Star Travelling and Paperwork and Journals

Since November of last year, I’ve had a Traveller problem. After snatching up some pristine Mongoose 2E books some poor sap dumped (entire collection...it was crazy), I’ve ramped up to playing in or running...well my wife says too many Traveller games each week.

Art by J.E. Shields!

Like the previous times I’ve dabbled, I found that I was overwhelmed immediately with notes scribbled on any available surface and rendered unintelligible by the time I got back around to the table (not to mention, I have up to 8 campaigns going as a player and GM). I was in desperate need of a way to organize my notes into some coherent medium. The generic gaming journals out there weren’t quite right and various document packs across various versions of the game were compelling, but still not exactly what I was looking for.

So, I figured I’d spend an afternoon making my own. Should be simple, right? Well, here I am...2 months later, and I think I have a couple of viable game journals focused on the galactic traveller.

I love the idea of the “campaign type” based on how the players want to approach the universe. There’s an exploration game, there’s a “space vagabond” game (thanks E.C. Tubb!), merchant/Firefly game, bounty hunter-focused, mercenary...lots of ways to skin the galaxy.

And each one of those approaches has commonalities and slightly different needs with regards to journalling/note-taking.

So, I present the first two stabs at player-facing journals for the world’s oldest space RPG (Jim Ward might decide to haunt me if I said oldest sci fi RPG). Though I've also been using them as a GM.

Each journal features a character sheet, a 26-week general journal in two-page spreads, personal ledger, and a psionic assessment record.

The Scout Captain’s Rutter. Back in the age of sail, before reliable mapping, the captain, navigator and other officers kept a “rutter” which was a record of their journey, notes on navigation, hazards, safe harbors, and everything in between. This book adds a ship record sized to the "scout" role, subsector and system reports, and 9 world reports, each with a map sized to the world.

The Star Traveller’s Logbook. A journal that attempts to capture the original feel of the game: A vagabond wandering the stars picking up jobs and experiences as they go. This resource adds travel logs, patron contract reports, contacts/associates, and some other records.

Anything found within these pages that’s related to game rules is aligned with the current version of the game, as well as the Cepheus Engine. When in doubt, I tried to leave the space open for the player to fill in as they wanted, rather than making rigid fields.

Current situation: I have both of these at DrivethruRPG awaiting a print proof, then I’ll release them. If you catch me at a con (or want to buy from my website), I’ll have ring-bound versions of both of these books available, as well. I love those version because they lay flat and are generally easier to use at the table. I’ll do a youtube preview on both versions so you can see what you’re getting once I have them in hand.

Until then, enjoy the PDF previews linked above. The character sheet is printable across a single sheet of letter-sized paper (front and back). If you don’t want the physical book, all the pages in the PDF are designed that way – so you can either make your own book or bind/store the pages however you want.

As always, let me know what you think.

-- Paul (paul@mysticbull.com)