mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I agree, I always thought of TNE as the dawn of a new future.
MT HT - now that was dark.
MT HT - now that was dark.
OTU Only: Development of the OTU
- Thread starter SpaceBadger
- Start date
TNE was dark in that anyplace of importance was in the safes, and the non-safes were all blasted wastelands or virus nastiness, and the game as presented was intended to be out picking the bones of dead civilizations for relics. In short, grave robbery on a galactic scale. (And that's before the democritization of the Domain of Deneb into something completely unlike the 3I.)
It was, almost totally, incompatible with the classic adventures. Further, the core rules only provided for about TL13... tho' FF&S extended that to about 17.
Further still, the change to realistic mode but unrealistically efficient N-Space drives made travel much more dangerous, and escaping combat both much harder on intruders and merchants, and much less intuitive for casual players.
The reasons the prototraveller 3I was dark but playable was the lack of all-pervasive megacorps, no sense of massive trade flows, only a limited sense of information flow, and a callous and somewhat ruthless imperium that only cares about staying in power... the PTU is halfway between CT and WH40K... TNE is closer to 40K in tone than many realize, but without the inherent humor of the absurd and parody value.
It was, almost totally, incompatible with the classic adventures. Further, the core rules only provided for about TL13... tho' FF&S extended that to about 17.
Further still, the change to realistic mode but unrealistically efficient N-Space drives made travel much more dangerous, and escaping combat both much harder on intruders and merchants, and much less intuitive for casual players.
The reasons the prototraveller 3I was dark but playable was the lack of all-pervasive megacorps, no sense of massive trade flows, only a limited sense of information flow, and a callous and somewhat ruthless imperium that only cares about staying in power... the PTU is halfway between CT and WH40K... TNE is closer to 40K in tone than many realize, but without the inherent humor of the absurd and parody value.
Well my mother was 13 and my father 19 in 1946, both had missed 6 years of education and were subject to rationing, I think my mother was living in a school at the time. They are not around to ask, but from things they said and wrote it was very, very dark at the time.
Please don't make comments like that about other people's lives.
Kind Regards
David
Hi,
that's more a statement on the manning problems of the Royal Navy, it was very rare for an 18th/19th century British warship to actually have a full complement, although many were well provided with officer's due to the habit of unemployed officers serving as volunteers.
Regards
David
Didn't say Pitch Black. Said "darker" .. rather than the sweetness and light that the OTU became before FFW.
At the same time I always stuck with CT. I never bought any material of any of the subsequent versions (thus my silence on all those topics).
Anyhow, the OTU in 77-78 was more mysterious and foreboding, Adventures had opportunity for Adventure. Trade was risky business. And a Cutlass was your best friend.
Not to say I didn't appreciate the content and work that went into the late supplements; just never had much use for them - so thereby blunting my interest in investing in later versions of something I already loved and still used.. and still use today.
That said I am going to try T5, in part because CT could probably use and update and in part because I think all the countless hours of pleasure the maybe $200 I had spent on Traveller (CT) stuff in the late 70's early 80's gave to me, Mr Miller deserved my loyalty and support again.
Baron
SOC-12
I bought CT way back in the old days while there were still new releases, and didn't really notice a change in the 3I, just more fluff. If it didn't really impact on the players then it was just reading material for a slow day. I see CT as an attempt to allow play in various classic SF novels. To me, there is no problem with adventuring in a 'non-evil-empire.' I really love the 3I, and as someone posted, you can vary every planet/subsector/sector as you like for whatever flavor you prefer without breaking the 3I as published. IMO.
My impression of the Third Imperium early on:
I was 11 when I first bought Traveller in 1977. Due to a lack of campaign information at the time, I had to rely on other media that was out at the time available to me to flesh out OTU flavor text. Back then that was the science fiction books I read, Star Wars. from television Starblazers. The science fiction I read was along the lines Asimov's Foundation and Anderson's Flandry stories. Most of the adventures we played or came up with back then due our young age were sci-fi versions of D&D modules.
The Third Imperium was just a place, sort of oppressive, but you get away with things as long as you did not get caught.
As more supplements came out, I adapted the new infomation of the Third Imperium to my childlike imagry at the time. As I matured, I later realized:
Spinal Mounts ARE NOT Wave Motion Guns
Droyne ARE NOT Pak or Sea Statue Slavers (and Yaskodray IS NOT a Droyne Protector)
Hivers ARE NOT Pierson Puppeteers
The Ziru Sirka IS NOT the Gamilon Empire
100000 Naval Officers sent to the conquered Vilani ARE NOT 100000 Flandry like characters
Ringworlds ARE NOT all over the place.
I was 11 when I first bought Traveller in 1977. Due to a lack of campaign information at the time, I had to rely on other media that was out at the time available to me to flesh out OTU flavor text. Back then that was the science fiction books I read, Star Wars. from television Starblazers. The science fiction I read was along the lines Asimov's Foundation and Anderson's Flandry stories. Most of the adventures we played or came up with back then due our young age were sci-fi versions of D&D modules.
The Third Imperium was just a place, sort of oppressive, but you get away with things as long as you did not get caught.
As more supplements came out, I adapted the new infomation of the Third Imperium to my childlike imagry at the time. As I matured, I later realized:
Spinal Mounts ARE NOT Wave Motion Guns
Droyne ARE NOT Pak or Sea Statue Slavers (and Yaskodray IS NOT a Droyne Protector)
Hivers ARE NOT Pierson Puppeteers
The Ziru Sirka IS NOT the Gamilon Empire
100000 Naval Officers sent to the conquered Vilani ARE NOT 100000 Flandry like characters
Ringworlds ARE NOT all over the place.
Good point. It looks less dark in hindsight, knowing how things turn out, than it looked to the people living through it. Depends a bit on where you were, though. 1946 Berlin and 1946 Madrid were very different worlds.
1946: Germany, and Berlin, are divided into 4 zones of occupation. The Austrian republic, annexed by Germany in '38, re-emerges and is also divided into zones of occupation. The European economy is a big mess - no surprise there, tens of millions had died in the war, industry was just beginning to rebuild after having lost almost 3/4 of its base during the war, and the Marshall Plan was still a year or two in the future. British war debts are crippling the Brit economy, thanks in part to some American financial bungling. Even Britain ends up on food rationing; folk over there grew real fond of Spam shipped over from the U.S. Displaced persons are trying to find their way home or make new homes for themselves - in some cases people are being newly displaced: Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland were expelling millions of German nationals and their own citizens of German descent, with the consent of the allied powers. There remains questions such as whether your neighbor or cousin was a collaborator, and how much of that could be forgiven and how much warranted punishment, how to rebuild without letting the fascists regain power, and whether your son or your husband or your daughter's fiance was still alive somewhere out there or was dead and rotting in some remote corner of a former battlefield. Communist groups are hoping this is the opportunity for communism to take hold throughout Europe, so they're agitating and making trouble.
The Western/Soviet alliance started souring immediately after the end of the war, and by '46 people are wondering whether the Soviets aren't going to start the war up again - Churchill by '46 is talking about an Iron Curtain separating Soviet occupied territory from U.S./Brit/French-occupied territory. A few wrong turns could have seen the Soviet juggernaut again marching westward while American bombers dropped their few available nukes on them - perforce in Europe since bombers then didn't have the range to reach much further and long-range missiles had yet to be developed. Amidst all of this, the colonial powers - Britain and France especially - are wrestling with how to dismantle their colonial empires without the whole mess collapsing into chaos or being swept up by Communism.
Very, very uncertain time to live in.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Actually, the Western/Soviet alliance was fraying before that, to some degree even before the end of the war in Europe. Once Roosevelt died, with his belief that he could handle "Uncle Joe" (he couldn't), questions about how long things would last began starting to be asked. Remember, up to the German attack on the USSR, both the US and Great Britain viewed Stalin as being very similar to Hitler, just to the left rather than the right. The Russo-Finnish War in 1939-40 nearly led to the British and the French moving through Norway and Sweden to aid the Finns, and the US was supplying Finland with spare parts for US equipment through Finland throughout the war, even when it was fighting the USSR. There are those historians that argue that one of the reasons the US dropped the first two Atom Bombs was to demonstrate to Stalin that the Westerns powers could hurt him very badly.
Against that, given the massive destruction in the USSR during the war, the idea that the Soviets could have immediately moved further west is highly questionable.
Yeah, that was an interesting war, full of strange bedfellows.
You're right, though that wouldn't have been obvious to the ordinary folk living through it.
Hi,
I came to Travelelr a bit later 79/80 ish, but I saw the 3 Imperium as the human Empire from the Flandry stories as well, a mad emperor, evil governor's revolting admirals'setc and I think that and Blake's 7 where the empire is designed to keep the aliens out heavily influenced my 80's Traveller.
Regards
David
slartibartfast
SOC-3
Been thinking on this. Trying to remember. Did not play a lot, everyone wanted to play AD&D more. When I did do things for CT my impressins were more of an Old West in space theme
. A distant, uncaring government. To far away to see what the real impact of their edicts meant for the common man. Not that the main government did it on purpose, more along the lines of Rome or Old West. Or, no offense meant here, Hitler in the bunker. Ordering units that don't exist to places that had already been over run. Not on the end of its life but just coasting to oblivion.
Thats the feel I got at least. I will admit some of it came for tne patch the Scouts used for the XBoat network. The old Pony express logo with a 6 legged horse.
That is what I remember from 78 when I started and what I'm working on trying to re-reate with either CT or T5.
. A distant, uncaring government. To far away to see what the real impact of their edicts meant for the common man. Not that the main government did it on purpose, more along the lines of Rome or Old West. Or, no offense meant here, Hitler in the bunker. Ordering units that don't exist to places that had already been over run. Not on the end of its life but just coasting to oblivion.
Thats the feel I got at least. I will admit some of it came for tne patch the Scouts used for the XBoat network. The old Pony express logo with a 6 legged horse.
That is what I remember from 78 when I started and what I'm working on trying to re-reate with either CT or T5.
Colin Tarsus
SOC-1
An empire of evil?
I think it was on Loren's site where he said that Traveller had its genesis coming back from seeing the original star wars. If that was once somewhere held in the DNA of the earliest works, no doubt original hinting discussions of the primordial Imperium were viewing it as evil.
How it plays out in any one campaign would be very driven by the style of the GM, in conjunction with the group. In a high fantasy mentality, one could envision Baron Harkonin-like descent into evil and depravity. In a low fantasy, gritty style, it would manefest itself as very dependant on point of view (much more real-world schizms). And yes, because of the importance of distance and time, you can easily envision pockets or regions ruled in vastly different ways, or people nievely or amorally picking the wrong path even for the right (from their view point) reasons.
If you like tightly sticking to canon, which personally fits my OCD nature, there is still ample elbow room to fit into it an area that suits your style. It is, after all, quite a large arm in the galaxy.
I think it was on Loren's site where he said that Traveller had its genesis coming back from seeing the original star wars. If that was once somewhere held in the DNA of the earliest works, no doubt original hinting discussions of the primordial Imperium were viewing it as evil.
How it plays out in any one campaign would be very driven by the style of the GM, in conjunction with the group. In a high fantasy mentality, one could envision Baron Harkonin-like descent into evil and depravity. In a low fantasy, gritty style, it would manefest itself as very dependant on point of view (much more real-world schizms). And yes, because of the importance of distance and time, you can easily envision pockets or regions ruled in vastly different ways, or people nievely or amorally picking the wrong path even for the right (from their view point) reasons.
If you like tightly sticking to canon, which personally fits my OCD nature, there is still ample elbow room to fit into it an area that suits your style. It is, after all, quite a large arm in the galaxy.
Marc's responded to this in other forums, but he repeats that Traveller (the '77 LBBs) was actually all but completed when they went off to see the movie, and they didn't change anything because of it.
Remember, Traveller's "foundation" is not laid on top of 70's TV and movie sci-fi, but 50's and 60's scifi novels. Marc is always pointing me at obscure scifi novels of that period, in a desperate attempt to give me a real education in the background.
I, on the other hand, keep trying to combine Outland the movie with Horatio Hornblower the A&E TV series, much to his despair, I fear.
Remember, Traveller's "foundation" is not laid on top of 70's TV and movie sci-fi, but 50's and 60's scifi novels. Marc is always pointing me at obscure scifi novels of that period, in a desperate attempt to give me a real education in the background.
I, on the other hand, keep trying to combine Outland the movie with Horatio Hornblower the A&E TV series, much to his despair, I fear.
Otto Harkaman
SOC-12
Guessing from GDW boardgame Imperium, Earth/Terra seems a lot like Asimov's young Second Foundation fighting the old Galactic Empire. Is this also where the idea of "Free Traders" comes from?
Free Traders are from Andre Norton, and some other sources, but they are almost exactly like Sargasso of Ships and such.
As far as darkness, growing up watching all the old sci-fi, plus newer stuff like Heavy Metal, Black Hole, etc.; it wasn't actually dark per se, just sort of the feeling from the era.
As far as darkness, growing up watching all the old sci-fi, plus newer stuff like Heavy Metal, Black Hole, etc.; it wasn't actually dark per se, just sort of the feeling from the era.
Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
:rofl:
Otto Harkaman
SOC-12
I love reading Andre Norton, I for some reason never thought they had an influence on OTU. I just happen to be rereading the Solar Queen stories.
There is a lot about "Free Traders" in Asimov's Foundation series.
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curmudgeon
SOC-12
While I like your idea for the background, and I have used it in the past, I would be really interested in learning more about the books that inspired Marc while he was designing the original background. I am a big fan of old and classic and sometimes obscure science fiction stories, so I think it could make a fun summer reading alongside T5.
slartibartfast
SOC-3
I also would love to see Marc's Appendix N. That would generate some interesting reading and a whole lot more hunting at Half Price Books.
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