Maps

Well, this one is a fantasy map from my old college days. I found my old gaming notebook and I outlined several maps.  As I am in on the Fantasy Trip RPG Kickstarter, I thought I'd see about fantasy maps.  My gaming group is not into science fiction gaming much so I am not sure I will get enough people to referee Traveller in September. I am hoping...

D'Arlee Pilot's Guide

Hopefully attached or available is the WIP of the pilot's guide. Redid the sizing so that in theory it prints out as an old-style LBB.

D'Arlee Pilot's Guide

I need to get back to the Traveller Tracker, but as the UWP thing seems to be not going well, perhaps I should start smaller or something. It is basically functional except for the T5 & MGT trading parts (classic trading worked last time I checked). but it will never get used...

Refereeing again, part 2

I'll be doing the 4 week "short" game slot in September. I've been re-reading the adventure, and working on maps sporadically. Of course my printer died so I'll have to buy a new printer in the next couple of weeks. And I really need to re-read the combat rules. Pretty sure I'm going with Mongoose 2, although the classic rules have some ease of use (the players are used to armor class making you harder to hit which is essentially what the CT rules do).

My plans are:

• Session 1: generate characters via a round-robin technique (1 term per player) so we all have some understanding of each other's characters; a test combat round to go over how combat works; and initial set up of the adventure
• Session 2: escape from the ship and the trek overland. There may be an animal encounter or two. Initial meeting of the crew at the test site, and go over who/what is there. We may cover the 1st night there with the creepers, err, creeping about
• Session 3 (maybe the last session): cover the night and see where they go from there. There are few options so I will be curious to see how that plays out.
• Session 4 (if we have it): recap, and where to go from there. They can only go rimward pretty much as Q'auntor is at the top of the map and I've never decided where this goes in the OTU.

Depending on how they play, there may be no combat at all. And with the limited amount of ammo, less reason for combat other than against the creepers.

As I do have the Great Reft box set, perhaps somewhere in there would work so I could use the stuff I seem to keep buying. I am also getting the ship box, but a giant Navy ship can be used anywhere. Heck - I could pull out my Enterprise blueprints and use that as a surface installation!

I'm hoping enough of them like that so we can explore the D'Arlee quadrant in more detail. I need to take that TravellerMap booklet and edit that to make a better guide.  There just never seems to be enough time.

On a non-related note, there is a Kickstarter for The Fantasy Trip. I did not get to play that much way back when, but it is a fairly simple OSR. I have basic and advanced Melee (the combat rules) and Advanced Wizard (the magic rules). I don't have (or at least cannot find) In The Labyrinth which is the DM guide basically, and explains talents and so forth. It is a very tactical-driven game based on Melee, the old microgame from Metagaming. At one time I had most of those games. Sadly I let them all go at some point in the past.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/the-fantasy-trip-old-school-roleplaying/description

Q'auntor Crash Site

Playing with various options in CC3+ Cosmographer. Redid the map in the book for a hand out and to mark progress.

Of course, my printer has died after less than 3 years and not a lot of printing And I had just bought a new set of ink! I'll probably get the next one up but with only 1 paper feed in the front - $149 is probably cheaper than I could get this one fixed for, and it will still handle up to 13x19 for printing.

Makes me almost ill though - that printer was not heavily used.

Refereeing again

Looks like I may be refereeing again, this time for a short 4 session month. The gaming club I go to usually does a 1 month then 2 month sessions to let people do different things. Not many have played Traveller, so this should be interesting. Just need to find out when this happens so I can start more prep. I'll need to re-read that adventure to make sure I can capture the essence of it and make it fun.

I'll be running the Flatlined adventure from Mongoose, but moving to Q'auntar in my old homebrew quadrant. The UPP is close enough, and it is on the edge of Imperial space same as Neon, just not in the Rift area. And I still have no idea where this quadrant exists in the bigger Imperial space, but that is not really important.

So hopefully this will be a bit more fun and I'll get better at refereeing. Going to be a mix of versions, but primarily Mongoose as the combat seems a bit easier and I like that armor actually helps vs the old D&D style of just making you harder to hit.

I'll allow for Vargr and Aslan alien characters although I'd prefer everyone to play human, unless they've played Traveller before and have an idea of how those aliens are supposed to act.  Way back in the day we had a player playing a Virushi, but a slightly crazy one with battle dress. Wonder if I can find that drawing I made?

Q'auntor

As if I get a game going, here are a bunch of maps and stuff.

LLamma

Playing with maps.  Also bringing an advert in to my gaming group to see if there is interest in playing.

This is llovelly Llamma of the D'Arlee subsector.

Pilot's Guide To the D'Arlee Quadrant

WIP - this may become my playground for the next game I ref.

Link to GDrive: Pilot's Guide to D'Arlee

D'Arlee again

Slightly different view. And tomorrow - back to the ship tracker!

Got borders and the fill - lots of really nice options on the TravellerMap site. I'd be willing to pay for it...

D'Arlee Poster

Making progress - I had not realized that there was a poster form on the TravellerMap - I was actually doing the post via Postman (hey, I play with APIs for a living, so I always think about how to do it via software and did not notice the excellent and easy to use web page!)

Need to figure out how to get the top of the Imperial border off the map, and if I can stick in polity names (my League of Independent Planets smack dab in the middle there!).

Hopefully I'll get around to transcribing the history of the quadrant.

Camapign Cartographer and D'Arleee

Finally figured out the Cosmographer add-on a bit for subsectors. Still not great but making progress.

I have no idea what the dashed lines are from that map - 30 some years have not helped to remember things. There are 2 trade routes listed. I'll have to write up that trade company - I have a couple of typewritten pages, several hand-drawn images, and oddly 1 few organizational charts. Antares Shipping was approaching mega-corporation size apparently.

All data in. Now to proofread it!

Got all four subsectors put in, but I need to review the data a bit. There also seems to be an awful lot of read and amber zones, but this section of space is pretty far away from the Imperium, somewhere on the far edge of it. So perhaps the Scouts are being extra cautious.

The Imperium's border was originally in purple on my original map, so I am just following that. Need to get the X-Boat routes in, and the trading routes. Having some issue figuring out GIMP for that stuff. Paths...

D'Arlee Quad - half done

I've got half the worlds put in, and I'm testing various TravellerMap API calls. I also found out that Heaven & Earth will import the sector file, so I can actually generate the extended systems that way. So cool to be using college stuff with software I was using in college as well as stuff that could not even exist then (I have a computer science degree pre-dating the world wide web. Internet was there if you knew the IP address...)

I've got 1 planet description that oddly is listed in a subsector but at row 11, which in the correct subsector has an entirely different world name and UWP.  I'll put in the description here though. I do want to find a place to out it.

Links A37455-8 Scout Base, non-Imperial, 2 gas giants, non-agricultural
Links' name is derived from some obscure myth. The major occupation of the people is the production of porcine products. Their quality is unsurpassed, and they produce all ranges of food derivatives from emergency rations to gourmet cookery.

*Referee Only* The mass production of food products means that supplies of high quality are readily available at discount prices. The people are gregarious so add one to all reaction rolls.

The remaking of a sector

Starting to re-do my old D'Arlee Quad (2x2 sectors) to bring it into the modern age. TravellerMap rocks! Pretty sure it can do the borders and all that, just need to figure it out.

My plan is to do world write-ups as I have done in the past.  My own little corner of the Universe.  Apparently it is at least partially in the Imperium. I must have not wanted to create everything from scratch.

College Traveller - the mid 80s

I dug up my old Traveller stuff. I had a complete 2x2 sector written up via typewriter, hand drawn maps and ships, and oddly a complete sector-wide shipping company.  Now I do so much on the computer, but those early days I could spend weeks with paper, pen and pencils and my father's old typewriter generating material.

Apparently I also created Zhodani ships!

Parrot Isle

I am just following a tutorial, but I better understand the sheets, layers and effects now.  Still need to mess with Traveller-style maps and things, but as The Fantasy Trip is going to be re-released I may see if I can get the gaming group to try that RPG as well as Traveller (now that I have more time! Plus my son is finally almost done w/Scouts as he has completed all Eagle merit badges, the project, and is just getting all the letters of recommendation and the final paperwork done. Meaning Monday nights, which were Scout night, can now go back to being gaming night with the RPG club in town!)

Anyway, below is a map from that 2nd tutorial where I learned about sheets, text on curves, and some more transparency things. Plus a sepia version as a player handout.

Traveller Tracker Ship Classes

Getting back into the tracker software, and making things work a little better on smaller screens. Mostly adding a scroll viewer around the grids. Not really pretty but at least functional. I am also cleaning up some of the more obvious UI issues, such as the edit boxes getting squashed or missing sides.

I started a user document but then thought it was premature.

I also spent a couple of hours going through more CC3+ tutorials. Getting a better idea of sheets and layers and how to make more interesting and eventually better looking maps.

I really need to spend the time getting the Tracker software working and looking better.

Slightly revised ship class editor:

And a map - hey, I've got some text on curves, and learning about glows...it could be a TL4 island...

No more classes

I've decided to withdraw from my class and school. Too much stress, not enough potential return to be worth it. So now I have free time to spend with family, work on the Traveller Tracker software, learn how to use Campaign Cartographer, and actually play.

While a painful decision as I really hate to quit, it was driving everyone, including the dog, crazy (I apparently do not sleep well and he would not stay in the bed but leave. According to my wife I would be yelling and thrashing as well...hmm, PTSD from a class, who knew?)

So hopefully I will be able to start up another Traveller game (I've got some ideas), work on the software, make fun maps...

Traveller Tracker - at least buying cargo now loads & displays the manifest

Finally got back for a few minutes, and updated the purchasing process to switch to your manifest window after purchasing, and it does properly refresh and show the current manifest.

As a reminder, it is available on GitHub, and in theory you can sideload this via the HockeyApp process (although we've not really had a lot of luck with that so far).  So at some point, if this just does not pan out, I may try again with a more generic approach other than UWP. Just wanted to see if I could write a universal Windows program so that the store would handle distribution.

If I ever do rewrite this for the nth time, this time it will be .Net Core so that it will run on Windows, Mac, Linux in theory. Not sure about the UI for that although there are rumors they will be porting XAML. Or I could try my hand at Java as that runs on everything as well.

Now back to project management...yay?

T5 Freight tonnage

After a lively discussion on the COTI forum, the conclusion is that the tonnage is:

(Flux + Pop) x (TCs + 1)  

The trade codes (TCs) that are applicable are a limited sub-set of all the trade codes, so I've added that flag to the trade code table and it seemed to work. I'll probably update the seed to automatically set that as well when you load the software the first time.

I am also assuming we're using the absolute value of flux - no negative tonnage (I guess we really could do that and say that there is a demand for that particular cargo in the system). And it is possible for flux to be 0, meaning that no cargo was found.  And unlike CT, it appears we roll once per day - good thing I set up the version table to have a slot for how many days per search!

And I still need to make that UI better: buying cargo should show the updated manifest. I do have the new ship process a bit better: it does go to the ship details layout. I may want to color-code the items you need to have entered to indicate that things are still needed. However, selecting the era did load the appropriate sectors and all that.

And playing with Campaign Cartographer more. I really need to go through a LOT more tutorials...but here is a test for the Cosmographer satellite view. I really need to figure out a bit more..