Vector Based Traveller Combat
The implementation of vector-based spaceship combat in Traveller is easy. It’s the strategy that results from the process that’s hard. Like chess, the rules are simple, but lead to a wealth of complex puzzles and potential pitfalls for the unwary. Marc Miller gives Traveller (1977) players two options: Just...
Tobor the Great
Ten billion people can’t all be wrong. Tobor is no paradise planet, but it’s got something going for it that keeps people there and keeps them growing the population. Sure, it’s got no surface water and only a trace atmosphere. It also has the most effective government in the...
Told You So
This video on the origins of tabletop RPGs made the rounds last week because Jason Tondro, in the white beard, took a few minutes to beat his breast and put on a hair shirt and self-flagellate that the hobby grew out of a normal guy scene in the late...
O The Pain, The Pain
Well, that didn’t work. Cobalt-15 had to make his first jump with unrefined fuel, and it went about as well as one might expect. Using refined fuel, you’ve got a 100% chance of making it home okay. Using unrefined fuel you have an 11% chance of your drive malfunctioning...
Blaine’s World
Let’s talk about this odd planet in the northwest corner of the Penfold Sector. Blaine’s World is earth sized and has a water coverage of 50%. It is chiefly characterized by a breathable atmosphere, but one classified by InfoGalactic as “corrosive” due to the frequent acidic rain-fronts that plague...
The Blackraven’s First Haul
Note the date of this post. In our 1:1 time game of Traveller, the Free Trader known as the Blackraven sets forth on February 22nd. With each jump taking roughly two weeks to complete, it won’t take long until we have to shift the camera back to that rascal,...
Traveller: Chad’s First Freelance
The people have spoken, and the Blackreef Syndic needs our hero, one Chad Solo, to recover some very important and hush-hush company materiel that they quote misplaced unquote somewhere out in interSyndican waters. The Blackreef Syndic, in the person of mid-level Admin named Joan Alice, offered Chad Solo a...
Gobbiton Update
In AD&D wolves are a pretty scary thing to encounter. They are 2+ HD creatures and run in packs. They are not for 1st level encounters, which should have served as an indication that running around the Wolflands is not for new characters, nor for n00b players. And when...
In Support of the Subsystem
Single mechanic RPGs are bad, mkay? Every time you think your interest in AD&D has run its course, that you’ve done all there is to do, you find another fun little subsystem that forces you to go back to the books and explore a whole new aspect of the...
Lone Wolves and Mass Combat
Recent experiments with mass combat run using AD&D as written have been wildly successful, even as they open up new avenues of exploration. Which is a fancy and nigh-journalistic way of saying that, after two battles, a glaring hole in my understanding has been exposed. On the matter of using...