JTAS FAQ

Traveller Versions

Q. Does JTAS publish articles that aren't based on GURPS rules?

A: JTAS supports all Traveller incarnations, and we are happy to publish well-written articles based on any official Traveller rules system. The articles that are most useful to our readers are those with rules from more than one system, such as a character with stats from both Classic Traveller and GURPS Traveller.

Q. I play Classic Traveller. Where can I find basic information about GURPS rules to help me understand the articles written for GURPS Traveller?"

A. You can download GURPS Lite for a free overview of the GURPS system.

Discussion and Copyright

Q. What's this about SJ Games owning all our posts on the discussion areas?

A. From the subscriber agreement:

Ownership of Materials

By posting any item to the JTAS message areas, you grant your permission for Steve Jackson Games to archive it permanently, and allow public or private access to it, as we see fit. By maintaining these discussion areas, we acquire a "compilation copyright" on their contents. If you make a suggestion here, you may not later deny SJ Games, or its customers, the right to use that suggestion!

Any posting not carrying an explicit copyright notice is also assumed to be a contribution to Steve Jackson Games, for any use the company sees fit, including later publication in whole or in part under the SJ Games copyright.

That policy is not there to protect you, the reader. It's there to protect Steve Jackson Games, Marc Miller, and our authors, and the policy itself explains why:

If you make a suggestion here, you may not later deny SJ Games, or its customers, the right to use that suggestion!

There are people out there who are greedy or self-absorbed enough to do just exactly that. If someone posts "Hey, in my campaign it's the Sixth Frontier War," we don't want to have to scrap our plans to do a Sixth Frontier War. We don't even want to have to explain to him that the idea has been around forever. (Don't laugh. The lawsuit that helped end Game Designers' Workshop was similar, and about that flimsy.)

Q. So if I write a whole article, or a whole book, and post it on the discussion area, you could just reprint it?

A. Yes. Exactly. So don't do that, okay? Just like you don't leave the keys in your Maserati. Now, if we like it enough to print it, we would want your goodwill so you would write MORE for us, so we'd be idiots to take advantage of you. But, still, if you feel that you HAVE to post something and you're afraid someone, anyone, will take it, put a copyright notice in your .sig file for everything you send everywhere.

Q. Well, why do YOU claim a copyright on it?

A. The law gives us a compilation copyright on the discussion areas; that's part of what happens when you host a written discussion. Our policy is just to make sure everyone KNOWS this. The compilation copyright gives us legal protection against people who try to copy the message areas to other sites on the net.

It does not prevent you from re-using your own words or ideas, though. You can re-post your own comments elsewhere, put them on your web site, work them into an article or a book . . .

Q. But I want to share my ideas without getting ripped off.

A. If that means "Anybody is free to use my ideas as long as they don't make any money . . . " then please write it up as an article, submit it, and make money! We want contributors. You don't have to believe in the goodness of human nature. Just believe that if we like somebody's work, it's better business for us to keep him happy and buy a dozen articles (and maybe eventually whole books) from him than it is to rip him off once, even if it's a "legal" ripoff.

Anybody can have ideas. Ideas are cheap. Good, clear writing is precious, and we are always looking for people who can do that for us. For money.

JTAS and Pyramid

Q. Will there be a price break for combined subscriptions to JTAS and Pyramid?

A. Probably not -- certainly not for a while. We're not making enough money to be able to afford to lure people in with cheap rates . . . our money here comes from the subscriptions themselves, with ad sales a very distant second. So we can't afford to cut our subscriptions just to get more eyeballs.

Q. Will Traveller articles from Pyramid be available in the JTAS archives?

A. Yes.

Q. Will Pyramid continue to run articles about Traveller?

A. Yes. The existence of JTAS will not change the Pyramid article mix at all. Our Pyramid subscribers expect to see a Traveller article once in a while, and we're not going to tell them "You have to subscribe to a different magazine now for that."

Q. Will the playtests of Traveller material be moved from Pyramid to JTAS?

A. No; when we set up Pyramid, we promised our subscribers that the playtests would be there. Frankly, it is a great deal easier for our editors to keep all the playtests in the same place anyway, but the bottom line is that we made a deal with the Pyramid subscribers and we're not going to change it.