Freelance
Traveller
- Hefry Starport (Alan Baird/Ron Tate)
- http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Atlantis/3631/Traveller/Main.html
This website was reviewed on 5 Sep 2006. Geocities has ceased operation; we do not have a current address for this site.
This website is actually part of a larger site hosted on Geocities. The rest of the site covers the author's interests in martial arts and MS Flight Simulator.
As always with Geocities there is the obligatory fat margin on the right for Geocities advertising. What follows is a write up of Hefry/Regina for CT and GRIP that could be registered as a landgrab. Top of the page is a nice pic of Hefry City, followed by a rough map of the city's districts and facilities. There are links for Alan's campaign, Hefry Shipyard, Hefry Scoutbase, Spaceport Customs, The Breakfast Bar, Bladenstiel Weapons, Daggett Outfitters, Hefry Library, and Aids for GMs. There are also downloads of GRIP character sheets and freeware add-ons. Ah, good news everyone: the last major update is reported as February 04 2006 ... so it looks like this is still an active website!
Campaign - This is a support page for a series of loosely linked adventures. The latest one, "Sweet and Sour", has an assortment of GRIP aids (characters, maps, etc). This is followed by a campaign log of sorts: the first 7 adventures are described with one paragraph apiece, adventures 8-12 have 1 to 3 paragraphs each, and adventure 13 has 3 paragraphs plus is ongoing. Despite the brevity of the campaign log there are plenty of plot ideas to mine.
Hefry Shipyard - This has brief description and GRIP add-on for: a Type-J and a Type-A merchant ships.
Hefry Scoutbase - This has brief description and GRIP add-on for: a X-boat, a Type-S, a Gazelle class CE, and an X-boat tender.
Spaceport Customs - A fairly meaningless page. 3 very short paragraphs that basically states that the starport is law level 4 but outside its law level 0.
The Breakfast Bar - This appears to be a list of PCs and NPCs ... with brief descriptions (usually little more that a UPP and skill list) and GRIP download.
Bladenstiel Weapons - This is a list of weapons and prices. Plus some GRIP add-ons of same(?).
Daggett Outfitters - This is a list of standard equipment and prices. Plus a GRIP add-on of same(?).
Hefry Library - Good content here! There are articles on "Common Knowledge on Hefry", "Common Knowledge for Traders on Hefry", "Common Knowledge for Scouts on Hefry", a copy of the "Hefry Herald", some maps of Hefry and the surrounding space, a timeline, and a few library data entries. Finally there is a referee screen and a downloadable merchant captain campaign (designed to be printed off and fit in a dayplanner).
Aids for GMs - This page has 4 GRIP add-ons as downloads. They all look to be on the Traveller front page so this is a bit redundant.
Okay, what did I think? The layout was generally clean, though the white serif font on black background could be a bit hard on the eyes after awhile. The downloads for GRIP tended to be a bit haphazard ... some placed on pages relevant to their content, some placed in either or both general download areas, some a mix. Not having GRIP I was unable to judge the quality of the downloads themselves.
The maps in "Hefry Library" are not great. In fact the planetary map of Hefry is about the worst planetary map I've ever seen. The downloadable GM screens weren't very good either ... I think I'm missing a key font, it renders in Times New Roman and doesn't line up properly.
In summary: The focus is clearly on supporting GRIP. But there is enough material to be quite valuable to anyone using Hefry/Regina in their campaigns (in future The Breakfast Bar is certainly going to be a feature IMTU). And as said before the Hefry write up is borderline landgrab quality. The organisation could use an audit, and the high contrast of the pages could be better. And finally, this site desperately needs a better world map of Hefry.