Yeah. Obviously I thought about alternatives, and just as obviously, I
came back to the idea of virus that Frank had floated earlier. But it is
not fair to say that virus was always a foregone conclusion since Frank's
thoughts. That was not a foregone conclusion, and we did not tie ourselves
into that.
However, in considering the alternatives, I found myself drawn back to the
virus idea for two reasons:
1. It would allow Traveller to finally make the leap into actual AI in the
game, an interesting SF component. Traveller had kind of paced around on
the ledge of what is or is not AI, is it TL 16 or what, and rather than try
to convince ourselves, "yeah, this algorithm advance constitutes AI," what
if one of the things just comes at you shooting? That has a tendency to
make you say, "okay, discussion over, it's AI."
2. We had the Cymbeline chip, a long-established, nostalgic CT thing which
we could tie it to, and that would allow us to tie it to things we already
knew were there, and ground Traveller within itself.
Made sense to me, and I ran it past the staff, and everyone was excited by
the new opportunities it would give us. I coined the word "Vampire Ship" to
get Les excited, because I wanted to get him involved as well, and he was
always into monsters. And it did get Les excited, which made me happy. But
he left for TSR shortly after that, which was too bad. More staff is better
than fewer.
On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 05:39:50 -0000, "constantine_