So I am working on a TAS supplement. It'll be primarily planet-based, but it will include a bit of a sector as well. I was aiming for a sandbox book. Where you can easily drop your players into the area and have fun, or even run a one-shot using the materials here.

The question is the format most folks prefer. Some friends have read the outline. I have gotten mixed input, and a few of them aren't Traveller players but are TTRPG players.

Here is the outline:

>1. The World of [planet name]- Introduction to the planet.
2. The [System name] Binary Star System - System and regional context.
3. History of [Planet] - Founding and development.
4. Government of [Planet] - Political structure and ruling dynasty.
5. Institutions, Factions, and Power Centers - Major organizations and actors.
6. The Economy of [Planet] - Industry, corporations, and commerce.
7. Defenders of [Planet] - Military and security apparatus.
8. The Great Cities of [Planet] - Primary locations for play and storytelling
9. The Great Space Elevator - A place of intrigue, scum, and villainy
10. Adventures on [Planet] - About 10 adventures involving some of the things covered in chapters 5, 6, and 7
11. Campaign seeds - About 3 open-ended campaign seeds for a GM to take and have fun with.
Appendix
Appx A - NPC cards, index card-sized when printed, with basic UPP and some flavor text (description, motivations, equipment). This would where NPCs mentioned in the chapters.
Appx B - Major equipment that could be found in the system (starships, robots, vehicles)

So the question is: if you had a book like that in your collection and arranged as the outline shows, would it be useful for you as a GM, or should I move a couple of chapters around and get to the action earlier? I have seen it both ways in official and TAS supplements.

So I figured I would ping the internet and get all the answers to be more confused as I work through editing and trying to smooth my drafts to something worthy to be published via TAS.

In release schedules from 2025 there is mention of a compendium in the works. Does anyone know what happened to that?

The first sign that something was wrong was the water.

Not that anyone in Continuity Facility K-17 had ever seen water fall from the sky, or gather in rivers, or shine beneath a sun.

Water came from pipes.

It came warm for washing, cold for drinking, sterile for the infirmary, mineral-rich for the hydroponics decks. It came because the machines beneath the Vault had made it come for one hundred and ninety-eight years.

Then, one morning, the taps coughed.

By midday, the lower habitation ring had no pressure.

By evening, the Steward-Marshal summoned the engineers.

The Hydrological Management Core sat behind three metres of armoured glass in a chamber no one had entered in generations. Its casing bore the crowned dragon of old Drinax. Tiny amber warnings crawled across a diagnostic screen.

Royal Engineer Mara Vey stared at them for a long time.

“How long?” asked her father.

Steward-Marshal Elian Vey was sixty-three years old and had spent all sixty-three beneath rock.

Mara swallowed.

“One hundred and fifty days.”

Nobody spoke.

The Vault had survived bombardment. Famine. Fire. Two generations of internal violence. A fungal blight in the eastern hydroponics galleries. The Great Fever of 118. The reactor shutdown of 163.

It would die because of a control board the size of a dinner plate.

“We can repair it?”

“No.”

“Rebuild it?”

“No.”

“Substitute another processor?”

Mara shook her head.

“The reclamation plant was designed around this architecture. We could fabricate most of the surrounding systems. Not this.”

The Steward-Marshal looked through the glass at the old machine.

“What does the inventory say?”

Mara had already checked.

“There were six compatible units on Drinax.”

“Were?”

“Two here. One failed eighty-seven years ago. One was installed in Royal Civil Defence Complex T-9. Two were transferred to orbital facilities.”

“And the sixth?”

Mara hesitated.

“Royal Palace.”

The room went very still.

The Palace had been dead for two centuries.

Everyone knew that.

Everyone in the Vault knew the story.

The Aslan came. The cities burned. The atmosphere poisoned. The King died. The surface became the Burned World, where nothing human could live.

It was why the Door had never been opened.

Steward-Marshal Vey folded his hands behind his back.

“Then we send someone to T-9.”

Mara looked at him.

“Father, if the external contamination readings are accurate—”

“They are.”

“The sensors are nearly two hundred years old.”

“They are accurate.”

“You don’t know that.”

For a moment she thought he would rebuke her.

Instead he looked tired.

Very tired.

“One person,” he said. “One suit. One mission.”

Mara understood.

Not an expedition.

A sacrifice.

* * *

The outer door had not moved since the reign of a king whose portrait still hung in the Vault schoolrooms.

Motors groaned.

Dust fell like grey snow.

Mara stood alone in a pressure suit while three hundred people watched through internal cameras.

The Door opened.

Sunlight entered K-17.

For several seconds Mara could not move.

She had known, intellectually, what sunlight was. The archives contained images. Educational simulations reproduced it.

None had prepared her.

It was too bright.

Too large.

The sky was blue.

Not black. Not orange with poison. Not boiling with radioactive clouds.

Blue.

Mara stepped outside.

Wind touched her suit.

She began to laugh.

Then she began to cry.

“Engineer?” came her father’s voice over the radio. “Report.”

Mara looked across a valley of broken stone and twisted metal.

There were plants.

Sparse, thorny things pushing through ash-grey soil.

Something moved in the distance.

An animal.

Alive.

“The surface is habitable,” she whispered.

Silence.

“Mara.”

“The surface is habitable.”

Another silence.

Longer this time.

“That is impossible.”

“I’m standing on it.”

She walked ten kilometres before finding the tracks.

Human tracks.

Fresh.

* * *

They found her before she found them.

Six figures appeared on a ridge, wrapped in dust-coloured cloaks and patched survival gear. Their rifles were ancient but very real.

One wore a respirator fashioned from parts that belonged in a museum.

He pointed his weapon at Mara.

“You come from the Palace?”

She froze.

“You know the Palace?”

The stranger tilted his head.

“Everyone knows the Palace.”

Mara’s heart began pounding.

“The Royal Palace?”

He laughed.

“Floating Palace, yes. King Oleb’s cloud-castle.”

Mara stared at him.

“King... Oleb?”

The man lowered his rifle slightly.

“You’ve hit your head?”

“I am Royal Engineer Mara Vey of Continuity Facility K-17.”

The stranger’s expression changed.

Not recognition.

Fear.

He looked past her toward the buried entrance in the hills.

Then he made the sign of the Dragon.

“The Door,” he said.

The others murmured.

One backed away.

Mara felt suddenly cold despite the heat.

“You know the Vault?”

“My grandmother told stories. Her grandmother told her.”

He pointed toward the hills.

“The rich hid under the mountain while Drinax burned.”

* * *

Three days later, a starship descended from the sky.

Mara had seen starships in archive footage.

This one looked like a knife.

Long, predatory, graceful despite its age, its down-swept wings cutting through the haze as it settled onto the plain.

The Vespexers scattered before its landing blast.

Mara did not.

The hatch opened.

Armed Travellers descended first.

Then came a woman in fine clothes, carrying herself with the easy certainty of someone raised among power.

Princess Rao of Drinax.

Behind her came a broad, magnificently dressed man with a beard, a sword, and an expression of delighted disbelief.

King Oleb.

He stopped ten metres from Mara.

Mara stared at him.

He stared at her.

Neither spoke.

Finally Oleb spread his arms.

“Well,” he said. “You took your damned time.”

Mara did not smile.

“By authority of the Royal Continuity Charter,” she said, “identify yourself.”

The Travellers exchanged glances.

Rao closed her eyes briefly.

Oleb’s grin widened.

“Oh, I like her.”

Mara held out a data wafer.

“We require a Hydrological Management Core HMC-4. Our current unit will fail in one hundred and thirty-eight days.”

Oleb took the wafer but did not look at it.

“How many people?”

“One thousand one hundred and twelve.”

This time, the King’s expression changed.

The humour vanished.

“A thousand?”

“Correct.”

“Engineers?”

“Yes.”

“Doctors?”

“Yes.”

“Technicians?”

“Yes.”

“Teachers?”

“Yes.”

Oleb looked toward the hill.

Behind Mara, the outer Door had been opened wider.

Figures were emerging cautiously into daylight.

Children first.

Then adults.

People shading their eyes against a sun they had never seen.

Rao stepped beside her father.

Neither spoke for a while.

The Vespexers stood apart from the Vault dwellers.

Two peoples of Drinax.

One had survived beneath stone.

The other beneath the open sky.

Neither looked pleased to see the other.

Mara watched Oleb.

“You are the King?”

He straightened.

“King Oleb XVI of Drinax.”

“Our records do not acknowledge your dynasty.”

One of the Travellers coughed.

Rao looked suddenly fascinated by the horizon.

Oleb stared at Mara.

Then he began laughing.

He laughed so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes.

Mara was not amused.

“Your Majesty?”

“Oh, this is magnificent.”

He turned toward the Travellers.

“Find their water chip.”

One of them raised an eyebrow.

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Oleb pointed toward the Vault.

“There are a thousand Drinaxi down there who remember how civilization works.”

Then he pointed toward the Vespexers.

“And ten thousand up here who remember what it costs when civilization fails.”

His smile returned, but there was something harder beneath it now.

“Get me that chip.”

Rao looked at him.

“And after that?”

King Oleb gazed at the open Door beneath the dead hills.

At the people stepping into daylight after two centuries.

At the old kingdom walking out of its grave.

“After that,” he said, “we decide who Drinax belongs to.”

Hi All,

David Schneider here, former Regional Co-ordinator of HIWG Australia.

To begin with: Vale Clayton R Bush (passed: June 12, 2007) & Vale Chuck Kallenbach II (passed October 1, 2025). Both these men were mentors and generous to a young man in far off Australia. I am still saddened at their passing. As all this was pre-internet, I never actually met or spoke with either man, and yet they were generous friends (Clay left me some stuff in his will). Chuck I have only recently discovered in some YouTube videos!

I am currently going through some stuff (marriage breakdown, Long COVID Symptoms, leaving my job in an Emergency Department after 24 years due to a variety of reasons (ie: health), etc and so forth). To try and keep myself sane I have dug up the old HIWG Australia archives, created a Facebook page, and have been uploading items from the old archives.

It's literally called: "History of the Imperium Working Group - Australia"

I have, thus far, uploaded:

1. All the Yiklezdanzh Sector material that we generated.

2. All the Starburst newsletters that I have been able to locate.

3. Light panel (Light bulb) jokes.

4. Some bits sent to me by Chuck Kallenbach II.

5. A few period letters.

I will add some other bits and bobs as I go. The primary goal is to preserve the work of the HIWG - Australia team. If anyone is interested in using the material for your own campaigns, you have my blessing.

Anyone wanting to contact me should do so via the HIWG - Australia FB page.

David Schneider RN JP

Former Regional Co-ordinator HIWG Australia

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Has anyone run or played in a Dark Matter inspired game? If so, how was it done?

I am working on doing just this but would love to see how others have approached this.

Figured I'd open a fun topic to discussion: What is the worst thing you or the players at your table have ever done, deliberately or by accident, which has collectively harmed an entire planet?

Ours is probably a recent Mercenary campaign. We were contracted by the Duchess of Regina to do counter-insurgency against some Fremen-style rebels on Yori. The Fifth Frontier War had recently erupted and we were supposed to keep open the crucial mines which fed Regina's shipyards.

Well after finally making some headway against the rebels, we started getting multiple confirmed reports from incoming traders that the Imperial front had collapsed, Regina was under siege, and a Zhodani fleet was likely in jumpspace towards Yori.

After weighing options, we went for scorched earth.

We cut a deal with the Sultan, the local Imperial noble, to evacuate himself, his treasury, and his household and escort them back to Imperial lines in exchange for his cooperation. With that secured, we went to town. We spiked every major mine on the planet, then cut a deal with the rebels we'd been fighting to arm them and start an uprising amongst the thousands of their kinsmen working as forced labor in the mines, then blew the rail lines and depots. We left a dozen volunteers from our intel unit behind to go to ground in the population and hinder the Zhodani occupation as best they could. With all that in place and the planet descending into smouldering anarchy behind us, we dusted off with the Sultan, his harem, and an entire treasury in gold.

Our GM later informed us that he'd expected and intended for us to run out into the desert and wage a guerilla war. Nope. Screw that. We decided to make Space Taliban.

I’m refereeing a play-by-post group and one of my players made a suggestion that I want to refuse but want the best words why.

They have an Express Packet with 11 tons cargo space. The suggestion is to load a 10-ton advertising boat on board. I see this as trying to fit a billboard into a U-Haul. It won’t work. I’m trying to explain why.

Greetings fellow Referees and Travellers!

If you run Traveller on virtual tabletops (Foundry VTT, Roll20, Owlbear Rodeo, etc.), you know that finding grounded, functional, and realistic sci-fi battlemaps can be surprisingly tough.

We are currently expanding the sci-fi catalog on FreeVTTMaps.com (our free resource library of lightweight WebP VTT maps), and we want to map what you are ACTUALLY running at your tables right now.

Which of these projects should we map first? (Vote or suggest below!)

Here are a few iconic adventure arcs and setting packs we are preparing to build — which one would help your campaign the most?

• Option 1 : The Pirates of Drinax Megapack
• (The Floating Palace of Drinax, Sindal sector asteroid pirate dens, Aslan clan trading posts, and frontier orbital hubs)
• Option 2 : Classic Derelict & Mystery Modules
• (Death Station, Annic Nova, Shadows, The Chamax Plague — depressurized ghost ships, abandoned orbital labs, radiation vaults, and derelict cryo-bays)
• Option 3 : Starting Adventures & Frontier Crashes
• (High and Dry, Flatlined, The Fall of Tinath — volcanic survey ridges, unmapped jungle crash sites, wilderness drops, and colonial settlements)
• Option 4 : Core Modular Starship Deckplans
• (Deck-by-deck functional layouts with bridge, engineering, staterooms, and cargo bays for the Type S Scout/Courier, Type A Free Trader, Safari Ship, and Patrol Corvette)
• Option 5 : Subsector Starports & Infrastructure
• (Class C/D/E frontier starport concourses, Travellers' Aid Society (TAS) hostels, customs security checkpoints, repair drydocks, and asteroid fuel-refining depots)
• Option 6 : Ancient Alien Ruins & Precursor Megastructures
• (Monolithic alien chambers, energy conduit complexes, and forgotten precursor stasis vaults)

How to participate :

1. Drop a number (1-6) in the comments for what you’d use most at your table.
2. If you are running a specific published module or homebrew subsector jump that needs custom scenes, tell me about it below and I'll add it to our priority queue!

In the meantime, feel free to check out our current collection of free sci-fi and industrial maps :
👉 https://www.freevttmaps.com/

May your Jump Drives stay calibrated and your ship mortgage paid!

🚀 The Autumn Sale is live on Fantasy Grounds! 🍂

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🔥 Find Traveller from Mongoose Publishing, including adventures, rulebooks, sourcebooks, and more, on sale at Fantasy Grounds.

🎃 Autumn Sale: October 1–8
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