The Expanding Frontier

Creating Sci-fi RPG Resources

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Category Archives: General

State of the Frontier – Nov 2019

This post should have gone up a couple of days ago but I was completely swamped over the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a pretty busy weekend at our house with my wife running a half marathon, Thanksgiving dinner, Black Friday Christmas shopping, and buying and decorating our Christmas tree. Along with all the regular weekend stuff like grocery shopping and laundry that had to be done. There wasn’t much free time to get the blog post up. But the craziness is behind us so let’s get to it.

Looking Back

The month started with the regular Detailed Frontier Timeline post, the next of which will come tomorrow. After that I finished up the Module Based Campaign thread and wrapped up that series covering all the Knight Hawks modules. I have to admit, it feels good to wrap up a series like that.

The last two posts of the month were the UPF Battleship and Heavy Cruiser models. I’ll admit I didn’t expect to get the Heavy Cruiser done last month but it took considerably less time than I expected to create the model and so the post was ready before the end of the month.

There were some other things going on behind the scenes last month as well. First, I’ve been having some issues with my web hosting provider and made the decision to bring all my web hosting back to my home server for the time being. That said, the computer I’m using as my home server is an old laptop that is about six years old and showing its age. To that end, I used some of the Patreon money from both my Expanding Frontier Patreon and the Frontier Explorer Patreon and purchased a new computer system to serve as a new server for my websites. That computer arrived this month and I’ve been getting it configured and set up. A big Thank You to all the Patreon supporters that made this possible.

The second thing that happened was that, given November is National Novel Writing Month, I decided to participate in a reduced #NaNoWriMo challenge. The normal event is to write 50,000 words on a new project. I knew that I didn’t have time for that, so rather than do the full challenge, I set myself a goal of writing for at least 15 minutes each day working on my Star Frontiers novel. The other part of my goal was to complete at least 10,000 words by the end of the month. And also posting my daily progress on Twitter.

I ended up not writing anything the last three days of the month (see the intro paragraph about how crazy those days were). Despite that, I more than met my word count goal with a total of 12,751 words written this month bringing the total word count of the novel up to 70,243 words. I figure the story is a little more than a quarter of the way finished so expect somewhere between 200k to 250k words when the rough draft is finished. If I had been able to write those last three days, I would have most likely had just over 14,000 words based on my writing rate through the month. Despite not getting to write the last three days, I think this was a success.

Finally, I started putting my miniature model files on-line on DriveThruRPG where people can download them if they want copies. I created a 3D Models product page in my New Frontier Games account where they are being made available. I haven’t quite gotten all the models I’ve created up yet but most of them are there. All future models will appear there as well. The model files that are recreations of the old TSR miniatures are listed as free, pay-what-you-want products while the new models that I’ve created myself will typically have a price of $0.99 or $1.99.

Looking Forward

Going forward, at least for the next few months, there are going to be some changes to my postings here on the blog. I’m going to try to get a post up every week but that may not happen. I’ve been going strong for a year and a half and I don’t want to break the streak, but if I do, you’ll know why.

The main change in posting is going to occur because I’m going to be spending a lot of time working on the websites that I maintain. And there are quite a number of them. Besides this site, I also maintain the Frontier Explorer website, starfrontiers.info, starfrontiers.us, and the Star Frontiersman website. Plus a website for New Frontier Games, an old blog (Programming Space), a website for a OSR gaming magazine that hasn’t launched yet, and personal websites for myself (I’d link to that one but see below) and two of my kids.

Initially all of these sites will just be moved over to my new server. With more memory, (much) faster disks, and a (much) faster CPU, you might even see a performance improvement. For the most part, those migrations should be seamless. There will be a bit of downtime but it should be small. Once I have them all up and running as is, I intend to start making some much needed updates and improvements to many of the sites.

You shouldn’t see any major changes to this site. I’m happy with its current design and so don’t have any major plans for it. The one thing I will be doing is enabling HTTPS and installing SSL certificates on the site to allow that. That’s one of the things I’ll be learning how to set up in the next month or so. That will be happening across all my sites.

The starfrontiers.us site is going to get a major overhaul. It is still the same site written by Bill Logan back in 2006/2007 and needs some major updating. That is going to consume the majority of my spare time over the next few months as I work on it. There will also be some updates to the Frontier Explorer site to make it more mobile-friendly. I’m also going to overhaul my personal site. It’s currently configured as a blog but since I have this one, I want to make it more of a profile site that links to all the various projects I have going instead. The other sites will be much lower priority.

In addition to the website work, I also have an editing job coming down the pipe for a FrontierSpace adventure, and a job doing the index for a new RPG coming from DWD Studios. Plus I’m hoping to continue my novel writing. And it’s time to start working on the next issue of the Frontier Explorer. As you can see, I’ve got a lot going on.

What this means is that I may not have as much time for specific blog posts. Here’s what I see happening for the next few months.

The Detailed Frontier Timeline posts will continue, both here at the first of the month, and daily on the Star Frontiers Twitter feed. I’m continuing to work on that project and intend to keep it going for a long time to come.

I’m really enjoying the modeling and miniature creation. (I think I’ve mentioned that in the past). As such, that is going to be a major part of this blog going forward, at least for the foreseeable future. I’m currently working on the UPF Assault Carrier and that will get posted in December. After that, you can expect to see the sathar assault carrier, a new UPF minelayer, and then recreations of the pirate assault scout, the freighter from the Federations Ships box, and finally recreations of the six ships from the Privateers box. That should keep me busy for a while and those will probably be released one a month for a while. I don’t think I’ll get to them any faster than that. And after that, I have ideas for a whole bunch of more ships.

This State of the Frontier post will probably become the regular last Tuesday post of the month for a while instead of just being an extra post the last day of the month. In it, I’ll update you on progress on the website updates, Frontier Explorer status, and any other projects that haven’t reached completion but which I’ve been working on. It really won’t change much, just go from an extra post to a regular one. Although if I do still have a lot to write about, I’ll bump it back to its extra post status to give you more content.

That leaves me with one or two other posts each month to keep the one-a-week schedule, depending on the way the days fall in the months to come (Dec and Mar have 5 Tuesdays, Jan and Feb have 4). I don’t know what I’m going to fill those with, although I’m leaning toward fleshing out more corporations like I did with Streel a while back. If people are interested, I could also post excerpts from the novel, although most of that is really rough and subject to great change when I get to editing in the future. The other thing that might end up here is bits of a new adventure I’m planning on starting (I know I need to finish the ones I’ve already started so they may show up as well). I hope to go to a con next year and run some Star Frontiers games and need to develop the adventures for those. I’m open to suggestions here for content. If there is something you’d like to see more of, please let me know.

That’s it for now. There is a lot coming up in the next few months so I’d better get to work. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions in the space below.

December 2, 2019 Tom Leave a comment

State of the Frontier – Oct 2019

This is going to be a fairly short post as there really isn’t much to say. This month’s posts had a fairly focused theme: miniatures.

Looking Back

October was the month of miniatures. We had the Detailed Frontier Timeline post to start off the month and then it was miniatures, miniatures, miniatures with posts on the Armed Station, the UPF Light Cruiser, and the UPF Destroyer. I ended the month with a post providing the spectral types of all the stars on the Extended Frontier Map.

There were some things going on behind the scenes as well. Most notably we were hard at work on Issue 26 of the Frontier Explorer, which was just released late last night. It took longer than I planned. I’m still struggling with the distributed workload. It just takes longer than when I was doing it all myself and I keep forgetting to account for that. Hopefully I’ll get that figured out for the January issue.

I also worked a bit more on my Star Frontiers novel. This was mostly at the beginning of the month before work on the Frontier Explorer and my current miniatures obsession took over. But I still managed to get ~5000 words added. Not as many as I wanted but creating the miniature models ate into the time I had planned to spend on writing.

Looking Forward

I’ll have to admit, I’m having a blast creating the miniatures and I don’t think it’s going to stop anytime soon. Although the rate will definitely slow down. I’m nearly halfway done with the UPF Battleship and will finish that here in the coming month so you can expect a post about that.

As I’ve mentioned in the posts this month, I’m working on filling in the gaps so that there are miniatures for all the ships in the Second Sathar War game. After the battleship, I’ll have recreated all the original UPF and sathar miniatures. With the destroyers and fighters done, the only ships left are the UPF Heavy Cruiser and the UPF and sathar assault carriers. Those builds will be completely from scratch and may take some time. I expect that those will be coming at the rate of one a month for the next little while. They may come faster if I really get bitten by the modeling bug but one a month is the plan.

I want to finish up the module campaign project so I’m going to force myself to write another post in that series this month and then finish it off in December. We’ll also have the regular Detailed Frontier Timeline post. As to the fourth post this month, I’m going to leave that open and not make any predictions or promises. We’ll have to see what project grabs me this time around.

Your Thoughts

What did you think about the overabundance of miniatures this month? Do you want to see more of those? Is there something you’re missing or you’d like to see more of? Is there a project or topic you’d like to see me tackle (or finish)? Let me know in the comments below. And Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2019 Tom Leave a comment

State of the Frontier – Sept 2019

As I was getting ready to write this, I noticed that it was post 100 on the blog. That definitely marks this as the most successful single blogging endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. Back when I was blogging regularly on the Arcane Game Lore blog, I had a total of 91 posts. I’ve considered pulling those posts over to this blog to consolidate but have not done so yet. My old Programming Space blog only had 16 posts before I stopped posting there and my really old Star Frontiers Lives On blog only had 25 posts before it died. (Another set of posts I’ve considered importing here.) To be fair the cause of death of that one was the Frontier Explorer magazine, it started eating up all my time. I’ve also tried off and on to run a personal blog but the most recent incarnation (there have been others that have been lost to time) only had 6 posts and one of those was a test post. So this has definitely been my most successful endeavor so far and will so exceed all the others combined.

Looking Back

I started out with the now regular timeline post which was followed by the map for a small space station location, the space dock crew lounge. This was part of an adventure I’ve been meaning to write up for a while now so I officially launched it as a new project, Asset Recovery.

And then this month took a right turn and went off in a completely different direction that I hadn’t planned on. About two weeks ago I really got bitten by the bug to do some more 3D modeling. This really shouldn’t have come as a surprise given that I just got my new 3D printer and enjoy modeling, but still. It started with me setting up a page on the site where people can order custom printed miniatures using my new 3D printer. I can print any miniature they want or they can choose from the selection of models I’ve created.

When I posted about this new page on the Star Frontiers Facebook group, someone (Andy) suggestions that I make “scenario packs” with the minis needed for the various modules and battle scenarios in the books. I had been thinking along this line already and I guess Andy’s comment was the push I needed to move more in that direction. To do that, however, I needed the rest of the models. That’s when everything went off the rails. I started by sitting down and whipping up models for the UPF and sathar fighters, miniatures that are lacking in the originally released sets. And then I launched into some more miniature models that I’ll get to in a moment.

Behind the scenes, there have been two major projects going on. The first is issue 26 of the Frontier Explorer. I’ve been working on editing the articles for that issue which comes out next month.

The other is I’ve been working on writing my novel set in the Star Frontiers universe. I’ve added over 7500 words (which is half again as much as I added in the two previous months combined) to the manuscript bringing it up to ~52,500 words total. That is now longer than my entire previous novella, Discovery, which clocked in at just over 48,000 words. And I’m only about 1/4 of the way through the story.

The other thing that happened is I got the first round of Extended Frontier Maps shipped out to those that ordered them. There was a bit of a hiccup with the printer but we got that sorted out and the maps shipped. As as far as I know, with the exception of the one going to Germany, they have all arrived. The upside to the hiccup was that I discovered that it’s actually easier to me to order these print-on-demand style rather than having to order them in batches. So I’ve turned the ordering page back on and will leave it open. If you still want a copy, you can order one anytime.

Looking Forward

This month is probably mostly going to be about miniatures. We’ll start off tomorrow with what has become the regular first post of the month, the Detailed Frontier Timeline post. And if you don’t want to wait until the beginning of each month for the timeline events, I still post them daily on Twitter from the @StarFrontiers account.

The post the following week will be a post on the space station mini I made. The picture at the right is a bit of a teaser for that. Continuing on the miniature theme, I’m currently working on reproducing the UPF light cruiser miniature. You can expect to see a post on that before the end of the month, probably on the 22nd. I don’t think it will quite be done by the 15th as I’ll be focusing a lot on the Frontier Explorer between now and then. As these new models become available, I’ll be adding them to the Order Miniatures page so that you can order them if you want. I plan on putting all my miniature files up on DriveThruRPG for people to purchase if they like although all the ones I’ve developed recently and going forward are sent to my Patreon supporters at the Surveyor ($2/month) level or higher as I finish them. I’ve already sent my supporters the fighter and space station models. They’ll be getting the light cruiser when it’s done. Anyone at the Crafter level of support ($30/month) will be receiving a printed space station and light cruiser miniature in November as those models will be released this month. In addition, anyone that joins that support level in October will receive a set of 8 UPF and 8 sathar fighters as well.

October is a five post month so I expect that the other two posts will be one on the module campaign and another related to the Asset Recovery project. Since the next miniature after the light cruiser will be the battleship, I don’t think that will get finished this month. Those will be my regular Tuesday posts.

As I mentioned, this month sees the release of issue 26 of the Frontier Explorer and a lot of behind the scenes work will be going into that. You can expect to see an out of band post announcing its release towards the end of the month. I’ll also continue to work on my book.

You may also see more shorter posts coming in the future. I often post small snippets of things I’m working on on Facebook or Twitter. Since my posts here are posted there as well, I’m toying with the idea of posting those small bits here as short posts instead. We’ll see how that pans out. Let me know what you think of the idea.

One other idea I’m toying with is expanding the scope of this post each month. While I call it “The State of the Frontier,” to date I’ve really only used it to talk about things I’ve been doing. I think I would like to also include other things going on related to Star Frontiers and FrontierSpace that others are doing as well. We’ll see if that come to fruition but if you have news and want me to help disseminate it, let me know.

Your Thoughts

Thanks as always for reading my blog and especially to those that support me on Patreon. Let me know if you have any thought or suggestions on current or future projects.

September 30, 2019 Tom 1 Comment

State of the Frontier – Aug 2019

Okay. This month has been a bit of a roller coaster (and that’s not counting the fact that I got to actually ride roller coasters this month 🙂 ).

Looking Back

As promised, I got out the regular Detailed Frontier timeline post and a post on the module campaign. I also created the sector map based on the region of space from my book Discovery as I had mentioned I wanted to do which highlighted the notation for the third dimension in the maps.

Speaking of the printer. I printed this model by Jay Thruman. It’s about 2″ tall. Bonus points if you recognize the ship.

The post that I wasn’t anticipating was my review of the AnyCubic Photon 3D printer. That one came about as a bit of serendipity. I was at the university library (where I used to work) printing out my poster for the meeting that I went to in Australia at the beginning of the month and they had added an SLA resin printer to the host of other 3D printers. We got talking about it and after seeing some of the prints they were doing, I kind of got excited to maybe get one myself. So I started looking and found that there were some entry level ones for just $300. And then I went on my trip. When I got back, I decided that for $300, I had to take the plunge so I ordered it and have been playing with it all month so I thought I’d write up a review for anyone else that might want to get one to make miniatures with. I mean if creating miniature for game play doesn’t count as creating RPG resources, I don’t know what does. 🙂

The 3D printer was the fun part of the roller coaster that was August. The down side was “off camera” so to speak. Somehow, my web hosting service got hacked and all my websites that were hosted there had malicious code injected into them. So I had to get that all rebuilt and back on-line. It didn’t affect this site as this one is on my home server but it did take the Frontier Explorer site off-line for about a week while I got it all cleaned up. The hack that let the malicious users in was on the webhost side, not my sites since they damaged several different (unrelated and unlinked) sites exactly the same way like they had access to account file system, not the web file system. As I’m writing this, I still don’t have one of the sites back up yet but that should be done in a day or two (probably by the time this posts). It’s my old blog that I haven’t written on since 2013 so I have a perfect backup. It’s just so old, I don’t think it works on the newer infrastructure at the web host so I’m temporarily reinstating it on my home server until I can get it upgraded.

I’ve also been putting some work in on my Star Frontiers novel. I’ve only added about 2200 words this month (and 2800 last month) but I’ve gotten some more organizational stuff done on the manuscript and done some light editing. It’s only about 3000 words shy of being the same size as my Discovery novel and I’m only about 1/4 of the way through the plot. So I’ve got a way to go.

I also posted an opportunity to purchase printed versions of the Extended Frontier Map. The preorders on that are still open and will be until Sept 4th. At which point I’ll be getting the order for the maps placed and get them printed and shipped out.

Looking Forward

September is likely to be a slow month as far as posting goes as I’m going to be doing a bunch of stuff behind the scenes that will probably not translate into posts. I’ll try to get a post out every week but they might be kind of small. There will definitely be the Timeline post as always, and I’ll do one more on the module based campaign, probably covering the Warriors of White Light and Dramune Run modules. Beyond that I can’t really say what will come up.

Behind the scenes I will be continuing to work on my books. I also am probably going to actually start getting Death at Rosegard put together properly.

But the big thing that will probably be taking up my time is an upgrade to my home server and moving websites around. The computer that is running my home server (an old laptop that was 2x faster and more memory that the previous server) is having issues and constantly throwing errors. It doesn’t seem to affect the running of the sites, but it is a cause for worry. Partially I think it is just over-heating and I need to clean it and maybe reapply some thermal paste or replace a fan to get better airflow. That server hosts this site, starfrontiers.info, starfrontiers.us, and starfrontiersman.com, and my old programmingspace.net site (once I get it moved back). So if you see a short interruption on those sites, it’s because I’m working on the server.

That’s just maintenance. I’m planning on actually building a new server with modern hardware (instead of 5 year old hardware) to run the server on. On the hardware side, the amount of memory will be the same but the memory speed will more than double and the CPU will go from 4 cores to 8 with each core being about 60% faster than the older ones so there should be a definite performance increase. I’ll probably also use the computer to do some development on as well but it will primarily be my server. In addition to the hardware upgrade, I’ll be working on upgrading the software infrastructure as well.

I’ll also probably star migrating my sites on the shared webhost back to my home server. I originally moved them off to get increased bandwidth and stability from my now 10 year old server and slower internet connection. But since then I’ve upgraded my internet and with the server upgrade, I will have plenty of processing power and bandwidth so that it make sense to move them back in house where I have a bit more control. Once the migration is done, I’ll be looking to make upgrades to the sites themselves but that a project for several months down the road.

I’m still itching to do another Technical Manual so that project might start this month depending on how the infrastructure work goes. We’ll just have to see.

Your Thoughts

As always, let me know if there are any particular things you like to see me address more here on the blog.

And thank you to all of you reading my blog and especially those supporting me on Patreon. It’s your support that makes things like the server upgrade possible.

August 31, 2019 Tom Leave a comment

State of the Frontier – July 2019

It has been a crazy month and I’m amazed I got as much done as I did. That said, it was a really good month too.

Looking Back

This month saw the completion of two major items. The first was the Expanded Frontier Map that I’ve been working on for a while. If you haven’t already, you can see the final Player’s Version without the sathar jump routes and the final Referee’s Version with those routes. While there is still more for me to do on the software, the maps themselves are finished.

The other major item was getting issue 25 of the Frontier Explorer magazine out the door and available for download. You can grab it on DriveThruRPG or on the Frontier Explorer website. This is a sathar themed issue and almost every article relates to the sathar in some form or another. While not specifically part of this blog, the Frontier Explorer is one of my major endeavors and can suck up a lot of time in the month before publication.

I also got a post in about the Streel mega-corp describing my vision of the company in my campaign. This was part of the July RPG Blog Carnival and I might start doing more of these corporate write-ups if people are interested.

Finally I had my monthly post with the updated timeline events and I managed to get another installment of the module based campaign series done as well.

Behind the scenes, in addition to working on the Frontier Explorer, I’ve started back in on my writing projects. I’ve mostly been working on my Star Frontiers novel but have also started looking at the sequel to my book Discovery. My uncles were actually bugging me about writing the sequel at a family gathering recently.

Looking Forward

There will definitely be the regular timeline post at the beginning of the month and I plan on doing another post in the module-based campaign series this month. So you can expect those to show up.

I’m headed to Sydney, Australia on Friday for a week to attend a conference for work. I’m hoping to get a bunch done on the flights when I can’t sleep. I might also get some work done in the evening if I don’t do too much sightseeing.

While it won’t be a regular post, you can expect to see an announcement for the opportunity to purchase a printed poster of the Player’s and Referee’s versions of the Extended Frontier Map. I posted a poll on the Star Frontiers Facebook group to see if there was interest and the response was positive enough that I will make them available. I have print proofs of the map already so I know that they will look great when finished.

While I really need to finish up the Death at Rosegard and Ghost Ship Osiris adventures, I’m really itching to start a couple of new projects as well. Ghost Ship Osiris was supposed to be the third module released for FrontierSpace but the second one still isn’t out so there is really no rush on that front. Which is why you haven’t seen much on it in the last few months. I will probably put some time in on Death at Rosegard during my trip so I might have some sections of that adventure ready to go by the end of the month. Or at least identify holes that need to be filled.

I’m looking at two new projects and possibly starting one from really early in the blog. The first, and this one will probably happen and get finished by the end of the month, is to take the map I have for the star sector in my Discovery module and give it the treatment that I gave the Frontier map. The major difference is that there is effectively only one jump route at the moment, and the stars are distributed in 3 dimensions instead of on a flat plane. I’ll have to update the printing of z-coordinates on the map, something the software does but which I’d turned off for the Extended Frontier Map. This won’t be a long series of posts, just one with the final product describing what went into it.

The other thing I’m itching to do is create another ship and associated Technical Manual like I’ve done for the sathar destroyer and UPF assault scout. Back at the beginning of this blog, I laid out the plans to do a sathar assault carrier to round out the minis for all the sathar ships. But I’m also considering doing either a UPF frigate, or maybe a civilian ship of some sort. That would probably be a rework and extension of the CDCSS Nightwind, published in the first issue of the Frontier Explorer, with updated maps, and alternate configurations for passengers, troop transport, or other activities.

I’ve also mentioned working on a simple starting adventure for Star Frontiers and that might get looked at as well.

Your Thoughts

Do any of those possible projects sound more interesting than others? Is there something specific you’d like to see worked on? Let me know in the comments below.

And thank you to everyone reading, commenting, and especially to those supporting this work on Patreon. I really appreciate the feedback and support you provide.

July 31, 2019 Tom 1 Comment

Frontier Explorer issue 25 now available

Just a quick note to let everyone know that issue 25 of the Frontier Explorer is not available for download. You can get it at either DriveThruRPG or on the Frontier Explorer website.

This issue is a sathar themed issue with articles about all aspects of the sathar from vehicles and weapons, to biology and social structure.

Grab your copy any enjoy!

July 29, 2019 Tom Leave a comment

State of the Frontier – June 2019

It’s been a couple of months since I wrote one of these. I missed the May one due to family vacations and other activities keeping me busy at the end of the month last month. So this report will cover the last two months.

Looking Back

The last couple of months have been mostly consumed by my Expanded Frontier Map project. As I’ve said before, this project has really wormed itself into my mind and taken over much of my efforts the last couple months. It also seems to be really popular with those currently reading the blog as the map posts generate the most visits of any of my posts.

The Detailed Frontier Timeline project continues apace. I missed a few days posting on Twitter and had to catch up, usually just after I got back from a trip. I scheduled the posts in advance for when I’d be gone but then always seemed to drop the ball the few days after I returned as I was trying to catch up with everything. I think in the future, I should schedule posts for a few days after I return as well.

I also posted a bit more on the module based campaign outline but that one has been hard for me to really get into.

Cover image of the book Discovery.  A twin engine scout ship floating in the dark of space.

My other post was the prologue for a Star Frontiers novel I’ve been working on off and on over the past few years. Over the last month I’ve picked up working on that some more. I’ve also been asked by several people recently if I’m ever going to publish the sequel to my book Discovery, so I’ve started looking at that again as well.

Behind the scenes, this last month has been mostly consumed in working on the next issue of the Frontier Explorer. I’ve also started putting Death at Rosegard into a coherent form instead of scattered bits and pieces.

Looking Forward

So what’s coming up this month? As usual, the first post of the month will be the next installment of the Detailed Frontier Timeline.

The next post will most likely be the completed “Players’s Version” of the Expanded Frontier Map. All of the stellar data (with the exception of Mechan) has been entered and I have the map. All that’s left is to add the nebula, which I’ll be doing by hand, tweak the placement of text, and add in a legend. That’s all manual work, that won’t be done by the program so I just need to sit down and do it.

Issue 25 of the Frontier Explorer will be coming out this month as well, although that isn’t a direct focus of this blog, it definitely impact my time. It’s a sathar themed issue and we might have room for a few non-sathar articles but not many given all the great content we have.

I plan to sit down and work on the module based campaign some more this month so you can expect to see at least one post on that, probably after the Expanded Frontier Map post.

The remaining two posts for the month are somewhat up in the air. I doubt I’ll post any writing samples. One, nothing is really that polished and two, I don’t know that there is a lot of interest in that at the moment. There might be another post on either the Expanded Frontier Map, which would be the “Referee’s Version” with all the sathar data on it, or more on the campaign outline. Or both. I might even get far enough on the Death at Rosegard work to put out some sections of that adventure in near final form.

Any Requests?

Are there any projects you’d like me to focus on? Something you’d really like to see finished? Let me know in the comments below.

And thank you to everyone reading, commenting, and especially to those supporting this work on Patreon. I really appreciate the feedback and support you provide.

June 30, 2019 Tom 2 Comments

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.

May 1, 2019 Tom 4 Comments

Frontier Explorer Issue 24 Available

I’m going to assume that those reading this blog have heard this already from another source but just in case you haven’t, Issue 24 of the Frontier Explorer is now available for download from DriveThruRPG or on the magazine’s website. Here’s the announcement text:

Hello Explorers!

Welcome to issue 24 of the Frontier Explorer.  Now that Spacefleet has cleared out the recent sathar incursion, we can start publishing again.

This issue picks up right where we left off including some articles that were ready to go but didn’t make it into issue 23.  All of the usual articles (Jurak Hangna, comics, etc) are here along with articles about derlict spaceships, and some not so derelict ones along with an small mini adventure in our Warriors of White Light 2 series.

The biggest change is that we’ve moved to a new layout and design for the magazine’s cover, logo, and interior.  Let us know what you think about the changes and any suggestions or ideas you might have to make it even better.

This issue continues and strengthens our support for the FrontierSpace RPG in addition to Star Frontiers. Issue 23 had a conversion of the Star Frontier races to FrontierSpace. This issue contains the details of a star system from the FrontierSpace frontier sector as well as stats in the Jurak Hangna creature article for use in that system.

The full article list for this issue is:

  • Frontier News
  • Dark Shadow’s Revenge
  • Duergan’s Star System
  • Of Lost Ships and Derelicts
  • Exploring a Deserted Spaceship
  • Meet the Crew of the SS Knight Owl
  • Titan Rising: 2299 #17
  • Kdikit Blue Biters
  • Ghostship of the Terran Queen
  • Escape Run #3

Grab your copy today and as always, keep exploring!


April 24, 2019 Tom Leave a comment

State of the Frontier – March 2019

This post should have come out yesterday but life has been quite crazy for me the last few days (and weeks really).

Looking Back

For the most part I accomplished everything I set out to do. I got the Sathar Cave System and Hum Calendar published as well as the updated engine data for the new starship construction system. What I didn’t get to at all, once, again, is the Pursale ship for the Ghost Ship Osiris module.

Most of my spare time this last month was eaten up by working on the Frontier Explorer. So much so that my buffer of articles has been completely used up and I’m writing this one a day late. The good news is that the issue is almost done.

The other thing that suffered a bit this last month, especially toward the end, was the Frontier Timeline posts on Twitter. There were a few days that I was so busy that posting the event (or two) for those days completely slipped my mind and they didn’t get posted until the next day. The summary post with all the events from the last month will be coming out tomorrow along with the updated comprehensive document (which is starting to get quite large. This month saw the beginning of the end in the the Saurian sector of space as the sathar begin their final push to eliminate the Saurians.

Looking Forward

The end of April will mark the first full year of my blog. I’m amazed it’s been that long already and I’m very grateful to all my readers and supporters. Toward the end of the month or possibly in early May I’ll do a “year in review” post. The exact timing is a little uncertain as I’ll be traveling during that time frame. Early May is my 25th wedding anniversary and my wife and I will be gone starting in late April on a two week vacation including a 7 day cruise where I will have little to no internet access. So we’ll see what I can get queued up before I leave.

While not directly related to the blog, April will see the publication of issue 24 of the Frontier Explorer. I’ll be sure to post a link here when it is available.

As I already mentioned, tomorrow will see the next Detailed Frontier Timeline post. Beyond that I’m not really sure what the month will bring. I think that regardless of how far I get, I’ll be posting at least the sketches of the Pursale ship as that will give me some incentive to get back to that project. I also have some setting “fluff” pieces that have been on my mind for a while that I might flesh out and publish.

On the starship construction system, I now think I have everything I need to have it work as a replacement for the standard system in Star Frontiers. There are some other tweaks I want to make to the system but it is otherwise good to go. I think I’ll start publishing the details specs for a number of standard ships from the game in the new system as I work on cleaning up the write-up of the system.

I also think that I now have everything for the Death at Rosegard adventure as well and it’s time for me to fully write that up. I’m sure I’ll discover lots of little bits and pieces I’ve left off as I go so that may take some time to finish.

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is designing one or more small, introductory adventures for Star Frontiers. Something that can take someone completely unfamiliar with the game and walk them through the basic game mechanics. I’m thinking at least two small adventures: the first a solo introductory adventure for someone completely new to the game, and the second a simple adventure that can be used to introduce others to the core of the game. The idea is still percolating in my brain but the beginnings might happen this month. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Once again thank you to everyone reading the blog and especially to those supporting me on Patron. I really appreciate the feedback and support you provide.

April 1, 2019 Tom 1 Comment

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