>>FYI: I don't know that Dave (or perhaps Martin for that matter) ever
really understood where I was going with the Terrans. Sure they had a
powerful pocket empire in Children of Earth, but that was because the
intent was that they would serve as the basis for the "new Solomani",
not that I ever saw them to be competitors for the RC or the
Regency--indeed as I developed the storyline for Children of Earth, I
was setting the stage to ensure the Terrans would be busy elsewhere.
They would have only have been a major player toward the end when the
final battle with the baddies behind the Black Curtain would take place. <<
DN may have admitted recently to not understanding what you were doing.
It might be worth your while to look through his posts from the last
couple of months.
>>More about Children of Earth in another thread if there is interest,
else I'll hang back and continue to get a better feel for the room.<<
Wow, Harold Hale. Glad to see you. Rumors were you weren't doing so well.
Glad they were wrong.
I would definitely like to see anything else you had done for CoE. It
wasn't what I would have done, but that was part of what I liked about it
the most.
I'm fine. These days I manage LMS (learning management system) software and do some instructional design for Antioch University. We have campuses in four states and five locations across the US.
After the bulk of the CoE material was published in 1996 and 1997,
the last piece I had published Traveller-wise was an entry in '101
Religions' regarding Gabreelism, which was published by BITS in 1998. In the latter part of 1997, I attempted to get a license from Marc Miller to continue to publish Traveller Chronicle, with the idea being that it could perhaps serve as the flagship for a larger effort to publish additional TNE books (we even had this crazy idea of taking the game mechanics and adapting them to other settings, such as the 1930s and 1940s, or doing a 'Space: Above and Beyond' RPG). Unfortunately, my business partner and I were unable to come to agreement with him on terms we could live with, so the idea got scrapped. Over the next couple of years I went through some tough times: job change, a divorce, a computer crash that meant that several drafts of unfinished CoE documents were lost. All of it got me rethinking my life and how I was spending my time, and so I made a return to college, obtaining a Telelcommunications degree in 2002. I got remarried in 2003,
and stayed busy doing other things, primarily working as a web designer. Aside from get togethers with friends here and there to do some gaming (miniatures, D&D, board games mostly), I didn't really get interested in Traveller again until I started playing a game called Cyber Nations in 2007 (I still play CN, but lord know why...). I started writing a Traveler-related story that went with the character I played and even got out a couple of books for reference. It wasn't last year however after I finished an M.A. in Instructional Technology, that I restarted a Traveller gaming group (just me and a few close friends), and that has rekindled my interest in writing again.At this stage my Traveller collection is a bit of a mess, with everything from printouts of online conversations from the mid-90s to old copies of Challenge and classic Traveller, to all the TNE sourcebooks, scattered over a couple of rooms and in a dozen boxes.
As I get organized, it made sense to come here and to a
few other sites and see what the heck has been going on since I left. Will I start cranking out volumes of material again? Honestly, probably not. While I finally have more time than have for a while to devote to it, a lot depends on how work goes. Also, I have zero desire to learn a new gaming system, so anything I'd do would fall under the "labor of love" category and be published on the Web. I would LOVE to turn Children of Earth into a novel(s) (preferably a graphic novel series) some day, and perhaps that is where all this heading.
Some additional thoughts on CoE:
1. When I read some of the initial TNE material, I was struck by the fact that religion was portrayed in a negative light. False gods, false prophets, misplaced faith. Science = light and must prevail. But wasn't it science that killed trillions trumping the total killed in all of man's religious wars combined? What if the religious types were more like the Spanish exploring the new world, or the Arabs bringing their faith to areas of a collapsed empire? Thus the idea of COE was born.
2. Just like the Spanish and the Arabs, the Terran Gabreelists aren't always the good guys or the bad guys (though on balance they were intended to be seen as good) and indeed how you perceive them was suppose to be entirely dependent upon your point of view. Far from being monolithic, the rules regarding faith were written such that they reflected the varied levels of faith that one could have found in Spain in 1550 or in the Arab Caliphates in the 7th century.
3. The Terran Republic always had the Dingir League as a counter balance. Hate the Terran Republic, despise what it stands for but still want to role-play in the Solomani Rim? that's where the Dingir League was supposed to come in. Founded by the last Imperial holdouts in the pocket that was cut off by Solomani forces during the Rebellion, they were a bit of a throwback to the "good old days".
4. Why two pocket empires, Harold? Wouldn't that be too much power concentrated into too small of an area. Go back and look the map of the Solomani Rim again. Lots of high population worlds, well developed, very little true backwater there. The Collapse would naturally hit very hard (and it did) but the sheer amount of stuff laying around afterward would mean that probably favored at least a couple of civilizations surviving the experience. That they turned out to be the Terrans and the Dingirians and not the Vegans and the Booteans, or the Terrans and someone else completely different was a story choice.
5. My biggest regret about the CoE setting was that I didn't put enough effort into creating adventures for it. I think that would have helped people better understand what I was trying to convey with the setting, certainly better than the lengthy back story I created for the COE setting that concentrated in the Terran Civil War. Perhaps then I've found something to do now, eh?
So hopefully that bit of explanation is helpful. I am of course willing to answer any questions you might have.
.
On Monday, May 5, 2014 5:38 PM, Master Uxi <> wrote:
Wow, Harold Hale. Glad to see you. Rumors were you weren't doing so well. Glad they were wrong.
I would definitely like to see anything else you had done for CoE. It wasn't what I would have done, but that was part of what I liked about it the most.
Apologies for getting the other thread a bit off the rails. For the purposes of further conversation and to correct an error in a date (not bad for of the cuff from over a decade ago at least...), here's what I wrote:
Well, here are your CoE spoilers:
1.
The Terrans in 1203 would run into a massive vampire fleet at Ganesh.
Well, "run into it" isn't exactly the correct word, they knew it was
coming and went willingly. The Priestess of the Faith Shoshanna had
seen its arrival in a psionic vision and that it was intent was to seize control of Ganesh before moving on to nuke
carpet bomb Dingir for "disloyalty to Lucan". Whether the vampire
fleet originated from the Black Curtain, or some place else was left
open--the core of it had been patrolling the Jump-1 main in the region for some time. What was certain however is that had the Terrans not intervened,
sacrificing about 20% of their warships in the process, it was unlikely that
the Dingir League would have able to stop it in time, and the League
would have effectively wiped out. Ganesh becomes a turning point in
Terran-Dingirian relations. It
also causes the Terrans to effectively stop further expansion coreward
shortly thereafter (no contact with the RC therefore for an extended
period), and instead concentrate on expansion into the Bootean Cluster
and into the Aldebaran Sector. [Note: I didn't want the Terran
interacting with the RC until GDW, or whoever took over the RC story in
the future, was ready for it, likely in 1208 game time--that was a conscious decision I made long before Frank Chadwick started toy with "Guided Lily"]
2. At
some point down the line, I envisioned the ruling families of Dingir and
Terra would unite and the Dingir League merge into the Terran
Republic. I also saw the Terran Republic evolving over a period of
decades to be more secular--indeed Shoshanna preferred to stay out of
government affairs, only intervening when she felt it was necessary (as
with Ganesh). Eventually the Priestess of the Faith be someone like the
Pope today--influential, lot of followers, but able to muster the power
of a state? Not so much. No Ayatollah, that's for sure.
3.
As stated elsewhere, I was perfectly comfortable with people concluding
that the Terrans were "bad guys", but with respect, I saw them as good,
bad, and ugly. The US in its history has been all those things. Great
Britain in its history has been all those things. So have many other nations. Mostly I sought to
create a setting that wasn't "paranoid racists in space", and all too
often the Solomani came across as just that.
On Tuesday, May 6, 2014 12:02 PM, "" <> wrote:
Please do NOT respond to this thread unless it's really about DN. Please change the subject to what it's really about. If you want to talk about Harold's "Children of Earth" material, change the subject to that. Leaving "Since Dave N is feeling talkative" as the subject makes it more difficult to find this conversation at a later date.
Well I for one am happy to see you. Sorry you had such a rough trot.
Welcome back! ;-)
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
Me too. CoE certainly was something I always looked forward to in my TTCs.
Eamon
Sent from my iPad
On 7 May 2014, at 16:06, "David Jaques-Watson" <> wrote:
> Dear Harold -
>
> Well I for one am happy to see you. Sorry you had such a rough trot.
>
> Welcome back! ;-)
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>
I look back on the stuff that happened in the post-COE era to me personally and realize that perhaps some of it was for the best. Going back to school has certainly worked out for me. The divorce was something I wanted, and I was happier for it. I have no regrets about all the time I spent on Traveller, nor about the material I wrote for COE, save as I said, I wish that I had generated more adventures for it.
In terms of Traveller right now, I feel like one of those people in the New Era rummaging through the remains of a planetary civilization trying to figure out if the pieces parts can be put back together into something recognizable or at least coherent. More to come.
On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 3:06 AM, David Jaques-Watson <> wrote:
Dear Harold -
Well I for one am happy to see you. Sorry you had such a rough trot.
Welcome back! ;-)
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
And if CoE did nothing else, it gave Traveller and TNE particular a sense of continuation it would not have otherwise had. GDW had shut down. There were serious questions whether T4 would amount to much of anything (turns out it didn't....) and at any rate, it's focus wasn't on either the classic Traveller setting (CT, MT, TNE).
On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 8:37 AM, Eamon Watters <> wrote:
Me too. CoE certainly was something I always looked forward to in my TTCs.
Eamon
Sent from my iPad
On 7 May 2014, at 16:06, "David Jaques-Watson" <> wrote:
>Dear Harold -
>
>Well I for one am happy to see you. Sorry you had such a rough trot.
>
>Welcome back! ;-)
>----------------------------------------------------------
>David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
>http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
>"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>
It's good to see you back Harold after a long break.
Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPad
> On May 7, 2014, at 10:54 AM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>
> Thanks!
>
> And if CoE did nothing else, it gave Traveller and TNE particular a sense of continuation it would not have otherwise had. GDW had shut down. There were serious questions whether T4 would amount to much of anything (turns out it didn't....) and at any rate, it's focus wasn't on either the classic Traveller setting (CT, MT, TNE).
>
> On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 8:37 AM, Eamon Watters <> wrote:
>
> Me too. CoE certainly was something I always looked forward to in my TTCs.
>
> Eamon
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On 7 May 2014, at 16:06, "David Jaques-Watson" <> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dear Harold -
>>
>> Well I for one am happy to see you. Sorry you had such a rough trot.
>>
>> Welcome back! ;-)
>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
>> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
>> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>
>
>
On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 2:17 PM, DEREK STANLEY <> wrote:
Lol ya what are we on now, T5 T7?
It's good to see you back Harold after a long break.
Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPad
On May 7, 2014, at 10:54 AM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>Thanks!
>
>And if CoE did nothing else, it gave Traveller and TNE particular a sense of continuation it would not have otherwise had. GDW had shut down. There were serious questions whether T4 would amount to much of anything (turns out it didn't....) and at any rate, it's focus wasn't on either the classic Traveller setting (CT, MT, TNE).
>
>
>
>On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 8:37 AM, Eamon Watters <> wrote:
>
>
>Me too. CoE certainly was something I always looked forward to in my TTCs.
>
>
>Eamon
>
>Sent from my iPad
>
>On 7 May 2014, at 16:06, "David Jaques-Watson" <> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Dear Harold -
>>
>>Well I for one am happy to see you. Sorry you had such a rough trot.
>>
>>Welcome back! ;-)
>>----------------------------------------------------------
>>David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
>>http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
>>"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>>
>>
>
>
> On May 7, 2014, at 8:30 PM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>
> Actually it's...
>
> Traveller (1977, GDW)
> MegaTraveller (1987, GDW and DGP)
> Traveller: The New Era (1993, GDW)
> Marc Miller's Traveller (1996, Imperium Games)
> GURPS Traveller (1998, SJG)
> Traveller 20 (2002, QLI/RPGRealms)
> Traveller Hero (2007, Comstar Games)
> Mongoose Traveller (2008, Mongoose Publishing)
> Traveller5 (2013, FFE)
>
> On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 2:17 PM, DEREK STANLEY <> wrote:
>
> Lol ya what are we on now, T5 T7?
>
> It's good to see you back Harold after a long break.
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On May 7, 2014, at 10:54 AM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> And if CoE did nothing else, it gave Traveller and TNE particular a sense of continuation it would not have otherwise had. GDW had shut down. There were serious questions whether T4 would amount to much of anything (turns out it didn't....) and at any rate, it's focus wasn't on either the classic Traveller setting (CT, MT, TNE).
>>
>> On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 8:37 AM, Eamon Watters <> wrote:
>>
>> Me too. CoE certainly was something I always looked forward to in my TTCs.
>>
>> Eamon
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>>> On 7 May 2014, at 16:06, "David Jaques-Watson" <> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Dear Harold -
>>>
>>> Well I for one am happy to see you. Sorry you had such a rough trot.
>>>
>>> Welcome back! ;-)
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------
>>> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
>>> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
>>> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 8:27 PM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>
>
> Actually it's...
>
> Traveller (1977, GDW)
> MegaTraveller (1987, GDW and DGP)
> Traveller: The New Era (1993, GDW)
> Marc Miller's Traveller (1996, Imperium Games)
> GURPS Traveller (1998, SJG)
> Traveller 20 (2002, QLI/RPGRealms)
> Traveller Hero (2007, Comstar Games)
> Mongoose Traveller (2008, Mongoose Publishing)
> Traveller5 (2013, FFE)
>
IMHO, Traveller needs a Cladistics Diagram rather than a List. As T5 is
just an extension of T4 which is an odd hybrid of MT and GDW's House system
but not quite the descendant of TNE. While the 2 editions that were CT (up
to four depending how you count Starter Traveller), which spawned MT and
MgT. Then there is the hybrids GT, Traveller Hero and T20, all three have
serious out of Clade Grafts in the form of rules systems. So you see it can
get confusing real quick.
But in the terms of counting CT counts as two, then MT as 3, then T4 and
T5. which are the editions that Marc worked on thus self referentially to
Marc it works....
Marc and the 'purists39; don't count GURPS Traveller, T20, Traveller Hero and Mongoose Traveller as "real" versions of Traveller since they're licensed out and not done by Marc or FFE/GDW.
Personally, I think that attitude is really insulting to all the people who put in a lot of work on those editions of the games (particularly when GT was so well written and Mongoose Traveller is really popular now).
Agreed. There is a lot of good stuff in there...and frankly most of it is
far better edited and organized than T4 and (from what I've heard) T5.
On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 12:28 PM, <> wrote:
>
>
> Marc and the 'purists39; don't count GURPS Traveller, T20, Traveller Hero
> and Mongoose Traveller as "real" versions of Traveller since they're
> licensed out and not done by Marc or FFE/GDW.
>
> Personally, I think that attitude is really insulting to all the people
> who put in a lot of work on those editions of the games (particularly when
> GT was so well written and Mongoose Traveller is really popular now).
>
>
>
>
>
> Marc and the 'purists39; don't count GURPS Traveller, T20, Traveller Hero
> and Mongoose Traveller as "real" versions of Traveller since they're
> licensed out and not done by Marc or FFE/GDW.
>
But many of those same people say the same thing about TNE as well.
>
> Personally, I think that attitude is really insulting to all the people
> who put in a lot of work on those editions of the games (particularly when
> GT was so well written and Mongoose Traveller is really popular now).
>
>
>
Heck GT was mostly written by people that had written for Traveller all
along.
The only edition I haven't at least read is the Traveller Hero, but to be
honest a friend and I did that conversion years ago and I saw no need to
revisit it.
--
Evyn
1. >> I didn't want the Terran interacting with the RC until GDW, or
whoever took over the RC story in
the future, was ready for it, likely in 1208 game time<<
If getting your work incorporated into the OTU was your intent, then
that was a good idea.
3. >>Mostly I sought to create a setting that wasn't "paranoid racists
in space", and all too
often the Solomani came across as just that.<<
Yeah, I never liked that about the official storyline. In essence, it
was part of the whole "who do I root for in MT" dilemma. I never picked
up the CT Solomani Alien Module, but I have MT /Solomani & Aslan/. Did
the paranoid racists go back to CT?
Did you find a new home for your website? If so, I'd like you to add it
to the Links section for this group's Yahoo site.
\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
==============================
Well, here are your CoE spoilers:
1. The Terrans in 1203 would run into a massive vampire fleet at Ganesh.
Well, "run into it" isn't exactly the correct word, they knew it was
coming and went willingly. The Priestess of the Faith Shoshanna had
seen its arrival in a psionic vision and that it was intent was to seize
control of Ganesh before moving on to nuke
carpet bomb Dingir for "disloyalty to Lucan". Whether the vampire
fleet originated from the Black Curtain, or some place else was left
open--the core of it had been patrolling the Jump-1 main in the region
for some time. What was certain however is that had the Terrans not
intervened, sacrificing about 20% of their warships in the process, it
was unlikely that
the Dingir League would have able to stop it in time, and the League
would have effectively wiped out. Ganesh becomes a turning point in
Terran-Dingirian relations. It also causes the Terrans to effectively
stop further expansion coreward
shortly thereafter (no contact with the RC therefore for an extended
period), and instead concentrate on expansion into the Bootean Cluster
and into the Aldebaran Sector. [Note: I didn't want the Terran
interacting with the RC until GDW, or whoever took over the RC story in
the future, was ready for it, likely in 1208 game time--that was a
conscious decision I made long before Frank Chadwick started toy with
"Guided Lily"]
2. At some point down the line, I envisioned the ruling families of
Dingir and
Terra would unite and the Dingir League merge into the Terran
Republic. I also saw the Terran Republic evolving over a period of
decades to be more secular--indeed Shoshanna preferred to stay out of
government affairs, only intervening when she felt it was necessary (as
with Ganesh). Eventually the Priestess of the Faith be someone like the
Pope today--influential, lot of followers, but able to muster the power
of a state? Not so much. No Ayatollah, that's for sure.
3. As stated elsewhere, I was perfectly comfortable with people concluding
that the Terrans were "bad guys", but with respect, I saw them as good,
bad, and ugly. The US in its history has been all those things. Great
Britain in its history has been all those things. So have many other
nations. Mostly I sought to
create a setting that wasn't "paranoid racists in space", and all too
often the Solomani came across as just that.
GT is GURPS using an alternative Traveller setting. That says absolutely nothing about its quality and in fact I've bought a few of the sourcebooks to use as references, since I consider the information they contain about worlds, history and such to be more or less "semi-canon", since they were put together under the eye of Loren. That said, if anything in them contradicts TNE (and by extension MT or CT) or even CoE (also "semi-canon"...a whole discussion to have later, but everything in there was developed from John Harshman's original work as well as MT), I put it aside in favor of what was written prior to GT.
With all due respect to Marc or any 'Traveller canon fanatics' (and this is coming from one), to declare anything published for Traveller by a license holder between 1998 and 2013 to be some sort of heresy is laughable, not as laughable as the editing on T4, but I digress. It's particularly rich in light of the fact MonTrav derives in large part from an early T5 draft and Marc was consulted in the writing of it. If a bunch of middle-aged guys and gals happened to throw down coin last year for a Kickstarter campaign and get T5 published, cool (super cool actually, it says something good about the popularity of the game). But that fact alone doesn't invalidate anything MonTrav, per se. Now if Marc wants to hire someone to write a "history of the Fourth Imperium" for his company that contradicts everything done for MonTrav, or for that matter, wants to re-write Earth's history post-war from "1117 to 1248" and ignore everything that Martin and I did
(or DGP did), then fine, as the copyright holder he's entitled, but don't expect that to fly too well with this bunch.
Really, the hierarchy of canon is as follows: 1) that which is written by the copyright holder, 2) that which is written by an official license holder, 3) that which is written with a letter of permission from the copyright holder (fanzine stuff), all other generally accepted writings within the community. But even then, if the Traveller community as a whole doesn't like it, it doesn't matter what people publish, it'll end up in the discount bin like T4 and will be cheerfully ignored until someone comes out with a new version.
The problem with having any sort of "holy war" over all this would be that eventually we ended up urinating all over each other, declaring a pox on everyone's house and doing our thing, having changed no one's mind. Traveller fans of all types are a balkanized group that love the game, but can't agree on how to play it or even much beyond what appears in the little black books and their GDW supplements.
Harold: Why the cutoff at 2013? Isn't Mongoose still publishing?
On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:56 PM, Harold Hale <> wrote:
>
>
> GT is GURPS using an alternative Traveller setting. That says absolutely
> nothing about its quality and in fact I've bought a few of the sourcebooks
> to use as references, since I consider the information they contain about
> worlds, history and such to be more or less "semi-canon", since they were
> put together under the eye of Loren. That said, if anything in them
> contradicts TNE (and by extension MT or CT) or even CoE (also
> "semi-canon"...a whole discussion to have later, but everything in there
> was developed from John Harshman's original work as well as MT), I put it
> aside in favor of what was written prior to GT.
>
> With all due respect to Marc or any 'Traveller canon fanatics' (and this
> is coming from one), to declare anything published for Traveller by a
> license holder between 1998 and 2013 to be some sort of heresy is
> laughable, not as laughable as the editing on T4, but I digress. It's
> particularly rich in light of the fact MonTrav derives in large part from
> an early T5 draft and Marc was consulted in the writing of it. If a bunch
> of middle-aged guys and gals happened to throw down coin last year for a
> Kickstarter campaign and get T5 published, cool (super cool actually, it
> says something good about the popularity of the game). But that fact alone
> doesn't invalidate anything MonTrav, per se. Now if Marc wants to hire
> someone to write a "history of the Fourth Imperium" for his company that
> contradicts everything done for MonTrav, or for that matter, wants to
> re-write Earth's history post-war from "1117 to 1248" and ignore everything
> that Martin and I did (or DGP did), then fine, as the copyright holder he's
> entitled, but don't expect that to fly too well with this bunch.
>
> Really, the hierarchy of canon is as follows: 1) that which is written by
> the copyright holder, 2) that which is written by an official license
> holder, 3) that which is written with a letter of permission from the
> copyright holder (fanzine stuff), all other generally accepted writings
> within the community. But even then, if the Traveller community as a whole
> doesn't like it, it doesn't matter what people publish, it'll end up in the
> discount bin like T4 and will be cheerfully ignored until someone comes out
> with a new version.
>
> The problem with having any sort of "holy war" over all this would be that
> eventually we ended up urinating all over each other, declaring a pox on
> everyone's house and doing our thing, having changed no one's mind.
> Traveller fans of all types are a balkanized group that love the game, but
> can't agree on how to play it or even much beyond what appears in the
> little black books and their GDW supplements.
>
>
>
I don't think T5 can really be said to have 'made its debut' yet. The version that was released as a result of the kickstarter was such a mess and contained so many errors and was so poorly received that the diehards are pretty much going over it all again in an attempt to get something playable out of it.
The sad thing is that it's not even relevant. If people want to get into Traveller nowadays then they'll get Mongoose or Classic Traveller.
Ø Yeah, I never liked that about the official storyline. In essence, it was
part of the whole "who do I root for in MT" dilemma. I never picked up the
CT Solomani Alien Module, but I have MT Solomani & Aslan. Did the paranoid
racists go back to CT?
Yes, it did. The Solomani were racial purists throughout CT. I forget when
they finally went down the rabbit hole, but it was before they seceded from
the Imperium and established the Solomani Sphere. So, from that point on
there was always a significant faction of Solomani racial purists.
Or TNE...the manuals are still out there, paper as well as electronic format from Marc Miller. It's just a matter of making sure new players find out about it.
Craig and Norris In that order There was no one else worth rooting for.
=D
From: []
On Behalf Of Mike West
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2014 3:03 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [Traveller_TNE] Re: Children of Earth
Ø Yeah, I never liked that about the official storyline. In essence, it was
part of the whole "who do I root for in MT" dilemma. I never picked up the
CT Solomani Alien Module, but I have MT Solomani & Aslan. Did the paranoid
racists go back to CT?
Yes, it did. The Solomani were racial purists throughout CT. I forget when
they finally went down the rabbit hole, but it was before they seceded from
the Imperium and established the Solomani Sphere. So, from that point on
there was always a significant faction of Solomani racial purists.
Yeah, the entire Solomani concept seems trite and unoriginal.
DGP did some good stuff, but not the Solomani. The member States are dated
caricatures of 70s-80s stereotypes outside of the Old Earth Union and Near
Bootes, Cthonia, and Turin Consolidation.
My own preferences centered on the latter while replacing Quesada with an
Ibero-Hispanic Confederation, though I did keep the names and general
identities for Wuan, Kostov while having their outlines be a bit different,
with most Canon as Imperial propaganda and/or poor intel.
- Sent from my SM-N900T
On May 8, 2014 11:59 AM, "DED" <> wrote:
>
>
> 1. >> I didn't want the Terran interacting with the RC until GDW, or
> whoever took over the RC story in
> the future, was ready for it, likely in 1208 game time<<
>
> If getting your work incorporated into the OTU was your intent, then that
> was a good idea.
>
> 3. >>Mostly I sought to create a setting that wasn't "paranoid racists in
> space", and all too
> often the Solomani came across as just that.<<
>
> Yeah, I never liked that about the official storyline. In essence, it was
> part of the whole "who do I root for in MT" dilemma. I never picked up the
> CT Solomani Alien Module, but I have MT *Solomani & Aslan*. Did the
> paranoid racists go back to CT?
>
> Did you find a new home for your website? If so, I'd like you to add it to
> the Links section for this group's Yahoo site.
>
> \_/
> DED
> TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
>
> ==============================
> Well, here are your CoE spoilers:
>
> 1. The Terrans in 1203 would run into a massive vampire fleet at Ganesh.
> Well, "run into it" isn't exactly the correct word, they knew it was
> coming and went willingly. The Priestess of the Faith Shoshanna had
> seen its arrival in a psionic vision and that it was intent was to seize
> control of Ganesh before moving on to nuke
> carpet bomb Dingir for "disloyalty to Lucan". Whether the vampire
> fleet originated from the Black Curtain, or some place else was left
> open--the core of it had been patrolling the Jump-1 main in the region for
> some time. What was certain however is that had the Terrans not
> intervened, sacrificing about 20% of their warships in the process, it was
> unlikely that
> the Dingir League would have able to stop it in time, and the League
> would have effectively wiped out. Ganesh becomes a turning point in
> Terran-Dingirian relations. It also causes the Terrans to effectively
> stop further expansion coreward
> shortly thereafter (no contact with the RC therefore for an extended
> period), and instead concentrate on expansion into the Bootean Cluster
> and into the Aldebaran Sector. [Note: I didn't want the Terran
> interacting with the RC until GDW, or whoever took over the RC story in
> the future, was ready for it, likely in 1208 game time--that was a
> conscious decision I made long before Frank Chadwick started toy with
> "Guided Lily"]
>
> 2. At some point down the line, I envisioned the ruling families of Dingir
> and
> Terra would unite and the Dingir League merge into the Terran
> Republic. I also saw the Terran Republic evolving over a period of
> decades to be more secular--indeed Shoshanna preferred to stay out of
> government affairs, only intervening when she felt it was necessary (as
> with Ganesh). Eventually the Priestess of the Faith be someone like the
> Pope today--influential, lot of followers, but able to muster the power
> of a state? Not so much. No Ayatollah, that's for sure.
>
> 3. As stated elsewhere, I was perfectly comfortable with people concluding
> that the Terrans were "bad guys", but with respect, I saw them as good,
> bad, and ugly. The US in its history has been all those things. Great
> Britain in its history has been all those things. So have many other
> nations. Mostly I sought to
> create a setting that wasn't "paranoid racists in space", and all too
> often the Solomani came across as just that.
>
>
Everybody from GDW, to DGP, to Loren at GT wanted to blow them up or have them break down into a balkanized, feuding mess. Virus does both of course.
As an aside, part of the basis for future development of the region of the Solomani Confederation I envisioned revolved around the final long range expedition as mentioned in 'Solomani & Aslan' returning back to Home c. 1120. Finding everything pretty much trashed, they are able to help with rebuilding efforts and by 1206, they've established a small pocket empire. I also liked the idea of the Solomani making much more use of biological robots (as envisioned in Arthur C. Clarke's "3001: The Final Odyssey") than the Imperium and the implications of those mixing with Virus were interesting.
Yeah, I had plans for that last Rim expedition ship, too, if not some
rimward Solomani outposts that would also escape the collapse by virtue of
avoiding standard transponder mechanisms and infection vectors.
Allows the same old space Nazis to still be villains while also exploring
those who toss the Party when the chance arose.
- Sent from my SM-N900T
On May 9, 2014 1:01 PM, "Harold Hale [Traveller_TNE]"
<> wrote:
>
>
> Everybody from GDW, to DGP, to Loren at GT wanted to blow them up or have
> them break down into a balkanized, feuding mess. Virus does both of course.
>
> As an aside, part of the basis for future development of the region of the
> Solomani Confederation I envisioned revolved around the final long range
> expedition as mentioned in 'Solomani & Aslan' returning back to Home c.
> 1120. Finding everything pretty much trashed, they are able to help with
> rebuilding efforts and by 1206, they've established a small pocket empire.
> I also liked the idea of the Solomani making much more use of biological
> robots (as envisioned in Arthur C. Clarke's "3001: The Final Odyssey") than
> the Imperium and the implications of those mixing with Virus were
> interesting.
>
>
I'd love to see MJD write more TNE stuff. 1200 or 1248 (but especially 1200). He told me he'd received a surprising amount of very angry mail over both 1200 and 1248 stuff. What a shame people are such jerks!
No doubt. His version of the Solomani Rim isn't entirely what I would have done, but I see it as an alternative. I certainly don't hate him for it, nor does Dave Nilsen.
People are asses. The problem is the 3rd Imperium crowd are very much traditionalists. The Imperium is as unchanging and eternal as the monolith in 2001. The world changes and things evolve, if you don't like the new setting don't adopt it, that doesn't mean you can't loot and pillage the source books for ideas.
Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPad
> On May 10, 2014, at 12:25 PM, " [Traveller_TNE]" <> wrote:
>
> I'd love to see MJD write more TNE stuff. 1200 or 1248 (but especially 1200). He told me he'd received a surprising amount of very angry mail over both 1200 and 1248 stuff. What a shame people are such jerks!
>
>
I'd love to see MJD write more TNE stuff. 1200 or 1248 (but especially 1200).He told me he'd received a surprising amount of very angry mail over both 1200 and 1248 stuff. What a shame people are such jerks!
====================
There were aspects about 1248 that I thought were implausible but no worse than a lot of other stuff in the various versions of the settings. I liked what MJD did a lot.
I'm sorry to hear that he was hassled for it. It reflects badly on the Traveller fan base that they would so angrily denounce people and game systems. I've been flamed on the TML and stay clear of it.