Flying Buffalo at DunDraCon 37

I went to DunDraCon 37 with my wife and oldest daughter on Saturday, and we had a great time. This is the first DunDraCon I've been to for a very long time. My first DunDraCon was #4, and unless I'm mistaken the last one I went to before this was #5!

Since then the con has moved to San Ramon, CA. I've been seriously thinking of going for many years since moving back to where it's within reach. But each year I was either already committed to something else on President's Day weekend, or didn't go because I was under the impression that it was a longer and more arduous trip than it turned out to be.

But it was just over 2 hours drive, and not so bad a drive at that, at least not when we went.

Flying Buffalo
Rick Loomis, of Flying Buffalo, has mentioned in several places online that he'd be going to DunDraCon this year. Since I'd been involved in both the Ace of Aces Kickstarter and the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls Kickstarter as a backer, and he'd promised a free die for stopping by the booth and saying, "hi", that was more or less my first stop once we got registered for the con.

I was surprised as how small the dealer's room was, but the vendors that were there all had plenty to show. So it was sort of a small but high quality set-up. The main thing I missed was the wide variety of small startups that I used to see at cons years ago. I guess they all live on the internet now.

At any rate, Rick Loomis was there with a Flying Buffalo display. I didn't get a picture because I was too distracted at that point, and by the time I thought of it, the time had gotten late enough that the poor people manning booths had been set loose by the closing of the room.

However, I did get my free die (I picked out a black and red one with a skull), and I bought a copy of Nuclear War and a copy of Monsters! Monsters!

Nuclear War
Nuclear War was one of the first "unconventional" games I ever played. I have a copy of Nuclear Escalation, which can be played stand-alone but it works better, IMO, as an expansion to Nuclear War. Now I have my own copy of Nuclear War. When I was much, much younger than I am today, I recall that I always wanted to get the Saturn booster rocket for my warheads. Because having the biggest booster is just, well, cool.

Monsters! Monsters!
Monsters! Monsters! is the original "reverse dungeon" RPG. I had a copy years ago, along with my copies of the older versions of the Tunnels and Trolls rules. Unfortunately, MM has failed to turn up in my searches through my stuff over the past couple of years, even though everything else did turn up. So I decided to buy another copy.

Now that I have, I expect my original will turn up.

I have hopes that the success of the dT&T Kickstarter might lead to a MM Kickstarter. I'd like to see the information in MM reorganized so that all the info on a given monster is in one place, a bit more detail on some of the monster abilities, and, of course, more monsters and more art.

Truthfully, it's not hard to just play a game of MM with just the T&T rules. But it's fun and a bit easier to sell a group on an MM campaign if you've got a dedicated book for the purpose.

Nuclear War Extras
My wife wanted an "I Love Nuclear War" bumper sticker for her car (Rick threw that in for free), and my wife was extremely pleased to discover that there's a Nuclear War spinner app featuring Claudia Christian. She's a big fan of Claudia's, so she's looking forward to putting that on her new Android phone when it arrives.

DunDraCon in General
That was just the start for us. We had a great time at the con, which I'll be going into in further posts. Back home today, I'm reading my way through Monsters! Monsters! again, and looking forward to breaking out Nuclear War on our holiday day tomorrow.

Traveller: Accountancy in Spaaace!

I've been running a Traveller game for our local role-playing group since last September. We started out with the characters as children using the latest iteration of my rules for children characters for Traveller. The old rules were published in Freelance Traveller. The updates I added bring the child character development more in line with other Mongoose Traveller classes. It includes Events, Mishaps, and Benefits for youngsters. Background skills are acquired as characters age.

I started or current game with a children's adventure, which went very well. It was a sort of "Three Investigators" or "Nancy Drew" style mystery. The party barely managed to find and solve the mystery behind the mystery.

All Grown Up

Once that was complete, we brought the characters up to 18. Then, depending on their relative ages, the characters got either 3 or 4 terms in standard Traveller careers.

Now we're well into the adventure. The group has a working starship and they just made their first interstellar flight as adventurers. They own one corporation, inherited from the eccentric old man of their childhood adventure, and they bought a second one on their first trip out of their home system. The second one was up for sale on account of 99% of its executive staff being suddenly dead. Probably just some paperwork error.

The party just sold 50 dTons of foodstuffs on an industrial world, and are backhauling lots of valuable food processing machinery. They'll be able to sell it for plenty, assuming the customer that the customer they have lined up isn't a smoking hole in the ground when they get back to their homeworld.

However, the party has started to engage in commerce in Traveller.

One of my players, new to Traveller, looked at me after the game and said, "So, basically, money is XP for Traveller. Right?"

I admitted that both money and equipment serve that role. After all, some things have a more than monetary value.

The Entire Traveller RPG on One CD

Traveller is a science fiction RPG that appeared in 1977. Supplements and add-ons for this game appeared for another 6 years or so until a new version, MegaTraveller, appeared. Other versions have followed, with the most recent being Traveller from Mongoose Publishing.

The original game (PDF of contents) is now available from Far Future Enterprises, the company of Marc Miller, the original author of the game. It has several different editions of the core game rules, all the supplements, add-ons, and tie-in board games from the original publisher.

I originally bought the game in print form shortly after its appearance in 1977. I bought the first version of the Classic Traveller CD about 3 years ago. It was a tremendous resource, but it had some flaws. Now a new version of the CD has been released.

It's a huge improvement over the original CD. It contains additional versions of the rules that were not included on the first CD. Errors and poor scans have been corrected. For example, the book Scouts was poorly scanned on the old CT CD:

The New Traveller CD Has Cleaner Scans. New CD Above, Old Below. New scan is sharper and has higher resolution.

New Traveller CD Character Recognition:

CHARACTER GENERATION
A character is initially generated by rolling 2D for each of the six personal
characteristics: strength, dexterity, endurance, intelligence, education, and social
standing. This initial step is identical to that for standard character generation.
College: Any individual has the opportunity to attempt to obtain a college education.
In the Scout Service, a college education is generally necessary for an individual
to secure assignment to the Bureaucracy.
Any character may apply for admission to a college. The admission throw determines
if the character is admitted and actually starts attending college; if the throw
is not achieved, the character remains age 18 and may then directly attempt to
enlist in the Scouts. Once admitted to college, the individual determines his or her
success in college for the full four years; if the success throw is not achieved, the
individual has aged one year (to age 19)

Old Traveller CD Character Recognition:

CHARACTER GENERATION
A character is initially generated by rolling 20 for each of the six personal
characteri~t8cs: strength, dexterity, endurance, intelligence, education, and social
standrng Tnos notla step s dsntical to that for sranasrd character genera! on.
C0I.g.: Any lnaivlobal has Ine op~ortunry la attempt to obra n s col sgs ed-eation
n tna Scnn Servlcs. a col eoe sa~cation:o "oeners l.v neceo osrv for an me v d ~ a l
to secure assignment to the Bureaucracy.
Any character may apply for admission to a college. The admission throw determine8
if the character is admitted and actually starts anendlng college; 8f the throw
is not achieved, the character remains age 18 and may then directly attempt to
enlist ~n the Scouts. Once admitted to college, tha individual determines hieor her
SUCCBSD ~n cdlege for the full four years; if the success throw is not achieved, the
indlvldual has aged one year Ito age 191

Missing pages and other problems have been fixed.

If you're looking for the best value in RPGs, check this out.

More Traveller RPG Than You Can Fit in a Low Berth

In the 1970s I regularly shopped at a local militaria/war game shop in Walnut Creek, CA called The Centurion. In 1977 they had a new game, called Traveller. When I bought it, the guy at the shop commented "I thought of you when I ordered this one. You're the first one to get it, let me know what you think of it." I was a sucker for anything in the way of science fiction games, so he had me tagged. If there was a blurry mimeograph in a ziplock bag with a spaceship on it, I'd buy it.

I still have the game today:

My original Traveller game from 1977

What's inside the box.

Needless to say, I like the game. A lot. For lots of reasons.

Fast Forward to 2007
Then, about three and a half years ago, I found out that Traveller had become available on CD. Not just the original game that I owned, but all the expansions that had been offered by its publisher, Game Designer's Workshop.

The Classic Traveller CD and the JTAS Magazine CD

All the expansions means:

All the additional rule books.
All the scenario, campaign, and adventure books.
The several board games related to the game.
The later editions of the rules.
Etc., etc.

In other words, a HEAP of stuff to read and enjoy.

As you can see from the picture above, I also bought another CD with it. That one contains the magazine "Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society", the magazine for the game. What a treasure trove of gaming stuff!

Fast Forward to TODAY
The Classic Traveller CD got an update earlier this year. It's got more versions of the rules, corrected and improved scans of some of the material from the new CD, and so on. For those that purchased the original CD, the new one costs only $7.

Unless you order an additional CD when you order the update. In that case, the $7 cost of the update CD is refunded. Since there are many different CDs for many different editions of Traveller available from Far Future Enterprises, it wasn't going to be hard for me to take advantage of that offer!

But Wait, There's More!

Not only that, but there's a special sale going on called 443. Buy three CDs and the fourth is free (thus Four for Three: 443), four for the price of three. Since two more CDs of "Classic" Traveller material were out, I was halfway there already. Add to that the CD of the latest version of Traveller, still under development (Traveller 5), and the forthcoming Traveller 4 CD (I have the core book for this version, but not some of the other books I've seen widely touted by other players on the web, which will be on this CD), and I'm good.

Today the mail held this:

My Amazing New Traveller CDs. One more will arrive after it becomes available at the end of August.

The T4 CD was a pre-order, so it's not in the picture. It'll be here soon enough. I've got plenty to keep me occupied until it arrives!

Here's the new Classic Traveller CD:

Bling! The new CT CD. Not just an amazing game collection, it also makes a great diffraction grating! Read the books as you use it to analyze spectra of far off stars!

Duke Norris has my back. There's nothing like having the nobility of the Third Imperium of Man keeping an eye out for your data. Beats counting on some drunken X-Boat driver to get it to you.