Stellar Reaches

Good Afternoon, All,

Finally, after all that work, starting over at times, and having to make some hard decisions, I finally reached the point where Issue #4, Spring 2006, of Stellar Reaches is now ready for download, so feel free to go check it out at your convenience.

I’d like to take a moment to thank all of you for your continued patience as I struggled through life challenges to get this issue of Stellar Reaches out for your perusal and enjoyment. While it is a lot of work, I’m happy to say that it is finally complete and ready for release. I hope that you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

You’ll probably notice that there’s a lot in this particular issue. Aside from our final article on the Astrography of the Empty Quarter sector in 993, you’ll find not one, but two adventures written by fans like yourself. “Hebrin Nights” is Part One of the Lorimar Slot, a double adventure by Mark “Commander Drax” Bridgeman. In it, you’ll find a lot of information in the adventure’s appendices that help to flesh out the Empty Quarter a little more. “Volander Libre” is a good introductory adventure written by Frank Mikes, and is designed to help bring new players into a Traveller campaign. Wrapping up info on the sector, you can catch Jeff M. Hopper’s regular article, “The Empty Quarter Echo,” this time focusing on the world of Mikik. Outside the Empty Quarter arena, you’ll find a Classic Traveller article on 17 Small Craft, written by the prolific Omer “Employee #2-4601″ Golan. For Traveller T20, Christian “Chaos” Schwietzke supplies us with two new prestige classes in a double dose of Prestigious Careers, the Bounty Hunter and the Starport Medic. And of course, we wrap up with an entertaining patron encounter, another contribution from our Ethical Patron contest last year.

Thank you all for your continued support and enthusiasm over the Stellar Reaches fanzine. I do this for the joy it gives me, and for the opportunity to contribute to the Traveller community. Your comments and compliments are very muchly appreciated, as always.

Prepare To Jump,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp
Editor, Stellar Reaches fanzine

Good Morning, All,

Things are coming together. I did a lot of work on SR4 last weekend, before my computer crashed and I lost about half an hour’s work. I tried for another 30 minutes to recover the lost material, and the software kept crashing, so I must admit I got frustrated and stepped away for a while. I’m back on it this weekend, though, so I hope we have something to post soon.

Just felt you guys deserved an update. Nothing is more frustrating than not hearing anything for a while on something you are interested in, so I figured I’d at least give you guys a quick note to let you know that I haven’t given up or anything.

More Later,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp

Good Evening, All,

Time for a quick update. I’m still having problems making the time to get the fanzine organized and together. I am still working on it, but between work and family life, I just haven’t had the time to wrap it up and post it. I’ll have it up as soon as I can, though. Expect this one to be larger than any of the other issues we’ve released to date. It may be late, but there’s a lot of Traveller goodness packed in there to make up for it.

For those that do not know, this issue wraps up the Empty Quarter 993 astrography articles. It was my hope that I’d be able to start some 1248 coverage after this issue, but the book sadly has not been released yet. It is my hope that it will be out by Issue #5, so that I can start covering the Hinterworlds sector in 1248. Otherwise, I will probably cover the Empty Quarter in 1200 as a filler issue while I wait.

In addition to my work on the Stellar Reaches fanzine, you can find more of my Traveller work over at Avenger Enterprises. I wrote the two special supplement products, Robots Of Charted Space and Robot Adventures, over two years ago, and they have now finally seen publication. I think you’ll find them useful for your Traveller games, particularly if you have a soft spot for robots as I do.

Given the sporadic nature of my free time, and the fact that I’m also working on roleplaying supplements that actually bring in some money, I must admit that the release of future Stellar Reaches issues will continue to be haphazard. I apologize in advance for that, and I hope that you enjoy the issues when they come out.

Some of my paid work (through my personal imprint, Samardan Press) will include science fiction adventures and localized setting material (for D20 Modern/Future, Grim Tales and Universal Concepts in an alternate sci-fi universe, since I don’t hold a Traveller license) and hopefully some future Traveller supplements for Avenger and QLI. I will probably release a free fan-based translation of game mechanics for the sci-fi adventures here as Stellar Reaches web enhancements, so the adventures can be used for your Traveller games as well.

Okay, hopefully this update helps to let you guys know what’s going on, and what the future might hold.

Keep On Travellin’,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp

Good Morning, All,

My apologies to everyone for the continued delays. This week had been the deadline for a large project at work, which goes live today, and I haven’t been able to get as much done on the fanzine as I would like because of it. Still, I am close, and imagine it won’t be much longer. I will be out of town this weekend and unable to work on it, but with luck, Issue #4 will be posted by the middle of next week.

Thank you for your time and continued understanding,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp
Editor, Stellar Reaches fanzine

Good Evening, All,

Because of the delays in putting out the most recent issue, there is still time to submit adventures and such, if you hurry. I will accept further submissions for consideration until March 20th. At that point, submissions will be considered only for later issues, so that I can still meet my personal release deadline of the end of this month.

Thank you for your continued interest and support,
Flynn

Good Morning, All,

Due to circumstances beyond my control (work, primarily) I am unable to finish Issue #4 of Stellar Reaches by the end of February. Towards that end, I project a release date for Issue #4 of March 31st, 2006. My apologies for the delay.

In service,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp

Good Afternoon, All,

This is just a quick note to let you guys know that the deadline for Issue #4 of Stellar Reaches quickly approaches. I hope that I have the final submissions on January 31st, 2006, so that I can aim for releasing the next issue by the end of February. If you have any submissions you would like considered, even if they are not adventures, please feel free to submit them.

With Regards,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp
Editor, Stellar Reaches fanzine

Good morning, All,

We are now accepting submissions for Issue #4. Of particular interest are Traveller adventures. (You can never get enough adventures!) The ideal adventure submission for Stellar Reaches is 1-8 pages in length (using Times New Roman at 10 point font for the body), and is written using the BITS task system so that it can be used by any of the published Traveller rule sets.

Setting: While the editor would greatly love to see adventures set in the Empty Quarter sector, he is open to adventures of either a generic nature or using a published (and preferably canonical) OTU setting.

If you are interested in making such a contribution, please feel free to contact the editor with your suggested plotline, or even with a completed document. Your work would be greatly appreciated.

With Regards,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp

Good Morning, All,

I finally worked around the original size problem by recreating the cover page myself (inspired by Chuck Shaw’s original cover design, of course) and in so doing, I dropped the size of the overall PDF down to about one tenth of its original size. While it does not capture Chuck’s work effectively, it does allow me to get Stellar Reaches out the door. Please bear in mind that I’ve now been up for more than 25 hours straight, and I’ve spent the eleven hours on this, so if I messed up somewhere along the way, I apologize now. If there are any glaring errors, please let me know, and I’ll fix it as soon as I can after getting some good rest.

With that out of the way, Stellar Reaches Issue #3 is now available for download! (The zipped version can be found here.)

Inside this issue, you’ll find a number of interesting articles. We’ve got a nice article on converting UWPs from the Classic Era of Traveller (circa 1105 to 1115) to the Gateway Era (circa 993 to 1000), as well as the third article on our continuing coverage of the Empty Quarter sector, this time focusing on the Beta Quadrant. “The Empty Quarter Echo” is a new column that presents worlds of the Empty Quarter sector from an in-character perspective, that of a Far Trader merchant travelling about the sector. We also have an expansion of CT Book Two starship design focused on small craft. “Alternate Universes” is a new column that introduces alternate Traveller campaigns. We have the five winners from the 76 Ethical Patrons contest we ran earlier this year. We wrap things up with our first “advertisement” promoting an online play-by-post game found on the Citizen of the Imperium boards. We even have permission to include an updated version of the BITS Task System, now including Traveller T20 difficulty classes, and use it in our future adventures. All told, the fanzine has grown even larger than the first two issues at 40 pages, and that’s without a lifeform write-up or an adventure this time around. (Don’t worry; those features will be returning in the next issue.)

We thank you very much for your patience over the delays in getting this issue out, and we hope that it proves to be worthy of the wait. It is our fervent hope to bring you Issue #4 in either late Winter or early Spring of 2006. Thank you also, fellow Travellers, for your continued support. That’s what makes this all worth doing.

Keep On Travellin’,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp
Editor, Stellar Reaches fanzine

Good Morning, All,

Or Good Evening, as the case may be. For me, it’s very, very late, and I’ve spent the last seven and a half hours finishing up Issue #3 of the Stellar Reaches fanzine for your enjoyment. Now that it is finally done and ready, I have sadly discovered that the final file size is just too big for me to upload onto the website, being as how it is sitting at ~9 megs, most of that being images. I will need to find a way of optimizing the file to greatly reduce its size (and since I’m using Acrobat 5.0 instead of 6.0 Professional, I don’t have access to the “reduce file size” option.)

If any of you have any suggestions, please feel free to share!

With Thanks,
Jason “Flynn” Kemp