Freelance Traveller

Content - Format - Rights - Submitting

Content

Material submitted to Freelance Traveller must be, in a word, Traveller.  Any era, any rule set, even alternate settings - but it must, in the editor's judgment, "feel" like Traveller.  In general, the editor will try to work with you to salvage material that is unsuitable as submitted, but bear in mind that ultimately, the editor's judgment is final.

If you have an idea that is not fully worked-up into a viable submission, and would like assistance in improving it, the editor would be pleased to assist.

The producers of Traveller have endeavored to keep Traveller material suitable for all ages. While occasional articles in Freelance Traveller may address mature themes, explicit material will not be accepted for publication.

Although Freelance Traveller does not maintain a reputation for being a flashy or multimedia-intensive site, submissions containing graphics or audio are welcome, with appropriate textual accompaniment.

We will happily create new departments or subdepartments if your submission doesn't fit an existing one. Our existing departments, and the material they include, are as follows:

Active Measures

Adventures. There is one subsection, Getting Off The Ground, which contains adventure seeds in the standard "Adventure Seed" (scenario-plus-possible-solutions) format.

Critic's Corner

Reviews, for our readers, by our readers. The items not set into one of the two subsections of this section are actual Traveller product reviews; those that appear in Other People's Toys are non-Traveller gaming products that the reviewer feels can be mined for use with Traveller, and those that appear in Off the Table are reviews of "Travelleresque" (non-gaming) fiction.

Doing It My Way

"House rules", ruleset mixes, and modifications or extensions to rules. Any version of Traveller is fair game, whether currently in print or not.

In A Store Near You

Goods that the player-characters might encounter as available for purchase. Some may be truly useful in a campaign; others are for "color". There are currently three subsections:

The Gun Shop

Personal weapons. Not all of these will necessarily fit the normal definition of "gun" (e.g., grenades), but all will be weapons that a single person can carry and use.

Handle With Care

Items of all sorts that may present a hazard to the unwary character.

The Promenade

Describes the shops that the players might purchase goods in. For campaign "color".

Information Center

This section is for non-game support of Traveller - software listings (and some downloads), pointers to other websites, news about publishers, product listings, and so on.

Kurishdam

Articles here will be for "background color" to a campaign, to give the setting depth. Has several subsections:

Art and Entertainment

Activities and entertainments that are often associated with "culture", whether performance art like dance or opera forms, or fine arts such as painting or sculpture.

At Home, We Do It Like This

Descriptions of interesting local customs and traditions.

Games People Play

Descritions of games and sports of all types.

The Club Room

Describes organizations such as religions, clubs, and lodges. Also used for racial, cultural, and societal profiles, similar to the series of "Contact!" articles in the original printed Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society.

Lecture Hall and Library

"Color" articles written in a style that might fit well in an encyclopedia, collection of public or university lectures, or other scholarly compilation.

The Lab Ship

This section is for articles about real-world science, both established and "cutting edge", that may be of use for adding verisimilitude to a campaign universe.  Not for reprints of commercially published articles; rather, authors should discuss the science and provide some ideas and/or outlines of rules for incorporating the science into a Traveller campaign.

Less Dangerous Game

This section is for articles about animals that might be encountered in a game.

Multimedia Gallery

Artwork created by Traveller fans. May include still pictures, movie clips, music, and anything else that can be made available through the World Wide Web.

Other Roads

Describe your Traveller universe as a setting. Emphasis should be on the differences from the standard setting, and should be at the game level, e.g., allowed technologies, political alignments, different star maps, and so on.  Variant rules for play, however, should be submitted for Doing It My Way.

Raconteur's Rest

Traveller-based fiction. Can be pure storytelling, or "novelization" of an actual campaign. There is one subsection, Lost Diaries, where the stories are implied - and left unfinished - by a series of entries in a diary or log.

The Shipyard

Articles about starships and ship-related topics. Includes ship profiles, deck plans and pictures, and alternative technologies.

Up Close and Personal

Descriptions of individuals that could be encountered in a campaign, as patrons, opponents, contacts, rivals, allies, and so on.

Format

Textual material should preferably be in RTF format, though we can handle plain text and most common word processing formats. Please advise us what program you have used to create your submission, as some programs have format-related issues that we need to know about when reformatting for our magazine.

Please consider carefully before submitting PDFs.  Even though our magazine is released as PDF, extracting your submission from a PDF file to reformat it for our magazine is somewhat complex. Freelance Traveller will reformat submissions to conform to our standard "look and feel".

Graphical material should be in GIF, PNG, or JPG/JPEG format. It is generally recommended to include a "thumbnail" reduction, at a width of 100 pixels.  We are looking at the general level of support for other formats, and may permit them in the future.

Audio material should be in MIDI or MP3 format, and at present should not be excessively large. We do not embed audio material on a web page, but offer it for download.  Please include a description of the material, including an approximate playing time.

Video must be hosted elsewhere at the present time, but the hosting site should permit remote sites to embed videos hosted with them. If you wish to submit video, please provide us with

1. A textual description of the video. This should be about 25 words, and crafted to allow the visitor to decide whether viewing the video is desirable.
2. A link to the video at the hosting site.
3. The HTML needed to embed the video in a page on our site.
4. Optional, but highly desirable, would be associated text describing your inspiration for the video and the tools and techniques used in creating it.

Intellectual Property Rights - Yours, and Ours

Because Freelance Traveller does not (and cannot) pay for material, you, as author, retain all rights to your material, except that you grant Freelance Traveller the non-exclusive right to publish that material in Freelance Traveller Magazine, and at the Freelance Traveller web site(s) and any mirror web site(s) that the management of Freelance Traveller may designate. You also grant us the right to maintain copies of the material in non-public archives designated by the management of Freelance Traveller.

In granting us these rights, you understand and agree that publication in the magazine or on our web site(s) or mirror(s) means that visitors to our site(s) may download your material, and that we cannot control the subsequent use of downloaded material.

Freelance Traveller may receive inquiries about reprinting or republishing material. Our policy is to require that the requestor also obtain the permission of the author, and we will pass on any inquiries to you, provided we have a current working e-mail address for you. If you choose to grant permission, Freelance Traveller will also grant permission.

Prior to the inception of the downloadable PDF magazine in November 2009, Freelance Traveller's policy was reluctant compliance with requests to withdraw material.  We will continue the policy of removal of the material from the article archive section of the public website(s) and mirror(s), but we are unwilling to reconstruct the PDFs with material removed, nor are we willing to withdraw entire issues. We will not delete published material from our non-public archives.

Sending Us Your Material

All material must be submitted electronically. The recommended address is submissions@freelancetraveller.com for material intended to be complete as submitted; for incomplete material, or if you wish editorial consultation before formally submitting, editor@freelancetraveller.com is the preferred address. Please include a valid email address and your name in all correspondence with Freelance Traveller.