Recent content by FreeTrav

This. Demoing is good, but in some ways, it needs to go beyond just demoing; positive and organized publicity of almost any type would be helpful. Having things like the Explorer's Edition or the Merchant's Edition with their one-dollar price point is good; it means a low (negligible) barrier...

Interesting. The only way that it ostensibly won't make a profit on pure freight is with the J6 - and even then, it'll be profitable with spec trading.

Coming to this convo late, but I did read through it. My personal take: Mongoose perceived a problem, real or potential, and made a decision on how to address it. This is their right and obligation as a business; whether it is the right decision will be shown by their future success under the...

Thank you for the compliment. Two other articles on the site that are at least peripherally relevant to this thread would be Building a Ship's Financial Profile, for figuring out the actual costs and needed profit, and Building a Commercial Atlas, for figuring out how likely that profit might...

Yup. Using Ken Pick's Commercial Efficiency Ratio, I make it a CER of 3.71, which indeed can make a profit combining spec trade with freight runs.

Deadlines? What be thems? Seriously, it's 'the sooner the better' for obvious reasons, but also 'take what time you think it needs for a proper treatment', which is probably more important. The idea here is that I want to focus on quality, and with the exception of the Theme Issues, I don't...

While I might have to go create a new section of Freelance Traveller for this kind of article, I'd still be interested if you should prove to be willing to write this up for sharing...

Actually, if a world is locked to its primary (the star), then the solar day and the tropical year are both identical, and there is one solar day per tropical year. Using a hypothetical tide-locked Earth as an example, the solar day would be ((365*24)+5) hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds - and there...

Someone over on CotI caught that I upfscked the upload and the permalink was bad. Fixed, so if you tried it and got 404ed, try it again.

I agree that player uptake of Traveller needs to be increased. Where there seems to be disagreement - and I have no opinion on who's right - is on how to increase that uptake. I definitely agree that The Rules need to be divorced from The Setting; I don't necessarily believe that that's the...

I think this is an excellent idea - having a single place where these announcements can be found would potentially allow more people to see - and watch for - future Cons, wherever situate. As it is, they can end up scattered across several subsections and spotting them would be "hit or miss"...

The November/December 2025 issue of Freelance Traveller has been posted for download! This issue features after-action reports on Traveller conventions on both sides of 'the pond', Timothy Collinson and Dom Mooney reporting on TravCon (UK) and Jeff Zeitlin reporting on TravellerCON/USA. Jim...

Books - Novels, not shorts, and there are a lot of them: C.J.Cherryh - the Chanur novels (there are four) Sharon Lee and Steve Miller - the Liaden Universe® (there are a metric fsckton) David Drake - the Republic of Cinnabar Navy series (also called Leary/Mundy) (there are about a dozen)

I'm seeing some sluggishness compared to most other times, but not to the point of timing out.

TCUSA is closing in on a hundred participants annually; we're not quite there yet, but we routinely run eight or more tables (out of ten to twelve available) for the Saturday sessions.