For a full-res image, look here:
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/7258/spinwardmain.png
Saturday, December 17, 2011
The Spinward Main
I've made a full-color, 300dpi map of the Spinward Main as it appears in Classic Traveller's A3: Twilight's Peak at the request of Paul Elliott from the Citizens of the Imperium boards. Enjoy!
For a full-res image, look here:
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/7258/spinwardmain.png
For a full-res image, look here:
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/7258/spinwardmain.png
Thursday, December 8, 2011
New Camera!
I've just received a new camera - an HP Photosmart M425 - from eBay. Now I've tested it out on my old Grey Alien figures from 15mm.co.uk.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Outer Veil Released!
Spica Publishing is pleased to announce that Outer Veil has been released!
Outer Veil is now available to buy and download from Spica Publishing’s publisher page at DriveThruRPG.com, price $14.99.
Click here to grab your copy of Outer Veil!
Product code: SP 0200
ISBN: 978-0-9560893-9-7
Format: PDF format, 156 pages.
Outer Veil is © Spica Publishing 2011. All rights reserved.
Oh, and I'm the primary author!
Outer Veil is now available to buy and download from Spica Publishing’s publisher page at DriveThruRPG.com, price $14.99.
Click here to grab your copy of Outer Veil!
Product code: SP 0200
ISBN: 978-0-9560893-9-7
Format: PDF format, 156 pages.
Outer Veil is © Spica Publishing 2011. All rights reserved.
Oh, and I'm the primary author!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
The Space Cockroach is Getting Published!
Yep, I'm getting my own first book published by Publishing! And its going to be available in PDF format NEXT WEEK! Woohoo!
Spica Publishing is pleased to announce that Outer Veil will be released on 30 October 2011!
THE YEAR IS 2159 AND THE FRONTIER NEEDS YOU.
Written by Omer Golan-Joel with Richard Hazlewood, with art by David Redington and Michael Thomas, Outer Veil is a completely new game universe for Traveller, set in 2159 AD in the space around Sol.
As mighty as they are in the Core Worlds, the Federated Nations of Humanity government and the Megacorporations cannot act directly on the Frontier, which is a month or more away even for the brand-new Jump 2 couriers. To exert their power to these distant stars, they need you to go there on their behalf and act as their eyes, ears, and hands away from home. The FNH government needs reliable administrators who can think on their feet, loyal military officers to project its force, and determined Justice Commission agents to uphold the law where the colonial authorities cannot.
The Megacorporations want results and want them now and demand people who can get results fast, by any means necessary. They also need researchers, explorers, and workers for their projects on the frontier and spies and mercenaries for the darker side of inter-corporate competition. The locals need you, too: as a professional, a hired gun, an explorer or as a fellow colonist. You need the Frontier, too: opportunities and adventures abound there for both the hireling and the freelancer.
The Frontier is large, deep, and wide open. Humanity's young sphere of interstellar space is surrounded on all sides by unexplored space. At the edge of this tiny sphere lies the Outer Veil, a partly-explored, sparsely-settled region of space separating the known and the unknown. Despite its best efforts, the Core has little influence in these dark reaches, and nearly anything can be found there: unsanctioned colonies, pirate enclaves, secret laboratories, alien ruins, isolationist groups, strange worlds and colonies scraping out a living on the edge of the Great Unknown.
The space beyond the Outer Veil is unexplored, unknown and undisturbed by human exploration, habitation or influence. The future of Humanity lies beyond the Outer Veil, where untold opportunities, riches and dangers await the trail-blazing explorer. The present human institutions hold little or no power amongst these far stars; whatever lies beyond the slowly expanding Outer Veil is an enigma waiting to be explored and colonised: a new opportunity for Humanity to begin anew and build new civilisations.
Authority is scarce and your bosses, if any, are weeks of Jump travel away from you. The Core can only give you general guidance and standing orders; when trouble strikes, you have to make your own decisions. If you are the captain of a patrol frigate, the commanding officer of a Marine detachment, a colonial governor or a Justice Commission agent, you are the government. If you are a trouble-shooter or a local exec for a Megacorporation, you are the company. And if you are a freelancer, you truly are independent.
In the Outer Veil you are on your own.
Outer Veil includes background and historical information on the Outer Veil universe, eight new, setting-specific careers, statistics for 20 new starships and smallcraft, rules for asteroid mining and belting, a complete sector of space with UWPs and subsector maps, Referee's information on the Outer Veil setting, patrons and 'Brotherhood & Justice', a complete introductory adventure ste in the Outer Veil universe.
Outer Veil will be released on Sunday 30 October 2011 as a PDF download from Spica Publishing’s publisher page at DriveThruRPG.com, price $14.99.
Product code: SP 0200
ISBN: 978-0-9560893-9-7
Format: PDF format, 156 pages.
A selection of preview pages from Outer Veil from Spica Publishing are presented below.
Outer Veil is © Spica Publishing 2011. All rights reserved.
Requires the use of the Traveller Core Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing.
'Traveller' and the Traveller logo are Trademarks owned by Far Future Enterprises, Inc. and are used with permission.
Spica Publishing is pleased to announce that Outer Veil will be released on 30 October 2011!
THE YEAR IS 2159 AND THE FRONTIER NEEDS YOU.
Written by Omer Golan-Joel with Richard Hazlewood, with art by David Redington and Michael Thomas, Outer Veil is a completely new game universe for Traveller, set in 2159 AD in the space around Sol.
As mighty as they are in the Core Worlds, the Federated Nations of Humanity government and the Megacorporations cannot act directly on the Frontier, which is a month or more away even for the brand-new Jump 2 couriers. To exert their power to these distant stars, they need you to go there on their behalf and act as their eyes, ears, and hands away from home. The FNH government needs reliable administrators who can think on their feet, loyal military officers to project its force, and determined Justice Commission agents to uphold the law where the colonial authorities cannot.
The Megacorporations want results and want them now and demand people who can get results fast, by any means necessary. They also need researchers, explorers, and workers for their projects on the frontier and spies and mercenaries for the darker side of inter-corporate competition. The locals need you, too: as a professional, a hired gun, an explorer or as a fellow colonist. You need the Frontier, too: opportunities and adventures abound there for both the hireling and the freelancer.
The Frontier is large, deep, and wide open. Humanity's young sphere of interstellar space is surrounded on all sides by unexplored space. At the edge of this tiny sphere lies the Outer Veil, a partly-explored, sparsely-settled region of space separating the known and the unknown. Despite its best efforts, the Core has little influence in these dark reaches, and nearly anything can be found there: unsanctioned colonies, pirate enclaves, secret laboratories, alien ruins, isolationist groups, strange worlds and colonies scraping out a living on the edge of the Great Unknown.
The space beyond the Outer Veil is unexplored, unknown and undisturbed by human exploration, habitation or influence. The future of Humanity lies beyond the Outer Veil, where untold opportunities, riches and dangers await the trail-blazing explorer. The present human institutions hold little or no power amongst these far stars; whatever lies beyond the slowly expanding Outer Veil is an enigma waiting to be explored and colonised: a new opportunity for Humanity to begin anew and build new civilisations.
Authority is scarce and your bosses, if any, are weeks of Jump travel away from you. The Core can only give you general guidance and standing orders; when trouble strikes, you have to make your own decisions. If you are the captain of a patrol frigate, the commanding officer of a Marine detachment, a colonial governor or a Justice Commission agent, you are the government. If you are a trouble-shooter or a local exec for a Megacorporation, you are the company. And if you are a freelancer, you truly are independent.
In the Outer Veil you are on your own.
Outer Veil includes background and historical information on the Outer Veil universe, eight new, setting-specific careers, statistics for 20 new starships and smallcraft, rules for asteroid mining and belting, a complete sector of space with UWPs and subsector maps, Referee's information on the Outer Veil setting, patrons and 'Brotherhood & Justice', a complete introductory adventure ste in the Outer Veil universe.
Outer Veil will be released on Sunday 30 October 2011 as a PDF download from Spica Publishing’s publisher page at DriveThruRPG.com, price $14.99.
Product code: SP 0200
ISBN: 978-0-9560893-9-7
Format: PDF format, 156 pages.
A selection of preview pages from Outer Veil from Spica Publishing are presented below.
Outer Veil is © Spica Publishing 2011. All rights reserved.
Requires the use of the Traveller Core Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing.
'Traveller' and the Traveller logo are Trademarks owned by Far Future Enterprises, Inc. and are used with permission.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
In Defense of Dying in Traveller Character Generation
A common complaint about Classic Traveller is that characters can die during character generation. At the surface of it, it looks like a very strong and robust complaint - why should character generation be based on chance rather than the player's choice, and why should a character die even before starting the game?
However, there are actually good reasons to follow this controversial, and lethal, rule.
First of all, Classic Traveller game starts not after character generation, but rather at the beginning of character generation. It is a mini-game all by itself - a game of chance, if you will. And like all gambles, it has its own thrill in it. Will your character survive multiple terms of combat as a Marine? Will you muster out a General, or, alternatively, finish your career at a state funeral reserved to military heroes? Go on, gamble!
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as long as you stick to Book 1 and Supplement 4, Classic Traveller character generation is FAST. VERY FAST. Once you know the system well, generating a character takes a mere five minutes. So even if your character dies, you don't lose much time - in fact, you've only played a little game of dice for several moments, no harm done.
But the real reasons for the chances for character death in Classic Traveller character generation are twofold: from a setting perspective and from a game-mechanics perspective.
From a setting perspective, a military career, especially in actual combat service (when you can learn all these nifty combat skills), is a risky thing. Combat is no picnic, after all. You don't earn combat experience by sitting behind a desk, but rather by shooting and being shot at. Soldiers die in many cases; that is the nature of war. And the game reflects that.
From a game-mechanics perspective, keep in mind that Classic Traveller - like most versions of Traveller - uses the 2d6 curve for task resolution. This curve is highly sensitive to modifiers, so even a mere +1 is significant; high skill levels will skew the curve much towards the character's favor, and thus are highly valuable. The chance of death during character generation, therefore, exists in order to make higher skills rarer and more valuable. Otherwise, why not just stick in, say, the Scouts for terms and terms on no end and have a character with Pilot-5? This presents the player with a choice: do you muster out now alive but with a smaller amount of skills, or risk a certain chance of death in the line of duty to earn better combat experience? Are you determined enough to become an officer to risk your life in the line of duty, or do you muster out as a Private and stay alive for the time being? Choices. Choices. And risks. This is the essence of Classic Traveller character generation.
I hope that these few arguments would make you think again about the reasoning behind these seemingly arbitrary mechanics.
However, there are actually good reasons to follow this controversial, and lethal, rule.
First of all, Classic Traveller game starts not after character generation, but rather at the beginning of character generation. It is a mini-game all by itself - a game of chance, if you will. And like all gambles, it has its own thrill in it. Will your character survive multiple terms of combat as a Marine? Will you muster out a General, or, alternatively, finish your career at a state funeral reserved to military heroes? Go on, gamble!
Another thing to keep in mind is that, as long as you stick to Book 1 and Supplement 4, Classic Traveller character generation is FAST. VERY FAST. Once you know the system well, generating a character takes a mere five minutes. So even if your character dies, you don't lose much time - in fact, you've only played a little game of dice for several moments, no harm done.
But the real reasons for the chances for character death in Classic Traveller character generation are twofold: from a setting perspective and from a game-mechanics perspective.
From a setting perspective, a military career, especially in actual combat service (when you can learn all these nifty combat skills), is a risky thing. Combat is no picnic, after all. You don't earn combat experience by sitting behind a desk, but rather by shooting and being shot at. Soldiers die in many cases; that is the nature of war. And the game reflects that.
From a game-mechanics perspective, keep in mind that Classic Traveller - like most versions of Traveller - uses the 2d6 curve for task resolution. This curve is highly sensitive to modifiers, so even a mere +1 is significant; high skill levels will skew the curve much towards the character's favor, and thus are highly valuable. The chance of death during character generation, therefore, exists in order to make higher skills rarer and more valuable. Otherwise, why not just stick in, say, the Scouts for terms and terms on no end and have a character with Pilot-5? This presents the player with a choice: do you muster out now alive but with a smaller amount of skills, or risk a certain chance of death in the line of duty to earn better combat experience? Are you determined enough to become an officer to risk your life in the line of duty, or do you muster out as a Private and stay alive for the time being? Choices. Choices. And risks. This is the essence of Classic Traveller character generation.
I hope that these few arguments would make you think again about the reasoning behind these seemingly arbitrary mechanics.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Of Rank and Fighting Ability - a rant
I'm thinking about the major NPCs of my City on the Ice-Choked Sea setting for D&Dish weird fantasy. Part of it includes deciding what to do with the high-level NPCs I've detailed earlier for that setting. And here I come face to face with a very common trope: many video games and face-to-face RPGs equate social (or military) rank with fighting prowess. and i don't think that this should be the case.
Assuming that fighting prowess equals social or military rank is assuming that the society or military force in question is a perfect meritocracy centered on fighting ability - where the more competent people are promoted to positions of power. While this might be true for groups such as pirates or viking raiders, where people literally fight their way up the rank ladder to the top (and have to keep themselves in good shape to stand against challengers), many more civilized organizations and societies do not work this way.
Examples of this abound. In the typical western state, the military is, ultimately, under the command of a civilian politician, who may or may not have any military experience; this is quite extreme in the USA where the President - an elected civilian - is actually the direct commander in chief of the military. But this is not only a case for democracies - not all medieval monarchs were warrior kings; many were even invalids, yet had armies at their command.
Furthermore, even inside the military hierarchy, ranking officers need not be high-level Fighters. After all, climbing the ranks and administrating armies require quite different skills than fighting in the battlefield. And this is not to mention the even less meritocratic forces where a noble (or other dignitary) could earn a military rank by the virtue of his social status... In many cases, indeed, a Sergeant might be more experienced as a soldier than the Lieutenant he answers to, especially is the Sergeant has plenty of real combat experience and the Lieutenant is fresh out of officers' college...
So the game stats of people in power will vary in my settings. Some would have powerful stats, other will be (in LotFP terms) be level 0. But in many cases, a low-level (in game terms) person in a position of power will have mighty warriors at his or her disposal - bodyguards, elite units and the like.
Assuming that fighting prowess equals social or military rank is assuming that the society or military force in question is a perfect meritocracy centered on fighting ability - where the more competent people are promoted to positions of power. While this might be true for groups such as pirates or viking raiders, where people literally fight their way up the rank ladder to the top (and have to keep themselves in good shape to stand against challengers), many more civilized organizations and societies do not work this way.
Examples of this abound. In the typical western state, the military is, ultimately, under the command of a civilian politician, who may or may not have any military experience; this is quite extreme in the USA where the President - an elected civilian - is actually the direct commander in chief of the military. But this is not only a case for democracies - not all medieval monarchs were warrior kings; many were even invalids, yet had armies at their command.
Furthermore, even inside the military hierarchy, ranking officers need not be high-level Fighters. After all, climbing the ranks and administrating armies require quite different skills than fighting in the battlefield. And this is not to mention the even less meritocratic forces where a noble (or other dignitary) could earn a military rank by the virtue of his social status... In many cases, indeed, a Sergeant might be more experienced as a soldier than the Lieutenant he answers to, especially is the Sergeant has plenty of real combat experience and the Lieutenant is fresh out of officers' college...
So the game stats of people in power will vary in my settings. Some would have powerful stats, other will be (in LotFP terms) be level 0. But in many cases, a low-level (in game terms) person in a position of power will have mighty warriors at his or her disposal - bodyguards, elite units and the like.
Friday, June 10, 2011
15mm BTR-70s by QRF
I'm pleased with the 15mm BTR-70s made by QRF; not only are they perfect for historical, ultra-modern and near-future games, but BTRs also fit perfectly, IMHO, as sci-fi wheeled AFVs with the right camo scheme.
So here they are:
And a closer look at one of them:
So here they are:
And a closer look at one of them:
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