Author: Admin

Non-Spoiler Review: Apotheosis, by Michael Brown

Over the last several years of running a Classic Traveller campaign I’ve purchased many of the one-page PDF adventures written “for 2D6 games such as Cepheus Engine and the Original Science Fiction Roleplaying Game” by Michael Brown. While I’ve not run any of them (I simply have not fit them into my game yet), I enjoy reading Michael’s creativity. Mr. Brown can get more adventure into one compact page than almost anyone, with creative scenarios and game hooks. He gives the GM all that’s needed to run a session or two without, as he has told me “stepping on the GM’s toes.”

Last week I decided to see what Michael could do in 16 pages. I ordered his adventure Apotheosis from Drive Thru RPG in both PDF and hard copy. The hard copy came in today, and I spent an hour reading it.

First a few comments about the book’s quality and layout. It is printed in what I’d call “zine size” 6″ x 9″. A little bigger than a folded in half letter size paper — not sure what this size is actually called. The cover is essentially a nice quality card stock with glossy exterior (again, I am not a publishing guy, so not sure what the exact terms are). Considering I paid on $6.49 for the hard copy/pdf set, I think the quality is really nice.

Apotheosis, by Michael Brown.

The actual adventure content is 16 pages, plus about 8 pages (front and back) of cover page, Open Gaming License, info, etc. The interior is printed on fairly nice paper, and the spine appears to be glued. I think the spine will actually last, as at about 24 total interior pages it isn’t heavy. One thing I like about this book is that it is small enough and light enough it was easy to handle, which not only makes it easier to read but probably easier to use during a gaming session.

The layout of this book is very nice. Simple black type on simple white pages, layed out simply. A font big enough for me to read without glasses.

The adventure is organized logically. It flows when you read it. Michael starts you with a plot overview, explains how to get your group into the adventure, gives you enough detail to run the adventure, lots of rumors the PCs might hear, motivations of the NPCs, etc. There is no art, but there is one map. I’ve found in some recent purchases that art is not always a bonus. Often it is poorly integrated into a rulebook or adventure, obscuring text and causing other problems. Not the case here. Again, Michael gives you what you need. Do you just have to have a map of a building or whatever? Just draw one. Or find a free one on the internet. You know your team’s going to probably destroy that building anyway, right?

Now, I said the adventure is layed out logically, but it is not designed to railroad your PCs through a linear path. This thing could go a lot of different ways, and Michael give you plenty of ideas as options.

Man, it is hard to do this without dropping spoilers. Ugh.

So, we have a nice little book, well organized content, a great mission on an interesting planet, and plenty of detail to allow you, the GM, to run a fun session or two. I think that it’s just the right length that I will not have any trouble finding things in it. Ever gotten an adventure that is so long, convoluted, and poorly organized that you can’t find some simple thing, like what kind of weapon an important NPC has, or something like that? I have. It sucks. Hell, you can spend five minutes looking for something, then just give up and make something up. That won’t happen with this adventure. It is all right there, easy to read, easy to use. Plenty to work with.

One last thing I wan to say. Michael Brown ALWAYS gives a reason for the PCs to be involved that makes sense when viewed in the light of the question “why wouldn’t the authorities be handling this?” That make a difference to me. I like things to make sense, so I appreciate this detail.

Even if you never play this adventure I would recommend it as an example of excellent adventure design.

That’s all. Now to play Traveller or Cepheus Engine!

 

Into the Void Ref’s Notes Session 22

Well, Session 22 was a lot of fun. I think my players had a good time.

As always, I feel like I could have been a bit more descriptive with the settings and all, but I’ll give myself a break. When you are GMing there’s a lot to keep track of.

So this game was intended to be the likely culmination of a story seed I planted in session 5, about 4 years ago. Yes, I sat on it that long. I say “intended” because while I had it set up, you can’t control what players do, and I was not going to force it. But it all worked out. The players of course didn’t do everything I expected, but I’ve come to expect that, so my expectations were met.

I go on and on about this, but my group is really good. They are great gamers. They are playing a system that punishes stupid actions. They are adventurous, but they use their head. Their characters use their tech to their advantage. They don’t walk into a situation unprepared, at least voluntarily. So while this session had many chance for grave bodily harm to be inflicted on the PCs, they managed to avoid it.

I knew this was going to be an important session in the campaign. I knew there was greater than normal chance a PC would die, so I wanted it to be very good. I struggled with the design of this session for a long time, writing stuff online, in notebooks, etc. I had a general idea of things, but just couldn’t really bring it together. So I tried something new.

I wrote a 7-page short story of the adventure. I envisioned it like a novel or movie, and I wrote it out. This helped me immerse myself in it and really think Was that fun? Yes, it was fun. Does it make sense? Yes, it does.” So I used that short story as an outline of what could happen. It also gave me some nice, prepared, descriptive text to read or at least use somewhat to provide atmosphere. I’ll often to that anyway, but typically I write my adventures in “scenes” so when they PCs arrive at a new location, if it is one I’ve considered, I’ll have some nice information about the atmosphere.

Overall it was a good way to do things. I don’t know if I’d do it in every adventure, but for this one it worked.

After we finished the session we had a talk, and I had considered resuming the campaign with the team back in civilized space, and not role play the journey home. But we have always resumed exactly from where we left off, and I think it is best to continue this practice. It is fun that way.

ITV Session 22: To Kill a God part 2

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In orbit of the intelligent fungal planet, SAFCO completes a week of maintenance on the ship. During that time Lucky conducts an EVA to inspect the ship for signs of fungus clinging to the hull, and finds none. Barney conducts an analysis of the fuel processed from the water on that planet and finds that the onboard refining process has removed any fungus, which was likely destroyed in the process. The fuel is fine. The rest of the ship is likewise inspected and found to be clean. It has been parked on ice and snow, so likely it did not come into contact with any fungus. The scouts with the help of Joe scan ahead to the destination system using their scout-class sensor array. They are able to detect eight planets, including two gas giants. No additional info at this distance. Art plots a course and Roger engages the jump drive and they spend a week in Jump Space.

They pop out of jump space on the edge of that system, not too far from one of the gas giants, well outside the orbital plane. More scanning is done, and they detect one inner planet in the habitable zone with water. They stop at the first gas giant to refuel. Roger is able to pilot the ship to avoid electrical storms. During the refueling run they witness gigantic gas-bag creatures floating in the upper atmosphere. A kilometer across, sensors zoom and and reveal kilometers-long tendrils hanging from the creatures, occasionaly catching a faster-moving creature of some sort. Though curious about the possible sentience of these creatures, the crew decides to press on with the main mission. Art uses his Nav-2 skill to plot a fast and efficient course to the target planet, slingshotting around the other gas giant and landing them in a perfect orbit of that world.

SAFCO confers with Zal Twist, who suggests that they scan the surface for likely unnatural formations resembling the ziggurat they found months ago on their first expedition. They eventually locate one on a small island off the coast of one of the two large continents. They survey the site from the air. It consists of a ziggurat 250 feet across, a large landing pad, and two tall black pylons, all inside a 50′ wall that surrounds the complex. Further aerial recon reveals an apparent breach in the wall of the second level and a main entrance on the ground level of the structure. Lucky uses the drone to take a look at the breach, but while it appears that a human could crawl through, he can’t risk sending the drone in.

On the ground level, the team finds an unpowered control panel next to the huge entrance, similar to the one they found on the other planet. Lucky is able to hotwire it using power from the robot, while Barney tends to the robot. As the door begins to open it draws too much power from the robot, but Barney makes his Engineering roll and prevents it from fully draining him.  They get it open about five feet – enough for everyone to pass.

They send in the drone to survey the inside. The first level appears to be a large ceremonial space. 35 feet to the ceiling, a large pit, columns, and an alter in front of a massive black square stone column the rises to the ceiling. Zal discovers alien writing on the face of that structure. Standing on the alter, he uses the universal translator to read the words…

Here, as the enemy approaches
We create our new body
The New Body
Immortal
Perfect
Powerful and Good
We dedicate ourselves to the New Body
And preservation of our Culture

As Zal speaks those words, a door slides open in that structure, revealing what appears to be an elevator.  Rather than jump in, they decide to send the drone up a stairwell they discovered to explore the next level.

As Lucky pilots the drone on the second level, it is hit by something. He backs it up and turns on the flood lights, to see a group of spider-like creatures the size of large dogs approaching the drone. They are shooting hard darts from their mouths, which trail a fibrous rope. The darts clang off the drone, but they follow it anyway. The team prepares as Lucky informs them of the threat and uses the drone to lure the creatures down the stairs. They manage to pick off the creatures before anyone is hit.  Several team members then go upstairs to explore. They find nothing but empty rooms and a spider lair.

The team decides to use the elevator, as Zal is sure they are about to make a huge discovery! They go up to the only stop – the third floor.

As the door opens, lights come on. Around this level they see two rows of 8 large organic-looking pods full of blue gel. Inside they can see the floating remains of what must have been the Precursors. Each pod has a control panel behind it, and here are huge machines along one side of the room. Across the room is what appears to be an “android” of the Precursor species, still in working order. Black metal surface that resembles that of the universal translator, the being comes to life. Zal uses the translator to communicate the team’s peaceful intentions. The android is confused. It moves about the chamber, looking at each pod, asking “Where are the Makers? How long has it been?” The team explains the situation. The android explains that the Precursors were at war, and losing, and this place was a facility to transform the consciousness of these 16 beings into pure energy, to live forever and evolve their species beyond the threat of warfare. The android asks Zal to give it the UT, as it will allow it to communicate with the whole team.

Zal hands the device to the android. The creature’s head splits open, it places the UT globe in its skull, and the head closes up. Moments later the creature suddenly grabs Zal by the throat, lifing him and squeezing. The team sees the old man’s body go limp and the android drops it to the floor, and speaks. “Thank you for this new body. I have waited months for this. Now I will take your ship. ” The team and the android begin to fight as it tries to move to the elevator. The first round of bullets bounce off the creature as they might off of battledress.  At close range, Flint strikes with his sword doing heavy damage. The creature strikes back, but his combat armor saves him. The team continues firing, and eventually puts the thing down, as Flint cleaves the head in two, destroying the UT, which apparently had housed the mind of the Dead God from session 5, who was apparently a criminal from the Precursor society.

The Baroness runs weeping to the body of Zal Twist, then exclaims that he is still alive. The team discovers that the old scientist is clinging to life, but barely. They rush him back to the ship’s autodoc, where they stabilize him..

We end the session with SAFCO considering their next actions.

End Session
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Elapsed game time: 343

Into the Void Ref’s Notes Session 21

Full disclosure. I think I missed doing these for session 20.  Also, this is about more than the session. This is the referee just thinking.

As the days get shorter about this time each year, I always look forward to spending more time on reading and gaming.  Summer, for me, means long days and evening skateboarding sessions. I still work on my gaming and try to run a monthly game, but I only have so much time or energy.

Online sessions have been a real benefit during the pandemic, and of course we’ve been able to to bring in a friend who lives out of state. One part of online session prep that has always been a pain for me is drawing maps. I’ve enjoyed using the many pre-fab maps available on Drivethru RPG, but drawing my own has been a real pain. However, last month I bought a Wacom drawing tablet, and it is making a huge difference. There is a big learning curve to using such and input device, but I’m getting better with it, and it is easier to use than a mouse. It works well with my Macbook, and talks to my Chromebook without any drivers needing to be installed. So I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I found a simple drawing app for the Chromebook, Ibis Paint X, which does what I need it to do. I can set up my maps to scale correctly for Roll20. It’s particularly nice to have the tablet and my chromebook in my backpack during the day. I can work on things while I eat lunch at work.

Our last Traveller session had to be postponed due to technical problems. Turns out my podcast partner’s firewall had suddenly decided it did not like any of the system we use for audio (Roll20 or Discord). We discovered the problem about an hour after cancelling, when simply hotspotting via his cellphone worked like a charm. Lesson learned.

So we’re playing that session next weekend. I’ll get everyone to check their systems the day before to avoid problems. I’m really looking forward to this game. I’m going to go all-out and try to make it a multi-session awesome game.

The group is currently exploring the unknown, which is fun, but I’m kind of looking forward to getting them back to either their own civilization or some other, as it is easier sometimes to created interesting conflict since we have some recurring NPCs. I also need to remember the idea of having three “groups” involved in the sessions – the PCs and a couple of NPC groups or competing interests.  Makes things more interesting.

After that I want to spend a little time back in our sadly under-played GURPS cyberpunk campaign. The idea, however, is to do that one in person, so it may be a while yet. We are not young people, and there are various issues in some of the households which make us wish to avoid the virus, even though we are all vaccinated.

Ultimately, what I’d really like to do is run GURPS Cyberpunk in-person, Traveller online, and I’d like a second Traveller group running online as well. I have one dear friend who lives across the country who is the best game master I’ve ever known, and I really want him involved in a campaign. I miss having him in games.

Omer Golan-Joel has released his new Cepheus Engine variant (speaking of variants), called Cepheus Deluxe. It is essentially an expanded and improved version of his previous Cepheus Light book, which is extremely good (I have it). I’ve ordered the new book in hard copy, and I have it in PDF format already.  As much as I love Classic Traveller, I have to admit I am very tempted to convert our campaign to Cepheus Deluxe. It is that good. There’s so much that Omer’s CE rules do well. One thing I really like about them is that not only are the rules really good, but they are well-organized and the page layout is simple and easy to navigate. The artwork is secondary. These are really perfect Traveller-inspired rules for doing homebrew settings.

I guess this weekend, in addition to preparing for next week’s game, I want to spend some time on my group’s gear, and really get a little better definition of what some of their stuff can do. Combat armor for instance. One of the guys has it. Well, I’ve kind of winged it so far, but I think I want to find some proper armor in the Mongoose Central Supply Catalog and adapt it to my Classic Traveller game. There are a few things like that I need to do. I think I want to also work on a Google Drive central repository for my group to use for their characters and whatnot. I have one already, but I want to really get it working well for them.

My only real comments about Session 21 are as follows. We had a lot of fun. Super fun game. BUT – I blew it. I created what could have been a really great planet and encounter, something that should have been the primary location and focus of a series of sessions, and I used it as essentially a very dangerous fuel stop. Lesson learned. Don’t use your best ideas on things that are not primary missions.

ITV Session 21: Ice Planet Horror

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Starting from where we left off in Session 20, part of the team is about the wrecked freighter, on an ice planet in the Void. The rest of the team is outside, keeping an eye on the ice apes they found hibernating in a ruined cargo pod of the freighter.

Being from the Merchants, Art is familiar with this very common class of freighter. He leads Flint, Barney, and Roger up one level to the bridge.  Flint is able to use his high strength force open the hatch. The ship is dead except for a very weak distress signal. The team is able to locate the memory modules containing the captains log, navigation records, and other ships info. Barney removes them. They return to the Rambler II along with the rest of the team and manage to power up the very rugged “black box” containing the captains log.  For this they learn that the ship has been there for 25 years, that it got there via misjump that resulting in a staggering distance covered. The find out the ship was carrying modular building material bound for the frontier area. This would have been when the team was all just kids (except of course for Zal). They find out the crew apparently build a survival camp in the huge nearby cave using some of their cargo, after firing off a weak distress call.

Feeling a responsibility to find out what happened to the crew and perhaps even find survivors, SAFCO gears up and the entire team except Lucky and Fardt go exploring.

The cave is massive. The entrance is nearly 200 feet across, and the interior is likewise huge. Their cold-suits have helmets with lamps. Flint’s armor has IR capability. As they enter, they find that the terrain steps down a bit. Looking ahead in IR, Flint can see one of the three branches is warmer. They explore and discover a large hot springs and the survival camp. The team searches the camp. They have thus far found no remains of the crew. They find the captain’s portable recorder (he mentioned it in the last ships log entry, in which he thanked the ship for getting them to the ground alive and says they are abandoning the vessel). In just a few entries, the captain describes their hope in discovering so much wildlife, their despair upon discovering that the biosphere is inedible, and his relief that his steward discoverers a common, highly nutritious, edible fungus. They will not starve. As the weeks go by the crew begins to go mad, one by one running deep into the cave or even out into the savage storms that come out of nowhere. The log entries end.

Assuming that the crew all met their demise by losing their minds, SAFCO and friends being to return the their ship. Zal and the Baroness are surprised attacked by three humanoid creatures after lagging behind. Zal takes a hit and is knocked out. The team engages the creatures with autopistols, but at medium range their pistols are not so great.  They close the distance, while Flint actually backs up and uses his sniper rifle to attack the creatures from a distance. A fairly long battle ensues.

At close range it is clear that these three creatures are members of the freighter crew. Their skin is mottled and permeated with weird looking fibers. They appear to be mindless and aggressive.  Roger takes a hit, but over the course of the fight the rest of SAFCO is not hit. The Baroness drags Zal out of the combat zone.

SAFCO hits many times with auto pistols, shotguns, and the sniper rifle. The creatures are extremely hard to kill, but eventually two of them go down, chunks of human flesh permeated by fungal tendrils blasted all over the place. As Roger is about to deliver the killing shot to the third, suddenly the creatures eyes brighten with the light of intelligence and sentience. It stops fighting. Roger has the universal translator. He attempts to communicate with the wounded once-human thing.

Roger hears a voice in his head. “Before I was All. But when the men came I knew there were others. I am not All. I must expand…”

Roger doesn’t like what he hears, so he and the rest of SAFCO empty their guns into the shambling thing like the Sopranos killing a “rat”. As they stand there looking at the thing, Roger still hears the voice!

SAFCO decides it will be a good idea to get the hell off this planet. They refuel from the hot spring and get back into space as quickly as possible, where they begin pre-jump maintenance. They put Zal and Roger in the autodoc to check for  fungal infections, but find none. Then the rest of the crew does the same thing. They theorize that there is an intelligent and psionic fungal colony on the planet, and that eating the fungus allows it to begin taking control of the minds and bodies of other creatures.

End Session
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Elapsed game time: 242

Game ideas, a short hiatus, etc

I put our Traveller campaign on hiatus until June. Just a short two month hold. I’m just so tired of being at my computer, in my home office, all the time these days I need a break. The idea of spending 3 or 4 hours pretty much “working” for fun at GM was making me sort of anxious. I love being the game master (or Referee in Traveller), but let’s face it. GMing is intense. It is performance. You have to really be “on”, and to do a good job you have to not only be prepared with your game materials, but you have to be physically and emotionally geared up as well. The last 14 months have taken their toll. I just need a short break. I’m glad my gaming group is all so cool and understanding. It helps that we’ve known each other since we were kids.

Image credit: ESA/Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University, the Netherlands) – Hubble Image

This break, however, is giving me a good chance to write new material for our campaign. I’m trying to spend 30 minutes to an hour a day working on stuff. I find that for each session I come up with an idea, and then over the course of development it changes tremendously. The team is currently on an ice planet, exploring a wrecked freighter, waaaaaay out in unexplored space. How did it get there? What happened to the crew? How long has it been there? So many questions to be answered. I watched a really interesting documentary last week. After we play the session I’ll discuss the documentary here and how it has influenced the session, but tonight I came up with what I think will be a very fun, super weird trajectory for this next session to take, all based on stuff from this documentary. Had nothing to do with space.  I’m enjoying coming up with the rest of this stuff.

A challenge for me, now, is to make sure the session has things for each PC to really be engaged in during the session. It can’t all be about “my great idea.” That idea is to provide the challenges for the players, so I need to make sure each PC has a chance to shine. Since players are unpredictable, I need to make sure I have two or three chances for each PC to do his thing and have his time of greatness!

Tomorrow, officially, is Mayday!, a special day in the life of Traveller players. This year Jeff (my podcasting partner on SAFCOcast) and I are playing in an online game as part of the online Traveller celebration organized by Virtual Traveller, Cyborg Prime, and Two Brothers Gaming. Beside the games, there are online talks and interviews all day. Looking forward to all of it!

Speaking of SAFCOcast, yes, Jeff and I will be creating a new episode after this game. We’ll be reporting on the online Mayday activities, and of course will have some internet finds and other Traveller talk. With the pause in our campaign, and each of us starting new jobs, we’ve been a bit preoccupied with “life” recently, but rest assured the podcast shall go on. We both love doing it.

I’ve been fantasizing about running two groups in our campaign. Christopher Rice, GURPS-master and Lord of Ravens N’ Pennies, does that. There are other people I really want to have in the game. My old college roommate for one. He’s the best GM ever, and he needs to be in our game. Since we went virtual it’s totally possible now. And there are a couple more players I’d like to involve. The problem is once a group gets over three or four players I don’t feel like I can give each PC the attention they deserve. I really like to shine the spotlight on each player, during each game, and once I pass four players in a session it gets tough. Right now we have 5 players in the came, and one occasional player. That’s about as many as I can handle. So running teams A and B would be really fun. The reality is that it will be tough to do that until I’m retired. I just can’t put enough time into gaming right now to make this happen. But…I might try anyway. Having teams A and B would open up some really fascinating possibilities to see how each’s actions might affect the other. Would they ever meet? Would they be allies? I need to do this.

Finally, I bought more 99 cent one-page adventures by Michael Brown. I love his work. So, so good.

 

ITV Session 20: Ice Planet in the Void

I didn’t write this one up right after the game, but here are Jeff’s notes. Pretty complete…

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Traveller Session 20 Writeup (from Jeff’s notes, probably a bit “noisy”)

Into The Void – Session #20

9 Jan 2021 (Sat)  Start 1:00PM.

Bob Loftin, GM. Players: Randy (Roger), William (Barney), David (Flint), Jeremy (Art), Jeff (Lucky)

We exit the complex, board ship.  We are at point #1 on Bob’s star map.

Our air raft is damaged.  Jeremy (+3) is the best suited (mech and air raft) to attempt repair.  Jeremy rolls, great success, air raft is fixed.

Roger (+4) pilots ship, rolls for Jump 1, success.

We are now in system #2.  There is a gas giant here.  We have enough fuel to jump to #3, if we want.  We scan – 20 planets, 1 gas giant, couple of icy worlds, no signs of signals.

Nebula – glowy gas.  We can scan one hex ahead.  Art (+2 navigator) rolls, does not detect anyhing in “empty” hex between #2 and #3.

We make it to point #3.  There is a gas giant in this system.  We scan, art rolls 6+2 = 8.  There is a star ahead with 9 planets, we can’t tell if there is a gas giant here. (target scanned = #4).

Zal – Would like to find an actual Precursor city or outpost.  Care needed, they could have sophisticated defense systems.

Roger rolls for jump – rolls 11, successful jump to #4.

ARRIVAL AT ICE PLANET:

We arrive at #4, one gas giant, 9 planets.  Barney (+3 computer) scans.  Barney finds one planet with a lot of water, scanning as we go.  Ass we get close, we find it is ice.  It is planet number 4 in this system.  80% water, frozen, 20% land.  One fairly large continent on southern hemisphere.  No moons.  We pick up a radio signal beacon – standard Imperial, very weak.

LIFE FORMS AND CRASHED CARGO SHIP:

Appears to be life on this planet.  In distance, a herd of creatures stomping through snow and ice.  Flying beings, as well.  We approach the radio signal, a distress beacon.  We see the wreckage of a large cargo ship, a crash site.  Looks like the back section just fell off.  Front is mostly under snow and ice.  Terrain is frozen.  200 foot cliff goes up to mesa above.  The ship is much, much larger than ours, maybe 300 feet long.

Two large holes in front part of ship, open to air.  The back of the ship has a large hole.

We each arm ourselves with 5 grenades.

We land.  I (Lucky) fly drone to survey the crashed ship.  Ship is three decks high, catwalk visible from hole in back.  We see cargo containers, hole at left of ship, destroyed cargo area.  Northwest hole at front of ship is the crew quarters.  No bodies seen anywhere.

ICE APES:

From hole in side of ship, we see four heat signatures.  Moving closer, we see that they are twice the size of humans, look like gorillas or apes.  Bringing drone closer, we see that they are not moving, appear to be asleep or perhaps in hibernation. They look like predators. Zal does not know anything about these life forms.

CRATES:

The crates look like they contained prefab building materials.  

PLAN:

Outside of ship – snow and ice.  No markings evident.  Our plan – Fardt will stay on our ship.  I will stay as nearby our ship as possible, will keep tabs on sleeping lifeforms with drones.  Everyone else will form a team to enter the crew area and explore through the NW hole in the crew section.

EXPLORATION:

The away team enters the crew compartment.  Art knows the general ship layout.  Crew compartment is on three levels.  The party is trying to make their way to the control bridge.  They encounter a hatch, frozen closed.  Flint, strength 10, tries to open it.

— END OF SESSION #20 —

End Session
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Elapsed game time: 241

SAFCOcast 24: Interview with Ken Patterson and Greg Caires about the 2021 MayDay! online Traveller event!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this episode we interview Ken Patterson and Greg Caires about the upcoming Mayday! event.

The first day of May – May Day – has special meaning to Traveller players due to the infamous Mayday call from the Free Trader Beowulf that has appeared on box and book covers of various variants of the game since its earliest years.

In 2021, May Day will be a Saturday – an ideal time to play Traveller.

To help the global Traveller community celebrate May Day, three groups of players have teamed up to create a unique day of Traveller-related programming.

Operating from its home base on Facebook, the Virtual Traveller group – the same people who organized the weekend-long online “non-convention” last October – will organize “MayDay! a Celebration of Traveller through online roleplaying.” GMs from across the globe will be invited to run Traveller games online using whatever communications tools they prefer and during any suitable time period based on their locale. The only requests are:

  • All games must begin and be run during May 1st in the GM’s local time-zone;
  • All games must conclude by 7 pm Saturday night Central US Time on May 1st to “clear the decks” for a charity game that will be broadcast live on Twitch (more about this below).

Based on lessons-learned from the Virtual Traveller weekend, MayDay! will be organized using Tabletop Events for simplicity game submission, player registration and communication. To cover the expense of using Tabletop, a nominal fee (likely $3) will be charged. That fee buys players their convention badges, and they can then join and play as many games as their schedules will allow.

More about MayDay!:

Tabletop Events:
https://tabletop.events/conventions/mayday-celebration
Facebook Virtual Traveller Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/virtualtraveller
Discord Virtual Traveller server:
https://discord.gg/3WRUjXk

Both GMs and players are sought. Questions can be submitted via the links above.

If online gaming isn’t your thing, CyborgPrime is organizing the 3rd annual “Mayday! Mayday!” event, which consists of live interviews of Traveller authors and others who contribute to keeping the game popular and replenished with fresh material. Last year, CP interviewed both Matthew Sprange and Marc Miller, and generous prizes were awarded to members of the audience.

This year, CP intends to interview a variety of new voices, giveaway more and better prizes, give a platform to Ken Burnside of AdAstra Games to host some Traveller Squadron Strike vector combat simulations. The marquee event will be – like last year – the live broadcast of Patrick Kanouse’s Traveller game to benefit his charity The Carcinoid Cancer Foundation (https://www.carcinoid.org/).

Joining him as players are Two Brothers Gaming, High Shelf Gaming, and The Death Die Club. They will be playing Michael Brown’s Angle of Incidence: “A routine cargo run leads to a station orbiting a black hole and one man’s world of obsession, secrets, and madness. As the heroes help an intelligence agent investigate the mad scientist’s activities, they come to realize that they may bear witness to the ultimate adventure…or become just more bits of matter crushed by the black hole’s gravity.”

The Carcinoid Cancer Foundation’s mission is to increase awareness and educate the general public and healthcare professionals regarding carcinoid and related neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), to support NET cancer patients and their families, and to serve as patient advocates. We’ll be giving away a bunch of things, and you can even have an effect on the game.
The game will stream on High Shelf Gaming’s Twitch channel (https://twitch.tv/highshelfgaming/profile) at 8:00 pm Eastern. The game will include giveaways and opportunities to influence the game.

SAFCOcast 23: To Violence Or To Not Violence

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First, thanks to all our listeners for sticking with us! It has been two months since the last episode, which of course is not our goal, but life got in the way!

In this episode, besides the usual sections, our main topic deals with non-violent/non-combat Traveller (and other RPGs) sessions. Not arguing against a good shoot-em-up, but just using other kinds of challenges to create a good game.

We also mention Jeff’s table of 2d6 outcome probabilities, so here it is!

Relevant Links

SAFCOcast 22: Interview with Greg Caires about Virtual Traveller

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In this episode we talk to Greg Caires about the October 2020 Virtual Traveller non-con that he and Ken Patterson organized. Always fun to talk to Greg!

Relevant links: