TNE setting distant enough?

[LeperColony]

The New Era is my favorite Traveller setting, but I sometimes wonder if 70 years is a sufficient span of time for the psychological and ideological changes the universe assumes, especially given that a large number (though small in relative terms) of people would have survived through to 1201, some (those in low berth for instance) in quite good shape.

Of course it is difficult to fully appreciate the total collapse of society and the horror of a computer holocaust, so I don't mean to suggest that 70 years is necessarily deficient. However, on some worlds the Imperium, the Rebellion, and even the collapse seem to be rendered in mythical terms. 70 years after the fall of Rome, there were still Emperors in Constantinople who called themselves "Romans," and there were still Romans who knew of their cultural, social, and political links with Constantinople.

I can definitely agree that many worlds could have regressed to a technophobic stage of tribalism where knowledge of the recent past could have become forgotten or imperfectly preserved. But it also seems possible for many worlds to have retained a memory of the Imperium and the Rebellion, along with the ideological implications of those identities.

Should TNE have set its time period a little further forward? 100 years? 150?

 

[whartung]

I think the 70 years is a good number.

One of the premises of TNE was to expand the possibilities for players and referees. With a 70 year span, there is enough time for areas to be turned completely upside down and literally "start anew" while at the same time there's opportunities for other areas to maintain societal, institutional, and generational family memories.

So, just about any place you go (within reason) you'll have the gamut of completely new societies to those in transition back to those that have changes less and still hold on to much of the ways and knowledge of the "old days" (i.e. the Regency).

Much longer and you won't have the survivors of the event, nor necessarily even the 1st generation after. Children could have easily survived, but at 70 years, you could still have a chance to meet someone who was on the Arrival Vengeance's last voyage as a young crew member. Could have been an engineer, or even a steward who was quietly listening to it all.

So, 70 years is a good time I think. Lots of possibilities.

 

[aramis]

The New Era is my favorite Traveller setting, but I sometimes wonder if 70 years is a sufficient span of time for the psychological and ideological changes the universe assumes, especially given that a large number (though small in relative terms) of people would have survived through to 1201, some (those in low berth for instance) in quite good shape.

Of course it is difficult to fully appreciate the total collapse of society and the horror of a computer holocaust, so I don't mean to suggest that 70 years is necessarily deficient. However, on some worlds the Imperium, the Rebellion, and even the collapse seem to be rendered in mythical terms. 70 years after the fall of Rome, there were still Emperors in Constantinople who called themselves "Romans," and there were still Romans who knew of their cultural, social, and political links with Constantinople.

I can definitely agree that many worlds could have regressed to a technophobic stage of tribalism where knowledge of the recent past could have become forgotten or imperfectly preserved. But it also seems possible for many worlds to have retained a memory of the Imperium and the Rebellion, along with the ideological implications of those identities.

Should TNE have set its time period a little further forward? 100 years? 150?

It's not enough. The level of collapse shown needs at least 3-4 generations for most, and more like 5-8 generations. At 20-30 years per generation, that's closer to 150-200 years.

To get people who don't remember the 3I, you need AT LEAST 100 years. 200 in Vilani space.

 

[Kilgs]

This is the part that always causes a hiccup in games like this... you want the tech to still be around so it can't be too long, but you want the landscape completely changed. I'm dogging around the same issue in TNE and Morrow Project ideas.

At the end of the day, I just invoke handwavium and say "yes." I mean, if my players can stomach elves... just accept the numbers.

 

[LeperColony]

I think IMTU (still an unformed, and uninformed concept) during the TNE era of 1201, knowledge of the Imperium will, in most places, be far better preserved, but will illicit largely negative (and often violent or irrational) responses.

I think if our modern civilizations were destroyed by nuclear weapons, 70 years later the survivors would know who the Americans were. They'd just hate us.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

It's not enough. The level of collapse shown needs at least 3-4 generations for most, and more like 5-8 generations. At 20-30 years per generation, that's closer to 150-200 years.

To get people who don't remember the 3I, you need AT LEAST 100 years. 200 in Vilani space.

Yup.

You would need to have been a teenager to have any real understanding of what being in the 3I was like. Your kids would hear stories that you told them. Their kids would hear the same things from you. Your great great grandchildren would be the first to have no direct contact with anything from the 3I. 4th generation ... 120 years.

(It just happens that IMTU the distruction or the Empire happened 137 years before the current time.)

I agree that 70 years is too short, and Will makes a good point about the Vilani, I mean they are so cultuarlly conservative it would take about a milenia for them to start to forget the 3I, it took them at least that long to forget the 1st.

Best regards,

Ewan

 

[epicenter00]

Yeah, the argument was made since the time when TNE was first brought out that 70 years isn't nearly enough for how people see the 3I. Kilg's point is important - GDW wanted a setting where the economy of the RC's economy is based around plundering tech from the 3I to build itself, which gives the impetus for their explosive expansion (along with their altruistic goals of trying to keep humanity from becoming a xenophobic empire). Unfortunately, if you go further into the future, it becomes increasingly unlikely there's all this tech lying around to be picked up (even 70 years is pushing it).

For the 3I to fall into the kind of semi-mythical memory that is presented in a lot of TNE, I would think you'd need centuries more of time, like 300+ years. That's assuming that these people fall into a kind of state where their populations drop below the critical mass for easy rebuilding or maintenance of civilization. The struggle for survival is so harsh that nobody can attempt to rebuild, they're stuck basically being nomadic hunter-gatherers without the benefit of generations of experience at it. A perfect candidate exists for this kind of scouring - Vampire fleets. Unfortunately, as initially presented in the TNE materials, Vampires aren't supposed to be that common, nor were they that thorough.

 

[aramis]

Yup.

You would need to have been a teenager to have any real understanding of what being in the 3I was like. Your kids would hear stories that you told them. Their kids would hear the same things from you. Your great great grandchildren would be the first to have no direct contact with anything from the 3I. 4th generation ... 120 years.

(It just happens that IMTU the distruction or the Empire happened 137 years before the current time.)

I agree that 70 years is too short, and Will makes a good point about the Vilani, I mean they are so cultuarlly conservative it would take about a milenia for them to start to forget the 3I, it took them at least that long to forget the 1st.

Best regards,

Ewan

You've also got 100 years as the outlier +3σ lifespan sans anagathics, and 200 or so years for Vilani.

As a society, that's 4 generations, not 3... and with a tech base of TL4+, that means also having to go double that - 160 years or so.

Take Jon... born 1100. Remembers, vaguely, Emperor Strephon. Remembers the rebellion. Lives to be 100, being solomani extraction, and is only +2σ, not +3σ. Tells his kids, born in the 1120's, grand kids born in the 1150's, great grand kids born in the 1180's his tales of the 3I and merchant flows.

Jon Jr, B 1122, remembers the virus as a major childhood trauma.

Jon III, b. 1155, has both stories, and is the first to not directly remember...

But Jon I is also telling Fred's kids, b 1170, and probably anybody else who will listen, of the good old days.

So, direct 3I contact lasts until Fred's kids are in their 90's... presuming we treat the effective cutoff as 10 for memory at both ends. So Jon IV and Fredson both have direct contact with relics, and will carry that through to about 1270.

And in that time, many are likely to write their stories down.

 

[Kilgs]

I think that was strong reason for Virus. In a society where most information is catalogued and maintained, you have an even better touchstone to the past. The recovery period is that much easier. So inject Virus that makes databases mostly inaccessible... in a 3I society, that means a lot of information is going to disappear or be difficult to access for some time. It makes the collapse of civilization a bit more plausible.

Personally, if computers stopped working today, I would absolutely flip... and lots of things I take for granted would be completely gone/inaccessible. Add to that starvation and minor things like that, and I may not be too concerned about getting the computers back up and running for a while. By the time I did care, it would probably be too late anyways...

For the original poster, I highly recommend reading H. Beam Piper's Star Viking book. It's a major influence on Traveller (source of the Sword Worlds and all). It also, for me, really helped me grok the whole "this planet is in the 1800's and this planet is in the 23rd century and they trade with each other?" problem. It also is a HUGE component of TNE and the game designers clearly wanted to tap that vein of setting and desperation when they rebuilt the TNE timeline.

It has a number of good discussions on how planets can lose their technology, talent and good gene pools through migration and stagnation.

 

[rancke]

Take Jon... born 1100. Remembers, vaguely, Emperor Strephon. Remembers the rebellion. Lives to be 100, being solomani extraction, and is only +2σ, not +3σ. Tells his kids, born in the 1120's, grand kids born in the 1150's, great grand kids born in the 1180's his tales of the 3I and merchant flows.

Jon Jr, B 1122, remembers the virus as a major childhood trauma.

Jon III, b. 1155, has both stories, and is the first to not directly remember...

But Jon I is also telling Fred's kids, b 1170, and probably anybody else who will listen, of the good old days.

So, direct 3I contact lasts until Fred's kids are in their 90's... presuming we treat the effective cutoff as 10 for memory at both ends. So Jon IV and Fredson both have direct contact with relics, and will carry that through to about 1270.

And let's not forget Uncle Eneri, born 1110 and still with half his life left to live in 1201.

And in that time, many are likely to write their stories down.

Indeed. A thousand years later people would still know at least as much about the 3rd Imperium as we today know about the Roman Republic.


Hans

 

[aramis]

And let's not forget Uncle Eneri, born 1110 and still with half his life left to live in 1201.


Indeed. A thousand years later people would still know at least as much about the 3rd Imperium as we today know about the Roman Republic.


Hans

Barring, of course, pogroms on the literate class ala the Khmer Rouge on a larger scale.

 

[kafka47]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]Barring, of course, pogroms on the literate class ala the Khmer Rouge on a larger scale.[/FONT]

ANd, is that not what the First Generation Vampires tried to do. I have major problems with the rate of collapse of the OTU but one needs to think about how Chartered Space looked in 1115 or 1110 - we assume that it was a golden age but perhaps it was akin indeed to the fall of Rome. Nobles and patricians living in their enclaves oblivious to the real suffering of their peoples. The Rebellion just heaped more crap down on top of them. Travellers are somewhat immune to these effects but everywhere the Imperium is in decay that the notion of citizens of the Imperium is rapidly giving way to a new serfdom by an insolent nobility and by megacorporations who don't give a damn. The two cooperating just to maintain an elite who has access to the Stars. However, the great mass of people are sinking further and further down only kept in place by cheap holovids and the fact interstellar trade means nobody starves.

And, when the day of reckoning happens - think of the Book of Eli or The Road - a complete collapse happens because everyone is in it for themselves. The Rebellion gives them the guns and the false raison d'etre to avenge themselves. Here the parallels with the former Yugoslavia should be apparent. A country that was on par with the lowest level of countries in the contemporary European Union (Greece, Portugal, Spain before the financial crisis) is now hovering just above subsistence levels - their industries shut down and people fleeing away from European urban life into the countryside and building hatreds and resentments and prepared to fight anyone who threatens their patch. And, all that happened within a decade.

 

[rancke]

Barring, of course, pogroms on the literate class ala the Khmer Rouge on a larger scale.

You mean the progroms that have turned Cambodia into a complete cultural desert where no one knows anything about history? Those progroms?

You don't just have to destroy all recorded knowledge of the 3rd Imperium on one world, you need to destroy it on all worlds in Charted Space. The first is definitely doable, but the second is, IMO, hugely, vastly, starkly unrealistic.


Hans

 

[rancke]

ANd, is that not what the First Generation Vampires tried to do.

They tried to kill people. They didn't target knowledge repositories, and they didn't succeed in killing everyone.

I have major problems with the rate of collapse of the OTU but one needs to think about how Chartered Space looked in 1115 or 1110 - we assume that it was a golden age but perhaps it was akin indeed to the fall of Rome.

A lot of knowledge was lost in and after the Fall of Rome. But some survived. As long as one copy of a book survived, the information it contained survived.

Imagine a worldwide collapse of civilization sweeping Earth tomorrow. What will our descendants know about us centuries from now, once they've rebuilt civilization? Well, if a single library or private book collection large enough to contain a shelf of encyclopedias survive relatively intact, a LOT more than we know about Ancient Rome.


Hans

 

[Peter Schutze]

>Well, if a single library or private book collection large enough to contain a shelf of encyclopedias survive relatively intact, a LOT more than we know about Ancient Rome

god help them if they find my library and cant translate the word "fiction" !

I can picture some scientist in 2500AD ... wonder what they did to suddenly jump from 1900-1970 military tech to these dozens of different and conflicting sci-fi universes .... although obviously there was an underclass of farmers cause they seem to get mentioned a lot as "collateral damage" etc :rofl:

 

[rancke]

god help them if they find my library and cant translate the word "fiction" !

I can picture some scientist in 2500AD ... wonder what they did to suddenly jump from 1900-1970 military tech to these dozens of different and conflicting sci-fi universes

If your library is the sole surviving repository of knowledge and you don't have a dictionary, maybe. If he's looking through my book collection he'd be able to look it up in my copy of Webster's Unabridged (Which, BTW, will tell him a lot about us all by itself).


Hans

 

[LeperColony]

I would tend to think that the period around 1201 would be when most of the information about the Imperium and the Rebellion would begin to disappear.

First, you have the Remnants getting older and more scarce. Second, after Virus takes its toll, you have 70 years of neglect, abuse, and repair attempts further diminishing the available technology. TL-14 might be more resilient than we're used to, but that's a lot to ask for. And third, you have societies beginning to emerge that would likely be quite adverse to things Imperial.

If you look at the transmission of ancient works to the present, often times we owe what we know to the survival of a single source, or a few limited sources. A single event, like the fall of Constantinople in 1204, could result in the loss of huge portions of information.

Of course, one thing the 3I has that isn't analogous to the fall of Rome or even our own society is the fact that it was spread over 11,000 worlds. Somewhat better odds when you have that many chances.

 

[kafka47]

They tried to kill people. They didn't target knowledge repositories, and they didn't succeed in killing everyone.

I am sorry but the thermonuclear warheads that the Virus rained down did not discriminate between books and people. It struck everyone. Furthermore, knowledge repositories digital (as they would be in the 57 century) suicided. The Virus knew to deny people a future, it was necessary to eliminate the past.

A lot of knowledge was lost in and after the Fall of Rome. But some survived. As long as one copy of a book survived, the information it contained survived.

Imagine a worldwide collapse of civilization sweeping Earth tomorrow. What will our descendants know about us centuries from now, once they've rebuilt civilization? Well, if a single library or private book collection large enough to contain a shelf of encyclopedias survive relatively intact, a LOT more than we know about Ancient Rome.


Hans

That is correct, save if the new dark age keeps us in perpetual fear of using that same technology. Books might survive but they would mean only a certain type of knowledge preserved at what level TL A? Books also burn, as I said in the introduction faster than people. It is possible the mob turn against everything begin to smash up the Old motivated by Fear so libraries may not exist as we know them now.

[FONT=arial,helvetica]You mean the progroms that have turned Cambodia into a complete cultural desert where no one knows anything about history? Those progroms?

You don't just have to destroy all recorded knowledge of the 3rd Imperium on one world, you need to destroy it on all worlds in Charted Space. The first is definitely doable, but the second is, IMO, hugely, vastly, starkly unrealistic.[/FONT]

I think you underestimate the amount of computers guiding the life in 3i. It is not the same as today, it would be indeed if the world was suddenly left without petroleum. We could survive but it would mean going back to a pre-industrial existence. Add to that death, starvation, disease, pestilence and war...and fire reigning down from the sky - you don't have a collapse - you have an apocalypse.

The scale is unimaginable but so is breadth and depth of computerization in the life of the 3i and add to that what I said - maybe we are just looking at it from an elite standpoint. Maybe the life of the average Imperial prole is much worse by being completely dependent.

 

[rancke]

I am sorry but the thermonuclear warheads that the Virus rained down did not discriminate between books and people.

No, but the number of warheads available was limited, so instead of carpet-bombing each world, the Virus only used enough to make each world so treated uninhabitable. That meant that lots and lots of small, out-of-the-way towns and villages remained physically unscathed. And, as the TNE books so clearly show, many worlds wasn't even visited by Doomslayer Viruses; indeed, a lot of them wasn't visited by Virus at all.

It struck everyone. Furthermore, knowledge repositories digital (as they would be in the 57 century) suicided. The Virus knew to deny people a future, it was necessary to eliminate the past.

The original, homicidal Virus didn't know any such thing. Most of the evolved Viruses didn't care. And the few that did was up against the existence of ultra-tech data storage devices, most of which (if not all) were surely non-volatile.

That is correct, save if the new dark age keeps us in perpetual fear of using that same technology. Books might survive but they would mean only a certain type of knowledge preserved at what level TL A? Books also burn, as I said in the introduction faster than people. It is possible the mob turn against everything begin to smash up the Old motivated by Fear so libraries may not exist as we know them now.

People would be far too busy to survive to go hunting for village libraries and burn them down. And once they started to regain civilization, those old books would become valuable antiques.

I think you underestimate the amount of computers guiding the life in 3i. It is not the same as today, it would be indeed if the world was suddenly left without petroleum. We could survive but it would mean going back to a pre-industrial existence. Add to that death, starvation, disease, pestilence and war...and fire reigning down from the sky - you don't have a collapse - you have an apocalypse.

Quite a few worlds in the 3rd Imperium aren't even using computers. And I have an excellent idea of what the results of the collapse were. The TNE books describe several dozen worlds. Some of them are completely devastated. But a lot more are not completely devastated. And it only takes one surviving copy of a book in all of Charted Space for the information contained in that book to survive.

And all that is before we even consider deliberate knowledge preservation caches.


Hans

 

[aramis]

Further, as shown by Hard Times (for MegaTraveller), most of the collapse-era destruction predates virus.

Many non-self-sustaining worlds simply died in place from lack of essential imports. Even many nominally self-sustaining worlds died from Lucan's black war policies targeting key self-sufficiency targets.