Classic Traveller on TAS - November!

[MongooseMatt]

Good news for fans of Classic Traveller - next month (November) will see Classic Traveller come to the TAS programme on Drivethru, allowing you to produce your own material for the original game.

On November 1st, we will be posting a free download pack on TAS that will provide all the templates you need for both cover and interior, giving everything you need to put new titles together quickly and easily, and in a format that will be readily identifiable as 'Classic'. Adventures, supplements, rulebooks and more will all be open for you to take a swing at, and we cannot wait to see what you can come up with for the game!

 

[apastuszak]

@MongooseMatt Can we get a TAS Classic Category on DTRPG to make it easier to differentiate the Classic Traveller stuff from Mongoose Traveller stuff in TAS?

 

[MongooseMatt]

@MongooseMatt Can we get a TAS Classic Category on DTRPG to make it easier to differentiate the Classic Traveller stuff from Mongoose Traveller stuff in TAS?

We can't

We did try, but Drivethru do not want to split things to that kind of granularity. However, because we have standardised the Classic covers you should find them very easy to spot.

 

[apastuszak]

Maybe add a tag to the title in the listing such as [Classic] - Title

 

[apastuszak]

I may be very wrong, but I have to assume people have homebrewed the **** out of Classic Traveller over the last 50 years. I could see many people wanting to put that stuff on TAS just to see if it might sell. Especially if the stuff is complete and there is very little effort in getting it to market on their part.

 

[Limpin Legin]

Maybe add a tag to the title in the listing such as [Classic] - Title

Just a thought: That would filter-in people who want to see Classic, but wouldn't filter-out Classic for those who don't.

 

[apastuszak]

There are people that don’t want to see Classic Traveller?

 

[-Daniel-]

I may be very wrong, but I have to assume people have homebrewed the **** out of Classic Traveller over the last 50 years.

To be honest, this is why I am curious, how much of the "Classic Traveller" content on TAS will be CT and how much will be CT-House Rule adjustments and/or even outright changes. Thus are they really CT or CT adjacent?

Just a thought.

 

[apastuszak]

It will be fun to see it all.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Especially if the stuff is complete and there is very little effort in getting it to market on their part.

And there is a Word doc template

 

[apastuszak]

A font tip for people. Classic Traveller used two fonts: Univers and Optima. Both fonts fall under the Monotype umbrella and have some pretty expensive licensing terms for "digital distribution," which includes using it in a PDF and selling it or even giving it away.

Doing some DuckDuckGoing today, I found some fonts that are "close enough" to these two fonts, that the average reader is not going to notice a difference, unless they're a super font nerd like me.

The first font is a substitute for Optima. It's called Libertinus Sans and it looks like this:


Not a 100% match. But REALLY close. And it's licensed under the SIL Open Font License, so you don't have to worry about royalties.

The homepage for this font is: https://github.com/alerque/libertinus

I'm still hunting for a free alternative to Univers. I found one. But it's only free for non-commercial use. I'll update when i find something.

 

[apastuszak]

Ok, I may have found something for Univers. There is open source font called Perun that's close. Again, it's not exact. But it's probably "good enough" for use in a TAS product without getting dinged for a font license. The font is Perun.



You can find the font here:

Perun

Perun is a a sans-serif typeface. It is derivated from FreeUniversal font family with OFL (SIL Open Font License) and SIL Sophia font.

localfonts.eu

There is a font called U001, which a perfect clone of Univers, but it's license does now allow commercial use.

 

[CordwainerFish]

I'm partial to "Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow" myself.

That said, damn but Perun is close to Univers.

Any thoughts on how to get Libertinus to put that not-quite-a-serif at the top of capital A?

 

[apastuszak]

 

[CordwainerFish]

Kerning is different, but mostly for the better I think.

 

[apastuszak]

It is.

The goal here is to find a font with an open license that's "good enough" for Classic TAS content creators so they don't have to buy a font license.

Most of the "classic fonts" people are familiar with are now owned by Monotype. Monotype requires an annual license for PDFs, based on the number of PDFs sold. They occasionally spot check content on various websites and then send you a bill. They usually only check to see if a font is being used on a website. But I wouldn't put them past checking PDFs. They're the 80s TSR of the font world.