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Traveller (game)
''Traveller'' is a science fiction role-playing game first published in 1977 by Game Designers' Workshop. Marc Miller designed ''Traveller'' with help from Frank Chadwick, John Harshman, and Loren Wiseman. Editions were published for GURPS, d20, and other role-playing game systems. From its origin and in the currently published systems, the game relied upon six-sided dice for random elements. ''Traveller'' has been featured in a few novels and at least two video games. Design Traveller is a tabletop role-playing game. Characters journey between star systems, engaging in exploration, ground and space battles, and interstellar trading. One player, the game master or referee, oversees task attempts and guides events as the players explore the setting. Characters are defined not by the need to increase native skill and ability but by achievements, discoveries, wealth, titles, and political power. Influences and inspiration Marc Miller lists a number of books that influenced ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc Miller (game Designer)
Marc William Miller is a wargame and role-playing game designer and author. Early career After serving in the U.S. Army, Miller continued his studies at Illinois State University in 1972 under the G.I. Bill. There he joined the ISU Game Club, created by Rich Banner and Frank Chadwick.DiceCast Special Holiday Interview Episodby Polymancer Studios. Podcast, includes interview with Marc Miller Banner obtained a grant that funded the printing of blank hex sheets (suitable for making war-game maps). Adding new members Loren K. Wiseman and John Harshman, the ISU Game Club drafted a variety of designs. Some of these designs were derivatives of existing games, and had generic names like ''Guerre'' and ''Swamp''. while others were amalgamations, such as ''Triplanetary''. In 1973, after being convinced by Miller, Chadwick and Banner, Illinois State University created SimRAD (Simulation Research, Analysis, and Design), a college program where students and teachers designed games. Revenu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Character Creation
Character creation (also character generation or character design) is the process of defining a game character or other character. Typically, a character's individual strengths and weaknesses are represented by a set of statistics. Games with a fictional setting may include traits such as race, class, or species. Games with a more contemporary or narrower setting may limit customization to physical and personality traits. This is usually used in Role-playing games. Role-playing games Character creation is typically the first step taken by the players (as opposed to the gamemaster) in preparation for a game. The result of character creation is a '' direct characterization'' that is recorded on a character sheet. In its most comprehensive form it includes not only a game-specific representation of the character's physical, mental, psychological and social properties in terms of statistics, but also often less formal descriptions of the character's physical appearance, personalit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subspace (Star Trek)
The technology in ''Star Trek'' has borrowed many ideas from the scientific world. Episodes often contain technologies named after real-world scientific phenomena, such as tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum slipstream drives, and photon torpedoes. Some of the technologies created for the ''Star Trek'' universe were done so out of financial necessity. For instance, the transporter was created because the limited budget of ''Star Trek: The Original Series'' (''TOS'') in the 1960s did not allow expensive shots of spaceships landing on planets. ''Discovery Channel Magazine'' stated that cloaking devices, faster-than-light travel, and dematerialized transport were only dreams at the time ''TOS'' was made, but physicist Michio Kaku believes all these things are possible. William Shatner, who portrayed James T. Kirk in ''TOS'', believes this as well, and went on to co-write the book ''I'm Working on That'', in which he investigates how ''Star Trek'' technology was becoming feasibl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ansible
An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities. A related term is ultrawave. Coinage by Ursula Le Guin Ursula K. Le Guin coined the word "ansible" in her 1966 novel ''Rocannon's World''. The word was a contraction of "answerable", as the device would allow its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of time, even over interstellar distances. The plot device of the ansible was the basis for creating a specific kind of interstellar civilizationone where communications between far-flu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superluminal Communication
Superluminal communication is a hypothetical process in which information is sent at faster-than-light (FTL) speeds. The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment. Superluminal communication other than possibly through wormholes is likely impossible because, in a Lorentz-invariant theory, it could be used to transmit information into the past. This complicates causality, but no theoretical arguments conclusively preclude this possibility. A number of theories and phenomena related to superluminal communication have been proposed or studied, including tachyons, neutrinos, quantum nonlocality, wormholes, and quantum tunneling. Proposed mechanisms Tachyons Tachyonic particles are hypothetical particles that travel faster than light. These would allow superluminal communication, and for this reason are widely believed not to exist. By contrast, tachyonic fields quantum fields with ima ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Viking
''Space Viking'' is a science fiction novel by American writer H. Beam Piper, set in his Terro-Human future history. It tells the story of one man's search for his wife's murderer and its unexpected consequences. The story was originally serialized in ''Analog'' magazine (November 1962 – February 1963), then published by Ace Books in 1963. Background Ten thousand refugees from the losing side of The Big War (The System States War of ''The Cosmic Computer'') fled far beyond the boundaries of the Terran Federation and colonized the planet Excalibur. By the beginning of ''Space Viking'', they had expanded to a handful of Sword Worlds (so-called because they are named after legendary swords) and had grown to a total population of three and a half billion, organized in a feudal system of kingdoms, duchies, and other small states, ruled by frequently warring noblemen. Despite their isolation and the political instability, the inhabitants managed to retain a high level of technolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William H
William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of England in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era. It is sometimes abbreviated "Wm." Shortened familiar versions in English include Will, Wills, Willy, Willie, Bill, and Billy. A common Irish form is Liam. Scottish diminutives include Wull, Willie or Wullie (as in Oor Wullie or the play ''Douglas''). Female forms are Willa, Willemina, Wilma and Wilhelmina. Etymology William is related to the given name ''Wilhelm'' (cf. Proto-Germanic ᚹᛁᛚᛃᚨᚺᛖᛚᛗᚨᛉ, ''*Wiljahelmaz'' > German ''Wilhelm'' and Old Norse ᚢᛁᛚᛋᛅᚼᛅᛚᛘᛅᛋ, ''Vilhjálmr''). By regular sound changes, the native, inherited English form of the name shoul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Drake
David A. Drake (born September 24, 1945) is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now a writer in the military science fiction genre. Biography Drake graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history (with honors) and Latin. His studies at Duke University School of Law were interrupted for two years when he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry (the Black Horse Regiment) in Vietnam and Cambodia. After the war, from 1972 to 1980 he worked as the Assistant Town Attorney in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Since 1981 he transitioned to full time writing of science fiction literature. With Karl Edward Wagner and Jim Groce, he was one of the initiators of Carcosa, a small press company. He now lives in Pittsboro, North Carolina. On 17 November 2021 he announced he is retiring from writing novels, due to unspecified ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hammer's Slammers
''Hammer's Slammers'' is a 1979 collection of military science fiction short stories by author David Drake. It follows the career of a future mercenary tank regiment called ''Hammer's Slammers'' after their leader, Colonel Alois Hammer. This collection, and other novels and stories in the same setting, are collectively called the ''Hammer stories'', and the setting is called the ''Slammers universe'' or the ''Hammerverse''. Each of the stories in the novel follows various members of the Slammers, starting with the regiment's creation by the government of the planet Friesland to put down a revolt on the Friesland colony world of Melpomene, in which Colonel Hammer is the focal character, and who transforms the unit into an independent mercenary organization. The reader is also introduced to recurring characters such as Joachim Steuben, Hammer's bodyguard and later commander of the Slammers' military police, a gay sociopath and master marksman devoted to his colonel; Sergeant (later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Laumer
John Keith Laumer ( – ) was an American science fiction author. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, he was an officer in the United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ... and a diplomat in the United States Foreign Service. His older brother March Laumer was also a writer, known for his adult reinterpretations of the Land of Oz (also mentioned in Laumer's ''The Other Side of Time''). Frank Laumer, their youngest brother, is a historian and writer. Early life Keith Laumer was born in 1925 in Syracuse, New York. He attended Indiana University, 1943–44, and then served in the United States Army Air Forces in the Second World War in Europe. He later attended Stockholm University, 1948–49, and then received a bachelor's degree in architecture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin Charles Tubb
Edwin Charles Tubb (15 October 1919 – 10 September 2010) was a British writer of science fiction, fantasy and Western (genre), western novels. The author of over 140 novels and 230 short stories and novellas, Tubb is best known for Dumarest saga, The Dumarest Saga (US collective title: ''Dumarest of Terra''), an epic science-fiction saga set in the far future. Michael Moorcock wrote, "His reputation for fast-moving and colourful SF writing is unmatched by anyone in Britain." Much of Tubb's work was written under pseudonyms including Gregory Kern, Carl Maddox, Alan Guthrie, Eric Storm and George Holt. He used 58 pen names over five decades of writing, although some of these were publishers' Pen name#Collective names, house names also used by other writers: Volsted Gridban (along with John Russell Fearn), Gill Hunt (with John Brunner (novelist), John Brunner and Dennis Hughes (novelist), Dennis Hughes), King Lang (with George Hay and John W Jennison), Roy Sheldon (with H. J. Campb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
