Mongoose Traveller is out this week
If you haven't heard,
Mongoose Traveller is available this
week from all good stores! This is the core volume
around which Marc Miller's Traveller
5 is being built.
You can find details and previews here, on the Mongoose
Website.
We would be delighted to have reviews for the BITS
newsletter, and would also encourage to send your
reviews of this (and BITS products, obviously) to
sites like RPG.net.
Mongoose Traveller sent to the Printers
More can be found at their blog page: http://blog.mongoosepublishing.co.uk/
Thanks to Richard Talbot for spotting this!
FarFuture now taking pre-orders for Traveller 5
The price is $35 (there will be a print edition with less material later on) and there is a PDF with more details here. The main Traveller-5 web-page is here. Pre-orders get a number of freebies now.
Mongoose to Publish Traveller [Updated]
The UK's Mongoose Publishing are going to be the new publishers of Traveller.
Mongoose Press Release in full:
Traveller Returns!
After a near 10-year gap in which only reprints of the Traveller game system have been available, Mongoose Publishing becomes the centralised resource for Traveller titles with the publication of their core rule book Traveller: Science-Fiction Adventures in the Far Future, in February 2008. On this foundation, Mongoose will produce a supporting line of supplements, adventures, and sourcebooks detailing the official and original Traveller universe of the far future.
The materials published by Mongoose will be placed in and part of the canonical Traveller universe.
It is our aim to halt the fragmentation of the Traveller game, and reintroduce one solid system (based on Classic Traveller), with one source for the official Traveller universe.
But that is not all. . .
Mongoose Publishing Science Fiction RPGs
Mongoose will also be using Traveller in its licensed science-fiction properties (each featuring a Traveller logo).
We have pioneered this concept already with Runequest, publishing a rules set and supporting adventures and sourcebooks, then using the Runequest rules as the basis for other alternative fantasy role-playing settings, such as Hawkmoon, Elric and Lankhmar.
The first licensed setting to be produced using the Traveller rules set (and available in early 2008) will be Starship Troopers, a welcome return to bug-blasting action across the galaxy! Hot on its heels will be Strontium Dogs, based on the hit 2000AD comic strip. After that, who knows. . ?
To the greatest extent possible, we intend that there be a transportability of characters, concepts, and even equipment between the various systems. So, it will be perfectly possible for your Strontium Dog Bounty Hunter to land on a planet in his Scout/Courier, only to find him battling for his life against waves of Warrior Bugs – with no conversion needed between the games!
All games and settings will therefore be able to utilise the core supplements, such as High Guard, Mercenary, and 760 Patrons, while retaining their own character.
Open Gaming License
Once the rules for Traveller appear, we plan to make them available under the Open Gaming License (OGL). At the same time, we will issue a Traveller Logo License (TLL) which makes the Traveller logo and titling available to licensees.
Far Future will Publish T5
Far Future is proceeding with plans to produce the long-heralded Traveller5, initially as an extensive CD ROM package (estimated at 1000 pages) by the end of 2007, and a distilled 350-page Traveller5 Core Rules book in the first half of 2008.
T5 will be a superset of the Mongoose Traveller rules, providing detailed coverage of rules, concepts and history not available elsewhere. There will be cross-compatibility between Traveller and Traveller5, allowing you to use rules and supplements from each.
Traveller will be faithful to Classic Traveller, with an upgraded task and combat system. Traveller5 will be a superset of those rules, providing greater detail and more insight into resolving situations in Traveller.
Freelance Traveller website issues
As if the breakdown of the laptop with the master copy of the Freelance Traveller website wasn't enough (no loss of information, just some
maintenance software has to be changed, which is what's causing the hiatus there), the system running the Freelance Traveller Forums has
*also* failed.
We believe that we can recover the information, but aren't certain yet. We'll be working on that this week, and will try to
be back quickly. If we have to reconstruct, we have archives of the newsgroups in Unix mbox format through 2/11/07; unfortunately, we don't
have backups of user data, so users will have to recreate their accounts in the event of reconstruction rather than recovery.
The breakdown also affects the IRC "'bots" from #Traveller on Undernet and #Lonestar on Psionics (Brubek and the bridge); we expect to have those back up quickly; it's just a matter of locating some of the older versions of the code for them. More information to follow as it becomes available; please spread the word.
Traveller Miniatures coming from Ad Astra Games
.
The ships pictured here are the Plankwell Class Dreadnought, the Azhanti High Lightning, a Chrysathemum class Destroyer, and two Zhodani ships (a Zhdavldlitz class Light Cruiser and a Zhdiak class Light Destroyer). If you're interested in the chat about these new models, have a look at Ad Astra Games' forums.
Classic Traveller CD ROM arrives in UK
The text if fully searchable, and the index page is better than then MegaTraveller one if you prefer using that to navigate. There are three editions of Traveller on the CD ROM - Starter Edition, the 1981 Little Black Books and The Traveller Book. Everything else that GDW published is here as well.
For its cost, I cannot do anything but recommend it. I'll try and get a short review done for the next BITS newsletter.
Dom (BITS Webmaster)
Classic Traveller CD ROM Now Shipping
We are shipping (by mail
in the US; by air letter post to destinations outside
the US) the Classic Traveller CDROM today (Jan 3) and
tomorrow (Jan 4). I want to thank you for your
patience on this; we’re proud of the content
and we think you will like it.
The JTAS CDROM (if you ordered that one) will ship by
Jan 31. More CDROMs are in the works…
Marc Miller
Far Future Enterprises
The Far Future has suddenly got Cheaper! [UPDATED]
Comstar Games have just
launched their own online store, and are running a
40% price reduction promotion for a limited time.
Now, Comstar publish Avenger Enterprise's
Traveller 1248 range, and this is
included in the promo. The PDF versions of the
first two releases are around $9 each (less than a
fiver) at the moment. If you're not sure about
1248 as a setting, it's a good time to check it
out. And if you've already got the paper version,
you can get colour maps and the opportunity for
better quality printouts than the print books
contain by getting a copy. We don't know when this
promo ends, but thought we'd mention it in case
you haven't seen it already.
There is also a new supplement for Traveller
1248 with Small Merchant Ships in.
Updated 27 December 2006: The initial 40% off sale has ended now, but there is still a 25% discount on PDFs and 15% on print material in an 'End of Year Sale'.
Traveller Calendar launched in aid of Children's Charities
Jesse DeGraff, Andrew Boulton, and Wayne Peters have teamed together and released a 2007 Calendar for Traveller, which can be purchased from Lulu. $2.50 from every sale goes to Children's Charities, according to the website info, although it isn't specific which charities. If anyone has more info, feel free to let us know.
TML now live, back with Traveller Central
...is the link you want if you would like to resubscribe to the TML which has risen from the ashes of the QLI server failure, thanks to Rob and Todd.
Some members have automatically been re-subscribed, but not necessarily all as the full list wasn't available.
Welcome home TML, we're glad to see it was only a short temporal mis-jump.
Dom (BITS webmaster)
TML down due to Server Failure [Updated]
Dear TML,
I sent this notice out just after the server hosting the TML crashed but only had 80-some subscriber addresses then (the actual TML subscriber list has been offline until Hunter can restore the last backup). I've been trying to recreate the TML subscriber list and have over 350 unique addresses who've posted to the TML between 2004 and 2006. I'm sending this out to them too. I apologize if you received this notice before, and for multiple copies if you have multiple addresses subscribed. If you don't want an address on the TML (if we have to recreate it from this list), please let me know.
No update on the status of the server in the last week. We're waiting for Hunter to get the mailing list software up and running again.
Rob Davenport
TML listmom2
---forwarded message (11/16/06)---
As you probably know or have guessed, the machine hosting the Traveller Mailing List - travellerrpg.com (quiklinks.com) - suffered a hardware failure of some kind yesterday [11/14/06].
All data after 10/22/06 was lost also. So all TML posts and archives after 10/22/06 are gone from that machine. (I know I have archives on my machine of those posts, and others probably do also, so we should be able to rebuild the missing data once the machine is back up and running.)
Hunter Gordon, the owner of the machine, and the TML's benefactor, is hard at work getting things back up. His priority is the Citizens of the Imperium website (the main site, the catalog, order system, Moot and other forums), and then he said the TML is his next priority.
He didn't expect to get to the TML until early next week though.
I apologize for not having a complete TML roster to send this notice to everyone on the list. I'm sending it to the people who've posted in the last month. If you see any names missing from my to: list, please pass this on to them, or direct them to me here. (And sorry if you get two of these messages.)
If you're on the CotI website, Hunter has been posting some progress there, if you want to check up on things. But I wouldn't expect anything until next week.
Rob Davenport
TML listmom 2
-------
Tod Glenn posted the following:
The TML will go up on travellercentral.com if I don't hear
from Hunter by Dec 8. I can have the list running in nothing
flat, But I need to check with my ISP and see if he's going to
charge me for high bandwidth usage.
Tod
FarFuture.net Website is Temporarily Down [Updated]
[UPDATE 25 November 2006] - The site is now back up.
Slight Delay for Classic Traveller CD ROM
The New Era Continues: Traveller 1248 released in Print
In the UK they are
retailing for around £17 each, and should be
generally available. You can also get them as PDFs from
DriveThruRPG for $15 each.
The first book gives an overview and history of the
whole of Charted Space 46 years after the
Traveller: The New Era setting,
space that is very different, but in some ways feels
more like the Imperium of old. There is also a small
campaign setting in the book. The second book gives
details on the four sectors of space that are
occupied by the Fourth Imperium, plus details on the
various institutions (especially the military) which
may be found there.
BITS Members: we are hoping to have a review
of this in the next newsletter in the near future. If
anyone has a copy and wants to review it, please
contact us.
Classic Traveller CD ROM and Special Offers
The CD ROM retails at $35 plus $5.50 shipping to anywhere in the world. One of the big benefits is that the files are searchable either in Acrobat, or with a system wide search tool such as Spotlight in Mac OS X Tiger, which means you can find obscure references quickly.
Dom (BITS Webmaster)
The details of the announcement:
We (that is Far Future Enterprises) are pleased to announce the Classic Traveller CD ROM. Searchable PDFs of Classic Traveller.
Order now for shipping before Christmas (no surcharge for air letter post outside the US).
Details at http://www.farfuture.net/cdrom
plus three bonuses for direct download:
http://www.farfuture.net/cdrom/MTGuide.pdf
http://www.farfuture.net/cdrom/Tv1Guide.pdf
http://www.farfuture.net/cdrom/Tv2Guide.pdf
and finally, respond to this email (just reply is fine) and we’ll email you our PDF of Classic Traveller’s Fifth Frontier War (3,382 kb).
This was sent to you from
Far Future Enterprises
1418 N Clinton Blvd
Bloomington IL 61701 USA
farfuture @ farfuture . net
Far Future Enterprises releasing Classic Traveller, JTAS and Twilight 2000 CD-ROMs
Currently, he has released MegaTraveller and 2300AD. Shipping is fast (my copies of both took less than a week to get to the UK) and there is no extra charge of international orders. The PDFs the same quality as those on DriveThruRPG, but you get all of the books for a fraction of the cost. Details can be found here.
Dom (BITS Webmaster)
____
Here is the FFE press release accompanying the announcement:
We are please to announce our latest CD ROM projects from Far Future Enterprises:
Ships October 1-
Twilight: 2000 V2.2. the canon for Twilight: 2000-- the original texts of all Twilight: 2000 version 2.2 military role-playing materials published by GDW Game Designers’ Workshop between 1990 and 1996. Each image and text PDF contains original page images and searchable text. All files are printable in whole or in part.
v2.2 Rule Book
v2.0 Boxed Set
Infantry Weapons
US Vehicle Guide
Soviet Vehicle Guide v2
Merc:2000
Bangkok
NATO Vehicle Guide v2
Merc Gazeteer
Nautical and Aviation Handbook
Twilight Nightmares
Heavy Weapons Handbook
Special Operations
Castle by the Sea
Referee's Screen
Operation Crouching Dragon
Eastern Europe Sourcebook
Rendezvous in Krakow
Plus: The Official Guide to Twilight: 2000 - an overview of the game system and its components.
Plus: Challenge Magazine articles on Twilight from Issues 45 to 77 (all the applicable T2k articles for v2.2)
Ships November 1-
Classic Traveller. the canon for Classic Traveller-- the original texts of all of the Little Black Books in the ground-breaking and award-winning science-fiction role-playing game. Each image and text PDF contains original page images and searchable text. All files are printable in whole or in part.
The Traveller Book.
The Traveller Adventure.
Books 0 through 8.
Supplements 1 through 13.
Adventures 0 through 13.
Double Adventures 1 through 6.
Games 0 through 6.
Modules 1 through 5.
Aliens 1 through 8.
Special Supplements 1 through 3.
Plus: The Official Guide to Traveller - an overview of the Classic Traveller game system and its components, and the History of the Imperium - an overview of the background for Classic Traveller.
Ships December 1-
Journal of the Traveller’s Aid Society. all 24 issues of The Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society. Game Designers’ Workshop GDW’s award-winning quarterly magazine dedicated to the Traveller science-fiction role-playing game system. Each image and text PDF contains original page images and searchable text.
All files are printable in whole or in part.
CD ROMS are $35 each. International: There is no extra charge for shipping air letter post internationally.
Imperium 3k Firesale by Avalanche Press
Several years ago, Avalanche Press Ltd re-released
the game Imperium in a new edition
called Imperium Third Millennium.
Imperium was originally published
by the Conflict Games Company (which became part
of GDW) and presents the period and battles
described in the recent GURPS
Traveller supplement Interstellar
Wars when Terra was fighting for survival
against the Vilani First Imperium.
The main rules remained unchanged, but some of the
conflict rules were 'updated'. The graphic look of
the game was also modernised.
However, Avalanche have announced that
the remaining Imperium Third Millennium
stock will be destroyed after 4th July 2006 to
create space for new games. They are clearing the
remaining stock at $7.50 a box (75% off). With the
strong pound/dollar exchange rate, this may well
make a good saving, even with the $25 shipping to
Europe.