Talk:Traveller

it seems to me that rogue trader and warhammer 40k seem to be inspired by traveler, especially the emperor, imperium and the idea that you're out in the fringes of space trying to make your way as a trader

I'd say it's more that Traveller and Rogue Trader are influenced by older SF. The idea of the crusty space trader in his rustbucket space ship trying to go from star to star, buying Denebian Pickled Peppers low and selling them high or trading them for Venusian Mega-Beer that can be sold back on Earth at a profit, goes back to the 1950s if not further. One of the authors, incidentally, who was a very big influence on Loren Wiseman, was H. Beam Piper. His novel "Space Viking" is about a hardass widowed planetary nobleman living in the era following the collapse of the Galactic Empire, who must raid neighboring worlds (imagine early edition cover art of guys in armored space suits with Viking style horns glued onto the sides of the helmets, which also have "rabbit ears" TV antennas on top, coming down the ramp from a giant V2-rocket-ish rocketship with WWII surplus submachineguns in their hands) for technology (since they're not using it anyway, amirite guise?) to restart high-tech industry and civilization first on his own world then on others. Those who've read Megatraveller's source material and the state of the known Galaxy after Virus will instantly say "Oh! Yeah, that's where that came from."