Do you happen to have the article / issue number of that Freelance Traveller? I looked for it but didn't find it.

Well, we played it at TravCon under its original title of 'Portents and Signs' (riffing on the Mongoose magazine of that name, the hint that the brown dwarf might cause trouble later and the double meaning of 'signs'). So that might be why you're not turning it up. Let's see, it will either be in an After Action Report from 2012 or in one of my Confessions - although they started later... here we go:

https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/stories/aar-travcon12.html

Oh hang on, I'd forgotten this:

http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/preproom/props.html

where I write about the Diary and the logbook under 'The Diary' and 'The Logbook' naturally enough.

BTW, if anyone wants a Word version of the logbook for their own ship adventures or to use as a 'found' item as here, email me offlist although it's very simple and nothing you couldn't recreate from the article.

I'm sure we'll take a shot at playing through it at some point, we're at the stage now that actual face to face

oh, well keep me posted if you do. I'd be fascinated to hear how it goes and very jealous I can't join in. I've never *played* the adventure even though I do feel I've lived it sometimes.

gameplay only happens during the last two weeks of the year, when people are more or less off work burning vacation hours that they can't carry into the next year. Much of our Traveller "gameplay" is play by chat / email drawn out over a long period of time, refining and adding to the pile of Mathematica and Maple notebooks we use for simulation. Don't read anything into it that I didn't play the module yet, our group only plays modules once a year :)

OK, but as the After Action reveals, you might have fun exploring the system data if you're into that kind of thing. :-)

The start of the module indicates that the star system is Jump-1 away, it just seemed curious that the crew couldn't jump back to that after a misjumsp.

Well bear in mind:

- they have just MisJumped (35 parsecs) so they might regard the j-drive as dodgy (as in fact it was as the PC engineer 100 years later can diagnose).

- they're in a system where they *know* they can survive, thinking about jumping to a system where they *might not* and even if they *can*, there's no guarantee that the system after that won't prove a dead end... and so on for 38 parsecs.

personally I think staying put and hoping a search party finds them was the best option.

The misjumsp was around 38 parsec,

35 - see page 39. I believe the rules make 36 a maximum (6x6).

if I remember correctly, meaning the frontier of the imperium advanced by 38 parsec in 100 years, that's pretty rapid development and would add about 900 systems to the imperium if the expansion were uniform. That's not necessarily bad, and I don't think it's ever been pinned down just how many systems per century that the Imperium adds.

But your point is good. And yes, I did debate that with myself. Absolutely no reason you can't make that distance much shorter if you prefer... I just wanted a good length of time for the colony to have descendants. Also, no need to assume that the empire has advanced equally in all directions - this might be the end of a 'corridor' they are advancing along or something. I don't actually specify the Third Imperium (you can't as there's no reasonable place to locate the adventure, I did try. I just say 'Imperium' and think in games I've said "an Imperium" so you or players can make of it what they will.

I *thought* this would be a weak point at TravCon and that experienced Travellers would complain that it was a bit 'nowhere' but in fact not only did no one even mention it, a couple expressed real delight at having a "proper" scout adventure as they called it. I must admit, there isn't as much along those lines as you might expect in the published corpus. I keep thinking I should write a follow up for the crew of the Spartan Wainwright pushing further out.

Give that the axial tilt drives the seasons, and your world has a very mild axial tilt (1 degree vs the ecliptic, iirc), it's fairly likely that the seasonal effect is going to be very minimal if existent at all throughout all latitudes.

Yes, I recalled it was low. Ok, no seasons. I don't think I ever said the birds migrated for *climatic* reasons.... maybe there was a prey reason, or something else. ;-)

Or it turns out that the flare effects were not as dramatic as expected and survivable, and then the three that were forcibly removed back to the Imperium have a vendetta against the player characters.

Ah yes, that's the middle seed on page 45. And yes, subsequently, thinking about (but not acting on) a sequel on the world, I did think that maybe the original survey info was off or as you say it's not as dramatic as predicted. (That NPC other half of the Wainwright crew could have been a right load of plonkers.)

Stephen Baxter's Proxima deals with frequent dangerous flares by Proxima Centauri and the danger to the life on its companion world, which I would say in short was that life would recognize the signs of a pending flare and find shelter by burrowing into the ground or something to that effect.

I've also thought a colony - with good warning system and bunkers - might be workable and interesting.

So did Blue Sky end up romantically involved with any of the players? What eventually happened to her?

Not that I recall. Although in one game Kelanora cabined up with Thomae and neither were seen for long periods and one PC soonish after arriving when there was a big feast going on slipped off down to the beach with one of the villagers and was a bit dischuffed (although none of the other players were survived) when big male turns up at the Kankurur next morning to give said PC what-for - it became a running joke whenever he spoke to a villager.

No, poor Blue Sky, for all her interest in the interlopers, never seemed to attract that kind of attention. I must explore what happened to her back in the Imperium one day...

Thank you! Do you have the other adventures you ran, or the gameplay descriptions, available? In particular the generation ship ones -

Well, it's funny you should mention that. Shorter things I've written, like last year's See How They Run and before that Three Blind Mice are already available on DriveThru - the latter is free! Other bits and bobs have appeared in the pages of Freelance Traveller. Searching for my surname and then restricting yourself to Active Measures should do the trick.

As for my 'longer ones', long time readers of TML won't be surprised to know that essentially they're all written up and ready to go there's just 'something' that needs doing in each case and I've singularly failed to do the thing. (If you know Belbin team-roles I'm not a completer-finisher.)

Second Scions' Society - is good to go BUT I've had an idea for a sequel (and a third part) and thought it better to send Mongoose the whole thing. Only I've had trouble writing part 2 as it's a murder investigation type thing. However, I'm currently running SSS with work colleagues at lunchtimes and the aim is to go past what's written and see if I can't write it 'as we go'. I'll keep you posted. (I have also written an 'interlude' between parts 1 and 2 which is the next bit that we'll play.)

Ashfall - this has 3 parts and has been with Mongoose for some time now. I emailed them a couple of weeks ago and although there are no promises, it might see light of day this year. As part 1 was the very first adventure I ever wrote (Into the Unknown was the first published), it won't be before time!

Generation X - this was waiting for me to finish the bibliography listing and describing every generation starship story/novel I could find and creating a table which told you ship name, size (if known), trip duration, destination, regressed or not etc. But perhaps I should give that up and just send it to Mongoose. However, while they've been busy over the last year or three with the 2nd edition, there hasn't seemed to be any hurry. It includes Rendezvous with Karma which Stephen Ellis (author of Eve of Rebellion) built up from my initial idea to run in tandem with the generation ship. Again, see FT for spoiler ridden report:

https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/stories/aar-travcon15.html

scroll down to paragraph beginning "You may have spotted..."

I think that's all. OK, not counting far too many 'in progress' files in a folder for sanity. However, I've also written maybe half a dozen or more 'solo' adventures (one player, one ref) which have also been with Mongoose for a while. Collectively entitled 'There May be Troubles Ahead'. There's an example in Freelance Traveller: http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/advents/troubledmind.html

I was planning on doing them all as March Harrier Publications until I heard from Matthew that they just might happen this year via Mongoose. So they're back in the 'Waiting' pile. Reminds me, I think I have two more to finish and add to the compilation.

Again, thanks for the interest. You're making me think maybe I should do a bibliography of tc!

cheers