Freelance Traveller

April 2013	Department	Article Title	Author
	From the Editor		Jeff Zeitlin
	Featured Article
	Multimedia Gallery	Explorations	Mark Poles and Victoria Clare
	Critics’ Corner	Off the Table: The Artemis Files: #2: Talisman	Ravi Shankar
		Outpost Mars	“kafka”
		Mongoose Traveller Supplement 7: 1,001 Characters	Jeff Zeitlin
		21 Plots III	“kafka”
	Up Close and Personal	Talia Mason	John Lees
	In A Store Near You	The Showroom: Strasser-class TL5 Rigid Airship	Chris Cox and Steward Wochende
		NHR 1010 Armored Multifunction Robot	Ewan Quibell
		NHR 1100 Fishery Robot	Ewan Quibell
	Less Dangerous Game	Four From the Jungle	Timothy Collinson
	Raconteurs’ Rest	Drop Out (Part 22)	Ken Murphy
	Doing It My Way	Suffer Unto Me the Little Children	Richard Morey
		Technology Rules: The Lyman Drive: An Alternative Jump Drive	Jeff Zeitlin
	The Shipyard	Mongoose Traveller Designs: Type M TL15 Scout Courier	Ed Hinojosa

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

From the Editor

How do we bring new blood to tabletop role-playing—and to Traveller, specifically? Tabletop role-playing as we know it is coming up on 40 years old—long enough that those of us who were in college when the original Dungeons and Dragons was released in 1974 could be thinking of introducing our grandchildren to the hobby. Those grandchildren, though, are growing up in an era of MMORPGs (most of which are combat-oriented), Twitter, Facebook, and so on—an era where face-to-face social interaction isn’t seen as central to one’s social life. And tabletop role-playing is very much about face-to-face social interaction—even though we have ways of playing without being face-to-face (play-by-email, play-by-post, using Skype or videocalling services, or IRC), few people will argue that “it’s not really the same” isn’t a true statement. How does one promote face-to-face interaction in an on-line world?

There’s another part to that question, too—most MMORPGs seem to be, as mentioned above, combat-oriented. Tabletop role-playing still supports that, but has also grown beyond it, to all sorts of non-combat campaigns, from trading to diplomacy to exploration to … all of which Traveller supports, and supports well. Part of bringing in the new blood would also include making non-combat campaigns attractive—but how?

There are other relevant questions that can be asked: Are tabletop RPG rules too complex? Should there be more computer aids? Are there other issues?

Consider this “From the Editor” to be something along the lines of the Essay Question feature we used to run. How would you bring new blood to tabletop role-playing and Traveller? We’ll gladly allocate a few pages of a future issue to share ideas that are sent to us. Send your ideas to editor@freelancetraveller.com or questions@freelancetraveller.com.