Category Archives: The Base

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Observances, The Base, Traveller

The Zhodani Base St. Patrick’s Day Contest – 2014

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A quick competition. A $15 prize at DriveThruRPG for the winner. Design something (e.g. a character, a ship, a patron, a system) for the St. Patrick’s 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 2014.
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.

Last years winner was with the Patron, The Regretful Historian.

St. Patrick’s Day
Image from wikimedia.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
The Base

State of the Base

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What has happened at the Base in 2013? A lot of things!

Highlights

The top highlight of 2013 was the 16 entries in the 76 Patrons Writing Contest. 🙂 This year I’ll add a few bucks to make the first prize even better. I’ll hope we can beat 16 entries in 2014. Sponsors are Welcome! 

Another highlight was the Traveller5 review guest-post by . This post quickly became the most read post at the Base.

Since March the Zhodani Base hosts the Coreward Fanzine by Paul J. Drye.

The Base now uses the Twenty-Fourteen theme.

Site Stats

Just like last year I have about 4000 proper visitors each month.

The 5 most popular posts on the blog was:

  1. T5 Review (new)
  2. Alien Fonts (1)
  3. Spherical Space Ships (new)
  4. Wikia must be stopped (new)
  5. Oh my God, it’s full of Tables! (new)

Alien Fonts dropped from first to second place. All other top-5 posts are from 2013.

The 5 most popular pages on the blog was:

  1. Maps and Data (1)
  2. Goodies (2)
  3. Free pdf-files (new)
  4. The Spinward Marches (new)
  5. Random Subsector Generator (new)

The top two pages from 2013 are still the top two. The other 3 are new.

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

  1. traveller rpg (4)
  2. zhodani base (1)
  3. traveller rpg maps (new)
  4. tatu (2)
  5. zhodani (new)

My post old post about The Average Traveller Universe seem to attract lots of surfers from eastern Europe. :roll: But is has dropped a bit in popularity. Mainly because I have blocked a lot of traffic from eastern Europe.

Hacking

In 2013 I didn’t get hacked. 🙂 There were lots of hacking attempts. The most annoying thing about these attempts are that they steal bandwidth. (For one week I was hit about once every minute with a dictionary attack from Ukraine and Belarus.) I have now blocked large parts of China and eastern Europe from my site. Countries where I know there are Traveller players are not blocked, but some IP addresses from those countries may still be blocked if they try to hack the Base.

Visitors from Brazil whose user-agent is a fake Google-Bot should change browser or ISP, since I’ll block all fake Google Bots. Brazil is a country known for hacking and I guess that the ISPs in Brazil thought that if they pretend that they are Google-Bots, less of the internet will be blocked. But they only make the problem worse for their customers.

As a safety precaution I have also blocked the wp-admin directory from all. This means that this site currently isn’t a multi user site. I.e. if you are a registered user you cannot login. If you are a registered user and want to update your entry in the Contributors Page, then just contact me and I’ll update your entry.

To-do List

Looking back at last years to-do list I can see that I (or Jonathan) have written a few reviews and  I have written about spherical ships and I have updated some old stuff and I have continued posting on Facebook. If I had more time, I would have done more.

For 2014 I plan to write more reviews and update some more old stuff. I will add Stiatlchepr (by Dale Jenkins) to my Space Atlas. I am also planning to write something about Traveller Aliens.

On the more technical side of the base I plan to use sharing plugins to connect to Facebook and Google+. Then I can make a short post about some traveller, science fiction and astronomy news at the Base and it will be automatically posted at the other sites.

Pulp-O-Mizer State of the Base

Adventures, Starships, The Base, Traveller

Zhodani Base Awards 2013

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Welcome to the Zhodani Base Awards 2013! 2013 has been a very good year for Traveller. There have been lots of new publications including the Traveller5 book we had been waiting for.

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

The winner of the “Best Cover” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2013 is: Freelance Traveller Issue 037

There were lots of Traveller products with nice covers this year. Lots of love for all nice covers. The cover for Freelance Traveller Issue 037 by Shawn Driscoll is one of the best covers for Traveller I’ve seen. I’ve been wondering for almost a year now if another cover was going to beat it. No, I still think it is the best one.

(Freelance Traveller also had one of the worst covers I’ve seen this year. It was the infamous camel-toe issue.)

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 2013 is: Freelance Traveller

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

I am also impressed by the new fanzine for 2300 AD, Colonial Times.

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

The winner of the “Best Adventure” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2013 is: 2300AD: Salvage Rights From Mongoose

There were lots of fine Traveller Adventures for different settings published. The one I liked best was an interesting adventure for 2300 AD. This is a good adventure for an interesting setting. This winner makes me want to play 2300 AD again.

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

The winner of the “Best Ship or Deckplan” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2013 is: Ships of Clement Sector 2: Vulkan From Gypsy Knights Games

There was lots of fine ships for Traveller published this year. Vulkan was the most impressive ship module with adventures as well. It made me think of Space: Above and Beyond.

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

The winner of the “Best ATU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2013 is: Clement Sector From Gypsy Knights Games

There was lots of interesting stuff for ATU published this year. Clement Sector won because it is really cool. The other nominees are also very good.

If I didn’t already owned the Judge Dredd RPG rules from Games Workshop I would be more interested in buying the Judge Dredd modules from Mongoose.

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

The winner of the “Best OTU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2013 is: Traveller 5 From Far Future Enterprises

T5 is the best OTU product. It is a complete new rule-set with lots of new interesting ideas added to the existing OTU.

I am well aware that some think that a new rule-set isn’t needed and that these new rules are badly organized. I think that these rules are good enough to start playing Traveller, either if you are new to RPGs or have played for years. If you already (like me) have seven other sets of Traveller rules, then maybe it is not needed. But I bought it anyway, since I wanted to support the Kickstarter project and I wanted to see the finished product. I am happy with the way it turned out (but some things could have been made even better) and I like the new ideas in the book. I am looking forward to seeing new T5 products.

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 2013 is:  Starships Book II0I0 : Cargo Barque From Christian Hollnbuchner

The Farragut-class Wallpaper is pretty and the Through the Veil Part adventure is interesting, but for me the Cargo Barque was the most useful free Traveller product in 2013.

Now, go and download all of the free Traveller Products. Why? They are free!

Adventures, The Base, Traveller

And the winner is…

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It was very difficult to pick the winners of the 76 patrons contest this year. There were 16 good entries to choose from. However, I thought one of them was a bit better and more playable than the others. It was The Executor by Friz. Congratulations!

Second place goes to Chapel Bells Chime by Library Bob and third place to This Old Drone by Jim Vassilakos.

  1. The Executor (by Friz) $40
  2. Chapel Bells Chime (by Library Bob) $20
  3. This Old Drone (by Jim Vassilakos) $10
Another winner
Another winner – Image from wikimedia.
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Thanks to all who participated! The winners will be contacted.

Model-1, The Base, Traveller

BeRKA is back

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I am back from my trip to planet Carinthia. Now I have a lot of work to do. There are some new Traveller products I should post links to (at the Zhodani Base Facebook Page), and I must decide which of the very good 16 entries in the 76 Patrons contest that are the best ones. I also have a lot of pictures to post at the berka.se blog.

Planet Carinthia
Planet Carinthia

I made this image using GIMP and the gas giant plugin. I changed the colors of the my image from Carinthia and then added the gas giant as another layer. Then I changed the opacity of the added layer to make it look good.

Adventures, The Base, Traveller

16 new Patrons this year

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This years 76 Patrons contest was a success. There were 16 entries. That is one more than the number of entries we had received last year.

This years entries:

  1. Xboat Speculation! (by Gray Pennell)
  2. Annual Maintenance (by Todd Bradley)
  3. The Executor (by Friz)
  4. This Old Drone (by Jim Vassilakos)
  5. Diplomatic Service (by Library Bob)
  6. Prison Broken (by Library Bob)
  7. Chapel Bells Chime (by Library Bob)
  8. Hunting Party (by Library Bob)
  9. Immersion (by Michael Brown)
  10. Software Desperation (by grondak)
  11. The New Messiah (by Alegis Downport)
  12. Treading the Boards (by Michael Brown)
  13. Royal Return (by George Ebersole)
  14. Repair Schedule (by Library Bob)
  15. Those Pesky Kids (by Allan Carpenter)
  16. Idol Fancy (by arbitrary remora and dead scout seven)

Now I have a lot to think about. In the beginning of October I will announce the winner. Until then, please comment, like and share. Tell us which entry you like the most and why! Both here and on other sites.