By the way, it occurs to me that it makes sense to point out some things
that were Frank's contribution to TNE, because it seems only right.
Frank, GDW's genre-hopping president, as I'm sure you all know, made huge
contributions to TNE. I think he used the same kind of creative process
that I did, where he would allow the different lines to inspire each
other, rather than impair each other. What I mean by that is that it was
difficult to jump from a Challenge magazine to a Dark Con product to a
minuatures project to a TNE project to a boardgame project several times a
day, because it takes effort to wrap your brain back around the local
specific rules and environment. What I would do to kickstart the creative
process would be to think, "Okay, I just came off a Dark Con project and
have to go back to Traveller. What would a Dark Con character think of
this TNE situation, or how would this boardgame situation be translated
into TNE terms?" I think Frank did much the same thing.
In no particular order, Frank's ideas included the following:
* Schalli
* Sean "Hammer" Lathrop
* The female RC trooper who was divorced or separated
* The Ithklur PC in Star Vikings
* The "absent friends" toast
* The "Star Vikings" meme to begin with
* The "Long Ships" meme to begin with. My old college friend, Traveller
player, skipper of the Belladonna, and Best Man at my wedding Rick Boquist
did the design, which got sent back a couple times, "make it uglier, less
streamlined" "make it longer," "loooonger," and I convinced Frank to
change the name to "Clipper"
* The title and structure of the "PoT" book, from the Cherokee term
* The title and structure of the "S&G" book
* The original concept of a virus to end the Rebellion era, which is how
we had people bashing TNE long before we actually made any of the final
decisions. As recounted elsewhere, I decided to go with the virus idea
because it had a lot of things that appealed to me: Allowed us to bring AI
into Traveller, and the whole Aeschylus Once an Eagle quote:
So in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten."
That was the only way to end the Rebellion.
* The Solee
* Lots of other things.
Dave