[Freelance Traveller] September 2013 posted for download!

[FreeTrav]

Freelance Traveller has posted the September 2013 issue for you to download!

This month's issue features Clash of Cultures, an adventure by Garry Ward which offers many different possible roles for your player-characters and variable length.

As usual, it is accompanied by an assortment of rules, reviews, stories, starship designs, consumer goods, and other community contributions, all aimed at enhancing your Traveller fun.

Download this issue from the usual places:
Our main site at http://www.freelancetraveller.com/magazine/
Our mirror at http://www.downport.com/~freetrav/magazine/

 

[Captain Jonah]

Thank you for the hard work once again

 

[GypsyComet]

Kafka's condemnation of the Mongoose deckplan style in his review is somewhat inaccurate. WotC started that color overkill style in their Star Wars products. Firefly and others just continued the trend. That style is also pointless unless playable scale, via a poster or similar, is provided. Someone wanting to scale it up is either doing a color copier or scanner/printer scale-up or will be re-drawing in, you guessed it, the sparser style.

Leave the art for separate illustrations, keep the Photoshop tiling to a minimum, and give me a MAP I can use.

 

[hdan]

Kafka's condemnation of the Mongoose deckplan style in his review is somewhat inaccurate. WotC started that color overkill style in their Star Wars products. Firefly and others just continued the trend. That style is also pointless unless playable scale, via a poster or similar, is provided. Someone wanting to scale it up is either doing a color copier or scanner/printer scale-up or will be re-drawing in, you guessed it, the sparser style.

Leave the art for separate illustrations, keep the Photoshop tiling to a minimum, and give me a MAP I can use.

Yeah, I disagreed with his less than stellar review of Mirador. In my opinion, it should be the model for future ship books, and nicely follows in the footsteps of classics like "Safari Ship", taking things farther as you'd expect in a modern RPG supplement.

 

[FreeTrav]

Yeah, I disagreed with his less than stellar review of Mirador. In my opinion, it should be the model for future ship books, and nicely follows in the footsteps of classics like "Safari Ship", taking things farther as you'd expect in a modern RPG supplement.

There's definitely room for differences of opinion, and if you were to send in your own review of Mirador, I'd be happy to print it as well - it wouldn't be the first product that's gotten multiple reviews. All I ask is that you be respectful, even if you're trashing the product.

For looking at pretty pictures, I don't mind "deckplans" like the ones for the Lepus in the current issue. For enlarging and using as a play map, yeah, the stark basic lines are better.

 

[hdan]

There's definitely room for differences of opinion, and if you were to send in your own review of Mirador, I'd be happy to print it as well - it wouldn't be the first product that's gotten multiple reviews. All I ask is that you be respectful, even if you're trashing the product.

I certainly wasn't suggesting that the published review should not have been published, or that is was disrespectful or poorly executed. Just that I disagree.

Perhaps I will try to write up my own review. I don't have Kafka's flair for writing though.

 

[Wil Mireu]

Perhaps I will try to write up my own review. I don't have Kafka's flair for writing though.

I really dislike Kafka's flowery prose - he waffles too much and doesn't stay focussed on the product (I got no real idea of what he thought of the ship book or what it actually even contains, beyond he thinks that it's not as pretty as others that most likely have a far higher budget).

Jeff Zeitlin's review of Spica's Career Book 1 has an issue that I've noticed in other reviews that he has done before - he doesn't seem to take the product for what it is, instead he reviews it in comparison to what he thinks it should be. IMO that is not a good way to write a constructive, useful review - I'm not interested in his expectations, I'm interested in the actual product. And I don't understand why he has to waste space describing the book cover when a picture of it is right there either.

I like reviews that get to the point and that describe what is actually there. These ones just aren't useful.

 

[phavoc]

For those commenting on the reviews, the writing style of the reviewer has always been key to generating a fan base or not. You may not agree with the reviewer, but you are fine with how they do the review. That will never change.

I'd take Jeff up on his offer and write up your own competing review.

 

[FreeTrav]

Jeff Zeitlin's review of Spica's Career Book 1 has an issue that I've noticed in other reviews that he has done before - he doesn't seem to take the product for what it is, instead he reviews it in comparison to what he thinks it should be. IMO that is not a good way to write a constructive, useful review - I'm not interested in his expectations, I'm interested in the actual product.

I don't go into a review with expectations; I look at the product and its apparent intent, and then I discuss how well I think it met that apparent intent, and some possible fixes for the flaws that I find. Yes, that's more an editorial function than a reviewer function - but I'm also the editor of the magazine, and unlike some lawyers I know, I can't completely divorce my many hats from each other - knowledge and attitude and experiences are going to influence how I perceive things, and my comments will be made under those influences.

That's specifically why I welcome multiple reviews of a product from different reviewers. They'll be coming in with their own experiences and attitudes and influences, and they may not agree with previous reviewers.

And I don't understand why he has to waste space describing the book cover when a picture of it is right there either.

That's actually a holdover from early days, before the PDF magazine, when it wasn't as easy for me to get cover images and I had more of a 'thing' for accessibility and low-bandwidth friendliness. You're right that it can pretty much be dispensed with, and will be, no later than the January 2014 issue (exhausting the backlog of my reviews - I try to limit how much I appear as a byline in any single issue).

I like reviews that get to the point and that describe what is actually there. These ones just aren't useful.

I'm sorry you feel that way. To me, a review that doesn't incorporate the reviewer's opinion of the product (and why) is no better than simply reprinting cover blurbs and TOCs.

 

[Wil Mireu]

I look at the product and its apparent intent, and then I discuss how well I think it met that apparent intent, and some possible fixes for the flaws that I find.

Why do you think that's useful though? Publishers aren't necessarily going to do second editions of books to apply any "fixes" that anyone suggests - it's much more useful to take what is there and say what you think of it. Not what you think it was trying to do, not how you would fix it - just what is actually presented in the book. You don't seem to do that in your reviews.

I'm sorry you feel that way. To me, a review that doesn't incorporate the reviewer's opinion of the product (and why) is no better than simply reprinting cover blurbs and TOCs.

I didn't say that at all. I do want to see the reviewer's opinions and reasons why - I just want to see the reviewer's opinion of what is actually there, not of what they think it should have been or the product's 'apparent intent', or why the product contains what it does.