Monthly Archives: May 2019

Expanded Frontier Map – update 2

Okay, this project has obviously grabbed my interest as I’ve spent way too much time on it recently. I’m actually writing this before last week’s post goes live and I had to force myself to write the campaign post rather than this one. If you haven’t read the first two parts of this series, they are here: part 1, part 2. So what’s new?

Names

First up is names. I had mentioned that I needed to do some tweaking on the black and white version of the map before I was ready to release it with all the stars labeled with their designations. I sat down and did that one day while my daughter was at soccer practice. That gives us the updated big map.

All of the systems (and a few just on the edge) of the original Frontier map (from the Alpha Dawn rules) received an “FS” designation for “Frontier Sector” The few beyond were either afterthoughts that I missed the first time around or ones give that designation in the Beyond the Frontier series of modules. There are 56 of those systems.

All the other systems on the map received an “OFS” designation for “Outer Frontier System”. There ended up being 227 systems with that designation for a total of 283 star systems on the map. The OFS designation dates from when I first made this map way back in the 80’s.

After reading the Beyond the Frontier series of modules, I had the idea for a campaign where the PCs ran an operated a series of exploration missions into the region that Zeb’s Guide declared to be the Rim. I created this map and designated the stars beyond the original Frontier with OFS numbers. The numbers on this map do not correspond to those original numbers (especially since I had to move some systems around to match the Zeb’s Guide map) but that’s where the concept came from.

This is the map of the Expanding Frontier. If I ever place adventures or locations in one of these systems, I’ll use these designations so you can find them.

In addition to adding designations to the larger map, I added the capability into my map generation program to print out the names of the star systems. Currently it randomly generates a name based on the systems coordinates in the random generation portion but reading in data from the file for the Frontier I was able to give the actual names of the systems, either their name or the FS designation. Running the program with that capability results in the following map.

I’m using the Copperplate Gothic Bold font for the text. I just really like the look of that font with its small caps and serifs. It’s the same font I used on the black and white version of the map.

Again, I’ve done nothing to tweak the positions of any of the labeling on this map. That will be a final step that will have to be done by hand. Another behind-the-scenes change I made to the code was to have the output created on different layers. Thus the black background is one layer, the grid is another, the stars a third, the jumps a fourth, and the names on a fifth. That way you can turn each layer on or off as desired when generating the final PNG or JPG file from the SVG file.

Star Scaling

You may also notice that the neutron star jets are larger compared to the one in the previous post. I figured out how to properly scale the symbol for the neutron star to match the others. There were some other internal tweaks to the way I did the scaling in the program that make it more robust and will allow me to do things in a more controlled manner in the future.

Nebulae

With the scaling and the names done, it was time to tackle the nebula.

In the interest of seeing if I could just do the final map if the program drew the stars, names, and jumps (since I have nebula shapes on the black and white map), I decided to sit down and play with Inkscape to see if I could come up with a way to get a nebula effect using the filters built into the program.

I had looked around on-line and there were some examples of how to do a full image, or do make a random nebula and cut it out to paste into your image, but nothing that would take an already determined shape and make something that looked like a nebula out of it. So I was on my own.

This is where I spent way too much time on the project in the past week but I was having too much fun to stop. In the end I did come up with a way to make nebulae that I think I can reproduce within the program itself. It will be specific to rendering the file in Inkscape, but since that’s a free, open-source program, I don’t feel bad about making that a requirement.

Here’s a sample nebula created by this process (which I’ll describe in a minute).

Once I figured out the filter combination to use, I was excited and tried it on the full color map using the nebula shapes from the black and white one. And it failed miserably.

It turns out that the patterns generated depend on the scale of the map and my maps generated by the program were using pixels as the scale while all the test nebula I had been doing were using millimeters, which were off by a factor of almost 4. So I was getting way too much variation across the shapes.

So I had a couple of choices. I could either take the shapes, put them in a document with the correct (mm) scale, generate the nebula patterns, and copy them back into the final document. Or I could figure out a way to make it work in the computer generated document.

I spend a lot of time playing with the filters and making changes to the filter settings trying to come up with something that would work in the programmatically generated maps but in the end I couldn’t find anything that was easy to apply that I really liked. (Or even something that was hard to apply that I liked). In the end I changed my program to output the files, still using pixels, but using millimeters as the scale parameter and things work out just fine.

Using the shapes from the black and white map, and playing with different color schemes to test them out, gave me the following map.

This is first attempt, the final map will have different colors and shapes in the end but I wanted to see what it potentially would look like and play with the color combinations to see what I liked.

The nebulae really bog down the rendering when they are all done so I’ll probably put each of them on their own layer that I can turn on and off as needed to speed things up.

How to make a nebula

So how exactly did I make these? Once I figured it out, it’s actually fairly quick. First, draw a rough shape of the nebula.

Next, apply two Texture filters. The first is the “Crumpled Plastic filter” (Filters->Textures->Crumpled Plastic). Which gives us something like this:

This isn’t the most intuitive filter to apply but bear with me. The various ridges and color variations provide the structure of the nebula when we get to the next step. Next apply the “Watercolor” texture (Filters->Textures->Watercolor). And now we have a nebula.

You’ll notice that it shifts the shape somewhat. That’s fine by me because I’m going for the effect more than the exact shape. If the shape is more important, there’s another filter you can use which I’ll talk about below. It also expands the nebula a bit and can make it go outside the original area.

Next we need to add the color tones. This takes several steps. First duplicate the nebula and change the color of the second one. In this case, I’m changing it to purple (#ff00ff).

Next shrink the “interior nebula” with the new color. I did this using the Path->Inset command ( ctrl-‘(‘ ), applying it 2-5 times. Then select the “outer nebula”, i.e. the original one, and make it a little larger using the Path->Outset command ( ctrl-‘)’ ), again applying 2-5 times. If that makes everything too big, you can leave the outer nebula size alone and just shrink the inner one. You might also play with the opacity of the “inner” nebula and maybe change the fill from solid to a radial gradient. Just play with it to get something you like.

In this particular case, I expand the outer nebula 4 times, shrunk the inner nebula 5 and gave the inner nebula a radial gradient on it’s fill instead of it being solid.

Add in the black background and your done.

One thing I discovered is that if you move the shape around on the image, it changes the shape of the nebula. If you want to move it around without changing the shape, you have to first copy it and then re-paste it back into the image. That locks it’s parameters and you can no longer change it.

Also, another filter that you can use for a slightly different effect, either in place of the crumpled plastic filter or the watercolor one, is the Inkblot filter (Filter->Textures->Inkblot…). This one has some knobs you can tweak so you’ll have to play with it a bit more. If you want to keep the shape of the final nebula closer to the original shape drawn, you might want to use this filter instead of Watercolor with low horizontal and vertical inlay parameters. I just like the combination above a little bit better.

The great thing about these filters is that you can store them directly into the SVG file. So I should be able to make the nebula directly in the files although they will now only work with Inkscape instead of any generic SVG rendering program. To me that’s a small price to pay.

Up Next

The next step on this journey is to get program to read and write the nebula shapes from a file. Eventually, I’ll also want it to randomly generate nebula on the map in places where there aren’t any stars or jump routes. I have ideas on how best to do that, I just need to play around with the code to make it happen.

How do you like the nebula on the color map? Which color combinations do you like best? Are there others that you think I should try? Let me know in the comments below.

A Module Based Campaign – characters

As part of the “Module-based Campaign” posts, I thought it would be a good idea to have a set of characters to go along with the series to demonstrate the skill progression as they go through the adventures. It would also help me gauge the amount of additional XP needed between the modules to prepare them for the next ones.

To that end, I’m presenting a party of six PCs that will travel along on the adventures with us through this campaign. In this post I’ll present their starting stats and the updated ones after the Volturnus series, with XP added for Starmist but not spent. Going forward, I’ll post updates to the characters at the end of each installment in this series of posts.

Guidelines for skill increases

Each of these characters is progressing towards getting a spaceship skill per the standard Knight Hawks skill rules. They’ll need those skills to play in the modules starting with SFKH0: Warriors of White Light. As such, I’ll be developing the prerequisite skills needed.

In addition, I assume that the characters are not laser focused on that goal and will add branching skills to diversify their skill sets. They may not be as good as one of the other players in this other skills but if separated and in a bind, they might be able to pull something off. It’s been my experience that players will typically drive hard on their main skill but also pick up a variety of others along the way and I’ll represent that in the skill lists of these PCs.

Finally, in the standard rules, ability scores don’t really play into the skill chances except with military skills. As such, for Technological and Bio-social skills, there is little to no incentive to increase ability scores to get skill improvements. In the military skills, since the skill computation is one half the ability score plus 10x the skill level, and ability scores are increased at one point per XP, it doesn’t really make sense to start increasing DEX or STR until it costs more than 20 XP to increase the skill. Which means level 6 (the max) for military PSA characters and level 3 for non military characters.

Now this dynamic changes a bit if you have a lot of weapon skills as each point into a characteristic increase all your skills so you might shift a little sooner if you’re a military PSA character. Regardless, I’m going to focus more on the skill levels than the characteristics while improving these PCs. You might do it differently but that’s the fun of the game.

With the preliminaries out of the way, let’s meet our band of heros.

Starting Characters

These are our starting characters as initially rolled up (and yes, I did roll them up randomly).

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 1, Beam 1

Notes:

Born on Hentz, Araks. Yanni likes to tinker with gadgets and vehicles.  She’d love to be able to tinker on starships as well.

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 0

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 1, Environmental 1

Notes:

Born on Pale, Truane’s Star.  As Mekar will tell anyone who asks, his job is to understand the local critters and keep everyone else in one piece. [Mekar will eventually have a Rocket Weapons spaceship skill but getting a bio-social PSA character there takes a bit of work.]

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 0

PSA -Techological

Skills: Computer 1, Projectile 1

Notes:

Born on Inner Reach, Dramune.  Dolnab loves to tinker with computers and also play flight simulator games. 

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 0 

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 1, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Minotaur, Theseus. Michaella grew up as the youngest of seven with six older brothers.  She learned to shoot and hold her own with her brothers’ rough-housing at a young age.

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 1, Martial Arts 1

Notes:

Born on Terldrom, Fromeltar.  K’sta’n has always had an interest in weapons, but also in the forms of the various martial arts.

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 0

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 1, Robotics 1

Notes:

Born on Gran Quivera, Prenglar.  T’vor used to hang aout at the University of Prenglar as a kid and chat up the tech professors.  He loves to hack computers and robots and can usually get anything working, eventually.  He also has a deep interest in astronomy.

So that’s our team – two yazirians, two vrusk, a dralasite, and a human. They somehow all ended up on Pale and were recuited to go on the Second Voltrunus Expedition.

After Volturnus

They all managed to survive the adventure (I said I was a nice Referee) and made it back to the Frontier with a sizable chunk of change and a bunch of XP points (I awarded them 70 for that bit of adventure). Spending their XP along the way, learning new skills from each other and out of necessity and practice, they have all increased their skills as follows.

Note that on the XP line I’m recording it as NN/MM where NN is the XP spent and MM is the total XP earned. The total earned includes the 13 XP for the Sundown on Starmist module.

Name: Yanni

Race: Yazirian, F

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 45/45

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Technological

Skills: Technician 4, Robotics 2, Computer 1, Beam 2, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Hentz, Araks. Yanni likes to tinker with gadgets and vehicles.  She’d love to be able to tinker on starships as well.

 

Name: Mekar

Race: Yazirian, M

STR/STA: 45/45

DEX/RS: 70/70

INT/LOG: 55/55

PER/LDR: 55/55

Racial Abilities: Battle Rage 5%

XP: 70/83

PSA – Bio-social

Skills: Medic 3, Environmental 3, Projectile 2, Psycho-social 1, Melee 1, Gyrojet 1

Notes:

Born on Pale, Truane’s Star.  As Mekar will tell anyone who asks, his job is to understand the local critters and keep everyone else in one piece. [Mekar will eventually have a Rocket Weapons spaceship skill but getting a bio-social PSA character there takes a bit of work.]

 

Name: Dolnab

Race: Dralasite

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 65/65

INT/LOG: 70/70

PER/LDR: 50/50

Racial Abilities: Lie Detection 5%

XP: 60/83

PSA – Techological

Skills: Technician 3, Computer 2, Robotics 1, Projectile 2, Melee 1, Demolitions 1

Notes:

Born on Inner Reach, Dramune.  Dolnab loves to tinker with computers and also play flight simulator games. 

 

Name:  Michaella

Race: Human, F

STR/STA: 55/55

DEX/RS: 64/61

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 40/40

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

Skills: Beam 4, Melee 3, Environmental 1, Thrown 1, Martial Arts 1, Medic 1

Notes:

Born on Minotaur, Theseus. Michaella grew up as the youngest of seven with six older brothers.  She learned to shoot and hold her own with her brothers’ rough-housing at a young age.

 

Name: K’sta’n

Race: Vrusk, F

STR/STA: 50/50

DEX/RS: 75/75

INT/LOG: 50/50

PER/LDR: 35/35

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Military

Skills: Gyrojet 4, Martial Arts 3, Projectile 3, Technician 1

Notes:

Born on Terldrom, Fromeltar.  K’sta’n has always had an interest in weapons, but also in the forms of the various martial arts.

 

Name: T’vor

Race: Vrusk, M

STR/STA: 40/40

DEX/RS: 55/55

INT/LOG: 65/65

PER/LDR: 40/40

Racial Abilities: Comprehension 15%

XP: 68/83

PSA – Technological

Skills: Computer 4, Robotics 2, Beam 2, Melee 1

Notes:

Born on Gran Quivera, Prenglar.  T’vor used to hang aout at the University of Prenglar as a kid and chat up the tech professors.  He loves to hack computers and robots and can usually get anything working, eventually.  He also has a deep interest in astronomy.

Whether they had them before or not, the team picked up some weapons skills just to survive on Volturnus. They also diversified their skill areas a bit and significantly improved their primary skill.

Going Forward

Now that we’ve met the team. I’ll update their stats and skills at the end of each of module campaign posts in the future.

Do you have thoughts on how you’d develop the skills differently? How have your players advanced their skills across a long campaign? Have they been laser focused on a single skill or broadly diversified? Let me know in the comments.

A Module Based Campaign – part 2

Having survived Volturnus, it’s time for the PCs to attempt first contact with the Heliopes on Starmist. Originally, I had planned to cover the remaining 3 Alpha Dawn modules in this post but in reviewing Sundown on Starmist, I realized I had a lot to say about this module alone. So it gets its own post.

Issues

I started to write up this module like the Volturnus ones, but the more I looked at this module, the more concerns I had with it.  Playing it in the 80’s as a teenager when it first came out, I didn’t think much about it.  You need to rescue your employer who had been kidnapped, you found a cool super tank, and you got to blow things up.  It’s no fun to lose the tank in the end but I understand that for play balance reasons.  Give the PCs a fun toy to allow them to take on harder challenges but take it away so it doesn’t unbalance the game.

But looking at it with older eyes, you see the other side of the adventure.  As part of the adventure, the PCs transgress the social structure of a primitive society, violate and destroy their temple, and eventually completely destroy an artifact central to the religion of that culture.  Granted, the other option is complete annihilation of the species (and the PCs) but it’s still not the best story-line for success.  Especially after just leaving Volturnus where they actually worked to build up and sustain the native cultures.

Now if you’re players don’t care about those issues, you can play it as written.  Or if you want to give them a morally hard situation and choice, maybe it is still okay.  But if you want to avoid that kind of situation in your campaign, you might consider skipping it.  Looking at the pregenerated characters, the PCs are going to be a bit overpowered coming into this adventure if they just finished the Volturnus series.  So skipping it won’t hurt them for future adventures.  And their higher levels might give them some options for other paths through the adventure that don’t require the tank.

In any case, we’ll proceed assuming you do want to include the adventure, so let’s get to looking at it in a bit of detail.

Sundown on Starmist

Location, Location, Location

First of all, we need to figure out where this planet and system is located.  If you look at the beautiful map in the Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space, the artist placed Sundown way on the left side of the map by Araks and Scree Fron.  Based on the information in the module itself, this location doesn’t really make any sense to me and since Zeb’s Guide has other issues, I’m going to not use this location for the system.

Now, I thought that the module itself gave an approximate location for the system, but it turns out that if it does, I can’t seem to find it any more.  All the other modules do give locations for their systems, so that’s probably why I thought this one did as well.  In any case, there are clues as to the location of the system in the text of the module that we’ll look at to divine its location.

The module says that Sundown was discovered when a ship that Maximillian was serving on was forced to make an emergency landing on the planet Starmist.  That doesn’t exactly jive with the Knight Hawks rules (And since the module specifically references the Knight Hawks rules, we know they were out when it was published.) but if we take it to mean that the ship misjumped into the system, then we know that it is somewhere near where that ship was traveling.

Looking at Maximillian’s background, he was born in a vrusk enclave in Valentia City, which is on Clarion in the White Light system.  And he went to school on Ken’zah Kit in the K’aken-Kar system.  His ship, the VSS Last Legs, is registered in that same system and he purchased and refitted the ship right after returning from Sundown the first time.  Since he grew up and worked in this part of the Frontier, near the vrusk inhabited worlds, and was in this sector when he returned from the Sundown system.  It makes sense that the system is somewhere nearby.

Astute readers will recognize this map as a cutout of the one I’ve been making in my Expanded Frontier Map series. Even more astute readers will notice that there is a nebula on it. This is a sneak peak of a portion of a map I’ll presenting next week.

To that end, I’ve chosen Sundown to be the star in the triangular region formed by Madderly’s Star, K’sta-Kar, and White Light.  You can see this location represented on the Expanded Frontier Map.

Starting the Adventure

Getting the PCs on this adventure is a bit of a trick.  They are either in Truane’s Star, or if you had them go testify at the Council of Worlds, they are in the Prenglar system.  Neither of which is over in the part of the Frontier where you really want them.

Prenglar is easier.  In that case you could just declare that Maximillian was having his ship refit in the starship construction center there and is looking for a crew.  He can recruit them at some point after their testimony.

If they are in the Truane’s Star system still, you need to come up with a reason to get them to the other side of the Frontier.  Maybe they are invited to talk about their experiences on Volturnus at the University of Clarion, all expenses paid. Or maybe the Pale government gives them a lead and offers transport to chase down someone who works with he Star Devil that skipped town.  Or some other small adventure that appeals to the players’ interests that get them across the Frontier.  Once they are on Prenglar or Clarion, they can be approached by Maximillian.

Regardless of where he approaches them, he’s heard of their exploits and is seeking them out specifically because of their experience working with native primitive cultures and he wants assistance dealing with the Heliopes.

Running the Adventure

Once they have signed on, they are off to Starmist.  The trip there should be fairly boring so it can pass by as quickly as you’d like.  It’s a chance to get to know their employer and decided what equipment they might need/want for the trip.  They should have quite a bit a cash from the Volturnus adventure so let them spend it.

The adventure itself is fairly straightforward: Head to the village, poke around to try to find the sources of the metal, learning along the way some of the history and seeing the strange artifacts, rescuing Maximillian, fighting off the sathar robots, discovering the tank, and assaulting the sathar base.

Skimming through the adventure, a few things stood out to me.

  1. Maximillian has plot armor, at least until the tank is discovered.  I thought it was funny how in the very first encounter, the module tells the referee to adjust die rolls as needed to keep him alive.
  2. The adventure is always pushing the PCs to find and explore the tank.  As I said before, this is a possibly morally questionable action and the players may not be comfortable with it.  I’d say if the players want to pursue that, let them but if they don’t show interest in the tank, don’t push it as hard as the module is written.  More on this below.
  3. Getting into the bunker is somewhat of a railroad.  The text says that the only way in is through the elevator and specifically tries to shut down alternate ways in.
  4. There are some inconsistencies in the times specified for the various self-destruct sequences in the bunker.  But there is also a lot of flexibility depending on what you want to do with the approaching sathar ship (if anything) so you can really do whatever seems best as you’re playing

Not using the Tank

I’ve already talked a bit about the issues with uncovering and taking the tank from the village.  That said, it’s not really needed to finish the adventure.  The PC’s already have an explorer that they can use to follow the sathar robots.  And approaching the sathar base on foot actually gives them a better chance of getting in undetected.  So in the end, the tank is cool, but doesn’t seem to be as necessary as the module writers seem to be implying by pushing the PCs toward it.  If they don’t want to take it, they can still successfully complete the adventure.  Especially since they will probably be at a bit higher levels than the pre-gens for the adventure.

Experience Points

Interestingly, this module gives no guidance on awarding experience points.  They don’t seem to be mentioned anywhere, even in the introduction.  I’d award XP at the following points:

  • Making it to the village on friendly terms – 3 XP
  • Rescuing Maximillian with minimal loss of Heliope life – 3 XP
  • Driving off both waves of sathar robots with minimal loss of Heliope life – 3 XP
  • Clearing the bunker – 3 XP
  • If they make it to the bunker without losing a vehicle (war tank or explorer) – 1 bonus XP
  • Not taking the War Tank – 1 bonus XP

Beyond the Module

Extra adventures

The module gives the option of the PCs dealing with the incoming sathar heavy cruiser and using the rocket launcher at the base to damage or destroy it.  It also gives the suggestion of the ship sending down landing parties that the PCs have to deal with.  Personally, I’d probably omit this aspect, especially since I have a different view of the construct of the sathar ships.  At most, I’d make it a destroyer.  That still gives over 500 sathar ground troops that they’d have to deal with and that’s a bit much for a single PC party.

However, if you do want to use those optional adventures, I’d award 3-6 more XP for the subsequent adventures.

There are few other things you could do on Starmist but they would require convincing Maximillian that they should stay on the planet longer.

The background says that Heliopes are spread out in 200 tribes over 5 different rifts.  If you wanted to extend the adventure further, you could develop these other tribes, and allow the PCs to seek them out and interact with them.  Remember that the village Heliopes are the most culturally developed.

Another option is to collect sathar bio-constructs.  These would be of great interest to the UPF and to various private corporations.  There are a lot of them here on Starmist and the PCs could go on a hunt to try to collect various live specimens.  This should definitely be worth a financial reward (shared with Maximillian) and possibly an XP reward as well.

Aftermath

Depending on the way they handled themselves, the PCs may or may not be on friendly terms with the Heliopes.  If the village was seriously destroyed and the war tank stolen, they might not be welcome at all and be run off by a mob and have to flee to their ship.  Or they might be welcomed warmly if they helped to save the village and didn’t disturb the tank.

There might also be repercussions back in the Frontier.  The UPF will eventually send a delegation to the planet and will discover how the PCs interacted with the natives.  This could either enhance or detract from their reputation and if they treated the Heliopes poorly, they might be called before a UPF tribunal for their conduct. 

Moving on

Next up is SFAD5: Bugs in the System.  We’ll look at that and the following modules in the next installment.  What are your thoughts on Sundown on Starmist?

Expanded Frontier Map – update 1

I had planned to to have the next part of the module campaign write-up as the post this week, but that’s taking me a bit longer than I had planned and I spent more time than I should have on updates to the Expanded Frontier Map so I’m writing about that instead.

As I said in my last State of the Frontier post, one of the things I want to work on this year is a full color version of the Expanded Frontier map. So while I was on vacation, I fired up my laptop and started on that. This post will detail some of the things I’m working on and what to look for in the future.

Corrections

The first thing I had to do was fix some errors I noticed in my original expanded map. Mainly, I had left off some labels on a few of the star systems. I haven’t posted a version of the map with those labels yet but will in the future. So I added those in.

The other omission I had to correct was one I noticed in creating entries for the Detailed Frontier Timeline. I was missing a necessary jump route for the sathar. So I added that in as well. Again, I haven’t posted that version of the map so the correction just appears on my “Referee’s Copy” at the moment.

Next, I decided to shift the system I was labeling as Belnafaer (from the SFAD5: Bugs in the the System module) to the same one that the TSR folks did in the Frontier map in Zeb’s Guide. The choice was arbitrary and both my selection and theirs matched the description given in the module. I figured it was better to disagree as little as possible with the “canon” material. (I’m still not moving Starmist or Rhianna though).

Finally, I discovered that the labeled distance from Madderly’s Star to White Light was wrong. The map labels it as 6 but it is actually 8. (The map in Zeb’s Guide has it correct but the one in the Dramune Run is wrong as well.) This was actually discovered in making the color map as described below. So I fixed that. It’s funny, but I’ve been playing Star Frontiers for 35 years now and never noticed that typo.

Those were the corrections I made. While you can’t see two of them, this is the resulting map:

The inner blue box is the original Frontier map area from Alpha Dawn while the larger blue box is the area covered by the map in Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space

I also fixed up some internal errors, mostly labels on the wrong layers, but that has no impact on the map itself. I had planned to post the version with all the star designations, but in looking at them, I realized they need some cleaning up on their positioning so it wasn’t quite ready to go for this post. I need to spend about an hour tweaking things.

Moving on to Color

Star symbols from the map generation program

As I mentioned before, I had written a program to randomly generate sector maps. The stars were represented using the symbols in the chart to the right. The second column showing how multiple star systems are represented.

As written, the program only generated random systems and wrote basic map data out to a file. What I needed was the ability to read in that output file and build the map from the data instead of randomly.

So that’s where I started. I had an output format, I just needed code to read that and convert it back into data that could be used for drawing the map. Along the way, I realized that I needed to change some things about the way the data was represented and stored in the program and output file as we well as needing to add storage for things like the name of the system.

Another thing I had to change was the printing of the Z-coordinate. The random map generation process creates star systems in 3 dimensions and labels each system with its Z-coordinate above or below the plane of the map. Since for the Frontier Map (at least initially) everything is on the same plane, there was no need to print little zeros by each star system. So I added a flag to turn off printing that coordinate on the map.

Generating the Data for the Frontier Map

With the code now ready to read data from a file and draw the map. I needed to generate the data for the Frontier map. As I’m building and testing the software, I figured I’d work with a smaller map so I’m just using the original Frontier Map from the Alpha Dawn rules.

There are 51 systems on that map. I determined the coordinates on the map (as the software sees them, currently measured from the upper right corner – that may change), and wrote those into a data file. That was the easy part.

The next step was to get spectral classifications for each of the systems. The inhabited systems were relatively easy. In the listing for each of the systems in the rule book, it gives a color for the star. At this point the program isn’t refined enough to break down the spectral types so a G0 star is represented the same as a G2 or G8 star. So I only had to approximate. Yellow stars got a G0 designation, orange stars got a K0 designation, white stars got an F0 designation, and red stars got a M0 designation. I used those since those are the spectral types that the program currently understands.

Next I went through and added in the spectral types for the stars that host the various planets of the modules and added in designations for them. Then, I had to go in and add in the designations for star systems in the Rim that were labeled in Zebulon’s Guide. Zeb’s Guide give full spectral types (F7, G3, K2, etc.) but for now, I just used the spectral type letter and not the number since the program can’t process those yet. (Note: if you compare the spectral types from Zeb’s Guide for the original Frontier worlds to the colors given in the Alpha Dawn rules, they don’t always agree. That’s something I’ll have to resolve later. For now, AD takes precedence.)

That covers all the “explored” systems. Note that I didn’t use the Zeb’s Guide data for the megacorp systems. I can always go back and add that but I don’t use those systems in my game. Finally for all the other systems, I had to randomly generate spectral types. To do that, I just generated a map with random values and copied the appropriate values over for the binary and single systems, only selecting single systems that were M stars or brown dwarfs. There are already way too many F, G, & K type stars in the region so I wanted a sprinkling of the other types. I also added the neutron star designation by hand for that system on the map.

Then it was time to actually run the program and make the map. It worked fine but looking at it I noticed a few problems with the jump distances. Several were too small by one and one was too large. Looking closer, I realized that while I was calculating the distances correctly, it was rounding wrong on display so I fixed that which corrected the distances displaying too small. That just left me with the one jump distance that was too large, now by two instead of one. This is where I discovered the typo on the original map for the distance between White Light and Madderly’s Star. The program was giving the correct distance but the original map was wrong.

I also decided that the symbols were a bit too small. The size I was using worked fine in the random map when there was the possibility of two systems in the same grid box with different Z-coordinates but for this map, where that couldn’t happen, I wanted the symbols larger. So I built in a scaling parameter in to the program allowing me to control the scale.

With those changes, we have the following initial color map of the Frontier.

The grid is there, you just can’t see it at this size. Click for the full size image.

You’ll notice a few things right away. First, there are no names on the map. Second, there are no nebulae. Right now the program doesn’t do those things.

Names will be relatively easy. I have the data, I just need to have the program add them to the image file. I need to research how to set fonts but otherwise, it’s straightforward.

Nebula are a whole different story. And may have to be added in by hand after the fact. Either way, that is going to be a complicated process and require some learning and work (and artistic ability) on my part.

If you look closer, you’ll notice that the positioning of the numbers along the jump routes are not optimal. It works for most of the jumps but for connections that are at an approximately 45 degree angle running from upper left to lower right, the number comes out too close (and sometimes overlapping) the line. I’ll need to fix that. That cleanup will probably be done by hand.

The program generates SVG files where each item is an object that can be manipulated allowing me to tweak things by hand. That was done intentionally as I knew the program wouldn’t be able to get everything perfect. That will be even more apparent once the names are added. I suspect that many of them will have to be moved to not overlap the jump routes.

The other minor thing is that the scaling factor I added wasn’t able to affect the size of the jets coming out of the neutron star. I need to either figure that out or, more likely, reduce the size back down for that spectral type and ignore the scaling. We’ll see how that goes.

Next Steps

The easy next steps are adding in the names of the systems and fixing the scaling on the neutron star.

After that, what I want to do is add in a way to handle all the various spectral types. The colors I picked don’t exactly represent the colors of the stars. They are close, but were chose for aesthetics rather than complete accuracy. Almost everything would be white with just some color tinting if we went for accuracy. I did that originally but didn’t like the result. I want to add code that will extrapolate between the given colors for the various spectral types’ number values to give various shades to the stars.

After that, I plan on tackling the nebula. I want to see if I can programmatically come up with something passable to start and then refine it.

The Code

If you want to play with the code, you can find it on my GitHub repository. It’s written in Python and right now isn’t the most user friendly. I need to add some in-line documentation as well as add features that will make it more usable directly from a command line instead of having to modify parameters in the code itself before running. That is another future project. But if you want to dive in and play with it as is, feel free.

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.084 to FY60.114

Here’s the next installment of the detailed Frontier timeline. I realized that I left off the last day of the previous post so it is included here. The events of the Sundown on Starmist module reach their conclusion and the Council of Worlds start to take the sathar threat seriously.

Date (FY)Event
60.084 After several days of probing, the saurian Battle Rays begin their return to the Sauria system.
60.085 Initial repairs begun on the Pale (Truane’s Star) starship construction center.  Capacity is increased to 60% of its original value. 
60.086 After nearly a month of meetings on Volturnus (Zebulon), the Council of Worlds declares the planet to hold protectorate status but not full membership.  It is deemed that the Eorna population is too small while the other races are not advanced enough for full membership.
60.087 The VSS Last Legs arrives at Starmist.  Maximillian and the scouting party make contact with the planet’s natives. (SF3)
60.088 Patrol Group Wisdom arrives in the Gruna Garu system and begins investigating the sighting of the unidentified vessel with Spacefleet markings.
60.089 Maximillian Malligigg is captured and taken prisoner by the priests of the Heliope village. (SF3)
60.090 – Sathar robots, shaped like Heliopes, attack the Heliope village causing destruction of many of the buildings.  The village temple is partially burned, revealing an alien war tank concealed inside. (SF3)

– SF Nova arrives in the K’sta-Kar system and will remain in system for 12 days.
60.091 – While Maximillian and the scouting party are examining the war tank, sathar robots attack the village again.  Driving the robots off, they follow them in the tank. (SF3)

– The sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system completes another destroyer.
60.092 The retreating robots lead the scouting party to a sathar base.  Infiltrating the base, they discover it is mostly abandoned and defeat the remaining sathar and agents in place.  However, the base is destroyed by an automated self-destruct system. (SF3)
60.093 Saurian Battle Rays arrive back in the Sauria system from scouting the Tischen and Dayzer systems.
60.094 The alien war tank on Sundown (Starmist) begins behaving erratically and alarms and lights begin to flash. 30 minutes later it self-destructs in a small nuclear explosion. (SF3)
60.095 Maximillian and survivors of the scouting party leave Sundown (Starmist) to return to K’sta-Kar on the VSS Last Legs. (SF3)
60.096 The TTSS Destiny arrives back in Prenglar after touring the western half of the Frontier, visiting Truane’s Star, Dixon’s Star, and all the yazirian systems (Gruna Garu, Araks, Scree Fron, & Athor).  Replenishing supplies, it prepares to continue its Grand Tour.
60.097 CDCSS Nightwind turns up in the White Light system under the name TSS Star’s Gift.  CDC immediately dispatches a team to recover the ship. (AR)
60.098 Having completed its shakedown cruise, the UPFS Nexus begins a high speed run to join up with Strike Force Nova.
60.099 Fortress Kdikitt (Madderly’s Star) reaches the 80% completion mark.  Behind schedule and due to the increased sathar activity in the Frontier, the UPF places a priority on operational security and getting the fortress completed.
60.100 After months of work, a petition with over 100,000 names is submitted to the Council of Worlds demanding investigation of signals detected from Hargurt in a system just beyond the Frontier in the direction of the Vast Expanse.  In the intervening months, signals have been detected multiple times from the system.
60.101 Second Volturnus Expedition members testify before the Council of Worlds about events on Volturnus (Zebulon) leading to the Battle of Volkos.
60.102 – The first of a new class of sathar vessels, the cutter, functionally modeled on the assault scout, is completed at the sathar starship construction center near Zebulon.

– SF Nova departs K’sta-Kar for the White Light System
60.103 After months of deliberation, the Council of Worlds votes to increase Spacefleet spending by 10% allowing for the commissioning of several new vessels.
60.104 After many days of debate, the decision is made to abandon the Tischen and Dayzer systems in face of the sathar forces there and focus all efforts on defending Sauria and completing the Ark program (FE004).
60.105 The TTSS Destiny departs Gran Quivera (Prenglar) for the Timeon system to continue its Grand Tour of the Frontier.  Over 100 passengers have been on the ship for the entire tour and intend to visit every system.
60.106 CDC team arrives in the White Light System from the Theseus system to attempt to reclaim the CDCSS Nightwind (AR).
60.107 Assault scout completed at the Gran Quivera (Prenglar) starship construction center to replace the UPF vessel lost at the Battle of Zebulon
60.108 After over a month of struggle through the jungles, the Spire Dragons reach the foothills of Mount Spire and establish a base camp.  Several members of the expedition have perished along the way and people question the wisdom of their approach.
60.109 A new assault scout is completed at the Pale starship construction center to replace the militia vessel lost at the Battle of Zebulon
60.110 UPFS Nexus arrives at Clarion (White Light) to await the arrival of SF Nova and spends the day training with the White Light Militia.
60.111 SF Nova arrives at Clarion in the White Light system and is joined by UPFS Nexus.  It will remain in system for 19 days.
60.112 After sneaking onboard just before the ship departs, the CDCSS Nightwind is recaptured by the CDC operatives and the former employees responsible for assisting in its disappearance are captured.  The ship begins its way back to corporate headquarters.
60.113 After a long and detailed search of the Gruna Garu system by Patrol Group Wisdom, no evidence is found of the mysterious vessel.  The patrol group departs the system to return to Prenglar.
60.114 Attempt is made (but fails) to sabotage Gollwin Academy.

Here’s the full timeline document:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

The State of the Frontier – A Year Complete

I can’t believe it’s been a full year since I started the blog.  More importantly, I can’t believe I’ve managed to maintain at least a weekly posting schedule for that entire time.  For this State of the Frontier post, I’m going to be looking back over the entire history of the blog, not just the last month.  Normally I post this on the last day of the month but since that was a regular post day, this is coming exactly one year after I made the first post.

I’m actually writing this in late April because when it finally posts, I’ll be on a cruise ship in the middle of the Caribbean with my wife celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary.  So most of what follows is based on data at that time.

Some Numbers

It’s interesting (to me at least) to look at the raw numbers for the site.  I don’t really have anything to compare them to, but they form a baseline for the years going forward.  First up, the raw web stats:

  • Sessions – visits to the sites consisting of one or more pages read: 2086
  • Users – number of people that visited the blog: 1360
  • Total Page views: 3388

I couldn’t tell you if that’s good or bad considering I just started, but I’m happy with it.  There’s definitely a rhythm to the visits.  It peaks on the days I make a new post (as I would expect) with 10-25 visitors on those days, a few more visitors on the day after a post, and then only one or two visitors for the rest of the week.  I suspect that baseline number on the non-post days will slowly increase over time as there is more and more back content for people to come across and visit.

The next thing to look at is the number of posts and comments received.  This post represents the 72nd post on the site.  Considering I’ve only been doing it for 52 weeks, that works out to 1.38 posts per week.  When I started this blog, I was thinking I’d be making two posts a month and slowly ramping up. However, I quickly got into the one a week habit with some extra posts (like these State of the Frontier ones) thrown in for good measure.  I’m happy with the cadence I’ve set up.  I don’t think I could do much more than that at the moment with everything I’m working on, but we’ll see how it goes in the coming year.

I don’t get a lot of commentary here on the blog.  There have been a total of 52 comments on the first 68 posts and 7 of those were me responding to other comments.  A lot of the others are just cross links (pingbacks) between posts on the site. I actually get more comments on the cross posts in the Star Frontiers Facebook group.  I can’t decide if the lack of commentary is good or bad.  On the one hand, I don’t get a lot of feedback or interaction on the content from those reading it.  On the other hand, fewer comments means I can spend the time that I would be responding on creating new content.  But on the gripping hand, the lack of commentary makes it hard to tell if people are enjoying the content or not.  At some level that latter doesn’t matter as I’m doing it as much for me as for others, but I want the readership to grow.

Which brings me to

The Patreon Campaign

First. I want to say a big THANK YOU! To everyone that is or has been a Patreon supporter of this blog.  I know I’m not a great poster on the Patreon campaign itself, but I hope everyone there is also a blog subscriber as well.  I believe in accountability so I thought I’d take a moment and talk about the funds raised via Patreon. Due to the generosity of my patrons, I’ve earned $532.53 over the past year (assuming no one cancels between now when I’m writing this and when it publishes in a week an a half).  I thought I’d talk a little bit about where that money went.

  • Web hosting – $82 – While the Expanding Frontier site is physically hosted on a server in my house.  I do host several other websites, including the Frontier Explorer website, on a shared hosting server.  With the Frontier Explorer starting production again (with its own Patreon), that may change in the coming year. I also have a fairly high speed connection to my house which comes at a cost.
  • Domain registrations – $64.70 – I actually have a bunch of domains that I own, I use the money from my gaming endeavors (including this Patreon) for those registrations.  They include some vanity domains for myself and some of my kids, the Frontier Explorer, a couple of Star Frontiers domains, and a few others.  All told there are 10 domains.  Several of those I had paid for 2 years of registration last year so they didn’t come due this year.  Otherwise that total would be closer to $110.  Again the Frontier Explorer Patreon will cover some of that in the coming year.
  • Supporting other creators – $61 – I currently support two other creators, Dyson Logos, whose maps I’ve used in my games and in some products I’ve sold (Two Sheet Locations), and the Saving the Game podcast.  I’ve considered supporting other creators but have never actually made pledges.  That may change if my Patreon support increases.
  • Gaming supplies – $178.32 – Not necessarily specific to the content I produce here, but I use the money from the Patreon to feed my gaming hobby.  Purchases this year include a D&D PHB, a bag of 150 polyhedral dice, a copy of The Angry GM’s book on Kickstarter, and support for another Kickstarter of stock Sci-fi art.  That last one hasn’t been delivered yet but when it does, I’ll be able to use the images in my blog posts and the Frontier Explorer and other products I produce.
  • Software – $106.74 – My versions of Microsoft Office were getting pretty old (2010) so this year I bit the bullet and purchased a license for Office 365.  Since I have a number of different computers that I use, I purchased a family license allowing me to install the software on up to 6 computers so my kids have access to it as well.

All told, that came to $492.76 in expenses leaving me $39.77.  Maybe I’ll use that to take my wife out to dinner.  Again, I can’t say thank you enough to my supporters.  Because of you, my gaming hobby is self-sustaining and I can pursue it guilt-free on the financial side. (I still sometimes feel guilty on the time side.)

Projects

I started out the year with three main projects which I had intended to work on.  Unfortunately, I haven’t completed any of them yet although I’m starting to get close.  One I didn’t even get started on.  In addition to those original projects, I picked up a few others along the way.  The projects worked on this year include:

  • Death at Rosegard Adventure – 13 posts (including the 4 how to draw videos)
  • Ghost Ship Osiris Adventure – 12 posts
  • New Starship Construction System – 11 posts (5 about the system and 6 ships)
  • The Detailed Frontier Timeline – 5 posts
  • Calendar systems and star system design – 4 posts
  • PGC Records Vault location – 3 posts
  • Other miscellaneous topics – 5 posts

Looking forward into the new year, I think I’ll be wrapping up several of those projects. 

  • The Death at Rosegard adventure will be completed.  I’m working now on putting the Death at Rosegard write-up together.  There will probably be some more posts on bits and pieces I missed as I string it all in to a coherent form. 
  • The same is true of the Ghost Ship Osiris adventures.  I need to write up the descriptions of the various rooms on the Pursale ship and what the PCs can find there, and then write up the final section of the adventure.  Beyond that it’s mostly art work and making the deck plans for the two ships in the art style for FrontierSpace.
  • The New Starship Construction System is almost done as well.  At least the initial version compatible with Star Frontiers.  That is only lacking some equipment descriptions and some final formatting.  That will probably be released as a Frontier Explorer Presents publication later this year.

The Detailed Frontier Timeline will keep going, one post a month and 1-3 tweets per day for the next several years so that won’t be wrapping up any time soon.  The other project I just started is the complete Star Frontiers campaign based on the published modules of which the first post was yesterday.  That will probably have 2 or maybe 3 more posts and then be put together as a complete document for download.

Another project that I’ve just started on, but which I don’t have anything yet to post about, is an update to the Expanded Frontier Map that I posted back at the end of October.  I’ve noticed a few errors on the map as I’ve been using it over the past months, so I’ll post an updated version.  But more significantly, I’m working on creating a full-color, poster-sized version.  Many years ago (2015), I wrote a program to randomly generate star sectors and produce a map which I wrote about on my old Arcane Game Lore blog (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  I’m currently working on that program to not just randomly create systems but read the data from a file and draw the appropriate map.  I’ll use that to create the Expanded Frontier Map in full-color and share the program so others can use it as well.

Finally, in this coming year I want to get back to writing fiction.  I have two books I’m in theory working on.  One is a follow-on to my book Discovery.  The second is a story set on Pale during the Great Sathar War.  I’ve been poking a bit at the latter one in the last few months and will probably pick up steam on that in the future. We’ll see how (and if) that goes.

Beyond that, I don’t know where I’ll head.  I might finally start the Sathar Assault Carrier project, or I might get carried off on another tangent.  We’ll just have to see where we end up on the journey through the ever-expanding frontier.

Thank you for reading my work and again a special thanks to those who have helped support it.  If there are projects you’d like to see worked on, please let me know.