Freelance
Traveller#79: New Year, new enthusiasm
This article originally appeared in the March/April 2026 issue.
Editor’s note: This was originally intended to appear in the January/February issue, but in calculating page counts, I goofed, and discovered that a couple of articles were longer than my math said. I couldn’t quite juggle things around to make it work, so…
Happy New Year! I find it hard to believe we’re more than a quarter of the way through the century already. Where did that go? I trust everyone had some kind of break and not too much food or family.
My online games went into ‘pause’ mode for the duration of the festivities. Too many demands our time, too difficult to schedule meetings, too much expectation to be spending time with family. But perhaps a break from the regular Traveller games is no bad thing.
Firstly, for some at least, it’s an opportunity to have a change of pace in board games and card games. Admittedly with casual ‘gamers’ for whom Chase the Ace at one end of the scale or Monopoly at the other might be the height of their ambition or attention span. (Having said that, daughter and I can play Monopoly by the rules in 40 minutes or so.)
Secondly, it’s a chance to try other formats, weigh up odds (of dice rolls or card appearance), see what grabs people – or not – in terms of gameplay, and perhaps try out the latest ‘Eurogame’ if Santa’s been kind. (I was quite taken with daughter’s acquisition of Survive the Island which I’d read about but never played. Some outings being played cooperatively, one game at least was decidedly not. But it was the nearest we got to role-playing with some excellent moments of ‘no! launch the raft without me; you won’t make it if you wait!’ and the like.)
Of course, there are the usual frictions of disenchanted players, disobliging fortunes and utterly disinterested partners, but again that’s good practice for, I’m sure, many typical role-playing groups at one time or another. It also made me half wonder if perhaps it wouldn’t be worth introducing more ‘casual’ games within games of Traveller. Just for the fun of it and to replicate the long, grey days in Jumpspace. I’ve done exactly this with Dhe on one occasion, and it seemed to go down well enough as a momentary diversion in the backroom of a bar.
But what I have noticed is that a break of a week or three has left me hungry to get back to Traveller and keen to meet up with friends – online and real – once again. If I was jaded in the run up to the end of the year, some time off and the promise of a new year has meant a certain spring in my step as regards getting back to it, picking up the threads, and seeing if one resolution at least might not be to be better. Better at contributing, better at supporting the referee, better at playing whatever role I find myself in.
Of course, it may be that some were fortunate enough to have more time for their Traveller role-playing rather than less. I can’t imagine that audience is large – but here’s to hoping you had a lot of fun with that as well and still want more in 2026!