That's a great idea, though I hate the laser pointer. That has to be the most frustrating thing to a cat since there's no reward. We've used them in the past, but prefer something they can sic their teeth into in the end.
Classic Traveller getting stale?
- Thread starter Murph
- Start date
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
The alternative is a "dangly lure" on the end of a stick (if you don't like the laser pointer).
The point of the laser pointer is that there's nothing to get caught in the spinning wheel ...
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
1. Boston Dynamics Mickey®.
2. Any large populated planetary economy is complex, so you have to figure out what there's a large enough demand for, besides Beanie Babys.
Point it at a pile of wadded-up scrap paper, or a catnip toy, at the end of play.
String on a stick works too.
Our house panther has never attacked a computer mouse.
1. Boston Dynamics Mickey®.
2. Any large populated planetary economy is complex, so you have to figure out what there's a large enough demand for, besides Beanie Babys.
Our dog did, with the results you'd expect. Running joke in our house is estimating the over/under lifetime for "indestructible" toys.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Cite needed.
Classic depicted the empire at peace and at the height of its power. While I wouldn't use "stale" to describe the state of the game in the mid 80s, there is a limit to the product line in such a setting. Looking at other RPG settings, you see one of two things: Static (or driven entirely by player actions) or rapidly destructive timelines full of war. Because war is interesting. Traveller adopted a calendar approach as soon as the setting launched, so big events were inevitable.
Each edition's choice of era and location allows a different set of plots and stories to be told easily. The moving calendar allowed some of that, but GDW found that their quarterly JTAS schedule meant the Fifth Frontier War was over in two issues before the calendar marches on. To tell the stories of a long, wide spread, and interminable war, a bigger event was needed. (MT)
To tell tales of recovery after a civilization shaking event, you need the civilization shaking event. (MT to TNE)
To rebuild an empire (T4), you first need to destroy one.
A new discovery that brings a long quiet era to an end requires the long quiet era. (T4 and T5)
Exploration needs frontiers and civilization's edges (T4, T20, and TNE)
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
There are (at least) two meanings to "frontier". While the Classic Era is supposedly short on the one, it is full of the second. Frontiers are not simply the edges of everything ("wild" frontiers), but also the borderlands between (political frontiers). Charted space is loaded with political frontiers.
The lack of a "wild west" feel is different. Lawlessness and one horse planets are actually pretty common, but the Imperium became too pervasive over time, at least in our perceptions. How well explored, settled, and protected is the fourth moon of the outer gas giant when it is beyond the Maneuver drive limit, and the *main* world only has 12,000 people on it? There is a lot of room for "wild west" if you look for it.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The Imperium was not at the height of its power:
It would be Challenge 26 before we learned of someone surviving contact with jump space - and that plot seed thread died as soon as the Rebllion kicked off.
The FFW filled the JTAS TAS News section from issue 9 until Challenge 25, over four years realtime of nothing but FFW related metagame tosh which I enjoyed reading at the time, but I preferred the setting info adventure seeds hidden in the TAS News articles.
It would be Challenge 26 before we learned of someone surviving contact with jump space - and that plot seed thread died as soon as the Rebllion kicked off.
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CT initial period shows an imperium as evil empire - see Adventures 1-4, Books 4 & 5...
War assigments are not rare, are not time limited. Striker adds that member worlds of the 3I even go to war with each other...
Then the bulk of CT presents the Marches as relatively tense cold war between the 3I and ZC, plus their proxies, Darrian Confed and Sword Worlds Confed. Late CT gives us the 5th frontier war.
Both AM Solomani and Sup 3 present the Solomani as hostile neighbors waiting for a suitable trigger...
The 3I is stable, but not peaceful, and not at peace, unless your definition of peace is merely the absence of overt military actions, rather than the one I prefer, where there's no issues with rebels, no participation in foreign wars, and no active disruption of the neighbors.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Easy to fix if it's getting stale. Roll up a new sub-sector. Roll up a few border worlds to start from and only roll up the rest as you get to them.
You have a point. Perhaps not an evil empire, but one where the Nobles and such sort of run things, that the underlings had better know their places or else. Get in the way of a Megacorp and you are done for. Piss off a Baron, and all of a sudden there is an Imperial Warrant for your arrest.
Just my opinion. There was too much Deus Ex Machina in the whole Rebellion, and the Empire falling apart so quickly. I mean TL 11 Vargr cruisers taking over against TL 13-15 Imperial ships, even second line? Then the whole "Empress Wave" and Cymbeline Evil Chip thing, just reeked of "I am bored, let's play Aftermath/Morrow Project/Twilight 2000 in space". The whole Rebellion/Destruction of the Universe/Black Death Zone/Etc was just too overboard. Here, let me walk into the IMPERIAL FREAKING PALACE with a gun, and whack the Emperor. Yeah, like that is going to really happen. TL 15 security systems would have made Dulinor a smoking puddle of goo on the floor of the palace.
My take on this is that the writers wanted to remake the OTU to suit their sense of what SF had become at the times of the rewrites, and somewhat heavy-handedly forced those changes. What they missed was that there were periods of their own 3I history that had the ambiance of the settings they sought to create -- GURPS's reset to Milieu 0 was a much-too-late example of how to do it without upending everything.
I think that this was because it didn't occur to them that they could move the setting backwards in time. They were players and referees and writers of the in-game present, and the question as they saw it was how to shape their existing settings and characters toward their desired "future" setting while retaining continuity, rather than being open to creating a "new" setting in past eras of the established game history.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Not arrest - disappearance.
The Imperial subsector authority of Regina subsector - Duke Norris - had a political opponent disappeared and then planted fake news stories and even a reward.
Characters can be detained without trial or legal representation.
The INI kidnaps and imprisons sophonts from beyond the Imperium so they can be experimented on.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The Rebellion was foreshadowed as early as S:3
The TL disparity is more difficult to explain. Much of the Vargr opportunism was the result of Imperial fleet movements leaving worlds with little in the way of defensive fleets, and it is still my belief that Norris invited the Aslan and disguised the mass migration.
I don't have a problem with Virus, especially now we have personality wafers, and never took TNE to be a post apocalyptic survival game.
The TL12 RC campaign was backed by Hivers and had all the toys, a regency based campaign was just boring old CT. The Empress Wave was never explained at the time.
Dulinor's plot must have involved taking over the palace security systems.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
GURPS didn't reset to Milieu 0, that was T4. GT was set in an alternative universe where the rebellion didn't happen and was set around 1119.
There was a JTAS article all about setting CT in one of the earlier eras of Imperial history.
Good catch -- thank you.
Well GURPs did the Interstellar Wars period as well with GURPs 4th edition as well. The rpg version of the boardgames Imperium...
Good points here. Me, I just ignore the silly stuff and get on with regular Traveller where there is no rebellion, etc. I love Wounded Colossus, it is just brilliant! Whipsnade made a truly brilliant analysis. They could have started at the Interstellar war period, or even the founding of the 3rd Imperium. As it was the while rebellion garbage was just too hard to swallow. Before I retired I worked some with the United States Secret Service guys, and know how hard they work to make sure the unthinkable does not happen. Those guys are amazing to work with.
