If religious orders are "in order" I vote Jesuit and Franciscan. The cyclan did not feel like the monacal type imho. Initially, I thought of the Cyclan more as a "fanatic scientist brotherhood".
have fun
Selandia
Dumarest -- one of the inspirations for Basic Traveller Boxed Set
- Thread starter creativehum
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If religious orders are "in order" I vote Jesuit and Franciscan. The cyclan did not feel like the monacal type imho. Initially, I thought of the Cyclan more as a "fanatic scientist brotherhood".
have fun
Selandia
ShapeShifter
SOC-13
hmm...interesting! What chapter was that in?? Since I've been taking meticulous notes, I'm surprised I didn't catch that.
Book 1, chapter 10. One advantage of an ebook - it's searchable.
I read every. Single. One. Of. Them. Except the recent one, which I haven't found in the library or the used bookstores.
Just because.
And yes, I had to grit my teeth through many of them. At one point, I tried to identify the ones which were actually WORTH reading, but didn't have the oomph to actually follow through.
#1 - Winds of Gath is required reading.
#2 - Derai (probably)
#4 - Kalin is required reading.
#5 - The Jester at Scar (maybe)
#8 - Veruchia (maybe)
#12 - Eliose (maybe)
#13 - Eye of the Zodiac is important.
#31 - Temple of Truth is important.
And a few more.
But, less than half, I think.
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Brian Smaller
SOC-12
The way I lok at these books is that it is like a TV series. I mean how many different stories are there on say, CSI? I just read them for the nostalgia now. Have them all in book and e-form.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
As I recall them, sparse of characters and spartan in tone.
Yep. As harsh as CT chargen and as spartan as the LBB covers.
I'm plodding my way through them as a soporific and they work great for that.
But... each one is definitely about the scope of a classic adventure module, with the requisite new world, environment, life forms, government type, laws, intrigues, pushes and pulls.
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
This, I think, is the most interesting feature of the books when comparing them to the Basic Traveller rules.
Specifically, Subsector generation rules + World Creation rules + Patron rules + Animal Encounters rules. You do end up with a sense of a string of Traveller adventures that would be the equivalent of a string of Dumarest.
I'm not saying Traveller should be played this way or it is ideal. Simply saying reading some of the Dumarest books after really digging into the Books 1, 2, and 3 was a real light bulb moment for me. Everything lines up fairly neatly.
Definitely feeds into the general "philosophy" of Traveller.
ShapeShifter
SOC-13
Eye of the Zodiac is a must-read too. There are other standouts, but I'll need my notes.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Hmm, the fungi ecosystem of Scar sounds a lot like the fungi ecosystem in one of the Megatraveller Journal adventures.
Also, I wonder how/whether the Doctor Who audio drama "He Jests at Scars" was influenced by it?
I was rather disappointed in them. Several people gave me a big buildup and convinced me I should read them.
Later on... I realized they probably wanted to share the boredom or something.
Well, according to the GURPS Traveller writing guidelines, air raft is spelled air/raft because Marc Miller likes it that way. And, I can be good with that. It is, after all, his baby.
External Link: http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/GURPS_Traveller_Writing_Conventions
air/raft: This is Marc Miller's preferred spelling, with the slash. It should not be capitalized (unless it starts a sentence, then capitalize the "a"), but the slash is always present.
I that the GURPS Traveller list came from Loren Wiseman.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Flying Carpet ®
salochin999
SOC-13
I enjoyed them at the age I read them but I don't know if I would now.
Separate from that they are interesting as an insight into some of the ideas that went into Traveller.
ShapeShifter
SOC-13
It's helpful to think of the Dumarest books as novelisations of a bygone science-fiction/space opera television programme: very episodic, and, yes, not the most scintillating and eye-opening prose in the history of literature, but a great, entertaining time.
It's not on par with the classics of the genre, and I'm always surprised that people expect so much from their leisure reading. It's not Milton, Dante, Shakespeare, etc. Just enjoy it for what it is. I found early Astounding magazine (1950s) and the 1950s sf much more interesting. And the newspaper comic Flasg Gordon was still in the newspaper when I was a kid. Books like 'Pebble in the Sky', the Jirel of Joirey stories, 'I, Robot'. I found a Gernsback or two a few years ago online. The copyright had expired.
All of that was much better than Dumarest.
All of that was much better than Dumarest.
