Travellers Needed - Pirates of Drinax Reprint

[MongooseMatt]

Hello, fellow Pirates!

Over the next couple of months, we are going to be looking at reprinting the Pirates of Drinax. So, for those of you already familiar with the slipcase books... Is there anything we need to tweak or correct? Nothing is too minor, but we are not looking at making major changes or doing a new edition. This will be a sanding down of rough edges.

Post any thoughts you have here, and we will look at every one of them!

 

[ScottBlake]

Kteiroa is misprinted as "Kteireo" in Book 1, pp. 77, 91, 198, 199, 259.

The Sindalian name of Kteiroa is referred to as Piper in Book 1 (pp. 83, 84), but Stross in Book 2 (pp. 15, 180).

Also, there's an Aslan NPC named Utea, described in Book 1 as the starport operator and an elderly female. In Friends in Dry Places, there's an Aslan Outcast male named Utea on Ktieroa. Not an inherent problem, but potentially confusing if not done intentionally.

 

[Old School]

In other words, nothing that requires a layout change, right?

Here's some random, minor errata that I could remember off the top of my head:

• Book 1: Page 58: Hroal's fleet references a 300-ton Bug Class Salvage Hauler. I believe this is an artifact from the 1st Ed version, as no stats are given for this class. The Salvage Hauler in 2nd Ed is the 400-ton Vulture Class.
• In The Demon's Eye, Lemuel's surname alternates between Volin and Vinus. Each is mentioned 5 times (including once in the appendix).
• Book 2, Page 185. The last paragraph refers to Falcon as "Falkenburg".

 

[Garran]

Book 1: The Demon's Eye - P119, The Journey Home suggests that the PCs may hear of Captain Hammer's crusade (The Game of Sun and Shadow) - except there's no Captain Hammer in that episode, and referring to Krond's punitive flotilla as a crusade is overselling it just a bit. This is presumably an artifact of an earlier draft.

Book 1: Blood of the Star Dragon. The adventure doesn't address Oleb's reaction to various things if he's kept alive and recovers from his injuries, not the least how he reacts to the conspirators/coup attempt. Beyond that, siding with Harrick on Asim would reveal the Zhodani backing of Rao's plan - but would Oleb actually have an issue with that? (The Zhodani aren't necessarily going to be the big bugaboo that they would be in the Imperium, and Oleb seems more interested in results than methods.)

 

[cjones_wolfe]

Kteiroa system on page 83 Book 1 is describes as having a gas giant (Bellopho). On the Traveller Map is is shown as having no gas giant. Obviously YTUMV but I suspect most people treat the Traveller Map as the go to reference.

 

[Baldo]

Book 1, page 81

"Galx also reports that four Vespexers are missing". NOTHING in the book reveals the fate of those Vespexers. What's happened?

Book 1, page 92:

"Toiho (...) is contemplating the planet of Pourne (Tlaiowaha/0704) – like Keaih, it is a waterworld". Pourne is a 'Fluid' world (A9B2887-A).
In addition, the description of Keaih in Book 2, page 181-182, needs a revision:

Found a little problem with the adventure "Ihatei!". Keaih, the planet the two warring clans came from, is described as a water world: "The Hkaaiheir and the Htyowao are both respectable clans within the Hierate. The Hkaaiheir are considerably more powerful, but the Htyowao are close allies with the major Ahroay’if trader clan who rule most of this subsector. Many centuries ago, they settled the water-world of Keaih together, and began a long-term engineering project to boil off some of the seas to thicken the atmosphere."

Keaih 0210 CAA5887-9 Fl. Not a water world. :shock: In fact, it only has a hydrographic percentage of 50. And I seriously doubt they boiled off 50% of its seas in a few hundred years, thereby creating the exotic atmosphere it has today. If they did, the tale of the planet would be the ecological disaster they created, thereby creating a fluid atmosphere planet, not the war between two clans. More likely the author saw that "A" for the atmosphere and mistook it for an "A" hydrographics percentage. I guess you can just kind of hand wave this away, but it does take a little out of the story that the two clans were fighting for the scarce land on the planet's archipelagos and therefore one of them had to win, and the other is motivated to seek new lands.

Book 1, page 122:

"You go out onto the forward topdeck and you have a (hurricane) boxing match (with King Oleb)", but Drinax has a Very Thin atmosphere at sea level, add/get some protection first :lol: ...

Book 1, page 266:

The reward for the 'Keaih Patron Mission' is "a shipping contract with the Company of Profits That Rise Like Mist. This contract involves shipping roughly 1,000 tons of cargo between Keaih and Vorito every month, at a rate of Cr2200 per ton". Keaih is 5 parsec from Vorito, and the Freight Costs table in the core rulebook gives bigger rewards for your efforts (Cr7700).

 

[Ursus Maior]

As an active GM of the campaign, I would like to see an index and a compilation of all occurring NPCs, including their stats as a reference booklet. The latter could be purely digital of course. But currently its painstaking to find information for main NPCs, such as Princess Rao, who appears in the first scene, but is not given stats until the very last chapter.

Additionally, my PDF version has several instances of cases where the text layer is formatted in a way that tries to display text within the page margins layer. Black text on a black page margin doesn't show, obviously. The printed edition is fine, but I cannot use several pages of the PDF due to that error.

If you ever planning to make larger changes to the campaign and how it's presenting information, I'll have a few suggestions for shuffling around chapters and deleting some stuff as well as adding a bit here and there.

 

[Old School]

As an active GM of the campaign, I would like to see an index and a compilation of all occurring NPCs, including their stats as a reference booklet. The latter could be purely digital of course. But currently its painstaking to find information for main NPCs, such as Princess Rao, who appears in the first scene, but is not given stats until the very last chapter.

Additionally, my PDF version has several instances of cases where the text layer is formatted in a way that tries to display text within the page margins layer. Black text on a black page margin doesn't show, obviously. The printed edition is fine, but I cannot use several pages of the PDF due to that error.

If you ever planning to make larger changes to the campaign and how it's presenting information, I'll have a few suggestions for shuffling around chapters and deleting some stuff as well as adding a bit here and there.

The reference ides sounds a like a new book rather than tweak or correction. Not a bad idea, and would be easy enough to do yourself with a PDF for the NPCs that are given stat blocks. .

I have no issues with text formatting on the PDFs, using adobe acrobat on a PC, and GoodReader on my iPad. What pages are causing you trouble?

 

[Old School]

Book 1, page 81

"Galx also reports that four Vespexers are missing". NOTHING in the book reveals the fate of those Vespexers. What's happened?

I see this as being left to the referee's discretion, rather than an omission. Some mysteries don't get solved. You're given the most likely answer. Changing it is your perogative.

As for the patron mission, it's certainly a cheapskate price, but doesn't mean its an error. She could take them for being clueless about money (i.e. an Aslan male) and is trying to take advantage of them. And the 7700 price in the core book is for a single jump, which is unlikely in this scenario.

 

[Ursus Maior]

And the 7700 price in the core book is for a single jump, which is unlikely in this scenario.

A single jump is unlikely, yes, but Cr2200 is still not enough. A single jump-2 is Cr1600 and a jump-3 Cr3000. The cheapest way getting your freight hauled 5 pc is a combination of both, adding up to Cr4600. That's a hefty discount of over 50 %.

 

[Tim J osborne]

Change the way mongoose draw deck plans. I know the ‘3D’ view is intended to be an improvement and more appealing. But they are the ugliest most useless things in any of the books.
What is wrong with producing beautiful scale drawings with 1.5m grids in monotone 2D. With all the lovely graphic art in the publications, having the deck plans as a graphic makes more sense.
It hurts to look at the present ones and they are not well planned or laid out.

 

[Ursus Maior]

I absolutely see the use of 2D deckplans, but do appreceiate the isometric 3Dish deckplans, too. Maybe a way could be found where PDFs feature layers that show either or?

 

[Old School]

Change the way mongoose draw deck plans. I know the ‘3D’ view is intended to be an improvement and more appealing. But they are the ugliest most useless things in any of the books.
What is wrong with producing beautiful scale drawings with 1.5m grids in monotone 2D. With all the lovely graphic art in the publications, having the deck plans as a graphic makes more sense.
It hurts to look at the present ones and they are not well planned or laid out.

Making a new account just to bash the product is a great way to have your ideas incorporated. . .

 

[RogerMc]

A bit more detail on characters from Drinax and Asim - 2D life event tables would make them more varied.

Quite like to see full NPC stats for the Drinaxi royal family, leading courtiers etc.

 

[SteveG]

2D maps and deckplans, maybe not as extra pages in the books, but certainly as downloadable files - more and more of us are running Traveller online and need deckplans and battlemaps for VTTs, the 3D isometric ones are ok, but traditional top-down 2D deckplans will be much more useful.

 

[paltrysum]

As for the patron mission, it's certainly a cheapskate price, but doesn't mean its an error. She could take them for being clueless about money (i.e. an Aslan male) and is trying to take advantage of them. And the 7700 price in the core book is for a single jump, which is unlikely in this scenario.

Funny you should mention that. That's exactly how one of my players interpreted the encounter. He said something like, "Oh, she's just lowballing us because she thinks we're as gullible as Aslan males." The players negotiated a higher price with a few Persuade and Broker checks.

And yes, Old School, the player who said that was the one who murdered Grimsbold. :twisted:

 

[Old School]

Funny you should mention that. That's exactly how one of my players interpreted the encounter. He said something like, "Oh, she's just lowballing us because she thinks we're as gullible as Aslan males." The players negotiated a higher price with a few Persuade and Broker checks.

And yes, Old School, the player who said that was the one who murdered Grimsbold. :twisted:

You may have been the one who convinced me it wasn’t necessarily errata.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Browne is listed as 30 Billion in the book 2 pg 187 but travellermap lists it as 90 Billion

The environment and living locations of Number One book 2 pg 160-161 does not match the description of Number One in Shadows of Sindal pg 56-57 (As MonkeyX pointed out in a thread. http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=122875 )

 

[GamingGlen]

Browne is listed as 30 Billion in the book 2 pg 187 but travellermap lists it as 90 Billion

The environment and living locations of Number One book 2 pg 160-161 does not match the description of Number One in Shadows of Sindal pg 56-57 (As MonkeyX pointed out in a thread. http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=122875 )

Yet again another stupid population number. What is it with TENS OF BILLIONS of people living on desolate worlds? The modern human race on Earth has had 100,000 years (give or take a few millennia) to reach 7 billion on a garden world yet the crew of 15 scout ships stranded on a poor world reach 30 billion population in 2000 years? Yeah, I'm changing that population number. Albe is another world with a unbelievable population count. (one of my pet peeves is Traveller's population generation in the world generation system but that's for another discussion)

Ahem. Back to the reason for the thread...

In The Treasure of Sindal (main book, mine aren't numbered) Gani Peras is referred to as Gani Perot on page 122.

 

[Ursus Maior]

Funny thing: Populations grow exponentially. It's the only way to go other than the way of the dodo. Humanity hit the one billion mark around the year 1800, ten years ago we reached seven billion. The big impediments to exponential growth are infant mortality, progress in medicine (i. e. vaccines against the most common epidemics, diagnostic tools beyond basic human senses etc.), abolishment of famine and poverty, fresh water supply and thus permanent establishment of basic hygiene and prevention of large scale conflicts. Though anything short of genocide or decade long warfare against population centers will not have a significant impact on population numbers and growths. The factors positively influencing a population boom are an abundance of resources available to a population

The question thus is not "will population grow indefinitely", but "can the environment sustain that growth"? And if you have a TL9 tech-base and a whole starsystem at your disposal, that is not much of an issue. What I find striking is the fact that this seems to be a desert-world, half the size of earth with only thin atmosphere. So, population density will be very high, the 90 billion people will likely be citizens of the world in name and actually be spread out across all of the system (ten planets and three gas giants, likely with several moons each). But without natural subterranean water reservoirs, this seems highly unlikely, unless there is a garden world in the system that for some reason is not the prime political entity, but the actual population center.

But hey, UWPs always were rolled up gibberish referees had to fill with meaningful stories.