quick Trav item

A glance at this wikipedia page suggests that the largest real world commercial ships top out at about 5 times the displacement of the largest military vessels, with many commercial vessels three times the size of the largest warships. So if the largest military vessel seen in your Traveller sector is a 60,000 ton cruiser, then the biggest merchant vessel one would expect to find would be 300,000 tons, with 180,000 ton vessels more common.

I've long wanted a rule of thumb like that.

longings for the stars

I've been on a little bit of a sci-fi kick lately, which undoubtedly started when I saved that old BattleTech scenario from geocities oblivion. That led to Klingon Armada, which got me thinking about all the fun possibilities of spaceship battles. Both of which naturally lead me to Traveller. For the first time in a couple of years I've recently added some new stuff to the Gateway Quadrant wiki, my attempt to preserve and expand the Trav material written by David Sering and published by Judges Guild.

Last night I flipped back through my copy of Mongoose Traveller. I continue to be impressed by how well the folks behind that one did at navigating the line between preserving the Traveller legacy and updating the material to make it more relevant. I really ought to try out these Mongoose rules at some point, especially when I already have a pretty large sandbox to play in. I kind of like the idea of putting the players in charge of a merchant exploration vessel and setting them loose among the weird mini-states of the Quadrant.

This just in: Swords & Wizardry is going into distribution. Huzzah!

so this is pretty awesome

Every once in a while the folks who publish games come out with something so suited to my idiosyncratic tastes that I can only assume they're making it specifically for me. Case in point: the new book Klingon Armada. Dan Kast takes his excellent Starmada spaceship minis rules and applies them to the alterna-Trek universe of Star Fleet Battles. To me that is so like peanut butter and chocolate that I never thought it would come to pass. Starmada is either the best or second best starship minis game I've ever encountered, Full Thrust being the other competitor for the top spot. The Starmada Compedium is one of my favorite game books ever. I own three copies, for frig's sake! Meanwhile, the Star Fleet Universe takes The Original Series and makes it bigger and more militant, so as to justify more and larger space battles. Kapow!

It's not a completely flawless book. I was hoping for a ship silhouette on the spaceship stat cards. And while the mini-campaign in the book is aces, an additional scenario or two (especially a training fight) would be nice. Stats for Tholian ships without web-shooters is just plain weird. And I don't understand why PDFs of the ship cards are six bucks at e23 rather than a free download. For six bucks I would expect to get the whole dang game, the hard copy is only seventeen. Still, as a launching point for seeking out new lifeforms and new civilizations and then blowing them straight to hell, this book totally works.

If you like SFB or the old FASA Trek ship game but want something sleeker and better suited to bigass fleet actions, I heartily suggest checking out Klingon Armada. Get it from your friendly local game store or buy one here. Or before you buy, check out this free download of the basic Starmada rules that Klingon Armada is built upon.

Dungeoneering with Dad

Yesterday the whole Rients family went to the Rader farm near Bloomington, Illinois. This is one of those places that in the fall opens up to the general public to sell them pumpkins and take folks on hay rack rides and such.

My dad and I were the only ones who wanted to test our mettle against the 5 acre corn maze. We had a great time of it, too. For scale, look at the photo above and imagine the base of the A's in FAMILY FARM at about 10 or 15 feet across. Most of the passages were just wide enough that two people going in different directions could squeeze by each other.

As you go in you're handed a map with the goal of finding all 10 checkpoints before you exit. While I am terrible at navigating by landmarks or even finding which way is east, you can bet your ass I know how to use a dungeon map! By checkpoint number 4 or so I was giving directions out to folks who were lost.

Although the lighting was good and no monsters tried to eat us, there was one major hazard: mud. The rain around here has been pretty heavy in the last week and there were a lot of passages with standing water and squishy mud. At one point I got stuck. Had I not been wearing boots my socks would have gotten plenty wet while I was extricating myself. One big lesson I took away from the expedition is that if you are always watching your footing it's awfully hard to pay attention to anything else. We had to come to a full stop on dry land to consult the map. Running away from ogres would have almost certainly involved falling face first in the mud and getting completely lost too. I can almost imagine someone in platemail with a pack full of gear drowning in a puddle of muddy water.

Another big thing the corn maze suggested: pacing out the length of passages in a dungeon really would take a heckuva long time. Add in trying to steer clear of monsters and the standard 120'/turn movement rate really seems to make sense.

It would be interesting to attempt the same maze at night, with a light source that simulates a torch or lantern. That would be cool.

Happy Shatnerversary!

Today's post is a little later than normal because my wife and I spent yesterday celebrating ten years of marriage. That's 3650 days of Amy putting up with my nonsense. Amazing.

Blame Eliphas Levi

Today I would like to offer a correction to a previous item. Back in 2005 I suggested that Wraeththu: From Enchantment to Fufilment was "the first RPG I've ever encountered with someone's genitalia displayed on the cover". I was wrong. Somehow I had forgotten about ol' Baphomet on the cover of Bruce Galloway's oddball Fantasy Wargaming.



If the snakes don't get you, Mr. Happy surely will.

What's on the tip of your brain?

Simple question today. Imagine you're not in front of your computer reading stupid gaming blogs, you're not looking at your shelf full of game crap, nor are you talking to your gaming buddies. You're doing something totally non-game related when you have an idle thought about role-playing games. Even if your thought has nothing to do with game mechanics, assume there's an implied game where the thought makes more sense with in the context of game X rather than game Y or Z. What system(s) are you most likely to be thinking of?

Personally, almost all of my random thoughts about RPGs can be filed under D&D, Encounter Critical or Traveller. That's just three systems, assuming you look at something like Mutant Future as a special case of the general field of D&D. Which I do. I'm curious if others get sudden inspirations about a wider range of games. Doc Rotwang! strikes me as being a likely candidate in this regard. Does anybody ever have unbidden thoughts about games they haven't played, read, discussed or otherwise thought about in years? I played one brief Shadowrun campaign when the game first came out and have never thought about it since unless someone us brought it up.