Freelance Traveller

July 2015	Department	Article Title	Author
	From the Editor		Jeff Zeitlin
	Featured Article
	The Lab Ship	Variable Stars and Dwarfs: An Overview for Non-Astronomers	Mark McCabe
	Critics’ Corner	Clement Sector	Megan Robertson
		Mongoose Traveller Referee’s Aid 7: Type R Subsidized Merchant	Paul Hillers
	Columns	Confessions of a Newbie Referee: #15: Why Make It Hard?	Timothy Collinson
	Multimedia Gallery	Starport Places Visualized: Captain’s Guildhouse Suite	Jeff Zeitlin
	Raconteurs’ Rest	Funny Fish: A Compact Model [Part 4]	Andrea Vallance
	Doing It My Way	Optional Career Rules	Kelly Kollman
	Active Measures	Invasive Species	Michael Brown

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

From the Editor

TravellerCon/USA 2015 is a mere three months away. Your Humble Editor is nominally responsible for some of the promotion thereof, though this spring he’s been somewhat remiss—real life does get in the way, sometimes. Nevertheless, it is happening, and we do want you to come.

One obstacle to previous growth has been that our arrangements with the old site didn’t really allow for gradual growth—and we had really hit the limit to what we could do without raising the cost to an untenable level. The current site offers us a bit more flexibility for future growth. However, to actually manage that growth, we need a few things: First, we need to see that there’s increasing interest in the con in its current form. The best way to show that is to come—pre-registration is open now (see the Con website at http://www.travellercon-usa.com/)—and to get friends to come as well. Second, we need to know what you’d like to see in an expanded con. We’ve had a few ideas mentioned in passing; what we need is some more concrete elucidation of those ideas, including some of the implementation details—for example, if you want panel discussions, we’d want to know on what topics, who you think should be on the panel(s), and how (and at what cost) we should induce the panelists to come. If you want to see awards of some sort given out, what sort of awards (both in the sense of ‘for what’ and ‘what is the nature of the symbol—and at what cost—of the award’) should we be looking at. Con-branded swag? Of what sort, and how much would you be willing to pay? Named guests-of-honor? Who? Why? How do we induce them to come? What’s in it for them? Other ideas? Tell us about them; use Freelance Traveller’s feedback address (feedback@freelancetraveller.com—use a subject line indicating Con ideas), and we’ll pass them on to the rest of the ConCom. Finally, we want to know what you’d like to see in the Con at its present size. Currently, the focus is ‘sit at a table and roll dice’ gaming; is there anything you can think of that we’re missing for a small (30-odd people) con? Let us know, also via Freelance Traveller’s feedback.