Traveller Hephaestus is a Traveller adventure written in German from 13Mann Verlag. Now they want to make this available to those who don’t read German. They need a small amount to hire someone to “translate the German text into English and have it checked by a copyeditor“. Help them with this at their Indiegogo page!
Category Archives: Traveller
Anything about traveller.
BeRKA is back
BeRKA is back from Paris. What science fiction related things have I done there?
We visited Musée d’Orsay where we looked at Renoir paintings. Another Renoir painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party was significant in the Amélie film. We visited the café where Amélie worked. In the Valérian and Laureline comic book called On the False Earths the final panel is an homage to this painting. We also visited Centre Georges Pompidou which is a location in the Valérian and Laureline comic book called Brooklyn Station, Terminus Cosmos.
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I bought this rocket ship from the The Adventures of Tintin comic Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon.
Veronica and I visited Le Café de Paris. (This shouldn’t be confused with Café de Paris in Geneva that makes the famous sauce.) Jewel Staite (from Firefly) has also been here. You can see that in an image at her blog Happy Opu. Now I am Happy P-O.
You can (if you know Swedish) read more about our visit to Paris at the berka.se blog.
The Zhodani Base 76 Patrons Writing Contest – 2013
It is now time for The Zhodani Base 76 Patrons Writing Contest – 2013.
This years first prize is a $40 Gift Certificate at DriveThruRPG.
Second prize is a $20 Gift Certificate at DriveThruRPG.
Third prize is a $10 Gift Certificate at DriveThruRPG.
If you win you can buy lots of traveller goodies that you might have missed.
The style of the entries should be in the style of the patrons in CT Supplement 6, 76 Patrons.
Past winners are:
- Universal Health Care (by Raz, winner 2009)
- Drought (by Ewan Quibell, winner 2010)
- The Builder (by Alegis Downport, winner 2011)
- Tourist Trap (by Greg Videll, winner 2012)
The contest starts now and ends 31 Aug 2013. Write as many entries as You like.
After the 31:st of August 2013, all entries will be posted on the Zhodani Base. The winner will be chosen by BeRKA.
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.
All entrants will be given credit for their work and will retain the copyright on their entries.
Some general guidelines:
1, Each entry should be less than 1000 words.
2, One image may be used in each entry. You must either own the rights to the image, or it must be used under some sort of free license. Wikimedia Commons is a good place to find an image that You can use. Please provide information about the image. (Is it Yours? If not, where have You found it? What license is used?) Note: You don’t need to use an image. You can also generate an image using the Pulp-o-Mizer or similar services.
3, Each patron should offer 6 options.
4, Each patron should be placed in the Foreven Sector. You may use the version of the Foreven Sector that can be found here at the Zhodani Base. (You don’t have to use this version.)
5, Please don’t force the PCs to sign up for (what they think are) illegal activities. It is better if they find that out later, or in some way are forced to take illegal action… 😈
6, Please use a spell checker! 🙄
Send Your entries by e-mail. Please use plain text format and attach the image, if You select to use one. Word files will not be accepted!
Everyone that sends me an entry will get a reply. If you have sent me something and not got a reply within a few days, then contact me again.
Please include a preferred nickname (that may be your real name) to show on the Zhodani Base. If You expect to win, include an e-mail address to send the first prize to.
Some help about Foreven Sector. (That you don’t have to use.)
Any rules you choose to use to design something for your patron is fine, even Mongoose Traveller rules, since the Zhodani Base has a Foreven Free Sector License.
Dushis Khurisi and other interesting expansions of the OTU
In the Traveller5 Book and in the Traveller5 CDROM we can read about a few interesting things that will expand the current “Charted Space” of the OTU to a galactic scale. There are a few hints that we can expect some epic adventures. If we look at the image of The GALAXY (p. 417 or in the CDROM) we can see many interesting things. In the map in the book these are called Scattered Hydrogen Societies. I have added these on the Milky Way map below.
From the top there is first Dushis Khurisi. Searching the interwebs I found it in Eaglestone’s Vilani Dictionary. The meaning is “poem“. This made me suspect that this was something from The Galaxiad. And there it is! Dashus Khurisi (slightly different spelling) is a Vilani Empire on the other side of the Galaxy.
In the Galaxiad Intro, the Abyssals, the Barren Worlds and the Essaray are also mentioned among many other interesting things. But there is no answer to what kind of Scattered Hydrogen Societies the SRAL and Denizens are. There are some notes about the Black Fleets that we remember from the Kickstarter Project (at the $ 25 level and above).
The first time I heard about the Barren Worlds was when Clifford Linehan was mapping the Zhodani Core Route. (His site is now offline.) He then discussed this with Marc Miller. That was 13 years ago. Marc must have been planning this a long time.
Oh my God, it’s full of Tables!
I got Traveller5 from Marc Miller today. I have looked through it. It is huge! The rules seem clearer on some points than in other versions. There are lots of help for both experienced traveller players and for new. But new players may get scared since the book is so huge and some rules are quite complex.
The Charted Space that we know is used. I thought the book would have been more generic since I have read about the extended tech-level tables and sophont generation. But I still want to create my own ATU for Traveller5.
One thing that I just had to check was the planet creation rules. Was is like Book-3, T4 and T20 or like Book-6, MT and TNE. It’s on page 433. It is like Book-3, T4 and T20, Hydrographics = 2d-7+atmosphere. But in T5 a concept called Flux is used.
I am Sir Berkatl of Hrun (Lishun 0312). My TAS membership card is issued on Raoh (Gushemege 3004).
The Lord Weird Slough Feg performing The Spinward Marches Live