Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! The winner of The Zhodani Base St. Patrick’s Day Contest – 2013 is Friz.
His entry is an old school rescue adventure called “The Regretful Historian” in the form of a Patron. Well done!
I hope we will get lots of other interesting contest entries in 2014. Welcome again next year.
A quick competition. A $10 prize at DriveThruRPG for the winner. Design something (e.g. a character, a ship, a patron, a system) for the St. Patrick’s Map. The most interesting entry will win.
Send Your entries by e-mail. Please use plain text format and attach any images. Word files will not be accepted!
The competition starts now and ends 16 March 2013.
By entering the contest You allow your entry to be posted at the Zhodani Base. All entries might also be posted in PDF format as a free down-loadable file at the Zhodani Base.
Last years winner was Randy with this write-up of Derry.
Cirque, a 160 page campaign source book for Traveller5 (T5) at familiar worlds in the Spinward Marches. This sounded like a good idea to me. I am backing it and getting a print version.
In science fiction we have seen lots of spherical space ships. We remember the ships used by the Space Vikings by H. Beam Piper and the Death Star from Star Wars and the Heart of Gold from the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the ship from E.T. and the Borg Sphere from Star Trek: First Contact and lots of more.
Image from Project Gutenberg. Copyright expired.
In Traveller we have the Mercenary Cruiser and the Tigress class. We all know that the Mercenary Cruiser is supposed to be able to land. But in Traveller it cannot do that since it is only partially streamlined and the rules say that it then cannot land. I think it should be able to land under certain conditions. These conditions might be a slow decent and no flying in the atmosphere. For a quick assault, the cutters would still be needed.
Some pretty pictures of the Mercenary Cruiser:
Some pretty pictures of the Tigress:
Peter Elson, who has painted a lot of the images for TTA (that we love) has also made a spherical ship. This ship is also able to land in an atmosphere.
The Long Result by Peter Elson.
Posted by permission of the estate of Peter Elson.
© Peter Elson.
The Traveller Wiki that is now at Wikia is going to move (to Downport). They have to move since Wikia is requiring that a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 3.0) is used.
Most of the information at the Traveller Wiki is used by permission from the author and used under license from Far Future Enterprises. This is clearly stated on the pages of the Traveller Wiki.
Since these two licensing requirements don’t match, the contributing users of the Traveller Wiki have decided that they need to move. They have probably been pushed a bit by authors and by Far Future Enterprises that don’t want anyone to say that their stuff is under a Creative Commons licence.
Since Wikia claim that everything at the Traveller Wiki is under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA 3.0), (which it isn’t) this had led to that content from the Traveller Wiki is published in books. Have a look at this one described at Google Books. (I will not link to any of the sites that actually sell this.) Books LLC (a.k.a. General Books and other names) that use this content are claiming that they may do so since everything at Wikia is under a Creative Commons licence. But they haven’t checked or if they have they didn’t care.
In my opinion it isn’t enough (at least not for a commercial company) to use material from the web that someone has posted under some sort of free license. You always have to double-check. Just because someone post something, it doesn’t mean it is free to use. The one who post something that they don’t own (or otherwise may post) may just be a teenager who wants to feel cool when getting lots of likes (at Facebook). It could also be that the person posting hasn’t understood the terms of the site to which the post is made.
I am the author of some of the information that has been posted at the Traveller Wiki. (I have not posted anything myself.) If a lawyer in the U.S. wants to help me sue Books LLC for free we can split the indemnity they have to pay. There are other authors that have a lot more of their writings at the Traveller Wiki.
The business model of Wikia is quite clear. Trick the fan-base of nerdy stuff (gaming, manga, science-fiction, fantasy, vampires etc.) to post at Wikia. Then, present their posts together with lots of ads. Then I suspect that they are in cahoots with Books LLC and share the profits (from the suckers that buy these books).
One strange thing about the move is that Wikia is demanding that no pages are deleted even though Wikia knows that these pages are not using a Creative Commons licence. This only means that Wikia and their accomplices are planning to continue their crimes.
A call to all fans (of something) that has a wiki at Wikia. Move!
A call to all content owners being ripped of by Wikia or Books LLC. Sue!
At the Anti-Wikia Alliance, you can get help with your move from Wikia.
Update: The Traveller Wiki has now moved. 
Update 2: Now it has moved again.
The Pulp-o-Mizer is too good not to write something about. It is a front cover generator for sci-fi pulp books. I think it is a lot cooler than my LBB cover generator. Look what I can do with it:
I bet you can do something better! Douglas Berry did this cool cover for Twilight’s Peak. Bruce Johnson did this scary cover for Signal GK. What can you do with the Pulp-o-Mizer? Please place a link to your image in the comments.
Space Marines is a term that has been used in science fiction since 1932. In Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein from 1948 the term is used. Games Workshop is now going after an author (MCA Hogarth) who wrote a book called “Spots the Space Marine“.
Amazing Stories December 1936
Image from wikimedia – Public Domain
Games Workshop needs to be stopped. A boycott was suggested by two Traveller fans at the Zhodani Base Facebook page. I hope they then will understand that they cannot hijack science fiction archetypes.
It’s easy for me to boycott GW. I haven’t bought anything from them for a long time. I hope you can do the same, and spread the word. Don’t buy anything from Games Workshop until they repent their behaviour and drop their trade mark of the term Space Marine.
Update: Good news from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The battle is won, but the war continues.
Hunter Gordon Sept 14 1966 – Jan 24 2013
Very sad news about Hunter Gordon, author (with MJD) of the Traveller T20 book and of other books for T20. 
He will be missed. There were some parts of T20 that I thought was really good. Hunter gave me permission to place the T20 Ley sector on my website. Lets play some T20 now!
T20 – Cheers Hunter Gordon
Could my internet Traveller friends stop dying now please! It feels like an epidemic. First Bari Stafford (a.k.a. General Turokan) who mapped a route to the rim of the galaxy. Then Jerry Mapes, Andrew Boulton, John Lees and now Hunter Gordon.
What has happened at the Base in 2012? A lot of things!
The coolest thing was the 15 entries in the 76 Patrons Writing Contest.
I hope we can beat that in 2013! I’ll add a few bucks to make the first prize even better. Sponsors are Welcome!
The most annoying thing this year was being hacked.
Well the base wasn’t really hacked. It was vandalized by a script-kiddie. Nothing was lost, and I didn’t lose control over anything. A script found a vulnerability and vandalized what it could. I could restore everything. This made me upgrade to the latest version of WordPress (the software that is running the blog). I also added two plugins that I thought looked cool. A dice roller and a forum.
One of these plugins had a vulnerability. The Base was vandalized again. 
Now I am a lot more restrictive about the plugins I add.
When upgrading the software I also got a better tool for site stats. All I knew before was that I had about 300.000 accesses each month. Now I know that I have about 4000 proper visitors each month
The 5 most popular posts on the blog was:
The 5 most popular search words/phrases for finding the blog was:
My post old post about The Average Traveller Universe seem to attract lots of surfers from eastern Europe. 
I am looking forward to 2013. On my to-do list there are a few reviews that needs to be written. I will also write something about spherical ships. When I have time I will also do a few updates of some old stuff. I will continue posting news about the Zhodani Base, Traveller and astronomy at Facebook.
Cheers
/BeRKA
Welcome to the Zhodani Base Awards 2012! 2012 has been a very good year for Traveller. There have been lots of new publications and a few interesting Kickstarter Projects.
The first category is “Best Cover“. The nominees are:
The winner of the “Best Cover” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Solomani Rim: From Mongoose
There were lots of Traveller products with nice covers this year. Lots of love for all nice covers. This one was the one that I liked the most.
Next category is “Best Fanzine or Online Magazine“. The nominees are:
The winner of the “Best Fanzine/Online Magazine” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Freelance Traveller (again).
Freelance Traveller has again proved that they are the best fanzine by publishing (almost) monthly issues with lots of good contents for free.
Next category is “Best Adventure“. The nominees are:
The winner of the “Best Adventure” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: 21 Plots III: From Gypsy Knights Games
There were lots of fine Traveller Adventures for different settings published. This year I prefer one with a number of hooks that can be used for lots of settings.
Next category is “Best Ship or Deckplan“. The nominees are:
The winner of the “Best Ship or Deckplan” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Ship Book: Garuda Class MSV: From Gorgon Press
There was lots of fine ships for Traveller published this year. I liked the Garuda Class MSV since it can be used in my adventures and it looked cool.
Next category is “Best ATU Product“. The nominees are:
The winner of the “Best ATU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Outpost Mars: From Zozer Games
I am just a sucker for Mars… I hope they will do a lot more for this setting.
Next category is “Best OTU Product“. The nominees are:
The winner of the “Best OTU Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: Journal of the Travellers’ Aid Society. Issue No.1-24: From Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW)
Even though it is a re-release, it is over 1200 pages of Traveller goodies. It just had to win.
A final bonus category this year is “Best Free Traveller Product“. The nominees are:
The winner of the “Best Free Traveller Product” category of the Zhodani Base Awards 2012 is: T5 Traveller5 Wallpapers From: Game Designers’ Workshop (GDW)
Those wallpapers are really nice. (Did you support the Traveller T5 Kickstarter?) Now, go and download all of the free Traveller Products. Why? They are free!
