Gaming for (Painted) Dragons - Home of Stellagama Publishing
2026 was a rough year so far for me, Omer Golan-Joel, owner of Stellagama Publishing . Apart from obvious horrible political events I prefer not to discuss here, I went through a lot of tough times. Across 2024 and 2025, I was in a deep marital crisis which almost led to a divorce. In December 2025, I broke my elbow and had my arm in a cast for a week. In January 2026, I had to go twice to a…
I have written much about Classic Traveller skills in the past decade. However, a recent discussion on the Traveller Discord server took me back to this subject again. Not only discussing skills, but also raising the point that Travellers are competent, even regardless of formal skills . That is, a Traveller character should be able to do anything a competent interstellar adventurer would…
Faced with a cluttered home, overwork, and financial insecurity, I have decide to simplify my life and drastically cut my expenses. This has a simple monetary component, namely cutting back on my cost of living to get out of debt and eventually reduce work. This also has a philosophical component, namely minimalism and reducing the effects of consumerism on my life. This will also affect my gaming…
I am thinking about migrating my Dark Nebula variant-OTU setting to the Galaxiad milieu of the Official Traveller Universe. This would be a refreshing change, as well as a good setting with a wide-open future. Playing in the Far Far Future of the Galaxiad is liberating - I get a narrative license utilize any part of the vast OTU Canon while ignoring other parts. For example, I can easily tell…
Art by Edna www.fotosearch.com One of my main current projects is Sorcerous Nomad. This is a new fantasy TTRPG ruleset based on my Faster Than Light: Nomad sci-fi rules and fully compatible with them. It is slated for a mid-late 2026 release and should be available both in PDF format and A4 softcover print format. What is it all about? Streamlined 2d6 core mechanic with "dice pool" components,…
I think I found my new favorite Official Traveller Universe (OTU) "milieu": the Galaxiad . Situated in 1902 Imperial (the 7th millennium CE!) and related to Traveller5, it presents a "pastoral" era when most big empires of the Golden Age are gone, replaced by more independent worlds and pockets of civilization within the Wilds. Practically, the Galaxiad permits me to use almost any part of the…
I made even further progress with my Lore25 challenge maps: a full Referee's map including Drill routes, and a Players' map with only the commonly-known stars and routes noted. On the Referee's map, the dashed lines are well-known Drill routes, while the dotted lines are forgotten and/or secret ones. Referee's Map Players' Map
I have progressed further in developing my Lore25 starmap for the Ishtar and Apep sectors. Now with all polities, borders, and world names marked. Note that worlds that already had Sobek(reptilian aliens) names were given the names of male Egyptian gods by Humans who did not wish to pronounce complex Sobek words. Most worlds which were unexplored by Sobek so far were given the names of Canaanite…
I have been dedicating the first week of the Lore25 challenge to drafting the star maps of the adjacent Ishtar and Apep Sectors into a simple, easily printable, B&W map. As this is SWN and not Traveller, the map is much simpler, simply showing dots, names, borders, and Drill routes across space rather than all the world, base, and starport types shown on a typical Traveller map. This is the first…
Similar to my abortive attempt at the Sector23 Challenge two years ago, I wish now to undertake a new yearly challenge, hopefully to bring to completion this time! Something nice to spice up my time and get my creative world-building juices flowing. 2025's challenge, as suggested by Discord friends, will be Lore25 . The challenge, as the name implies, is a world-building challenge focused on…
I decided I wanted to play a solo campaign in Barrowmaze , using Shadowdark with its free SoloDark supplement. This would be a "tabletop Roguelike" of sorts, combining crawling using all the aforementioned rules with some storytelling and me "filling in the gaps". A primary source of inspiration would be the Darkest Dungeon video game, a game which is very much in the same vein as both Shadowdark…
I have recently bought and read XBoat Special Supplement 2: Galaxiad Gaming Kit , published in March 2024 by Robert Eaglestone , a licensed - and canonical - milieu of the Official Traveller Universe (OTU), noting Marc Miller himself as an advisor and source in the book's credits. Below, I will review this excellent booklet in detail. TL;DR: an excellent version of the OTU, unifying the various…
Art by Nomad_Soul Following the Library Data A-M I posted yesterday for my Dark Nebula 2900 setting, here are the N-Z entries. New Libdis (Kimson’s Stand 0502; formerly A87A9BB-C; currently C87A871-8): once the formal Rule of Man capital of the Dark Nebula Sector, today an irradiated hell. Contact with New Libdis was sporadic at best when travel was still economically viable. The latest official…
I have once posted the Library Data for my Dark Nebula 2900 setting - a quasi-OTU Classic Traveller setting. However, I will repost the edited version thereof, in two parts, on the blog itself for your enjoyment. Here is the star-map for reference purposes: The following common information is easily accessible from a ship’s Library program or from planetary datanets in the Dark Nebula region.…
After receiving some input from my readers and the Traveller community at large, I decided to keep the two Subsectors format of my Dark Nebula quasi-OTU setting. I was recommended a four-Subsector (Quadrant) format, but the original Dark Nebula boardgame maps lend themselves better to two Subsectors side by side. There are 8 maps, each 8x10 hexes, but each hex being half a parsec; so each…
The original idea for my Dark Nebula quasi-OTU (Original Traveller Universe) setting for Classic Traveller was that of two subsectors, side by side, providing a large and comprehensive sandbox to play in. This is how the starmap looks so far : However, I was thinking as of late of converting it to a single subsector, for ease of writing and tightness of design. A bit like using only four map tiles…
Three and a half months ago, Stellagama Publishing released Faster Than Light: Nomad, our new premier sci-fi ruleset. So far, it has already reached Gold Best Seller status on DriveThruRPG. It is an all-new RPG, not a Cepheus Engine variant, intentionally designed as a streamlined yet comprehensive ruleset for the modern gamer. If you have not bought it yet, you can get it: HERE . What is it all…
I have recently been attracted to a new OSR (or OSR-adjacent?) RPG: Shadowdark . It is a streamlined but relatively comprehensive ruleset originally derived from D&D 5E, but greatly - and pleasantly - modified for streamlined play and an OSR atmosphere. While this is not one of the B/X-based games dominating the OSR market, such as Old School Essentials (OSE) , it captures the older-school feel…
Hard science fiction, like our real world, favors the gun over the sword. However, the space opera genre often includes daring duels with flashing blades and sharp knives, where heroes and villains defend their honor in the ancient way of the sword. This free supplement provides several rules intended to add such a flavor to your Faster Than Light: Nomad game. They are, of course, optional – to be…
The Second Edition of The Sword of Cepheus refines and redefines the game, upgrading it for greater usability and playability by a wide variety of players with varying playstyles. Among the changes, you may find: All-new A5 layout for maximum portability and readability. The well-loved art of the first edition supplemented with new high-quality artwork . Mechanics are now 1 00% compatible with the…
Yesterday, I discussed the question of empty-hex (deep-space) jumps in Classic Traveller . This (re-)opened a wide discussion of this subject on numerous Traveller groups on Discord, Facebook, and even in this blog's comments, and has led me to further thinking of this subject. I no longer have a problem with empty-hexagon jumps. Why so? Because economics and logistics solve this problem.…
During research for my Box-Centric Classic Traveller blog post, the question arose: can Box-Centric Classic Traveller jump into, and from, empty map hexes? That means jumping into deep space, where no major gravity well exists, and jumping from it to another major gravity well. This subject was, if I recall correctly, hotly debated in the past, together with Jump Torpedoes and the nature of…
I have written in the past about Proto-Traveller : a way to play Classic Traveller focusing on its older roots, namely the first three booklets released in a black book in 1977. A common rule of a thumb for it is "First Four Books, First Four Supplements, First Four Adventures", including Book 4: Mercenary and even S3: The Spinward Marches in this definition. This, I am told (told by Traveller…
Art by deanz; purchased through Adobe Stock I was thinking of an OSR-fantasy setting. I have toyed with such ideas in the past, but this came to me with much greater clarity lately. The ingredients are: Aliens . Most likely of the classic "Gray" type. With saucers and abductions and everything. But gone for centuries. Jungles . Potentially the tropical region of an extrasolar planet. I want this…
Our artist, Maximilian Schmuecker, who made the Cepheus Deluxe: Enhanced Edition cover, is hard at work on the cover of the second edition of The Sword of Cepheus (SoC2) . In addition to a cool sword & planet cover, SoC2 will feature an improved sorcery system, new magic items and monsters, a better layout, and greater faithfulness to the sword & sorcery source material. It will also be 100%…