News
Garden Worlds
I've published another TAS supplement - Garden Worlds. This is a set of d66 tables for describing what can be found on (not too surprisingly) Garden Worlds, and is my latest addition to my Wonders of a Solar system collection.
I've also been continuing to work on some Dungeondraft assets for Traveller, with plans to use them for ship deck plans in a bigger supplement I almost have finished.
I've also published two (Traveller related) modules for FoundryVTT:
It also looks like we're going to shifting our normal weekly schedule around a bit, in order to start getting in a bit more wargaming. I'm putting together a Vikings war band for Saga in preparation.
Druids' Dale
We have started a new Ars Magica campaign, called Druids' Dale. Set in mythic Scotland, in the ruins of an old Díedne covenant. A weekly write up of it can be found over on the blog.
Wonders of a Solar System: Hot Worlds
I have recently published the third supplement in my Wonders of a Solar System series: Hot Worlds. This provides a list of random world descriptions for small, barren worlds similar to Mercury.
Designed for use with Traveller, and published under the Travellers Aid Society on DrivethruRPG, it provides a D66 list of short world descriptions for use when the GM needs a quick description of an interesting world in the inner solar system.
Examples include worlds with ferro-volcanoes spewing molten metal into orbit, transparent quartz mountains embedded in the crust, and towering glaciers on the night side of tidally locked worlds.
Also included is a D66 list of things to find on such worlds - from abandoned cities to research stations and mining outposts.
It joins Kuiper Belt Objects and Gas Giants.
Wonders of a Solar System: Gas Giants
I've published a second Traveller supplement over on DrivethruRPG - Wonders of a Solar System: Gas Giants. This is a smaller book, really just a list of random events of natural phenomena that can be found at gas giants. It's pretty system neutral, but has some references to the Mongoose Traveller rules so I've once again released under the TAS license.
I plan for this to be the first in a series of supplements - Kuiper Belt Objects and Rogue Planets are probably up next. The idea is to provide some random encounters that are mostly natural in nature.
A Travellers' Dozen
I've finally taken the plunge, and have published my first real product, A Travellers' Dozen. This is a collection of twelve NPCs for Mongoose Traveller, together with story hooks to work them into your campaign. It's available on DrivethruRPG as pay-as-you-want. They've already appeared on this website, but have been edited and expanded for the final product.
A Travellers' Dozen includes a dozen NPC Travellers for use with Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition. Each character includes a portrait, background and 6 story hooks to provide ideas on how they may be used in a campaign.
Also included are four organisations which have connections to these characters: Intuitive Biomedics, Paternity Inc, Sag Mekilure and Tobia Uncovered! Each has a full description and a set of story hooks to include them in your campaign.
Finally, those characters which obtained a ship as part of their background has their ship detailed at the end of the book, along with information on the rest of the crew.
Though all of these are based in the Reft and Trojan Reach sectors, they could be easily moved to a more stuiable location for your own Traveller campaign.
In total, it includes:
- 12 main characters
- 50 supporting characters
- 4 organisations
- 6 ships and crew
- 96 story hooks
Also included are image files which include portraits and VTT tokens for each character, logos for each of the organisations and images and tokens for each of the ships. These can be used in a VTT or simply provided as handouts to players.
2020
So 2020 is finally over, so time for a look back at the games we played over the last 12 months.
Traveller
Given the amount of Traveller I've been running recently, I've completely restructured my Traveller pages. This may result in some broken links, but the content is still around - just moved. Previously the content focused on ideas for my 'Traveller-like' campaign. These have now been moved to my YAGS rules site where they can be unambiguously centred around my YAGS rules.
The content here is focusing on actual Traveller, mostly Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition and focused on the Third Imperium during the Golden Age, which is when my campaigns are set.
Islands in the Rift
A few weeks ago I started running a Mongoose 2nd Edition Traveller game on Roll20. It's set in 1105, in Reft Sector, in the Islands cluster, and involves the players locating and trying to recover a ship left behind by a failed Imperium intelligence mission. I'm putting some background notes and various resources on this site for future reference and general use.
Sessions are being blogged about on a weekly basis.
I'm also playing in a Zweihänder game.
Blender Renders
I've had some free time recently, some of which I'm been putting into watching YouTube videos on how to use Blender. It's a very complete 3D modelling package, but also quite complicated to learn how to use.
However, I've started to figure out the basics, and in the process have started working on some 3D models of various spacecraft designs for my various SciFi RPG initiatives. I'm very much at beginner level at the moment though, so anything I produce is very basic. I'm making everything I do available under open source licenses, and available on GitLab.
I've also tried some crude scenes as well, though drawing natural stuff is a lot harder than engineered objects. Hopefully things will improve over the coming year, and I may try using it for fantasy related things as well (such as buildings and ruins).
Spacecraft Recognition Guide
The main content being worked on at the moment is the Spacecraft Recognition Guide, where I'm putting together a collection of spaceship designs for my YAGS SciFi rules. Starting at the plausible near future, and then working forward in time with an ever increasing level of technology.
I'm making heavy use of Blender to model what the starships look like, and coming up with a starship design system that is reasonably detailed, but hopefully simplified enough that it's usable.
There are more details over on my blog.