Category Archives: General

State of the Frontier – July 2020

I can’t believe July is already over. I was sitting and thinking about what I would be doing for my next regular Tuesday post and realized that I had this one to write before then. That was last night (the 30th, I’m writing this just before it goes live). I think the month flew by because I’ve been busy working on the Frontier Explorer all month.

Looking Back

Normally, I start this section with the blog posts I made but this month they seem almost ancillary to everything that has been going on that I’m going to start with the behind the scenes stuff.

First and foremost, my time this month was taken up by getting issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer ready to go. I really struggled with this issue and procrastinated working on it until the very tail end of June so most of the work was done this month. But I managed to get it all finished just a couple of days later than I planned. If you haven’t already gotten a copy, you can get it either at DriveThruRPG or on the Frontier Explorer website.

I only ran one session of my “Skills for Hire” game on-line this month as the first session got canceled due to lack of players (we only had one). So I put out a reminder call before the next session and had a bunch of new players show up for that session. We had eight players total, although one had to drop out due to connection issues. They got through about half of the adventure I had planned, which is where I expected to get to, and everyone had a good time. We are looking forward to finishing it next week.

I also joined another game, as a player this time, were we are playing through the Second Sathar War game from the back of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book. We have several people on each side with someone playing referee between the two sides. He’s added in some twists and a bit of fog of war which makes it interesting. I’m playing the militia and unattached UPF ships. The game is played fairly asynchronously, with the players on each side of the battle taking turns moving and firing on Roll20 with the referee, but otherwise independent of the other players. There is also a forum were we post strategic movement orders. If you want to follow along, we have a Facebook group were we post updates. I think we’re also still looking for a 4th sathar admiral so if you want to play as well, jump over to the Facebook group and volunteer.

With all that going on, I also managed to get my regular blog posts out, although sometimes just barely (like this one). The first, as always was the Detailed Frontier Timeline post. If you follow the timeline on Twitter, you will have noticed that it was only coming out in batches this month and not daily as it has in the past. That was partially due to all the above going on and partially as I would be so busy with other things that I forgot to post for several days at a time. I also have gotten a bit behind in writing the updates so I’m always right on the edge of what I’ve worked out and that would sometimes cause delays as well. I’m hopefully over that and will get back to a regular schedule of tweeting this month.

Next up was a background piece discussing my ideas about the enlisted crews of Spacefleet vessels. That one had been sitting in my todo list from day one of the blog and in my mind for several years before that. After that came an update post on the HSS History’s Hope with some of the material provided by Mathew Crymble, a long time Star Frontiers fan that contacted me about helping flesh out the ship. It that post, I described the ship a bit more (using material provided by Mathew), provided its game stats, and an update on its travels to date in the detailed timeline.

Finally I ended the month’s posts with a new organization, the Tristars, an organized crime group based in Myha’s Beach. I had actually planned to write about them earlier in the month but since that one is a direct off-shoot of my Skills for Hire game, I couldn’t post it until we played through the adventure and that got delayed this month. But it’s out now.

Looking Forward

We’ll do this section slightly reversed as well. The first major thing happening this month has nothing to do with the blog. And that is my family and I are going camping and I’ll be completely off-line for nearly a third of the month. So if you see some disruption in posting, or lack of response from me, that’s why.

Rough HSS History’s Hope model next to a Swift Class assault scout for scale.

Otherwise, things will look pretty normal. I’m currently working on deck plans and a 3D model of the HSS History’s Hope. I teased the model on Facebook and Twitter with the image to the right. I don’t expect to finish this all up this month so it will probably be September before you see that post. I’ve also been asked if I’m going to turn this into another one of my Technical Manuals. The answer to that is probably yes, as I’ve been thinking about that as I work on it, but that is going to be even further off.

Another behind the scenes item that I’m working on is editing a new Frontier Explorer Presents product. This time a short story collection. We’ve been sitting on this since we first conceived the Frontier Explorer back in 2012 and we’re finally getting to it. It is a collection of stories based on the khad’dan, a yazirian honor sword created my Mathew Crymble back in the 90’s. Some of the stories are from that era and some are newer. If by some miracle we get all the art and editing done quickly that might come out in August but more likely, you should look for it in November, after the next Frontier Explorer issue.

As to this month’s blog posts, we’ll start as usual with a Detailed Frontier Timeline post. Assuming that the next session of my game doesn’t get canceled, that will be followed by a post on the Brekstoone Manor in Myha’s Beach. The PCs have determined that that is their next destination so once they’ve been through the manor I can post the details. You can also expect an adventure write up for the scenario they’ve been playing through once they’ve finished.

Related to the game, I’ve been recording the sessions and planning on releasing them as an actual play podcast, but haven’t had time to get that all set up with all the work on the Frontier Explorer going on. With issue 29 out of the way, I have time to focus on that so you will most likely see those sessions showing up here, probably with a kick-off post to talk about it. And maybe that rules review podcast will kick off as well but no promises there.

I didn’t do anything for the Blog Carnival this month due to lack of time. I don’t know what August’s topic is (I just haven’t looked) but there might be a related post there as well. We’ll just have to see what happens.

And I think that’s it for August. My kids start back in to school this month as well. They are starting at the school in person, but we’ll see what happens relative to COVID-19 when everyone starts getting back together. That could have an impact on events at the end of the month or, more likely, next month.

Your Thoughts

And that’s it. I’ve got eight minutes before this is supposed to go live so I just squeaked in before my self-imposed deadline. 🙂 As always, if you have suggestions on things you’d like to see me write about, let me know in the comments below.

State of the Frontier – June 2020

This is coming on the first of July instead of the last day of June as I was hosting the RPG Blog Carnival last month and the normal day for this post was filled by the wrap-up post for the carnival. Let’s get to it.

Looking Back

As I already mentioned, last month I was host to the RPG Blog Carnival with a theme of “Organizations” and that was the source of the majority of last month’s posts. I started the month (and the blog carnival) off with a post about the True Yazira Society, a group that works to oppose the Family of One and preserve the cultural heritage of Yazira. Mid month, I wrote about another organization, the Investors, a shadowy organization that works to increase their personal wealth and power by manipulating governments and corporations throughout the Frontier. Finally, we finished the month with the wrap up post for the blog carnival.

In between those posts I sprinkled in the regular Detailed Frontier Timeline post, and a post about a new location, Myha’s Beach, a city east of Point True on Pale.

Behind the scenes I was supposed to be working on issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer. And while I did get some work done on that, I did not get nearly as much as I should have.

I also ran a session on my online Star Frontiers game, “Skills for Hire.” There should have been two sessions but due to technical difficulties and a lack of players, the second session didn’t happen. There was a bit of development work for that game that will show up in future posts. I just have to wait for the players to get to it so that posting the details doesn’t spoil things. But there is at least a location and possibly another organization to be written about.

On the technical side, I finally got my mail server migrated and updated from my old server to the new one. My old server is now officially retired. It’s still up and running so I can access stored passwords and such on my account there but all my servers are now running on the new machine. I even started looking into an upgrade of the starfrontiers.us site but didn’t get very far on that. Upgrading the mail server allowed me to use security certificates from Let’s Encrypt instead of being completely self-signed. Going forward this will solve some of the mail issues I’ve been having with my websites since their recent migration and upgrade.

Looking Forward

Beyond the Detailed Frontier Timeline post next week, I really don’t know what this month will bring. There should be a post about a new location. I have all the maps and room descriptions, I just need the players in my online game to get there first. 🙂

I also think I’ll be doing another post on the HSS History’s Hope. This will include at least an updated map of it’s progress, a description of the ship, it’s game specs, and possibly a rough 3D image. I’m currently working on deck plans for the ship but I don’t think I’ll finish them this month.

That just leaves one post up in the air. We’ll see what comes up, possibly a writeup of the mini adventure I’m waiting to run for my game.

The main thing I’m going to be working on is issue 29 of the Frontier Explorer. My goal is to have it all done by the 15th and out to the supporters of the magazine’s Patreon campaign. That means it will be out on the 22nd for general release. If you want to get it early, consider joining as a supporter there. Although if you are already a supporter of this site, don’t feel that you need to support both.

Also related to my on-line game, I’m still planning on posting the audio of the sessions (and possibly the video as well) on-line as a podcast here on the site. I just haven’t had the time to sit down and get it all put together. I was waiting for a Windows update that would allow me to use the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 on my computer. That came through earlier in the month (finally, it was dated for April). If I find time between working on the Frontier Explorer and posts for the site, I’ll try to get that up.

I’ve also floated the idea of doing a podcast series reading and discussing the core rule books for the game. I posted about this on the Facebook group and it got a positive response so maybe I’ll tackle that at some point in the future as well. But probably not this month?

Your Thoughts

Do you have any ideas or suggestions on things you’d like to see in the blog? Is the rules reading and commentary postcast something that would be of interest to you? Anything I’ve mentioned that you don’t want to see? Let me know in the comments below.

June RPG Blog Carnival – Organizations – Wrap-up

RPG Blog Carnival Logo

It’s the end of the month and time for a wrap-up on this month’s RPG Blog Carnival.  Regular readers of my blog know that I normally do a “State of the Frontier” post on the last day of the month, that post will be up tomorrow.  Today we’re going to look at the various entries in this month’s blog carnival topic, Organizations.

I don’t know if the topic wasn’t very appealing, people were crazy busy, or if the blog carnival is losing steam but we did not have a lot of submissions this month.  I know I’m guilty of not doing an article every month as sometimes I’m strapped for time or just don’t have the inspiration to bend the often fantasy themed topics to sci-fi.  But I was hoping this month’s topic of organizations would be broad enough to appeal widely, I guess I was wrong.  That said the entries we did get were great.

First up was Building a Financial Landscape with Megacorps by Phil Forbes on the Stray RPG Thoughts blog. This entry discusses how to use Keith J. Davies’ Polyhedral Pantheons system to, instead of creating gods for a setting, create a series of mega-corps that are the main influencers in a setting.  Phil then goes on to apply the system to the local branches of the mega-corps and the local markets they are operating in.  This provides a rich framework of connections and competing interests for the players to interact with.  I found this one interesting as my preferred setting, Star Frontiers, already has a pantheon of canonical mega-corps controlling various interests throughout the setting.  I’m definitely going to take a look at this system for expanding these interactions.

Next up was an entry by Andrew Girdwood on the Geek Native blog.  He gave us a random secret society generator. You can never have enough random names on hand and this generator gives you an infinite supply.  You choose a general genre (Contemporary, Horror, Low or High Fantasy, or Sci-Fi) and then generate a name.  You can keep clicking to get new ones or until you find one that sparks your imagination.  The second one I got on his sci-fi generator was “The Eternal Planet Faction.”  I immediately thought of a tie-in with the True Yazira society that I posted as part of the kickoff of this month’s carnival.  In this case, it’s not part of the True Yazira Society, but a faction within the Family of One and the GODCo mega-corp that is trying to recreate their homeworld.  I might write that up in the future.  I’ll definitely use it at some point in my game.

Next was the entry by Gonz from Codex Anathema with their entry on the Silver Arrows, a loose, crime-prevention organization that might be part of the Church of the Silver Flame in their Ebberon campaign.  They even provide a variation on the Arcane Archer archetype to play a member of the Silver Arrows.

As host, I offered up two different organizations. The first as part of the kickoff post, was the True Yazira society, primarily a cultural organization striving to preserve the traditions of their homeworld but also opposing the practices of the group that has usurped authority (as the True Yaziria Society sees it) from the rightful rules of their species.  The second was the Investors, as shadowy, behind-the-scenes organization that works to influence governments and corporations to increase their own wealth and power.

That’s it for this month’s RPG Blog Carnival. I hope you found a nugget you could use in your game from this month’s posts or were inspired to generate some new organizations for your world even if you don’t blog or didn’t submit an entry.  For me this is just a springboard as I plan to present various organizations from my setting in future posts, not just part of the Blog Carnival.  I have several ideas lined up, I just need to find the time to write them down and get them posted.

Next month’s entry is still TBD but be sure to check out the RPG Blog Carnival’s home page on the Of Dice and Dragons blog to find links to past and future topics. And come back tomorrow for my regular “State of the Frontier” Post.

RPG Blog Carnival – Organizations – True Yaziria Society

RPG Blog Carnival Logo

Welcome to June! Regular readers my have noticed that this post is a day early as I usually post on Tuesdays. That’s because this month, I’m hosting the RPG Blog Carnival and we need to get this month’s topic, Organizations, kicked off. This post will replace tomorrow’s regular post as the first post of the month. But don’t worry, the next installment of the Detailed Frontier Timeline will be up next week.

If you’re new to the Expanding Frontier, welcome. After you’ve read today’s post, maybe you’ll stick around and take a stroll through the archive and hopefully find something else of interest as well.

The Topic – Organizations

When I volunteered to host a month of the blog carnival, I had already had in my mind to do some development of new and existing organizations in my game. I had already done a few posts on the topic and thought it would be a great topic to get input from other creator on how they handle different organizations in their settings. Plus it would give me the motivation to flesh out a few more of my own.

I’m using the term “organization” here very loosely. It could be anything from a megacorp, like I detailed in my post about the Streel Corporation, a small private company (e.g. Obar Enterprises), a religion, a governing body of a planet or city, or a band of adventurers. It could be a single business, a sports team, or a knitting club. Guilds, cults, and secret societies are other examples. Anything that has two or more people involved and some sort of order or hierarchy counts. The sky is really the limit.

Maybe like me, you want to flesh out one or more organizations in your setting an share them as part of the carnival. What makes the organization unique? How does it stand out in your world? How do the player characters interact with the organization, if at all?

I remember a business from a fantasy game I played in when I was in high school. It had been created by a retired character in an earlier campaign run by the GM, he wasn’t part of our game. It was a chain of establishments that were a combination of high-end tavern, inn, casino, and other attractions. You could find them in almost every major city. But they only accepted silver coins. You could not pay in gold, copper, nickel, or brass (the various other coins of the world). Only silver. Apparently, the retired PC who set up the original inn, which he created as a safe house, had something happen to him that made him leery of every other coin type. It was a great, safe place to stay, you just had to have a lot of silver on hand to pay your bills.

Or maybe you have a unique set of rules for handling the way various organizations interact with one another. I remember when I read Stars Without Number, the faction rules were so interesting I almost wrote a little mini game based just around that set of rules.

Another topic that comes to mind is how you keep track of all the organizations in your game and what they are up to. Do you have lists of all the projects they are working on? Or maybe you just have short descriptions of their aims and goals and when something happens, you attribute it to the organization most likely to have done it.

Those are just some ideas I’ve had of things to write about as I’ve contemplated this topic the last little while. I’m sure you’ll have others. Share your ideas by linking to this post in yours, and posting a comment here once your post is up. At the end of the month, I’ll gather up all the posts from the comments and consolidate them in to an organized list to provide a handy reference.

And with the kickoff out of the way, it’s time to turn our attention to a semi-secret society in my game universe, the True Yazira Society.

The True Yazira Society

True Yazira Society Logo, a stylized tree shaped like the leaf of the major tree species from Yaziria with the society’s initials forming the branches.

I teased this organization back in my posts for the February Blog Carnival, whose topic was Legends and Lore. As part of that month’s posts, I did two posts on the legends and lore of the yazirian species in my Star Frontiers game universe. The first, Yazirian History, I covered the background of how the yazirian race came to be in the Frontier. Most of this is general knowledge to yazirian characters. In the second, Legends & Lore – Yazirians, I covered more less known information including things the characters may not know. It was in this post that I introduced the True Yaziria society.

Creation

The True Yazira society was formed about ten years before the first sathar attack. It was created by surviving members of the old Warhon’s guard, supporters, and retinue.

When news reached the yazirian colonies that the only ship to be lost in the exodus was the one carrying the royal family, many believed that foul play by the Family of One was involved and that they didn’t want to give up control of yazirian society on the new worlds. This was most strongly vocalized by members of the royal court and the Warhon’s personal guard that were already in the Frontier.

It was at this point that the “accidents” and disappearances started happening. Many of the most vocal dissidents died or simply vanished. Fearing for their lives, many of the royal court and royal guard took the opportunity to emigrate to the Prenglar, Cassidine, and Truane’s Star systems were there were multi-species worlds and where they would be out of the direct influence of the Family of One.

As part of this second exodus, these yazirians formed the True Yazira society. The members initially consisted of those fleeing the yazirian worlds but that would change over time.

Aims and Goals

The initial aims of the society were really just mutual protection and support. Coupled with a desire to preserve as many of the traditions of their homeworld as they could in their new environment. First and foremost in the beginning, the members of the society worked to keep track of each other in order to keep them safe from the Family of One and alert one another if someone went missing. The other major aim was to support one another as they settled in these new worlds among aliens species. Contact with the humans, vrusk, and dralasites had started only a few years before and the society provided a social outlet for yazirians to meet and just be themselves.

As word reached the members of the actions being taken by the Family of one on Hentz, as well as the other yazirian colony worlds, the True Yaziria society’s goals expanding to opposing the actions of the Family of One. Many members returned to the yazirian worlds, either permanently, or as regular business visitors, to both monitor and actively work against what they felt were encroachments by the Family of One on the true yarziran way of life. These early efforts were quite fruitful, and the society was gaining momentum, most rapidly on the worlds other than Hentz where the Family of One was centered.

And then the sathar attacked. While the actual devastation was confined to the Truane’s Star system, the repercussions would be felt all over the Frontier. Most of the membership of the society living on Pale were killed in the sathar attack, as whole cities and towns were obliterated in single strikes from space. In the decade after the attack, when everyone thought a fresh attack could occur at any moment, the focus of the entire Frontier shifted and the concerns of the True Yazira society were far from the concerns of the average yazirian citizen. The Family of One worked efficiently and effectively during the crisis and people just came to accept their leadership.

In the intervening decades the aims of the society have shifted somewhat. They still oppose the Family of One, but their efforts are much more behind the scenes. Openly, they focus on cultural preservation and teaching about traditional yazirian values from their homeworld. But behind the scenes, many members still work to limit the power of the Family of One and to get equal treatment for yazirians everywhere regardless of world or clan. These efforts have been much more effective on the worlds other than Hentz. They have given up on completely ousting the Family of One from its position in yazirian society but rather now focus on neutralizing its influence as much as possible.

Membership and Organization

Initially, members of the True Yazira society were all members of the royal court or royal guard and refugees from the yazirian colony worlds living on the mixed-species worlds or the worlds of other species. With the return of some of these yazirians to the colony worlds, the society began to grow there as well. Anyone who expressed displeasure with the operations and ideals of the Family of One would often find their way to True Yazira. On the non-yazirian worlds, many joined simply for the comradarie of fellow yazirians in their new alien homes.

Today most of the membership of the society is fairly old and consists of first generation colonists who still remember Yazira itself. While there are new recruits of the younger generations, their numbers are relatively few but growing. Some of these younger members are truly interested in preserving and sometimes restoring practices from Yazira, most are there for the opposition of the Family of One and its policies and practices. The old world doesn’t mean as much to this younger generation as they have never seen it.

The society is organized in to chapters and councils. The chapters are the local organizing body and typically cover a single town or small region. Although in the larger metropolitan areas such as Port Loren, or Point True, there might be multiple chapters each covering a part of the city.

Councils are the higher level organizations. Each world has a single council that coordinates activities across all the chapters of the world. Each chapter has a representative that attends council meetings and votes for the interests of the chapter. This representative also has the responsibility to make sure that the chapter members adhere to any decisions of the council. Typically, the council representative is the head of the local chapter.

There is also a Frontier wide council consisting of two representatives from each of the world councils. This is the governing body of the society. All current members of this council are former members of the royal guard or royal court.

Activities

In the early days of the society, the members openly opposed the actions of the Family of One although they did so as individuals or groups and never in the name of the True Yazira society. And in return, the Family of One actively hunted down these members of the society, although that was done clandestinely as much as possible.

Openly, and in the name of the society, the early members organized activities and cultural events for yazirians on all the worlds of the Frontier where chapters were organized. They also welcomed any visitors of the other species in the Frontier to the events as a way of teaching them about yazirian culture.

After the sathar attack, the opposition to the Family of One became much more clandestine and behind the scenes. They supported organizations that opposed the practices of the Family of One with money and manpower but took much more of a supporting role than active involvement. They have worked extensively, especially on the worlds in the Athor, Gruna Garu, and Scree Fron systems, to get equal treatment from GODCo on those worlds and limit the control the Family of One exerts on the govenments of those systems.

At the same time, the society has actively stepped up the cultural and historical activities on worlds all around the Frontier, working hard to preserve the cultural heritage of the species and the histories of their homeworld. In the last decade they have launched a major effort to interview and record all surviving members of the species who actually lived on Yazira and participated in the Great Exodus. All of these stories are available for anyone to listen to.

As the society is slowly recruiting younger members, many dissatisfied with the actions and policies of the Family of One, the opposition is becoming more vocal and open once again.

Once recent activity which the society is indirectly a major supporter of, is the voyage of the HSS History’s Hope, a small exploration craft currently trying to chart a way back to the system that they believe to be Yazria. The Family of One suppressed the location of Yaziria shortly after the yazirans arrived in the Frontier claiming a computer crash wiped all details of the location and routes there. With the recent discovery of a system that might by Yazira in the right direction from the Frontier, many members of the society were quite excited. The support for the mission was quite spontaneous and not an organized event. However, most of the crew of the ship are members of the society and much of the mission’s funding comes from members as well. While unintended, this means that the mission has the ability to call on the society for assistance if needed. You can expect to hear more about this relationship in an upcoming post and in upcoming events in the Detailed Frontier Timeline.

Closing Thoughts

That’s my first organization for this month’s carnival. I intend to do at least one more later in the month and have new organizations be a regular feature on the blog. I created the True Yazira organization as part of the Legends and Lore blog carnival entry and have since tied it in to several events in my setting. It hasn’t come up with any games I’ve ever run but that is sure to change in the future.

I can’t wait to see what other organizations my fellow bloggers come up with and other aspects of using organizations in games they discuss. Be sure to check back regularly to see what new posts have been added to the comments and come back at the end of the month for the wrap up and summary post.

What do you think of the True Yazira society? How would you use an organization like this in your game? What more would you like to know about this society? Feel free to share your ideas in the comment section.

State of the Frontier – May 2020

I realized about halfway through the month that my April State of the Frontier post should have been the two year retrospective as that was the end of the first two years of the blog. Can I just say I can’t believe I’ve been going that long. This has been my most fruitful and long lived blogging streak. And it looks like it will be going for a while to come.

Since I missed the yearly retrospective last month, I think I’m just going to skip it for this year and try to remember to do one next year. There really isn’t that much to say. This is post 145 for the blog. Since we were at 72 at the end of the first year, we nearly doubled the number of posts in the second year which means I’ve been posting apace. And it seems that the audience is growing as the number of visitors, sessions, and page views grew by 45-75% depending on the metric. So more people are visiting the site which is great to see.

The focus of the blog has almost completely shifted over the past year from my original intent but the pendulum is starting to swing back now that I’m running a game again. More on that below.

Looking Back

This month was the first in a while that I didn’t have a new miniature model to share. With all the COVID-19 changes, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and work on models. I’ve actually been busier than before the pandemic.

We had the usual Detailed Frontier Timeline post at the beginning of the month which was followed by a two part article looking at the economics and logistics of starliners, first from a ship and passengers numbers perspective and then at the economics of a single ship. This kicked off an “Economics of Spaceflight” series that I intend to revisit occasionally in the future.

Behind the scenes I started up a new on-line game, “Skills for Hire.” This will be an episodic game with a different cast of characters each session to allow anyone available to play on a given night the chance to participate. The PCs are mercenaries working for Galactic Task Force, Incorporated and are assigned out to various jobs that GTF contracts for.

Which brings us to the last few posts of the month. Given the start of the game, I decided to showcase my game prep as blog entries, although after the game sessions are complete. To that end, I launched a series of posts with the “Skills for Hire” tag that will be outlining everything I’m creating and using for the game. I began with an introduction to the game and the impact it will have on the blog, then two creatures: the young sathodragon and the Pale mountain lion, and finally a write-up of the adventure and how it played out.

This will start a new style of posting going forward where there will be lots of little posts spaced out among the regular Tuesday posts. I may not post up all the write-ups of all the sessions, but I’ll try to get at least one in a month. And I’ll try to post the small bits like creatures, items, and locations. We’ll see how it goes. The write-up of the scenario was, I believe, the longest post I’ve done yet and it took a while to get it all written up.

Also behind the scenes I got the VM running my mail server moved over from the old server to the new one. So everything is now running on the new server and I can shut the old one off. Next up is to begin upgrading and improving the sites. Probably starting with my mail server as it is using a different technology (VMWare intead of Docker) than all the other sites and requires a bit more manual intervention in the case of a crash.

That was my month. Let’s look at what’s coming up.

Looking Forward

I’m hosting the RPG Blog Carnival in June. So there will be a post launching the month’s topic, Organizations, tomorrow on the first of the month so that all those participating in the blog carnival can get their cue for the month. This will take the place of the regular Tuesday post, which would normally be the first post of the month. Instead it will come the following week on the 9th. I’ll be talking about the True Yazira secret society in that kick-off post. Keep an eye on that post to links to other blogs taking about organizations created for their games and worlds. Most of the blog carnival posters write for fantasy settings and games but I’m sure the material created can be adapted to a sci-fi setting if you desire.

I’ve been asked about the stats and design of the HSS History’s Hope, so maybe this month I’ll whip up a more detailed description of that ship and post an updated map of their travels. They recently attempted a long jump and got lost again.

Beyond that, I don’t really know what I’ll be posting about. I’ll probably do a second organization to go with the theme of the blog carnival, probably on Galactic Task Force, Incorporated to go along with my game. And there will probably be several small posts related to the game and a scenario write up.

I’m planning on making the game sessions available as an audio podcast, and possibly videos, I just haven’t gotten everything in place for that yet so those will probably launch this month as well.

There are five Tuesdays this month with the last Tuesday being the last day of the month. That would normally be another one of these posts but since I’m hosting the blog carnival, that final post will be the wrap-up post for the carnival. I’ll do the State of the Frontier post on the first of July.

The other major thing happening behind the scenes is that June also means the start of editing on the next issue of the Frontier Explorer. I think a few of my blog posts might make it into the issue as articles this time around as they have been suggested by my co-editors. We’ll see.

There is also another FrontierSpace module in the works as I’ve been contacted about editing it and it’s almost about time for me to start writing my science nuggets for the Space Kids RPG.

Your Thoughts

Do you have any ideas or suggestions on things you’d like to see in the blog? Anything I’ve mentioned, you don’t want to see? Let me know in the comments below.

Skill for Hire – Introduction

Last Wednesday (May 20th) I ran the first session of a new on-line Star Frontiers game. I’ve been itching to run a game again and I finally pulled the trigger on getting it started. We’ll see how long it lasts.

Game Background

Game Logo

The PCs are employees of Galactic Task Force, Incorporated whose slogan is “Secretaries to Mercenaries, we’ve got a place for you!” They are effectively a mercenary group with a wide range of skills that you can hire out for any kind of job. You can see a more detailed description on the Skills for Hire game page on my wiki.

The plan is to make the games very episodic with each adventure taking only a single session. The goal is to allow anyone that can make a given session the opportunity to play. Each session starts a new mission and it can be run with whoever is available that night. I wanted to accommodate as many players as possible, even if they can’t make every week.

I’m also recording the sessions and I’ll be posting them on-line. The video will go up on YouTube and I’ll be posting the audio-only version as a podcast here on this site (and will list it on various podcast sites as well). The video will be completely unedited and the audio minimally so. More on that when they go live.

Games are Wednesday at 8pm MDT and we play on Roll20. If you think you might want to play and are able to join, feel free to jump over to the Roll20 game page and join. Create a character (instructions on the wiki page) and join us for the next session.

Impact on the Blog

As part of this, I’m also going to return to some of the roots of this blog and be posting the various resources I create for the game as part of my prep. These will be fairly rough and not fully polished but should provide some nuggets you can use from the resources as well as small adventures you could potentially drop into your game if you desired.

This will most likely result in a fundamental shift in my posting schedule and style. Namely, if things go as planned, I’ll be posting more often and the average post length will be smaller as I break up all the information across several posts. For example, I created two new creatures for the first session and those will get posted up as small individual posts to make finding them in the future easier. Similarly, I’ll be posting location maps (when I create new places) as individual posts. Once all the pieces are up, I’ll post up a description of the full adventure linking to all the parts.

All of the posts related to this game will have the “Skills for Hire” tag applied to them in addition to any others. Which should make the easier to find. I’ll also preface the session summaries/game outlines with “Skills for Hire” in the title.

So consider this the first of these small posts. I’ll get the creatures up over the weekend and do the full adventure post as the regular Tuesday post next week. I won’t necessarily get everything posted every week. I just don’t have that much free time. But I’ll try to get the more interesting things up.

I also still plan to do more of the typical posts like I’ve been doing for a while. The timeline posts won’t go away, and I might get back to modeling. The starliner posts has me looking at my custom starship system again so maybe there will be a post soon about that as well.

Going Forward

We’ll see how this goes and if I can keep up this new pace of posting. If there is interest, I might also consider live-streaming the games, either on YouTube or Twitch. I’ll just have to check that my computer is up to it. It didn’t have any issue recording the session locally on Wednesday but I’ll have to see how streaming works.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for things going forward.

State of the Frontier – April 2020

I hope this post finds you well, healthy, and safe as we navigate these troubled times. Luckily for us, we’ve managed to avoid any illness (other than allergies are hitting us hard) and everyone has remained employed. I worked from home before this all hit and the only real change from my day to day routine is that I now have to supervise school work for my kids. Of course that means less time to work on gaming projects. My wife is a college professor and for her things, actually improved in some ways as she could still go into her office but doesn’t have as many distractions every day. It has been a strange time and hopefully we all pull through it without too much damage.

Looking Back

Despite everything going one, I managed to get a new post out every week. The last post (Starship Construction in the Frontier) was only an hour late. I had actually finished it the night before but forgot to queue it up and then was busy in the morning. Otherwise, we had the usual Detailed Frontier Timeline post to start the month followed by the miniature post, this time about the Agriculture Ship. The final post of the month, which was part of the RPG Blog Carnival, was an update to my star sector map generator, this time adding in a graphical user interface making it easier to use.

Now, back at the end of last month, I talked about doing a post on the True Yazira secret society. Which you may notice I didn’t get to. That was actually a conscious decision. That post will probably come in June, when I’m hosting the Blog Carnival with a theme of “Organizations”. But more on that next month.

Cover of Frontier Explorer issue 28 featuring a hovercraft.

The other major thing that happened this month was that I finished and published the next issue of the Frontier Explorer. Issue 28 represents seven full years of publishing, even including the year we took off. If you haven’t gotten a copy, jump over to the Issue 28 page on DriveThruRPG and grab one. As I’m writing this, there have already been over 600 downloads of the issue. I’m quite happy with how it turned out.

Otherwise, most of my other behind the scenes activities were completely obliterated by the changes and school closings due to COVID-19. I haven’t even looked at my book. I also didn’t do any work on migrating or updating the websites. The other thing that suffered is my modeling efforts. I didn’t get a chance to work on any new models this month. There were also a few days when I fell a little bit behind on some of my timeline posts on Twitter but I got caught back up and back on track. Although I do need to sit down and get a little bit ahead of that project.

Looking Forward

This month will start with the usual Detailed Frontier Timeline post. The second post will probably not be a new model. I hope to have one later in the month but I don’t think I’ll have one ready by then. Instead the second post will probably be a spin off of my starship construction post. I’ve been thinking a lot about that and had some good discussions on Facebook and I’ve got another post in the work looking at the logistics and economics of space travel, again looking at how that affects the number of ships to expect in the setting. I have no idea what the final post of the month might be as the topic for next month’s Blog Carnival is still TBD. I guess we’ll find out together.

The other thing that will be starting this month is that I’m going to start running an on-line Star Frontiers game. I’m going to shoot for a weekly game but it might end up being bi-weekly instead. We’ll see how that turns out and I’ll probably be posting on that as we go along. If nothing else, I’ll be generating maps and adventures and can post those once the players have finished with them. It may also end up as an actual play podcast if the players are willing to let me record and post it.

The work on the Space Kids RPG hasn’t started yet so that may also begin this month. Nick Landry, who is producing the game, is working hard and may get to the point where he needs my input. At this point, I’m just waiting on him.

What have you been working on this last month? Are there things you’d like to see me post about? Let me know in the comments below.

State of the Frontier – March 2020

This has been a crazy month. With the world mostly locked down, it’s been interesting to see how things have changed and evolved. For me, work hasn’t changed much as I already worked from home full time. The main difference is that now I have even less free time since in addition to full time work, I have to manage the schooling for my four youngest children. But because of that, I haven’t gotten as much done as I had hoped.

Looking Back

As usual I started off the month with the Detailed Frontier Timeline post followed by a post on a new miniature and model, this time the freighter from the Federation Ships boxed set. Next came a post on the Blue Plague, inspired by the events unfolding around us right now. Finally, last week I finally put together the map of the Yazira Sector, the region of space beyond the Frontier where the HSS History’s Hope is exploring in an attempt to rediscover the Yazirian homeworld. I had originally thought to do a different, but related post in that slot. More on that later. And this post is the final Tuesday post this month.

You might have noticed that there wasn’t an RPG Blog Carnival post this month. The topic was Alchemy and I just wasn’t having any inspiration on that topic for a sci-fi setting.

A lot of my free time this month was spent on the Frontier Explorer. For the first time since we rebooted the zine, I’m actually ahead of the game. As of right now I’m waiting on one final article and a few pieces of art to finish of the issue. I was able to get all the submitted articles edited and into a preliminary layout. I expect that this issue will be out much earlier in the month than the last few issues, which squeaked in just before the end of the month.

Beyond that, not much has been going on. I didn’t get anything done on the website migrations and upgrades and don’t think I got any writing done on my book. The COVID-19 adjustments have just eaten up all my spare time.

Looking Forward

The timeline post is queued up and ready to go out next week. After that will be a post on the agriculture ship model I created. My plan is to do a post on the True Yazira secret society. I had planned to do that instead of the Yazira sector map post this month but two things resulted in putting that off. One was simply that I didn’t have time to do it justice. The other was that I wanted the HSS History’s Hope expedition detailed out since they are related. More on that later this month. The final post will hopefully be related to the Blog Carnival. April’s topic is “Corners of the Multiverse” so I should be able to come up with something.

The other big thing happening this month will be the Frontier Explorer. As I already mentioned, issue 28 is almost completely done. So watch for an announcement on that. Here’s a teaser of the cover.

With my house settling into a routine, I’m starting to have a bit more free time. Hopefully that means more of my behind the scenes projects will get some love including getting more web site work and book writing done. I also suspect that this month I’ll be starting in on my writing for the Space Kids RPG that successfully funded and which I mentioned last month. I also hope to start painting some of these miniatures that I’ve been creating.

I’ll also be working on new models as the ag ship is the last one I’ve finished. This month I’ll start working on the ships from the Privateers boxed set. Hopefully I’ll find my missing three miniatures but I have three to start with.

What have you been working on this last month? Are there things you’d like to see me post about? Let me know in the comments below.

State of the Frontier – Feb 2020

Happy Leap Day! I hope this blog is still around in four years to say that again. Who knows where we’ll be by then. I managed to get a post in every Tuesday this month, mainly because my Yazirian Legends and Lore post ended up needing two slots. Let’s get started.

Looking Back

I think I’ve settled into a routine that may become fairly standard for the next little while. We’ll see how it goes. The month started with the usual Detailed Frontier Timeline post followed on the second week by a post about a new miniature, this time the Pirate Frigate. The last two posts of the month were my posts for the RPG Blog Carnival on Yazirian History, and Yazirian Legends and Lore, which turned out to be more lore than legends but that’s okay. Doing the information for the yazirians has gotten me thinking about the other Frontier species so you may see articles like those for other species in the future.

Behind the scenes, there were a number of things going on this month. Why does it always seem February is the busiest month?

First off, I completed another orbit around the Sun celebrating my birthday mid-month. It is left as a (not so difficult) exercise for the reader to determine how many orbits I’ve made.

Another project that I finished was to move all of my websites to the new server. Last month I migrated all my externally hosted sites to the new server; this month I moved all the sites hosted on my old server over (except this one, which was already running on the new machine). This includes my old Programming Space blog, the Star Frontiersman webzine site, the Star Frontiers Network site, and the Star Frontiers Revival site. Yes I host a bunch of different Star Frontiers sites. The Star Frontiers Network was originally mine and I’ve collected the others over the years. With the migration, all of these sites are now set up with SSL certificates and default to the secure HTTPS protocol so you should see the little lock icon in your browser.

Another thing that happened is that I was recruited to help out with the Space Kids RPG Kickstarter. I’ll be providing astronomy and science nuggets that will be littered through the rules to teach about those topics. You may notice some familiar influences. The project’s creator, Nick Landry (@ActiveNick on Twitter), is a big Star Frontiers fan. The project has funded and, if you’re reading this on the day this post drops, is still open (It closes the evening of March 1, 2020). If you haven’t already, go back it.

I also helped Trevor Holman get another module ready for FrontierSpace. His module, Gremlins, is the second in his series and is available now on DriveThruRPG. I provided the editing on the module. This is number 2 of a planned 12 modules so be sure to keep and eye out for them. I’ll be posting about them as they are available.

Finally, I was hired out to work on the index of another upcoming RPG. That’s still a work in progress and I’ll talk about it when it comes out, although it’s not sci-fi related.

What didn’t happen was any advance work on issue 28 of the Frontier Explorer. These other projects ate up my time for that. I’ll have to get cracking next month. I also didn’t do so well on working on my book, adding only ~2000 words.

Looking Forward

So what is coming up in March?

On the blog, you can look forward to the regular Detailed Frontier Timeline post in a couple of days. The second week will be a new miniature, this time the freighter from the Federations Ships boxed set. I’ve teased that one on other social media platforms and my Patreon subscribers have already received the model. I’m currently working on an agriculture ship which will be April’s model.

The RPG Blog Carnival topic for next month is Alchemy. I’m not sure how I’m going to work that into a sci-fi topic but we should get a post on that at some point this month.

Right now I suspect that the fourth post of the month will be a new star sector map. In the Detailed Frontier Timeline, one of the threads has been the voyage of the HSS History’s Hope that I talked about in the Yazirian Legends and Lore post earlier this week. I have a map of the star sector they are traveling through, I just need to clean it up. I will probably do a post about that later in the month. It introduces some new features into the maps I’m making.

March has five Tuesdays which would normally be a fifth content post. But I’m saved by the fact that the last Tuesday is also the last day of the month so this time around it will just be the next State of the Frontier post.

Behind the scenes, this is editing month. I’ll be working furiously on the articles for the next issue of the Frontier Explorer which will come out in April. I hope to get the editing and preliminary layout done early so my volunteer artists have time to create any images I might need.

I’ll also be finishing up the indexing of that upcoming RPG which will eat up some of my time here at the beginning of the month. That’s a freelance project with a deadline (and a paycheck) so it actually takes top priority.

Another thing I plan to do this month is revamp my Patreon rewards and goals. If there is a reward tier you’d like to see, or something that would encourage you to support the site, please let me know.

On the computer side, the only thing still running on my old server is my mail server. That will get moved over to the new server this month allowing me to finally shut down the old computer. Once that is done, I’ll be embarking on the website upgrades for all the sites I manage, probably starting with the Frontier Explorer site to make it more mobile friendly.

Wrapping up

That’s quite a busy schedule. We’ll see how much of it actually happens. Is there anything you’d like to see me working or or types of posts you’d like to read? Please let me know in the comments below.

State of the Frontier – Jan 2020

Can you believe it’s already the end of January 2020? Where has the time gone? You may have noticed that this post didn’t come as a regular Tuesday post. I don’t think I’m completely back to getting a full post every week with this as a bonus post but we’ll see how it goes. In any case, this was a crazy month but things are going well.

Looking Back

I started out with the Detailed Frontier Timeline post and the post on the Sathar Assault Carrier miniature. That was all according to plan. Then the Frontier Explorer happened. More on that later. The Worlds of Origin post was planned as the third post for the month, but I didn’t have it finished and because of the time spent getting the Frontier Explorer issue ready, I wasn’t going to get it done in time. But I had already finished the UPF Minelayer model, which I had planned to save for February, so that post went up with the Worlds of Origin post following the next week. And then we got this post at the end of the month.

That’s the front end of the site. Behind the scenes, there were also a bunch of other things going on. The biggest is that I finished up and released issue 27 of the Frontier Explorer. And I just want to say that I absolutely love this cover by Jerry Boucher.

Getting the issue out actually took a bit more work than I had anticipated. Due to life events, some help I thought I would have with the issue didn’t materialize and I didn’t find out until the last minute so there was a bit of a scramble to get everything ready to go. But it all worked out in the end and, because of these events, I’m in a better situation to handle future issues of the magazine with fewer problems. So in the end it was a net win.

Another behind the scenes activity was the migration of several websites. During January, I managed to get all of my externally hosted websites, including the Frontier Explorer site, moved from the external host to the new server. This allowed me to get them all set up with SSL certificates so they use the HTTPS protocol instead of just plan HTTP. Now I just need to cancel that hosting service so I don’t get billed again.

I also set a goal to spend less time playing games on my phone when I’m sitting around waiting to pick up kids from school and activities and instead use that time to work on writing my book. The program I’m using to write and organize the book has an Android app and can connect directly to Dropbox. So I can write on my phone, tablet, or computer and have it all synced up. While I wasn’t completely diligent about not playing games, I was much better than I have been and managed to get another ~3000 words added to my novel in my spare moments.

Finally, I spent some time working on the fighter miniature models. The ones I have work just fine on my high resolution printer but I wanted versions that would work on lower resolution FDM printers as well. I think I’m happy with the new variations. I don’t know that I’ll do a blog post on them (unless you really want me to), but they will be released at some point in early February.

Looking Forward

Coming up next is the usual post on the Detailed Frontier Timeline. I kind of dropped the ball a bit on that project here in January with the work on the Frontier Explorer and missed a few days posting on Twitter. And then yesterday I realized that I had dropped a couple of the storylines so I had to go backfill them and post the missed updates to keep everything in sync. I’ve fixed that and will try to be better going forward. I need to take a day and work out the next few weeks of events to get the stories all advanced. For the past month or so I’ve been barely staying ahead and with all the storylines going on, it’s been a bit too last-minute.

After that will be a post on the Pirate Frigate miniature. That was the last ship from the Sathar Ships boxed set of miniatures that needed to be recreated. I finished the model last week and sent it out to my Patreon supporters. The write up will happen on the second week of February.

The RPG Blog Carnival topic for February is Legends & Lore. If all goes well, the third post of the month will be on that topic. I don’t know what I’m going to write about yet, especially since I haven’t seen the kickoff post for the month, but I’ve got some ideas percolating. I’m leaving the fourth week post open right now. I might have content or it may end up being the State of the Frontier post but I think it will be the former.

Behind the scenes I will be continuing to work on an number of projects. I’m already mostly done with my next ship model which is a recreation of the freighter miniature from the Federations Ships box of miniatures. That will be the last ship from that boxed set. That will be posted about at some point, probably in March or it may end up as the fourth week post. After that, I just have the six ships from the Privateers box to recreate.

I’ll also continue to work on my novel. We’ll see if I can get the time spent on it increased. I wrote about 14k works in November, writing 15-20 minutes a day. If I can get back up to that rate each month, I would probably have the first draft done late this year or early next. I’m ~74k words into it and about 1/4 of the way through the outlined story. I also plan to start spending a little bit of time on issue 28 of the Frontier Explorer as well but that will be very low level in February as I also have an editing project to work on another module for FrontierSpace being written by Trevor Holman.

Finally, I’ll be migrating more websites to my new server. I still have four websites and my mail server running on the old server and I want to get those moved over this month. These will either be really easy to move or much trickier than the sites I’ve already moved. We’ll see how it goes. But these include the starfrontiers.us, starfrontiers.info and starfrontiersman.com sites so they are directly relevant to this audience. I also have my old programmingspace.net blog to move. Once those are moved, the real work of upgrading all the sites will begin.

Final Thoughts

I think that about covers it. If you have feedback on the types of posts you’d like to see more of, please let me know in the comments below.