Doing It My Way - Freelance Traveller

Contents
Freelance Traveller #011: November 2010
Editor
Jeff Zeitlin
Contributors
Jeff Zeitlin, Shannon Appelcline, Travis
Leichssenring, Scott Diamond, Jeffrey
Schwartz, Ken Murphy, John Snead, William
Ringland
Artwork
Cover: Travis Leichssenring
From the Editor: Jeff Zeitlin, from the Freelance
Traveller web site
Fifth Imperium: Shannon Appelcline, from
the Fifth Imperium Column at rpg.net
Critics‘ Corner: Jon Brazer Enterprises,
from the RPGNow website
The Shipyard: William Ringland, from the
Gallery at Citizens of the Imperium
In A Store Near You: Scott Diamond, from
the Pimp My Gun website at http://
pimpmygun.doctornoob.com
From the Editor
Jeff Zeitlin ................................................................................................................. 1
Critics‟ Corner
d66 Compendium reviewed by Jeff Zeitlin ................................................................ 2
In A Store Near You
The Gun Shop: Early (TL8-10) Gauss Rifles by Scott Diamond .............................. 3
Missing Miscellany by William Ringland ............................................................... 31
Active Measures
Dead Hand by Jeffrey Schwartz ................................................................................ 5
Doing It My Way
The Psiren—A New Psionic ―Talent‖ for Traveller by Jeff Zeitlin .......................... 5
Traveller for the 21st Century by John Snead ......................................................... 15
Essay Question ....................................................................................................... 7
Fifth Imperium
#14: Genre-ic Plot Seeds, Part Four: The Action Ones Shannon Appelcline ............ 8
The Shipyard
Krolic-class Star Scout (TL-9) by William Ringland .............................................. 11
Up Close and Personal
Gwen ‗Aunt Molly‘ Polaneczky by Ken Murphy .................................................... 30
Freelance Traveller is published monthly in PDF form by the editor. The current issue is
available from the Freelance Traveller web site, http://www.freelancetraveller.com.
From the Editor
In some sense, this month‘s issue
represents a milestone for Freelance
Traveller—it‘s one year since we
posted our initial eight-page proof-ofconcept
issue. We don‘t consider this
the last issue of our first year—or the
first of our second—as we didn‘t actually start regular
monthly publishing until January of this year. So
far, the Traveller community has contributed 290
pages of material to us, and we expect the total to be
around 320 when next month‘s issue (December
2010) is made available for download. That‘s a very
respectable body of material for an Annual, and it‘s
the Traveller community that has made it possible to
do it without dipping into our sizeable ―backlist‖ of
articles posted to our website from the pre-magazine
days. Thank you for your support, and please keep it
up!
Our editor went to TravellerCON/USA for the
first time this year, and ―had a blast‖. It was a great
opportunity to meet some of the Traveller community
in person, including some of the third-party
Traveller publishers, and to actually play instead of
1
just talking, and watching from the sidelines. A
venture into miniatures gaming (under Full Thrust
rules) was less successful in terms of game goals
than it might have been, but was loads of fun, and
opened up a new vista. We fully intend to support
Traveller miniatures gaming in future issues of the
magazine, and urge the community to submit
miniatures-related material in addition to the types
of material that is represented in 290 pages of our
magazine.
Our experiment with forums hasn‘t worked too
well, quite honestly. The feedback we‘ve gotten
suggests that part of it is organization, part of it is
the poor software we‘re using, and part of it is lack
of focus. So… we‘re temporarily shutting them
down, and rethinking them. They‘ll be back in the
new year, with new software and a focus on supporting
the magazine first, and the general Traveller
community second. ‗We‘ll have forums for
submitting articles and commenting on them, for
the Essay Questions, and for some other ideas that
we‘d like to test out. We hope you‘ll come back in
January to join us!