I also started my "travelling" in '79, but with CT, I always felt that the
milieu was missing something critical, beyond simple game mechanics, it was
missing a frontier. everywhere the characters went in canon traveller,
pretty much, someone else had gone before.
TNE didn't rectify that per se, but put a more exploratory spin on things,
someone else had certainly been there before, but the pieces where so
broken, EVERYWHERE was a frontier.
And with the pieces so thoroughly broken, any group of PCs could quite
literally see themselves as movers and shakers.
I have had the pleasure of GMing the same people in both CT and TNE. and by
far, they had more fun with TNE. 'people' are understandable enemies, and
Virus, though difficult at first to conceptualize for the average joe, was
NOT the average NPC. it was not a Vargr or a Virushi or a Vilani!
well played, virus was a potential for unique and memorable encounters.
for all my attempts to make vampires memorable encounters, for whatever
reason, the PCs liked 'The Warden' most 8-)
On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 4:47 PM, Evyn MacDude <> wrote:
> **
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 09:51, Ewan Quibell <> wrote:
>
>> On 21/10/2011 01:55, Matt wrote:
>>
>> > It's really unfortunate about the split in the Traveller community over
>> TNE.
>>
>> I agree. It's what started the fragmentation of the Traveller community.
>> And now it's completely fragmented.
>
>
> Well, IMHO TNE was the final nail for a number of reasons, not just virus.
>
> 1st off it was a radical edition change, from MT/DGP mechanics to the GDW
> House System, this was huge. While a lot of people didn't particularly like
> MT (I for one pretty much Loath it for how buggy and typo ridden it was), it
> was a huge change from the kinda linear evolution that was CT/MT. Or to say
> MT was backwards compatible with CT, TNE wasn't.
>
> 2nd was the reset, a lot of people where upset with the wiping away of the
> Imperium, it sometimes amazes me how many Big Government fans there
> is amongst the fan base. Another part of this was the
> re-setting of technical assumptions, TL15 was no longer the requirement for
> things to work. Roundabout is They fixed stuff that had been terminally
> broken and people bitched about it. So really it was a change, and well a
> lot of gamers don't like it.
>
> 3rd and last was Virus, which always surprised me, as the genesis of it was
> in two separate CT/MT products, and it made sense in terms of the previous
> setting. I think what it really did was piss off the Anti-AI faction, as it
> allowed AI into Traveller at lower than the "cannon" TLs. Again this is my
> opinion after 20 years of TML membership and related digital fandom. (For
> the record it was sometime in the late 78-79 when acquired my 1st traveller
> books, so in my heart CT is the only true edition)
>
> Ok, I liked TNE both the setting and the rules. But to be honest if I where
> going to run a game in the ERA I would use the 1248 books by Martin J.
> Dougherty, with MgT's character generation and task resolution,
> and technical details from CT/Striker/FF&S (Book2 for ship design, Book5 is
> ok for fleet combat but doesn't scale to RPG levels ver well).
>
> As for fragmentation of the fan base, there is too much choice for it not
> to be fragmented, with at least seven versions available, and only 3 are
> mechanically interchangeable CT, MT & MgT. Coupled with 3 or 4 active Era to
> play in, it can't help but fragment. What gets me is the antagonism between
> groups who titularly are fans of the same core thing.
> --
> Evyn
>
>
>
--
"Here at Ortillery Command we have at our diposal hundred megawatt laser
beams, mach 20 titanium rods and guided thermonuclear bombs. Some people say
we think that we're God. We're not God. We just borrowed his SMITE button
for our fire control system."