Cardboard on tables and lead miniatures
Hot phasers firing and dice that are yours
Primer and paint and some decals with bling
These are a few of your favorite things...

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Sunday, July 01, 2012 - 04:25 pm: Edit

I'm pretty sure ADB used to have SFU dice but they sold very poorly. Dice are expensive to produce, as well. So it's probably "No dice!" on dice.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Sunday, July 01, 2012 - 05:57 pm: Edit

I think part of the dice selling problem was that they were on sale around the same time as the interregnum when people thought SFB was gone forever, stuff was out of print and sales plummeted. CCGs killed a ton of game companies in that time and TFG bit the dust. I believe that SFU dice would do better if released now, because the word would get out better. ADB is on a upswing in popularity with increased sales and awareness. Traveller Prime Directive is about to launch and Tribbles vs. Klingons is on the horizon. I think there are some other ADB projects that may be released in the near future that will grow the SFU and I say as far as dice are concerned, strike now while the iron is hot. I am sure the Traveller dice helped the T5 and the Ogre dice helped the Ogre kickstarter. Look at what Zombie and Cthulhu dice have done for SJG sales.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Sunday, July 01, 2012 - 08:49 pm: Edit

Zombie Dice and Cthulhu Dice are complete games, though. I know SJG does seem to sell a lot of different kinds of Munchkin dice, which implies it's worth their while to stock them. Given their staggeringly high Munchkin sales it's not surprising that sales of supplementary items like dice are high. Even so, SJG is currently having a sale on Munchkin dice, which may indicate that they want to clear out residual stocks.

I suppose a run of themed dice could be made a part of a KS project as a stretch goal. But given that setup costs are so high, and minimum runs are in the 5,000 dice range, anyone making custom dice needs to be sure of selling them in a reasonable time frame before committing to producing them.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 01, 2012 - 11:54 pm: Edit

Jean, it might not look so odd if the part was off-center a bit. Or maybe had a few whisps of hair in the void. But that's just MY opinion.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jim King (Captainjonah) on Monday, July 02, 2012 - 06:50 am: Edit

Well if you are looking for an expanded market you have it with the Mongoose alliance.

Traveller and ACTA-SF use the same D6s.

Federation and Klingon themed dice would be useful for both games and given that they are the two high popularity races should sell fairly well. Romulan’s, Kzinti, Gorn, Orions, less so and other races not yet released.

Still it may be worth looking into. If people want a bag of Federation D6s or they want to roll 10 Gorn D6 for the plasma strike and the price is acceptable to people who are paying $100+ a box and $15+ a single ship then they will buy them.

Alternatively if the design has the ACTA-SF or SFU icon for the 6 then all you need to do is produce them is race colours which should be a bit cheaper than a race icon for every major race.

5000 dice is 500 bags of 10. How many people have bought those $100 boxed sets so far?

Or look at the big dice makers, find out who does D6s in what you would consider the "Official" colours for each race and faction and sort something out that way. So people are buying normal D6s but in Federation or Vulcan or Orion colours.

By Michael Bennett (Mike) on Monday, July 02, 2012 - 10:25 pm: Edit

It would be tempting to make stickers to adhere to the sides of regular dice (or cubes with actual arabic numbers). I wonder if Tony's decal company could come up with something like that?

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Tuesday, July 03, 2012 - 12:13 am: Edit

Koplow dice, make dice with Arabic and several foreign number dice, as well as blank dice and small round blank stickers to put on the dice for marking them.

By Lee Hanna (Lee) on Sunday, July 08, 2012 - 03:11 pm: Edit

One of my RPG groups sounded positive on the idea of a PD Traveller game. If that's what is chosen as our next game, is T-PD close to playtestable, or shall I make it up myself?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 02:36 pm: Edit

Cover

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, July 13, 2012 - 02:37 pm: Edit

Lee Hanna: I don't know if Jean needs another playtester, but do contact her and see. (She doensn't need my permission to add you to the list.)

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Friday, October 05, 2012 - 12:31 pm: Edit

If there's one thing you get right for Mongoose Traveller... I propose that it is mapping and mapping tools.

1) There are three levels of star mapping that are relevant to an SFU campaign. There is the broad brush F&E map level with all the capital worlds and starbases marked. There is the mid-level map showing the major points of interest within a single F&E hex. (This level corresponds to gameplay-wise to a Traveller subsector-- ie, there is enough here to run a long campaign with many adventures focusing on 5-8 worlds.) Finally... the sub-hexes of the mid-level can be broken down into sub-subhexes that map out every single stinking star system and weird stellar object.

My worked gaming samples are here:

This is messing with the F&E level:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4639

This is the mid-level:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4642

I haven't gone down to the lowest level of resolution, but I have thought of situations where it would be useful/fun to do that. Oh wait... I did start down that path somewhat in order to get a feel for the frequency of the various weird stellar objects:

http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=4646

2) Traveller has you pretty much fully map, place, and name all the major worlds of your campaign before you begin-- usually a sector's worth of stuff. The scale of the SFU is so big, that you can't do that. This is actually an asset because you can pretty much always make up and place something if you need it-- you're never limited by canon the way Traveller players complain sometimes.

3) For the world generation tools... if you did anything with them... I would propose that they be re-engineered to help GM's broadly sketch out regions... and then later filling in the details only as they're needed.

4) SFU GM's need to be cautioned/encouraged to make things up as they go and to slowly develop their own setting within the SFU framework. The framework really takes a load off GM's (what with F&E and SFB being so well developed), but the canvas is so great and the setting is so vast... there really is no limit to the kind of creative detail you can add when developing a hex.

5) The blank star map that you include with SFU Mongoose Trav should be something that lets you zoom in or out as needed for your campaign map. It should be possible to zoom into an every-stinkin' star system view... and then back to the subhex level... then to the F&E hex level... and then to a lower resolution of the F&E hex map with many F&E hexes per hex.

Note: My personal sub-hexing system was taken from Old School D&D wilderness gaming. It works really well, though you may want to fiddle with the number of subhexes per hex to get something that works better. A number of hexes that breaks up the 500 parsecs evenly would maybe be a better choice!! (Their approach is based on the utility of a 6 mile hex.) Also... the hex numbering pattern should probably match the F&E system.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, October 05, 2012 - 01:21 pm: Edit

The closest thing I can envision in terms of scaled-down maps are examples I've seen over in the BattleTech franchise.

For example, this map of the Inner Sphere c.3130 is set at a low enough scale to allow for individual star systems to be pin-pointed (in so far as the abstraction to a two-dimensional star field will allow); while the map key includes details like the maximum "safe" jump distance, to help work out travel times and suchlike.

Alternatively, there are more zoomed-out maps, such as this preview map of the Spinward quadrant of the Deep Periphery, c. 3095; unlike the Inner Sphere map, this one is more to show the various astronomical landmarks in this region of space (such as the Orion Nebula), as opposed to merely highlighting the political definitions shown on more detailed maps of the Inner Sphere. (But even so, it has a zoomed-in section showing the member worlds of the New Delphi Compact, one of the Deep Periphery states in this sector of space.)


One day, I would imagine that a broadly similar divide would be useful for certain RPG settings; such as, say, hex 0804, where the WYN Cluster could be shown as a terrain feature on a more abstracted-out map of the hex as a whole, but with a secondary zoomed-im map showing the star systems known to exist within the Cluster proper.

Or, perhaps, the border regions between hexes 5810 and 5910; showing zoomed-in details of the various capital and major colony planets, and a more abstracted map to give a more general sense of the Resource Worlds as was understood by the five pre-ISC species prior to the onset of tactical warp.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Friday, October 05, 2012 - 01:48 pm: Edit

Maybe I'm not making sense here, but... trying again:

1) The default Traveller mapping approach is not a good fit for Star Fleet Universe.

2) What I'm proposing is to break F&E hexes into subhexes-- a single blown-up F&E hex is the SFU gaming-equivalent of a Traveller subsector. GM's need to be told that fleshing out a single F&E hex is plenty of area for gaming an entire campaign. (But even then... they don't have to map out every-stinking-stellar object within that hex unless-- though the ability to completely map out a "sub-subhex" could be fun in certain circumstances... just like mapping out the other planets of a star system beyond just the main world is occasionally useful/fun/flavorful.)

3) The generic map-as-you-go and zoom-in-and/or-zoom-out system that I outline above should be the default approach for SFU-Traveller. It's workable, fun, and is a great way to manage the vastness of the SFU setting. Even better... it is also very Traveller-ish. (Traveller was always as much about cool tools for making things as it was a single fleshed-out universe to play in.)

You can't detail everything... so SFU-Traveller GM's need a system for detailing just the areas that their players are operating in... and that can be grown in a consistent manner as they range farther and farther through the universe.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, October 05, 2012 - 03:51 pm: Edit

Here's my theory, and Jean can feel free to tell me she (or Mike W) have another plan.

SFU is not travellerverse. The entire travellerverse is ONE F&E hex. SFU is a universe of sweeping scale. Every F&E hex includes at least 50 inhabited planets (ranging from a few dozen colonists up) and at least one each of every kind of astronominal/geographical phenomenon you can pick.

The only maps we're going to provide are the F&E maps. Each GM can do sub-hex maps as he sees fit. Later adventure books might include sub-hex maps for the campaign included in that book.

I'm ok with including a sub-hex map generating system if somebody other than me creates one that makes sense.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Friday, October 05, 2012 - 08:58 pm: Edit

I think one thing that get complex with breaking up an F&E hex is that once you do you have to consider galactic thickness too. Since one F&E hex is aproximately the thickness of the galaxy there is no going up and over.

If you break up a F&E hex into, lets just say five one hundred parsec hexes, you also will have five levels.

Of course, you could just ignore the z axis but you'll have to field questions.

I like SVC's theory. Seems wise given finite time.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, October 06, 2012 - 08:51 am: Edit

IIRC, LONG ago there was a comment that each F&E hex has something like 1000 points of interest. Be they colonies, mining operations, black holes or whatever.

Hence the darn police ships and Navy have to HUSTLE to get around to visiting them in any kind of reasonable time frame.

By Darren Kehrer (Kehrer1701) on Monday, October 08, 2012 - 05:37 pm: Edit

Just wanted to chime in on something under this topic. I don't own any of the Traveller products, but do plan on buying the PD book. I was wondering if ADB might consider just selling the Basic Traveller rulebook..making it much easier for those of us investing in PD Traveller who don't own any Traveller books. This way, it's a one stop shop...much like you do with MJ12 Starmada books. I can buy the Basic Rulebook plus the PD Traveller book to get me started.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Tuesday, October 09, 2012 - 03:25 pm: Edit

Okay, I'm doing a series of posts on game mastering. Here's the first one.

There's a million ways you could do that, I guess... but this series is based on experiences running GURPS, Traveller, and Prime Directive.

(If ADB needs this sort of practical roll-up-your-sleeves-and-game type of commentary as a part of Captain's Log, the company blog, or other books/magazines/supplements y'all do... you know where to find me. Or you can just link to me.)

I'm posting here because what I'm doing combining Traveller and Prime Directive may be relevant to the Mongoose project. If it isn't, I'll of course switch over to the RPGs-for-SFU-fans thread.

By Jeff Johnson (Jeffro) on Monday, November 12, 2012 - 06:32 am: Edit

This is my complete series on the sort of game mastering style that is liable to emerge when you start running a Traveller and Prime Directive game:

Everything is a Ruling
How Role Playing Games are Played
Framing and Reframing
The Elements of Adventure Game Situations
More Elements of Adventure Situations
Fractal Campaign Development

This is not so much me trying to develop something new for this sort of rpg... but rather... it's me trying to put down exactly what I did when I was running the game.

By Joshua I. Penick (Tricericon) on Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - 01:50 pm: Edit

I poked around and couldn't a more recent estimate for release date than "November" or so (which obviously didn't wind up working out). Is there a revised estimate out there somewhere?

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - 01:58 pm: Edit

Joshua, the big holdup was the hopes to have more deckplans. We're looking at early spring, well before Origins.

By Joshua I. Penick (Tricericon) on Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - 02:18 pm: Edit

Cool, thanks. Looking forward to it.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - 03:08 pm: Edit

Jean, this may have to wait until after your move to Texas, but have SVC and Matt thought about posting a periodic "State of the Joint Venture" update? i.e. where we are at on announced plans, as well as some ideas on what might be next.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Wednesday, December 26, 2012 - 03:31 pm: Edit

That's an interesting idea I think we try to keep folks up on the news through Hailing Frequencies (you can read old issues here: http://www.federationcommander.com/Newsletter/past.html). Are you thinking something more formal?