10 questions to ask Joe Fugate

[Flynn]

Larsen's right, Malenfant. It's generally considered poor etiquette to take a shot at someone and then say they can't respond to it, especially with language that attempts to generate an "us versus you" feel to it. ("...not an invitation for you to froth at us..." - Malenfant)

I'm glad Larsen's a big enough person not to make a big deal about it, yet confident enough to point out that he is being baited without having to respond in kind.

At least, that's how it comes across over this particular electronic format. If that was not your intention, my apologies for misunderstanding your post. Also, my apologies if this observation is considered by others to be inappropriate. I just have certain expectations of COTI board moderators, is all.

With Regards,
Flynn

 

[Hyphen]

Dear Folks -

Originally posted by JoeFugate:
...And don't forget the proles in Zho culture are the "deadheaded" ones for the most part. But horrors if you offend a prole by being openly psionic in his presence. Lots of subtrifuge and great fun in an aventure setting.

There is an interesting Fred Ramen story available at the Freelance Traveller website entitled "The Hostile Stars". Part of the story involves a group of Zhodani being led by two psionic officers. In effect, we see their thought processes as they attempt to take and hold an Imperial Plankwell-class dreadnaught.

Have you had a read of this story, and if so, do the Zhos in the story sound compatable with your take on the Zhos?

 

[jzeitlin]

Originally posted by Hyphen:
[QB]There is an interesting Fred Ramen story available at the Freelance Traveller website entitled "The Hostile Stars". Part of the story involves a group of Zhodani being led by two psionic officers. In effect, we see their thought processes as they attempt to take and hold an Imperial Plankwell-class dreadnaught.

Have you had a read of this story, and if so, do the Zhos in the story sound compatable with your take on the Zhos?

Oooh, I enjoyed reading this as Fred was writing it. I keep secretly hoping that he'll write another one...

 

[jfugatesr]

Next question ...

15. Given the Solomani were becoming the big empire :

a) did DGP plan to do anything with the Solomani Confederation.
b) Was the later hint that the Sols were moving towards a pan-sophontist line under Joshua Dahvin a DGP or GDW idea?
====================================================
Gee, this is terrible, but it's been 16 years so I guess I have an excuse.

Where did the Joshua Dahvin stuff first appear in print?

Was it in TD13, the earth issue? Or some place else?

I know Gary was a big fan of stiring the pot around the Solomani. He was personally very tickled with the new freedom the Solomani got with the Rebellion and really relished the fact the Aslan got jump technology from the Solomani ... proof the Aslan were a "trumped up minor race".

Now Gary didn't really see the Aslan as a minor race no matter where they got jump technology from, but he loves controversy and stirring up barroom fights and things like that in an RPG setting. So at least it set the stage for some really good barroom insults, and that was the part he enjoyed.

As far as our specific plans for the Solomani, we did not really have any. Most of our focus was coreward, in the Marches, and in Antares (Onnesium Quest).

Can someone refresh my memory on the Joshua Dahvin thing?

 

[jfugatesr]

And the fact we put Solomani and Aslan in print near the end means you got most of what was on our minds about those two races before we folded.

 

[jfugatesr]

Originally posted by Hyphen:
Dear Folks -

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by JoeFugate:
...And don't forget the proles in Zho culture are the "deadheaded" ones for the most part. But horrors if you offend a prole by being openly psionic in his presence. Lots of subtrifuge and great fun in an aventure setting.

There is an interesting Fred Ramen story available at the Freelance Traveller website entitled "The Hostile Stars". Part of the story involves a group of Zhodani being led by two psionic officers. In effect, we see their thought processes as they attempt to take and hold an Imperial Plankwell-class dreadnaught.

Have you had a read of this story, and if so, do the Zhos in the story sound compatable with your take on the Zhos?

</font>[/QUOTE]I read through the "Hostile Stars" Novella and the Zhodani in there mention being taught to respect others and not fall back on using psionics all the time.

But on the other hand, the Zhos are pretty aggresive with the Psionics for the most part in this story, and that makes sense, since it is, after all, war.

As you may have noticed, war tends to make politeness go out the window.

"Uh-hummm! Please excuse me sir, while I blast your head off ..." Just isn't how it works.

I can see all the "ethics" in Zhodani society around not taking sneak peaks into people's thoughts all the time to be likewise nullified when dealing with the enemy.

Having said all that, the Zhodani take a dim view of harming someone else (in peaceful society). Using weapons, psionics, or otherwise to commit a crime is sure to trigger re-education by the Thought Police.

Amazing how much better things look after the Thought Police have paid you a visit ... troubles? What troubles?

 

[jchurchill]

"Roger owns the already written materials and graphics for AI. But, does he own the idea? If someone were to create a similar game even if based on Joe's comments and the AI article in MTJ4, would that be legal?"

"Yes, I believe the basic ideas could be taken and redeveloped into another game with a different name. And you could change some of the details."
================================================
Not to divert the fascinating Q & A with Mr. Fugate but I wanted to comment on this:

{Disclaimers: my recitation of some basic copyright info is not legal advice.

}

Copyright law does not protect *ideas* but the expression of those ideas in a tangible medium. 17 USC 201.

What does this zen like nonsense mean? Basically the idea of a science fiction rpg is not protected. And certain archetypes or ideas in SF are not protected: robots, space travel, aliens, etc etc. (copyright law has the scenes a faire doctrine which recognizes that certain genres of fiction contain common elements like the ones listed above]

It is the particular way or style in which an idea is expressed. Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet is a different expression of a robot than say Pris [grrrrr] from Blade Runner.
Pris' character does not infringe on Robby the Robot despite Robby's earlier appearance --and neither infringes upon the very first robots in RUR [Rossum's Universal Robots] or perhaps even Metropolis. [Evil sexy female robot]

Does that make sense? message me if I can cloud the waters further.

 

[jfugatesr]

Time for another question ...

16. What of the K'Kree? Lords of Thunder was a DGP purchase - would you like to have expanded on it? Or was a one-time venture?
====================================================

MTJ4 was our final grand finale Traveller product, and William H Keith had this K'kree adventure gathering dust that he had never been able to sell to GDW.

I was tickled to get my hands on the adventure, being a big Classic Traveller Keith Adventure fan ... the Sky Raiders Trilogy being a personal favorite I have ref'd numerous times for several different groups of players.

I also saw Traveller, IMO, being driven into the ground by GDW with the coming of TNE. Frankly, the Rebellion was done abit too heavy handed for my taste, with GDW calling most of the shots there too.

We did get to spill a lot of the beans, which was an honor I don't want to ever diminsh, and we tried to make the best of things. I think we did pretty good, but I personally would have made the breakup slower and more splintered, with threats and counterthreats.

Lots more "fog" because of the long distances from one edge of the realm to the other, and I'd have made the aliens slower to move, and the Vargr incursions more pockets of incursion with lots of ebb and flow (and where are the borders *this week* ???)

This whole time period in our support of Traveller is what birthed the first serious discussions of doing our own game, because we did not own Traveller. As we slowly became more disastified with the direction the game was going, and the diminishing influence of Marc on the game, we were losing heart.

Marc seemed to be a very stabilizing influence on the game, and I felt he was getting pressure from Frank and others in GDW to take the game directions he may not have 100% agreed with. There was a certain rationale that made sense to what they did, since it is true that turmoil makes for more adventuring options.

But I think there was too many "convenient" coincidences for my taste and some rather heavy handed or overly simplistic "history making" to the official canon going on at GDW that wasn't really in keeping with the original spirit of Classic Traveller.

From what I gather in reading some of the stuff out on the internet about how the fans feel, I'n not alone in this assessment of the Rebellion and TNE. From the sounds of things, though, the game's made a turnaround for the better since then with T4 and T20, and now with T5 discussions going on.

I think now that Marc isn't shackled by loyalty to GDW and can listen and act according to his heart-of-hearts, that's a great improvement. And he listens to what the fans tell him (I know Marc pays serious attention to fan feedback ...), so the future for the game is once again bright!

That's a long-winded way of saying, no, nothing was planned beyond Lords of Thunder with Gateway or the K'kree. It was to be our grand finale, and that was that.

 

[clementk]

Ok here’s one I was reminded of after looking over the Vilani clothing article.

What’s up with Vilani fashion; in particular the, for lack of a better term, disco boots?

Is there any story on the origin of Vilani style as depicted in the artwork?

Casey

 

[daryen]

Just want to mention I got my TD/MTJ package from Joe.

Thank you, Joe!

 

[jfugatesr]

Originally posted by daryen:
Just want to mention I got my TD/MTJ package from Joe.

Thank you, Joe!

You're welcome.

And there's more where those came from. I have the better part of a box of MTJ3, MTJ4, and TD19 still in mint condition. Since I'm offering this at cover price, that's cheaper than I've seen them at on places like eBay.

See the Duty Free Shop for details.

 

[jfugatesr]

Originally posted by Casey:
Ok here’s one I was reminded of after looking over the Vilani clothing article.

What’s up with Vilani fashion; in particular the, for lack of a better term, disco boots?

Is there any story on the origin of Vilani style as depicted in the artwork?

Casey

We asked Tom Peters, as kind of a lark, to go have some fun with Vilani fashions and those are the sketches he came up with, which were too fun! He explained what he had in mind with them, so we had him write them up and we printed it!

 

[jfugatesr]

Another question from the list ...

17. Can we have an outline of the Onnesium Quest adventures (or is it one of those copyright things) or if you remember what were going to be some of the fun and different things covered in that campaign?
====================================================

Okay, now remember it's been 10 years so my brain is fuzzy on the details.

I do recall having the players find a lost starship loaded to the gills with onnesium. Enough to make the group the richest people in the Sector.

And being followed ... *ouch*

And finding a scientist who could take all this onnesium and help the players retrofit their ship with a TL16 jump drive for cheap (since they already have all the onnesium they could use).

And slouthing around the ship for clues that leads them on a quest to figure out where in the heck they got all that onnesium ...

... which leads the group ultimately outside the Imperial borders of the Antares sector into scattered worlds that can only be reached by jump-6 vessels ... and ultimately the source of all that onnesium ... an intensly dense, hollow asteroid in an inner asteroid belt.

It's the "homeworld" of a TL16 minor human race that has long since died off. The group will likely end up triggering the same defense mechanism that affected the other derelict ship they found.

As they are maneuvering away from the asteroid belt to prepare for jump, when they near the 100 diameter jump point, the asteroid, still locked on to them, will fire some sort of ray that causes their jump drive to do a premature energy dump to the jump grid, and they will misjump.

If they are lucky, they'll end up on the edge of some system with a gas giant or a population, and they will be able to get back to civilization after a few weeks of maneuver drive travel.

Or they will end up in deep space, and have to put some folks in low berth, kick in the maneuver drives, put the ship on power conserve, and hope for the best in a decade or two.

 

[jfugatesr]

Of course, with their hold jammed with Onnesium, it makes it very easy for sensors to pick out their ship, since they will have an unusually high mass reading for their size.

Which is how the original inhabitants of the asteroid would deal with theives.

But let's not forget they were being "followed".

Their "tail" could end up being the ones trying to escape with all the onnesium (it's what was left, so there is no more for the players) if they showed up and got the upper hand on the group.

And then their "tail" would be the ones who would misjump ... (but how would the players know that? Only eventually, once they found out their "buddies" never showed up to dump onnesium on the market.)

Can anyone say, "Let's look for another lost ship full of onnesium?

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by JoeFugate:
Time for another question ...

16. What of the K'Kree? . . .
====================================================


I also saw Traveller . . .
<snip of vast insights into Traveller's history>

It's really amazing to hear the ins and outs of the personal feelings and thoughts of DGP during its history.

Once again (and hardly for the last time), thank you for sharing such valuable insights with us.

 

[jfugatesr]

Next!

18. Were there any plans for future Hiver involvement in the MT/rebellion and how different are TNE/GT Hivers from how DGP would have developed them

19. Did you and DGP have an ending in mind when they began the Rebellion? If so, what was it? If not, why not?
====================================================

Let's do two more.

What about the Hivers, and how would DGP have done them compared to how TNE or GURPS Traveller has done them?

Sorry, haven't followed TNE or GT *at all*, so I can't answer. Once DGP shut it's doors, I didn't keep up on Traveller since I expected it to not last in any form I would be interested in.

Glad to see I was wrong.

DGP never discussed the Hivers much, except in TD adventure 8. So other than what we did with them there, that was it. We only discussed Zhodani and Droyne since that was to be our next Alien module.

-------------------------------------------------

Did DGP have an end in mind for the Rebellion? Not really, since the whole idea is the first place was mostly GDW's. Certainly not the TNE solution.

The whole TNE virus thing was for me, way over the top. I mean c'mon, computer viruses exist here at tech 8, so what's the big deal?

If a tech society can't build a higher tech computer to be "virus resistant" then who would want to trust technology at all? Sort of like the way the transporters kept failing every other episode of the original Star Trek tv series.

Who would want to use the dang thing if it was so unreliable? If you recall from Book 8 robots, we stipulated that computer memory became more resistant to outside influences with tech level. For example, you could kill the power to the computer and when the power was restored, the memory would be completely intact and the computer would pick right up where it left off.

More and more sophisticated error and tampering checking with tech level. Which makes writing effective viruses tougher with tech level.

If you wanted to destroy civilization, use something more insidiuous that you can shoot at. (grin)

The Borg on Star Trek were pretty good in that way. Darn nasty and hard to stop. If I wanted to destroy civilization, I would have some external outfit show up on the scene with some halfway plausible malicious intent, and release some really awful nanotechnology disease or something.

To make it more sinister, make it so you never see their faces, so you don't know just quite who or what you are fighting. Just their horrible ships that show up in your system, and a few weeks later, it's all over.

But then, I was never a fan of destroying the Classic Traveller setting in the first place, so DGP's preference would have been to figure out some way to get everyone to patch up their differences, move the borders around a bit, and then we can get back to finding the next ancients site or some other cool lost society's artifacts or aliens.

 

[Malenfant]

The point with Virus was that it was derived from a silicate-based organism (from Cymbeline, and introduced in a CT adventure) - a "living computer chip" essentially - that was re-engineered, lobotomised and co-opted into the transponders of every ship in Charted Space.

Virus was a version of the operating system of that lifeform engineered as a weapon in a research lab. Exactly how it worked is somewhat fuzzy, but the idea was that when transmitted by radio into a ship with the transponders, it physically restructured the transponder chips when transmitted into them and turned them into virus carriers that either destroyed everything, spread into other chips, or evolved in their own way.

Either way, it wasn't just a simple computer virus, it was a "living" AI silicate organism. If you want an explanation for how it worked, blame nanites .

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Either way, it wasn't just a simple computer virus, it was a "living" AI silicate organism. If you want an explanation for how it worked, blame nanites .

I blame psionics. My explanation of Virus is that it isn't an intelligent chip, it is a disembodied psionic entity whose natural habitat are chips.

Since psionics is the Traveller version of magic, you can then blame all the things that an electronic chip wouldn't be able to do on psionics.


Hans

 

[jfugatesr]

Regardless of what Virus was, the notion of destroying all the tech in charted space is again a rather heavy-handed thing to do, and seems just too convenient.

It's also against the spirit of Classic Traveller. Create this cool place to adventure, where the players can "get used" to how things work, then just tear it all down so anything goes and nobody can count on anything.

Felt sort of like getting all this great understanding of Star Fleet, the Federation, etc in Star Trek, and then let's destroy it all 3/4's of the way through the season so nothing's true any more. Now the writers who want to do non-Star Trek story lines can produce their stuff!

I had to wonder why all this careful work had been put into developing the Third Imperium only to totally trash it. Felt like killing off Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.

Time to get up and go home -- this series sucks.

 

[Flynn]

Joe,

I will definitely say that MJD's work on TNE:1248 picks up the pieces and gives us a direction to move forward with some sense of hope. While 1248 gives regions of CT feel with regions of TNE feel, it does allow the OTU to recover from Virus and move on.

It's my hope that, in time, someone will pick up the ball and write about the OTU in 1500 or something like that, after things have really calmed down and several sector-sized polities have sprang into existence, and space is not so desolate any more.

But that'll have to wait until a few years after 1248 is released, I'm sure.

The events of TNE chased me away from Traveller for a long time, too, but I'm really enthused about the fact that 1248 is healing some of those wounds and moving things forward again.

In time, I think it could grow into something you'd recognize again as a great place for Traveller adventuring.

My two credits, anyway,
Flynn