Having gotten that out of the way, let me first ask specifically what you
mean by "would Virus stabilize?" I think I'll get at that below, but maybe
you have something specific in mind.
First, the usual caveats and usual examples.
These "plans" or "ideas" or "intents" are just that, concepts for where we
intended to go and how we thought we'd get there. As a practical matter,
we would try to come up with production schedules about a year out, but
even those were subject to great change if a new idea or opportunity came
up. Examples of this include Twilight:2000 Version 2.2 (T2KV2.2) which we
put together really fast to have a GenCon release, as having a GenCon
release was a big thing. The TNE stuff we had in the works wasn't going to
be ready in time, and we didn't want to rush those, and T2K was coming due
for a reprint but was still in the D10 system and updating it to be more
fully compatible with TNE was something we wanted to do. So we stayed up
for a week and knocked that out. Sometimes we'd have something on the
schedule being written out of house and it would come in in bad shape and
we'd have to push it back and put something else in. Also remember that
through much of this period we were also supporting Dark Conspiracy,
Dangerous Journeys, miniatures lines, etc.
So ideas we had about storyline developments were generally "paced" by
products to be released, which mostly would have been the 64 or 80 page
book. 80 was about the usual target if I recall correctly, but you could
look at page numbers and tell me if that's true.
In the long run, the idea was to tell a bunch of stories to about five
years out. By five years out we would have had the RC and Regency making
first contact, but it might perhaps have happened before that. I'm pretty
sure we moved up the Regency Source Book because we got the sense that the
Imperial fans needed to start seeing something for them, so that may have
pulled forward the RC-Regency meeting as well.
Now, what year in game-time would that be? I don't know, we would have
calculated it out to be sensible. We didn't have a big timeline with
target years, and even if we had, we would have been changing it all the
time. And one of the reasons for changing it all the time was that things
would come up.
For example, one day, probably a Monday, Frank came in. He had been
consulting the "ships per planet" algorithms we published somewhere, and
he had discovered, "Oh, crap! Solee! This RC expansion stuff isn't going
to be as easy as we thought." We could have hand-waved it away, but I
don't think we ever really considered that. Whether it was a commitment to
following the rules we had laid out, or that moment in a game when the ref
makes a die roll that really screws up the plan and he is tempted to fudge
the roll and go along with preconception but realizes, "no, this may be
more interesting," or the fact that we thought it was fun that the game
could surprise us, we never really considered hand-waving it out.
But that realization led to at least three things.
1. The RC isn't going to be able to expand as fast, building up strength
to take on Solee is going to take some significant time. We're going to be
down here for a while. I think this probably led to moving up the RSB,
because it was going to be clear to players that things down in RC
territory were slowing down, so we had to open up the other setting for
those who wanted to play in the Regency rather than the RC.
2. Frank asked me how the heck the RC was going to beat Solee. I said that
the RC was going to eventually get itself some tame Vampire ships (in
order to eventually torque off the Regency) and these would provide a
great advantage in combat, as well as being a way to rapidly increase
available fleet tonnage. And that led to Vampire Fleets coming out when it
did, to set up that development.
3. That also led to my telling Frank about the Virus shipyard out in
(Diaspora?), which led to the Guilded Lilly (a deliberate corruption of
the common phrase in both words) "Epic Adventure" trilogy. You may note
that I said "telling Frank about," implying that he did not know about it,
because he didn't. Which is another insight into how we didn't have a
giant GDW blueprint. As Traveller line manager I spent the most time
researching and prepping TNE stuff, Frank spent the most time thinking
about Command Decision and boardgames, Les knew where he wanted to go with
Dark Con, etc., and there was never time to brief each other on all of the
details that we were working out. But obviously we'd bring each other up
to speed when it was a good time for it, and that was one of those cases.
Although we obviously practiced some specialization, when it was time to
start making things, we were self-consciously a "workshop" where we tried
to make sure everything benefited from inputs and suggestions from the
whole stuff.
While I said above that we did not have a big blueprint or timeline on the
wall, what I did have on my wall was a floor-to-ceiling map of all of
Charted Space, photocopied out of Imperial Survey and taped together and
with all of the J1 "mains" colored in with magic marker so you could spot
traffic patterns. Similarly, I did the same thing for J2 access (but only
for about 6 or 8 sectors spinward of the RC because a J2 map is more
time-consuming to make), and that's how I found the isolated world where I
placed the Vampire shipyard. I think the J2 map was more useful because it
better exposed unusual gaps and chokepoints, and is closer to an average
jump.
I'm going to break here, more later.
> ( I'm a relative new comer to the group, and may have missed some of
Dave's prior info on this topic, so feel free to point me to the proper
channels for finding old information. )
>
> I would really like to know what the short range and long range (and
> medium range, if you recall) timelines were for the New Era universe.
Would the Imperium eventually reform? Would Virus eventually stabilize?
Inquiring Duke ('88) guys want to know. :)
>
>
>
>
mean by "would Virus stabilize?" I think I'll get at that below, but maybe
you have something specific in mind.
First, the usual caveats and usual examples.
These "plans" or "ideas" or "intents" are just that, concepts for where we
intended to go and how we thought we'd get there. As a practical matter,
we would try to come up with production schedules about a year out, but
even those were subject to great change if a new idea or opportunity came
up. Examples of this include Twilight:2000 Version 2.2 (T2KV2.2) which we
put together really fast to have a GenCon release, as having a GenCon
release was a big thing. The TNE stuff we had in the works wasn't going to
be ready in time, and we didn't want to rush those, and T2K was coming due
for a reprint but was still in the D10 system and updating it to be more
fully compatible with TNE was something we wanted to do. So we stayed up
for a week and knocked that out. Sometimes we'd have something on the
schedule being written out of house and it would come in in bad shape and
we'd have to push it back and put something else in. Also remember that
through much of this period we were also supporting Dark Conspiracy,
Dangerous Journeys, miniatures lines, etc.
So ideas we had about storyline developments were generally "paced" by
products to be released, which mostly would have been the 64 or 80 page
book. 80 was about the usual target if I recall correctly, but you could
look at page numbers and tell me if that's true.
In the long run, the idea was to tell a bunch of stories to about five
years out. By five years out we would have had the RC and Regency making
first contact, but it might perhaps have happened before that. I'm pretty
sure we moved up the Regency Source Book because we got the sense that the
Imperial fans needed to start seeing something for them, so that may have
pulled forward the RC-Regency meeting as well.
Now, what year in game-time would that be? I don't know, we would have
calculated it out to be sensible. We didn't have a big timeline with
target years, and even if we had, we would have been changing it all the
time. And one of the reasons for changing it all the time was that things
would come up.
For example, one day, probably a Monday, Frank came in. He had been
consulting the "ships per planet" algorithms we published somewhere, and
he had discovered, "Oh, crap! Solee! This RC expansion stuff isn't going
to be as easy as we thought." We could have hand-waved it away, but I
don't think we ever really considered that. Whether it was a commitment to
following the rules we had laid out, or that moment in a game when the ref
makes a die roll that really screws up the plan and he is tempted to fudge
the roll and go along with preconception but realizes, "no, this may be
more interesting," or the fact that we thought it was fun that the game
could surprise us, we never really considered hand-waving it out.
But that realization led to at least three things.
1. The RC isn't going to be able to expand as fast, building up strength
to take on Solee is going to take some significant time. We're going to be
down here for a while. I think this probably led to moving up the RSB,
because it was going to be clear to players that things down in RC
territory were slowing down, so we had to open up the other setting for
those who wanted to play in the Regency rather than the RC.
2. Frank asked me how the heck the RC was going to beat Solee. I said that
the RC was going to eventually get itself some tame Vampire ships (in
order to eventually torque off the Regency) and these would provide a
great advantage in combat, as well as being a way to rapidly increase
available fleet tonnage. And that led to Vampire Fleets coming out when it
did, to set up that development.
3. That also led to my telling Frank about the Virus shipyard out in
(Diaspora?), which led to the Guilded Lilly (a deliberate corruption of
the common phrase in both words) "Epic Adventure" trilogy. You may note
that I said "telling Frank about," implying that he did not know about it,
because he didn't. Which is another insight into how we didn't have a
giant GDW blueprint. As Traveller line manager I spent the most time
researching and prepping TNE stuff, Frank spent the most time thinking
about Command Decision and boardgames, Les knew where he wanted to go with
Dark Con, etc., and there was never time to brief each other on all of the
details that we were working out. But obviously we'd bring each other up
to speed when it was a good time for it, and that was one of those cases.
Although we obviously practiced some specialization, when it was time to
start making things, we were self-consciously a "workshop" where we tried
to make sure everything benefited from inputs and suggestions from the
whole stuff.
While I said above that we did not have a big blueprint or timeline on the
wall, what I did have on my wall was a floor-to-ceiling map of all of
Charted Space, photocopied out of Imperial Survey and taped together and
with all of the J1 "mains" colored in with magic marker so you could spot
traffic patterns. Similarly, I did the same thing for J2 access (but only
for about 6 or 8 sectors spinward of the RC because a J2 map is more
time-consuming to make), and that's how I found the isolated world where I
placed the Vampire shipyard. I think the J2 map was more useful because it
better exposed unusual gaps and chokepoints, and is closer to an average
jump.
I'm going to break here, more later.
> ( I'm a relative new comer to the group, and may have missed some of
Dave's prior info on this topic, so feel free to point me to the proper
channels for finding old information. )
>
> I would really like to know what the short range and long range (and
> medium range, if you recall) timelines were for the New Era universe.
Would the Imperium eventually reform? Would Virus eventually stabilize?
Inquiring Duke ('88) guys want to know. :)
>
>
>
>