Harold: Why the cutoff at 2013? Isn't Mongoose still publishing?
On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>
>
> GT is GURPS using an alternative Traveller setting. That says absolutely
> nothing about its quality and in fact I've bought a few of the sourcebooks
> to use as references, since I consider the information they contain about
> worlds, history and such to be more or less "semi-canon", since they were
> put together under the eye of Loren. That said, if anything in them
> contradicts TNE (and by extension MT or CT) or even CoE (also
> "semi-canon"...a whole discussion to have later, but everything in there
> was developed from John Harshman's original work as well as MT), I put it
> aside in favor of what was written prior to GT.
>
> With all due respect to Marc or any 'Traveller canon fanatics' (and this
> is coming from one), to declare anything published for Traveller by a
> license holder between 1998 and 2013 to be some sort of heresy is
> laughable, not as laughable as the editing on T4, but I digress. It's
> particularly rich in light of the fact MonTrav derives in large part from
> an early T5 draft and Marc was consulted in the writing of it. If a bunch
> of middle-aged guys and gals happened to throw down coin last year for a
> Kickstarter campaign and get T5 published, cool (super cool actually, it
> says something good about the popularity of the game). But that fact alone
> doesn't invalidate anything MonTrav, per se. Now if Marc wants to hire
> someone to write a "history of the Fourth Imperium" for his company that
> contradicts everything done for MonTrav, or for that matter, wants to
> re-write Earth's history post-war from "1117 to 1248" and ignore everything
> that Martin and I did (or DGP did), then fine, as the copyright holder he's
> entitled, but don't expect that to fly too well with this bunch.
>
> Really, the hierarchy of canon is as follows: 1) that which is written by
> the copyright holder, 2) that which is written by an official license
> holder, 3) that which is written with a letter of permission from the
> copyright holder (fanzine stuff), all other generally accepted writings
> within the community. But even then, if the Traveller community as a whole
> doesn't like it, it doesn't matter what people publish, it'll end up in the
> discount bin like T4 and will be cheerfully ignored until someone comes out
> with a new version.
>
> The problem with having any sort of "holy war" over all this would be that
> eventually we ended up urinating all over each other, declaring a pox on
> everyone's house and doing our thing, having changed no one's mind.
> Traveller fans of all types are a balkanized group that love the game, but
> can't agree on how to play it or even much beyond what appears in the
> little black books and their GDW supplements.
>
>
>
On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>
>
> GT is GURPS using an alternative Traveller setting. That says absolutely
> nothing about its quality and in fact I've bought a few of the sourcebooks
> to use as references, since I consider the information they contain about
> worlds, history and such to be more or less "semi-canon", since they were
> put together under the eye of Loren. That said, if anything in them
> contradicts TNE (and by extension MT or CT) or even CoE (also
> "semi-canon"...a whole discussion to have later, but everything in there
> was developed from John Harshman's original work as well as MT), I put it
> aside in favor of what was written prior to GT.
>
> With all due respect to Marc or any 'Traveller canon fanatics' (and this
> is coming from one), to declare anything published for Traveller by a
> license holder between 1998 and 2013 to be some sort of heresy is
> laughable, not as laughable as the editing on T4, but I digress. It's
> particularly rich in light of the fact MonTrav derives in large part from
> an early T5 draft and Marc was consulted in the writing of it. If a bunch
> of middle-aged guys and gals happened to throw down coin last year for a
> Kickstarter campaign and get T5 published, cool (super cool actually, it
> says something good about the popularity of the game). But that fact alone
> doesn't invalidate anything MonTrav, per se. Now if Marc wants to hire
> someone to write a "history of the Fourth Imperium" for his company that
> contradicts everything done for MonTrav, or for that matter, wants to
> re-write Earth's history post-war from "1117 to 1248" and ignore everything
> that Martin and I did (or DGP did), then fine, as the copyright holder he's
> entitled, but don't expect that to fly too well with this bunch.
>
> Really, the hierarchy of canon is as follows: 1) that which is written by
> the copyright holder, 2) that which is written by an official license
> holder, 3) that which is written with a letter of permission from the
> copyright holder (fanzine stuff), all other generally accepted writings
> within the community. But even then, if the Traveller community as a whole
> doesn't like it, it doesn't matter what people publish, it'll end up in the
> discount bin like T4 and will be cheerfully ignored until someone comes out
> with a new version.
>
> The problem with having any sort of "holy war" over all this would be that
> eventually we ended up urinating all over each other, declaring a pox on
> everyone's house and doing our thing, having changed no one's mind.
> Traveller fans of all types are a balkanized group that love the game, but
> can't agree on how to play it or even much beyond what appears in the
> little black books and their GDW supplements.
>
>
>