Messages from the Far Havens

Early Thoughts on Zweihänder Reforged

Posted on April 10, 2026 by First Age

We ran our first Zweihander Reforged session last night, and though it is very early days for rules engagement, I’m pretty sure that I am going to like it. Here are my early thoughts as placeholders for when actual play firms up my views.

The game chassis is my sweet spot of light/medium crunch and skill based, without a huge shopping list of over specific expertise areas.
Core mechanics are familiar percentage based with simple blackjack for opposed tests. Warhammer success levels are good fun for a more detailed game, but I don’t really need them. Some very simple aiding and hindering mechanics plus result flipping gives you an agile and intuitive set of principles to play with.
The three tiers of development are very straightforwardly set out as three careers, with complete flexibility in the way you progress.
Characters start part way through their Basic Tier, with all their chosen career’s +10% skills already acquired. Along with the more generous base attribute starting percentages, your characters feel much more capable from the get go, and I sense that the level is a good place for the sort of games that I like to run.
Ancestry as talents provide an impactful way of flavouring other peoples and cultures without over emphasising mechanical differences.
Most of the later medieval vibe is captured in the professions and trappings. It would be very easy to set the game in other fantasy periods by reskinning the descriptions of the professions, possibly with some renamed talents, and adding a few classic trappings.
There are a number of small mini games that I have yet to evaluate, but I like the way the game recognises some extra game play for core endeavours that crop up in sessions, such as journeys, chases and social intrigues.

I’ve worked quite hard to give my players a well detailed and sumptuous feel to the play setting. Some of the simpler and ‘basic’ elements of Foundry VTT enable that in a seamless way. The journal feature provides contextual background information to players without the necessity of filling play time with exposition. It’s just there as you need it. New information that comes through play can be added, or revealed as the game progresses.

The Foundry Zweihänder module is written for the earlier revised edition of the game. However, the flexibility of its design allowed me to add in the new skill list, talents, spells, and updated trappings to give a near perfect Reforged edition system. The module is attractive, presents characters well, and forms an excellent base for game mechanics in scene resolution.

On the technical side, I host my Foundry instance on Sqyre. The service has been excellent, and I’m very glad to have found them so early in their own development. They have matured very quickly, and I will be staying with them. I also marvel at how good the Livekit module is, delivering high quality webcams into the session. I wouldn’t be without it. My Linux desktop runs a decent enough OBS session, allowing me to stream the game to YouTube, which ran without a hitch. My Internet connection may be wet string by modern standards, but it holds enough bandwidth to make my sessions fly by, with thanks to the technical wizardry above.

Most importantly, we had some good laughs.

More thoughts to come as we play some more.

Posted in Games, Streaming, VTT | Leave a comment

On the slate

Posted on March 22, 2026 by First Age

A number of game projects are pushing forward, with a focus on developing them for actual play. There remains a joy in my concept teasing, especially through VTT preparation, but mostly I just want to realise some of this potential. Perhaps the embarrassing glut of recent indiscrete crowd funding has encouraged me to hone in on actually doing something with what I have?

I’m reasonably certain that some of the ‘yet more to come’ will turn into great play experiences. Both Nimble and Dragonbane: Trudvang will feature strongly over the next few years, with the former already slated for a first try out at Virtual Grogmeet in April. For me, a strong Foundry implementation gets a game going early. ‘Beyond the Woods’, an Irish Celtic inspired expression of Legend in the Mist may yet prove irresistible, and have a group in mind to try out that whole game family. ‘The Serpent’ SF setting and mini campaign will take either Traveller or Coriolis off the shelf, ‘Amarath’ will do the same for Dragonbane, and ‘The Veiled God’ gives me an easy sword and sorcery option playing Barbarians of Lemuria.

All good. Only my implacable need to back Monte Cook’s Cypher nags at me. Yes, all the tweaks to the latest iteration of a game system, that I keep thinking I like, are the ones that I wanted to see, but will this really manifest as a breakthrough for the game in an already crowded sphere? I’m probably at a ‘use it or lose it’ stage with Cypher, and sense that I am enjoying the lengthy silence before ‘product’ appears. That isn’t how it should be. At least I didn’t go ‘All In’. There may well have been ‘nine worlds’, but does this mean that Cypher has nine lives?

Of the recent glut, I’m currently enthused to find a long term vehicle for Nimble. This inventive ‘Occam’s Razor’ take on the huge F20 block of gaming has pushed my hopeful buttons. It’s almost as though, as I reflect on the horrors of recent real world events and the systemic failures of democratic processes to control them, I feel the need for some heroic fantasy froth and bubble to cheer me up. To get things moving I have been looking at two big 3rd party settings to provide a home for the game. Either Midnight or Fateforge are strong candidates. Midnight is my ‘Sauron has won’ dark fantasy of struggle against oppression, though one that I am invested in seeing win. Working through my wishes in play space, it is quite possible that the allegory would be raw and thin. I love everything that Studio Agate do. It’s been a while since I have embraced a welcoming Gallic hug from the creators at their UK Games Expo stand; it remains one of the most compelling reasons to attend the convention. Fateforge is an open and heroic setting, sumptuously realised through their team of artists. A recent and ongoing Humble Bundle delivers all the PDFs for a small investment, worth it for the art alone. I never explored the potential due to the embedded D&D 2014 5e, despite the clever design work to make the system their own. I’d probably have got lost in the maze of the Forge had they used their own house Story Arc System. Well, now I have Nimble, so perhaps it is time. Easy to get lost in a preparation jungle, only to return to where I started. I may yet get to inflict something on my mate Pete at Patriot Games.

The convention calendar imposes a useful sequencing to my creativity. After Virtual Grogmeet, North Star is next up in early May, and emerging from jumpspace directly after a week away in Italy. I have a pre-packaged fun-looking space opera already slotted in the schedule via ‘Genesys Twilight Imperium’. Shelf combing upended some hopeful second slot contenders, but really I knew it had to be Traveller, not least because I want to attend TravCon later in the year, and some game development now, will bear future dividend there.

Now British owned Traveller might be my forever game, yet even here I manage to face a game system conundrum. Far and away, and to another galaxy and back, the most sensible thing to do is just play and run Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition. The potential obfuscation of self imposed game breaking optional technologies is minor and controllable. Overall, it’s a solid and highly playable version of the game with a breathtakingly rich accumulation of material. There’s a reason that most people who love Traveller are playing this approachable version. Contrarian that I am, and seduced by that there Cybergoth’s delicious A5 Lulu print of Cepheus Universal, I want nothing more than to get this all in one 2D6 engine to the table. It is streamlined and solves some technology complexities with some asymmetrical game design. That it wanders off in small unit tactics places that I’m not interested to follow, doesn’t lessen my enthusiasm for it. The modular nature of the 2D6 SF group of games is a mixed blessing too. I can all too easily fuss over ‘perfect blends’, when I could be playing one of the damned games.

And here we are. The depths of my depravity. It’s time to get T5 to the table. The version that ‘everyone’ looks at with a technical reverence, and quickly dismisses as a playable possibility. You can see why. Even as I bludgeoned the wonderful huge tomes into some kind of play sense, I recognised that a number of the critical play phases, such as personal and starship combat, would be sub-optimal, at least for me. Rather than jettison the many good sequences in the three Big Black Books, I have decided to double down on the core mechanics and riotously blend in my own take of the Cepheus Universal system to deliver a mostly authentic T5 experience. The blend is seamless, largely helped by the fact that nobody understands how T5 is supposed to work anyway. I say nobody, there is, of course, an active, helpful and knowledgeable T5 community to be found on the Traveller Discord.

Bringing T5 to the table is going to take a lot of work, and I sense that time is already running out for North Star. I am committed to this folly in the oft quieter end of convention Sunday afternoon Slot 5. I’m undertaking the blend through the lens of actual play and player characters. See what is needed through experience in play and knit strands together from there. I’m continuing the story from previous TravCons, with the centrepiece being a ridiculously impractical frontier trader and a crew trying to keep it running along the Diadem Main, deep in the midst of the Vanguard Reaches. A slice of archetypal Traveller using the ultimate edition of the game.

This week, even while at Center Parcs, I have a session zero and character generation for Zweihander Reforged. I’m really looking forward to finally giving this game a try out. The Kickstarter failings can be forgotten, and we can find out how it plays. Signs are good for The Eternal Night of Lockwood.

Yet further game possibilities continue to escape to the surface, sometimes filling precious time with a stale odour. I reflect that the copious time I give my hobby brings me great delight, along with some good actual play outcomes. The ongoing Enemy Within campaign is a lot of fun, however long we decide to prop up the authoritarian regime as a bulwark against the swirling forces of chaos. This brings us back to our present reality, and a good time for a close and some breakfast!

Posted in Cepheus, Conventions, Dragonbane, Games, Traveller | 2 Comments

Distro Play

Posted on March 20, 2026 by First Age

A spare, and now somewhat ageing, Matebook laptop has afforded me an occasional Linux Distro hop. Although the Matebook is showing its years in a few areas, it continues to look fabulous, and sports a tremendous 3000 x 2000 resolution 13″ touch screen panel with thin bezels.

I thought I’d take a look at the Cosmic Desktop via Pop!_OS.

There is so much to like about this environment. It feels modern and responsive, with rich tiling and theming options. The few Cosmic apps are well implemented. Cosmic Files allowed simple samba loading of my network drive (once the config file had been edited to allow for the poor capabilities of my Plusnet router).

I’ve grown accustomed to the fairly vanilla Gnome desktop, with just a few tweaks and Dash to Dock. I felt immediately at home with Cosmic. The distro is packaged to handle my aged NVIDIA card flawlessly, delivering a smooth and high quality display. The Cosmic store seems to use Flathub almost exclusively, which keeps things simple, while managing any application updates in a straightforward manner. Proton, Zen browser and most of the other apps I routinely use are all there, so I am just cracking on doing what I do.

There are other distros that accommodate Cosmic, which I may check out, but for now I’m enjoying playing from where I am.

A fun dalliance.

Posted in Linux, tech | Leave a comment

Airecon Harrogate 2026

Posted on March 16, 2026 by First Age

Another Airecon analogue gaming weekend in Harrogate, and what a fine time we have had! I run the RPG track as part of a lovely tabletop community convention, well organised, with a strong and positive ethos. It’s great to play a part in supporting this perfectly sized gaming weekend. Below are some personal reflections, in anticipation of feedback from my GMs and possibly some attendees via the community forum.

It was a very good weekend, with RPGs continuing to grow a little year on year, providing another gaming expression to the amazing board, card and other games. This year we moved to the grand Hilton Majestic Hotel with the Reading and Drawing rooms opened for 21 tables in each of the 8 sessions available. Being a short walk from the main convention halls probably had its pros and cons, but we were very happy with the space provided, amidst the grandeur of the column and chandelier great rooms, with carpets, drapes, and high ceilings that managed the sound so well. It was a delight to work the desk, helping people to find their booked tables and get into games. The buzz and laughter emanated through the walls to my corridor desk all weekend.

Our space was sponsored by Chaosium, who are significantly contributing to tabletop convention roleplay events across the UK (and doubtless beyond). Thank you to them for helping us put our RPG event together in such a fantastic location!

With some spaces in our programme, particularly on the lighter Sunday afternoon, we offered 781 player spaces, with 543 tickets sold. This tells me that, for now, we have the right number of tables, and should focus on filling the capacity we have, before expanding the space that we might need in future years. RPGs are very much a full part of the Airecon experience and they are there to stay.

Airecon’s RPG Gamemasters (GMs) are a terrific group, many of whom return every year to ply their craft. They bring a wide range of different RPGs with varying playstyles, thrilling situations for the players to resolve, or indeed murders to solve, and all delivered with a lot of heart and significant preparation. I think Remi might have stolen the show with his huge Lego diorama for his Star Wars games, though as I toured the tables I saw gorgeous character sheets, figures and maps, props, and even a touch of fancy dress, all of which, though not essential, adds to the experience. However, the real preparation is more important and invisible. The mastery of the game, the design of situations that engage, and characters that can be expressed through play at the table. Creators of memorable gaming experiences all.

Not everything works out smoothly on the day. Some games might not fill or be viable, some players do not show up, and just occasionally a GM might not be able to make the session they had pledged to run. We have a principle that GMs are ready to run, even if we know there are no, or few, ticket sales for their game. This enables me to juggle late minute player sign ups, or re-allocate players from one cancelled game to another. It was so nice to see players prefer to be slotted into another game, other than the one they had booked, instead of going for a refund. People had arrived to play! GMs with no sign-ups are also able to join games to make up numbers and get games going if required. GMs like to play too.

We were especially concerned about one GM who didn’t show up at all, and wasn’t responding to messages. It is with profound sadness that we were told that one of our number, David Gallico, passed away on Thursday night. Many of you know David, a lovely and kind hearted man, who shared our passion for RPGs and was always keen to offer a rich variety of games at conventions. David will be greatly missed, and I shall think of him, and his game of DCC that he ran for me. Time is so precious, and I am so glad to have shared the moments I had with David.

As an organiser, I also like to run games. I thought it particularly important to do so this tmie around, to personally experience the new play space. My planning of table numbering was designed to soften any impact of loud noise, though the rooms handled the volume extremely well. My three games of Free League’s ‘Dragonbane’ went well, with some riotous and welcoming play from a cast of wonderful players. My last game on Sunday afternoon was much shorter than I had planned, a full hour and 45 minutes less than the same game the previous evening. Sometimes the players take routes and decisions that short cut potential complications. I’ll be running three games again next year.

I have made a few notes on a very few changes that will fine tune the organisation of RPGs for next year. Most especially, I think some form of ‘#children friendly’ tag (or some such) will help parents choose games that GMs have prepared with children and younger adults in mind. I was very lucky to have a ten year old and mum play in my first game, and it was a considerable delight to see my other three adult players adapt their play to make the younger one welcome and included. The youngster seemed to have a wonderful time and remained fully engaged throughout more than three hours of play.

To conclude, I just want to say a big thank you to all the GMs. The event is nothing without you. You’re commitment to bring great play experiences to the table is clearly evident from the preparation, your skill and approach to managing the sessions, and perhaps most of all the electric buzz of players engaging in your games with all the cries of surprise and laughter flowing from the room.

We’ll be ready for next year.

Posted in Conventions, Games | 2 Comments

A Nimble Cybergoth

Posted on March 9, 2026 by First Age

I will admit to an ongoing dalliance with Fantasy D20 level and hit point designed games, despite my instinctive preference for lower fantasy skill based systems with static(ish) wound thresholds, so in the Warhammer and Dragonbane mode. It seems clear that I will put up with the ascending competence bubble for the visceral delights of levelling up. There’s also something of a joy to the engorged high fantasy tone, with menagerie populations and thoroughly unlikely super hero powers, popping off amongst the ale, simple farmsteads, and lost towers of the ghoulish Deathdealer King.

As you may know, I returned to these games after a long time away, mostly summoned by the prospect of my daughter becoming a Critter and starting to play D&D. This was a magnetic draw, initially fuelled by Green Ronin’s Dragon Age, and then unleashing the contrarian in me that took me to the adjacent Pathfinder 2nd Edition, which I played and very much enjoyed, and onto a huge spend fest on D&D 4th Edition. 4e over Covid with a great group and an epic campaign will live long in the memory.

Much as I enjoy the big blocks of F20 rules and ability lists, and copious monster options, there was always a desire to have it all without the bloated weight of the text walls, perhaps because I am a slow reader. So, I produced Heroic Fantasy, a Black Hack based game that delivers a similar experience but in a slim fast play volume. Some people out there really enjoying playing it, as do I. The earth was tilled and primed for the next crop of temptations.

My good friend Dom, who understands my gaming journey, introduced me to his most recent kickstarter backing: Nimble RPG. This is exactly the sort of D&D adjacent game I have been looking for. He knew it. Stripping back a lot of the 5e guff, you have a fast play ‘rules tight’ heroic fantasy game with 1-20 levels of ascending power, highly focused and very simple to play. That it also takes design inspiration from Pathfinder 2, D&D 4e, Savage Worlds and even out to ‘Into the Odd’, only added to my delight. Sixty page rulebook? That’ll do.

Nimble is perfect for someone like me, having quietly purchased a shed load of F20 adventures and campaigns, flowing from Bundles and indiscrete, over enthusiastic, DrivethruRPG shopping grabs. Nimble can take any of this rich input and, with conversion ‘on the fly’ produce a game of Nimble in a trice. I may know that the mouldering digital pile is unlikely to see much, if any play, but with Nimble I can now pretend that I have a ready vehicle to turn the steaming feat load into some actual gaming.

Even now, I look at the gothic nonsense of Elderbrains’ ‘Crown of the Oathbreaker’ campaign and think that I could, at last, get it to the table. Back to Greyhawk for some more of my Bandit Kingdom sandbox? Nimble. That nice looking Pathfinder adventure path? Nimble. That dodgy third party campaign module with inadvisable line art? Nimble. A simple one off for a convention? Well, that’s easy.

That it inhales some tactical vapours from Savage Worlds and 4e really works for me, instinctively taking me over to Foundry VTT, where I discovered that it had a beautiful and free Nimble system module full of ready to use compendium.

A few PCs I created with eight clicks each, and the compendium of data

Attractively, the Nimble community has a busy Discord, supporting websites, great VTT support, a regular zine, and, perhaps most important of all, a phenomenally talented and approachable creator. The third party licence is open and generous, doubtless foretelling a mushroom of community content.

The Kickstarter has just a few days to go. My digital pledge has been ‘Cybergothed’ (Dom’s online handle name) to a matching physical box tier, swept up as I am by the excitement of play. Virtual Grogmeet in April will be its first outing for me, and expect many more to follow.

Although unlikely to supercede Dragonbane in my affection, I still have a place for Nimble. It might nudge my own Heroic Fantasy game out of the way, at least for a while. I’m looking forward both to playing in Dom’s forthcoming game, and to inflicting this ‘5e but not’ on others, including possibly yourself!

Posted in Games, Heroic Fantasy, Uncategorized, VTT | Leave a comment

Get the balance right

Posted on February 25, 2026 by First Age

Don’t tend this way
Don’t tend that way
Straight down the middle until next Thursday
First to the left Back to the right
Twist and turn until you got it right
Depeche Mode

To the thumping synths of a 1980s dance floor, welcome to this newly located blog! Here you will find a signal continuation from the Far Havens sector, briefly interrupted by an ongoing desire to move away from USA corporate owned tech. Legacy messages are found at https://farhavens.blogspot.com, though I have undertaken a full import of the old content to WordPress using a plugin.

Perhaps a fitting first post on this new ‘deGoogled’ blog site is a consideration of my engagement in social media, and where the healthy boundaries are? This will be different for everyone; have you got the balance right? I really don’t believe I have. Recognising this, I’ve already taken some steps, having walled off some places, particularly Facebook, languishing instead at quite a few Discord servers, along with some occasional Instagram, a forum or two, and a little BlueSky and Mastodon (dice.camp). So, a strongly curated series of places that allows some conversation about my gaming hobby, some tech, miscellanea, and often with people that I know and trust. Despite this, I have brought back into focus some old thinking about the amount of social media time that is really healthy for me, and the terms by which I choose to engage. You really don’t want to spend your retirement doom scrolling.

I think it would be beneficial to wind down the overall time I engage in online blather, and perhaps find the best moments in the day to click, view and participate. With the multiplicity of opportunities dangling on a typical desktop dock, it can be difficult to stay clear of the time sink icons. Still, I think a focus on just a few choice places is right, necessarily including the discussion associated with the conventions that I help to organise.

It has proven difficult to stick to my goal to only look at the news and politics on a Saturday morning. There seems to be a highly clickable despicable every single damned day. Need to double down on that goal. I think that this ‘clamour reclamation’ will be extremely positive for me, allowing some more space for family and closer friends, my own thoughts, creative endeavours, music, series, and ‘quiet reading’.

This blog has always been a strong place for me to express my enthusiasm and delight. I guess the amount of dialogue is low, except for the good folk of the Tavern, and so I get to speak forth with some good view numbers yet without extenuated conversation. So, I shall continue to write in this new place, and enjoy articulating thoughts in a positive manner. I’d be happy to engage more on the posts here and in other sites.

It amuses me that I could post this and, without some form of social media posting, no-one would see it! I sense this post is actually for me, so in some ways that would be fine.

Hope you have a good balance, and that your online dialogue adds positively to the time tapestry of your life.

Posted in tech | 2 Comments

The Union is in a state

Posted on February 25, 2026 by First Age

On the morning after the bloated and falsehood strewn State of the Union address by President Trump, I thought I’d reflect on the progress I have made to disentangle my digital dependence on USA tech companies.

I use the Affinity Suite for a lot of my image and text presentation for creative projects. This Windows and Mac application suite has now been straightforwardly enabled on Linux, either through using an AppImage, or a GUI based Wine implementation. Although I can still hope for a native port to Linux, it is more than good enough for me to ditch the Windows PC that I held on to for just this purpose, and switch it to Linux. Microsoft has left my building. My Mrs uses Windows for work and home, but that’s fine, this is my struggle.

A satisfying morning adding repos and apps and making my local network USB HDD available to a fresh Fedora Workstation 43. I’ll add Affinity Suite as a standard these days. I think the main OS changes, away from USA corporations, that are possible for me right now are complete. Default browser is Zen (Firefox based), search engine is currently DuckDuckGo. I have the Brave browser if I need something Chromium based.

There is more that I can do, at a leisurely pace. The majority of my data is now stored locally on a pair of cheap USB HDDs, one live on the router and accessible throughout home, the other a maintained back-up. The backup is kept in sync by a monthly rsync process, sending changes that have occurred on the main HDD to the backup. I was stunned by the simplicity and power of ‘rsync’ on the command line. The process isn’t ideal, but for the nature of my data, this cadence is more than good enough. A proper NAS is likely this year, and I’ll report back on the one I go for and how I find it. Probably UGREEN, but we’ll see. In the mean time I plan to further reduce my Google Drive data, though I am already within the 100GB threshold I had set myself.

I have a full local archive of my Google photos, using their takeout service. It came to more than 40GB, reflecting many years of accumulation. I really should have first gone through the cloud based files and deleted the huge weight of pointless ones!

I need to decide if I am going to commit to Proton for an additional email address and cloud space. It would be part funded by the reduction in Google subscription. I also host websites for conventions on Hostinger, and have a domain there with email access. The cost of hosting is covered as charge to the conventions. I think the web presence is useful for the small charge.

I’m evaluating European alternatives to Google Maps. I think that will be a full switch, over the coming months.

Some elements will remain. Sunk cost on the Google phone and HarmonyOS based tablet will keep me for their lifetime. I’ve already noted alternatives for when the time comes. I really should do something about my bank!

And of course there is this blog. It will probably have to move. It makes sense to migrate the blog by using a WordPress instance on Hostinger. That feels like a significant effort, but it is a further next step.

Progress then. I feel less entangled, less personally dependent. I was disappointed by the speech given in my name by our Prime Minister at Munich. I have rehearsed the one that I would have given. It is a time of rupture, and despite beneficial and enduring cooperation, we have to recognise that a return to a rules based order with a properly cogent and powerful ally is not a given. For now, I’ll do these small things, in one aspect of my life, to give a sense of positive action.

More to come.

Posted in Linux, Politics, tech | Leave a comment

Star System Explorer

Posted on February 16, 2026 by First Age

An excellent resource for any science fiction RPG enthusiast is the free Star System Explorer (https://star-system-generator.vercel.app). Particularly responsive in any chromium based browser, this application calculates star system dynamics and planetary physical details, providing a graphical display of the orbits around the star. It has been modeled on known physics, to give a consistent projection of a system composition.

Even more amazing is that it pulls data using the Travellermap API, enabling you to import Traveller subsectors, where every system is mapped out using the application’s logic. There is space for you to edit your copy of this with other world details useful for your campaign. All the world system mathematics heavy lifting seems to be carried for you, leaving you with just the juicy narrative aspects to add.

Subsector G, Hyperion, of the Vanguard Reaches

One of the systems in the subsector

The system’s mainworld

Early days, but I think this tool may quickly become essential. You can save your maps and reload them should you need to. I’ll be using it at Travcon, perhaps with a screen display for a bit of a Sci Fi feel.

Amazing.

Posted in Cepheus, Games, Traveller | Leave a comment

Diving Deeper into T5

Posted on February 8, 2026 by First Age

If for no more than an indulgence of time in my favourite RPG, I am enjoying the exploration of Marc Miller’s Traveller 5, an edition that is seen by many as more toolkit than a ready to play game. I am in no way through all the sub-systems, many of which lie tantalisingly out of immediate cognitive capacity, but the part familiar retelling of many aspects of Traveller play have bathed me in a warm summer’s glow of long memories.

As much as the theoretical appeals, I’m really interested in seeing if this heavyweight can deliver a game that I’d like to run. The early indications are good. Character generation and core tasks are both familiar while intriguingly recast in a somewhat different expression. Familiar character operations, including trade, seem fine and playable. Worlds and star systems are created with good detail and can be generated in a moment using tools from the Traveller Map site that uses T5 as its source. I won’t really know how T5 plays until I take the plunge, with willing or unwitting volunteers, to test the game in action.

I’m an old lag, with good systemic instincts. Although wrapped in good detail, I have wondered if the T5 personal and starship combat sections would actually translate well to exciting play. The starship system covers smaller ‘Adventure Class Ships’ (ACS) with size up to 2400 tons. This is fair enough. as ships over a certain scale start to push the relevance of individual characters to the side. A T5 starship, even a more approachably sized one, has a significant amount of detail in the familiar types of sections. Most noticeably, a ship will have a number of compartments identified, numerically increasing with scale, that effectively provide hit locations to note what has been damaged inflicted. However, the container section on the combat cards don’t match the suggested dice range. Also a D6-D6 ‘Flux’ distribution brings its own probability curve effects that are not acknowledged in the game. Put a component at location zero and that is going to get hit much more frequently. There is little guidance on where you place components on the combat chart.

Starship combat tasks are particularly driven by the technology, with difficulty dice ascending with range and Task Numbers combining Tech Level, possibly twice, unless an individual gunner is outstanding. I decided to take these observations to the T5 experts at the T5 thread on the Traveller Discord. These folk have been very helpful, and form a cadre who love this version and actually play it! The consensus of actual play is to narrate outcomes rather than slavishly following the rule sequence. This also applies to some of the ship design elements. I can see the wisdom of this, though I want my systems to drive these narratives.

Dog with a bone, I know that I am going to struggle with representing starships in T5. The level of detail, the lack of an automated ‘maker’, and the probably laboriously work to create bespoke combat cards with randomised compartments is pushing me away. I know, I hear you, my completist need for an approachable yet system driven level of detail is quite vexing. How often will this stuff come up in play? Just narrate it. Bah, not for me, and after nearly 900 pages of dense rules, I’m looking for something that I can use quickly enough to encourage me to run the game.

Image from Starship Geomorphs 2.0 by Robert Pearce, Pearce Design Studios LLC

So, what to do? I’m at a crossroads. I could just ditch all of T5 and return to a set that I already like. Both Mongoose Traveller and Cepheus Universal are perfectly good renditions of the Traveller game. I could instead draw large twitching chunks of T5 across and embed those ideas in Mongoose or Cepheus Universal. I think a lot of people do that. Maybe I’m just in too deep to do a runner? I think I’m going to try and stick with the T5 core and draw in workable ideas on vehicles, starships (especially) and personal combat from Cepheus Universal and make them T5 adjacent. It’ll be a bodge, but I already think a fairly seamless one. I note that current writers have produced simplifications to starship descriptions. Starships are fine in T5 and strongly detailed. This depth can be used as flavour without taking the system wholesale.

So, here is a blend of Cepheus Universal and T5, with a dramatic task profile:

To hit a target with starship weapons
Difficult(?) 3D < Dex or Int + Gunner +K

Mods
1 Range Band Over Weapon Optimum -2
2 Range Band Over Weapon Optimum -4
Individual Turret 0
3-Turret Group +2
6-Turret Group +3
Attacker’s ship one Tech Level higher/lower +1/-1
Attacker’s ship three Tech Levels higher/lower +2/-2
Attacker’s ship five or more Tech Levels higher/lower +3/-3
Capital ship forced to fight at Short range -2

Defensive fire against missiles
Difficult 3D < Dex or Int + Gunner +K

1d6+Flux missiles destroyed on a success.

Mods as above and
Torpedo -2

I can create any starship from small craft to Dreadnought using Cepheus Universal in 15 minutes.

I think this says something about me. I’m all for narration and vivid descriptions, but after nearly 900 pages of dense rules, I feel you need to have the game strongly support the narration mechanically. Rules light games may lean into narration more, but even then, with a smaller page count, the game can work and base our descriptions actually on something that the rules have given you.

I’m not done yet. With this decision out of the way, I can now delve yet deeper into the recesses of this intriguing version of Traveller.

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Traveller 5 – The Ultimate Edition

Posted on February 6, 2026 by First Age

I have been working my way through Traveller 5 (T5) to see if I can get this game to the table. It is said that only nuclear scientists, engineers and Biblical Studies and Philosophy graduates are able to do so.

The three big black books (BBBs) are notoriously dense, abbreviated, and complex to navigate. Including indexes they clock in at 888 pages, styled as procedural manuals to launch missile systems. And yet, there is an intriguing and playable game in amongst the tables and ‘condensed to the point of confusion’ summary sheets. Many people give up. I have wavered, but have doggedly pushed through.

The game system is a major divergence to the Classic -> Mongoose/Cepheus line of 2D6 games. The Task system is redolent of the previous errata strewn T4, now evolved and honed as the ultimate expression of the game, at least down this evolutionary path. As task difficulty ascends so does the dice pool you have to roll. The dice result must be equal or less than the ‘Task Number’ (TN) for a success. The TN is formulated in a variety of ways, but most frequently the addition of a characteristic, skill and knowledge. ‘Knowledges’ are akin to skill specialisations. So, characteristics, which are generated in the same way as the 2D SF Traveller editions, are much more directly influential to task checks.

If your combined skill and knowledge is lower than the base difficulty dice number, you have to apply the ‘This is Hard!’ rule and engorge your dice pool by one extra die. How I am ever going to get a group of players to see past the wording of this rule without faintly embarrassed guffaws of laughter I really don’t know.

I happen to like a lot of game in my RPG. When looking to embrace a heavyweight, I create my own quick reference sheets, less to replicate what the game obfuscates in its depths, but rather to pick out the core sense of the game for a playable summary. In reality, I think that the base text of the game needs a more sympathetic rendering to draw out the system in a more approachable way. A mammoth task and way beyond me, so a simple document will have to suffice.

Acknowledging the apparent complexity, I don’t think the game looks particularly difficult to run. Once you have your mind around the task checks you really are off and running. At times the game provides relieving simplification. Wounds are factored similarly to the 2D6 line but with a post battle severity and diagnosis check to provide more uncertainty and detail to the restoration. NPCs, on the other hand have a simple ’10+ points of damage and they are out of action’ rule with any damage less than this ignored. For all the mechanical changes, and some of the technological detail, the game feels very much like Traveller.

Having said that, I have found my first eye widening major divergence from other editions of the game. Such surprise came not from the task system, or many of the sub systems in T5. These are different, and apply lots of interesting changes to to the Mongoose version, but none of them change the logic of the Traveller universe as I understood it. I’m deep in Book 2 Starships and have discovered that most of the turret based weapons, such as the classic Beam Lasers and Fusion Guns have ranges only out to about 500KM. In all other versions I have encountered they have ranges of hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Starship combat works at very short range with these weapons or, as I was told on the Traveller Discord, they are mostly used as defensive systems to shoot down missiles, which now have greater prominence as primary offensive systems with long space ranges. Fire missiles or get in close to rip a ship apart. You can still stand off with the biggies, such as Particle Accelerators or Meson Cannon.

My simple Foundry VTT T5 character sheet in action

To show willing, and perhaps to push me over the precipice into a sunk time fallacy of actual play, I have put together one of my basic Foundry VTT character sheets. Lacking automation, it works well enough to record character details and roll dice. This propels me to a final step. What am I actually going to do with the game?

A shout out to Rob Eaglestone, whose Xboat and Imperiallines low cost zines have illustrated many aspects of the T5 game. I have bought them all and have yet to digest. They look terrific. Amongst these zines is an introduction to the Galaxiad setting, further out in the future of the official timeline. Instinctively, I think running a game out there is too much of a Hop Drive away from my comfort zone, perhaps until it is detailed a little more. I like the look of where it is going.

Converting any 2D6 Traveller material looks possible on the fly. Characteristics and skill names are largely the same, and their numbers are not very different from Mongoose 2e. High level examples of starships and weapons need very little cross over, though I’d need to think about detailed hit location compartments should a starship ever have the misfortune to get into a battle.

Could I face my old favourite Hard Times? Right now, I think I need something a little less implosional. The Fifth Frontier War is a prior destructive sploosh in the fragile fallacy of the Imperial pond. Could it be a classic trading and adventuring sandbox, out in the Vanguard Reaches? Yeah, maybe that. A sort of frontier scifi, themed like a rustic fantasy. Picking a simple hook and cluster setting and then dropping a free trader crew in the midst usually does the trick.

Maybe.

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