Concerning computer-assisted Traveller...
First, I'd like to say that just by providing PDF versions of your books, you have already crossed a bit into this realm. I have something like 40 gaming books loaded into my ipad, and I can't see ever going back. This alone has changed my gaming methods substantially.
Some of these suggestions and opinions mirror existing opinions, but this helps order my thoughts, so I apologize.
So, with that.. first, some general thoughts:
1) Open. In my experience, virtually every game group and referee has there own quirks/house-rules/etc. If things are hard-coded, it becomes difficult to handle a campaign. If the geekier folks have the ability to add in plugins or modifications, this is somewhat mitigated. This kind of goes, IMO, in the same bucket as interoperability. Some of my gaming friends use Windows machines, some Apple, and with even a smattering of unix/linux. It helps tremendously if there is some sort of support for everyone. This leads to...
2) Optional. My gaming friends have a relatively wide range of disposable incomes. If one player can't afford or is unwilling to purchase a device, it would be great if this didn't bring the game crashing to a halt. IMO, any tools provided for electronic devices should be helpful, but not required by everyone at the table.
Now, on to specific tools that, in my opinion, would enhance and speed-up play. It should be noted that these opinions come from the point of view of a referee. In the past, as I've run MgT sessions, I mentally keep track of what parts I could speed up with a quick computer script here or there. ( I use perl, for ease and speed in creating these scripts, as that is what I'm familiar with )
1) NPC Creators. Books of NPCs are fine, but finite. I have toyed around with the idea of creating scripts to generate NPCs on the fly, with a few bits of guidance from the referee. You could type in a role, species, etc, and it should be possible to spit out something useful. Bundling in random names, personality quirks, and so forth seem a natural addition to this.
2) Random Tables. Perhaps it is my age speaking, but I love tables. But, if you have too many, they can really bog play down. It seems trivial and natural to computerize all this. You could provide pre-existing tables, and allow referees to create or load in their own. Perhaps the hardest part would be finding a way to organize them.
3) World Maker. This is a bit more ambitious. This tool would be along the lines of the NPC creator.. but for planets. Take a UWP, plug it into the tool, and it does some fractal magic, and some random city generation, and poof.. you have a nice random world map. Tie this in with #2 above, and you could have a variety of other useful bits of information. You could have a table of 50 different types of Charismatic Dictatorships, for example. This would be very helpful in a sandbox kind of game if/when the players go somewhere that the referee hasn't planned out.
4) One tool I created, and used constantly, was a 'traveller' tool.. It, quite simply, computed how long it took to get from point A to point B. If you go by the rules, that involves a fair amount of dice rolling, and can really bog the game down, and really nobody cared. ( although they cared enough about their profit margin to want to actually make the rolls.. to trim down travel time, and therefore increase profits ) That, to me, means automation. Now, this was a simple, ugly tool. Professionals could take this to a whole new level. Imagine a point and click map that allowed the referee, or players, to plot out their travels. And a step beyond that.. now imagine a referee doing this for half a dozen important NPCs. You could now easily keep track of locations and travel routes of various NPC ships without losing your mind.
I've gone on too long, I suspect.. but I hope you get the picture. Basically, identify tedious parts of the game, and then write tools to speed those up.
Dan
(whew.. somewhat long-winded for a first post..
)
