Review: Traveller Main Rulebook (2008)

We are getting to the end of our journey into the various editions and versions of Traveller.  Today I am bringing us to the modern era and will spend some time with the various Open Gaming editions of Traveller.  That's right. Traveller has hit the retro-clone stage of development.

2008 was not all that long ago.  This blog was up and running at this point and I was beginning work on a lot of the projects you know me well for. So consequently I was not really paying all that much attention to what was going on in the world of Traveller. 

While I mentioned that we are hitting the "retro-clone" phase of Traveller's development, it was not (as far as I can tell) Mongoose that released the Traveller SRD. That was the work of Jason Kemp.  But I will get to all of that in a bit when I review the Cepheus Engine.

Traveller Main Rulebook (2008)

PDF. 192 pages (plus covers). Black & White art with a red accent.

Traveller has had a long history. This new version from Mongoose celebrates that history by essentially going back to the beginning with the look and feel of Classic Traveller. 

How much does this feel like Classic Traveller?  So much so that I am kinda struggling with what to say other than "wow this is like Classic Traveller!"  Not in a "they copied The Traveller Book" way but more in a "These are people that began playing this game 30 years ago and now want to introduce new gamers to that game" way.

Everything about this book is a serious nostalgia trip.  And given that I have been spending all this time with all versions of Traveller, a serious case of déjà vu.  

Introduction

Our introduction to the Traveller game.  There are some minor references to "The Third Imperium" but much like the LBBs this game is largely setting-free.  Some examples of play are given and the various Technology Levels (TL 0 to 15) are given.

Character Creation

This is very, very similar to the Classic Traveller Character Creation even down to our good friend Alexander Jamison returning.

Side note: I have decided that once a character musters out of one of the services (Army, Marines, Merchant Marines, Navy) they are gifted a sword. Seems like something that should happen and explain why Jamison here has a cutlass in a universe full of lasers.

The big changes here (and see throughout this book) are better layout for looking at options and checklists and guides.  This version does an amazing job of getting a new player up and going fast. 

You can't die in character creation, but there is still a lot going on.  Also there is a point-buy feature for assigning your points to your six abilities.  We are again back at an average of 7 for abilities and the UPP is back. 

There are still a lot of careers to choose from, more than in The Traveller Book.  Life events follow. Someone close to your character can die, but not your character.  Though you can muster out and be in medical debt.  

There is a section on aliens. Here we get the Aslan, Droyne, Hivers, K'kree, Vargr, and the Zhodani.  Given the way the rules of this version are written, I can't see why the older Alien Modules couldn't still be used here. 

Skills and Tasks

Skills are very familiar but seemed to be pared down a little. Die Modifiers (DM) are discussed as well as how to do a task check right away.  Each skill is detailed along with any specialties under that skill. 

Combat

This chapter gets an upgrade in my mind and shows the familiarity Mongoose has had with d20 and other modern systems.  Actions are divided into Minor and Significant Actions along with Reactions and any number of Free actions. These are made very clear.  Combat actions (a significant action) is detailed on what needs to be rolled.  All of this was in previous versions, but now they are more upfront and bolded.  

Encounters and Dangers

This is the analog to the older Encounters and Animals sections. Plenty of charts and boxed text to help a referee out when building encounters.  Encounters are more than just strange new animals on weird worlds. There are rivals, other humans, and corporate actions just to give some examples. Quite a lot really.  True to Traveller there are plenty of d66 tables for all these encounters.

Equipment

Your characters' shopping lists. It looks like this is very similar to other equipment lists of other editions.  I will note (because this is me) that computers finally feel right.  They, and a lot of the other equipment here feel like futuristic equipment.  Computers are tiny and powerful. There are "smart guns" that help you hit your target, holographic displays, and robots and drones in their own sub-section.

Each bit of equipment comes with a TL rating.

Spacecraft Design

Distinctions are made between interplanetary and interstellar spacecraft.  Like character creation, there is a helpful checklist. 

Common Spacecraft. This is less of a chapter section and more of a sub-section of Design.  This list of common ships with their details, some maps, and a picture. 

Spacecraft Operations

An alphabetical listing of everything (mostly everything) that can go on in a ship. 

Space Combat

Similar to other versions and the combat chapter above. This details how ships can fight including movement, targeting, and firing phases. Along with damage and reactions.  The chapter is not large but remarkably detailed.

Psionics

Ah. Psionics.  Stuck out into the back half of the book again. Psions are given a "career" write-up as the other character types. 

Trade

Covers basic trade between the worlds/systems/colonies.

World Creation

This chapter feels more like Classic Traveller than the others. Sadly no equations to apease the math geek in me but a lot of information all the same. 

Index

A pretty good index (not hyperlinked), a character sheet, and a hex grid.

--

So this might be the best version of Classic Traveller to date.  Same rules more or less (I admit I could not spot any major differences), the feel of Classic Traveller and in a cleaned up and reorganized fashion.  I know there is a 2nd Edition coming up (I have already started on that) but there is a simple elegance to this edition.

There is also a Book 0 to get you started.  It is a cut down version of the Core Rules at 32 pages and is Free.  I have both in the same three ring binder I have The Traveller Book in.  

Plays Well With Others: Horror in Space (BlackStar)

It's Friday the 13th! Something of a holiday here at the Other Side.  

May is SciFi month and for the first two weeks here I have dedicated it all to Classic Traveller. I find myself at a bit of a crossroads.  Do I continue with the Classic Traveller OR do I go along to the progression from Classic to Mega Traveller and beyond?  Choices. Choices. 

In the mean time since today is the scariest day outside of October 31st (well, than and Walpurgis Night) let go to a discussion you all know I LOVE and that is horror in Space.  In particular, the Mythos flavored Cosmic Horror of Lovecraft AND the exploration of Space ala Star Trek.

Since I am going to look a few ways to do this I am going to put it under the banner of Plays Well With Others.

My "Star Trek meets Cthulhu" campaign is known as BlackStar and I have detailed the ideas I have had here.  

The game started out as a combination of various OSR-style games because that is what I was playing a lot at the time. But as time has gone on I have given it more thought and explored other RPG system options.  Every combination has its own features and its own problems.   Let's look at all the options I have been considering.

Basic Era/OSR

The first choice was the easy one really.  I went with the two main books for their maximum compatibility, Starships & Spacemen and Realms of Crawling Chaos.  Both are based for the most part on Labyrinth Lord.   This gives me a lot of advantages. For starters, and the obvious one, there is just so much stuff for this.  If I don't like the Cthulhu monsters from Realms, I can grab them from Deities & Demigods, Hyperborea, or so many more.  The Lovecraft/Cthulhu stuff is covered.  The "Weakest" link here is Starships & Spacemen.  Well, it's not weak, but it is not my favorite set of Trek-like RPG rules.

Given the rules, I could add in bits of Stars Without Number. That *might* fill out some of the rough spaces (for me) of S&S.  There is a lot, I mean really a LOT I can do with all of this.

It would also make running The Ghost Station of Inverness Five much easier. 

D20 Systems

I'll admit it. I like d20. I enjoyed d20 games. There are LOT of options if I want to go 3.x d20.

Pathfinder, Starfinder, d20 Call of Cthulhu, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos.  All of these are great and at least 90% compatible. Again, I am sick with riches when it comes to Cthulhu/Lovecraftian materials here. Starfinder is good...but it is not Star Trek.  In fact my preferred Sci-Fi d20 game is the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars.  I know. I am strange.  

Certainly, the d20 Cthulhu books would be easily converted to OSR, but they already have analogs in the OSR world.   But having all of these is certainly helpful.

Since my weakest link seems to be Trek-like rules, maybe what I need is a good set of Trek rules.

Star Trek RPGs

Currently, my two favorite flavors of the Star Trek RPG are the classic FASA Trek and the newest Mōdiphiüs' Star Trek Adventures.  Both are great. Both are really fun. AND there is even a Mythos/Lovecraftian game using the same system, Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20.  Now this game is set in WWII, but that is not a problem. 

Here I have exactly the opposite issue.  There is a LOT of great Trek material and limited on Cthulhu/Lovecraft material.   I could add in material from Call of Cthulhu as needed. Also, I have the PDFs for Achtung! Cthulhu 2d20 but none of the physical books. The 2d20 system is also much newer for me and I don't know it as well as some of the others.

Traveller

I have been talking about Traveller all month long and it would remiss of me not to try something with that.  Thankfully things are well covered there.

So I have not even touched ANYTHING yet regarding the Cepheus Engine or new Traveller, but to jump ahead a bit there is a game setting for Traveller Chthonian Stars. It takes place in 2159 (a date I can use!) and there is a lot to it, but the basic gist is Humankind has begun to explore the Solar System and that is about it.  Then we introduce Cthulhu Mythos material to that!  Sounds a bit like BlackStar: The First Generation.  I'll get a proper review up later in the month, but there are a lot of great things in this setting.  Reading over it it really makes me want to try this using just Traveller.  They really make it work well.  Plus I could still use the Classic Traveller system, more or less.

This provides me with a solid sci-fi game with great mythos support too. The publisher has since updated this game to their more inhouse version called The Void. Not sure if it uses the same system as their Cthulhu Tech RPG or not. 

AGE System

I really love Green Ronin's AGE system. I also LOVE the Expanse.  So I grabbed their Expanse AGE-based RPG and am hoping to do a lot more with it.  So imagine my delight when they ran a Kickstarter for Cthulhu Awakens an AGE-based Mythos game.   The Solar System spanning of the Expanse is nowhere near the Galaxy spanning of Star Trek, but maybe I could run it as a "Prequel" game.  Get a ship out to Pluto to discover something protomolecule-like but instead make it mythos-related.  A prequel to my Whispers in the Outer Darkness.  A Star Trek DY-100 class pre-warp ship would fit right in with the ships of the Expanse.  I should point out that the Expanse takes place in the 2350s, the same time frame as my proposed BlackStar campaign in the Star Trek timeline. 2352 for the launch of the Protector and 2351 for the Expanse RPG.

Maybe this "First Mission" might explain why Star Fleet is building its experimental ships at Neptune Station and not Utopia Planitia.  There is something they discovered on Yuggoth/Pluto that makes the Warp-13 engines work. There is my protomolecule connection!

It is possible I could retweak my "At the Planets of Maddness" for this system/setting. Though in my heart I really wanted Shoggoths and Elder Things for that adventure.  Pluto and Yuggoth clearly imply the involvement of the Mi-Go.

--

I have all those choices listed above and that is also not counting games like Eldritch Skies that also combine space travel with Cthulhu/Mythos.

Chthonian Stars might have an answer for me.  What if this story is not being played out over a single campaign, but multiple lifetimes?

I could do something like this.  Note, this is only a half-baked idea at this point.  

Victorian Era:  Scientists work out the means of travelling the Aether to the stars. (Ghosts of Albion*, Eldritch Skies, Space: 1899. Using Ghosts to make the Protector connections a little clearer).

1930s: Scientist found dead with brain "Scoped" out. Investigate. (Call of Cthulhu)

2150s: Travel to Yuggoth discover an advanced civilization was once there.  Items from 1890s and 1930s are there. (Expanse, Chthonian Stars, Cthulhu Awakens)

2290s: Star Trek Mercy (this one is pure FASA Star Trek). Maybe this can be the one with the Klingon Skelleton ala The Creeping Flesh.

2350s: These are the Voyages of the Experimental Starship Protector. (OSR or Mōdiphiüs 2d20)

I could even do an epilogue in the far future of the Imperium.  

And some other stuff to include all my BlackStar adventures.

Maybe all of these are tied to the "Black Star" an artifact that makes space travel possible and is at the core of the Asymetric Warp-13 engine?  Some was found on Earth but there is a bunch of it on Pluto.

Too many ideas, too many systems.  Gotta narrow it all down at some point.  But one thing is for sure, the system used will depend on what sorts of adventures the characters will have. Mōdiphiüs 2d20 is best for adventures and exploring. OSR games are good for monster hunting. FASA Trek does a little of both.  AGE would be suit the New Adventures in Space theme well.

Review: Traveller Starter Edition (1983)

If there was a "Golden Year" of classic RPGs then I am willing to put my nomination in for 1983.

By now what I considered to be the "Big 3" were well established; AD&D/D&D, Call of Cthulhu, and Traveller.  Indeed there were even alternatives to these that were very good games in their own right; Runequest, Chill, and Star Frontiers respectively. While Edition and System Wars have always been with us, it was a great time to be a gamer.  

1983 also gave us a "new" version of Traveller.  Well, not really new at all, but certainly reorganized and edited again.   To keep up my analogy of Classic Traveller = Original D&D and The Traveller Book = Holmes Basic D&D (although with the inclusion of The Traveller Adventure a better one is Moldvay Basic/Cook & Marsh Expert D&D) then the 1983 Traveller Starter Edition is Mentzer BECMI D&D.

The Traveller Starter Edition was the version I saw the most in the pages of Dragon Magazine.  No surprise.  My prime Dragon reading years were 1982 to roughly 1991 and then not again until the 2000s.  Until Mega Traveller came onto the scene this was the Traveller book that GDW was pushing.  Easy to see why.  The cover of the Traveller Book, despite how much I love it, was always more "sci-fi novel" cover.  The new cover?  That's Star Wars meets Dune meets Battlestar Galactica.  This was a cinematic cover, even if the rules were the same.   I could not tell then, and in fact it was only today I noticed, but that ship looks like the Azhanti High Lightning from below.  Or maybe it isn't.  Either way that cover says Space Adventure.  The Traveller Book says "Space is Dangerous and I got bills to pay!" to me.  Both are perfect.

Traveller Starter Edition (1983)

For this review, I am considering the PDF I bought from DriveThruRPG split into three separate files.  The front cover and the back cover of the original book are not preserved here. 

Book 1: Core Rules

This PDF is 68 pages and features black & white interior art with black & white covers with red accents.  They look very much like the classic Traveller covers. 

This book features all the rules from the Classic Traveller system.  It is largely the Traveller Book but reorganized and edited for clarity.  Some sections read a little differently, but for the most part, it felt the same.  There is some new art here, but a lot of art from previous editions remains. The new art is, as expected, better and gives more detail. The red accents to some of the art have been removed.  Character creation reads faster, but it could also be that I have read this section many times now in one form or one book or another that I am "getting it."  

A trained or expert eye could spot the rule differences, but that is not me.  This largely feels the same.  This is not a bad thing mind you.  The difference feels the same as that between Moldvay Basic and BECMI Basic.  Two books for the same game are designed to do the same thing only in slightly different ways.

Book 2: Charts and Tables

This 28-page PDF covers all the charts and tables. References to the charts are in Book 1. 

Book 3: Adventures

This is a 23-page PDF with two adventures; Mission on Mithril (from Double Adventure 2) and Shadows (Double Adventure 1). 

Thoughts

When it comes to learning how to play Classic Traveller then either this version or the Traveller Book would be fine since they cover the same ground.  The analogy of The Traveller Book = B/X D&D and Traveller Starter Set = BECMI D&D extends here.  The trade dress of all future Traveller books will follow the Start Set design.  This will hold until Mega Traveller and 2300 later in 1987.

Which one should YOU buy?  That is entirely up to you.  The Traveller Book has the advantage of also being out in POD format and this one does not.  But this version is a little more friendly to newcomers.

#AtoZChallenge2022: Reflections Post

Here we are at the end of another April A to Z Blogging Challenge. I "won," that is I completed the Challenge.  That's not such a stretch for me since I tend to write every day anyway.  For me success is whether not I had an interesting theme (I think I did) and whether or not I got some interaction on the posts (I did).  "Success" for me in this case is about the journey and not the end.

This year's theme Conspiracy Theories was suggested to me by my wife and I really had a lot of fun with it.  The conspiracy theory part was for all the visitors from the A to Z, but the NIGHT SHIFT RPG applications were for my regular audience.   

I do hope that both audiences enjoyed both sections.  

Ultimately I hope that some of my regular audience found some new blogs thanks to the A to Z AND I hope some of the A to Z folks looked into the NIGHT SHIFT RPG.

I have not crunched all the numbers, but my hits were significantly higher this past month.   My Twitter engagement was also quite higher.

Like previous years, I made a Pinterest board for all my posts so if you want to see what I did you have a visual guide.

Follow Timothy's board "April 2022 A to Z of Conspiracy Theories" on Pinterest.

Though this one is less visual than last year's Monsters.

Also, unlike last year, there is no book these are all going in.  It was just a bit of fun.  Though I did do enough research on the side for a new book, that will wait until other projects are complete.

Once again I am considering what to do for 2023.  No ideas yet. I suppose I could do what I had originally planned for this year, but I have less excitement for that now.  I DO however know exactly what I am going to do in 2024!  

So until then!

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

Oh.

I suppose that I shouldn't let "May the Fourth" go by unremarked.  It is Sci-Fi month here after all.

So for my small contribution here is the most Science Fiction of all musicians, Thomas Dolby featuring George Clinton on "May the Cube Be With You."

May the Cube and the Fourth and the Force be with you!

Review: Classic (Basic) Traveller

It's May and I want to spend the entire month talking about Sci-Fi RPGs, and most of this month talking about Traveller.   Traveller has a long and storied history in both the RPG world and for me personally. It is the second (or the third, more on that) RPG I ever owned after D&D.  

I say second but my memory is foggy and it could have been Traveller or it could have been Chill.  I think for my horror cred I like to claim it was Chill, but in the early 80s, I was all about Science Fiction.  So really it was most likely to be Traveller.  I picked up the Traveller Book and tried to teach to it to myself, but my groups were very D&D focused and no one wanted to play it.  The groups that did play it were all older than I was and they did not want some "D&D kid" in their "Serious Sci-Fi" groups.  I was able to more traction on Star Frontiers a few years later.  Must have been the TSR bias of the time.  I do wish I still had my original Traveller Book though.   I did manage to score an Original Traveller boxed set of the "Little Black Books" so I guess that is even better.

Today I am going to review Traveller and start at the very beginning.  There is just no way I could through everything for Traveller.  I'd need more than a month, I'd need a whole new blog, so instead, I was going to going to concentrate on some core products to get people into the game and a few choice ones that have meaning to me. 

I will admit right up front that I am no Traveller expert.  So it is very, very likely I will miss a few a things.  Just let me, and others, know in the comments.   

Ok, as my friend Greg said on Sunday, let's get this party started!

Classic Traveller

For this review, I am going to be referring to my 1977 Game Designers' Workshop edition of the boxed set of Traveller.   I am also joining to be comparing them the PDFs of the Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition from Game Designers' Workshop / Far Future Enterprises on DriveThruRPG. 

Side Note:  Far Future Enterprises bought the rights to various GDW games a while back and published this pdf as far back as 2001.  They own the rights to republish Traveller, 2300 AD, Twilight: 2000, and Dark Conspiracy. They also work with Mongoose and other publishers of Traveller material.  But more on that in future posts.  Suffice to say that from my point of view they have been carrying the torch of Traveller high since 2000.  Among other things they publish a full CD-ROM of Traveller material that I would love to grab someday. 

The Boxed Set

The Traveller Boxed Set from GDW was released in 1977.  GDW was located in Normal, IL which is along what I learned was a trail the lead from Lake Geneva, WI, and Chicago, IL all the way down to the University of Illinois in Urbana, IL, Illinois State in Normal, IL down to Southern Illinois Univerity in Carbondale, IL.  Tim Kask was an SIU grad, GDW was in Normal, Mayfair would later be founded in Skokie just outside of Chicago, and Judges Guild was founded in Decatur, IL.  I basically grew up surrounded by the growing Table Top RPG scene. 

Much like Dungeons & Dragons of the time, Traveller came in a digest-sized box with three books.  Instead of there being "3 Little Brown Books" there are "3 Little Black Books."   Also, like D&D future printings would combine these books though in different ways. 

PDF Note: The Classic Traveller Facsimile Edition also includes a preface for the whole set of books and gives a brief history of their publications.  This is a great value-add for the PDF.  According to it what I am reviewing today is "Basic Traveller" and published in 1981.  Basic Revised was published in 1981 and the Traveller Book (my first purchase) was in 1982.  

Book 1: Characters and Combat

This is the character generation book and maybe one of the most famous bit of RPG lore ever.  Yes. In Traveller you can die in Character creation!  

I should also point out that very, very often in my conversations with people over the years that Character Creation for Travelller was very much in line with what we would call "Session 0" today.  Everyone worked on their character, developed a back story (yes in 1977) and then got together.  Even the starting character example is a 42-year-old with a pension (and a cutlass it seems). Trust me, at 42 I already had backstory (and a wife, kids, a mortgage, bills...)

Character creation is largely a random affair, but not wholly so. There are choices to be made along the way.  How a character acquires skills and expertise largely depends on which service they were in and how they got there.  You can enlist or you can be drafted. At this point, all characters were assumed to have served in some form of the service. Citizens don't mortgage their pension on a beat second-hand starship to go galavanting across known space. 

As you work through character creation you can go for a few terms of service. This gives you more skill, more experience, more credits, and makes you older.  As in real life, there are benefits and detriments to age.  

Skills are detailed next.  This is going to come up again and again, but let's talk about it here first. The Computers of Traveller are the computers of 1977.  Not very advanced and require special expertise to use them.  Today of course I am writing this post in one window, monitoring email and chat in another, watching the weather in another, and reading the PDF in yet another.  I have dozens of active programs running that I am paying attention to and who knows how many more running in the background.  I am not going to apply 21st-century biases though to these rules.  Let's just leave them as-is for now and see how future versions of this game treat it.   For me I am going to assume there are computers (with a lower case c) that do all the work we think of today and anyone can use and then there are specialized Computers (with an upper case C) that do specialized work, like today's supercomputers.  

Side Note: The best super-computer of 1977 was the 80mhz, 64 bit Cray-1. It cost $8M and was capable of 160 MFLOPS. For comparison, my three-year-old smartphone runs at 130ghz and is capable of 658 GFLOPS. Newer phones are more than double that. 4000x's the power at 1/10,000th of the cost. And I can put it into my pocket. 

After your terms of service are figured out along with your skills then comes the time to learn combat.  Combat always gets more ink than say hacking a computer since there are so many things going on and a failure usually means death.  Also, as an aside, there are a lot of bladed weapons in Traveller. I attribute this to two different elements. The first and obvious is Star Wars, though Traveller obviously draws more from Dune than Star Wars which only came out in May of 77.  The other and likely more important source is D&D.  For the obvious reasons.  The end effect is that officers in Traveller often carry swords in my mind. 

Combat gives us our basic roll for the game and the introduction of the Traveller basic mechanic. The PDF is a little clearer on this than my print book. Roll 2d6 and beat a roll of 8.  This is modified by various skills and experiences.  

Wounds affect the character's Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance. The more wounds you get, the worse those stats are.  D&D would not do this in earnest until 4th Edition. 

PDF Notes:  My copy is dedicated "To Mary Beth" and the PDF (and I think the Traveller Book) are dedicated "To Darlene."  There are other minor differences as well. The PDF for example has a "Personal Data and History" aka a Character Sheet on page 28 (36 for the PDF). 

Book 2: Starships

This is what makes Traveller, well, Traveller. There are two types of travel dealt with here, Interplanetary (worlds within the same star system) and Interstellar (different star systems). Also if you are afraid of math this book is going to give you a bad day.   

The main focus of this book in my mind is buying a starship and keeping it running.  Starships are expensive and in Traveller, those expenses are more keenly felt than say keeping up a castle in D&D.  If your castle runs out of food you can leave to go buy some. In a starship, in space, your options are more limited.  In space, no one can hear your stomach grumble. 

I have no idea if the economies of Traveller work. I mean is 2 tons of fuel really worth the year's salary of a gunner?  No idea. I am going to handwave that and say it works.

There is also a lot on Starship construction here too. Before I could get anyone to play I would write up sheets of starships and their costs based on what I thought was cool.  Kinda wish I had a couple of those. The only one I can remember was the FTL Lucifer.  It was designed to be small, but fast.  It would later make it's way into Star Frontiers, but that is another tale.

We get some details on starship combat and some basic world data.

Book 2 also covers experience and various drugs.  I get the feeling these were put here to pad out Book 2 so all three books were the same size; 44 pages. 

PDF Notes: The PDF has more art, in particular how to orbit a planet and the necessary equations made more clear.  Like Book 1 for Characters, this volume has sheets for ships. The PDF also adds a Trade and Commerce section.

Book 3: Worlds and Adventures

This book covers worlds.  And if there was one thing I did more than creating starships that never traveled to other worlds, it was to create worlds that starships would never travel to.  World creation was fun.  

This book also covers various personal equipment and various encounter types.

Note at this point there are no aliens, no Imperiums, and really nothing other than the most basic adventuring outline.  Very much like OD&D in that respect.  I like the psionic system in Traveller and maybe I should explore the differences between it and the one in Eldritch Wizardry for D&D. 

The last part of this book covers Psionics. Maybe one of the reasons I like to draw a pretty hard line between Magic and Psionics is that one is for Fantasy (and D&D) and the other is for Sci-Fi (and Traveller).

PDF Notes: The PDF again has more art (vehicles) as well as hex maps for working out star systems.

Final Notes

How does one review a classic like Traveller?  How does one compare an RPG from 1977 to the standards of 2022?  It's not easy under normal circumstances, but with Traveller it is easier.  Why?  Because so much of this game was ahead of its time you could brush it off, get some d6s and play it out of the box as is today.  More so than OD&D is I think.

But both games are classics, no, Classics. With that capital C. It is no wonder that now, 45 years later, Traveller is still the goto science-fiction game.

As I move through the editions and versions I'll also talk about all the other materials that have been used with Traveller (board games for example) and how these "3LBBs" expanded to cover an entire universe. 

Monstrous Mondays: Greys (Zeta Reticulians)

Nice meeting of topics here today.  It is May which this year will be the start of my Sci-Fi month.  We have the normal May the Fourth celebrations, and Mayday for Traveller was yesterday.  Plus we get Star Trek Strange New World premiering this week.  AND there is a new D&D Spelljamer on the horizon. So there are a lot of great reasons to celebrate SciFi. 

I also just got finished with my A to Z Challenge for April where I did Conspiracy Theories.  I leaned heavily on a lot of UFO-based ones.  So my appetite has been whetted for more.  And today is Monstrous Monday!  So I thought I would bring all of these ideas together today into a special Monstrous Monday!

Greys (Zeta Reticulians)

Of all the alien species that have purportedly visited the Earth few are as popular as the Greys.  These creatures are also known as Zeta Reticulians since they supposedly come from the Zeta Reticuli star system, approximately 40 ly from Earth.  This is based on a drawing from one of the most famous alien abductees ever, Betty Hill.  

Greys are called such due to their skin color. The skin seems to be a uniform grey.  While some are depicted as not wearing clothes, others have suggested that they are wearing skin-tight suits of the same color as their skin to protect them from Earth's atmosphere.  They typically stand 4 to 5ft in height (1.2 to 1.5 meters), are hairless, with large black eyes.  They have no ears nor a nose, save for small slits or holes where such external sense organs would be.  Their bodies are small, thin, and somewhat elongated. Their heads however are large with large foreheads giving the impression of large brains inside. Their hands are long with long delicate fingers. They typically only have four fingers (three fingers and a thumb) per hand, though there are reports of "hybrids" that appear to be greys with human eyes and five fingers per hand.

They do not speak but instead communicate via a form of telepathy. 

Their purpose with humanity is still unknown.  They may not even know themselves just yet since all evidence seems to point to them observing and experimenting on humans. Their experiments in removing eggs and sperm as reported by abductees, and the existence of hybrid forms at least point to an interest in our reproductive abilities.  It is postulated that they are using humans to help deplete their own lessening numbers.

Grey (Dungeons & Dragons 5e)

Grey (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 3-12 (3d4)
AC: 6
Move: 30 ft.
Hit Dice: 2-4
Special: Cause fear, psychic abilities (chosen at random), telekinesis, telepathy, Can't use magic
XP Value: Varies

Greys are aliens from the Zeta Reticuli star system. They have enhanced psychic abilities, but are vulnerable to all forms of magic.  They never speak but communicate via telepathy.  A group of Greys are typically a scouting party with various scientists onboard their spaceship. They will abduct humans or cattle, do experiments on them, erase their memories and return them to where they found them.

Grey (OSR)

Frequency: Very Rare
Number Appearing: 1d4+3 (1d10+2)
Alignment: Neutral [True Neutral]
Movement: 90' (30') [9"]
Armor Class: 7-5 [12-14]
Hit Dice: 
   Scientist: 2d8+2* (11 hp)
   Monitor: 3d8+3** (17 hp)
   Leader: 4d8+8** (26 hp)
To Hit AC 0: 18, 16, 15  (+1, +3, +4)
Attacks: 0 or 1
Damage: None, stun 
Special: Cause fear, paralysis, mind blank, telepathy, vulnerable to magic
Save: Monster 3
Morale: 10 (10)
Treasure Hoard Class: Special
XP:
   Scientist: 35 (OSE) 47 (LL)
   Monitor: 100 (OSE) 135 (LL)
   Leader: 275 (OSE) 290 (LL)

Str: 7,9, 11 (-1, 0, 0) Dex: 16 (+2) Con: 14, 14, 16 (+1, +1, +2) Int: 22, 18, 18 (+5, +3, +3) Wis: 16 (+2) Cha: 14 (+1)

Greys come in three castes; Scientists, Monitors, and Leaders.  Scientists perform the experiments, leaders lead the missions, and are the fighters of the group.  Monitors are a blend of the two, acting as leaders amongst the scientists.  The castes are not hierarchical, they are designed so that each role is filled by the most capable individual.  A group of greys encountered outside of the ships will all be scientists with at least one member a monitor or leader. 

Greys have psionic abilities to cause fear, paralysis by touch (save vs. Paralysis or be frozen for one minute), and to erase the memories of their victims.   Scientists do not attack. They leave this to the Leaders and if needed the monitors. 

Additionally, greys have no concept of magic, they save at -2 against all spells and take an additional +1 point damage from magical attacks. 

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I might tweak these a bit more, but so far they look great to me.

Mayday, Mayday! This is the Free Trader Beowulf...

Mayday! Mayday! 

It's May and Sci-fi month at The Other Side!

#AtoZChallenge2022: L is for Lost Cosmonauts

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: L is for Lost Cosmonauts

L was going to be for Lunar, but while I was researching this one came up and I just really could not say no.

The notion of lost cosmonauts has been around since the dawn of the manned space missions.  I recall people (ok, kids) talking about this in the 1980s when the distrust of the U.S.S.R. was at a high.

The idea is simple.  The Soviet Union sent men into space even before Yuri Gagarin's (the first man into Space) historic flight.  Cutting corners the Soviets sent men into space and presuablly could not get them back down.  Somewhere up there their life-less, well preserved bodies still float in orbit.

The first of these came up after 1959 when the US and the USSR were deep into the "Space Race."  Even such illuminaries as Robert A. Heinlein wrote about shenanigans with the Soviet space program in his article "Pravda means 'Truth'."  The is in fact so much about it that I am not entirely sure I can rule it out.  It's not inconceivable that the Soviets would lie about these sorts of things, and certainly not beyond the realm of belief that they would cut corners.  As the following meme demonstrates.

Cute. But no where near the truth.  Pencils are flammable. Pencils, modern ones anyway, are made of graphite. Which as you are writing turns to a fine dust, which while weightless can get into electrical circuits and cause damage.  None of these things you want in a small, oxygen rich, inclosed environment.   People buy into this meme because the accept a level of, well incompetence from the forme Soviet Union. 

Are there dead Cosmonauts still in orbit out there?  Who knows.  This is the first one I really can't outright dismiss.

Links

• The Haunting Mystery Of The USSR’s Lost Cosmonauts
• The Enduring Myth of Phantom Cosmonauts
• Ivan Ivanovich and the Persistent Lost Cosmonaut Conspiracy
• Robert A. Heinlein, http://www.firearmsrights.com/rah1961.htm
• Oberth Believes Astronauts Lost

For NIGHT SHIFT

The problem with dead Cosmonauts is not whether or not they are out there.  It's what happens when they come back to Earth.  I have lost track of how many "horror from space" movies I have seen. Lots. Too many really.  So here is situation.  A space craft in orbit from the 1960s has been spotted by some amateur astonomers (nod to me sitting out in the cold with my telescope trying to find Skylab) and it is slowly falling to Earth.  The Soviets want it to burn up in the atmosphere, but the Americans want to salvage it for it's secrets (let's say this is the 1980s).  Guess who has the right idea? Clue, it isn't Uncle Sam. 

The craft lands and yeah, the Zombie Apocylpse starts.  What do your characters do?

This is essentially the premise behind Völlig Losgelöst, a proposed 80s-themed horror game I wanted to do.  I dropped it largely because Dark Places & Demogorgons did what I wanted VL to do and did it quite well.  That's fine, much like my Zombie Cosmonauts, Völlig Losgelöst is coming back from the dead with a new-ish direction.  

This is German, not Russian, but still has a lost astronaut and is full of 80's pathos.

Ich komme bald.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Random RPG Thoughts

Have a bunch on my plate at the day job right now and I am headed up the Gary Con tomorrow and the weekend.  The best part of Gary Con?  I can drive in, drive out, and sleep in my own bed every night!

Unnamed Victorian/Rural Gothic Mini-campaign

I want to run an adventure/campaign set in Victorian times and combine "Little House on the Prairie" with "True Detective" Season 1 and Carcosa.  Essentially you are all a bunch of gritty detectives and have chased this dangerous "End times" cult to the US Midwest in the 1880s.

This cult had a member that is a bit clairvoyant and saw World War I and decide that it is better to end the world.  She went mad (naturally) and this is how the PCs discover the cult's activity and connects them to a string of grisly sacrificial murders.

Why Little House?  Well I did enjoy the show growing up and it seems so idyllic, even with their hardships, and some cult trying to draw down some horror beyond the stars is so incongruous to the setting that it makes for its own first level of horror.

Originally this was called "Ghosts of Albion: Carcosa"  but today I could use pretty much any Victorian-era system for it.  I have all of them. 

New Gaming Gear

My youngest is now in college and has built a new computer.  So I just got a "hand-me-down" Alienware.  With this and my other gaming computer, I am thinking about getting some new PC games to play.  All of the old AD&D "Gold Box" games are coming to Steam.  I never had the time to play them when they were new but I am hoping they might scratch that AD&D 2nd Ed itch I have.

ETA: Just found another hard drive to put in it!

Sci-Fi RPGs

I have been in the mood for a sci0fi RPG for some time.  Now my oldest is too.  Though he wants something that is compatible with 5e so he can continue playing in his world and doesn't want to go the Starfinder ("Featfinder") route.  Ultramodern5 has been suggested to me as has Esper Genesis. 

This is only quasi-related to my Star Trek games. Though it will inform my choices when I do Sci-Fi month in May.

Spell Database

Not for publication, just my own use. I am putting together a database of every spell I have written for all my witch books.  While I am not expecting to share this out, you will likely see the products of the labor one day.

Monster Books

With the day job, I have not had much of a chance to really work on any of these.  In fact, my last edit was early February according to the file dates.   Hope to get back on these. 

October Horror Movie Challenge: Curse of the Mayans (2017)

Another one with my wife tonight.  She was in the mood for something Egyptian or similar, but I remembered I had this one on my list.  It is horror, it is sci-fi, and I have been wanting to find something more about Mayan myths, even if it was in the form of a cheesy movie.  Actually for what I have planned a cheesy movie is perfect.

Curse of the Mayans (2017)

This movie was also known as Xibalbá.  An American professor, Dr. Alan Green (played by Steve Wilcox) hires a professional cave diver Danielle Noble, played by Carla Ortiz, to uncover what he believes is the lost library of the Mayas.

There is a bit in the start about an alien race of reptile aliens from the Pleiades. And a Mayan retelling of the Nibiru tale, Va Sheck.

The movie starts slow, but about 1:05 in it really begins to kick in.  The divers find what they think is the library, but it looks like alien technology.  One of the divers tries to grab a gold jaguar head, but instead, they let something out.  The demons/aliens begin to kill the divers.

The professor tells us the alien/demons are "Tlaloc."  While the name is Aztec, there is a Mayan god that is similar.  They can possess humans, but their eyes look like snakes.  Cool, but how does the professor know all of this?

The movie ends just as it is getting interesting.  

So some scares, but not enough and too little too late.

I had hoped for more really. 

October 2021
Viewed: 31
First Time Views: 18

October Horror Movie Challenge: Horror Planet aka Inseminoid (1981)

Man, I am in some kind of rut.  Ok in my defense this movie has been on my list for years, but even I thought it was too cheesy to consider.   Also there are not a lot of choices when your search terms are "Horror," "Sci-fi," "Alien," and "Archeologist." 

So if you read my post earlier today you know I have an idea, or the start of one, for my alien reoccurring Big Bad.  

So this film is taking place on an alien planet.  Writing is discovered on the walls while the research operations are going on this frozen planet.  There appear to be a lot of couples here, convenient really.  One of the researchers is hurt in an explosion and his buddy starts to go crazy.

I am not sure what the future is like, but according to this movie, they must be outlawed by then. 

While out (even though the commander ordered everyone to stay on the base) Sandy and Mitch get out of communication range.  Mitch is killed by some sort of monster and ripped apart.  Sandy is captured and taken to some room where she is stripped naked and impregnated (via a long clear tube full of green slime) by some weird-looking alien creature. 

Sandy starts acting strange.  Not in the "I am traumatized" way, but in the "I have an alien baby growing inside me and I need to kill and eat people now" way.   Sandy is played by Judy Geeson, who has had a really great career over the last 7 decades. This movie wasn't even the start of her career, she had already been working for 20 years at this point.  

Each plan to stop Sandy ends up getting more people killed, often from complete stupidity.  By the end I was rooting for Sandy since pretty much everyone was the cause of their own deaths.

I am not sure what was the biggest scientific screw-up.  When Mark was able to go outside and see Sandy when everyone else died outside.  Or that Sandy was able to get her pants off to give birth and back on again without ever taking off her shoes.

There are some minimally interesting ideas here, but not enough to sit through an hour and a half of this.  At least I have some ideas of things not to do. In the end, it is just a fairly weak Alien rip-off with a side helping of misogyny.   

Directed by Norman J. Warren who also gave us Satan's Slave and another potential one for tonight, Prey.  Let me say right now I am not really that impressed. 

I need to make some better choices in my movies.

October 2021
Viewed: 27
First Time Views: 14

October Horror Movie Challenge: Mars Night

What is it about Mars that both fascinates us and horrifies us at the same time?  Even long before H.G. Welles and "War of the Worlds" Mars has had a hold on our collective consciousness.  

Doctor Who has visited horror on Mars many times, most recently with "The Waters of Mars" (2009) and "Empress of Mars" (2017).  Notably, one of the few times we see the Doctor truly afraid is when he learns he is facing the Martian Grand Marshal Skaldak in "Cold War" (2013).  

Even the optimistic Star Trek is not immune, with one of the greatest terrorist acts committed against the Federation happening on Mars' Utopia Planitia. 

Mars has gotten to us. 

So it is not a big surprise that there are still today sci-fi horror movies featuring Mars.

The Angry Red Planet (1959)

One would assume I would start with War of the Worlds. At least the classic or maybe even one of the remakes.  But I want movies ON Mars and for better or worse, this is a classic. I have seen it before, but it is a good one to start the night and it is on every streaming service I have.  This one takes place sometime after the first moon landing. No date is given but you can assume it is the 1970s as seen through the eyes of the 1950s (Time Delta, 11 or so years).

Again, while I typically avoid movies from the 1950s, there are exceptions.  A couple of things make this one stand out.  The giant wolf-bat-spider creature being one and the "CineMagic" effect used when they were on the surface of Mars was another. The CineMagic could look cheap by our standards of today, but I actually thought it had some charm to it. 

The acting isn't bad, though it suffers from all the casual sexism of the time, though to it's credit it has Naura Hayden as biologist Dr. Iris "Irish" Ryan. She isn't so much there as eye-candy (plot wise) and has a role.  It is also noted that only Americans seem to bring guns into space. It does avoid the trope of one of the scientists being secretly evil or wanting to establish his own empire on Mars. 

The film is a bit silly for our times, but there were what appeared to be some good (for the time) scares.  The CineMagic effect really covers up a lot of special effects shortcomings. 

I am sure I have seen this one before, but there are a lot of parts I don't remember.  I am only giving myself ½ a credit for this one.

Star Crystal (1986)

I actually started this one first. Stopped it because it was just not  good and came back to it tonight. While there is 30 years between this one and Angry Red Planet, it sure has improved much in attitudes.  This one takes place in the year 2030 to 2033 (Time Delta 44 to 41 years).

Let's be entirely upfront about this.  This one is bad.  I spaced (heh) out a lot writing other things.  Here is the gist.  Two dufuses bring back some rocks from Mars expecting some of them will give them a good payday.  One of the rocks cracks open and something slimy comes out.  Fast forward to NASA on Earth in the later 2030s where everyone is smoking like it's...well 1986. The first crew is dead so they send another crew after them.  

After some not-scares and other nonsense we learn the alien, named Gar, used the computer to learn about humanity including reading a Bible, and has decided to depart in peace.  What the actual fuck? Anyway, that's the movie.  There is more like the shitty effects, the toy Millennium Falcon used for close-up shots of the starbase and the misspellings on the computer screen.  An aside, here in the real 2021 I am using more computer power than they displayed in their fake 2033 just write these words. I also have the benefit of a spell check.

Anyway, I am embarrassed I watched this movie. 

By the way, this site Explore Mars wants us on Mars in the 2030s. I don't think they saw this movie.

John Carpenter's Ghosts Of Mars (2001)

2001 should have been a bigger year for sci-fi movies.  Just saying. This one takes place in 2176. The Time Delta on this is 175 years now.  As we move further and further away from the Apollo missions our optimism about colonizing nearby space is waning.  Or maybe we just have a better understanding of how bad the void of space really is. 

I also admit this is the one I was looking forward to.  I mean John Carpenter right?

Well...

The pluses. The film stars Natasha Henstridge, Ice Cube, Jason Statham, Pam Grier, Clea DuVall, Robert Carradine, and Joanna Cassidy. All of whom have delivered good performances in the past.  The key with any movie with Ice Cube and Jason Statham in it is you never take their characters seriously. Jason Statham has more or less likened all his characters to cartoon characters.  

The soundtrack is great, if for no reason other than the inclusion of Stevie Vai whom I have been a fan of since his days with Frank Zappa. 

Some interesting bits.  Mars' government appears to be a Matronage or rule by women.  The Mars here reminds me of Total Recall or Doom before the Demons arrive.

The story revolves around a group of police officers attempting to do a prisoner transfer of James 'Desolation' Williams, played by Ice Cube.  They get to the boomtown to find him but instead, they find everyone dead and Williams still locked up.  They find a couple of people still alive but possessed.

Turns out the ghosts of dead Martians are possessing people thinking the humans had killed all the Martians.  They decide to blow up the nuclear reactor thinking they can nuke all the spirits.  Sure. Why not.  

The ghosts just repossess other humans and attack the city.

The Martian possessed humans reminded me a lot of the Futurekind from the Doctor Who episode Utopia.  In fact, the scenes of Mars at night also remind me of the planet Malcassairo at the end of the Universe. 

October 2021
Viewed: 25
First Time Views: 12

Science Fiction and Horror

This week I am working my way through a bunch of Sci-Fi/Horror movies.  I thought then that today would be a good day to see how I use both genres together.

Science Fiction and Horror have had a long-standing relationship.  Where horror stories are some of the first stories ever told, Science Fiction, or Science Romances, are newer.  

For me, and many others, the Modern Age of Science Fiction began with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus" in 1818.  While considered by many to be a Gothic Horror novel, it only has the trappings of a true Gothic Horror. The work is pure science fiction of a brilliant man, the titular Dr. Frankenstein, and his attempts using science to reanimate dead tissue resulting in the creation of his monster, who is NOT named Frankenstein. 

Like all good science fiction, it is far looking and attempts to tell us something about our society or morals.   Which is why when people ask "When did Sci-Fi become so woke?" I say "In 1818 when it was invented by a Regency-age, teenage feminist."  This was 10 years before Jules Verne, the so-called Father of Science Fiction was born and almost 50 years before H.G. Wells was born.

It would be disingenuous to ignore the horror elements of Frankenstein in favor of its Sci-Fi elements.  They go hand in hand.  The story was conceived from a nightmare, the same night that John Polidori gave us "The Vampyre."  

Almost a century later we would get another popular horror/Sci-Fi mix in H.G. Wells War of the Worlds. This give us the popular and potent combination of Sci-Fi, Horror, and Mars. 

Sci-Fi tends to organized into two large camps; the hopeful and the dystopian.  YES there is more, I am not talking about ALL of sci-fi right now.  But you make some clear demarcations alonge the line of Hope.

Star Trek for example tends to be on the side of hope.  Hope for what the future can bring and be.  Again "Woke" since 1966. Star Trek is about hope in the face of all sorts of diversity.  But what about hope in the face of fear?

"Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence."
 - Leonard 'Bones' McCoy, Star Trek (2009)

The goal of Star Trek: BlackStar very early on was the horrors of space.  Often times, especially in the TNG days, space travel was depicted as fun, and easy (ish), and the horrors were the ones we brought with us.  While that made for great TV in the 90s, I was still left wanting something more.  Star Treks Voyager and then Enterprise got back to the idea that space travel was not easy nor always fun.  BlackStar I hope delivers on the "in space no one can hear you scream" angle.  I opted for mythos monsters and settings with the idea that "in space the stars are always right."  Even though that was also the same time I was lamenting you can't just slap Cthulhu on something to make it sell.

Well. I am not "selling" anything with BlackStar save for my own home games. Still, I feel I owe it at least to myself not to "just slap Cthulhu onto Star Trek." 

On the flip side of this I have my Star Trek: Mercy.  Which is nothing if not about hope.  A Starfleet full of various species from across the Galaxy, even ones the Federation are not allies with, all working together to run a hospital ship to save lives. Not that I can't run into horror elements, that is not the goal here. 

I have, thanks to many of the October Horror Movie Challenges had the chance to watch some great Horror/Sci-fi.  I have also had the chance to read a lot of horror sci-fi over the years, but sadly nothing recently.

It is a topic that I would love to explore more in depth and find stories that are unique to this combined genre.   Much like how Sci-Fi lead me to Fantasy and Fantasty lead me to Dark Fantasy and Horror, Horror is bringing me full circle back to Sci-Fi.  

I think it would be fun to get back to some sci-fi games.  Even if I have to add horror to them. 

I am not sure where this is taking me, but I am looking forward to finding out.  Hopefully I'll have some more insights later this week.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Saturn 3 (1980)

This is one of those movies I have wanted to go back and see to see if it was as bad as I remembered. Was it? Oh yeah.

Saturn 3 (1980)

Kirk Douglas seems underutilized here.  Farah Fawcett is, well..., I have a better opinion of her now than I did then, but she is still not very good here. She seems to be here only as eye candy and to scream.  I can't even tell you what it is her character was supposed to be doing here.

Harvey Keitel has called this movie the "nadir of his career" and he certainly seems like he is only going through the motions here. He has even been redubbed for this.  I didn't even remember he was in this, to be honest.

The plot is super simple.  Harvey Keitel brings an experimental robot to an outpost near Saturn (Saturn 3) and he passes on his crazy to the robot. 

The outpost is researching new food alternatives for Earth and is run by Douglas and Fawcett who are also a couple. Yeah, he was twice her age in this.  

They have trouble with Keitel from the start and then trouble with the robot, and then everyone is fighting everyone else.  Despite being newer than 1979's Alien, the sets look more like a 1970s sci-fi movie. 

 I remember seeing this one on TV a while back, I thought it had some other scenes.  Checking good old Wikipedia there were other scenes when it aired on NBC. 

The movie is, or could have been, an Alien rip-off, but there are not enough people on the station and thus not a high enough body count.  It could be remade today an would be much better.

October 2021
Viewed: 22
First Time Views: 9.5