Another quick competition. A $10 prize at DriveThruRPG for the winner.
Design a medium-sized Spherical Ship using any Traveller rules. It doesn’t have to be a Mercenary Cruiser. You may assume that it can land and take-off (but not fly) in a standard atmosphere. You may add write-ups for crew, deck-plans and any other stuff you like. Name you design after anything Swedish. (Have a look at the ship names of the Swedish navy at Wikipedia.)
Coolest design will win $10 at DriveThruRPG. Send Your entries by e-mail. Please use plain text format and attach any images. Word files will not be accepted! Send in your designs before the 5:th of June. The designs will be published at the Zhodani Base on the National Day of Sweden.
The competition starts now and ends 5 June 2012.
By entering the contest You allow your entry to be posted at the Zhodani Base. All entries might also be posted in PDF format as a free down-loadable file at the Zhodani Base.
What has Mongoose done to the Sword Worlds? Do I need this book? These are the questions that I will try to answer here.
The cover of the book is quite cool, but it doesn’t look like the soldiers in the image are Sword Worlders at all. š
Interior art is not bad either. I just feel it is too much Viking themed, and not really showing the hi-tec spacefaring culture that I wanted to see. The deckplans are fine and the 3D rendering of the Jarl is ok. It can be seen in colour at Biomass Art.
There are a few contradictions in the introduction of the book. Are the Sword Worlds a dangerous place or a popular place to visit? Are there no physical differences from original Solomani or is the average male weight 105 kg, and the females pregnant for 10 months? Then there is also (a likely) bug in the naming rules, since the female surnameĀ possessive form is missing, but not the male possessive form.
How did they come up with the Army Ranking table? I don’t think that matches any Scandinavian army. (SWE, NOR, DEN)
There are 3 new careers. The first one is the Aesirist Church. This isn’t something that I like. It is too Viking themed. I will not use it in MTU. The next one is The Patrol. From old JTAS #18. This is a good idea to include. The third is JƤger Command. I think it should really be part of Marines or Army, as special forces.
The origin of sagamaal and the vocabulary makes some sense. Currency and exchange rate was a good thing to include. History is a bit messed up. It’s interesting but doesn’t match the previous publications.
In the Worlds chapter, the world listing of the subsector is missing the worlds outside the Sword Worlds. The atmosphere of Enos is explained in the same way as in the GURPS SW module. (To keep Traveller fun, these things should be ignored so that the referee can deal with in a different way.) Mithril matches the old adventure Mission on Mithril.
The equipment list is nice, but there are some items that are just too Viking themed. There are a nice selection of ships. Some parts of the encounter tables are fine, and the animals are interesting. The miniphants has been changed. They are not the same miniphants as in JTAS #16.
There are some proofreading errors (as usual). There are some extra-largeĀ apostrophes. There is a reference to a class III starport. (That is what a type C starport is called in GURPS.) There are some talk about the Border Worlds (that shouldn’t exist in 1105). I get an error message in the end of the pdf. Please Mongoose, do a better job!
So, I think that parts of the book is good, and other parts are not so good. You can buy it for the good parts. Maybe you like the other parts as well. The alternative would be to use JTAS #18 and read Space Viking for free, and form your own opinion about the Sword Worlds.
A problem with the random generation of worlds in Traveller is that for small worlds (where size < 4) is that these worlds might get an ordinary breathable atmosphere. This is a problem, since the minimum molecular weight retained for a planet shouldn’t allow that. EDG has explained minimum molecular weight retained here, and here is a nice visual tool for checking what gases will be retained depending on size, density and temperature.
This problem leads to silly explanations. Like the one in both the GURPS and Mongoose Sword Worlds modules where a planet (Enos) is made of Osmium. Other explanations might be terraforming by the ancients.
These silly explanations might explain how a few (very unique) worlds got their atmospheres. But it seems unlikely that these explanations can explain every world equal or smaller than size 3 with an atmosphere equal or greater than 2. In an average sector with standard stellar density there are about 80 such worlds. (In the Spinward Marches, there are 73 worlds with this problem.)
I usually ignore this problem, since our group of Traveller players don’t care about details like this. They want to play the game. But if the question is asked, I now have a solution. Instead of explaining every world or changing the UWP, I use this table.
SIZE
DIAMETER miles
DIAMETER km
1
4000
6400
2
4500
7200
3
5000
8000
4
5500
8800
5
6000
9600
6
6500
10400
7
7000
11200
8
8000
12800
9
9000
14400
A
10000
16000
As can be seen is this table, the problem is solved by making the smallest planets big enough to retain a breathable atmosphere. (The original table can be seen at Traveller Map.)
Terraformed Mars: File from wikimedia. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
At Wikipedia, there is an entry about asteroid mining. Planetary Resources will go after the Near-Earth objects, and take small steps and learn along the way. That seems like a nice business plan (as long as you can wait for any results and profits).
Asteroid mining, Image from wikimedia. Public Domain.
Planetary Resources are far from first to think about Asteroid mining. A snapshot from 1998 at the wayback-machine proves that the BeRKA corporation was in the asteroid mining business 14 years ago. š
In the TTA books, there was also some cool images of asteroid mining space ships. Have a look at the PC1 191 Gourmet or the AC3 Stag Beetle. The PC1 191 Gourmet has inspired asteroid mining in MTU. That ship is so much cooler than a Scout Ship with a mining laser.
Except for the flowchart in JTAS #3, a lot have been published about asteroid mining for traveller. To generate belter (asteroid miner) characters for your game, you’ll need Supplement 4. For some fun asteroid adventures, you’ll need Beltstrike! (You can also get Beltstrike for Mongoose Traveller.)
Asteroid Mining Vehicule – Image from wikimedia. Public Domain
There are also some games about Asteroid Mining. From GDW, there is Belter that is about asteroid mining in the solar system. A cheaper alternative is Asteroids from Radioactive Press, and a fun alternative is Asteroid Racers from Avalon Game company.
You can play the classic Asteroids arcade game at the Atari website. What is your High-Score?
A quick competition. A $10 prize at DriveThruRPG for the winner. Design something (e.g. a character, a ship, a patron, a system) for last years St. Patrickās Map. The most interesting entry will win.
Send Your entries by e-mail. Please use plain text format and attach any images. Word files will not be accepted!
The competition starts now and ends 16 March 2012.
By entering the contest You allow your entry to be posted at the Zhodani Base. All entries might also be posted in PDF format as a free down-loadable file at the Zhodani Base.
For a week, (until March 7th) You can get 141 Traveller products and lots of other products for 25% less than usual. Have a look and see if you need something.
