Conventions Calendar re-enabled
You can find this information here:
TravCon 08 - Final Report & Pictures
Neil has sent his final TravCon 08 report:
Saturday night ended with pretty much all the con attendees having a drink in the bar. Did we mention that the bar was open 24-hour? A couple of attendees checked the claim and found that yes the staff would serve until the early hours of the morning.
The TAS 24 hour bar.
Sunday started a little later than planed with two RPG games being ran. One by Max Kettley who was running his first con game for BITS.
Another group gave the combat system for the new Mongoose Traveller rule system a test run.
The afternoon session saw the end of one of the morning games and a short run out for the BITS classic scenario Family Business.
The Awards!
The con was wrapped up with a closing ceremony (posh term for getting everyone in the same room) hosted by our own Andy Lilly. A couple of
awards were handed out including the Ping, F*** It award. I'll leave the details so as not to get them wrong. With the closing ceremony ending with very long list of thank yous we all then started to thin out and make our weary way home.
Well that was the first of the resurrected TravCons. With a little bit of luck there will be a TravCon 2009, a bit bigger and obviously better.
--
All the best,
Neil
All pictures from TravCon 08 can be found here.
If you want copies of the higher resolution images and you attended TravCon 08, please drop us an email.
TravCon 08 - Survived! UPDATE 3
As TravCon 08 draws to a close, an update from Andy:
Bloody 'ell, we did it!
I'm going to have a quiet meal (non-Indian) and drink (non-Carling), relax (non-gaming) and tomorrow hopefully I'll pull together the pictures I took
and post them up.
Should be plenty of material for the next newsletter.
Thanks to those who made it a success. Missed those of you who couldn't make it.
Andy
Andy Lilly
BITS UK Limited (British Isles Traveller Support)
TravCon 08 - Traveller and Curry! UPDATE 2
Once again, our fearless
Hello again,
We've just got back from another fine curry. The afternoon slot saw another three games of Traveller. The evening slot is just about to kick in with a couple of games being played. We'll have to see what the morrow brings.
Highlights of this afternoons session were Cold Dark Grave get another run out and the fine George Wright's beer brought along by Derrick. Yes, Neil was able to find six players who'd never played Cold Dark Grave!
The prediction for Man of the Con goes to Simon who looks to be trying to run the whole of the Angel's Share saga at the con. All the best, Neil
Hopefully pictures tomorrow!
(Angel's Share is the new mini-campaign being prepared for publication by BITS.)
TravCon 08 is underway! UPDATE 1
TravCon08 is underway! BITS' very own Neil McGurk reports:
Hello from TravCon 08 to all who aren't just outside Sawtry.
We're well into the Saturday morning session now. Three games of Traveller played last night. The evening ended with a large game Chez Geek in the 24-hour bar! Won by Derrick, who then continued to drink until 4am.
We've now got three games of Traveller being played, with a couple more planned for this afternoon. Hope to get a couple of updates out during the rest of the weekend. The WiFi isn't free but it is cheap.
All the best, Neil
Hopefully we'll have more news and pictures this weekend.
Dom
LAST CHANCE for TravCon08
This is your LAST CHANCE to register for TravCon08!
There is less than a week to go until the Con opens this coming weekend...
Demand for places has been good, however...
...we have ONE room left (as work/illness have cut the BITS team attendance) and we also have a number of day tickets available, and would welcome more people who want to play or referee Traveller (of any flavour). Come and take part in the UK's premier Traveller RPG convention, and even try out the new Mongoose Traveller playtest rules!
IMPORTANT: You must pre-register for day tickets, as they are not available on the day. Day tickets are £15 Saturday, £10 Sunday.
Register HERE!
New BITS Newsletter Available
Conpulsion 2008, Edinburgh, 22-23 March 2008
BITS will be demoing 4 linked adventures (1 per slot) at Conpulsion 2008 at Edinburgh University, 22nd-23rd March 2008 for those of you living in that part of the world.
We'll be using the Mongoose Traveller 3.2 Playtest document as the rules unless MGP get the main rulebook out by then.
We'll be running In Search of Angels, The Rock, Ice Work and Ghosts from the Past in sequence detailing the travels of the crew of the Angel's Share in the Spinward Marches just after the Fifth Frontier War.
Conpulsion is an excellent con so if you live in that part of the world come along as there seems to be plenty on:
http://www.geas.org.uk/conpulsion/index.shtml
TravCon08 Registration now Open to All
BITS is proud to announce TravCon08 UK is now open to registration for everyone after two months as a BITS member exclusive. There are limited numbers of places left, so book soon!
This is the rebirth of the convention we used to run at Hebden Bridge, but this time down south near Sawtry.
Register HERE!
Happy New Year!
And what a New Year it promises to be, with Mongoose Traveller and Traveller 5 due out, not to forget the forthcoming TravCon 08!
Speaking of Traveller 5, the bundle of pre-order stuff arrived here so we'll hopefully have some thoughts on it for you soon.
Wishing you all well,
The BITS crew.
Update: 20 Jan 2007
Sorry this is so late going up, but we've been suffering broadband issues.
TravCon08 Registration open to BITS Members
BITS is proud to announce TravCon08 UK is now open to registration from BITS members. This is the rebirth of the convention we used to run at Hebden Bridge, but this time down south near Sawtry. Details can be found in the BITS members area of the website.
We will open the registration to everyone shortly.
UPDATE (3/12/07): The minor glitch on the electronic registration page is now corrected.
Dragonmeet 2007 is Today!
We are pleased to remind
you that we are attending Dragonmeet 2007 at
Kensington Town Hall today (1st December) from
10.00am.
We have the usual trade stand full of new and second
hand Traveller merchandise, dice,
figures and other fine products manned by
BITS Director Andy Lilly. Usual
BITS member discounts apply at the
show.
The BITS Demo Crew are also be
present running a series of new adventures including
the Angels Share scenarios (In Search of
Angels, The Rock and Ice Work)
in both morning and afternoon slots. Throughout the
day we will have exclusive previews of the new
Traveller Starship miniatures by
Ad Astra and will be running demo
games of our Power Projection: Fleet
starship combat game.
New BITS Newsletter Available.
Dragonmeet 2007 - Yes, we'll be there!
We are pleased to
announce we will be attending Dragonmeet 2007 at
Kensington Town Hall on 1st December from 10.00am.
We will have the usual trade stand full of new and
second hand Traveller merchandise,
dice, figures and other fine products manned by
BITS Director Andy Lilly. Usual
BITS member discounts apply at the
show.
The BITS Demo Crew will also be
present running a series of new adventures including
the Angels Share scenarios (In Search of
Angels, The Rock and Ice Work)
in both morning and afternoon slots. Throughout the
day we will have exclusive previews of the new
Traveller Starship miniatures by
Ad Astra and will be running demo
games of our Power Projection: Fleet
starship combat game.
Newsletter - Final Call for Submissions
newsletter due to be released October 2007.
Articles should be submitted by email in plain text, RTF, MS Word
(10pt Arial) or Open Office (10pt Arial). Formatting should be as
plain as possible.
We are especially looking for artwork to grace the pages of the new
look Newsletter so if anyone wishes to submit artwork as well please
email:
richardtalbotuk@yahoo.co.uk
or alternatively
bits@bits.org.uk.
We are unable to reimburse authors/artists for newsletter articles/art
but full credit will be given. Consideration is being given to a best
article prize so watch this space.
Thanks and anyone with queries feel free to drop me a line.
Richard Talbot
BITS Newsletter Editor
GenCon UK is nearly here!
BITS
will be attending GenCon
UK 2007 between August 30th and
September 2nd at Reading University (http://www.genconuk.com/).
BITS Director Andy Lilly will be
bravely manning the trade stand with a wide range of
Traveller merchandise including our
own range of Little White Books, with our most recent
release Cold Dark Grave by Dom Mooney and
Universe software and a good selection of
new and second hand gaming products.
On the gaming front Richard Talbot, Neil McGurk and
Peter Trevor will be running a range of 3 new
Traveller RPG adventures during the
3 timed slots at 9am, 2pm and 8pm.
We will also have a demo table of Traveller:
Power Projection Fleet and
Escort with games timed during the
day at 9.00am and 2.00pm.
All our slots are now bookable via the GenCon website
and cost two gaming tickets per game.
BITS are also looking for a brave
volunteer to help run some of the sessions so if you
are attending GenCon or just even
thinking about it, drop an email to richardtalbotuk
at yahoo.co.uk or bits at bits.org.uk (or use the
contact form on the site here) and let us know!
GenCon do provide some benefits for
GM's depending on how many slots they run so check
out their website for more information.
TravCon 08 is coming...
The hotel is comfortable, with en-suite facilities in all rooms, has ground floor rooms for a limited number of disabled attendees and a couple of conference rooms for gaming. The hotel provides breakfast; lunch and dinner venues include an adjacent Indian restaurant, small snack shop, or take-away from nearby Sawtry.
To help people plan their days and to give everyone a chance to play in several games, we will be organizing the weekend into a morning, afternoon and evening gaming sessions, with the opportunity to play BITS scenarios or to bring your own adventures to run (preferably having notified us so that we can advertise games to the attendees well in advance of the con). We also intend to run fun competitions of both Power Projection starship battles, and At Close Quarters miniatures skirmishes, there will be the BITS trade stand and a Bring & Buy (for any roleplaying stuff you want to try to sell to other attendees) and more fun stuff as we get it organised.
We’ve organised a deal with the hotel which gets attendees an ensuite room, Friday night to Sunday afternoon, B&B, including full con entry, for just £99 for BITS members.
Watch out for further details as they appear here on the web site.
New BITS Newsletter Available
Cold Dark Grave and Power Projection: Escort now available in the USA
Power Projection to be printed in the USA
BITS are
proud to announce closer ties with yet another game
publisher. Following on from our collaboration with
Jon Tuffley at Ground Zero Games to
produce our much-applauded
Traveller starship combat system
Power Projection, we are
now beginning printing of the Power
Projection: Fleet rules through Ken
Burnside at Ad Astra Games in the
USA.
We continue to have stock of the original UK
printings of both Power Projection:
Escort and Fleet, but this
agreement allows us to produce and distribute the
updated version of Fleet more easily
in the USA. We will continue to stock and distribute
the original UK printing to distributors, mail order
customers and at conventions, but will replace these
with the US-printed version over time.
We will only be printing Fleet at Ad
Astra; though Escort is a useful,
and fun, lead-in to Power
Projection, the economics of printing meant
it wasn't worth producing Escort in
the USA: for our first out-source to Ad Astra we
wanted to focus on the complete rules set in
Fleet and see how it went.
We intend to collaborate further with Ken and his
team at Ad Astra on future projects, just as we
continue to work very closely with Jon at Ground Zero
Games with our upcoming Power Projection:
Reinforcements book.
Andy Lilly
http://www.bitsuk.net/
http://www.powerprojection.net/
Power Projection site updated
This is a conversion of
the Traveller T20 Saberwolf Block 1
Fleet Destroyer into a Power Projection SSD. If you
want the full details on the ship (the blurb and High
Guard style stats and picture), you'll need to buy
the excellent Traveller's Aide #7: Fighting
Ships from RPGNow or QLI directly.
Have fun blowing things up!
Dom
Delays in Responding due to New Arrival
Scenario Playtest (16th December 2006, Edinburgh)
Masks sets the players in the middle of the Fifth Frontier War as the Zhodani (psionic humans) prepare to invade your planet. But the dreams have been bad, very bad... (6 slots free, 4 hr adventure)
Richard Talbot will be playtesting this new scenario at ORC Edinburgh at 13.00 hrs on 16th December 2006. 6 players required. If you fancy coming along drop Richard an email.
Autumn Newsletter now available
We're happy to announce
to BITS members that the latest issue of the BITS
newsletter, the Autumn issue, is now available for
download through the secure Member's section of the
site. All members were emailed a username and
password yesterday. If you're a member, and
haven't seen this email (from the YahooGroup), please
let us know via the contact form and we'll try and
sort things out.
Dom (BITS Webmaster)
Changes to the website
This has meant that I had to upgrade the 'theme' which provides the common formatting for the pages, which went smoothly as far as I can see. However, I haven't tested each and every bit of format and function, so I'd like to ask you to let me know here (via the comments to this news entry) if anything doesn't work as expected.
The 'BITS Members' section has been removed as I have completed the initial testing. It will return, and members will be contacted with details on how to access it. Our plan is to make the newsletter available through it rather than requiring YahooGroups membership.
Dom (BITS Webmaster)
Testing, Testing...
Holidays at BITS Central
The current security problems for air travel are also proving problematic - there were plans to take a laptop to continue with the new books and updates to current books, but this is changing to hand-written edits. If you've seen hold baggage being handled, you'll understand why the thought of putting the laptop in the hold isn't attractive.
Dom (Webmaster)
Brave New World
BITS Member's Newsletter due soon!
Welcome to the New Look!
Just to reassure all our
avid followers out there, the "little white books" of
Traveller are still in production,
with 101 Starcrews being our latest
Traveller supplement. However, as
each of us on the team grows that little bit
older, our time for Traveller
becomes necessarily constrained by personal
commitments to our partners, children, jobs, etc.
Of course, should any of us ever win the lottery,
we'd be able to give up our jobs and do this full
time. Alternatively, if any of you out there have
a few million pounds to spare, please get in
touch.
Once again, welcome to our site - I hope you find it
useful (please send us your comments). We
hope to keep it regularly updated with information
on our latest work, including new products and
our planned attendance at conventions.
Andy (Chief BITS Disorganiser)