What do you like the most from JTAS?

[robject]

As it says on the tin - what articles do you enjoy the most?

Bestiary?
Contact!?
Amber Zone?
The various Features?

or something else?

 

[Timerover51]

My favorite article was the one on Victoria/Lanth written by Marc in JTAS Number 2, as that convinced me that I needed to get the rules for Traveller.

Right after that article is the one on the ANNIC NOVA in JTAS Number 1, also written by Marc. I first got that in the Double Adventure of the same name, and then in hard copy and then online from DriveThru.

After those two articles, I would say that I like the Bestiary the most, and then the articles on the various characters that you could encounter, Casual Encounter.

The article on Planet-building by the Keith brothers was also very useful.

 

[Brandon C]

The articles I wrote

More seriously, in the online version I preferred Patrons. They fit my improvisational style much better than Amber Zones.

For the print JTAS ... Hmm, probably alternative or expanded rules. I never really used them, but they did give me ideas.

 

[mike wightman]

The first thing I turned to when I got my hands on a new issue was the TAS News bulletin.

The articles that stick in my mind:
LKW editorial on building a laser pistol
MWM Jump Space
MWM Robots
Contact
Bestiary
Worldbuilding

 

[aramis]

Contact!

Then the procedural expansions: Asteroid Mining, Robots, SS2 Atmosphere, SS3 Missiles, new weapons for striker...

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I liked all the articles except for the Amber Zones. I skipped over those.

 

[nobby-w]

In terms of what I used -

• The contact articles for Vargr and Aslan - these came out some time before the alien modules did - and even longer before I got the alien modules themselves. Some of the other races got cameos but the majority of alien PCs I've seen actually used in games were Aslan or Vargr.
• Some of the amber zones were quite good and got used or adapted.
• Some of the ships locker, bestiary and causal encounter articles made their way into my 'verses.
• Some of the specific articles like Startown encapsulated good ideas that got adopted.
• In the later ones, there were character generation systems for various services - skyport authority, police, scientists, journalists, spook services and maybe one or two others. These got occasional use.
• The robots design system got a fair bit of use. I didn't get Book 8 until way after it was published and never really got around to using it.

Most of the rest of the articles got a read and occasional stuff cribbed from them

 

[Meteoric Assault]

the LBB format

I miss the small books (LBB format) and odd tangents of the old gronganrds who wrote it....

 

[nobby-w]

I miss the small books (LBB format) and odd tangents of the old gronganrds who wrote it....

I think this was one of the hidden features of CT. Although there is a sort of back-to-basics meme floating through the online community today, a lot of the fun in Traveller was seeing the universe unfold piece-by-piece as new material came onto the market.

It gives me the view that the Big-Book-of-Canon approach that you sometimes see in modern games isn't the right way to do it, and the process of unfolding as you release the setting in a series of adventure modules actually works better. It also makes for a modular product that can be adapted for other uses more readily. Chaosium also took a similar approach with Runequest.

Apart from some sort of Do's and Don'ts guide for writers¹ I'm inclined to leave canon to the superfans and maybe a collection of notes behind the scenes.
____
¹ To paraphrase MWM, Canon is for publishers. It's there primarily to stop third parties from writing stuff that clashes with each other. Canon is for when you have to put your foot down and say 'It doesn't matter how cool your story arc is. We are not going to kill off Spider Man.' This is a good problem to have if you have it. Don't complain.

 

[Maksim-Smelchak]

I liked it all.

Shalom,
M.

 

[Cryton]

I liked just about everything JTAS had to offer, that is right up until it stopped being the mini sized JTAS.

I guess my favorite thing was the Amber Zones. Especially when the Bestiary and other articles supported the Adventures.

 

[coliver988]

Pretty much liked all of it as well, although the casual encounters was probably my favorite. I threw a few of those characters in play. Still need to bring in a bloodvark at some point.

And this thread made me break back out the physical magazines - I have most of them (well, a lot at any rate). And I am bringing a couple to the game tonight as there are relevant articles to share with some of the players (the advantage of a physical copy - I can loan that out. A PDF is not really loan-able and I can't share those. Which is why I usually get the physical & PDF for game stuff whenever possible).