Thread: TNE playtest (was Re: Hey)

--- 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.

Ah yes, GEnie, the Internet before the Internet.

Yeah, Loren and Les were the big online guys, and then just Loren. When we
did the on-line things it was always from Loren's house, as the old wiring
into the GDW offices wouldn't let us have it at the office.

Loren would print out messages and bring them into the office, we'd write
our replies on them longhand, then he'd go home and type them in. Ah,
technology.

> --- 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.
>
>
>
>