Jeff(erson) Swycaffer

[jackleg]

I was going thru some old issues of the Dragon magazine last night, and I came across an adventure written by Swycaffer, 'Exonidas Spaceport' in issue #59.

The premise was the Empire/Republic responding to the after effects of a nuclear exchange on a balkanized world.

From the npc's I realized he was using people from the novels he wrote, I am guessing on his own Traveller campaign.

Question: Is Swycaffer still involved in rpgs/Traveller? Is he on our board somewhere? And what were the Battles of the First & Second Binary about?

 

[jfetters]

I remember that issue/article, but it has long since disappeared in the mists of time. I always thought it was interesting, as it was about the time I started with Traveller.

From what I remember, it (and his novels) was based on his campaign.

But I forgot what the titles were of his books. Does anyone remember them? Were they any good?

 

[jappel]

"Exonidas Spaceport" is a good article, and one of the first in-depth descriptions of a Traveller starport. EDIT: I believe you can get it in the Dragon Compendiums WOTC sells.

According to the Traveller Bibliography, there were four novels by Mr. Swycaffer published by Avon Books and set in his Praesidium universe:
1. Not in Our Stars - Fiction
2. Become the Hunted - Fiction
3. The Universal Prey - Fiction
4. The Praesidium of Archive - Six Short Stories

But a quick search on Amazon shows a number of others. I'm not sure what the final count was.

I picked up one a couple years ago - Not in Our Stars I believe - and have to admit I couldn't bring myself to keep going past the first 20 pages or so. I think the milieu is interesting (I am a big fan of non-OTU settings) but the novel wasn't very good. It's been a while so I don't recall specifically what turned me off about it.

I also don't believe the book had any Traveller branding.

No idea if Mr. Swycaffer is still doing anything with Traveller. Don't think I've seen his name listed in the credits of any product, but I haven't looked for it.

-John

 

[jackleg]

The novels did not have a Traveller stamp on them, but it does acknowledge GDW& Traveller. His books were a bit hard to get thru, I own all 4 but have only read 2.

His Traveller universe was different from OTU, as they had FTL communications, AI's and some type of bio-engineering on a grand scale for the human population. Also they were recovering from empire wide melt down. The last emperor, before being killed sent out an order that virtually wiped out all the information from all computers and thus crippled the entire empire.

 

[kafka47]

No unfortunately, Mr. Swycaffer has not been persuaded to come back to Traveller. He does still do Short Stories in things like Analog or Amazing Stories magazines but his Concordant series was continued in a line of books that was associated with Gygax's New Infinity line. Now, this probably killed off his contacts in Dragon Magazine and the attempt at recovery resulted in Warsprite (the worst novel that I ever read). These novels by New Infinity were not as good as the first series but had their interesting moments, namely in describing how a Free Trader crew operates.

He then turned to the web and if you peruse through the HIWG CD ROMs and their zine you will still find a lot of Swycaffer (in fact he is given a credit in Rebellion Sourcebook, if I am not mistaken). Writing outside of the Official Traveller Universe, he was able to gain a substantial following in the CT community but because of the lack of aviability of his novels and that "Not In Our Stars" turns most people off...he was not able to capitalize on it.

When I contacted him a few years back, it seemed like he was content to sit on the sidelines and was always looking for story ideas for young writers. His advise look to the headlines and expand from there.

Like many writers, he sought to use the great concepts that colated in Traveller and build a universe from that. Sadly, none of the companies that produced Traveller ever said...now, can we borrow your universe?

 

[jackleg]

Thanks for the info! It is a shame he never wrote up his CT universe for the rest of us.