Freelance Traveller #88 is out!

Jeff Zeitlin's Freelance Traveller e-zine has a new issue out!

Highlights include the Horosha-class Scout/Courier (Type S) for Classic Traveller, by Matt Frisbee

The Spacer's Hymn by Timothy Collinson, complete with sheet music, and a link to an audio file

A short fiction piece of mine, set in my own Daktari Nebula subsector: Predator!

Issue 88 is available from the Freelance Traveller site. Here's the link.

Check it out! And Thank You Jeff for publishing my story.

PC perspective of a game event

This story was written by Longfinger's player. It is from his perspective, where he refers to himself in the third person as Allistair.

Allistair walked into the club. He had spotted Stephy, and had seen him gambling his money, and his time, away. Allistair mentally rolled his eyes.

I've only been under his employment for a few days now, and I'm already utterly disappointed, he thought.

He walked over to him, noticing that Stephy was winning by more than Allistair cared to count. Looking down on him, he could see a very well executed poker face plastered onto the Baron's face.

"Good evening Captain. I don't mean to intrude, I just wanted to check up on you. The crew and I were a little concerned about you and Miss Tawny leaving the ship," whispered Allistair.

"Oh it's quite alright Longfinger, we're just relaxing a bit before we shove off tomorrow," replied Stephy in a half attentive voice.

Even more quietly, Allistair whispered in the Baron's ear,

"I'd also like to apologize for my earlier behaviour, I meant no harm to you in the slightest."

"Don't worry about it my boy, I understand your motives completely."

Stephy then turned his attention to one of his fellow gamblers, whom he seemed to know, with a confused look upon his face.

"Have you seen Tawny anywhere? She's been absent for twenty minutes," he inquired, although he didn't sound concerned.

The gambler shook his head. Allistair then saw a chance to be of service, for since the age of sixteen he had made a covenant with whom his people referred to as "The Gardener".

"I could fetch her for you if you'd like of me Captain," he offered.

Stephy merely shrugged and casually uttered, "If you wish."

Snowball - the Conclusion

Coherent light pulses stabbed outward at a chunk of ice the size of a shuttlecraft.  It shuddered, and large pieces of it broke loose and drifted out of the way.  Tarrant banked as hard as he dared to get around it, struggling to keep the two craft from drifting together. It was so quiet on the bridge he could hear his breath coming in short puffs, as if inhaling too hard would alter the ship's course.

Out of nowhere, the communicator bleeped and a new voice broke the silence.
 
“Assisting ship, this is the Navy rescue vessel Damascus.  We are closing on your position, please identify yourself.”

Tarrant waved his arm to quiet the spontaneous cheers so he could hear to answer. “Damascus, this is Confederation ship Nth Degree, tail number 27B-94E.  We can’t see you, the ice has fogged our sensors.  Where are you?”

“Nth Degree, this is Damascus. We are above you to port aft.  Break off to bearing 212 by 037 and get out of there.  We are deploying grapplers to recover Lady Caroline.  She’s in good hands, get clear before you get yourselves killed.”

“Thank you, Damascus! We are on our way out.” Tarrant responded with a sigh of relief.  Cheers went up from the crew and passengers.  Smiling at the celebrating crowd, Tarrant stabbed the grappler release button with his thumb.  The grin faded as the ENGAGED light went out and the MALFUNCTION light came on.  He thumbed the button again, frowning now, and the MALFUNCTION light blinked at him.  The knot in his stomach squeezed even tighter.  He groped for the comm panel.

Snowball part Four

Kate stood clutching her triage kit as the airlock tube extended towards Lady Caroline.  “Caroline, this is Dr. Chiltern.  Open your outer airlock door. We’re ready to connect the tube.  Have you got your wounded standing by to transport?”

“Dr. Chiltern, this is Dr. Benz.  We’re trying, but it’s been hard to move people; the artificial gravity is intermittent at best. It’s a miracle no one’s dead. We’re getting the worst cases to the airlock now.  Almost everyone’s got some injuries, but the worst five are coming first.” 

The outer door to the airlock slid back with a dull thunk.  Dack and Wally hurried to secure the tube and sealed it. “You know,” Dack said as they waited for the pressure to build, “The hole in the hull looked pretty odd. I didn’t see anything that looked like a typical asteroid strike. All the hull plating shattered out, not in. I took some video, if you want to see it later.”

Wally only grunted. Without bothering with the comm, he pounded on the inner door with his gloved fist.  Dr. Benz, a studious-looking man wearing a space suit opened the door. The doctor did not speak, but handed him a teenage boy with a magnetic cast bracing his torso. Dack picked up an unconscious older woman who had a circulatory constrictor clamped to her abdomen.  It struck him that the woman must have been old money – even lying on the deck she radiated culture and poise. ‘I bet she’s an aristocrat,’ he thought. Kate and Dr. Benz lifted a man on an immobilization tray and hurried across to the Nth Degree.  Two more passengers followed, assisting another who had both legs splinted.

As they arrived in the infirmary, Kate saw that Dr. Benz looked exhausted. Anya took his end of the litter and they hoisted the patient onto a table.  Kate gestured toward her supply locker “You stay here and get started with these people. Anya’s here to help now.  I’ll take charge of getting the rest of them across."  Dr. Benz managed a sort of a smile, and then turned to the man on the table. Anya rummaged through the locker for equipment he wanted. Kate rushed out of the infirmary, heading back to the airlock. She passed Dack and Wally, who were carrying more passengers.

Halfway across the tube she stopped and turned back. ‘Always shut the outer door,’ she chanted, recalling the safety rules Anya had drilled into her head.  That accomplished, she trotted along the tube but stopped at the same point. Something had thudded against the outside of the tube.  A second later there was another thud, and another.  A louder thud, then the sound of a metal strut bending.  Realizing what was happening sent a jolt of fear through Kate’s heart.  As she scrambled for Lady Caroline’s airlock the tube wall started shook and rattled, making the tube echo like a popcorn popper.

New Issue of Freelance Traveller #75

The new issue (May/June 2016) of Freelance Traveller is out, and chock full of Traveller goodness!  This issue is the second time they've published an article of mine! Check out their review of the Behind the Claw podcast as well.

The editor re-printed my recent post about Animal Encounters and why you should include them in your game. 

Issue 75 can be found here along with the full list of all their back issues.

Snowball Part Three

"What wrong?" Tarrant asked.

Marek blew out his cheeks. "I plotted Lady Caroline's new trajectory as part of the vector calculations but I just noticed where they're going.  They're heading in the direction of the system gas giant. They'll miss it but they’re already its gravity well. In about thirty-three minutes, they're going to tumble right into a Snowball."

"What's a Snowball?" Kate asked.  Marek re-activated the navigational hologram.  In front of the red dots marking Lady Caroline and Nth Degree was a huge expanse of dark blue marking the gas giant. Next to that was a smaller group. Marek zoomed in to focus on the cluster, which showed blue objects of varying shape and size.  "It's a point in space between a planet and a satellite where the two gravitational fields balance each other. Space debris like ice chunks and rocks tend to collect in them. This system's got one of the largest fields in the Empire.”

“So it's like an asteroid field?”

Snowball, Part Two

The story starts here.



A smooth soprano voice floated out of the comm pad.  "Anya here, Tarrant.  What's up?"

“Anya, we just received a Code 99. We’re the nearest ship. I need 110% on the maneuver drives, and I need it now."

Anya replied as if distress signals were a daily affair. "You got it, Tarrant.” She began at once to reprogram the engineering computer.

"How long, Anya?"

"Overdrive will be available in 144 seconds.  We can run it up past 110% but only for a few minutes, or we'll burn out the motivators.  At 110%, we should have close to an hour.  How far off is this ship?"

Tarrant relayed the question. “Marek, how long until we reach them?”

“They're at 1.324 million kilometers.  At 110%, we need thirty-four minutes to get to contact range. Tarrant, I've got your vector, feeding to your panel now."
The Nth Degree's thrusters glowed blue-white as the ship shot towards the helpless liner.  A few minutes later Dr. Jackson Selker, the chief engineer, arrived on the bridge.  After a career teaching Engineering theory, he bought the ship so he could take this extended sabbatical with his friends. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and tucked in his shirt as he spoke.  "Have you been able to contact them, Marek?  We'll need to know how bad they're hurt to plan any repair jobs."
 
"I've had only intermittent contact.  My guess is damage to the communications rig .  Hang on, I'll try to raise them again."   Marek tapped the comm panel. "Lady Caroline, this is Nth Degree.  Are you still receiving?"

Snowball - a Traveller-inspired short story

I wrote this story a few years ago, and published it in a local writing e-zine. The zine is now defunct, so I'm presenting it here, in several installments.  It is set in my Traveller Universe, in the Talaveran Empire, Winter system.

The Winter system, at the edge of the Empire.

Snowball

Part 1

The Gentry-class space liner Lady Caroline accelerated smoothly on its way, departing the planet Winter on course to the hyperspace limit from which it could safely jump the five light-years distance to the planet Dumas. The ship was small, as liners went in the space lanes of the Talaveran Empire. A long tube, rounded at either end, the Lady Caroline offered a selective passenger list and quiet comforts. Ships of her class were the choice of those who wanted to travel in comfort and not be disturbed.

Third Officer Ivan Dittmer made his way along the narrow access corridor that ran the length of Lady Caroline's port side. It was cramped but it was the quickest way to get to Engineering.  The basso hum of the fusion plant was louder here than in the passenger staterooms on the other side of the bulkhead but Dittmer preferred it to tiptoeing around staring at the ceiling to avoid upsetting the privacy-conscious passengers with unwanted eye contact.

He came to a section of the corridor where the ceiling was lower, as it passed underneath where one of the ship's lifeboats was housed.  As he ducked his head, Dittmer noticed a large tool case against the exterior bulkhead.  One of the maintenance crew must have left it here, he thought as he picked it up so that he could give it to the chief. Whoever owned the toolbox would get a stiff reprimand from the demanding engineer.

The 2015 Amber Zone Contest is on

Surf on over to the Amber Zone (or see the link in my blog roll) and check out all of the entries in this year's Amber Zone Adventure Writing Contest. 

Pay particular attention to my three entries:

• Sinking Ship
• Aid and Comfort
• The Outer Limits

but do check out all the other awesome adventures, like and share!

The Traveller Index

With Marc Miller's kind permission, I have produced an index of The Traveller Book.

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/The_Traveller_Book

This is quite the big thing for me. I happened upon the opportunity to index a book last year (I posted about it here) and discovered that I enjoy the process. Then I thought, why not combine this with my gaming hobby?  When I contacted Marc, I didn't know if I would get a reply in a week or a month; it turned out to be a day. He was very gracious and readily gave me permission and approval to do the project. 

The actual work took longer, as freelance work always will when one has a regular job and a family. On the upside, I'm so familiar with the book itself and the milieu of Traveller that it was not hard to determine what items needed to be indexed. Of course, there may be something I've overlooked; if you spot such a thing, leave me a comment below and I'll add the entry if I agree.

Traveller is and probably will be my main game, but I've been in the hobby for 20+ years and have seen games from TSR, GDW, FASA, ICE, Chaosium, Decipher, and other  publishers than I can't recall right now. It is my hope that this project might lead into future work indexing current game material.

As a sample of my work, and as a contribution to the game & community I've been a part of for so long, I am making the Traveller Index available at DriveThruRPG, in cooperation with Marc Miller. Look for it there.
 
Please share the Index with all the Traveller players you know; if you happen to know people who are publishing Traveller or other RPG material, I'd appreciate it if you'd show them my work too.

Did you see this issue of Freelance Traveller?

The January 2013 issue of Freelance Traveller, the free online magazine supporting all Traveller rules, published an article that I wrote! A while back I put a post on the Citizens of the Imperium discussion board with a alternate career option of School. The editor of FT saw it and asked me to submit it for the magazine. I did, although I admit that I took a long time getting around to it, and the editor had to add & clarify a few things, but they still gave me all the credit for it.

Inspirational Artwork for Sci-Fi

Check out this picture from the CGSociety.  Their site had several pictures which could serve as inspiration for sci-fi world buildling and gaming.  

www.scifiideas.com/inspiration/inspiration-gallery/inspiration-gallery-jw-bubb

I've got two questions - why are only some of them mushroom shaped, and why are they so high off the ground?  You can see that they are in mountains, but behind the mushroom things it looks like a valley, perhaps a lake. Why are they not instead more conventional buildings on the lake shore?

So, having asked the questions. I will now answer them.Welcome to Shetland, in the Corellian League.

1  The mushroom shaped ones are the residential areas. The sky-scraper building in the background is a business/industrial building which is sealed at least at the lower levels. See question 2.
2 The planet's atmosphere has an odd component that at ground level is harmful/toxic to humans. At altitudes, it is dispersed enough to not be a problem. Maybe that's what the mist over the lake is. By hoisting their habitations up on stilts like this, they avoid having to seal them, thereby saving themselves a lot of bother with environmental control. 

Where is this city?  This is the capital city of Orpha, in the Lycosky Trade Protectorate, an industrialized High-population world.

What makes this place unique?  The planet's atmosphere is 5.2 times standard Earth atmosphere, which among other effects causes the reddish 'sunset' appearance of the system's sun, even at mid-day in clear skies. The high air density makes air travel more difficult; as drag is orders of magnitude worse than on Earth. Despite being TL-15, ground vehicles are very common.


Speaking of which, I really like this high-tech Wheeled Vehicle. Very Traveller.

This is a Sternmetal Horizons Model F-27J 'Super-Reliance' tractor, part of the F-20 series of exploration vehicles. It is capable of hauling 15 C-94 series transport wagons a distance of 2500 km (under 1G gravity) and a maximum hauling weight of 27 metric tons (at 1G). Base TL is 9 (fusion power plant) and is available through TL 13, the model F-27R. The model pictured is currently operating on Cadawala, in Holtzmann's Corridor.

Has this ship landed, or crashed?  Maybe it landed, but remained in place because of a system failure, so it has become overgrown in the local vegetation. What's s Scout Survey crew to do?

Have a look at this page of planetscapes:
www.pxleyes.com/blog/2010/01/40-out-of-this-world-cg-space-scenes

 Here's some starship models:
webdesigncrowd.com/32-detailed-awe-inspiring-spaceship-concept-art

 Have you read my post The Drannixa Gambit, with these huge arcologies?  Here's the illustration I should have used:

Welcome to the future. It is very tall.

All images copyrighted to their creators or the CG Society. No infringement intended.

And the Winner is . . . Me!

 The 76 Patrons Adventure Writing contest for 2014 is over, and the winning entry has been announced. It's my entry The Oncoming Storm! To say the least, I'm thrilled!  It has been great fun writing and reading entries in this contest.

Read BeRKA's announcement here.

Congratulations also go to:
Mark McCabe for The Bank Job (Second Place)
and 
Sifu Blackirish for Game Time (Third Place)

Head over to the Zhodani base and read all the 76 Patrons contest entries. Adventures galore await you!

The Oncoming Storm - a 76 Patrons Adventure

The Oncoming Storm

An adventure for Traveller

 

Location: Highbury (Foreven/Titan 0106) 0926 B566879-9  Ri  (PBG)203

Patron: Colonel Sandovar Fasola, military intelligence officer of Caxburgh, one of the major states of Highbury

Required skills and equipment: none

Players Information:

Highbury's two main land masses are separated by fairly wide oceans, except at one point, known as the Channel. In this narrow passage (32 km at nearest point) is found the chain of islands that make up the country of Glostonburgh, home to 2400 souls. Glostonburgh’s economy is based on fishing, and they export fish and aquaculture goods to nations on both continents. 

Caxburgh (103 million) on one continent and Breedony (86 million) on the other are gearing up towards a war. Glostonburgh is officially neutral but both sides have a reason to desire control the islands; the largest island has an excellent harbor, and the islands can serve as staging grounds for invading the other country. 

Colonel Fasola wants the PCs to investigate the island, looking for military activity by the other side, to use as a pretext and justification for their own occupation. He’s using off-worlders to minimize risk of being recognized as spies. They are given a special military comm channel which can be utilized by their own comms, and two weeks in which to discover any military ships, planes or vehicles, any uniformed soldiers, or other evidence that Breedony has already violated the neutrality. They will have to provide tangible evidence for the Colonel to take to the high command, preferably visual recordings. 

The PCs will be given a cover identity as off-world journalists there to investigate the local aquaculture. They can use this guise or create one of their own. They can use their own contra-grav craft if they have one, or Fasola will arrange for one to be available. At the end of two weeks, the PCs should return, with whatever intelligence they’ve been able to gather. Pay can be negotiated based upon PC’s military background and social skills.

You can read the rest of the adventure, and leave a comment at the Zhodani Base. 

The Thing in the Telescope - a 76 Patrons adventure

The Thing in the Telescope

an adventure for Traveller

and contest entry in the Zhodani Base 76 Patrons adventure writing contest.

Chang-Xi's best resolution image of the Thing.

Patron: Jedric Chang-Xi
Location: Apinanto (Foreven/Fessor 0604)
Required: starship skills, Vacc Suit skill

Player's Information:

Chang-Xi contacts the PC group, offering to hire them as ship crew for an in-system exploration mission. If the PCs have a ship, they can use it, but if not then Chang-Xi has chartered a Slow Pinnace. He is an amateur astonomer, and recently he detected something in the L4 cluster of the second planet in the Apinanto system. The cluster is a mass of small asteroid bodies and ice clouds, which are in motion, making identification of the Thing difficult. Apinanto Prime is the fourth planet, a low population poor world that gets little interstellar traffic. If the object is a ship, Chang-Xi can sell it to the government which would pay handsomely for it. He offers the PCs either one month standard salary by position, or a total of 15% of the salvage price of whatever he finds.
Travel to the L4 cluster will take several hours to around a day, the inner planet orbits the sun much faster than Apinanto.


You can read the rest of the adventure, and leave a comment at the Zhodani Base. 


Image credit: NASA photo archive http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap951010.html
 

Clement Sector - New Frontier of Exploration and Adventure

Product Review - Clement Sector by John Watts,  published by Gypsy Knight Games

Image borrowed from www.freelancetraveller.com. Image property of Gypsy Knight Games.

 I won my copy of Clement Sector in the Amber Zone adventure writing contest, so I came at it from what I hope is a neutral perspective. My review will take the same general shape as my Amber Zone Review series; that is I'll describe what it offers, what I think was really good about it and what was not so good, and how I would change things to make Clement Sector my own.

Quick Look at what you get:
    140 pages, with scattered illustrations. The first part of the book is the subsector maps and descriptions. From there you get Characters, Starships, Equipment, Travel, Governments, Corporations, Organizations, and Religions.

    The Clement Sector book is written to work with the Mongoose Traveller rules, but is described in a general enough way that whichever version of Traveller you play, you can use Clement Sector. The artwork is very good, and nicely divides the chapters, rather than breaking up the text.

History of the Sector:
    This book postulates an original future, where mankind reaches out to the stars by the 22nd century, first by Jump-1 drives, here called Zinn drives after its inventor, then by means of a wormhole (The Conduit) which permitted transit to the far side of the Milky Way galaxy. Colonization of solar systems on the far side of the Conduit began, and continued until the early 24th century when the Conduit disappeared, trapping all of the colonists on the far side, with no way to return to near-Earth space.

Subsector Breakdown:
    There is only one multi-planet polity in the Clement Sector, the Hub Federation. All other worlds in the sector are independent. The subsector maps are in the normal CT style, and each subsector gets a planet list and a few short notes about inhabited worlds. The bulk of Clement Sector is not inhabited, leaving plenty of room for travel and exploration.

Some notes on some of the chapters:

Characters: Character creation for the Clement Sector follows the standard Traveller rules, except that SOC has been changed to represent wealth & influence, since there are no interstellar entities with aristocratic hierarchies. Skill levels are capped at 4 (perhaps this is a MgT rule) and the skills limit of INT+EDU is specified.  Two career tracks are detailed: the Hub Federation Navy and the Cascadia Colonization Authority.

Technology: The most important technology to note is the Zimm drive, which is capable of a maximum of Jump-2. This fact more than any other shapes the colonization of Clement Sector. Tech levels on inhabited planets is very uniform, mostly TL-A and B with exactly two planets at TL-C. This makes sense as the planets have all been colonized within a narrow period of time, but it limits the variety found in a typical Traveller subsector.  The specifics of the Zimm drive require that ship size in Clement Sector be limited to 5000 tons.

Starships: The book includes five starships, complete with deckplans and MgT style ship stats, which again are easy to convert to other editions of Traveller. The deck plans and artwork again are very good.

Corporations/Organizations: A goodly selection of business and civil groups, described in about a half a page. The Stellar Purity group sounds likely as a recurring villain group with their nutty philosophy.

Politics: A brief overview of the state of relations between planets. You would not think that there would be much political action with each planet being a separate government, it should be very hard to prosecute a war on that scale.

Religion: This section acknowledges the continued existence of Earth's dominant religions, then invents two more. One is a vague Force-like religion with an ill-defined evil entity, and the other is Mormonism in a funny hat.

Aliens: Clement Sector has no aliens – but it looks like they used to. Several sites are described where objects of clearly not-human manufacture have been discovered. What does this mean for the Sector?  Only the referee can say.

Wrap-up: This book has what any Traveller resource should have – a framework which the referee can build upon to create unique and original adventures. Lots of material to work with here! The index at the rear of the book is a welcome tool, not all rpg books, by any means, are indexed.

The Best part is:The Clement sector is wide open, and still has lots of actual frontier. The higher tech levels are still to be developed, and there is no Imperium enforcing stability. Ambitious PCs can really shape the course of the Sector, if they're lucky.

This could have been better: I would have liked more variety with the Tech Levels. I respect the decision to cap everything at TL-B/C, but there should be some more planets further down the chart at 5, 6 or 7.

Putting my own spin on it: I would have pre-set a few more multi-planet states, spaced far enough apart to have spheres of influence that sometimes overlap. I also would have focused more on the place of the Church in Clement sector, and left out the faux-Mormons.

I am stealing this idea: There are five starship types described, with stats and deckplans. They will be making an appearance in my TU, especially the Atlas-class freighter. Also, the format for describing the Corporations and Organizations  - one page, logo at the top and 400-500 words to give just enough structure that the referee can take it and run. I plan to create and share a few more corporations in my TU, using this format.

I won Second Place! Again!

The First Annual Amber Zone adventure Writing contest has come to an end, the winners were announced yesterday (see the results here) and I won second place for my entry A Hostile Takeover. 

Previous wins include: 
Chapel Bells Chime, 2nd place entry in the 2013 Zhodani Base "76 Patrons" adventure writing contest. 

Renovations, 2nd place entry in the 2012 Zhodani Base "76 Patrons" adventure writing contest.

Seriously, I need to improve my writing. I'm not sure what it is that I keep getting 2nd place. Don't get me wrong, it's a blast participating in the contests and learning from what others present, and the prizes are wonderful. I'm grateful to BeRKA and all the other judges for giving my writing such positive reviews. 

It must be my pride telling me "you shouldn't be satisfied with second place." You know what, pride? Shut up. I didn't create my writing talent. It was a gift given to me by God. So thanks and praise go to Him first and foremost. 

Will I ever win a 1st place prize?  I don't know. I'll get there when my writing is good enough to deserve it, and then I'll be grateful to all the people who have influenced and encouraged me to write. For now, I'm going to just keep writing. It's something God has enabled me to do, and it's just a huge amount of fun. 

Thanks to all of you who read my blog, and comment on and share what I've written.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.