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Planning for April 2022

Planning for April 2022

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For a while, I was afraid that March would be yet another month without any big block of new material to share, but then I had a remarkably productive week and was able to produce a first interim draft for the “special cases” section of Architect of Worlds. So March ended on a good note, and now I need to think about April.

I think I’m going to restructure my priority list, starting this month. Instead of listing several projects as all being “Top Priority,” I’m going to restrict myself to one project that’s going to get the lion’s share of my time in the coming month. That’s the project that seems to me most likely to produce a block of new material suitable for sharing with patrons and other readers. Everything else is going to get pushed down to “Second Priority” (projects that may get some time, but probably won’t lead to a big block of new material) or “Back Burner” (projects that I’m keeping on the docket but don’t expect to work on at all during the coming month).

For the month of April, I think the Top Priority item is going to be to work on a rough draft of the Atlas of the Human Protectorate, a new tabletop-oriented book that describes the late-23rd-Century universe of the Human Destiny setting. Working on that project for the first time is also going to help me make progress on several items on this month’s Second Priority list:

  • Give the current (v0.8) draft of the Architect of Worlds design sequence a thorough workout, looking for possible ambiguities and bugs to be corrected, possibly leading to a v0.9 release.
  • Similarly, test and improve on the “working with astronomical data” (v0.1) and “special cases in worldbuilding” (v0.1) sections of Architect, possibly leading to v0.2 releases for those.
  • Also, work out how my particular take on the Cepheus Engine system is going to represent this kind of setting, which is kind of different from the usual representation (3D space, more detailed world writeups, and so on). If I come up with some results here, those may go into the interim draft of the Player’s Guide, leading toward a v0.5 release for that.

So, without further ado, here’s the formal planning list for April:

  • Top Priority:
    • Human Destiny: Start compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate, meanwhile giving the Architect of Worlds material a good workout. Produce a v0.1 interim draft (at least 10,000 words) by the end of the month as a charged release.
  • Second Priority:
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “special cases in worldbuilding” section, possibly leading to a free v0.2 update.
    • Architect of Worlds: Further additions and revisions to the “working with astronomical data” section, possibly leading to a free v0.2 update.
    • Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
    • Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
  • Back Burner:
    • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine).

Planning for March 2022

Planning for March 2022

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Well, February was at least somewhat successful – I managed a major rewrite of sections of the Architect of Worlds design sequence, and released a new interim draft of that for a wide audience. I think in March I’m going to try to keep up my momentum there, and work on some new sections of the book. It would be nice if I could have the whole rough draft finished before summer, so I could work on final polish and layout and actually get the book out at last.

There’s one new development in how I’m planning to structure these projects. I’m going to break the Human Destiny setting bible into two distinct books for eventual publication under the Cepheus Engine game rules. The core setting bible itself will get the working title of the Human Destiny Player’s Guide, and then there’s going to be a separate Atlas of the Human Protectorate that provides location data and adventure seeds. My patrons will get free updates to the Player’s Guide, since I’ve already charged them for that once, but the Atlas will likely be a charged release once there’s enough material there to justify one.

Meanwhile, I really need to get unblocked on Krava’s Legend again if I can. it’s been well over a year since The Curse of Steel was published, and it needs to start getting sequels if the series is ever going to attract an audience.

Here’s the list for March:

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Human Destiny: Start compiling material for the eventual Atlas of the Human Protectorate, meanwhile giving the Architect of Worlds material a good workout.
    • Krava’s Legend: Review and possibly rewrite the existing partial draft of The Sunlit Lands, and write a few new chapters.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Human Destiny: Design additional new rules systems for the Player’s Guide and add these to the interim draft.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine)

I think the top priority for a charged release will be to get the initial draft of the “special cases and additional worldbuilding topics” material finished. The other items are more likely to give rise to free updates for my patrons.

Planning for February 2022

Planning for February 2022

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Well, my day job is a little less demanding as January turns into February – my two big projects for calendar year 2021 are almost finished and I don’t have any big new projects for 2022. At least not yet. So I’m expecting to make good progress on a couple of creative projects this month. Here’s the main list:

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
    • Architect of Worlds: Rewrite sections of the Introduction and Design Sequence segment, based on new research, hopefully simplifying several steps of the sequence having to do with the placement of planets. I may also take this opportunity to update all the worked examples and make all the mathematical notation more consistent.
    • Human Destiny: Finish the novelette “Remnants” for eventual collection and publication.
    • Human Destiny: Finish writing an article for the Cepheus Journal about the game-book project.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Human Destiny: Produce a high-level map of terraformed Mars.
    • Human Destiny: Research and produce a timeline for the terraforming of Mars.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine)

The work on Architect of Worlds is probably the top priority this month. The end result there will probably be a version 0.8 draft of the Introduction and World Design Sequence. That new document will be a free update for my patrons.

I’m also considering releasing the new partial for free on this blog site, in an attempt to generate some new interest for the project. There have been a lot of changes and improvements since the version that’s currently available to the public. My patrons will continue to get any further updates to that document as free rewards, until there’s another major overhaul or the book as a whole is about ready for layout and release.

Meanwhile, I should be able to complete the novelette “Remnants” this month, and if that ends up being long enough, I’ll likely make it the charged release for February.

Status Report (23 January 2022)

Status Report (23 January 2022)

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A quick post to update things, as we’re moving into the last week of the month. My day job has been insanely busy so far this month, with two major projects coming to a conclusion more or less at the same time. Still, I’ve survived the critical few days and still gotten some creative work done. Fingers crossed that I’ll hit my major milestones by next Monday.

I’ve just finished putting together a new partial draft of the Human Destiny setting bible and game sourcebook. This is the first draft under the assumption that the eventual product will be published as a Cepheus Engine book – the main block of new material is a complete draft of the character design rules, including all the lifepath tables. A PDF of the draft just went out to all of my patrons as a free update.

I’ve also finished polishing up the existing partial draft of a Human Destiny novelette, with the working title of “Remnants.” This is actually the first Human Destiny story I ever started writing, seven or eight years back, and I’m hoping to finish it over the next few days. If I can get that whipped into shape before the end of the month, it will be a charged release for my patrons.

In other news, I have an opportunity to write an article for the Cepheus Journal, the foremost fanzine for the Cepheus Engine family of games. The article will probably be a summary of the Human Destiny setting, with some designer’s notes about ways in which the eventual game book will be distinctive. Cepheus Journal isn’t a paying market, but that’s okay – I’ll bring in more attention for that particular project that way.

Meanwhile, I still need to finish reading a novel or two for review by the end of the month. I’ve got a couple of promising candidates, but we’ll see how that goes.

Eight days to go, and I think I’m ahead of the usual monthly curve. Hopefully nothing unexpected will get in the way.

Human Destiny: The Careers List

Human Destiny: The Careers List

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Here’s another teaser for the Cepheus Engine hack I’m putting together, for the new version of the Human Destiny sourcebook. This is part of the character design rules – the draft list of available “careers” for characters to indulge in during the lifepath generation process.

Again, this list is kind of atypical for a Cepheus Engine game. A few of the careers here are somewhat analogous to the ones you’ll find in the classic space-opera RPG that the engine emulates. Others are not – again, Human Destiny stories are likely to be heavily social-interaction-oriented, in a context of post-scarcity economics and a strong interstellar state. That sets different parameters (and constraints) on the kind of “adventures” that are likely to happen.

Careers List

  • Activist – Individual who pursues a cause, agitating for social or political change.
  • Artist – Individual who pursues celebrity status and supplements the Citizen’s Allowance by producing and selling works of art or handicraft.
  • Athlete – Individual who pursues celebrity status and supplements the Citizen’s Allowance by taking part in one or more competitive sports.
  • Bureaucrat – Official in an organized bureaucracy, either under the Hegemony or in an éthnos, charged with following the details of administrative process.
  • Citizen – Individual who subsists almost entirely on the Citizen’s Allowance, and who spends most of their time on entertainment or socializing.
  • Colonist – Individual who has settled on a more-or-less Earthlike (or terraformed) world and works to support the human community there.
  • Counselor – Individual who provides psychological care or social services.
  • Dissident – Individual who has rejected Hegemony society, but still uses some technology and lives in a Free Zone.
  • Ecological Reclamation Service –Member of the Hegemony’s scientific corps, overseeing wilderness reserves to support and protect the natural ecology.
  • Entertainer – Individual who pursues celebrity status and supplements the Citizen’s Allowance by performing before an audience.
  • Feral – Individual who has escaped the Hegemony entirely, by rejecting all technology and living in the deep wilderness.
  • Guard Service – Member of the Hegemony’s paramilitary force, enforcing the Praxis on planetary surfaces, also (rarely) carrying out annexation against pre-stellar civilizations.
  • Influencer – Individual who advocates for ideas, products, or services, primarily on the global information grid.
  • Interstellar Service – Member of the Hegemony’s interstellar paramilitary force, carrying out missions involving peacekeeping, enforcement of the Praxis, and exploration of deep space.
  • Mediator – Individual who provides negotiation or conflict-resolution services.
  • Physician – Individual who provides medical care.
  • Rogue – Individual who frequently engages in deception and subterfuge, whether in violation of the Praxis or not.
  • Scholar – Individual who is engaged in and has expert knowledge of a science, or some similar formal body of organized knowledge. Also, anyone attending or teaching at an institution of higher learning.
  • Service Specialist – Individual who provides personal service to others, most often in the hospitality or leisure industries.
  • Spacer – Individual who works aboard a deep-space outpost or colony, usually on an asteroid or moon.
  • Technician – Individual who is skilled in designing, building, maintaining, or repairing complex technological systems.

Now that I’ve blocked this out, the rest of the character generation rules should follow without much trouble. We’ll see how much progress I’m able to make over the next week or two.

Planning for January 2022

Planning for January 2022

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Things have been a little hectic here at the Palace lately. The period since Christmas has, ironically, been one of the busiest I’ve had at my day job in some time, with three major projects all coming to a head at the same time and demanding a lot of my attention. On top of that, throw the disruption of the worst surge since the pandemic started and our usual pattern of getting heavy snow in January, and it’s kind of been chaos. Not conducive to getting creative work done.

Still, I have a calm weekend at the moment, and it’s a good time to outline work for the rest of this month.

  • Top Priority (“this is how I’ll judge whether the month has been successful”)
    • Human Destiny: Finish a draft of the character design rules and release the first partial draft of the Human Destiny setting bible as a Cepheus Prime sourcebook.
    • Human Destiny: Finish a new novelette for eventual collection and publication.
    • Human Destiny: Produce a high-level map of terraformed Mars.
    • Human Destiny: Research and produce a timeline for the terraforming of Mars.
  • Second Priority (“work on this as time permits”):
    • Krava’s Legend: Write a few new chapters of The Sunlit Lands.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section describing the structure of the galaxy and of interstellar space, and providing guidelines on how to make maps for interstellar settings.
    • Architect of Worlds: Start work on a section of special cases and additional worldbuilding material that doesn’t fit into the design sequence.
    • Scorpius Reach: Write a few new chapters of Second Dawn.
  • Back Burner (“work on this only if everything else gets blocked”):
    • Architect of Worlds: Return to improvement and polishing of the Introduction and Design Sequence document, leading to a new minor-version release. This work may involve updating all of the worked examples, and making mathematical notation more consistent.
    • Krava’s Legend: Write the second short story for the “reader magnet” collection.
    • Scorpius Reach: Start work on a third edition of the Game of Empire rules for Traveller (or Cepheus Engine)

I’m clearly focusing on the Human Destiny universe some more this month. I’ve actually worked out most of the Martian material, although it’s all scattered notes at the moment, and producing the map is proving a little more challenging than I thought. I’m making good progress on the Cepheus Engine hack for the sourcebook. Meanwhile, I’ve come across one of my older partial stories – possibly the first piece of fiction I ever wrote in the setting that eventually became Human Destiny – and it seems likely that I’ll be able to finish that fairly quickly. So that’s where the low-hanging fruit are at the moment.

For my patrons, the most likely releases this month will be the next partial rough draft of the sourcebook (free release) and the new story (charged release, if it’s long enough). As always, I’ll update as the month progresses and it’s clearer how things are going to go.

Human Destiny: the Skill List

Human Destiny: the Skill List

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I’ve been working on a Cepheus Engine kitbash for my Human Destiny setting bible and game.

One thing that became obvious fairly quickly is that the usual skill sets for Cepheus Engine, as derived from Traveller, may not work well in this setting. The typical premise in the older games is a band of misfit characters trying to make a living through some combination of troubleshooting, mercenary work, or tramp-freighter trade. Those are a lot less likely in Human Destiny stories, which are more likely to be heavily social-interaction-oriented in the context of post-scarcity economics and a fairly strong interstellar state. Think Star Trek or the Culture, rather than Firefly or The Expanse.

So here’s the tentative skill set for the new game. I anticipate task and conflict mechanics to work in a standard manner for Cepheus Engine, but this is distinct enough from the SRD that the game will certainly be presented as “An Alternate Cepheus Engine Universe.”

Incidentally, I spent a lot of time reviewing other science-fiction games in my library to remind myself how this was done elsewhere. It’s actually rather amusing how many games, published across four decades of time, have taken very similar approaches to this problem . . .

Tentative Skill List

Artistic Skills

  • Fine Arts (Specializes to Architecture, Body Art, Calligraphy, Drawing, Interior Decorating, Musical Composition, Photography, Poetry, Pottery, Sculpting, Video Production, Virtual Production, Woodworking, or Writing)
  • Handicrafts (Specializes to Basket Weaving, Brewing, Blacksmith, Bookbinding, Carpentry, Cooking, Gardening, Glassblowing, Jeweler, Leatherworking, Masonry, Needlework, Sewing, Winemaking, or Woodworking)
  • Performing Arts (Specializes to Acting, Dancing, Singing, or a specific musical instrument)

Athletic Skills

  • Athletics
  • Free Fall
  • Observation
  • Riding
  • Sports (Specializes to a specific sport)
  • Stealth
  • Unarmed Combat

Interpersonal Skills

  • Carousing
  • Debate
  • Deception
  • Diplomacy
  • Games (Specializes to Gambler, Virtual Gamer, or a specific game)
  • Instruction
  • Interrogation
  • Leadership
  • Negotiation
  • Personal Service
  • Persuasion
  • Public Speaking

Operations Skills

  • Battle Dress
  • Demolitions
  • System Operations (Specializes to Comms, Computers, Security, Sensors, or Telepresence)
  • Vacc Suit

Outdoor Skills

  • Animal Handling
  • Navigation
  • Survival
  • Tracking

Professional Skills

  • Admin
  • Broker
  • Forensics
  • Law
  • Medicine
  • Memetics
  • Politics
  • Profession (Specializes to a specific career)
  • Protocol
  • Strategy
  • Streetwise
  • Tactics

Scientific Skills

  • Research
  • Science (Specializes to Anthropology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Ecology, Economics, Geology, History, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Metallurgy, Meteorology, Paleontology, Philosophy, Physics, Physiology, Planetology, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Theology, or Xenology)

Starship Skills

  • Astrogation
  • Engineering (Specializes to Drive, Life Support, or Power Plant)
  • Gunnery (Specializes to Bay Weapon, Orbital Bombardment, Spinal Mount Weapon, or Turret Weapon)
  • Pilot

Technical Skills

  • Civil Engineering
  • Construction
  • Cybernetics
  • Electronics
  • Gravitics
  • Mechanics

Vehicle Skills

  • Air Vehicles (Specializes to Airship, Grav Aircraft, Rotor Aircraft, or Winged Aircraft)
  • Ground Vehicles (Specializes to Cycle, Hovercraft, Tracked Vehicle, or Wheeled Vehicle)
  • Water Vehicles (Specializes to Motor Ship, Sailing Ship, Small Craft, or Submarine)

Weapon Skills

  • Guns (Specializes to Archaic Guns, Energy Guns, Gravitic Guns, and Stun Guns)
  • Heavy Weapons
  • Melee Weapons (Specializes to Fencing Weapons, Impact Weapons, Knives, Staves, or Swords)
  • Missile Weapons (Specializes to Bows or Crossbows)

Current status of the project: I had vaguely hoped to have a new partial rough draft for my patrons by the end of December, with the character rules more or less finished, but designing this list took a lot longer than I expected.

I’ll have my formal “planning for January” blog post in a few days, but I suspect my main efforts for next month will involve finishing this game-design task so I can push a version 0.4 draft to my patrons, and possibly writing a new Human Destiny novelette. A murder mystery, oddly enough, although murders are vanishingly rare in the Human Destiny setting . . .

Rethinking the Human Destiny Setting Bible

Rethinking the Human Destiny Setting Bible

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One of my ongoing projects is to create a combination “setting bible” and tabletop RPG sourcebook for the Human Destiny setting. The idea is to codify the setting for myself, and also to make a little money while cross-marketing it to gamers.

The problem all along has been to find the right vehicle – that is, the right game system – for the RPG side of the project. There’s a continuum of potential options here.

At one end of the spectrum, I could design my own game system from scratch. I’ve done a little work in this direction, producing the fragmentary EIDOLON game system. The advantage there is that I would have creative freedom, and could avoid infringing on anyone else’s intellectual property. The drawback is that yet another original game system, one that doesn’t have any external support, acts as a barrier to potential players.

At the other end of the spectrum, I could license an existing and well-known game system and produce an independently published sourcebook for that. GURPS would be an obvious choice, given my publication history, but I’ve also considered a few other systems. For most of the past year, I’ve leaned toward Cortex Prime as a good choice, on the assumption that Fandom’s eventual licensing schemes would be congenial. In general, the advantage of working with an existing game system is that the finished product would be familiar to many potential players, and would have significant ancillary support.

The drawback of using an existing system – and this is a big one – is that most of the best choices have fairly restrictive licensing schemes. I’m a one-man creative operation with a fairly low tolerance for risk. I’m just not interested in a plan that would require me to hire a development staff and try to crowd-fund with a budget of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s why I’ve never seriously considered trying to get a GURPS license, for example. I know people have made a good go of that, but it’s not within my reach.

Recently the folks at Fandom announced their upcoming non-commercial and commercial licenses for Cortex Prime. I can’t speak to how other Cortex fans have reacted to that announcement. From my own perspective only, it looks as if what I would want to do with the system falls between two stools. Non-commercial license means no money at all. Commercial license looks as if it would informally require the development-staff-and-crowdfunding avenue.

Back to the drawing board. Fortunately, there’s another “sweet spot” on that continuum I mentioned earlier. That involves working with a system that’s covered under the Open Game License (OGL).

The OGL is a legal framework which was first established by Wizards of the Coast back in 2000, originally covering the “3.5 edition” of Dungeons & Dragons. Since then, a lot of indie publishers have produced material for a variety of game systems under the OGL.

Working under the OGL, you can use any game mechanics that a publisher has placed under the “Open Content” category, adding your own tweaks to the mechanics and your own new rules systems, and publish the result. There are some legal requirements – you have to include a copy of the OGL in your book, and you can’t expressly claim that your product is associated with the original game. Those aren’t onerous requirements, and they don’t push a project into the staff-and-crowdfunding zone. Plenty of one-man or small-team projects have succeeded under the OGL.

Meanwhile, under the OGL you can also designate your own intellectual property – information about a setting, most often – as “Product Identity” which is still protected by copyright. Which is exactly what I would want to do for game material based on any of my created settings or published fiction.

Right now I’m specifically looking at the fact that the popular SF game Traveller has at least one edition published under the OGL. There’s also a Traveller emulation under its own OGL structure, published as the Cepheus Engine RPG. There’s a whole cottage industry of indie publishers producing material under the Cepheus Engine banner, and some of that material is moving out into a variety of genres. There are Cepheus Engine-based games for hard-SF, swords & sorcery, Old West, and other settings.

The Human Destiny setting isn’t all that Traveller-like in some respects, but I suspect it wouldn’t be all that difficult to produce a Cepheus Engine hack that would do a good job of it. I might even be able to bring in some mechanics from EIDOLON – the two systems aren’t radically different and might hybridize well.

So that’s the current plan for the Human Destiny sourcebook: to rework it as a Cepheus Engine hack and start moving toward independent publication under the OGL. First step in the plan is to start working on the character design rules. I hope to have at least a partial draft of those available as a free release for my patrons by the end of December.

Looking Backward: Game of Empire

Looking Backward: Game of Empire

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One of the more interesting phases of my creative career was my involvement with the Traveller tabletop roleplaying game. Between 1999 and 2005, I wrote, co-authored, or edited at least seven books for the GURPS Traveller product line. In fact, for much of that time, I was effectively the backup Line Editor, assisting Loren K. Wiseman in that capacity, and even taking over entirely for a few months at one point. It was a neat experience; I kind of miss it even today.

In 2000, I was writing the Solomani Rim sector book for GURPS Traveller. I was also helping Loren to produce an online edition of Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society (JTAS), the venerable Traveller fan magazine. One thing I did in that period was to help Loren wrangle Traveller News Service (TNS) entries, little scraps of “current events” from the Third Imperium setting that were meant to maintain the game’s meta-plot and suggest interesting adventures.

There was a side project I undertook, relevant to all of that activity: a set of rules with the working title of Game of Empire. This was a set of Traveller meta-rules, designed to allow “movers and shakers” roleplaying across a region of space. Instead of playing ordinary Imperial citizens, players could take on the role of very senior nobles, megacorporate executives, planetary political leaders, rebel-faction commanders, and so on. The actions and decisions they carried out would affect whole worlds. There was some resemblance to other Traveller products such as Pocket Empires or Dynasties, although the scale and emphasis were a bit different.

As part of the project, I wrote up a scenario, titled The Alderamin Scramble. The premise was that an Imperial duke’s title had fallen vacant in the Solomani Rim sector, and a number of notables were in a position to compete for an appointment to that seat. There were a lot of other events in the scenario – at least two local wars, a visit from Empress Iolanthe to the Rim, and so on.

I recruited 20 players from the JTAS message boards, and we spent several months “playtesting” the ruleset and the Alderamin Scramble scenario. It was a lot of fun – and along the way, we generated dozens of potential TNS items. I think most of the TNS entries from the in-game years 1119 through 1122 came out of that one game.

I often thought about building Game of Empire into something that could be published. I did write a second edition of the ruleset, based on our experience with the playtest, and thought about running more games with that. Unfortunately, with one thing and another, further development never happened before GURPS Traveller started dying on the vine a few years later.

In fact, I somehow misplaced my copy of the game’s files at some point. Fortunately, in 2017, I happened to be talking with Keith Alan Johnson when he mentioned he had a complete copy of both versions of the rules, the Alderamin Scramble scenario, and a bunch of his notes from the playtest. He was generous enough to bundle the whole package up and send it to me.

At the time, I still didn’t have any place to publish the game, but that may be changing. There’s an “open source” version of Traveller in existence now (a game called Cepheus Engine) and several independent publishers have released material through that venue. I’m already exploring ways to release other game material, as for example through DriveThruRPG. So a few days ago I got the notion of reviving this old project.

Yesterday I made a post on the Traveller Facebook group, describing the project and its history, and asking whether the audience would be interested. The response was a pretty resounding yes – so this certainly looks like something that would be worth moving to the front burner. I already have a lot on my plate for the rest of this month, but I may be spending odd moments looking at the old material and letting my subconscious mull over ways to improve and add to it.