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Recently I went though the content of an old hard-disk I found in the attic.
Disk wasn't used since 1995...

On it I found a collection (some 60 images in GIF format) depicting floor-plans of various models of space-craft all labeled as "Defrog ship-model".
E.g "Defrog ligth cruiser", "Defrog log-range scout", "Defrog Assault Troop carrier", etc.
Most of the ships where military. A few cargo vessels with limited passenger capacity. And a diplomatic shuttle-craft that also had a passenger cabin.
All descriptive text in the drawings was in English.
There were only floor-plans, showing the deck-layouts and included basic furniture like beds, chairs, tables. From the furniture and the layout of bathrooms, etc. it was clearly all designed for humans. Or very humanoid aliens.

I have no idea what "Defrog" means. Could be the name of the manufacturer or maybe the name of the nation/empire/organization to which these ships belonged.

It all looked quite interesting but I have not been able to find any more references to "Defrog" anywhere.

Unfortunately I can't provide a sample picture. That hard-disk died on me while I was trying to retrieve the content. No surprise as the disk was about 30 years old.

I must have downloaded these images from a BBS, a FTP site or USENET group between 1988 and 1995. I can be fairly certain about that time-frame because I can recall I bought the computer with this hard-disk in 1988 and I replaced it in 1995.

Does "Defrog" ring a bell for anyone? I would like to know more about these ships.

PS. On request of Valorum I added a rough sketch drawn from memory to give you an idea what these floor-plans looked like. Background was white, outlines, hull, walls in black. Furniture in blue and green (this varied). For some ships having multiple decks 2 or 3 decks where displayed in one image. Or for some others each deck had his own image. All images had a small legend bottom-left.

Sample image Forgive me my lousy drawing skills!

Valorum
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Tonny
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  • Can you draw said ship on a napkin? – Valorum May 20 '17 at 11:58
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20050208203737/http://deckplans.00sf.com/ships.html? – Valorum May 20 '17 at 11:59
  • @Valorum There were at least 30 different ships. So which one? Whatever I drew (with my vary limited drawing skills) would probably not look anything like the originals. That link you gave is interresting. The plans I had in mind where much more simplistic and really only the floor-layouts themselves with walls and ship-hull only delineated by lines. I see if I can sketch a sample to give you some idea. – Tonny May 20 '17 at 12:42
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    @Valorum Added sketch. Not a copy of one of the actual drawings but a made-up ship in the same style. – Tonny May 20 '17 at 13:31
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    Awesome sketch ;) – Gallifreyan May 20 '17 at 13:47
  • Defrog looks almost like what you might read into the logo of the Ghtroc Industries on the page Valorum provided, maybe whoever labelled it read the logo wrong. But if that's not it, as someone who BBSed in that era, my guess is it's from some individual RPG played over e-mail, possibly in a completely homebrew setting. GMs often went above and beyond in providing reference materials. – starpilotsix May 20 '17 at 14:18
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    That looks suspiciously like a home brew deck plan for the Traveller tabletop role playing game. Just like starpilotsix said. The chairs are a hallmark. In which case "defrog" is a term for some race or empire the game master invented – Winchell Chung May 20 '17 at 15:01
  • @WinchellChung, starpilotsix You could be on to something. I never played those RPG's myself, but Traveller was popular in the BBS scene I used to hang out in. I will be meeting in a few days with an old friend that used to play those back in the day. I will have him take a look at this. See what he has to say. Will let you know how that turns out. – Tonny May 21 '17 at 10:15
  • Sounds like it could be something from this long-defunct website, which looks like it was related to an RPG of some sort: https://web.archive.org/web/20020926091511/http://www.defrog.com:80/ –  May 23 '17 at 06:53
  • @Nathan You are spot on. If you care to make that an answer I will accept it. – Tonny May 25 '17 at 12:53
  • There appears to be a Yahoo group here named "defrog Stardrives" – Valorum May 25 '17 at 21:40
  • @Valorum. I discovered that too. Combined with some other info that actually nailed it. See my self-answer. – Tonny May 26 '17 at 09:52

2 Answers2

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It could be something from this long-defunct website, which looks like it was related to an RPG of some sort:

http://web.archive.org/web/20020926091511/http://www.defrog.com:80

Defrog Stardrives website

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I'm adding a self-answer to further explain and to thank Nathan, Winchell Chung and Starpilotsix. Their combined efforts, together with input of my mate Steven who used to play these RPG's back in the day, gave me the full story.

Over the years there have been a lot of table-top RPG games (official ones and home-brew) set in the StarWars universe.
Many of those games were derivatives (to a greater or lesser degree) of the Traveller RPG and have a great deal of similarity to that in terms of game-materials like maps, drawings and such. In many cases this material is interchangeable between the various games.

The exact origin of "Defrog Stardrives Inc." is not clear. Most likely it was originally devised by a GM as a ready to use background setting for one of those games at some time in the early 1990's.

The space-ship drawings and plans got circulated on BBS boards and the internet. Over time many variants and additions came into existence. Later a variant of these also got official status (maybe a content-pack for one the games)? The www.defrog.com web-site (2002) was most likely related to that. Around the same time also a Yahoo group was formed, tied to that web-site.

As for the files I found on my own old hard-disk...
My mate Steven told me he had most likely pulled them from a BBS or newsgroup himself using my computer back in 1994, when he was several months out of internet/bbs connectivity of his own.
(It was still dial-up back then and his new house, in the country-side, didn't have a land-line at first.)
I recall letting him use my computer, but I didn't really care what he downloaded as long as the dailup-charges stayed reasonable.

Tonny
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