All posts by BeRKA

P-O "BeRKA" Bergstedt is the Zhodani Ambassador. :-) BeRKA started the Zhodani Base in 1994.
Adventures, Rules, Starships, The Base, Traveller

Zhodani Base Awards 2018

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Welcome to the Zhodani Base Awards 2018! 2018 has been another amazing year for Traveller products. Lots of new stuff from the small publishers (and Mongoose).

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The first category is “Best Cover“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best Cover” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2018 is: Spacecraft Design Guide from Moon Toad Publishing.

There were lots of Traveller products with nice covers this year. Lots of love for all nice covers. A cool starship image and an otherwise well designed cover was what won this year. (Ian Stead did three of the nominated cover images and one of them won.)

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Next category is “Best Fanzine or Online Magazine“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best Fanzine/Online Magazine” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2018 is: Freelance Traveller

Freelance Traveller has once again proved that they are the best fanzine by publishing bimestrial issues with lots of good contents for free.

Freelance Traveller has won this category every year since 2011!

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Next category is “Best Adventure“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best Adventure” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2018 is: Grand Safari from Gypsy Knights Games.

There were lots of fine Traveller Adventures for different settings published. But Grand Safari was outstanding. I love that there are six linked adventures in this book.

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Next category is “Best Ship or Deckplan“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best Ship or Deckplan” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2018 is: Hercules-class Heavy Freighter from Gypsy Knights Games.

There were lots of fine ships for Traveller published this year. I really liked the winning design that looks a bit like the Voyager II / Connestoga from TTA.

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Next category is “Best ATU Product“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best ATU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2018 is: Cepheus Light from Stellagama Publishing.

This category always make me happy since you can always find so many cool ideas.

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Next category is “Best OTU Product“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best OTU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2018 is: Element Class Cruisers from Mongoose.

Mongoose continues to produce good quality products for the OTU.

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A final bonus category this year is “Best Free or Pay What You Want Traveller Product“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best Free or Pay What You Want Traveller Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2018 is: Starship Geomorphs from Robert Pearce.

Starship Geomorphs wins because it is an amazing fan produced product that is also a work of love for the game.

Adventures, Traveller

The Kitten

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Patron: Industrialist
Required Skills: none
Required Equipment: None

Players’ Information:
The crew of the ship has bought some cargo (frozen bug-fish) at Regina (Spinward Marches 1910). They thought that they would make a huge profit at Extolay (Spinward Marches 1711) at the bug-fish festival. But their information was wrong. Their cargo is unsellable. While trying to locate a buyer at Extolay the crew is contacted through their ship’s computer connection by an anonymous caller. The caller wants to know if the crew could help her with something that is legal but may cause some confusion. This is a task that is best performed by outsiders using a cunning plan but could be performed in other ways. Violence should be avoided. In return, she would buy their cargo for what they paid at Regina.

This is better than nothing and it means that it will free up the cargo hold. The crew will get one day to consider the offer. The caller say that she will call them again in exactly 24 standard hours.

Beaked Monkey Continue reading The Kitten →

Mapping, Rules, Starships, Traveller

The shorter jump

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This post is about trigonometry in the hex-maps used for Traveller subsectors. The summary for those who hate maths is that a jump-4 is actually only 3.46 parsecs if you take the shortest route.

3.46 pc

As you can see in the image above is that if you want to go from point X (0503) to point Y (0101) it is a jump-4. The distance is 4 parsecs.

But if you wants to go from point  X (0503) to point Z (0103) it is also a jump-4, but the distance is actually shorter since you are zigzagging  when you are counting the hexes following the dotted orange line.

How much shorter is it? If we use Pythagoras, then:
a2 + b2 = c2
b2 = c2 – a2
b2 = 16 – 4 = 12
b = 3.46

If we use trigonometry, b = 4 * cos(30) = 3.46.

In the Adventures of the Starship Notorious the crew meets a very talented jump-drive scientist that helps the crew improve and calibrate their J-3 drive so that it can do 3.46. This will only work if the ship is unloaded and if a special jump-program is run.

IMTU, Mapping, Traveller

Subsector from a Map

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I have been asked how I made the maps of Lancaster and Chambersburg Subsectors. In this post I will describe how I did it.

(I have also done the same for Ireland. I work on a version of Denmark and south Sweden.)

First I find the area I want to map on Google Maps (or any other map). I zoom to the level I like. 10-20 towns (or places) in the area is about right. Make a screenshot of this.

I use a transparent subsector map that I have made using quickhex.


I use a good image editor that can handle layers. (I use GIMP, which is free.) Then I open my screenshot and place the transparent map on top of it as a layer. (I can move it a bit until I am happy where the towns are in the subsector.) This is what it could look like.
Continue reading Subsector from a Map →