(hypothetical) What would you ask Dave Nilsen?

[Andrew Boulton]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Mr Nilson (or can I call you Freakin'?),

Yes, Andrew, you certainly may. We're all friends here.

(But it's Nilsen, with an "e".

)
</font>[/QUOTE]Oh, poo! I double-checked the spelling and my fingers *still* got it wrong! And I complain when people spell my name wrong...

 

[daryen]

That's OK. I mock people who spell my name (Mike West) wrong.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

You'd have to try pretty hard to spell Mike West wrong.

Well...I suppose there's My Quest...

 

[ChaserCaffey]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:

I was thinking back in January (before I found out about the COTI site) about doing some limited patch runs of Thunderchild, Arrival Vengeance, and Mary Ellen Carter patches.

Oh, heck yes! For anyone (Dave or the good folks who run this site) trying to guage demand for such a thing, I would *love* to be able to get a Mary Ellen Carter patch.

Just the thing to complete my Viking fanboy costume.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Legendary, Absolutely Legendary.

Sometimes I’m in complete awe of this community of people.

I’ve spent the evening riveted to the (hypothetical) What would you ask Dave Nilsen? thread, all 14 pages … and it’s fantastic.

I know this has been said, but after a decade!! … I never dreamt it could happen. The insights, the understanding!!

I know this is a ‘me to’ post, but to hell with it!!

Guys, thank you for your questions, and Dave, thank you _so much_ for your answers.

Awesome … truly, truly, Awesome.

Sincerely yours

Ewan

 

[Michael Schulz]

Mr. Nilsen,

At the risk of taking up too much of your time with a non-question thread, I just thought I'd join the chorus of people thanking you. Actually, I've joined this board for just that purpose.

Way, way, back in 1993 when I was a mere pup making the transistion to high school and beginning to play games other than AD+D and Star Wars, TNE was one of the first games I purchased largely out of curiosity. Although I never actually played it (my cohorts were way too into shadow/cyber/runningpunk stuff), the setting always stuck with me.

Sadly, my copy of TNE was one of the casualties of my moving away for college. And to be honest, I had kind of fallen out of the hobby in my late teens after my buddies and I became more interested in meeting girls than rolling dice. But it was an item that I soon sorely missed.

A little less than a year ago I got back into role-playing with a couple other perpetual grad students. As the campaign I am currently running is coming to a close I started to cast about for a new game, ideally a good solid sci-fi game. Sadly, nothing on the market really appealled to me (largely due to an unreasonable dislike of anything to D+Dish).

Memories of TNE started to come back and, thanks to the miracle of ebay, I recently recieved the core book (tragically missing the psionics rules). I started casting about for more info on Traveller in any form and stumbled across this forum just in time to learn how contraversial you were. And now, boom, here you are. And I am truly happy to thank you for a sci-fi setting that has spurred on my imagination for more than a decade.

Oh, and did anything of Duke Craig or Marget's domains (I just read Survival Margin for the first time) survive the collapse?

 

[William]

Rereading through this thread just reminds me of all the things I had wished that GDW had been able to complete - Armor 21, the rest of the 2.2 rewrite of the T2k Poland series, as well as the house system version of 2300. Sheesh, I'd happily pay stupid money for either of them. Ah, well, such is how it goes.

If nothing else this thread is a reminder to me of how many different and equally wonderful products were created every 22 days (!) for a heck of a long time.

Oh, and if you do the patches, I want one for the AV. See, I've got this little thing I'm writing about her in 1248...

William
(ed for clarity. Not that it'll help much.)

 

[Dreadnought]

Mike/Daryen--

I will admit that I had to read it twice to see what it was trying to say. However, once I "got" it, I really liked how paradoxical (is that even a word) the Hivers are. To a great extent, they have a very, very tenuous hold on sentience.

I do admit that I had never read Aliens of the Rim. I think I need to try and track that down, now ...

I think paradoxical is a word (I'd use it), and I like your characterization of their having a tenuous hold on sentience. Living in a world of double-think and triple-think must leave them pretty close to mad. I know I've characterized the Ithklur as having "snapped," but the Hivers are no less in that mold. Since they are mute however, and radically different from us morphologically, it's harder for us to see their madness in the midst of the rest of their weirdness.

I would very much like you to read H&I, as I would be interested in hearing what you pick up in it, as carefully as you have read the other books.

I thought the font sizes on that book were a bit screwy. Sometimes adjacent pages were in completely different sizes.

Yes, that's absolutely true. That happened when a subsector that required a lot of detail sat next to one that required less. I didn't like that effect particularly, but there was only so much I could do, given the time available.

First and foremost was the one-page sidebar on Norris (p9). The description of Norris' "unsuccessful attempts to find a partner" clearly showed how successful he really had been. You clearly added a new wrinkle to Norris' character without directly saying it. That was a very good piece of writing.

Thank you very much. I wrote that very carefully, for perhaps obvious reasons in this day and age. The intent, however, was not to settle the issue in any particular detail, but to allow the thoughtful reader to see that within all of this grand star-spanning history there are still human beings with their small, personal moments that they must deal with at the same time as all the big ones. It is not my intent that there is any official answer, but that referees are able, "IMTU" to have some information to think about, and to draw a conclusion that fits what makes sense to them and their gaming groups. "His Grace" certainly faced a number of challenges, and met them with grace and courage, and is to be commended for it, even if he isn't real.

And here's a funny piece of Traveller trivia. In Arrival Vengeance, Lamont Fullerton and I created the facsimile of Norris' letter to the factional leaders, and we had to have a signature. The signature was mine, but it was with a strange amount of trepidation that I undertook the task. I took it as a significant honor and responsibility that it was my hand that was to become Norris'. Yes, that's right. I'm a Norris fanboy. But I think that all long-time Traveller players are Norris fanboys and -girls.

Also, I recall reading once someone commenting on the "old Norris" picture in RSB. The "old Norris" picture was an outtake from Arrival Vengeance, drawn by Mike Vilardi. Mike had misunderstood and had drawn a Norris well advanced in age, and the art department had to go back to an older picture, and were going to send it back to him as unuseable. I told them no, hang onto it; we'll have a chance to use it. I was very pleased to be able to use that picture in RSB. I thought it was a really good capture of the old fox, still sharp and alert, and even a little humorous, through all of the challenges of his life.

Vilardi's illustrations for AV were outstanding, as usual. Seldrian was a good female Norris, and the presence of a Pacific Whiteside Dolphin just blew me away, and inspired some more continuity detail. One of the things I enjoyed about being a designer was providing illo references. Duke Craig was based on Lucian K. Truscott, Ililek Kuligaan on John Huston, and the two older Strephons were very powerful. In the full length one you can see the clenched fist, and I can clearly see him clenching and unclenching it with the stress of the job.

With the Zhodani, you never explicitly state that the Consulate is "dead", you only talk about the strife and conflict in it. But it is readily apparent that there is no Consulate at all, and likely hasn't been for some time. They may have collapsed not much after the Imperium did.

This is true in the sense of a reliable central government, able to make its stabilizing will a reality throughout the Consulate. However, it is fair to state that the deepest principles of Zhodani Consulate style society are still being fought for by nobles undamaged by the Empress Wave. The damaged warships seen in 1119 were the result of internal fighting in the Consulate, and the "intimations of doom" are as much the ordinary reaction to the breakdown of order as they are the spreading of psionic damage from wave-damaged minds to those around them. The fact of the refugees, of course, with their nobles going with them, are the clearest sign of all. Also think in terms of the Regency psionics not only in terms of generally rational liberalization and creation of a Regency counter-balance to Zhodani capabilities, but also the creation of a corps of persons who might be able to help shore up or reconstruct damaged Zhodani society. Note how the ethics and values of Regency psions are highly congruent with traditional Zhodani values, and also the clear focus on "humanity" and "all persons."

Out of curiousity, did you think the ihatei invasions were as nonsensical as many of us do?

That's one of those areas where I did not indulge myself in an opinion. It was established as a continuity "fact," and I treated it as such. I've done some reading on those who disagree with the realistic possibility of the ihatei invasion, and I think they make some valid points. I guess I figured it as a plot device, much like the sudden unanticipated collapse of the Imperium following the assassination, and one which had taken place sufficiently long before my arrival that I could only treat it as a fait accompli. I had no intention of subtly undoing it as I did with the IRIS plotline. Probably the main reason for that was that the IRIS plotline was more recent, and more directly at odds with the TNE "solution" to the Rebellion.

And then there is the Regency itself. There are so many problems and divisions within it, it is amazing it didn't fall apart by 1202. In 1248, the Regency splinters. Many who read the playtest would ask how Regency could fall apart. I respond by asking how could the Regency stay together? (Obviously, based on your comments in this thread, you intended them to, but only with great difficulty.)

Absolutely. The Regency was a very tricky little federation to manage, and that makes for great roleplaying. There are always lots of important things to be doing to keep it together, and lots of ways for roleplaying to appear in the fissures between Vargr and Imperial and Zhodani and Aslan and disenfranchised nobles and you-name-what else. That's why your great spy movies are always set in places like Berlin, and not Salt Lake City.

A little detail is the Islands. The Regency took it over, in the theory of protecting itself from Virus. But, considering the Rape of Trin (which shows that Virus doesn't need the Islands to get in) and that no Virus involvement with the dead Island worlds was found, it would seem that there is really a different reason for taking the Islands. I postulate that so the Regency can have a door to the old Imperial space that bypasses Corridor and Vland. Was that intended?

I would say yes and no. I'll start with no. The main reason for seizing the Islands is the military principle of "defending forward." The farther out you can push your frontier and your visibility, the better you are able to defend yourself; the more time you have to see approaching threats. Also, if you were to leave the Islands undefended, you don't have any control over what sorts of threats could grow and fester there. The notion of the impermeable barrier required by Virus is that you must maintain positive control over everything that you can. Anything you ignore is a vector by which something can sneak it. I have always argued that the US maintains troops in Europe not because we care about defending Germany or France, but because we want the ability to keep an eye on those guys and keep them from doing anything we don't like, and that's the best way to keep your finger in.

Another military principle however, is that defense is never passive. You don't just sit in your trenches and wait for the bad guys to come over. You send out patrols, and probe, and gather intelligence from your forward lines and listening posts. Here is where the "yes" answer comes in, as your suggestion is definitely a part of what the Islands are used for. It's just that that is not the only reason.

Another item is the Daryen. On the surface, it appears that the Daryens are as they always were, and are faithful Regency allies. But looking at the details, it looks to me like the Regency is actively coopting the Daryens to the point that, if the path in the RSB doesn't change, the Daryens will be annexed by the Regency, either in fact or effect. Was this intended?

I would agree with what you are saying if only from the standpoint that, to paraphrase Von Clausewitz and Marx, "economics is war by other means," and war was already politics by other means. The economic and technological ties already there would lead toward the sort of things you suggest, but I would take that as an effect rather than a specific intent. The Daryens, smashed as they are between the Imperium and Consulate, and with Virus outside forcing everyone to work together, are being rather coopted into being a junior partner in a larger enterprise rather than a truly independent race. Nonetheless, as soon as the frontiers open and the pressures are perceived to be eased, old fissures will re-emerge, like in Yugoslavia.

I really appreciate your "expose" on the Jonkereen. You label them as a failed experiment, and why they are failed, and the tragedy they have become.

I always felt sorry for them. They were made to be unhappy by some God-complex types, and it's a tragedy. "Daddy, why can we only live on these dustball worlds, and not live anywhere nice because we can't get along with anyone?" "Well, my daughter, because some bureaucrats and scientists with God-complexes thought they were allowed to make us this way." I assume they were originally designed because someone wanted to have Dune in Traveller, but the poor guys just made you want to say, "boy were you screwed," and the chance of a big Jihad that would lead them to Capital seemed like a real long shot.

At the risk of ruining my previous post, I want to mention two nits with the RSB: one little, one big.

The little one is the non-mention of the Floriani. I understand that the RSB didn't cover the subsectors with the Florian League, but it would still have been good to have a sidebar mentioning their existance, their rough current condition (e.g. "lost no ground after the initial Aslan attacks spurred by the Rebellion"), and their influence on things.

Don't worry, you didn't "ruin your previous post." All the thoughtful things you said in the first are not undermined by the thoughtful things you said in the second.

You are correct about the logical value of mentioning the Floriani, even though their actual subsectors were not included. I just missed including that in my thinking, and probably a large reason for that is the artificial divisions of sectors and subsectors. I never agreed with the Traveller obsession with these uniformly-sized grids, which is just an artifact of paper size. In the real world we don't define nations in terms of fixed sized maps. Cultures and peoples and polities expand to where they expand, and we analyze them on the basis of where they're at, not on what will fit onto a page. If you read my previous posts, you'll recall the time I spent with maps, showing J1 mains and J2 travel patterns. My real dream was to do away with the artificiality of subsectors and deal in real stellar communities, but that was just going to be too hard, and fly in the face of established formats and assumptions. So when I would update data, that data would tend to be segregated by subsector or sector, and if something was just one parsec on the other side of an arbitrary line, it just increased the chance that I'd miss it. And in the case of the Floriani, that's what happened.

The big thing is the TL inflation. Regency space gains a lot of techinical increases in the RSB, some worlds even jumping 3 or 4 TLs. I understand the unique pressures the Regency was under, but the amount of TL increases seen in the RSB is truly unprecidented in all of Traveller.

I do agree things should have "moved forward" and there might have been some special cases with big jumps, but the across the board increases were a bit much.

Without being able to look at that stuff in detail, I will say that it is very hard to pore over all of those UWP digits without going mad, and without missing lots of stuff. I believe that we made it so that the big jumps were mostly only on low-tech worlds where you could notionally drop in some prefab stuff and instructors and bring people up in some significant fashion by saying, "do it this way instead." However, the updating of the subsectors was done according to some algorithms developed between me and Geo Gelinas and the boys. I know that Geo provided me with analysis and explanation of what they did, how they applied the rules, what the exceptions were, etc., but I don't have that where I can find it, and certainly don't remember it. And please let me be clear, I'm not trying to shift blame to anyone else. The UWP updates were done under my supervision, and they were my responsibility, but I'd be lying if I told you that I looked at every single digit of every single world.

I think I tweaked about every single world that was delivered, but it's so hard to gain a holistic sense of a world when you're looking at them hundreds at a time through those myopic little alphanumeric strings. Half the time I'm not even sure I'd recognize a feudal technocracy if it appointed me head of a guild, much less how that affects TL increases within certain environmental bands and certain population figures.

You've probably got a very good point, but I would probably need to spend some more time thinking about it and studying it before I had anything particularly useful to say.

Thanks for your thoughtful attention to the material, and I look forward to hearing more of your observations.

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

Cad Lad--

Please, there is never a need to apologize to me for recognizing that girls are more important than dice, God bless 'em. (Girls, not dice.) If you're lucky, you'll meet a girl who likes to roll dice, as CardinalBiggles did.

(largely due to an unreasonable dislike of anything to D+Dish).

D+Dish? I must be getting too old to understand you kids today.

Somebody tore the psionics rules out of your TNE rulebook? That must have been tough.

and stumbled across this forum just in time to learn how controversial you were.

Controversial must be one of those good/bad things, right?

Yeah, I had no idea how controversial I was until I got here either.

Oh, and did anything of Duke Craig or Marget's domains (I just read Survival Margin for the first time) survive the collapse?

It is my belief that a pocket empire/fragment survived from each factional safe, so the answer to your question is yes. However, we had not worked them out to any level of detail before the end. I certainly would have wanted to see a Craig remnant, as I liked him. Margaret's would have probably had the old IRIS clubhouse in it. Just kidding.

I'm glad to hear from you, and very happy to hear of your fondness for TNE. We really did want to make something that people would find engaging and exciting, and it's nice to hear from those that we connected with.

Dave

 

[Falkayn]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> (largely due to an unreasonable dislike of anything to D+Dish).

D+Dish? I must be getting too old to understand you kids today. </font>[/QUOTE]He meant Dungeons and Dragonish ... but perhaps you already got that?

 

[Dreadnought]

He meant Dungeons and Dragonish ... but perhaps you already got that?

Oh, "D&D-ish" is the way I would have spelled it. I read that as "Dee plus Dish."

Dee plus Dish made absolutely no sense whatever to me.

Dave

 

[Michael Schulz]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
D+Dish? I must be getting too old to understand you kids today.

Somebody tore the psionics rules out of your TNE rulebook? That must have been tough.

Uhh, sorry for being unclear. There is no hip lingo to learn. I just didn't feel like writing out Dungeons and Dragons and adding an 'ish' to it. While I haven't actually played that system since it became D20, I really disliked it when I was a teenager and suspect I wouldn't like it now.

On the other hand, T20 inspired me to pick up a used copy of TNE on ebay. Sadly, the otherwise pristine copy had had the psionics rules cut out. I guess that's what they meant by 'some wear and tear.'

Oh, and I hope the IRIS clubhouse line was a Legion of Super-Heroes reference. I actually got into the Legion around the same time I bought TNE. There is a weird parallel between the two in my mind because I started reading the Legion back when Kieth Giffen (another contraversial creator) was turning that cherished universe on its head.

Controversial (is there a spell check on this thing?) by the way, is mostly good in my opinion. While controversy for its own sake can be awful, usually it means (to me) that a creator has touched a nerve and elicited very strong emotions. I'd much rather read/watch/listen to something that people either love or hate than something guarenteed not to offend.

 

[Michael Schulz]

Crud, too late to explain myself. At least now I know short hand for Dungeons and Dragons. And knowing is half the battle.

 

[Dreadnought]

Oh, and I hope the IRIS clubhouse line was a Legion of Super-Heroes reference.

Well, only tangentially. LSH had a clubhouse, Mickey Mouse club had a clubhouse, IRIS struck me as the kind of outfit that ought to have a clubhouse.

Imra Ardeen. They gave her a cool new costume in the 70s. "Cool up, Starboy!" My favorite LSH story was the one where Braniac 5 sleep-built this Supergirl robot that had the hots for him. This was when she had the red choker and the off-center "S". Pretty hot for me as an impressionable teenager. But I digress.

I started with D&D in 1974 or 75 (Greyhawk had just come out, I think), when RPGs were born. We had to start someplace. It was kind of cool, and made sure we were ready for Traveller when it came out. We discovered it in 1978, right when Mercenary came out.

Controversial (is there a spell check on this thing?) by the way, is mostly good in my opinion.

I spell-checked it for you. Otherwise my response would have looked too much like I was dogging you for misspelling it, which was not my point. And did you know that "extravert" and "extrovert" both appear to be accepted spellings? That makes no sense to me at all.

While controversy for its own sake can be awful, usually it means (to me) that a creator has touched a nerve and elicited very strong emotions. I'd much rather read/watch/listen to something that people either love or hate than something guaranteed not to offend.

I don't believe that I engage in controversy for its own sake, although I manage to find it often enough.

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
Jame--
Q: If questions are still being taken, then: If you could (and wanted to) go change one thing about the background, what would it be?

That's a very interesting question, and I'm not sure. Do you mean change something we did while I was there? Or change anything?
Dave
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I meant was, would you change anything about the Traveller universe/game system?

Maybe I'm still missing your point, but...I don't think so?

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

OK, so I'm a hopeless geek, replying to my own posting. Anyway, now that I'm home, I've added a few pics to my Repair Bays. One is of my collection of miniature ships & tanks, the other is a close-up on the G-Carrier menitioned earlier. Maybe it'll give you a better idea that my stunning ASCII works-of-art.

Man, I wish I had some of them. We didn't even have any of those at GDW, which was plain wrong. Marc didn't even have any when we tried to get some for RCVG artist's references.

And I still don't have any of those starship minis that I rated for RAFM in RSB! Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

MadGav--

Anyway my question (and I’m afraid that it’s a technical one) is this. One of the changes in TNE was that the standard in-system drive was no longer a reactionless thruster plate but HEPLaR. It was a subtle difference but one that had a surprising number of repercussions. It took longer than one week to make many (most?) in system transfers (especially after the revisions that came with the Referee’s Screen) so it was quicker to make a jump instead. Gas giant refuelling became a rarity and running out of/keeping track of fuel became a major issue in ship travel. Would you mind expanding on the process by which you came to decide on the change to HEPLaR? In particular, were you conscious of all of the repercussions when you made the decision? Did you ever regret making the change?
It’s a small point really but somehow it’s a question that’s puzzled me for the last 10 years.

One of the "must do" items in TNE before we ever started was Frank's desire to get rid of reactionless drives. I think somewhere someone made the nice soundbite that "we try to only violate one law of physics per game," and in Traveller it was jump drive, so reactionless drives had to go*. That didn't bother me, they felt a little magicky, and the reintroduction of reaction drives felt interesting and seemed to make sense.

We did intend for it to have repercussions in terms of ability to maneuver in space combat (i.e., Brilliant Lances), and to reinforce things we'd said in the past about conserving vectors when jumping. For example, we published numbers about G-turns into and out of planetary orbit to make sure players knew that they were supposed to be paying attention to G-turns, fuel supply, and refueling. Every ship had very clearly rated fuel supplies in G-turns so the players would have that information. We also did want to encourage merchant ships to refuel at the main world rather than at gas giants, because it reinforced interaction and roleplaying. We liked the idea that star systems seemed bigger now (because they are) and that people weren't just flitting effortlessly from inner system to gas giants and able to ignore the main world, which was supposedly the focal point of the system. It made sense to us to enforce the notion that the main world truly was the focal point.

We really did want players to have to think about running out of fuel rather than the old "four weeks of unlimited maneuver" which didn't seem interesting. The idea that space travel is dangerous, and that you can run out of fuel and be stuck on a trajectory or in an orbit and require rescue struck us as interesting, and reasonable in that it reinforced the notion that space is a dangerous, unforgiving place.

All of those general observations are things that we desired, but when it gets down to trying to remember all of those details, I'm afraid that's pretty hazy.

I will say this, however, that I was conscious at the time of wanting to do more to explain to players about those changes and go into SOPs and the "so whats" of how this change means people will routinely operate and I don't think we ever really got to do that to the extent that would have been best. And that's too bad, because it's something I recall knowing we wanted to do, to show examples of "here's this ship blasting into orbit, which costs it this much fuel, and then it proceeds to 100D and jumps with such and such a vector, which allows it to emerge at its destination with this vector, leaving X G-turns of fuel in its tanks." You'd wind up being able to generate numbers that there were minimum numbers of G-turns to get into and out of worlds of various sizes, or refuel at gas giants, and you'd be able to make decisions among ships because some were better suited to some operational profiles than others.

We paid attention to it in Brilliant Lances in terms of how much you expended in combat, but the other side of that, how much do you need to retain after space combat to land or refuel is something we didn't go far enough on, as I recall. Maybe we did do some of this stuff, but I recall the desire to do more.

So while we don't regret the effect, I think we didn't do enough to help people see it and learn how to replicate that thinking in their campaigns. There were just a lot of other things to do, and that got pushed aside probably. Like I've said in previous posts, my regrets are mostly details, not big strokes.

I know that there was more discussion and thinking than I'm able to recall here, but I might have to consult the books again, or it might just be too far gone.

Dave

* Of course, we still had contragrav, and then I had to introduce gravitic focusing as the named violation of physics that permitted the impossibly long-ranged canonical Traveller lasers.

 

[Dreadnought]

Kafka47--

I finally got a chance to print out this thread. WOW! Dave, you did a fabulous job in answering all of our questions and dealing with your critics in fair and gentlemanly manner.

Thank you, and I'm glad to have done so.

As to your query to what was/is "Candles Against the Night", it was the TNE set in the Reavers Deep sector to be found in the early Traveller Chronicles, if memory serves me right...

Although the name is familiar, I just can't remember right now.

Hope that you will be convinced/press ganged into doing something for M:1248. Funny how we both thought of the Black Curtain the same way...

I may be able to do some stuff for 1248. That would be fun.

What do you mean about the Black Curtain thing?

Dave

P.S. This brings me to the top of page 9, where I will resume later. I think I might have to skip tomorrow night. These last few posts seem kind of rambly and repetitive and not really getting to the point so much as staggering around near it. So I might have to skip a day or so and catch up on some sleep.

Good night.

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
I would very much like you to read H&I, as I would be interested in hearing what you pick up in it, as carefully as you have read the other books.

I will have to try and find a copy. I know I can get an e-copy, but I refuse to use their restrictive licensing nonsense. (There is just too much chance to be screwed when you mess with your machine as much as I do.) I will definitely keep my eyes open for a dead-tree version, though.

Thank you very much. I wrote that very carefully, for perhaps obvious reasons in this day and age. ... "His Grace" certainly faced a number of challenges, and met them with grace and courage, and is to be commended for it, even if he isn't real.

Well, rest assured you executed flawlessly. I must admit that I haven't read Arrival Vengence yet (I haven't found that one, either). Even so, I really, really like the nuances you added to his character. He had always been set up to be "larger than life", but you tried (and, IMO, succeeded) in giving him depth, showing the other side to some of the choices and compromises he made.

The nastiest example of this was Seldrian and Avery. He understood the political expediency and popular desire for their union, even though he had to know it was a bad idea. They would never have married without his approval, if not his direction. It is one thing to make unpleasant choices for which you will have to pay. It is an entirely different thing to make choices that will harm your daughter and adopted son.

None of this diminishes him or his character. But it gave him much more depth and character.

Yes, that's right. I'm a Norris fanboy. But I think that all long-time Traveller players are Norris fanboys and -girls.

Probably. At the very core of it, that is why there is a "Republic of Regina" in 1248.

The fact of the refugees, of course, with their nobles going with them, are the clearest sign of all.

Actually, the refugees are another one of my quibbles with the RSB. First, the number given isn't quite tenable. I mean 30 billion arriving in a single year? How can the logistics of just the traffic control even work?

I still have this vision of Jewell traffic control trying to deal with so many jump flashes occuring. Let's see. Let's assume that only 3 billion of those 30 billion cruise through Jewell. Let's also assume that the average "shipload" is 1000 passengers. Then, let's assume there is an even distribution of arrival. That means there is 342 Zhodani ships arriving in system every hour of every day for an entire year. This doesn't include all of the other, normal traffic going on.

Of course the distribution wouldn't be even. Imagine the spikes.

And I'm still trying to figure out where to stick them all.

I would agree with what you are saying if only from the standpoint that, to paraphrase Von Clausewitz and Marx, "economics is war by other means," and war was already politics by other means. The economic and technological ties already there would lead toward the sort of things you suggest, but I would take that as an effect rather than a specific intent. The Daryens, smashed as they are between the Imperium and Consulate, and with Virus outside forcing everyone to work together, are being rather coopted into being a junior partner in a larger enterprise rather than a truly independent race. Nonetheless, as soon as the frontiers open and the pressures are perceived to be eased, old fissures will re-emerge, like in Yugoslavia.

Ironically, with the Daryens, I don't really think there were any fissures before, but there definitely would be after. In other words, (to me, anyway) it is quite possible that the economic and political domination done by the Regency will poison the Regency/Daryen relationship, even though the Regency certainly never intended for that to happen.

... but the poor guys just made you want to say, "boy were you screwed," and the chance of a big Jihad that would lead them to Capital seemed like a real long shot.

You know, I never really thought of this type of result. I'm gonna let this one sit and simmer for a while ...

Don't worry, you didn't "ruin your previous post." All the thoughtful things you said in the first are not undermined by the thoughtful things you said in the second.

Thank you for the kind words.

So when I would update data, that data would tend to be segregated by subsector or sector, and if something was just one parsec on the other side of an arbitrary line, it just increased the chance that I'd miss it. And in the case of the Floriani, that's what happened.

I thought it would be something like that. If you can remember, is my assumption that the Floriani were still around with their 1117/1120 borders correct? (Or close enough?)

Without being able to look at that stuff in detail, I will say that it is very hard to pore over all of those UWP digits without going mad, and without missing lots of stuff.

After doing just that, I completely agree with this sentiment. The other thing I notice is that every time I go over it, I find myself wanting to tweek at least one thing.

You've probably got a very good point, but I would probably need to spend some more time thinking about it and studying it before I had anything particularly useful to say.

Hey, no sweat. I was just curious of the rationale behind it, so that I could be sure I wasn't missing anything. Your explanation is what I was looking for.

Oh, one more RSB comment I forgot to make before: thank you for trying to fix the stellar data. While still not up to snuff for today's understanding (as our friend Malenfant will tell us

), it was still a very marked improvement over what had been done before. Thank you for trying to address that detail.

Thanks for your thoughtful attention to the material, and I look forward to hearing more of your observations.

You're quite welcome.

Again, thank you for not only stopping at the boards, but for so openly sharing your memories and experiences with us, and sticking around to answer the follow-on questions.

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
And did you know that "extravert" and "extrovert" both appear to be accepted spellings? That makes no sense to me at all.

I still want to know how "flammable" and inflammable" can possibly mean the same thing. I still hate that.

(Hopelessly off topic, I know, but the above comment caused me to think of it again.)