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Seeker Redux?

T

T. Foster

SOC-13
Perhaps I'm jumping the gun here, but it looks like the folks at Seeker Gaming Systems are gearing up to get back into the Traveller business. Their still-very-much-under construction website suggests they're going to start with deckplans of some of the CT-era designs they never got around to the first time (Safari Ship, Survey Ship, etc) in 15mm and 25mm scale (a big relief after those ridiculously oversized SJG deckplan sets!).

I'm keeping my digits crossed that we might also eventually see some of the non-deckplan products that they announced but never released back in the day (Equipment Catalog, Starship Profiles), and maybe even, if we're really lucky, a re-release of Lords of Thunder (hey, it could happen -- they DO have the cover painting prominently displayed on their site!).

Anyway, I apologize for having probably stolen the thunder of some imminent official announcement, but I just stumbled across this site and found it too intriguing to go unremarked-upon.
 
Originally posted by T. Foster:
Anyway, I apologize for having probably stolen the thunder of some imminent official announcement, but I just stumbled across this site and found it too intriguing to go unremarked-upon.[/QB]
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Oohhh nice... And Loren just posted on the JTAS boards that he had a big announcement in his editorial tomorrow. I presume that will be G:T related, but still there seems to be an embarassment of riches at the moment.

William
 
Originally posted by Scarecrow:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />originally posted by T.Foster
(a big relief after those ridiculously oversized SJG deckplan sets!).
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YAY! Someone who agrees with me!!!

Crow</font>[/QUOTE]Indeed...the SJG plans are useful but too big and the trick of reprinting the plans on the back of the sheets with grid instead of hex is useless....would much rather see interesting data, internal/external pics or perhaps a small one-sheet adventure printed there. Just doubling up the same thing on both sides just makes me think they're trying to trick you into thinking you have content to match the price...of course I've come to expect that from SJG.....
 
Did I say agree? What I meant was seperated at birth!!!

I've mentioned all of these points in my review on RPG.net:

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_6187.html

...and also on the SJG JTAS message boards and have constantly been fobbed off with the reasoning that the grid had to be a certain size because of the size of the base of the card heroes supplied. And because the grid is so many metres square the plans had to be bigger.

Absolute balderdash!

It does, I agree, smack to me of a feeble way of increasing the content to justify the price.

Crow
 
First, the facts:
</font>
  1. Standard scale for miniatures today is 25mm (actually they're mostly 27-28mm but they're still called 25mm). SJG's mini-substitute Cardboard Heroes are at the same scale.</font>
  2. Traditional scale with 25mm figures is 1" = 1.5m (be it squares, hexes, or just table-space). True 25mm figures are slightly too small at this scale (less so 28mm ones), but it's generally close enough, and has been the standard for many years.</font>
  3. For stability, figures/minis are traditionally mounted on wide bases, filling most of a 1" square/hex.</font>
  4. GURPS traditionally uses a 1 hex = 1 yard floorplan scale.</font>
The odd-man-out here is the GURPS floorplan scale -- in order to stay in-scale with 25mm figures, GURPS hexes should only be ~2/3" wide. But then most figure-stands would be too big to fit a figure into a single hex. There are three possible solutions:</font>
  1. Make the hexes bigger, but, consequently, not to scale.</font>
  2. Make the figure-bases smaller.</font>
  3. Change the GURPS standard scale to match the same standard scale everybody else uses.</font>
Despite the seemingly self-evident logic of options 2 & 3, SJG chose option 1. I don't THINK they did this deliberately to blow up the size of their deckplans so they could justify a higher pricetag on them; I think they just made a wrong choice (I can understand not choosing option 3, since they'd then have to revise a lot of existing GURPS books, but I still have no idea why they didn't just choose option 2 -- did they really think customers would complain LESS about deckplans being oversized and not to scale than about having to use smaller figure-bases?).

But in the end, whatever decisions led them there, the end result is the same: the GURPS deckplans are way too big (9x the size of the 'traditional' Traveller 15mm-scale plans from Snapshot, AHL, and FASA), not to scale (QED), and way overpriced (for what they are -- $20 may well be a reasonable price for 12 glossy double-sided poster-sheets, but not when it SHOULD be 8 single-sided non-glossy sheets!). Therefore I'll be very happy to see Seeker offering properly-scaled alternatives (so long as they don't try to 'follow the market price' and still charge $20+ apiece for them!).

Edited to Add: It occurs to me now that claiming 1" = 1.5m is "the standard scale" is too sweeping, as some systems (including TNE?) also use 1" = 2m (making the 25mm figs too big instead of too small). But this is really only pendantry, since by that scale the SJG deckplans are even more out of proportion (approx. double-size instead of 1.5-size). And FWIW I, being both a traditionalist and a cheap bastard, prefer 1/2"-square/15mm-scale best of all (and I use cardboard tokens/counters instead of minis -- shock! horror!).
 
ME too.

Although lately I've taken to drafting some of the many minatures I have from a minature based strategy gaame to which I've only recently been addicted.

Those 50mm minatures fit the SJG maps nicely but I frankly have NOT been tempted to purchase any more than the ones I have as result.
 
There have been some weird Seeker offerings on ebay (with different colours, red, blue, green). Does anyone know anything about these? Are they the Seeker reprints? Plus, has anyone got a reply after contacting them from their website... as you may guess I am still waiting...
 
Originally posted by kafka47:
There have been some weird Seeker offerings on ebay (with different colours, red, blue, green). Does anyone know anything about these? Are they the Seeker reprints?
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A few months ago, I bought MegaTraveller 25mm plans for the Gazelle (red/black/white cover) and Empress Marava (green/black/white cover) on eBay (from a game shop in Florida). These are originals from 1991 and 1990 respectively (these covers can be seen on the Seeker site's Product Archives pages for those two years). The plans themselves are in dark blue/black ink on a light blue paper.

Plus, has anyone got a reply after contacting them from their website... as you may guess I am still waiting...
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After buying those, I saw that Seeker seemed to be planning to republish their CT/MT materials (judging from their website, then just getting started). I wrote to the address from their website, and received a reply:

Thank you for inquiring about SGS products.

The website is still under construction although it should be finished within a few weeks. At that time all product info will be posted concerning each item listed.

Some deck/building plans have been published and are awaiting to be sold the website. We will send you a short email when all is ready.
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Well, that was in late April, so it's been a few months rather than a few weeks, but their website does seem to be gearing up to get going.... To me, this seems like a Good Thing™.
 
Originally posted by T. Foster:
</font>
  1. Make the hexes bigger, but, consequently, not to scale.</font>
  2. Make the figure-bases smaller.</font>
  3. Change the GURPS standard scale to match the same standard scale everybody else uses.</font>
Click to expand...
I got a fourth option - simply lose the grid, make everything the right scale and use a ruler and common sense to move the figures/counters.

I agree that '25mm' does tend to be anything from 20mm to 32mm but as long as the plans are roughly that scale I'm easy. Twice the size just grates harshly on my somewhat visual roleplaying style.

Crow
 
Originally posted by kafka47:
There have been some weird Seeker offerings on ebay (with different colours, red, blue, green). Does anyone know anything about these? Are they the Seeker reprints? Plus, has anyone got a reply after contacting them from their website... as you may guess I am still waiting...
Click to expand...
That's actually how I found the current website (there was a link in one of the ebay ads). It looks to me like they've reprinted the original 15mm 'proof' editions of what later became their familiar 25mm MT line and are selling them as 'collectibles.' Or maybe they're selling the actual proofs, in which case I suppose they ARE collectibles. Either way, while I'd like to have 15mm-scale plans of the ships from Traders and Gunboats as much as anyone, I'm neither able nor willing to meet their (IMO) outlandish asking price ($120+ for 7 sets of 15mm deckplans? Suuuure...).

How/if this is connected to the 'new product line' hinted at by their website I can't say. And no, I haven't actually even tried contacting them directly. I guess unsubstantiated rumor-mongering on message boards is just more my style ;)
 
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