Recent content by FreeTrav

Poul Anderson. "Pohl" is Frederik (author of the Gateway/Heechee books, among others).

Actually, when looked at from this point of view, it's not the players whose awareness of GNS theory is required; it's the marketing department. In this case, it comes under the heading of 'know your customer', and - for the most part - the customer for Traveller is the player who - whether he...

Directly, it doesn't. But understanding how a particular game fits the model and how that in turn relates to player styles does offer ... I guess I'd call them "thought patterns"... for focussing any marketing efforts in what would likely be the most productive directions.

I don't see the Game-ism in Traveller; there's no "win/lose", there's no progression after character creation, none of the characteristics that are associated with "games". There aren't any means to change the adventure to improve the story because you're telling the story as it happens - the...

So a novel that is written in the first person present tense isn't a story? Plays and musicals and movies don't tell stories? I think you and Mr Gygax need to check your definitions.

The role-playing is the collaborative storytelling. The player-characters (along with the referee) are working together to describe/portray events, conflicts, personalities, et cetera, following a plot that the referee (or the author of the pregenerated module the referee is running) has worked...

Recognizing that thread drift is A Thing, and trying to bring it back to the original topic - making Traveller more popular with TTRPG players - an article that I'm formatting for the upcoming issue of Freelance Traveller made mention of a thought pattern that I think is still valid, even though...

I think this could cut either way; I haven't tried a search, but if there's a way to search for "Products released as TAS", then between that and being able to search on "rule system: Traveller", it would seem that having March Harrier TAS works be listed as "Published by Mongoose" is less than...

On the strength of this posting, I asked the bingleduck about it, and discovered I have a copy, because I have a copy of "3×T".

In reading through the various "Follow your Favorites" notifications I get from DTRPG, and checking out some of the products therein mentioned, I've noticed that DTRPG seems to register all TAS product as having been published by Mongoose, even if the product's own branding suggest that the...

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.