In this episode, I sit down and talk with Tom Verrault, known as jedion357 in the Star Frontiers on-line community.  We discuss a wide range of topics including how he got started with and back into Star Frontiers, his sources of inspirations for ideas and writing for the Star Frontiersman and several of the projects he is working on.

This is the longest podcast yet and future podcasts will probably be of similar length.  There is just too much to talk about to try to squeeze it into under 20 minutes.  As usual there is a Choose Your Own Adventure segement at the end.  Jump over to the Adventure forum to cast your vote for where the story will go next.

Enjoy the show!

Links from the show:

• The Star Frontiersman Magazine – Issue 16 is out.
• Star Frontiersman issue 16 discussion forum
• Star Frontiers.org
• Black Hand Gang on-line game
• Crash on Volturnus game played with Zeb’s Guide rules (If you know of the link to this site please let us know so we can include it.  I couldn’t find it.)
• Choose your own Adventure poll – text of the Choose your own Adventure segment and voting for the next action.
• The Star Frontiers Network

Podcast Tiimeine:
00:00 – Intro
00:20 – Star Frontiersman Issue 16 Announcement
01:00 – Start interview with Tom V.
04:48 – Miniatures
09:37 – Inspirations and writing for the Star Frontiersman
14:14 – Zebulon’s Guide Rehabilitation
16:53 – Timeline Project (part 1)
18:07 – Humma
19:39 – Zebulon’s Guild Mechanics
21:39 – Stagnant On-line Games
25:27 – Timeline Project (redux)
27:52 – Cadres and Cults Project
28:48 – Choose your own Adventure segment
32:53 – End transmission

Links from the show:

• The Star Frontiersman Magazine – Issue 13 is out.
• MercCo Open RPG game – Forum thread discussing the “live” OpenRPG campaign.
• Choose your own Adventure poll – text of the Choose your own Adventure segment and voting for the next action.

Podcast Tiimeine:
00:00 – Intro
00:20 – Star Frontiersman Issue 13 Announcement
01:16 – Game Review
03:48 – Star Frontiers Conventions
06:19 – Gary’s background
08:00 – Star Frontiersman articles submitted by Gary
11:45 – Gary’s ship – Pirate’s Bane
12:45 – Archiving old Star Frontiers websites
13:55 – Choose your own Adventure segment
16:22 – end transmission

Links from the show:

• Art’s Star Frontiers Game – This is the forum discussing the Star Frontiers star ship and RPG game Art is working on.  Download it and try it out.
• The Orbiter Space Simulator – A realistic spaceflight simulator originally developed to simulate the Space Shuttle.
• The Star Frontiers Orbiter Add-on – A plugin for the Orbiter simulator that incorporates the Star Frontiers theme, including the addition of an Assault Scout. (this is a direct download link and the file is 165 MB).
• Choose your own adventure segment for this episode – Here you will find the text of this episode’s segment and the poll to cast your vote.
• Wing Commander game – Come join the elite Star Fighter Corps
• Live Play (OpenRPG) thread- The discussion thread on the StarFrontiers.us site discussing plans and ideas for starting up a regular live play session.

Podcast Timeline:

00:00 – Intro
00:20 – Interview with Art continued
00:22 – Star Frontiers and Orbiter
01:25 – A bit of Tom’s background
02:22 – Knight Hawks Vector computer game evolution and status
05:15 – Discussion of the RPG portion of the computer game
12:46 – Choose your own Adventure segment
14:27 – Community News
15:36 – end transmission

Due to vocal enthusiasm for the idea (you know who you are!), I’ve added a “Choose Your Own Adventure” segment to the podcast.  We’ll see how it goes.

Interesting Links from the show:

• StarFrontiers.org – Art’s site
• The Star Frontiers Network Archive – New portion of this site hosting old, “lost” Star Frontiers Websites
• Layne Saltern’s Star Frontiers Now & Forever – A long running community site
• The Internet Archive – The name says it all.
• The podcast Choose Your Own Adventure Forum – This is where you go to vote for the adventurer’s action in the story.

Podcast Timeline:

00:00 – Introduction
01:00 – Art Eaton’s Star Frontiers Background
07:30 – History of the StarFrontiers.org site
14:45 – Choose Your Own Adventure Segment
16:43 – end

Episode Topics:

• podcast format, content and frequency
• introduction to online Star Frontiers resources
  • Podcast website – http://podcast.blogs.starfrontiers.info
  • The Star Frontiers Network - http://starfrontiers.info
  • Star Frontiers.com – http://starfrontiers.com
  • Star Frontiers.org – http://starfrontiers.org
  • Star Frontiers.us – http://starfrontiers.us
  • The Star Frontiersman Magazine – http://starfrontiersman.com
  • The Star Frontiers Underground – http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SF-Un/
• Announcement of Star Frontiersman issue 12
• Call for players for the online play by post Warriors of White Light 2 game being run by jedion357.

If you’d like to suggest topics for, or be a guest on, future podcasts, drop me a line at tom@starfrontiers.org or post on the Whispers from the Void discussion forum.

The podcast is hosted by Tom Stephens (a.k.a Terl Obar) and will feature guests appearances by Star Frontiers personalities from the on-line community to discuss various topics and ideas related to our favorite game.