> Jeff Zeitlin wrote:
>
> And, in retrospect, I think this may have ultimately hurt Traveller -
there really wasn't anything in the setting to 'grab' you.
What to some (open-ended) was a strength was to others an Achilles heel.
Those that found it easy to say, "I know what I want to do with this"
could, but would by definition create a balkanized player base. Those who
didn't needed more to "tell them how Traveller is played." That was one of
the things the distributors pounded at us: "give them a role, and
ecological niche so they know how to begin," hence the two adventures in
the TNE rulebook. Which of course the Old Guard thought was a waste of
page count, and attached the game too tightly to the setting. Both sides
had valid needs, but we were always getting advice from
diametrically-opposed directions and incompletely satisfying someone.
> My primary - essentially, /only/ - objection to TNE was /not/ the
wholesale destruction, but the /means/ of that destruction - just based
on what we knew of computers at the time of TNE, Virus represented a
violation of just too many principles that were even then considered
/basic/ for protecting against malware. Of course, with the increasing
capability of browsers, and the advent of such abominations as
> unsandboxed Flash, Java, and scripting, the TNE scenario suddenly seems
less improbable, even given that we have people howling about how
insecure browsers, especially Internet Explorer, are...
To me there was no reason to believe that 57th century computers were
remotely like what we have, what we're really talking about in terms of
cyberwarfare (we have a word for it now) is ECM, constant waves of
measure, counter-measure, counter-counter-measure, and we're always going
to be at a "snapshot" of that endless arms race. I had thought that by
reaching back to the Cymbeline chip, which was already established by CT
could rewire the hardware on which it sat, we could get around some of
that, but obviously what happened is, "I know something about computers,
and know how to make my Mozilla browser secure (or whatever people were
using in 1993), you people are really stupid." And I could have spent
another year trying to make it more "plausible" and it still would have
gotten the same response. We felt at the time that as a single plot device
that people did to themselves, that "poetically" brought the Rebellion
full-circle, that would allow AI, etc., had a lot going for it. And after
five years of essentially unsupported Rebellion, Black Wars, Hard Times,
etc., we needed something to "hit the reset" button that seemed to follow
logically from what had already been printed. If we hadn't had GW
Factbook, DJ lawsuit, and MTG would it have caught on enough with the
people that didn't object? Counter-factuals don't count for much if I
can't slip into that parallel dimension.
By the way, what did you think of the BSG reboot? When I watched the
original series, I thought, "Oh, Dave, you idiot! The NAV system, that's
what I did wrong, it should have been the NAV system." Although not as
strongly as "Firefly" I got a frequent TNE buzz off of BSG, like the Cylon
meta-identities. (But they did those wrong--moving consciousness requires
signal, which you could jam, which proves from TNE terms it was psionics,
which fit in with all the dreams and religious hoo-ha.)
> But TNE did represent a 'doing right' of what the classical setting 'did
wrong' - the PCs /could/ Make A Difference, and we could /see/, not
simply /read/. Did I like the Star Viking motif of the RC expansion? Not
really; that struck me as being more like the Spanish colonization
model, and it's pretty clear that the Anglo-Dutch model was a bit more
successful. But I didn't have to use the Star Vikings; I could run my
own post-Collapse universe with a Dawn League that wasn't in that
expansion mode, but instead did so by fostering trade and /creating/
wealth rather than treating wealth as a zero-sum game.
Indeed. WTH was an incomplete step in that direction, Regency would have
been similar. The best solution to that would have been a Pocket Empires
sourcebook, but it's hard to believe that would have fit into the
production schedule. We really should have released the Regency
simultaneously with the RC, but there was simply not the resources to do
that.
On the other side of the coin, RC brought in people with a T2K bent, and
military SF miniatures-based shoot 'em ups are a lot quicker to write, and
had a ready audience. Which kind of takes us back up to your first para,
in that sometimes too many "grabs" dilute you as badly as none at all.
(I'm not arguing that TNE did that, it's just an observation.) Fortunately
I don't suffer from, "what would you do differently?" You can't. You did
what you did in that fleeting moment with the best wits you had available.
Experience only comes later, and you can't retrofit that back in time.
Thanks for the honest "warts and all" appreciations. :-)
> --
> Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
> Freelance Traveller
> The Electronic Fan-Supported
> Traveller® Fanzine and Resource
>
>
> http://www.freelancetraveller.com
> http://freelancetraveller.downport.com/
>
>
>
> ®Traveller is a registered trademark of
> Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2014. Use of
> the trademark in this notice and in the
> referenced materials is not intended to
> infringe or devalue the trademark.
>
> Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following
> enterprises for hosting services:
>
> CyberNET Web Hosting (http://www.cyberwebhosting.net)
> The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com)
>
>
> And, in retrospect, I think this may have ultimately hurt Traveller -
there really wasn't anything in the setting to 'grab' you.
What to some (open-ended) was a strength was to others an Achilles heel.
Those that found it easy to say, "I know what I want to do with this"
could, but would by definition create a balkanized player base. Those who
didn't needed more to "tell them how Traveller is played." That was one of
the things the distributors pounded at us: "give them a role, and
ecological niche so they know how to begin," hence the two adventures in
the TNE rulebook. Which of course the Old Guard thought was a waste of
page count, and attached the game too tightly to the setting. Both sides
had valid needs, but we were always getting advice from
diametrically-opposed directions and incompletely satisfying someone.
> My primary - essentially, /only/ - objection to TNE was /not/ the
wholesale destruction, but the /means/ of that destruction - just based
on what we knew of computers at the time of TNE, Virus represented a
violation of just too many principles that were even then considered
/basic/ for protecting against malware. Of course, with the increasing
capability of browsers, and the advent of such abominations as
> unsandboxed Flash, Java, and scripting, the TNE scenario suddenly seems
less improbable, even given that we have people howling about how
insecure browsers, especially Internet Explorer, are...
To me there was no reason to believe that 57th century computers were
remotely like what we have, what we're really talking about in terms of
cyberwarfare (we have a word for it now) is ECM, constant waves of
measure, counter-measure, counter-counter-measure, and we're always going
to be at a "snapshot" of that endless arms race. I had thought that by
reaching back to the Cymbeline chip, which was already established by CT
could rewire the hardware on which it sat, we could get around some of
that, but obviously what happened is, "I know something about computers,
and know how to make my Mozilla browser secure (or whatever people were
using in 1993), you people are really stupid." And I could have spent
another year trying to make it more "plausible" and it still would have
gotten the same response. We felt at the time that as a single plot device
that people did to themselves, that "poetically" brought the Rebellion
full-circle, that would allow AI, etc., had a lot going for it. And after
five years of essentially unsupported Rebellion, Black Wars, Hard Times,
etc., we needed something to "hit the reset" button that seemed to follow
logically from what had already been printed. If we hadn't had GW
Factbook, DJ lawsuit, and MTG would it have caught on enough with the
people that didn't object? Counter-factuals don't count for much if I
can't slip into that parallel dimension.
By the way, what did you think of the BSG reboot? When I watched the
original series, I thought, "Oh, Dave, you idiot! The NAV system, that's
what I did wrong, it should have been the NAV system." Although not as
strongly as "Firefly" I got a frequent TNE buzz off of BSG, like the Cylon
meta-identities. (But they did those wrong--moving consciousness requires
signal, which you could jam, which proves from TNE terms it was psionics,
which fit in with all the dreams and religious hoo-ha.)
> But TNE did represent a 'doing right' of what the classical setting 'did
wrong' - the PCs /could/ Make A Difference, and we could /see/, not
simply /read/. Did I like the Star Viking motif of the RC expansion? Not
really; that struck me as being more like the Spanish colonization
model, and it's pretty clear that the Anglo-Dutch model was a bit more
successful. But I didn't have to use the Star Vikings; I could run my
own post-Collapse universe with a Dawn League that wasn't in that
expansion mode, but instead did so by fostering trade and /creating/
wealth rather than treating wealth as a zero-sum game.
Indeed. WTH was an incomplete step in that direction, Regency would have
been similar. The best solution to that would have been a Pocket Empires
sourcebook, but it's hard to believe that would have fit into the
production schedule. We really should have released the Regency
simultaneously with the RC, but there was simply not the resources to do
that.
On the other side of the coin, RC brought in people with a T2K bent, and
military SF miniatures-based shoot 'em ups are a lot quicker to write, and
had a ready audience. Which kind of takes us back up to your first para,
in that sometimes too many "grabs" dilute you as badly as none at all.
(I'm not arguing that TNE did that, it's just an observation.) Fortunately
I don't suffer from, "what would you do differently?" You can't. You did
what you did in that fleeting moment with the best wits you had available.
Experience only comes later, and you can't retrofit that back in time.
Thanks for the honest "warts and all" appreciations. :-)
> --
> Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
> Freelance Traveller
> The Electronic Fan-Supported
> Traveller® Fanzine and Resource
>
>
> http://www.freelancetraveller.com
> http://freelancetraveller.downport.com/
>
>
>
> ®Traveller is a registered trademark of
> Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2014. Use of
> the trademark in this notice and in the
> referenced materials is not intended to
> infringe or devalue the trademark.
>
> Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following
> enterprises for hosting services:
>
> CyberNET Web Hosting (http://www.cyberwebhosting.net)
> The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com)
>