I'm fine. These days I manage LMS (learning management system) software and do some instructional design for Antioch University. We have campuses in four states and five locations across the US.
After the bulk of the CoE material was published in 1996 and 1997,
the last piece I had published Traveller-wise was an entry in '101
Religions' regarding Gabreelism, which was published by BITS in 1998. In the latter part of 1997, I attempted to get a license from Marc Miller to continue to publish Traveller Chronicle, with the idea being that it could perhaps serve as the flagship for a larger effort to publish additional TNE books (we even had this crazy idea of taking the game mechanics and adapting them to other settings, such as the 1930s and 1940s, or doing a 'Space: Above and Beyond' RPG). Unfortunately, my business partner and I were unable to come to agreement with him on terms we could live with, so the idea got scrapped. Over the next couple of years I went through some tough times: job change, a divorce, a computer crash that meant that several drafts of unfinished CoE documents were lost. All of it got me rethinking my life and how I was spending my time, and so I made a return to college, obtaining a Telelcommunications degree in 2002. I got remarried in 2003,
and stayed busy doing other things, primarily working as a web designer. Aside from get togethers with friends here and there to do some gaming (miniatures, D&D, board games mostly), I didn't really get interested in Traveller again until I started playing a game called Cyber Nations in 2007 (I still play CN, but lord know why...). I started writing a Traveler-related story that went with the character I played and even got out a couple of books for reference. It wasn't last year however after I finished an M.A. in Instructional Technology, that I restarted a Traveller gaming group (just me and a few close friends), and that has rekindled my interest in writing again.At this stage my Traveller collection is a bit of a mess, with everything from printouts of online conversations from the mid-90s to old copies of Challenge and classic Traveller, to all the TNE sourcebooks, scattered over a couple of rooms and in a dozen boxes.
As I get organized, it made sense to come here and to a
few other sites and see what the heck has been going on since I left. Will I start cranking out volumes of material again? Honestly, probably not. While I finally have more time than have for a while to devote to it, a lot depends on how work goes. Also, I have zero desire to learn a new gaming system, so anything I'd do would fall under the "labor of love" category and be published on the Web. I would LOVE to turn Children of Earth into a novel(s) (preferably a graphic novel series) some day, and perhaps that is where all this heading.
Some additional thoughts on CoE:
1. When I read some of the initial TNE material, I was struck by the fact that religion was portrayed in a negative light. False gods, false prophets, misplaced faith. Science = light and must prevail. But wasn't it science that killed trillions trumping the total killed in all of man's religious wars combined? What if the religious types were more like the Spanish exploring the new world, or the Arabs bringing their faith to areas of a collapsed empire? Thus the idea of COE was born.
2. Just like the Spanish and the Arabs, the Terran Gabreelists aren't always the good guys or the bad guys (though on balance they were intended to be seen as good) and indeed how you perceive them was suppose to be entirely dependent upon your point of view. Far from being monolithic, the rules regarding faith were written such that they reflected the varied levels of faith that one could have found in Spain in 1550 or in the Arab Caliphates in the 7th century.
3. The Terran Republic always had the Dingir League as a counter balance. Hate the Terran Republic, despise what it stands for but still want to role-play in the Solomani Rim? that's where the Dingir League was supposed to come in. Founded by the last Imperial holdouts in the pocket that was cut off by Solomani forces during the Rebellion, they were a bit of a throwback to the "good old days".
4. Why two pocket empires, Harold? Wouldn't that be too much power concentrated into too small of an area. Go back and look the map of the Solomani Rim again. Lots of high population worlds, well developed, very little true backwater there. The Collapse would naturally hit very hard (and it did) but the sheer amount of stuff laying around afterward would mean that probably favored at least a couple of civilizations surviving the experience. That they turned out to be the Terrans and the Dingirians and not the Vegans and the Booteans, or the Terrans and someone else completely different was a story choice.
5. My biggest regret about the CoE setting was that I didn't put enough effort into creating adventures for it. I think that would have helped people better understand what I was trying to convey with the setting, certainly better than the lengthy back story I created for the COE setting that concentrated in the Terran Civil War. Perhaps then I've found something to do now, eh?
So hopefully that bit of explanation is helpful. I am of course willing to answer any questions you might have.
.
On Monday, May 5, 2014 5:38 PM, Master Uxi <> wrote:
Wow, Harold Hale. Glad to see you. Rumors were you weren't doing so well. Glad they were wrong.
I would definitely like to see anything else you had done for CoE. It wasn't what I would have done, but that was part of what I liked about it the most.
- Sent from my SM-N900T
After the bulk of the CoE material was published in 1996 and 1997,
the last piece I had published Traveller-wise was an entry in '101
Religions' regarding Gabreelism, which was published by BITS in 1998. In the latter part of 1997, I attempted to get a license from Marc Miller to continue to publish Traveller Chronicle, with the idea being that it could perhaps serve as the flagship for a larger effort to publish additional TNE books (we even had this crazy idea of taking the game mechanics and adapting them to other settings, such as the 1930s and 1940s, or doing a 'Space: Above and Beyond' RPG). Unfortunately, my business partner and I were unable to come to agreement with him on terms we could live with, so the idea got scrapped. Over the next couple of years I went through some tough times: job change, a divorce, a computer crash that meant that several drafts of unfinished CoE documents were lost. All of it got me rethinking my life and how I was spending my time, and so I made a return to college, obtaining a Telelcommunications degree in 2002. I got remarried in 2003,
and stayed busy doing other things, primarily working as a web designer. Aside from get togethers with friends here and there to do some gaming (miniatures, D&D, board games mostly), I didn't really get interested in Traveller again until I started playing a game called Cyber Nations in 2007 (I still play CN, but lord know why...). I started writing a Traveler-related story that went with the character I played and even got out a couple of books for reference. It wasn't last year however after I finished an M.A. in Instructional Technology, that I restarted a Traveller gaming group (just me and a few close friends), and that has rekindled my interest in writing again.At this stage my Traveller collection is a bit of a mess, with everything from printouts of online conversations from the mid-90s to old copies of Challenge and classic Traveller, to all the TNE sourcebooks, scattered over a couple of rooms and in a dozen boxes.
As I get organized, it made sense to come here and to a
few other sites and see what the heck has been going on since I left. Will I start cranking out volumes of material again? Honestly, probably not. While I finally have more time than have for a while to devote to it, a lot depends on how work goes. Also, I have zero desire to learn a new gaming system, so anything I'd do would fall under the "labor of love" category and be published on the Web. I would LOVE to turn Children of Earth into a novel(s) (preferably a graphic novel series) some day, and perhaps that is where all this heading.
Some additional thoughts on CoE:
1. When I read some of the initial TNE material, I was struck by the fact that religion was portrayed in a negative light. False gods, false prophets, misplaced faith. Science = light and must prevail. But wasn't it science that killed trillions trumping the total killed in all of man's religious wars combined? What if the religious types were more like the Spanish exploring the new world, or the Arabs bringing their faith to areas of a collapsed empire? Thus the idea of COE was born.
2. Just like the Spanish and the Arabs, the Terran Gabreelists aren't always the good guys or the bad guys (though on balance they were intended to be seen as good) and indeed how you perceive them was suppose to be entirely dependent upon your point of view. Far from being monolithic, the rules regarding faith were written such that they reflected the varied levels of faith that one could have found in Spain in 1550 or in the Arab Caliphates in the 7th century.
3. The Terran Republic always had the Dingir League as a counter balance. Hate the Terran Republic, despise what it stands for but still want to role-play in the Solomani Rim? that's where the Dingir League was supposed to come in. Founded by the last Imperial holdouts in the pocket that was cut off by Solomani forces during the Rebellion, they were a bit of a throwback to the "good old days".
4. Why two pocket empires, Harold? Wouldn't that be too much power concentrated into too small of an area. Go back and look the map of the Solomani Rim again. Lots of high population worlds, well developed, very little true backwater there. The Collapse would naturally hit very hard (and it did) but the sheer amount of stuff laying around afterward would mean that probably favored at least a couple of civilizations surviving the experience. That they turned out to be the Terrans and the Dingirians and not the Vegans and the Booteans, or the Terrans and someone else completely different was a story choice.
5. My biggest regret about the CoE setting was that I didn't put enough effort into creating adventures for it. I think that would have helped people better understand what I was trying to convey with the setting, certainly better than the lengthy back story I created for the COE setting that concentrated in the Terran Civil War. Perhaps then I've found something to do now, eh?
So hopefully that bit of explanation is helpful. I am of course willing to answer any questions you might have.
.
On Monday, May 5, 2014 5:38 PM, Master Uxi <> wrote:
Wow, Harold Hale. Glad to see you. Rumors were you weren't doing so well. Glad they were wrong.
I would definitely like to see anything else you had done for CoE. It wasn't what I would have done, but that was part of what I liked about it the most.
- Sent from my SM-N900T