All posts by BeRKA

P-O "BeRKA" Bergstedt is the Zhodani Ambassador. :-) BeRKA started the Zhodani Base in 1994.
The Base

State of the base

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What has happened at the Base in 2012? A lot of things!

The coolest thing was the 15 entries in the 76 Patrons Writing Contest. 🙂
I hope we can beat that in 2013! I’ll add a few bucks to make the first prize even better. Sponsors are Welcome!

The most annoying thing this year was being hacked. 🙁
Well the base wasn’t really hacked. It was vandalized by a script-kiddie. Nothing was lost, and I didn’t lose control over anything. A script found a vulnerability and vandalized what it could. I could restore everything. This made me upgrade to the latest version of WordPress (the software that is running the blog). I also added two plugins that I thought looked cool. A dice roller and a forum.

One of these plugins had a vulnerability. The Base was vandalized again. 😡
Now I am a lot more restrictive about the plugins I add.

When upgrading the software I also got a better tool for site stats. All I knew before was that I had about 300.000 accesses each month. Now I know that I have about 4000 proper visitors each month

The 5 most popular posts on the blog was:

  1. Alien Fonts
  2. A Fat Cat or an interesting ship
  3. WriteUps for planets in the Foreven Sector
  4. Traveller 5th Edition at Kickstarter
  5. Sword Worlds revisited by Mongoose

The 5 most popular search words/phrases for finding the blog was:

  1. zhodani base
  2. tatu
  3. alien font
  4. traveller rpg
  5. tatu band

My post old post about The Average Traveller Universe seem to attract lots of surfers from eastern Europe. 🙄

I am looking forward to 2013. On my to-do list there are a few reviews that needs to be written. I will also write something about spherical ships. When I have time I will also do a few updates of some old stuff. I will continue posting news about the Zhodani Base, Traveller and astronomy at Facebook.

Cheers
/BeRKA

Pulp-O-Mizer State of the Base

Adventures, Starships, The Base, Traveller

Zhodani Base Awards 2012

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Welcome to the Zhodani Base Awards 2012! 2012 has been a very good year for Traveller. There have been lots of new publications and a few interesting Kickstarter Projects.

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

The winner of the “Best Cover” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Solomani Rim: From Mongoose

There were lots of Traveller products with nice covers this year. Lots of love for all nice covers. This one was the one that I liked the most.

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 2012 is: Freelance Traveller (again).

Freelance Traveller has again proved that they are the best fanzine by publishing (almost) monthly issues with lots of good contents for free.

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

The winner of the “Best Adventure” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: 21 Plots III: From Gypsy Knights Games

There were lots of fine Traveller Adventures for different settings published. This year I prefer one with a number of hooks that can be used for lots of settings.

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

The winner of the “Best Ship or Deckplan” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Ship Book: Garuda Class MSV: From Gorgon Press

There was lots of fine ships for Traveller published this year. I liked the Garuda Class MSV since it can be used in my adventures and it looked cool.

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

The winner of the “Best ATU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Outpost Mars: From Zozer Games

I am just a sucker for Mars… I hope they will do a lot more for this setting.

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

The winner of the “Best OTU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society. Issue No.1-24: From Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW)

Even though it is a re-release, it is over 1200 pages of Traveller goodies. It just had to win.

A final bonus category this year is “Best Free Traveller Product“. The nominees are:

The winner of the “Best Free Traveller Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: T5 Traveller5 Wallpapers From: Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW)

Those wallpapers are really nice. (Did you support the Traveller T5 Kickstarter?) Now, go and download all of the free Traveller Products. Why? They are free!

Mapping, Traveller

New Elite game at Kickstarter

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I just love Elite. You have a starship and travel between planets and trade and try to avoid dangers. You can equip your starship or upgrade to a better ship. (Does it sound familiar?) I played it a lot on my ZX Spectrum. I would have played it even more if the copyright protection hadn’t been so silly. Then I got a PC and played Frontier: Elite II and Frontier: First Encounters. Now I play Oolite.

David Braben has now started a Kickstarted project for a new multi-user Elite called Elite: Dangerous. I want this new game and I support this project.

In the original Elite (and in Oolite) the game map is 8 “galaxies” with 256 planets each. I thought that a galaxy would work great as a sector for Traveller, so I started mapping Galaxy One for Traveller. So far I have mapped half of the sector (8 Subsectors). The starting position for the old Elite game is in the Old Worlds Subsector. The other 7 subsectors can be found here and here.

Adventures, Observances, Reviews, Traveller

Halloween scenarios for Traveller

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I have heard that there exists other games that might be easer to adapt for Halloween. There is even a horror game from GDW. But I want to play Traveller. So what are my options?

If you want to play a horror scenario for Traveller, then I would say that you should have a look at Challenge #46. It is a Special Horror Issue.

Challenge #46
Photo of my own Challenge #46.
(DrivethruRPG is showing the wrong issue)

In this issue you can find a 6-page article about scary wizards and witches, with three interesting adventure hooks. There is a four page scenario with some nasty surprises about salvaging a haunted scout-ship. The final (and maybe most scary) scenario is about encountering a ghost ship in jump space. It is written by Mike Mikesh. This scenario also includes deckplans of a 600-ton subsidized liner. All of these articles for Traveller are very good and usable. But there is more…

There is a scenario for Twilight: 2000, one for Space: 1889, one for 2300 AD, one for Cyberpunk, two for Shadowrun, one for Torg, two for Call of Cthulhu, one for Star Wars and one other (for fun). The one for 2300 AD would be easy to adapt for Traveller if you need another scenario.

Other horror scenarios for Traveller can also be found in:

  • Challenge #54: This is another Special Horror Issue.
  • Double Adventure 5: The Chamax Plague / Horde that could be turned into an Alien style bug hunt. (Also in JTAS #17)
  • JTAS 16: An Amber Zone scenario (called The Day of the Glow) about “Vampires”.
  • JTAS 15: An Amber Zone scenario (called chill) also about “Vampires”.
  • JTAS 5: An Amber Zone scenario (called The Werewolf Disease) that isn’t about vampires.
DTRPG-Halloween
Now go find those pumpkins to get some free stuff from DriveThruRPG.

EDIT: DriveThruRPG has now updated the cover image. Challenge #46 is now number 1 in the Top 100 Products list.

Adventures, The Base, Traveller

And the winner is…

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It was so difficult to decide the winner of the 76 patrons contest this year. There are 15 good entries. Of these, there are 13 that I want to use, and of these there are 6 that I think are really good. I must say thank you to all the participants for all the interesting, fun and playable entries!

I have now finally picked the winner. The winner of the fourth Summer Zhodani Base 76 Patrons Writing Contest is Greg Videll with the Patron called “Tourist Trap“.

The runner-up is Library Bob with the Patron called “Renovations“.

The winners will be contacted.

Loreen Eurovision 2012 winner
Another winner: image from wikimedia,
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.