Field Manual

I had barely emailed off the last of the proofs for Field Manual - that proofing job that has basically eaten a month - when John at Spica had the book up on DrivethruRPG and, I believe, at LuLu.

There's an anouncement at the Spice Publishing site.

It's hard to review something I've been working very closely with (and I haven't seen the final product yet), but Bryan and Dan have laid out a rich background, sketched out an adventure scenario, and basically said, "Go for it". This is the type of scenario I like, and close to the way I run my own games - let the players loose, but know the landscape well enough that they can't catch you out or leave you flat-footed.

Well worth a look, if your players like more military styled games.

Egad! Zhodani!

It's my birthday today, I'm four pages from the end of a massive edit job I've been doing for Spica Publishing, I have the day off and the weather is beautiful, and Tony from
Eureka Miniatures has just emailed me to see if I'm still interested in the 15mm versions of the Ventaurans that have been in the Eureka Miniatures' 300 Club since 2007!

It would appear that there has finally been sufficient interest, and sufficient people, that Eureka is looking at possibly getting Mike Broadbent to sculpt 15mm versions of the Denizen 25mm figures. Fantastic!

From what Tony says in his email, it would appear that the helmeted figures are a definate "go". I, personally, would like the helmetless figure as an officer as well. No word on the droids, so perhaps these are not the droids we are looking for.

If the Ventaurans look like the sort of armoured trooper you've been waiting for, I would suggest getting over to the Eureka site and pre-ordering some to help ensure they get into production.

Design Notes and Digressions

I am not a big fan of empty drum blogging - the sort where the blogger commits himself to x number of posts in y time and then proceeds to burn bytes by telling his followers that he actually has nothing to post about.

My plans to continue with the history of my Traveller Universe, the RimWorlds, became slightly derailed this month when I took on a proof-reading job for Spica Publishing. The manuscript, while good, requires a lot more work than first anticipated and this has been eating most of my evenings. The end is, however, in sight - possibly much to the relief of John at Spica who had hoped to get the book out fairly soonish.

Once the book is done and dusted, I should be free to continue with the History of the RimWorlds, plus have another review to post. So, an empty drum post this time, but substance to come.

Dilettante

Mongoose Traveller Book 8: Dilettante

by Peter Nash

Want a character with access to great steaming piles of cash? Need a Patron who puts the “rich” back into “filthy rich”? Then, this character class expansion book from Mongoose could just be the thing for you.

As with previous expansion books, Dilettante adds seven career paths and 21 specialisations to the growing galaxy of Traveller Character Generation options:

· The Adventurer, through the specialisations of Explorer, Hunter and Archaeologist, is driven to be first-in, or to be first to shoot/tag a new creature, or to discover and explore ancient ruins.

· The Aristocrat - Courtier, Chevalier or Paramour - is one of the entourage of the Great and Good.

· The Celebrity specialises in either Actor, Musician, or Luminary – the latter being famous for being famous.

· The Competitor, be he/she Sportsman, Athlete or Gamer, strives for fame through the game –carrying the hopes and dreams of the masses with him (or her).

· The Connoisseur – Critic, Artisan or Collector values art in its myriad forms.

· The Dilettante can be a Wastrel, a Socialite, or a Philanthropist. Money is usually no object and the Dilettante spends it.

· The Humanitarian, whether an Idealist, a Raconteur or an Investigator, has the cash to bring the injustices of the Galaxy to light.

What I was struck with initially was how evocative these career pathway titles were for scenario ideas. While there is the temptation to run some sort of interstellar Jeeves and Wooster game with lots of Hooray Harrys, a closer look reveals quite a broad swathe of character possibilities. These can range from the “self-funded-Heinrich-Schliemann” type of gifted amateur archaeologist with fusion cutter in hand; to the high-profile sophonts’ rights activist; to the loyal retainer battling to protect the honour, status and good name of her noble employer; to the socialite who is always in the news feeds but of whom no-one can quite remember what exactly she is famous for.

In Dilettante, the author concentrates on the Social Status character stat, showing how it can be used as an indication of exactly how famous a famous person is – their reputation – and how far this recognition can extend. Ways that a character might increase their Social Status, either temporarily or permanently, are suggested, as well as the possibility that a character’s Status can mean different things at different times depending upon the social context.

Wealth – a dilettante needs it to maintain the lifestyle that he or she has become accustomed to. Deftly, the author has replaced the Cash benefit roll in the character generation section with a Portfolio roll. This has the effect of supercharging the mustering out cash benefits a character can receive. First, one discovers the nature of one’s Portfolio investment from each term – whether it consists of Business Investments, an Estate, a Pension, Property, a Stipend or Stocks - and then one rolls the value of that particular Portfolio Asset. Portfolio Assets range in value from Cr10,000 to MCr5.0 per roll. Social Standing Modifiers are added to the Value roll which, in theory, can push the cash value up to MCr50.0 per roll. From this Portfolio, the character receives a monthly income.

For those interested in the metagame, the character can adopt a more hands-on Portfolio Management style and attempt to accelerate their financial growth. This, of course, can all go horribly wrong.

There is a nice section that examines the pros and cons of Fame (high Social Status) and how the Dilettante can use high Status to their advantage, though this is balanced with a section of pitfalls that can trap or otherwise damage our socialite.

Along with the usual section on Equipment (which includes several starship deck plans), there is a look at ways of separating the unwary Dilettante from their wealth (or at least trimming it) through events and clubs.

Lastly, a chapter on campaigns looks at possible roles for Dilettantes, from patron to enemy to wild card, as well as possible Dilettante campaigns.

Dilettante, or at least the first printing, suffers from what can only be described as crap proofreading. I do not know if this is because deadline crunch forced the latest file to go to the printers before the proof-reader was finished, or whether the editor and proof-reader just aren’t up to the job, but to copy and paste the Book 6: Scoundrel cover tagline onto the cover of Book 8: Dilettante, and then miss-spell the book’s title on the contents page is pretty poor form. There are a number of spelling mistakes through the book that are just plain annoying. If Mongoose is still replacing faulty copies, as they should, then this shouldn’t be a problem – but it must be costing them so you’d think they’d sort this sort of thing out. I believe the typos were corrected for the second printing but I have not seen this.

But on the whole, Dilettante is a good work and could easily open up new and fertile fields for referees and players. If I were to buy a dead-tree version, I would check it out in the shop, first, but Pete Nash has done a fine and fascinating job in offering Players the chance to play high rollers, while offering Referees some mechanisms that help not to blow their campaigns apart with excess cash.

Alien Minor Race: The Johdari

During a couple of days holiday out at the beach at Maraetai, I finally had a chance to play around with “Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation” that I reviewed back here.

It is a very quick and simple system to use, and I really enjoyed playing with it. I did find that having a vague idea of the alien race you wished to create enabled you to visualise the created alien more easily. Below is the second alien race I created – the Johdari – a member species of the Outrim Alliance and the race of the character Kephar Oanneshhu, the Engineer in the Webcomic “The BurrowWolf”.

The Johdari
Johdari are a humanoid Minor Race descended from nocturnal arboreal Omnivore/Hunter stock and are native to the planet Johunshhizair/Entorth A-886883-C.

Johdari are warm-blooded, have two genders and are egg-layers. Of Medium Build, though smaller and slighter than humans, they possess bilateral symmetary; have a pair of arms ending in two-fingered hands; and a pair of legs ending in two-prehensile toed feet, each with an apposable gripping spur. They are Fast, moving at 9m, Natural Climbers with Notable Dexterity (2d6+1), and posses a prehensile tail. Built for short, quick chases, they soon tire, having a Weak Endurance (2d6-1). Razor sharp teeth (Natural Weapon – Teeth) and Low Light Vision enabled primative Johdari to dominate the jungles of Johunshhizair, traits that their star-faring descendants still posses.

Maturing at Age 18, Johdari start aging around Age 38 (5 terms) and then slowly (DM+1 to aging rolls). All Johdari benefit from their government’s advanced education system and have Notable Education (2d6+1).

Skin colour ranges from dark brown to jet black and the skin is covered with a fine, downy, fur of a similar colour.

Website Update #10

I have finally updated my modelling log and my Traveller pages on my website.

There are many Works In Progress.

History of the RimWorlds #5 – Enter, the Imperium

The Veil - created by the passage of a starcluster through the plane of the galaxy some 100,000 years ago, the Veil stretches up out of the plane of the galaxy, originating in the Spinward March / Trojan Reach section of published maps, and trailing up towards the open starcluster.
- Chris Harrod: MetaTraveller

The creation of the Veil by my friend Chris enabled us to sidestep the increasing clutter around the Spinward March, while still permitting us to use interesting “official” material without too much trouble. The divergence of our campaigns into the Veil was the beginning our divergence from the GDW-driven timeline of the 3rd Imperium, though the on-going campaign development jumped backwards and forwards chronologically, as well as moving from the macro metagame to the micro scenario.

Writing up the Imperial History of the RimWorlds in 2008, I began to flesh out my theories of a comitatus-style development of the RimWorlds and the character of that initial swashbuckler, Kolin Venuraski, started to emerge:

History of the RimWorlds
103 Thongaloros Empire falls to the Outrim Barbarians.

323 Ftaioiaftew/Gazul settled by Aslan of Huiha Weakhayuwikhye.

497 First Imperial presence in the Rimworlds in Kaorin and Berimar’s Sceptre subsectors.

540 Sector Duchy of the Rimworlds established with its capital on Raelmar/Thurgandarn. Kolin I Venuraeki is first Sector Duke.

The Imperial Interstellar Scout Service mapped their way up the Whisp and into the Coreward Subsectors of Kaorin and Berimar’s Sceptre in the mid-490s. The Whisp Route was, by its nature, difficult to navigate with the Tech Level 12 equipment available to the Imperium at that time. Several Rifts, with multiple, barely sustainable, Jump-3 passages across them, challenged the Scout Service Exploration Service. Eventually, massive fuel refineries orbiting sullen and isolated M-Class stars kept the route open.

Having run the Whisp, the Scouts discovered that the Coreward Subsectors of the RimWorlds, Kaorin and Berimar’s Sceptre, possessed a relatively dense population of vibrant, younger stars, perhaps remnants of the original starcluster that burst through the disc of the Milky Way some 100,000 years earlier. Unlike the barren stars of the Whisp, these stars possessed planetary systems rich in resources.

As the exploration reports filtered back to the IISS Domain Command Centre Deneb, Lord Kolin Venuraski, the young, ambitious, head of a cadet branch of the House of Deneb, caught wind of this new and, as yet, unexplored region. Deftly manoeuvering through the rocks and eddies of Domain Court politics, Lord Kolin, the younger son of Count Metch Venuraski of Fornice/Mora, succeeded in having himself appointed to head the Imperial Commission considering the Scout Service reports on the new sector.

As the Imperium was already heavily committed to the exploration and settlement of the Spinward March, the prospects of colonising a remote pocket of space, accessed via a hazardous and difficult passage, held no immediate attraction to the members of the Commission. Except for Lord Kolin Venuraski. Proposing to explore and exploit the RimWorlds for the betterment of the Imperium through the agency of a Chartered Private Equity Company, thus avoiding any direct commitment of sparse Imperial resources, Lord Kolin shamelessly exploited his position as Head of the Imperial Commission to be commissioned Viceroy of the RimWorlds Sector. The patent of Viceroy was struck in 525, 28 years after the initial scouting missions.

Venuraski had not been idle during this time. Early on, he had reached the conclusion that the Imperium or, more specifically the Domain of Deneb, with expansion in the Spinward March under way, lacked the resources to fully exploit the Rimworlds. In his capacitiy as Head of the Imperial Commission, he was able to ensure that the Scout Service purchased refinery stations for the Whisp Route that vasty exceeded the Service’s requirements. That a large percentage of the refinery construction work was farmed out to heavy engineering corporations on Fornice, or in the Mora Subsector with connections to House Venuraski, passed unnoticed at the time.

As the Imperial Commission’s deliberations dragged on, Venuraski put together a team of trusted advisors who analysied the confidential Scout Service reports and then began drawing up a colonisation plan for the RimWorlds. With this plan in hand, Lord Kolin began marshalling the resources of his immediate family and his wider House. A casual conversation at a soiree opened his eyes to the fact that there were a number of younger siblings of the Houses Major who felt that they were being excluded from the Spinward March development. Frustrated, yet in control of reasonable resources in their own names, these restless young nobles numbered talented, yet untested, members amongst their ranks.

By the time Lord Kolin became Viceroy Kolin of the RimWorlds in 525, he had a strong, multitiered organisation behind him. The moneyed timid, as well as the short-changed adventurer, had all found places in his Chartered Private Equity Company, as silent shareholders or as divisional chiefs and managers. The first colonies were already established in Thurgandarn Subsector in the Coreward RimWorlds even as the ink dried on Kolin Venuraski’s letter patent as Viceroy.

Expansion was rapid and successful, and Kolin began to dream of a Sector Duchy. And then his advancing wavefront of scouts ran into a technologically competent Pocket Empire, the Klarthur Confederacy.