Freelance Traveller

January 2011	Department	Article Title	Author
	From the Editor		Jeff Zeitlin
	Fifth Imperium	#15: Twenty Weeks of Traveller, Part One: Publisher Lessons Learned	Shannon Appelcline
	Critics’ Corner	Mongoose Traveller Compendium 1	“kafka”
	The Shipyard	Vagrant-class X-Boat Service Hull	Donovan Lambertus
	Up Close and Personal	P. Hunley Marsters	Ken Murphy
	In A Store Near You	NHR Multifunction Robot	Ewan Quibell
		The Gun Shop: Specialized Grenade Types	Scott Diamond
	Active Measures	Organized Opposition	Bruce Johnson
	Raconteurs’ Rest	A Passage to Extolay	Chris Wright
		An Exciting Night: An After Action Report	Andrew Brown

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The articles listed and linked above are also linked in their appropriate sections of our website.

From the Editor

A new year is starting, and with it, some changes. We spoke of most of them in brief in this slot last month; we’ll recap some of them this month.

Essay Question turned out to be less of a success than we would have liked, so we’re dropping it from the magazine as a regular feature. When we get the new forums up—that’s in progress, and will be discussed separately, next month—there will be a section for Essay Question, and we’ll only print in the magazine those questions and answers we feel are particularly well-written and interesting. Up to now, the various questions have been directed toward players’ and referees’ fundamental views of Traveller; we’d like to see it change direction to the “work” of Traveller—identifying problems that come up in actual play, and what others may have done to overcome them.

Back when Freelance Traveller was a website without a magazine, our Critics’ Corner section had two kinds of reviews: Traveller products, and Traveller websites. We wouldn’t mind seeing more Traveller website reviews, and we’ll continue reviewing Traveller products, new and old, from any publisher. But we’re also going to expand on it: A new subsection, “Other People’s Toys”, will be for reviews of non-Traveller RPG products that the reviewer feels would be of use or interest to the Traveller player or referee—the reviews of Hyperlite, the 100 SF Plots book and Starblazer Adventures will be moved here, with other products to follow—and a second new subsection, “Not On The Table”, will be for reviews of fiction that the reviewer believes has relevance to Traveller, for any of several reasons. The specific applicability to Traveller must be a major theme in the review, and spoilers are discouraged (but not prohibited; sometimes, there’s no way to avoid them).

Finally, getting last month’s articles up on the website is going to be slightly delayed, but we’ll get it done as soon as possible. We apologize for the delay.