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[Vormaerin]

*MY* recommendation is to ignore the 1000D limit, as it serves no useful purpose at the game play level. IMHO, you *want* more real space travel going on, because that's where you can have interactions. If you jump from Saturn to Neptune, you are never going to be far from a space station. That makes it hard to have piracy, ship disasters where the PCs are the only eligible respondants, etc. (Unless its a back of beyond no one goes to Neptune kind of thing, in which case.. also hard to explain why all these other people are where no goes ).

If someone is spending a week in real space hauling supplies from Titan colony to Triton Colony, that's a lot of chances for stuff to happen.

The Deep Space Maneuvering system is just a hack to undo the damage of the limit so that you can actually have deep space stuff going on again. Its fine if you only want specially built ships to be able to do that kind of thing for some reason. But its large and expensive and not going to be on a normal PC ship. So your PCs aren't gonna be doing anything in deep space except singing their dirges.

 

[Geir]

So, would you suggest deleting the half-page I dedicated to "ignoring the 1,000-diameter limit" and travel time to the outer system?

Not 100% sure what you mean, but for the most part, the 1000D limit is still an OTU thing, especially with the interpretation that the m-drive and its variants require a certain amount of gravity well to interact with.

 

[NOLATrav]

*MY* recommendation is to ignore the 1000D limit, as it serves no useful purpose at the game play level.

+1 on this. And the rest of that insightful comment.

The game already leans heavily into "starport of the week" and the week in jump is often more enticing (for study, skill improvement and healing) than a side gig to the Outsystem. Also, it ignores what I feel should be obvious - if Thrust diminishes as you leave a gravity well, should it not increase as you approach the source of the well? That could be a way to explain Thrust 1 traders visiting 1.4G worlds or whatever. But I digress.

Also, why let a bunch of Geir's work in WBH go to waste? We finally got the book so many people said they wanted but officially we don't have ships that can really go explore all the new worlds we can build? Seems counter-intuitive at best.

I understand, Traveller5 and Mark's canonicity and all that. But to limit in-system travel without old, outdated technology is a bummer for my players. So yeah, I ignore it IMTU.

 

[Anstett]

100% all in on building out WBH and having fleshed out systems to explore as players want.

 

[NOLATrav]

100% all in on building out WBH and having fleshed out systems to explore as players want.

Yeah buddy. Getting closer to that daydream of a multi-star system with dozens of worlds and dozens more moons, all in various states of exploitation -um, colonization - where jump drives are rare and astrogators are the top dogs on the ship.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Does a new rule add something new to the setting that has been missing? Does it generate more adventuring possibilities? Does it have unexpected consequences? Does it contradict setting canon?

 

[Anstett]

Does a new rule provide a compromise to aggregate previous non-canon rulings into something that creates agreement?

{a good compromise should make everyone mostly happy and slightly unhappy}

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

Does a new rule provide a compromise to aggregate previous non-canon rulings into something that creates agreement?

{a good compromise should make everyone mostly happy and slightly unhappy}

 

[Sigtrygg]

Does a new rule provide a compromise to aggregate previous non-canon rulings into something that creates agreement?

{a good compromise should make everyone mostly happy and slightly unhappy}

Can you give an example of that?

 

[Zapgun]

It is! Given the nature of submissions like this (and the increased editing they demand) it is usually 3 cents/word.

Hi Matt,

3 cents/word seems like a very low rate for the current gaming industry - that's the rate folks were getting paid in the 90s. Talking to some industry folks I know, the going rate these days is typically 5 to 8 cents on the low end, with 10 being more of a standard. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I can appreciate you want to keep your costs down, but it would be nice to know that one of my favourite publishers is paying their writers appropriately.

 

[Anstett]

Can you give an example of that?

I would offer your suggestion about gravitcs and heat dispersal.

That keeps things closer to canon, most people will find it a good compromise. You (and others) would rather something along those lines BE canon. Others think Traveller is a science based game not a hard science game so handwave/ignore for the fun of the game.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Hi Matt,

3 cents/word seems like a very low rate for the current gaming industry - that's the rate folks were getting paid in the 90s. Talking to some industry folks I know, the going rate these days is typically 5 to 8 cents on the low end, with 10 being more of a standard. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I can appreciate you want to keep your costs down, but it would be nice to know that one of my favourite publishers is paying their writers appropriately.

And if we were using said industry professionals for JTAS, you would be absolutely right - however, JTAS writers tend not to be and usually need... an amount of editing, shall we say.

 

[Zapgun]

And if we were using said industry professionals for JTAS, you would be absolutely right - however, JTAS writers tend not to be and usually need... an amount of editing, shall we say.

As the saying goes: 'a professional is someone who gets paid for their work.' Of course you wouldn't be paying a well established writer 5 cents a word - that low end is for 'new writers'. So unless you're re-writing around 50% of each JTAS article, it still seems low (in my opinion anyways).

I just like to see people who put in their creative ideas and time appropriately rewarded according to industry acceptable rates.

Regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of the new journals.

 

[Zarpaulek]

Know if they prefer submissions in two columns or just one?

 

[Geir]

Know if they prefer submissions in two columns or just one?

Just do a word document single-spaced with and extra return between paragraphs. The default font on their template is Times New Roman 10. Not sure if the style guide is a publicly-available document, but the one they sent me four years ago is in .doc format, so it might not be exactly up to date.

 

[Zarpaulek]

Just do a word document single-spaced with and extra return between paragraphs. The default font on their template is Times New Roman 10. Not sure if the style guide is a publicly-available document, but the one they sent me four years ago is in .doc format, so it might not be exactly up to date.

Think you could forward that style guide my way?

 

[Geir]

Think you could forward that style guide my way?

I'd really prefer if Matthew where to post it or link to it. It's not mine to give away and as I said, my copy is about four years old (and that's likely the download date (looks like it was created in 2009, last modified in April 2020), so it may not be the current one.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Don't worry about the style guide for JTAS (you'll get that if you are recruited for more work ). Avoid pretty formatting where you can and you won't go far wrong.

 

[DigrizJB]

If I submit an article to Mongoose, and I don't hear back from you, when can I shop it around to all of the other Traveller publishers? But seriously, can I submit the same article to one of the fanzines like Freelance Traveller or Cepheus Journal? Or do I need to wait for a period of time?

 

[MongooseMatt]

If I submit an article to Mongoose, and I don't hear back from you, when can I shop it around to all of the other Traveller publishers? But seriously, can I submit the same article to one of the fanzines like Freelance Traveller or Cepheus Journal? Or do I need to wait for a period of time?

It is very unlikely you will not be hearing from us - give us a couple of months (at most, likely), and we should have got round to everything!