Thread: Re: Dawn League naivete, or,           sorry for all the posts but..

Yes that was me. Depending on the forum or list, I am called either

"daryen", "caddocourt", or "Mike West". I dunno how exactly that

"caddocourt" gets in there, but, whatever.

I worked with Martin on the 1248 stuff, particularly on the Spinward

States. He even let me help direct what happened there. (No spoilers

here.) It was pretty cool.

In order to work on the Spinward States, I had to study the Regency

Source Book thoroughly. The more I read it, the more impressed I

became. Not only did you pack in the information (to the point where

some pages had reduced font sizes to make it fit!), but you packed

in a whole lot of stuff *between* the lines. That was impressive. I

know I misread some of that "between the lines" stuff, but even so

the fact that it was there to be read (or misread) was really impressive.

My favorite "between the lines" was Norris and his personal life. It

is explicitly stated that he "never found love", but, in fact, most
definitely

did! I am still trying to learn how to write things that well.

In addition, you set up a lot of loose threads that I had fun drawing

out and expanding. In particular, I had fun taking the Kiskii incident

and turning that ultimate tragedy into a long term benefit for the Regency.

Trin did not die in vain!

Thank you for making a book that I had to read over and over worth

the effort to do so.

Mike West



From: []
On Behalf Of
Sent: Sunday, March 23, 2014 5:38 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Dawn League naivete, or, sorry for all the
posts but...

Caddocourt--

(I'm doing really well on the whole, "that's the last of me for today"
thing.)

I apologize, but it's hard for me to keep names straight over the long
periods of time on this list with e-mail addresses that don't necessarily
show them (mine doesn't either). Are you they guy who threw himself in
front of me saying, "Dave don't listen, you don't want to hear this"? That
was very considerate of you, and I recall it fondly.

> "I have always wanted to finish them and put them out there, but just
never got the chance."

I would say, "my former life in a nutshell," but that would be incomplete.
To make it complete, I have to add, "my ex-wife remarried and they live
across the street from Marc Miller." THAT completes my former life in a
nutshell.

And speaking of, "just never got the chance" if I were as smart as I like
to believe I am, after all this time I would admit that none of that TNE
stuff is ever going to happen, erase those brain cells, and use them for
something else. I just can't bring myself to do it. I'm just too fond of
all of the little unwritten stories.

> Back when I did the Spinward States sourcebook for 1248, I had
desperately
> want to make an otherwise barren garden world the surprise home of some
mutant Hivers. They would have been the result of the crash of a wide
ranging Embassy ship that got stranded by the Civil War. The survivors,
not understanding either the ecology of the world they were on or the
interstellar situation just waited for rescue. By the time reality set
in,
> they were already doomed, but they had already made lots of
'handshaking'.
> With no (or not effective enough) predators on the world, the 'babies'
went on to run wild. The survivors never knew what they had unleashed.
>
> And when these 'wild Hivers' we're found over a century later, it was
quit
> he shock.
>
> Unfortunately, I just couldn't get them to fit in, so left them out. I
have always wanted to finish them and put them out there, but just never
got the chance.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Mar 23, 2014, at 4:22 PM, Master Uxi <> wrote:
>> I did have an idea for a colony of Hivers that were evangelized and
>> formed human style nuclear-esque families near Turin.
>

From: []
On Behalf Of

> Also, thank you for the insight into the RC. I detested the RC when I was
> first reading the New Era background info, they seemed nothing but the
> worst sort of bullies and opportunists. But seeing your explanations of
> the whys and hows makes them much more human to me, even if they are
> deeply flawed.

That's interesting, and not invalid, that you saw them that way. One of
the things about writing for different books, different groups in those
books, is that in writing for a group you would naturally become somewhat
biased toward them, in the meaning of taking on their POV, and the sense,
"yeah, we ARE the heroes of this story." Obviously the RC was supposed to
be some of the good guys, and in order to convey the swagger of a "Hammer"
Lathrop you had to put on some of that yourself. A lot of that came
straight out of T2K, but with the stronger addition, "we are not only
fighting for our own survival, we are fighting for a better world."
Sometimes that came across in T2K, but for a lot of players it didn't.

It's interesting, I never saw it that way Tim, of course my GM had all the
books and he gave the story to us, we all knew something horrible happened
after MT but he spun the tale and introduced the universe to us. We never
felt like we were doing anything "wrong" unless it was morally wrong, we
were doing our bit to ensure the survival of our people. Without our blood
sweat and tears the people behind us were going to be much worse off. So we
stole mothballed starships and power plants, the locals weren't using them,
we toppled TED's, they were power hungry thugs who got where they were
because they had all the guns.

We were the guys and girls who were out there on the raggedy edge living
minute to minute never knowing where our next meal was coming from and if
there would be a home to come back to when we were done. My GM was really
good as spinning the story, I'd been de-mob'd from the Marines because of an
injury and like Ritter I wasn't on Ashtabula when she vanished, when we
started the game we didn't know she was missing and when we found out it
tore a hole in those of us who'd been there. It was a really fun game.