Freelance Traveller

May/June 2018	Department	Article Title	Author
	From the Editor		Jeff Zeitlin
	Featured Articles
	Active Measures	Viral Shades	David Burden
	Critics’ Corner	Three Supplements for Mongoose Traveller	“kafka”
		Central Supply Catalogue	Megan Robertson
		Reft	Jeff Zeitlin
		Variant Psionics for the Cepheus Engine	Robert Weaver
	Active Measures	Getting Off the Ground: Cat and Mouse	Michael A. Cessna
		Getting Off the Ground: Border Crossing	Jonathan McDermott
	Columns	Confessions of a Newbie Referee: #34: Onwards, Upwards, Outwards	Timothy Collinson
	Less Dangerous Game	Shaduquaram	Benedikt Schwarz
	The Shipyard	Mongoose Traveller Designs: Pham’s Gunboats	Joshua Levy
	The Prep Room	Jottings #4: Education	Jeff Zeitlin
	Raconteurs’ Rest	The Adventures of Gerry Fynne: [Part 11] and [Part 12]	Sam Swindell
	Kurishdam	Lecture Hall and Library: Jump Destinations: Alnimes	Robert DeVoe
	Up Close and Personal	Jan Haakon Mattiason	Bill Cameron

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The articles listed and linked above are also linked in their appropriate sections of our website.

From the Editor

In discussions of Traveller, there often seems to be a perceived dichotomy, of play versus ‘gearheading’ or ‘worldbuilding’. While I will concede that ‘gearheading’ isn’t for everyone, I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘worldbuilding’ overlaps—or perhaps subsumes—both play and ‘gearheading’.

A referee can spend hours and hours rolling up and writing (and reading) about worlds, cultures, characters, trade goods, and so on, and in doing so, paint a picture of his (her) Traveller universe. That’s the ‘gearheading’, and it’s an important part of worldbuilding.

But a world is more than an encyclopedic compilation of places and things. It’s a living and dynamic collection of all those, plus people and their actions, thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, and nightmares. And it’s all connected. Nothing really happens in isolation; what you do today influences what the people you interact with will do tomorrow.

Traveller and some other games try to emulate that, at least partially, in both the ‘reaction roll’ and having contacts (and allies, enemies, and rivals, in recent versions of Traveller). But the real worldbuilding happens when the players and the referee, and the characters and NPCs, start actually interacting. That’s when a world stops being a binderful of facts, and comes to life. And that’s when you’ve actually built a world. Even if you haven’t written a single thing about it.