The Inside Scoop on Gaming

About a year ago, my local game store was clearing space for tables for Pokemon tournaments. To do so, they cleared out a lot of old stock. Real old. I came across a copy of this 1981 Travellers supplement for the then listed price of $5.95 and got it half that.

It's still available on The Judge's Guild website http://www.judgesguild.com (warning: the site was in - cred -- ibl -y sa --- a --- l - ow - wwwwwwww when I checked to see if this item was still available. 20 minutes to go from a web page to a near identical page with two links offered, for example of it's slowness) so I figure it's worth a mention.

The book's price jumped to $9.00 in the intervening two decades. It's possible that the current stock is reprinted from original materials and some or all of the mistakes I have in my copy have been fixed. Then again they may just be selling off old stock.

What it is:

A ten page section on Star ports in general followed by tables to randomly roll up variable features a starport might have, along with a surprising (for 1981 anyway) warning that the table results should not be followed religiously.

There is a two page list for planets (starting at 21 and ending at 94, go figure) and then we get to the main reason for the book's existence. fifty one page maps of various starports laid over a numbered hex grid, and accompanying map keys, one paged sheets a GM can use to list special features the starport has.

While designed for Traveller, there isn't much on any of the maps that is specifically Traveller related. Every port has a large fuel depot or depots, fairly standard given the enormous quantities of hydrogen used by the Traveller FTL system, which wouldn't be found in games where fuel isn't a major problem, ie reactionless thrusters and reactionless FTL drives can be powered for years by relatively small quantities of nuclear fuels or antimatter.

But those buildings can be relabled easily enough.

Weak point: In keeping with early 80s publishing standards for RPGs, the art work is rather simple with yellow ink added for a few pictures, to give a character blond hair etc.

Unfortunately, a few maps have yellow ink backgrounds, thus hard to read borders and hex grids.

What 50 Starports brings to any GM whose campaign does a lot of planet hopping, a quick way to add depth and detail to the planet by giving it it's own unique starport architecture, and possibly enhance plot developments because of the features added to the starport.

The fact say that a big hotel complex lies near the port or that the port does have construction facilities could be things the players might use as the game goes on.

While it'd be nice if the player asks the GM: "Does this base have X?" and have the GM answer the question, players have been known not to ask things. Having it cited on the map they see avoids that pitfall.

It's not crucial to running a game. If you're hard up for cash, I'd suggest skipping it and draw your own starport maps. But if you can afford the nine dollars, you get a reasonably useful aid to your game.

Fifty Starbases