[Spica Publishing] New Outer Veil previews!

Spica Publishing is pleased to announce that Outer Veil will be released on 30 October 2011!

Written by Omer Golan-Joel with Richard Hazlewood, with art by David Redington and Michael Thomas, Outer Veil is a completely new game universe for Traveller, set in 2159 AD in the space around Sol.

THE YEAR IS 2159 AND THE FRONTIER NEEDS YOU.

As mighty as they are in the Core Worlds, the Federated Nations of Humanity government and the Megacorporations cannot act directly on the Frontier, which is a month or more away even for the brand-new Jump 2 couriers. To exert their power to these distant stars, they need you to go there on their behalf and act as their eyes, ears, and hands away from home. The FNH government needs reliable administrators who can think on their feet, loyal military officers to project its force, and determined Justice Commission agents to uphold the law where the colonial authorities cannot.

The Megacorporations want results and want them now and demand people who can get results fast, by any means necessary. They also need researchers, explorers, and workers for their projects on the frontier and spies and mercenaries for the darker side of inter-corporate competition. The locals need you, too: as a professional, a hired gun, an explorer or as a fellow colonist. You need the Frontier, too: opportunities and adventures abound there for both the hireling and the freelancer.

The Frontier is large, deep, and wide open. Humanity's young sphere of interstellar space is surrounded on all sides by unexplored space. At the edge of this tiny sphere lies the Outer Veil, a partly-explored, sparsely-settled region of space separating the known and the unknown. Despite its best efforts, the Core has little influence in these dark reaches, and nearly anything can be found there: unsanctioned colonies, pirate enclaves, secret laboratories, alien ruins, isolationist groups, strange worlds and colonies scraping out a living on the edge of the Great Unknown.

The space beyond the Outer Veil is unexplored, unknown and undisturbed by human exploration, habitation or influence. The future of Humanity lies beyond the Outer Veil, where untold opportunities, riches and dangers await the trail-blazing explorer. The present human institutions hold little or no power amongst these far stars; whatever lies beyond the slowly expanding Outer Veil is an enigma waiting to be explored and colonised: a new opportunity for Humanity to begin anew and build new civilisations.

Authority is scarce and your bosses, if any, are weeks of Jump travel away from you. The Core can only give you general guidance and standing orders; when trouble strikes, you have to make your own decisions. If you are the captain of a patrol frigate, the commanding officer of a Marine detachment, a colonial governor or a Justice Commission agent, you are the government. If you are a trouble-shooter or a local exec for a Megacorporation, you are the company. And if you are a freelancer, you truly are independent.

In the Outer Veil you are on your own.

Outer Veil includes background and historical information on the Outer Veil universe, eight new, setting-specific careers, statistics for 20 new starships and smallcraft, rules for asteroid mining and belting, a complete sector of space with UWPs and subsector maps, Referee's information on the Outer Veil setting, patrons and 'Brotherhood & Justice', a complete introductory adventure set in the Outer Veil universe.

Outer Veil will be released on Sunday 30 October 2011 as a PDF download from Spica Publishing’s publisher page at DriveThruRPG.com.

Price: $14.99.
Product code: SP 0200
ISBN: 978-0-9560893-9-7
Format: PDF, 156 pages.


A selection of preview pages from Outer Veil from Spica Publishing are available at the Spica Publishing forums and on the Spica Publishing blog!

Outer Veil is © Spica Publishing 2011. All rights reserved.

Requires the use of the Traveller Core Rulebook, available from Mongoose Publishing.
'Traveller' and the Traveller logo are Trademarks owned by Far Future Enterprises, Inc. and are used with permission.
 
I am also excited ... it looks just like the small universe Earth-neighbourhood Aliens-inspired game of Traveller I've always wanted....

Screenshots here: http://spicapublishing.co.uk/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=1689
 
Yep, all of known space fits easily inside a single sector. LOTS of unexplored space on all sides, max TL of 11 (look, it goes to Jump2).

Alien mysteries, those new Psions that have just started cropping up... and a central government that just can't be everywhere and needs bold people to go out and fix problems...
 
Yes, this sounds very interesting indeed, especially for those of us who are tired of the OTU's baggage and who feel that a smaller, more focussed setting would be much more enjoyable.

Will there be continuing support (supplements?) for this too?
 
Wil Mireu said:
Will there be continuing support (supplements?) for this too?
Definitely so; several supplements and adventures are in various stages of planning and/or writing.
 
This sounds quite cool. Is this intended to be a hard SF setting or are you aiming it more at the space opera end of the spectrum?
 
Prime_Evil said:
This sounds quite cool. Is this intended to be a hard SF setting or are you aiming it more at the space opera end of the spectrum?
Much closer to hard SF than to space opera, though still with some "handwaves" such as gravitics and FTL.
 
Golan2072 said:
Much closer to hard SF than to space opera, though still with some "handwaves" such as gravitics and FTL.

That's reasonable - most SF handwaves that stuff for good reaon....

If you knew how they gravitics and FTL travel work, you'd be writing a patent application rather than an RPG supplement. :lol:

Would it be fair to say that this setting has a more contemporary 'feel' than the OTU?
 
Much more contemporary.

Set in 2159, it is only 140 years in the future, so as contemporary as our world is to 1770. A lot that is recognizable and a lot that is obviously evolved from modern institutions. There are corporations for example with obvious Russian, Chinese, Japanese and European/American names.

BUT, being 140 years in the future, you can make is as contemporary as you want. It is not the same as 2300AD. There is less emphasis on national origin, no "arms".
 
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Much more contemporary.
Yes. Society would still be very recognizable by a 21st century person, though with the obvious effects of an interstellar frontier and relative ease of interstellar colonization. Think Alien(s) or Outland rather that Star Trek or Star Wars.

Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Set in 2159, it is only 140 years in the future, so as contemporary as our world is to 1770.
This should be as contemporary as our world is contemporary to 1863, to be exact.

Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
BUT, being 140 years in the future, you can make is as contemporary as you want. It is not the same as 2300AD. There is less emphasis on national origin, no "arms".
Ironically, nationality is something you see more clearly in the Colonies rather than on Earth. Many ethnic groups took off to the stars to escape the hyper-globalized melting-pot which is Earth. Some of this nationalism feeds the Secessionist movement. But the driving forces of exploration and the conquest of space are the megacorps and the FNH (Federated Nations of Humanity) government rather than any particular Earth nation.
 
Nifty! At last a Traveller setting I'm happy with (!). I never liked the 3i space opera, always, even when I was 14, shoehorned Traveller into a mix-up Outland, Aliens, Saturn 3, Bladerunner universe.
 
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