Marc W. Miller partnered with Sweetpea Entertainment to license his science-fiction property Traveller in exchange for funding to get Imperium Games running in February 1996, as a new publisher solely dedicated to Traveller material, beginning with a new, fourth edition of the game titled Marc Miller's Traveller, commonly abbreviated T4. Sweetpea advanced Imperium Games seed money to launch in exchange for equity and media rights.[1]: 330
Lester W. Smith and Timothy Brown, former employees of original Traveller publisher Game Designers' Workshop (GDW), came to work for Imperium Games.[1]: 63 Don Perrin also designed role playing products for Traveller.[2] Larry Elmore created most of the black-and-white artwork for Marc Miller's Traveller.[1]: 332 Chris Foss created much of the color concept art for the new edition of Traveller, produced 12 pages of artwork for the edition's first supplement, Starships, and illustrated a number of covers for the line.[1]: 332 [1]: 333
When Sweetpea Entertainment bought out the stock of the many creators who had worked on T4 and took over some of the day-to-day operations of the company, Timothy Brown took the helm of Imperium Games under Sweetpea's guidance, and was now the only official staff for Imperium, with others acting as freelancers.[1]: 332