(hypothetical) What would you ask Dave Nilsen?

[TheDS]

I figured you'd do a "Thanks? I think...?" kind of thing.

I am sure that anyone we can name as being a good influence (or hero, to use the above term) also has some bad traits that we should not take to heart.

I recall seeing a whiney discussion about why do people ask Patrick Stewart his opinion on real life space matters (like, why should we save Hubble) instead of people with actual qualifications, and I said that it was because people like him are heroes to people (aside from being well known), and the next person blasted to me that the man had left his wife or something, so he should NOT be emulated.

It didn't occur to me to say it at the time, but since then, I have thought that it is our job as idol-worshippers to recognize the good and bad acts that people commit, and emulate the good while ignoring the bad. A mindless idol-worshipper assumes their idol is perfect, and must be emulated in every way, but as a human, we must be capable of realizing that those we admire are also human, and capable of making mistakes.

So I guess that was my funny way of saying that despite what I consider to be a mistake on your part (or one you would have made), I still admire you for the net positive influence you have had on my life.

 

[Dreadnought]

Back to Page 9...

TheDS--

Thank you so much, Dave, for stopping by and impinging us with yourself.

I have thought of a question myself, which I should have thought of earlier, considering I talk about the subject now and then:

Are there any hidden datasheets for all those ships you designed for the Battle Rider game? There are markers for large Imperial warships with BR stats on them, and the conversion guide gives us rough estimates as to their FFS/BL stats, but I was wondering, since you said you had to do all the vehicles for Striker 2, if you also had to do all the ships for BR, and if so, are they still existing?

Cool use of rare world. So long as I don't accidently impale myself on you guys.

No, Frank designed most of the BR ships by "roughing them out," using some algebraic formula intended to give pretty close results. So those designs were never actually done in detail, except perhaps for the smaller ships that would have been done in RSG.

RE: your buried computer files: Dig them up and transfer them to something reliabler. I put my Amigas away for just a couple years before deciding to sell them, and as I booted up to make sure they still worked (and make sure I had gotten everything of importance off them), lo and behold, they didn't work! I know a lot of people will be happy to know the stuff still exists, and is copyable/saleable.

I agree that that is what I ought to do, assuming that I can get in past the password logins. However, last time I tried to do Mac to PC conversion it was not really easy. My files would be Word and Adobe Pagemaker for the most part, I think.

One other note I just thought of: "He is what he is" is to "I yam what I yam" as Ithklur is to _______?

Did Popeye have any inspiration in this?

I don't recall if Popeye served as the inspiration or after I came up with the idea I was reminded of Popeye, and then used that for the bugeyed nautical remark. If I came up with it in third person, probably not, but if in first person, it must have come from Popeye. Somewhere I do have a button that says, "I yam what I yam," so maybe I saw that one day.

Dave

 

[Hyphen]

Originally posted by Rupert:
Bah. Reactionless thrusters only date from High Guard 2nd edition.

As in "Gee, they only date back to 1980??"

I think that using neutrinos as exhaust and imposing a "speed limit"(*) on thrusters allows them to be used without both the "reactionless" and "near-C rock" problems.

(*) The concept goes something like: "Thrusters push against the fabric of the gravity well, but can only push so hard, therefore the max velocity attainable is [insert an appropriate velocity here, e.g. 0.25c]." This was a TML-suggested solution a couple of years ago.

 

[TheDS]

Originally posted by Hyphen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Rupert:
Bah. Reactionless thrusters only date from High Guard 2nd edition.

As in "Gee, they only date back to 1980??"

</font>[/QUOTE]I figured this was irrelavent, but didn't know the dates myself. Thanks!

 

[Hyphen]

Dear Folks -

Originally posted by TheDS:
I figured this was irrelavent, but didn't know the dates myself. Thanks!

Hmph. Don't worry, I'm not that clever, I had to go and look it up on my Library Data site meself...

(Index List ==> Reference Texts Indexes ==> Original Traveller ==> Books 0-8, FWIW)

And now back to the real reason for this thread: More Questions For Dave[TM]!

Having mentioned having all those URL's swimming before your eyes, I'd like to ask how you felt about weird things like Pixie, Class A 'port, with a pop of about 30? Did you get annoyed at such "anomalies"? Was your approach:
</font>

• this is interesting, how can it work ;</font>
• let's ignore the whole thing, the GM can figure it out, gotta leave them something to do ;</font>
• bah humbug, I'm gonna change THIS nonsense!
  
  </font>

 

[Dreadnought]

TheDS--

So I guess that was my funny way of saying that despite what I consider to be a mistake on your part (or one you would have made), I still admire you for the net positive influence you have had on my life.

Like I said before in a couple posts, and as you allude to above, nothing was ever final until it actually came time to write the book. That's one of the dangerous or unsatisfying things about responding to "what would you have done here," because you don't really know absolutely for sure until you do it.

For example, until I wrote Survival Margin, I thought that Strephon was a pretender, and the real one died. Loren talked a lot about a pretender in Russian history, and that sounded kind of amusing. But when I sat down to write, I knew that wasn't the right answer for me anymore. Until I wrote H&I I thought manipulation was a load of hooey. I fully expect that the Empress Wave would not have turned out exactly like the unfinished recollections I've posted here, but we're not playing that scenario, so what the heck. In fact, depending on what the project load looked like at the time, I may not even have been the primary author.

Of the dangling issues of TNE, the EW was definitely the most plastic, born as it was of necessity and graphic artists.

Hopefully (intentionally actually, but what I mean is to your sense) its effect would not have been to make the game D&D-ish (I was involved in coining that phrase last night, by the way--I'll be famous someday), but if you already wish there were no psionics in Traveller, any additional attention to psionics would probably not please you under any circumstances. I just always figured that since psionics were definitely in the game, and involved in a number of key events (Ancients, Zhodani, Core Expeditions), it was interesting to think more about how it worked, and the physics of jumpspace were pretty vague too. If it's true that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, is it perhaps fair to say that any sufficiently well-defined mystical thing is indistinguishable from auto mechanics? But you know what aspects of the game did and did not speak to you, and that is the way you ought to play it.

If I ever had been a hero to you (which I find a little hard to believe

), I hope that if you learned anything from me, it would be to take people as you find them, share happiness with them, and in so doing help them find a way to become truer, kinder versions of themselves (which is largely what you're saying anyway). Now, how in the world you would ever learn such a thing from me is hard to say, but I can still wish it, can't I?

Later,

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

alanb--

I'd love to rave about this and that, but I'm going to try to focus on some questions.

1. I was always attracted to the Pocket Empire concept. In fact, I was always a little upset that the RC was so obviously going to stomp Kide, since the latter was such a nice example of a bottom end, dubiously viable PE - the kind of place that could be made or broken by what PCs do.

First question:
The TNE rulebook described the Hubworlds - a major pocket empire that was immediately adjacent to the Black Curtain. Were there any plans to develop this polity further?

Yes, I think they were going to be contacted by the RC at about the time the RC discovered the Black Curtain. They would have likely been the first source of information to the RC on what was known (more properly, not know) about the BC. They even would have been a good candidate for the "too much collateral damage" event that got the Star Vikings kicked out. But that last bit is just me speculating.

[B}Q2. There were hints in RSB that while the Vargr had been heavily hosed by Virus, at least some groups had managed to find an effective way of absorbing Virus into their society. Was anything of this sort every likely to have been explored, in, say, material dealing with the Regency's coreward expansion?

My own take on the matter involved the Utovogh device from Rebellion sourcebook, which would allow Vargr and Viruses to interact through pseudo-personality interfaces and so on. Oekhsos lives![/B]

Yes, I/we had thought the same thing, but there were no firm plans. However, the idea of a bunch of Vargr running around following a Vampire AI would definitely have found its way in somehow. Literarily, it's somehow inevitable. You know, "his master's voice."

Q3. Somebody has already asked about the previously canonically established AIs on Sabmiqys. Am I correct in guessing that there weren't any particularly firm ideas about their role in TNE?

Yes, you are.

So, of course, I did what any Traveller PC would do, and "hit" him.

Or any Ithklur for that matter. Well chosen.

DAve

 

[Falkayn]

Originally posted by MJD:
Sigh. I broke my rule about revealing bits of the 1248 background outside the playtest and the first reaction was a protest....

Which is a shame, because I for one would like to hear the riff that could come out of you and Dave answering questions that overlap the two periods.

For my sake alone, please keep doing this!

 

[Dreadnought]

Hyphen--

Having mentioned having all those URL's swimming before your eyes, I'd like to ask how you felt about weird things like Pixie, Class A 'port, with a pop of about 30? Did you get annoyed at such "anomalies"? Was your approach:

this is interesting, how can it work ;
let's ignore the whole thing, the GM can figure it out, gotta leave them something to do ;
bah humbug, I'm gonna change THIS nonsense!

All of the above, depending upon how appalling the circumstances of how quickly I had to make sense of it.

Probably a better question would be, "how did you handle it the 15th time you found a Type A starport on a Pop 1 world in one evening?"

Then the problem would be that the first couple times I came up with a good story, and then lost patience with each additional one, so I started getting concerned that I was inconsistent in my remedies, and maybe one planet deserved the fix more than the other, etc.

Lies, damn lies, and UWPs.

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

Falkayn--

Which is a shame, because I for one would like to hear the riff that could come out of you and Dave answering questions that overlap the two periods.

For my sake alone, please keep doing this!

Well, little do you know, we've been just burning holes in each other through e-mail. Did you know that in 1248 he changed the name of Lon Maggart to "Candyboy" Maggart just to cheese me off?

I've had it,

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

Ewan Quibell--

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

Do I know your name? Have we conversed before? Your name sounds familiar.

Dave

 

[Falkayn]

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />For my sake alone, please keep doing this!

Well, little do you know, we've been just burning holes in each other through e-mail. Did you know that in 1248 he changed the name of Lon Maggart to "Candyboy" Maggart just to cheese me off?</font>[/QUOTE]

Well, you could do us the courtesy of conducting these conversations on the Moot's TNE 1248 board. That way it is still top secret (not publicly released), but the rest of us get to see how human Martin is as he asks you these same sorts of questions.

It also lets us join in with our own good (bad/indifferent) ideas, and lets you know about potential 'hot button' issues before you publish them.

 

[MJD]

There's a fair amount of history in 1248, detailing the fall of the 3rd Imperium and the Dark Years etc until the reconstruction period and the New Era.

As to the othe rthing - can Dave become involved and do I feel threatened by him, well...

I sent Dave the playtest files today.

What happens next is up to him. I really hope discussions and more will ensue. See below.

 

[Elliot]

Dave - What breed of dog is that? Is it a retriever in the snow or a wolf?

 

[TheDS]

Well, uh, mostly I learned to make my writing a little more conversational and less technical and dry, and to not let stupid people get in your way of enjoying life or doing your job. I'll misquote you here:

"I don't believe in antigravity, jump drive, or aliens, yet I sleep like a baby."

Without going into detail, I had something in my life where I had to choose whether or not to continue letting something bother me, and once I learned to let it go, well, not much stresses me out anymore.

I see you embodying that even today, by showing up here, and showing that you hold no grudges against those you know wasted so much of their lives slandering you. Likewise, I have forgotten all about those who have worked against me.

"Hero" may be too strong a word; maybe something more like "positive role model", or "good example", if that makes you feel less self-conscious.

Anyway, if you're not able to get the computer files off your Mac, consider writing down some of your memoirs or something. Judging by the responses here, there'd be a lot of enthusiasm for BOB or something very similar to it.

Since your current work doesn't seem to hold your interest.... (you keep logging in while there).

 

[MJD]

Some time ago, when my first book was published, I threw away the contents of my writing file. I'd kept all my rejection slips etc.

But I kept a few things. Acceptance letters, my very first 'positive rejection'; that kind of thing.

And the red-pen-covered manuscript of the sample of what became Diaspora Phoenix, with Dave Nilsen's comments on it, plus the acceptance letter.

The book wasn't to be, the shorts never got published, but one of the things that helped me continue to believe was that manuscript. I still have it and I treasure it. It made a difference.

Today I'm the Traveller line editor guy, and a professional writer. That MS is part of the process of getting me here - ie Dave Nilsen's approval was part of the process of becoming what I wanted to be.

It was Dave Nilsen's Strephon that inspired the Fourth Imperium, his Norris that Kept the Flame that I took up. His Duke Craig that I admire as the greatest hero of the Rebellion era.

As the author of a book titled Bearers of the Flame, how can I feel threatened by the original Keeper of that Flame? How can I not want Dave aboard for the Star Vikings' great voyage into the unknown, or the last flight of Spirit Hope?

We Kept the Flame in the dark times, and now a group of us are planning to take that Flame and set fire to stuff with it. I'm the one handing out torches these days, but I'm also the one eagerly shoving one into Dave Nilsen's hands. Right now, today.

And look, here's a lighter to go with your torch...

(chuckle) what I'm saying is, I want to work with Dave and I don't feel threatened. I *LIKE* his version of TNE. It looks a lot like mine.

Funny, that...

 

[TheDS]

While we're setting things on fire, I got dibs on the IRS building!

 

[MJD]

heh. okay then.

 

[Dreadnought]

Elliot--

Dave - What breed of dog is that? Is it a retriever in the snow or a wolf?

She's a flyin' dog! More specifically, an American Eskimo. Her name was USS Wisconsin (BB 64), but to Traveller players she was perhaps better known as Vargr Shadow Councilor for Chew Toys Wisconsin Snfzbut.

She went home to the eternal fields on July 7 of this year. Her sister, Minister for Tennis Balls Halifax Gverrerrerrerrerrend is still with us, however.

Doglover Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

TheDS--

Wow, that's a lot of really nice stuff to say, and it really means a lot to me. And I think it's pretty brave of you to say that too, but bravery is part of what it's all about.

Actually, that sounds like a pretty accurate quote. I wouldn't deny it under oath.

I think we would all like to believe that we've made a positive difference in other people's lives, but deep down we harbor this fear that that's more a wish than actual truth. For someone to tell you you've made a difference is a very valuable gift, and I thank you for that; that is no small thing for you to say, or me to hear.

And as for what you call me, "friend" would be fine. Or "fellow Traveller." That way we sound like communists.

Anyway, I'll stop now, as they'll start telling us to get a room.

Since your current work doesn't seem to hold your interest.... (you keep logging in while there).

S#*t! I was hoping no one would notice that (showing how stupid I really am). I had some dead time between briefings today, and then after the big one this afternoon I could have either gone home early or stay and scan some documents. So I scanned some documents while logged into COTI. I'm spread so thin at work lately that I keep having these Kafer moments where if the phone's not ringing, or e-mail pouring in to tell me what fire to put out now, I don't even remember what to do next, and I just go kind of stupid.

Well, I'm going to bed early tonight, so I'll be off soon.

Thanks,

Dave