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Half of todays blog post is a shameless plug for my latest product, now available on DTRPG; ‘A Bunch of Fives‘ relates not what you get if insult someone (a punch in the gob) but five short scenario ideas for the Swyvers RPG by The Melsonian Arts Council.

The product is available for the princely sum of $1.00 and contains five varied scenarios in the format of the Classic Traveller supplement ’76 Patrons’, across 23 pages. In case your aren’t familiar with 76 Patrons, each scenario is provided with a brief description setting the scene and six possible outcomes which can be determined by the roll of a D6, or you just pick what you feel will be the most entertaining for your game.

The titles of each scenario are:

Frying Tonight
The Circus is in Town
‘That Bay Noe Rott’
Mesty’s Mess
Loves Young Dream

A Bunch of Fives is available via this link on Drivethru RPG. The download includes A5 and half US Letter formats, with colour and monochrome covers.

The second part is the announcement of a new supplement for Swyvers, called ‘A Swyvers Miscellany’. Launching via Backerkit on the 21st of May (if my calculation of the countdown is correct), you can sign up for the launch via this link: Get Ready for A Swyvers Miscellany
This will provide an expansion to the Swyvers RPG which includes:

A full pickpocket mini-game
An alchemy system
A grudge-tracking system
A robust serial killer generation system
New city generator
More monsters, spells, despots and building upgrades

By registering you can pick up a free copy of the Swyvers RPG for free, via redemption on DTRPG. The pickpocket mini-game is intriging as this is the basic premise of my scenario mentioned above, ‘A Circus is in Town’ and might help to enhance it.

I have also reduced the price permanently of my first Swyvers release, ‘The Relic‘ down to $1.29 which I hope will prove more attractive to prospective buyers.

Have fun…and don’t get caught by the Local Watch!

A few weeks later than I planned due to another family emergency (which involved cutting a holiday short) which has been temporarily been resolved for a few weeks at least, it feels good to be able to put my mind to writing a product review. I have several books to catch up with, kindly provided by the generous guys at Independence Games and Stellagama Publishing. Thank you for sending me these gents, my apologies for the far longer than planned delay in starting to get back into the swing of things. Real life is throwing me some unexpected issues at the moment, but I’m steadily working through them.

The Loki-class Q-ship is available from both the Independence Games online store and Drivethru RPG for $9.99 for the PDF or softcover book (and PDF) for $22.99. It grades a total of 49 pages including covers and OGL / copyright notice at the end of the book. The product is aimed at Independence Games own setting ‘Clement Sector’ which is Cepheus Engine compatible. Therefore you should be able to use this in any of your CE-based games with little modification.

When I first skimmed through the book, I had to do a double-take and thought I’d seen the ship design before; and thats exactly the point of ‘Q-ships’. In case you’re not aware of what one of these are, Q-ships first came into being during the First World War. German U-boat’s were a huge danger to British merchant shipping and Q-ships were specfically designed to address the problem. By covertly converting a merchant ship to include guns and weaponry, they would rely on the U-boats need to conserve torpedo’s and conduct their attacks on the surface. The merchants crew were trained to even react in the same paniced manner that a real merchantman would, in reality once the U-boat got close enough shutters and covers would come off revealing a deadly surprise for the Germans.

Fast-forward to the Clement Sector, so how does a concept from four-hundred years ago fit into the depths of space? This is where the book starts with the background to the Loki-class Q-ship. Pages 4 to 20 provide an enjoyable narrative describing how the Loki-class came into being; it starts with an initial ‘pained’ discussion between United States Space Navy senior naval staff in how to address an increasing problem with pirates attacking merchant ships in the Sequoyah subsector. This then moves to discussions with the manufacturer Boone Starship Industries (BSI) and how this ‘black project’ was kept under wraps (spoiler – no surprises, a ton of cash). By secretly fitting in a Loki within the normal Thorpe-class construction line, these heavily-armed merchants can slip unnoticed into the usual shipping routes. There aren’t many Loki-class ships, just five either commissioned or planned. However, their perceived presence in the shipping routes is enough to make pirates think twice about attacking a Thorpe-class merchant, which could be a Loki in disguise.

Page 21 begins with a breakdown of how the Loki-class differs from a standard Thorpe-class. Military-grade crystaliron armour, reinforced bulkheads, power supplies, fuel tankage, better Zimm drive and environmental support is a start. Weaponry is where the Loki packs a punch; we are talking capital ship-level kit here. Particle beam weapons and barbettes, beam lasers, middle launchers and sandcasters and gatling lasers which are hidden or concealed about the ship. Even though there is all this hardware installed, a certain amount of space is dedicated to ensuring that if the ship is checked by customs, it would pass without challenge or incident. For example, the cargo bay is fitted out in such a way that it would look like a normal merchantman and provides no idea that its cargo is much more deadly.

Pages 30 to 32 provide a set of game stats and costs breakdown listing how the ship is constructed. Pages 33 and 34 I had to check closely as it appeared that the spacecraft graphic had simply been repeated. Thankfully this wasn’t an oversight, on closer inspection I noticed on the second graphic you can see the previously hidden weaponry now deployed. Page 35 provides three side view variants of the Loki-class in different colour schemes also showing the additional weapons on show.

Pages 37 to 42 provide the obligatory ship deck plans and the book is rounded off with a short encounter describing what happened with the USS Loki went up against a pirate Rucker-class starship.

Though much of the book is narrative around the gestation of the Loki from first idea to a combat encounter, I found the book thoroughly enjoyable to read. Each section describing the background to the Loki made me want to read a bit more, but suffice to say I certainly wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with a Loki-class. I have a feeling I’d be heading for the escape pods very quickly. With some excellent illustrations from the ubiquitous Ian Stead and deck plans by the author Michael Johnson, I would certainly recommend picking up a copy of the Loki-class Q-ship, especially if you want to give your players a nasty surprise.

I would like to thank John Watts of Independence Games for very kindly providing a copy of the book for me to review.

It’s the birthday of the Alegis Downport blog today, I’ve been here for 15 years! I’m not going to post much, I’ve got a streaming cold and today is also significant in that my mom-in-law’s house sale finally completed yesterday. It’s been a hard, 15 months and aside from the closure of the services contracts, it’s ‘mission complete’.

Time for a holiday and some time to get back into reviewing and writing again.

In my scenario for the Swyvers RPG, ‘The Relic’ I mention how to print The booklet according to your page size preference. I’ve included UK / EU A5 size and US Half Letter formats, with colour and monochrome covers. You can purchase a copy over at Drivethru RPG for the meagre sum of $3.49 via this link: The Relic by Luna Greyt Publishing

If you’re not sure how to print the booklet, read on…

The first is to separate the cover from the rest of the booklet. In your PDF print settings (I’m using FoxIT PDF Reader, but Adobe or other readers will look roughly the same) you’ll need to use ‘Booklet Printing’ and set the print range as ‘2-29’.

This will print the booklet double-sided on A4 paper, with the ‘fold’ down the centre so it can be folded into an A5 booklet. The US Half Letter version follows the same principle.

Once you’ve got your booklet, you’ll need to print your cover. I use thinnish coloured card (check what your printer supports); go back to the print menu and in the pages field change the print range to just ‘1’.

This will print the cover on page 1 on the right half of the page, so we can now add this to the booklet.

To staple the booklet, I use a long-arm stapler with an adjustable guide to suit different page sizes. Bung a couple of staples in…

…and fold the booklet down the middle, which gives you the final product…

…in my example, I should have checked the adjustment on my stapler before applying the staples, which has resulted in the placement being slightly off centre when I folded the booklet in half. You get the idea though.

In the meantime, I’d like to thank the first person who has bought a copy of The Relic – I hope you enjoy it!

I was saddened to hear that one of my early science-fiction art inspirations Bob Layzell, passed away on the 29th of January. Bob was a prolific artist whose career spanned many decades and many visions of the future.

I first came across Bob’s work in the Terran Trade Authority Handbooks (TTA) by Stewart Cowley around 1978 when my parents bought me a hardback copy of the first book in the series ‘Spacecraft 2000-2100AD‘ (which I still have). Bob’s work could be easily picked out by the way that he signed his initials, combining the ‘B’ and the ‘L’ into a single digit.

In my view, Bob’s style of art always presented a grittier, grimier view of far off worlds. Spacecraft or vehicles always looked ‘less advanced’ or less shiny than some artists, especially when compared to more modern computer generated images. This isn’t a criticism; this made Bob’s work stand out and presented his own unique view of the journey to the stars. I hope Bob’s family don’t mind me reproducing a few of his images here so you can see his style (and you may even recognise a few from book covers).

Downthetubes.net has a more detailed article over on their blog (which also links to my other TTA / art website Digital Waterfalls which features covers of all the TTA and related books):

I would like to pass on my condolences to his family and friends and thank Bob for his inspiration, which has remained with me my whole life.

The past year has been a tough one, not only dealing with family matters (emotional and legal) following the passing of my mom-in-law, I have also had some mental health issues which forced me to take some time off work for several weeks. The mental ‘load’ simply got too much and I needed to detach myself from things whilst I let my overloaded brain heal.

Though friends from the Independence Games, Stellagama Publishing and Zozer Games have continued to send me products to review, I’ve found it tough to get into the right mindset to review them.

I therefore needed another way to still be ‘in the RPG world’ but use my creative skills. I’ve been wanting to self-publish some materials on DTRPG for a while and seeing the release of the Swyvers RPG, I saw the opportunity to tap into a new market and develop something.

I am pleased to announce that as of yesterday, I am now a publisher through ‘luna greyt publishing’. Named after my Vargr co-pilot Luna, I have launched a short-ish scenario for Swyvers by the Melsonian Arts Council called ‘The Relic’. If you play Swyvers, please take a look and I hope you find the adventure enjoyable.

It is available from DTRPG for $3.49 and contains 29 pages; a description of the product is available via the link.

Approaching writing and researching for my own little adventure has helped me sustain a continued interest in RPG’s, even though I’ve struggled to look at reviewing new products.

However, by approaching writing again from a different angle, I feel that I am getting there and look to be (hopefully) be in a better place to review products, for which I’m grateful to receive from the friends above.

‘luna greyt publishing’ won’t be for just Swyvers stuff, the intention is to write for whatever game system I feel I have an idea for. As long as I can get my head around the OGL, I’d like to get some Cepheus Engine stuff out there as well.

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me, hopefully 2026 will be a better year than the last one.

For my first review of 2025, I’m going to take a look at the latest edition of Zozer Games’s ‘Solo’ by Paul Elliott, for Mongoose Traveller. Paul very kindly forwarded me a copy to review and now I’m on holiday having sorted out some real life stuff (though things are still ongoing), it feels good to have the opportunity to write again. This review is an update to my original post back in 2017 where I reviewed the Cepheus Engine version, so there will be some re-use of text where the two books are the same or similar.

One of the ‘problems’ of the RPG gaming hobby is sometimes you simply don’t have any players to game with. This is especially true of old school gamers like me where real life, work, family make significant demands on our time and it can be difficult to set up a gaming session. For those in-between times where other players aren’t available, there is the solo gaming option. Different systems have provided solutions to this approach, Tunnels and Trolls is probably the most famous for its series of solo dungeons in the fantasy genre.

If your preference is to use the latest Mongoose Traveller RPG system, what are your options? There are some Traveller Solo adventures for Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition, but I can’t comment on these as I’ve never seen the book contents. However, if you want to try your hand at running your own solo games, Zozer Games Solo aims to provide a solution.

The book is split into five major sections;

How to Solo

Characters

Resolution

Building Plot

Write it Down

Campaigns (1-6)

Starships

Examples of Play

Random Tables

Blank Forms

The book is available from Drivethru RPG for $11.99, though at the time of writing it is available for a discounted price of $8.39. DTRPG provide the PDF version, whereas you can buy either a softback (approx $20.70 USD) or hardback (approx $31.78) copy of the book from lulu.com. This edition of Solo contains 178 pages. If you purchase a printed copy from Lulu and you send your receipt to Paul Elliott he will send you a free copy of the PDF which I think is a great offer.

How to Solo (Pages 8 to 13)

First of all Solo looks into the problems around solo gaming. In my experience, these can be summarised into four problems;

1. Trying to cover every single potential situation that could occur.
2. Trying to ‘randomise’ situations.
3. Attempting to make the situation ‘flow’ in a story-telling manner, so that it simply doesn’t feel like a series of dice rolls.
4. Not falling into the temptation of dismissing an unfavourable dice roll result and rolling again until you get the result you want, simply because its easier to deal with, or advantageous.

Solo addresses this by getting you to ‘take a step back’ and not necessarily worrying about having to try and cover every single potential solution, or to try and roll for it. Instead, it wants you to think about the storytelling side of the situation and the flow of the adventure. This takes some preparation and a bit of getting used to, but the ultimate aim is to try and create more memorable adventures; its more satisfying to recall that you managed to fool the broker into accepting those dodgy credits and escape the cantina rather than thinking ‘My Bribery-1 skill helped me get an 8 and then roll a 10 to escape the cantina’.

The Building Plot section covers this through the following headings; Random Encounters, Storylines, Character Creations and Spotlights. The latter heading describes where a couple of your group’s characters may not be getting any ‘screen time’ say, during a routine job. By randomly rolling a couple of words, it can reveal what they are thinking or may be intending and hence inspire ideas for the storyline.

Characters (Pages 14 to 19)

One of the most enjoyable aspects of gaming is to create characters and their background. Because Traveller / 2D6 SFRPG adventures tend to be more ‘group’ orientated (ie. you need many characters) Solo suggests that you roll up a number of characters with which to play. As there are a number of things that can happen especially if you are commanding a starship for example, you stand more chance of advancing through a situation if you have many characters ‘at your disposal’. However, rather than simply rolling up a series of character stats, Solo encourages you to think of the relationships between your group and introduce how they react to each other.

Paul has redeveloped the character generation section by combining a number of elements from the previous edition of the book and expanded it. It encompasses any relevant system-specific changes where Solo recommends it, to help you play the game in ‘solo mode’ such as removing the Connections Rule or skills such as ‘Homeworld Skills’ have been changed to reflect the Mongoose Traveller chargen process.

This is followed by looking at a description of Characteristics, Skills, Mustering Out and a Life Events table. This D66 table helps to build on the Mishap or Event table and describes some sort of unresolved aspect of the characters background. There is an odd typo in the PDF copy I reviewed, where the last three Life Events seem to be missing (64 to 66) compared to the Cepheus Engine edition; however I’m sure this will be corrected in a future update. *Update 31st July 2025 – this has not been corrected and an ipdated version is now available to download**

Resolution (Pages 20 to 29)

Page 20 starts with methods how to resolve random events and encounters. ‘Interpreting Success and Failure’ provides a table to help you decide on how much of a success or failure your roll results in. For example +6 or higher is an amazing success and could transform the whole plot. But a -6 effect is quite bad and there is some sort of additional disadvantage.

It can be tempting to resolve complicated tasks involving multiple characters going through each action in turn. ‘Scene Resolution’ takes a different approach asking you to think of what the group’s plan is and what they are trying to aim for? Think about how dangerous it is; is it a reasonably safe situation, or one where there is a distinct likelihood of injury or death? This is broken down with a couple of tables helping you to ‘Resolve a Scene’ and the ‘Consequences’. Alternatively you can take the ‘Yes / No’ approach (yes / no / and / but) or you can ‘Ask the D6’ where a die roll against the Person / Situation table can provide a catch-all if you’re not sure how to resolve a scene. Still stuck? Why not ‘Just Decide’? Don’t forget, the game is meant to be a narrative rather than a record of dice rolls. Rounding off the section pages 28 and 29 contain a couple of D66 Inspiration Tables with a series of useful headings. Its a neat system; you have to be honest with yourself and to a certain degree be disciplined in keeping to the roll result. However, because Solo encourages you to ‘storyline’ your adventure, this gives you the scope to elaborate and expand on the situation, which leads into developing the adventure further.

Building Plot (Pages 30 to 42)

Storylines are the heart of any adventure, but you need some tools with which to set up the initial details. It can be very difficult to think of everything from scratch, without some sort inspiration or structure and frankly off-putting. Solo gives you advice how to best create a storyline, without getting too hung up on the details.

The section titled ‘Random Encounters’ encourages you to use the tables in the Traveller rulebook, but with a more thoughtful approach. The author suggests not using the encounter simply as an event to get through, but as an idea or plot generator. What effect does the encounter have on the game? Try to link the encounter to into the game in some way rather than something that simply needs to be bypassed.

The next section looks at Non-Player Characters and the relationships and interactions they can have, within the game. There is a really nice table in D66 format which lists some of the potential relationships that the party have had with each other, here are some examples:- ‘Bickers’, ‘Competitive Rival’, ‘Knows a Dark Secret’ and ‘Divorced Over Differences’. This all helps to build backgrounds for the party (and makes for some interesting ongoing situations onboard a starship!) Solo has some tools (such as the ‘Reaction Table’) with which to make best use of these relationships and other tools to add contacts, enemies and other NPCs.

Not every encounter needs to link to some sort of action; leaving an event ‘hanging’ can help to lead to unresolved situations that can set up a story later or in another game.

Write it Down (Pages 43 to 45)

Writing it all down is a very effective technique which you are encouraged to do, there is nothing worse than trying to remember everything you’ve done / want to do and end up forgetting it. Using a diary is actively encouraged in Solo; keeping a written record is a much better way than trying to keep it all in your head. There a few suggested headings to help keep a record, such as ‘Allies and Enemies’ or ‘Storylines’.

Campaigns (Pages 46 to 126)

The original Cepheus Engine version of Solo contained four types of campaign, which were ‘Travellers’, ‘Star Traders’, ‘Naval Officers’ and the most extensive, ‘Survey Scouts’. These have been carried over to the current edition, with the addition of two more; Salvagers and Mercenaries.

The first campaign (‘Travellers’ – 4 pages in length) is broken down into a useful checklist followed by a series of events tables (Starting Situations, Missions and Speculation without a Starship) with examples such as situations to immediately throw the players into, onboard passenger ship events, ship malfunctions and world encounters. These will help to give your party a leg up in starting an adventure.

The next campaign format some people may recognise; the ‘Star Traders’ (7 pages long) section is based on an older Zozer Games title of the same name, which was published for the Mongoose Traveller first edition rules. I picked up the original Star Traders book some time ago so I was able to compare like for like. From what I can make out, this has been updated for the Mongoose Traveller rules set, reformatted and text updated to fit in with the rest of the Solo book. You start with the checklist with some tables to work through, which is structured to help make the aspect of trading a straightforward process. The Star Traders book was the inspiration for Solo as many of the techniques and solutions presented in the new book were incorporated from the original.

The third section ‘Survey Scouts’ (19 pages long) is the most comprehensive because it is potentially the most wide-ranging in scope. The section starts with giving you a structure with which to select your crew and a ship. The next few steps describe how to conduct a survey of a system. You then move onto how to actually survey a system and how star systems are constructed, namely the different types of planets and how they are made up. There is quite a bit of information presented here with plenty of inspirational tables, so you could spend quite a bit of time building a system ready to explore. Next you have ‘Landing and Exploration’, where you are guided on how to get to the planet and some of the survey problems that you could encounter. You could use this section with the original Classic Traveller introductory adventure ‘The Imperial Fringe’ that was included with the Deluxe Traveller boxed set, to help provide a bit more structure in surveying the Spinward Marches subsector.

The fourth section ‘Naval Officers’ (12 pages) describes the Interstellar Navy and Star Patrol. This could be a very useful section for developing traits whilst creating characters and adding colour to events. It follows the same structure with a checklist for how a Naval patrol would operate and some of the types of encounter you could come across. In addition, you’re provided with the types of crew that make up a Naval patrol and who to focus on ie. keep it simple and to your key characters, everyone else are played as NPCs. The character generation process is tweaked slightly to help you generate a character that fits the job required and not to wory about the full chargen process. The ‘Resolving Problems’ section helps you to work through some of the rolls made on the above tables and give you some pointers how to make use of them from the perspective of a Naval Officer.

The fifth campaign type ‘Salvagers’ (14 pages) is new addition to this edition of Solo and looks at those crew who want to try and get a big payout by recovering derelict spacecraft or rescue stranded low berth passengers. Or, you could be a prospector looking for valuable minerals in an asteroid belt. You’re given some pointers how to setup your crew (use the Scavenger Assignment from the Drifter career in the Traveller rulebook) and some suggestions for what type of ship would be suitable for this jack-of-all-trades role. How to conduct salvage and asteroid prospecting is covered in a couple of pages each, followed by a system to generate randomised interiors on spacecraft or space stations. This is a particularly useful system so that you don’t get bogged down by trying to find suitable deck plans to fit the situation. You could however, utilise the Starship Geomorphs book to help you make a space station or facility more ‘substantial’, especially if it turns out you may re-use the location in the future.

The final campaign setting is ‘Mercenaries’ which involves the player creating and running a small independent military force. The checklist provides for either one-off missions or the more involved battlezone mission. Mercenary units managed by the player are best kept to a maximum of 3-4 ‘core’ characters and have a second NPC team who are managed with a single dice roll for task resolution. This cuts down on the amount of operational management and paperwork you will have to do. You’re also made to think about the equipment your Mercenary unit will have to carry. This is no place for Snub Pistols and SMG’s, you’ll need some sort of rifle such as an Advanced Combat Rifle or Gauss Rifle.

You’ve given plenty of scope and inspiration for the types of mission you’ll end up with, but with some complications (you weren’t expecting things to go smoothly, were you?) An additional page describes a simplified way to resolve a firefight, hence its useful to have that second NPC team for a bit of cannon fodder…!

Starships (Pages 127 to 136)

Rather than using the normal starship combat rules, the author has presented a Fast-Play Space Combat procedure to help speed such encounters along. This is followed by six sample spacecraft stat summaries ranging from Scouts, Traders and Escorts. Three of these have associated Ship Books by Moon Toad Publishing, whereas the three that don’t have deck plans (which are based on the one common platform, the Zori) have a set provided on pages 135-136.

Examples of Play (Pages 137 to 150)

The original Cepheus Engine version of Solo included a large number of examples which were embedded into each section of the book. In this version, these have been moved to a separate part from page 137 onwards. To demonstrate what Paul is trying to put over, he’s provided lots of examples of how these processes work. This isn’t just a short paragraph or two, he takes each section and adds to it so as you work through the book, the whole process is demonstrated in great detail. The first example looks at the Scouts with a survey of a star system by four characters. The narrative demonstrates how the steps presented earlier in the book can be applied to make an adventure with a description and not just a record of dice rolls. The second example covers the Star Traders campaign and the third looks at the Mercenaries campaign.

Random Tables (Pages 151 to 168)

This section presents the Solo player with a huge resource with which to draw upon with a wide selection of tables to help you build your storyline. These range from for example NPC Reactions, World Encounters, Location Encounters, Ship Types and Reactions, Non-Passenger Ship Events, Ship Malfunctions, Patrons and their Missions.

Quick Reference Sheets (Pages 169 to 177)

The final part of the book includes some Quick Reference Sheets in landscape format for printing with key checklists, tables and record sheets.

Conclusion

Going back to my original set of problems when playing a solo game, do I think that the Solo book addresses these effectively? It’s a most definite ‘yes’. No book can even think it can cover every potential situation or variation by having large numbers of tables and charts; in doing so I think such a book would be so unwieldy and daunting to use that it would never be taken off the shelf. Solo addresses this by getting the player to think and use their imagination – it takes a bit of getting used to because there is an amount of preparation to do, but its certainly worth it. The book also offers enough structure and supporting tables to be a very useful reference tool not just for solo play, but also for group play with a referee. At the same time though it does present lots of tables later in the book, it doesn’t fall down the trap of trying to be too comprehensive which is what it is trying to avoid. I found the writing style engaging and well edited, any book that provides lots of examples is a plus for me as this always reduces the amount of time getting used to a new set of rules and reduces ambiguity in its interpretation. You get various examples ranging from multi-page narratives to short paragraphs, all of which are useful. Compared to the original Cepheus Engine edition, the book has lots of excellent monochrome and colour illustrations, the latter by the ubiquitous Ian Stead.

Overall, I feel Solo is an essential product not just for Mongoose Traveller but considering the new layout and additional content, with some minor adaptations you could easily use it for Cepheus Engine. This isn’t just for solo play as I believe there are many tips, tricks, guidance and tables which will prove very useful for solo players and referees alike. Therefore, I consider Solo as a highly recommended purchase! Finally, I would like to thank Paul Elliott for very kindly sending me a copy of the latest version of Solo to review.

I would also like to mention that there is also a version of Solo for the TAS Classic Traveller in LBB (Little Black Book) format which I’ll be reviewing in another blog post.

Since my last announcement, my family have been trying to work through the grief of losing my mom-in-law in December. Time is a great healer they say, though it’s taking some time to get our heads around things and deal with the estate. This is an ongoing process and I’ve taken some time out from writing to give me some space to help sort things out.

In the meantime, I’ve been slowly coming round to what I want to do with the blog and its direction. In the latter part of last year, there have been several changes in the Traveller RPG world including the transfer of the license to Mongoose and new product announcements from Cepheus Engine publishers.

There have been a number of other things to consider; the creep of companies use of Artificial Intelligence to trawl the internet to feed their LLM’s (Large Language Models) which has caused a great deal of consternation among artists and writers regarding the use of their work without permission.

I took the decision to remove the Classic Traveller posts because of concerns about the potential reuse of materials by Mongoose Publishing, depending on how their licensing model will work. In addition, the ‘threat’ of my musings being reused in AI LLM’s has been in the back of my mind and has took the steam out of my usual enthusiasm to write reviews and gaming articles.

I’ve been trying to reconcile this in my head and this has had quite a detrimental effect on wanting to write anything for a subject I enjoy, because of the ‘fear’ of all these companies wanting to steal ideas and writing. Today I had a bit of an epiphany and a thought occurred to me. When I started the blog, it was because I enjoyed writing and developing ideas for TTRPG’s. Instead of writing in fear of what might happen to an idea or article, why not just write because I enjoy it ? If there is a licensing or copyright issue, then I’ll deal with that as and when it happens.

I’m going to think of myself and the pleasure that writing gives me, rather than worrying about what might happen. Perhaps its a side-effect of my family’s recent bereavement, I’m not sure – but I certainly feel better about the conclusion I’ve come to.

Therefore, I’ve made the decision to republish my Classic Traveller articles and make them available to the public again. In addition, I’m going to start writing again and reviewing new products that friends in Independence Games and Zozer Games kindly have sent me over the past few months (thank you Paul and John!).

The blog posts will be gradually restored over the coming days and weeks, I hope you enjoy reading them and the new material for both Cepheus Engine and Traveller I want to write for. Thank you for listening and for the kind comments and feedback, it is very much appreciated.

I’m going to be pausing things on the blog for a while, unfortunately my mom-in-law passed way suddenly on the 28th of December.

As you can imagine, my family is completely numb and shocked. Therefore, I’ll be pausing things for a while whilst we grieve and concentrate on the important things we need to do.

Take care and thank you, Steve

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who kindly commented on my last blog post with the closedown of my Classic Traveller blog posts. If I haven’t got around to replying to you just yet, I will be as soon as possible and I won’t be going anywhere. If anything, I feel a bit more energised to focus on Cepheus Engine for my 2D6 sci-fi and I’ll be continuing my reviews and features along with anything else that catches my eye in the RPG world.

Moving swiftly on, in the space of less than a week, I’ve had two Kickstarter fulfilments delivered; the first was a digital delivery of ‘Sword and Sandals’ RPG called ‘Kal-Arath’ by Castle Grief and the second was the Swyvers RPG physical book by the Melsonian Arts Council.

I’ll be taking a more in depth look at both in a future article, however I’d like to show off a few snapshots of the Swyvers book as it is particularly striking with its red hardback cover.

It was provided with a supplement of the Marlough Docks, an A5-sized supplement detailing encounters, typical things that are going on and building locations.