Gaming and other Nonsense
“Just the place for a Snark!”
Welcome to a collection of random pages about tabletop roleplaying and wargames, with a bit of science fiction thrown in for good measure. It contains campaign notes and chronicles for various games I've run and played it, design notes for game systems, and designs for armies and characters. Since some of the material dates back almost 30 years, the style may be inconsistent.
Though there is material here for both Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder, it also includes Ars Magica, Traveller, Star Wars, Legend of the Five Rings, Pendragon, as well as various home brewed game systems.
Products I sell are available on DriveThruRPG.
Frequent updates on the games I'm currently playing can be found on my blog.
Campaigns Roleplaying Wargaming
Most of the content on here is entirely original. Some of it is based on material published by other people - e.g., game content for published RPGs or Wargames.
For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.
News and Updates
Desert Worlds
The latest TAS publication is Wonders of a Solar System: Desert Worlds. This provides 36 descriptions of Desert planets for Travellers to find and explore.
Designed for use with Traveller, but compatible with any science fiction roleplaying game.
Other publications in the series include:
101 Garden Worlds
Available for sale now on DriveThruRPG, is 101 Garden Worlds, a collection of maps and animated tokens for world maps. For use in any Science Fiction RPG, it consists of maps and 3D renders which can be used as handouts in a tabletop game. Also provided are animated images for use as either tokens, or in handouts in Virtual Tabletops such as FoundryVTT or Roll20.
The collection contains Icosohedral maps, rectangular maps, and a collection of 3D renders showing what the world looks like from different angles.
Each world also comes with animated tokens are available at 100px, 200px and 400px sizes.For some examples, see my original blog post on the subject.
Barren Worlds
My latest publication on DriveThruRPG is Wonders of a Solar System: Barren Worlds. It's a collection of D66 descriptions of small barren terrestrial worlds similar to Mars.
It also includes D66 entries for archaeological finds which may be located on such worlds.
Other things that I've been working on recently include my Ships of Elite collection, which contains conversions of ships from the original Elite computer game to Mongoose Traveller. It now includes most of the common original ships, including the Cobra Mk III and Python. The Boa is currently being worked on.
I've also been working on expanding my assets for Dungeondraft, adding smallcraft, vehicles and even some larger spacecraft as tokens.
My next planned DriveThru publication will be a collection of trade ships, from 100t to 1,000t, for use with Mongoose Traveller. They will include deck plans, renders and game statistics.
Marlow Light Freighter
The Marlow Light Freighter is a 2,600t bulk carrier, used in the ore and agricultural industries. With a Jump-2 drive, and 2G of thrust, it is designed for servicing worlds outside of the standard main line.
This is my latest TAS product, a short supplement containing full details for Mongoose Traveller, as well as deck plans, 3D renders and tokens for use in a VTT.
The deck plans are 128px resolution, since Dungeondraft couldn't handle exporting to the full 256px for a ship of this size. This is not a ship that PCs will typically use themselves, but it is the sort of ship that might be encountered at starports.
As part of my renewed interest in creating ship designs, I've also put together Mongoose designs for some of the ships from the 1984 version of Elite. They have 3D renders and deck plans, as well as a history and description of the ship. Each is about 4 pages in length. There's four at the moment, but I plan to flesh this out over time.
A Travellers' Dozen 2
My final TAS product of 2022 is A Travellers' Dozen 2 which contains another dozen, randomly rolled, characters for Mongoose Traveller. Each character has a detailed background, a list of connections and half a dozen story hooks for getting them involved in your campaign.
The characters are located in the Reft and Trojan Reach sectors of the Third Imperium, but it shouldn't be too hard to move them to a different location or setting. Though statistics are included for Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition, most of the material is system agnostic.
The main characters are:
- Michelle Mandeville - a ‘truther’ who strongly believes that the Third Imperium is a lie
- Nigel Mikateema - an artist famous for his portrayals of urban life
- Okhegan - a small Vargr seeking a pack that won’t treat her badly
- Paul Peterson - a disillusioned, alcoholic, ex-law enforcement officer
- Quilla Quartermaine - an enforcer for a local street gang
- Ronald Reed - a steward aboard the Electric Blue subsidised liner with a colourful past
- Samzan Shalaj - the red headed lead vocalist of the Frantic Reds
- Tony Turner - a scout turned data analyst
- Ushle Ujarii - a psion who doesn’t play well with others
- Valkentana Vidar - a fallen nobleman who is now part con-man and part drifter
- Willa Weber - an arms dealer
- Xander Xenakis - a rich psychopath with a history of corporate greed and callousness
As well as the main characters, there are detailed descriptions of four organisations:
- The Broken Arrows - a criminal gang of arms dealers operating out of the Trojan Reach.
- Reaching Shipping - a company that runs subsidised merchant vessels in the Outrim Void.
- StarChat - a social media company that runs a distributed chat system across the Islands in the Reft sector.
- United Defence Alliance - a mercenary group who specialise in the protection of VIPs.
In addition, there are full write ups of four ships associated with the characters. Each ship has a set of statistics, deck plans, a crew and background information. Adventure hooks are also provided, from D66 tables to more detailed stories that can be fitted into your campaign. All deck plans have both a gridded and un-gridded format and are provided at both 100px and 256px resolutions.