State of the Planes 8/20/26

Its been a pretty quiet summer here as back to school approaches, I ran a single session of TMNT and Other Strangeness (and hope to run it again) and a short campaign of Shadow of the Weird Wizard for my DnD Summer Camp this year (the 3rd "class" I've taught). The Kids in our Thursday game (graduates of the previous two years of DnD Summer Camp) are taking turns DMing right now so it has given me time to get some extra work done. I'm continually impressed how talented each of them are. My Friday game sees us playing the 5E Vecna campaign when scheduling allows and I'm not running anything on Wednesdays right now.

Running a family business in this economy is pretty challenging but we all keep plucking away it and God willing we will come through the other side eventually. For the first time in years Comics are outselling Magic: the Gathering which I attribute to an initiative we made about three years ago where we started marketing to younger customers of all genders and having my 25 year old son and 22 year old daughter taking over larger roles. I think the icing on the cake is our ComicsHub Point of Sale that has an App to allow you to order or preorder from us 24/7.

I've spent the last few months counting down to Mongoose Publishing's Dark Conspiracy powered by their Traveller 2E (now funding on Backerkit) and am going all in on the project. I have always loved the game and hope to do something with it later this year or early next.

Yesterday, I picked up Cypher Character Rulebook, the 2E player's book from Monte Cook Games, and am impressed by the changes they made to it. There are no longer only 4 Types as the genre now dictates the number and role a Type takes which I think is a big plus. I also applaud the Wound system as a nice change from using your Pools for doing cool stuff AND your "hit points". Cypher was always easy to run and I think the changes make it even easier to do so. The books production values, clarity, and ease of use (yay hyperlinks) has improved and I prefer this book over the expanded version from few years ago that, because I felt like they were trying too hard to be GURPS and it just came off as dense. I also like the order information is presented and look forward to the GM Guide and the new Bestiary. If you do pick it up the Cypher Unlimited Discord is very active and Sean K. Reynolds posted there about a quick conversion for how much damage enemies now do in Wounds which I have posted below.

The new edition of Cypher has me looking at some of the past creations/adaptations I did years ago on here and reignited my creative juices. I've found my interest in 5.5 diminishing, though my love of World of Warcraft has piqued my interest in its November release. Overall, my interest in the D20 system is waning a bit. I really like the bare bones nature of Traveller/Cepheus Engine (I keep realizing I really don't care for Feats or Classes at this point) and prefer it to Basic Role Playing. Even my passion for Shadowdark has diminished significantly.

I'm hoping for that inspiration to translate better into posts on here.

State of the Planes May 2026

Gaming wise things are a bit slow for me, but I really don't mind. Our Wednesday 5E game lost some players and is in limbo, my D&D Camp game for kids is now in the hands of the players who are taking turns being the Dungeon Master, my Friday 5E game has been the victim of numerous scheduling issues, and my Saturday Hexenburg game became the victim of being too busy at work to carve out a couple hours to run it.

Having the extra time has been a bit of a blessing though since things are so busy at work. Running a family business is never easy but the last two years have been tough. Tariffs affected us pretty heavily because 98% of comics are printed in Canada and we have seen sales slump since gas has started climbing. I've been doing this for 27 years though and there is always some kind of crisis so you just try to manage it as best you can. 

With the extra time I've been diving heavily into Traveller and various Cepheus Engine games and settings. I've also been watching lots of Sci-Fi: For All Mankind, Foundation, The Expanse, Alien: Earth, and Space 1999. In fact, I had never watched Space 1999 before and I'm four episodes in. It's darker than I expected.

I've also been brainstorming two Sectors for a Traveller Sandbox per this excellent post by the sagacious Robert Conley.

Rob Schwalb has finished the Dungeon of the Damned for Shadow of the Demon Lord and I'm really contemplating running it when its my turn to run on Fridays.

I've found time to go through Palladium's reissue and remastering of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness RPG and I'm going to do something with it soonish.

And I'm super excited by the forthcoming Book of Magic for Dragonbane and Free League's announcement that they now have access to the Elric license (Goodman Games has access to it too).

Bundle Holding launches Traveller Week with the Traveller Update & Traveller Imperial Navy

Slowly, over the last few years I've fallen in love with Traveller/Cepheus Engine/Quantum Engine games. The journey started when I discovered Barbarians of Lemuria which used 2d6 like Traveller and "skills" are treated as professions. It felt, to me, like Simon took inspiration from Traveller with its four year professional terms. That is purely speculation on my part.

Next I discovered Stellgama Publishing and Zozer Games which both have dozens of cool and clever sets of rules and settings powered by variations of the Cepheus Engine.

Finally, Mongoose announced that a Traveller powered version of Dark Conspiracy, a game I never to got to play but really fell in love with, would be crowdfunding this summer.

So I've dove in.

And I was amazed that Bundle of Holding is having Traveller Week in the lead up to May 1, 2026 AKA Traveller Day.

Today kicks off with a resurrection of December's Traveller Update and the debut of Traveller Imperial Navy. Three more bundles will be revealed as the week unfolds.

I've been looking for a straight-forward skill system for years and Traveller really grabs me. It's clean and easy to teach but can support other systems for the various genres I want to emulate. I really can't recommend it enough.