drh,
With Aramis' suggestion in mind I was going to answer your question via a PM, but I decided, given your history of selective quoting, it would be better to answer it public. (Last post in this thread, Aramis, I promise.)
Without any further folderol, here are my answers to your questions:
Why should someone new to Traveller actually care whether or not they can play psionic aslan?
They would care if they were interested in both psionics and the Aslan. The option should be there, whether or not anyone actually uses said option.
Mongoose produced a
Psion supplement for
MgT before the
Aslan supplement. Psionics are obviously part of the
MgT setting and nothing in the
Psion book says anything about limiting psionic usage in alien races, so a
MgT player or GM would naturally expect the Aslan can use psionics until they bought the Alsan book. Now, if I'd bought
Psion first, because as a player or GM I was interested in using psionics in whatever capacity in my games, I'd be disasppointed when
MgT said I couldn't use psionics with the Aslan.
Of course, the quote from the preview doesn't mean I can't use psionics with the Aslan, I can still if I come up with my own rules. But why should I have to make my own rules? That's why I'm buying supplements after all, so I don't have to make up my own rules. Why not include the rules in the Aslan supplement and allow me the option to use or ignore them? If the rules were included I could still ignore them when playing the Aslan in a game without psionics, but without the rules I'm either forced to ignore psionics whether I want to or not or create my own rules. With the Aslan book, Mongoose removed an option the
Psion supplement had presented and placed the work of restoring it on me as the GM.
Or that the Aslan arrived in the Trojan Reaches at a certain time?
I've actually less bothered with this than psionics. It's still nothing more than yet another example of shoddy research or no research, but it won't impact new players as much as removing the psionics option will. Psionics is a basic part of the setting while history is more along the lines of chrome. History only enters the picture when a GM begins to run out of his own ideas, or the time to flesh out his own ideas, and needs to begin supplementing his campaigns with published materials. It happened to me and I'm sure it happened to you also.
A GM who used
MgT and it's history while crafting his campaign is going to run into trouble when he tries to incorporate previous materials that used
Traveller history. The backstories won't fit in places and how easily he can use published materials all comes down to how well things fit together. There's already enough goofs, gaffes, and whoppers to deal with, so adding more really doesn't help the situation.
Again, this is a minor detail but adding to the work a GM is forced to do isn't really helping.
Obviously it's important to you that they do, but why should it be important to someone who's never bought into Traveller before and who doesn't know anything about the OTU?
As I wrote above, Mongoose released
Psion first so someone who is new to
Traveller would have every expectation of using that supplement with the
Aslan supplement. When they see they can't use psionics with the Aslan without making their own rules, they'll be mildly disappointed. They'll either not use psionics with the Aslan or buckle down to create their own rules.
However, after they play
Traveller for a period of time and begin to use previously published materials to supplement their campaigns, they'll learn that the Aslan are psionic in
every previous version and they'll ask - just as we are asking now - why Mongoose chose to remove that option from
MgT.
I don't think they'll be satisifed with Mongoose's explanation either.
And those are my answers.
Regards,
Bill
