If you've been reading my blog, you know I like starports. I've several posts where I try to expand on the starports with some sort of Universal Starport Profile. When Independence Games had a sale on their Port of Entry book, I decided it was up my alley. Bought the PDF & color paperback version and it showed up a couple of days ago. And then I remembered I had also bought the GURPS Traveller Starport book years ago. Now I've 2 Starport books!
This is a Cepheus Engine book for the Clement Sector setting. But like most Traveller books, can be used in pretty much any Traveller or any other SF type of game. The first section covers the basics: ratings and what they mean. The classic ratings are there, but rather than a very complicated USP like I was coming up with, they just add a 3-star system, where 3 stars is your chef's kiss, and 1 star is it barely makes that rating. And from a player's perspective that is probably enough to help get the general feel of things. From a referee point of view, I may still go back & try to get a workable USP that has real game effects, and perhaps a set of tables. But I digress from my brief overview. There are some interesting aspects to the Clement Sector that I may end up using at least in part in MTU. While I use the SPA (which the GURPS book covers pretty well) there is a Captains' Guild that has some similar functions, though I am particularly enjoying the anonymous Starport inspectors. Something I think I will use, though under the auspices of the SPA.
The next section has a listing of the various facilities and services that may be available, along with several examples. While I've yet to have my players visit an astroburgers, there are several Clement Sector examples given that may show up on multiple worlds. I wonder how interstellar franchises manage to keep track of things like that. The section of services is very complete with a variety of services that are inherent in the port such as traffic control and security, through cargo handling, a wide variety of hotel and restaurant types and so on. Unlike the GURPS book, pricing is not really discussed other than noting expensive options versus lower-cost alternatives.
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| Astroburgers (and not sure where I found this image) |
We then have a section on careers, with the Guild taking the place of the SPA and oddly the Travellers Aid Society for the most part. As a nice touch, there are even emergency services careers here as well as search and rescue. There are the complete career options with their mishaps and events. Meaning I need to update my bibliography for Traveller careers again! Most of the base careers have choices as to further delineate that job, such as a courier can be a messenger delivering sensitive information, general mail who carries the mail from system to system, or a money courier transferring physical money between worlds. What could go wrong there? I think there is a Classic adventure where a Naval pay ship has crashed. With all those credits just sitting on some planet...
There is a brief interlude after the extensive careers covering an example down port. I did not see a class rating in the several pages covering the port. Based on the description, either a C or B port. But oddly they did not rate it nor give the star rating. Unless I missed it, which is always possible. However - if I were to detail a port, one of the top things would be to list the class rating as that sets base expectations. Regardless of that oversite (mine or theirs) we cover the facilities, get some local color in (reminding me of the GURPS sidebars, though Independence Games uses italics to indicate someone's opinion). A couple of restaurants, a hotel or two, and facilities are outlined. It would be an info dump for the players, and not having section headers or anything to differentiate the text can make it hard to find what the players may ask about. But it does give me ideas about describing star ports and to try & make each a bit unique.
Next up is a few pages of corporations and organizations. Like the BITS 101 Corporations (and I have a hardcopy from them: when I rediscovered Traveller I got a bunch of things like that, which is also why I have several of the GURPS books even though I am not a fan of the GURPS system itself), some may be useful outside the Clement Sector, but are definitely set up for that setting as most are Earth-based. And oddly I've never played or ran a game in the Solomoni Rim. Chrome is always good, and seeing how other people play is always useful. Some of those may well end up in my universe.
Next we have a lot of example locations, often with floor plans of varying usefulness. I'll admit I like looking at plans but often, they are hard to use effectively at the table or screen. But I think that is a failing on my part. Regardless, I spend a lot of time looking at spaceship plans and fantasy buildings and SF buildings and locations. So even if I sometimes have a hard time using them, I still really like them. As I also have the PDF, I should be able to use these on Owlbear.rodeo (which is what we use when we need battle space to keep track of where characters are; I need to see what we get if we pay for it as we're using the free tier at the moment). I also have pretty much all of 0-Hr's posters and PDFs and minis. Which sadly do not get used much either. Regardless of my meandering, there are a lot of floor plans. All of which are rectangular and square - one would think in a few hundred years there would be more variety in buildings. However, we've had boxes forever basically, so probably not going to change anytime soon (though the 3D houses being printed now do have some interesting shapes sometimes).
A section on grav lifts (forklifts that can fly) follows. Though in a lot of places, unless the vehicle rules are a lot different, you can probably get 20 regular forklifts for the price of 1 grav forklift. However - this IS a SF game so I want my flying cars and forklifts! But it is nice to have some mundane, working vehicles listed.
The final section is a large chapter for creating high ports. With costs. It would be a fun exercise to compare the GURPS rules against the Independence Games version. But in a quick review of both, they seem to pretty much cover the same material: hull sizes, shipyards and the like. And like a lot of Traveller, more for the referee than anything a player will do. Other than interacting with whatever the referee comes up with. I do like the section on station crew and residence which gives some good information. And finally, there is an example of a high port, Wallace's Pit Stop, that shows a 25K dTon station with the basic stats and some high-level plan views. It lists it as a class D port but does not give any stars. Thinking that the station designer did not read that part of the text. Using that and the fantastic plans from Yet Another Traveller Blog's Geomorphs you can create a cool station.
Overall, it was a pretty much must-buy for me as I do love this sort of thing. The artwork is pretty much the Independence Games style of what I think are Poser characters and computer art. While I prefer old-school line drawings, the world is no longer in the 70s. Some of the pieces are really good others, at least those with the poser figures, hit that uncanny valley feel. The book would be useful for referees to create and better define their star ports and what should be available there.
Anyway, more an overview than a review. I know it is something I'll read through more carefully at some point, and I may even try to build a high port using both GURPS and this book to see how they compare.
And then I asked the AI to draw a Traveller RPG 50-ton cutter landing at a busy star port. The images may be useful for flavor.
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