Spelunking My Library Part 4: Post College To Now

And post-college to now covers almost 40 years - 1986 is when I graduated. Yes, I am old. And cranky - get off my lawn! Alas, most of the Traveller players are old as most RPG gamers seem to gravitate to D&D and fantasy games. But that's okay - everyone should play what they want and there is new stuff all the time to try if you want to. But in my diving into my collection, I've come to realize I have enough and need to use and enjoy what I have now. Though I still may get the occasional new thing...

After college it was a couple of years before I found my way back to gaming. I was perusing a bookstore and found the big book reprint for the Alien Races.

So, I bought that, and my cardboard box of Traveller (and a few other games) started growing again. I then found the Asheville Gaming Club and got back into gaming with a like-minded group of people. I only had a motorcycle then, but my apartment was about 3 miles away, so I walked which was nice. I also started the liberal arts program at UNCA, as well as joining the YMCA's volleyball team. I did get a car not long after, and in fact I am still driving that red 1991 Toyota MR-2. T-Tops do come off in the summer!

Not my car, but what it looks like. Mine does have 270K miles on it and may be a bit rough riding but is still a lot of fun. Apparently, I like the stuff I got early in life and manage to hold on to them!

And as time went on, and I was gainfully employed, I started getting more Traveller stuff. I found the GURPS books and bought a lot directly from Steve Jackson Games (Far Trader was the first and my favorite, then I ended up getting the Nobles, Cutter and first alien book. Then a couple of the planetary guides: Glisten and Toberak). Somehow, I found BITS and managed to get four books: 101 Cargos had some really interesting and super-detailed cargo container rules which I started to implement in my cargo trade program, 101 Governments, 101 Corporations and 101 Rendezvous). 

Not that I really used a lot of this, but I enjoy reading and at least dreaming I could use it. And in fact, I have used a few bits and pieces of many of these books. Though the cutter book is a lot of fun to look over, even if that 6m payload is a lot like the Tardis, and bigger on the inside than the outside (sorry - that lower deck is going to be tiny at the bottom and wide at the top, and the upper deck the opposite. No way those plans really fit a 6m diameter tube! But still fun to imagine being in them).

Mongoose got the Traveller license, so I bought a lot of the Mongoose Traveller 1E books. I liked the updated rules and also that they were still mostly pretty close to Classic. And the cheap books reminded me of those early days as well. When 2E came out, while I bought that, I was not as impressed. It was a slightly better set of rules for some things, though still confusing. But they were also infusing a bit of the British ideas of SF in there, and if I want to play Judge Dread, I'll get a Judge Dread game. Yes, times have changed but I thought they were straying from what I consider Traveller. Plus the book was a LOT more expensive and started falling apart after only a few readings.

Then the T5 Kickstarter came out and was my first Kickstarter. I backed that Big Black Book and even got more dice as part of that. I was looking forward to that! It finally arrived and, despite being over 800 pages, was not really a playable game. He really needed a professional proofreader as there are a of issues. However - a lot of that is really very useful and I've borrowed parts of it for my games. I started backing way too many Kickstarters (why yes, I am a superbacker!) and backed the 2nd T5 book set. And I am still waiting, a decade or more later, for the promised players guide. While the 2nd revision was a bit better, and slip cased 3 volume set similar to the original 3 books, I just cannot reconcile a dice pool system versus 2d6 for Traveller. But still, there are a lot of interesting and useful mechanics in there that can apply to pretty much any game. And of course, the various makers which I've not spent enough time with.

I also backed several other Mongoose Kickstarter projects: the Great Rift and the Element Cruiser boxed sets. And both JTAS projects though I am also somewhat disappointed in those: mostly reprinting what was already done. The boxed sets are really, really nice in many ways. Why I've placed some of my recent games in the Great Rift - I have maps! However, I still cannot figure out how those pods for the cruiser actually work, and I also hate they just mirrored the sides for the most part. While that makes sense for some of the pods, others not so much. But still cannot see how those pods work exactly. Regardless, they are deck plans and I have spread them out on the floor to walk those various corridors. Though the landing bays and all that are all appear to be a single deck height which makes no sense to me either. I've pretty much stopped getting the Mongoose books: I think they are too expensive for what I am getting, and as evidenced here, I have more than what I need to play Traveller!

And finally, I've found some software that may work to store my library data. Zotera is an open-source library manager, and really not designed for exactly what I want to do but may suffice. Interestingly, despite having a lot of types of media, it was lacking magazines. It does have magazine articles, but not magazines. And it does not seem to have an editor to add more types of things. However - it is a SQLite db and, well, I am a developer. So I added the magazine type and thought it worked until it broke. Then I poked around a bit, and realized we also needed the fields for a type, such as author. I duplicated the book field types and it all seems to be okay. I may also see if I can add a new field type: game version. For Traveller this would be Classic, Megatraveller, Mongoose, T4, T5, Cepheus. However - it does support tags to I'll see if that works. Still not exactly what I want, so I still may end up making up my own at some point. I do like writing software that is fun, though my career has been in writing mostly boring software. But it does help my buy games!

My next delve will be the other games I have. Mostly The Fantasy Trip as I had that on college (well, the box games, and the advanced rules for Melee & Wizard, but never the actual In the Labyrinth rules. And of course, I did back that for the All-In when it was available, but that is a story for the next post!) But also another old-style game, Old School Essentials. Which I've been running and if you're reading my blog, you'll see the game updates. I am also hoping to run a TFT game next year in our face-to-face games so we can bring out the minis and other toys!