Traveller Universe
- Thread starter apoc527
- Start date
far-trader
Mongoose
In answer to your questions:
No (actually not a "no, not still using it" but a "never used it myself")
Depends (old rules so not strictly MgT, but compatible to a degree)
Maybe (that is a personal factor)
No. Not legally anyway. Buy it through BITS (I think):
http://www.bitsuk.net/Products/Software/Software.html
http://www.ancienttomes.org.uk/
No (actually not a "no, not still using it" but a "never used it myself")
Depends (old rules so not strictly MgT, but compatible to a degree)
Maybe (that is a personal factor)
No. Not legally anyway. Buy it through BITS (I think):
http://www.bitsuk.net/Products/Software/Software.html
http://www.ancienttomes.org.uk/
I should have asked as well:
What, if anything, do you use to track the kind of stuff one might want to track in a Traveller game?
In short, the only actual Traveller game I've run to date has been The Traveller Adventure using MGT.
I'm going to be running a completely homespun Third Imperium campaign, though I may toss in some published adventures, and I'm just sort of daunted by all the potential bookkeeping involved.
I am not a fan of real paper these days, so I'd prefer something I can use on a computer. Maybe just the old Heaven & Earth?
What, if anything, do you use to track the kind of stuff one might want to track in a Traveller game?
In short, the only actual Traveller game I've run to date has been The Traveller Adventure using MGT.
I'm going to be running a completely homespun Third Imperium campaign, though I may toss in some published adventures, and I'm just sort of daunted by all the potential bookkeeping involved.
I am not a fan of real paper these days, so I'd prefer something I can use on a computer. Maybe just the old Heaven & Earth?
I used Universe quite a bit in my last game, or at least until I switch to using a Mac Laptop. I am considering going back to using Galactic as it will run on the Mac under DosBox. Mind you both have a lot of setup to work through, but can be very useful.
To to be very honest if I run a campaign again I probably will just use TheBrain for Game management. It is a flexible, dynamic mind mapping program that allows you to hang file off of entries. Again there is a bunch of set up but it's flexiblity is worth it.
And to be very honest I would love to see a app for the iPad/Droid that I could do system level GIS like the previously mentioned programs. The Killer app would be TheBrain on a iPad for me.
To to be very honest if I run a campaign again I probably will just use TheBrain for Game management. It is a flexible, dynamic mind mapping program that allows you to hang file off of entries. Again there is a bunch of set up but it's flexiblity is worth it.
And to be very honest I would love to see a app for the iPad/Droid that I could do system level GIS like the previously mentioned programs. The Killer app would be TheBrain on a iPad for me.
My most used software is Galactic 2.4 for data presentation to players while using Heaven & Earth to generate the actual star system details. It's a real shame Traveller Universe never got its star system generator off the ground.apoc527 said:
I've used Galactic 2.4 for years but, as has been pointed out, there's quite a bit of setup necessary. Setup as in installing a DOS emulator on your PC, the manual building of links to text files (as in Notepad text files, not modern software like MSWord), and the manual conversion of GIF (only) graphics files to self executing files using GIFExe.
Like I said, I've used it for years. I also use the "Heaven & Earth" software (having been on the beta test team) which is Windows-based and more user-friendly but it hasn't been supported in years. The creator of Galactic 2.4, Jim Vassalikos, is still around and happy to answer some questions on it. There's also a couple of Yahoo! forum groups for Galactic discussions.
There's also NBOS's "AstroSynthesis 2.0" which is an amazing Windows-based star mapping package with a star system generator but the star system details are very generic and not Traveller standardized so its usability for a Traveller campaign is limited (but it's soooo freakin' awesome I bought it anyway).
I've never been able to find a buyable copy of Traveller Universe, even from the BITS website. You may be more successful.
SSWarlock said:My most used software is Galactic 2.4 for data presentation to players while using Heaven & Earth to generate the actual star system details. It's a real shame Traveller Universe never got its star system generator off the ground.
Last I checked he was still beating on it when he had time. Just the thing is life has a tendency to get in the way.
SSWarlock said:
Jim is active on the Yahoo list. And can be a great help. I could never get the Beta of Heaven and Earth to run reliably on any of the windows machines I had. But that maybe more about the ramshackle windows machines I tend to own than the beta. (for a long time my house contained machines franken-teched out of dumpsters)
SSWarlock said:
I want to love AstroSynthesis but is fails in so many subtle ways, part of this is the cranky machines it lives on, part of it is its sheer generic-ness.
But really the bigest thing is the lack of effective path finding, but that is the problem all of the programs we are talking about have.
SSWarlock said:
Try Here
GamerDude
Cosmic Mongoose
If you are looking for a program to organized the information in a campaign or setting, I would like to recommend "The Keep" by NBOS.
When I was trying to sift out all the info from those horrid adventures I tried running at recent cons, The Keep was totally awsome. I could extract images from PDF's and put them in the keep, the database is just like using the Windows or Mac OS X file system (folder in folders). You can easily hyperlink between elements for quick reference jumping, or even to outside pages.
Trust me, I took two adventures of 'disorganized mess' and made them at least navagatable. I just wish I had the time to link in those crummy sound files i could have found them faster to play.
When I was trying to sift out all the info from those horrid adventures I tried running at recent cons, The Keep was totally awsome. I could extract images from PDF's and put them in the keep, the database is just like using the Windows or Mac OS X file system (folder in folders). You can easily hyperlink between elements for quick reference jumping, or even to outside pages.
Trust me, I took two adventures of 'disorganized mess' and made them at least navagatable. I just wish I had the time to link in those crummy sound files i could have found them faster to play.
