS, which is a small business which does
all the nasty things like pay for print runs, submit tax
and VAT returns and all those other scary things.
In 2005, it was decided that
the CORE logo would no longer be put on the
BITS products as it was still causing
confusion!
