Original box I bought in '81, we had been playing since '79, though I waited to get the upadeted rules. Dice might be original, or might be from Squad Leader. #TravellerRPG#MayDay
@nyrath@Robert_Brandt well said. that little fiction blurb was like a taster of what TTRPG experience is at its heart and at its best. using words to stimulate our minds and paint worlds and adventures which exist only in our imagination
@nyrath@synlogic All of it, there were the digest sized books in the racks, micro- and task force games in plastic bags, deluxe bookshelf games from AH and SPI, all sorts of magazines such as the Dragon, General, White Dwarf, and The Space Gamer. It was heaven, and that's just scratching the surface of hobby shops.
Star maps. It was no small undertaking making over thirty maps, the most accurate still I have found for an RPG. I also created a unique, and plausible setting. Inspiration was drawn from solstation, and Winchell Chung's maps on atomic rockets. Using the same orientation as NASA JPL, and data from places such as the internet stellar database, simbad, and exokyoto; closest I found was gruze, seems they used similar sources. Each map is its own astro synthesis database, which was discarded ...
I am hearing James M Ward, the designer of many games, including one of the first Science Fiction RPG's Metamorphosis Alpha has passed, very sad, my condolences to his friends, and family. 😢 #JamesMWard#MetamorphosisAlpha
@nyrath I liked it too (I like 3D maps a lot), I agree that with knowing the game vs being new to it was a real advantage. I have a lot of other microgames, car wars etc.. I am still a big fan of inexpensive gaming.
@Robert_Brandt@nyrath I was "present at the creation" (or, well, playtesting) of Diadem, one Saturday evening at Waterloo (owned by Scott Bizar's parents) out in Stony Brook.
A thing that makes it difficult in doing hardish SF in a RPG is that the players will simply ask the GM the results w/o doing the calcs. Which is entirely normal, as that is what people would do in real life is ask the ship's computer. The rub lies in that the computer was an NPC run by me, so I was loading myself up with the extra rules. Lesson: KISS. #KosmicRPG#CepheusEngine#TravellerRRG#ttrpgDesign