--- In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote:
>
> So you're an original TNE playtester? Cool.
>
> How did we do that? For some reason the playtest that I really remember
> was for DJ, where we knew there was a mole/leak in the system, and we had
> to painstakingly distribute the playtest sets with strategic typos so we
> could identify the leak. DJ was unlike everything else we did in that
> cloak-and-dagger stuff, as only it had all of the licensing and legal
> issues.
>
> Good times.
>
The chapter drafts were distributed via GEnie and a handful of other places, mostly by Loren, who even then was the most common online presence. A fairly standard open playtest, based on prior and subsequent experiences.
I ran a convention game based on the playtest chapters and attracted the attention of two other Traveller GMs at the same convention. The group that formed from that meeting is still going, though we are currently using MGT and both of those players have departed (one from this life, the other from this time zone). Old TMLers will remember them, though: the famously run-on typist Jim Kelleher (who died four years ago of diabetes complications) and the inimitable Katie Helm, who's TML posts on geophysics and chemistry in the 80s were amazingly complete, informative, and guaranteed insomnia cures. She married a mad scientist and moved to Maine. We miss them both.