(hypothetical) What would you ask Dave Nilsen?
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Interesting reading about the CCG crazy, BTW.
Some big names in the hobby have called it a needed culling of a bloated business with to many producers and to few customers.
I think it did a lot of good for the professionalism and the business sense of the survivors. The companies done as a "hobby venture" was killed.
I think Steve Jackson could confirm and expand upon some of the things David wrote above. He and his company was one of the survivors after all. They did something right.
I do believe we have stronger hobby now, but it sure wasn't fun seeing GDW go.
Andreas /Cymew/ Davour
Some big names in the hobby have called it a needed culling of a bloated business with to many producers and to few customers.
I think it did a lot of good for the professionalism and the business sense of the survivors. The companies done as a "hobby venture" was killed.
I think Steve Jackson could confirm and expand upon some of the things David wrote above. He and his company was one of the survivors after all. They did something right.
I do believe we have stronger hobby now, but it sure wasn't fun seeing GDW go.
Andreas /Cymew/ Davour
re: Alex White
I only know of him as a fellow on a list for rescuing "antique" computers (principly Sun unix workstations) from the fate of the dumpster. He made that observation once in a post to the list and I loved it and have used it as a .sig ever since. He may well have been paraphrasing someone/thing else, but that's where I know it from.
re: writing style
To add my 2 centi-credits, I enjoyed your writing tremendously. I found H&I to be a refreshing change in a game that always had a tendancy towards making the sahara look wet. TNE got me hooked back into Traveller and gaming after slipping away for awhile as until I read SM, I had found the Rebellion a bore and I've never liked DGP's tendancy to splat details without considering the consequences. I didn't find HT till much later and I still consider it the single best RPG supplement ever published with SM a close second.
Now my two main Traveller books are the TNE core and my copy of The Traveller Book with the MT task system taped into it. Both offer an excellent, if slightly different, take on this game. Once 1248 ships, I'll gather some friends, teach the game to my son, and go explore the universe again.
William
I only know of him as a fellow on a list for rescuing "antique" computers (principly Sun unix workstations) from the fate of the dumpster. He made that observation once in a post to the list and I loved it and have used it as a .sig ever since. He may well have been paraphrasing someone/thing else, but that's where I know it from.
re: writing style
To add my 2 centi-credits, I enjoyed your writing tremendously. I found H&I to be a refreshing change in a game that always had a tendancy towards making the sahara look wet. TNE got me hooked back into Traveller and gaming after slipping away for awhile as until I read SM, I had found the Rebellion a bore and I've never liked DGP's tendancy to splat details without considering the consequences. I didn't find HT till much later and I still consider it the single best RPG supplement ever published with SM a close second.
Now my two main Traveller books are the TNE core and my copy of The Traveller Book with the MT task system taped into it. Both offer an excellent, if slightly different, take on this game. Once 1248 ships, I'll gather some friends, teach the game to my son, and go explore the universe again.
William
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Before I ask this question can I just say that FF&S is one of my favourite Traveller supplements of all time.
My question is why did FF&S redefine many Traveller technologies, was this a game balance issue or an attempt to "update" the sci-fi tech of Traveller?
And if I can sneak this related question in please , is there any truth to the rumours that it was seriously considered to have TNE ships with stutterwarp rather than jump drives - or is this a result of someone getting confused about how FF&S could be used as the architecture for different sci-fi settings (T2300 being on the to do list)?
Thanks once again,
Mike.
My question is why did FF&S redefine many Traveller technologies, was this a game balance issue or an attempt to "update" the sci-fi tech of Traveller?
And if I can sneak this related question in please
, is there any truth to the rumours that it was seriously considered to have TNE ships with stutterwarp rather than jump drives - or is this a result of someone getting confused about how FF&S could be used as the architecture for different sci-fi settings (T2300 being on the to do list)?Thanks once again,
Mike.
Dreadnought
SOC-12
Jumping around for a moment now.
Wil/Aramis—
Wow.
“What a remarkable creature you are, Stephen.”
--Jack Aubrey, off the coast of….somewhere.
Thank you for the interesting and forthright replies.
When you say you’d relegated TNE to flame war ammunition, do you mean that you’re something of a flame hobbyist? )
Your discussion of the concretist vs. narrativist positions is interesting. However, as I recall the times, the concretist position in RPGs was definitely on the wane in favor of the narrativist position. I think you could almost see that as part of a trend that we were part of, rather than choosing it per se. I think also in terms of your narrativist position you’d find yourself on the opposite side from Marc Miller and Joe Fugate from the pre-TNE period. Marc was the first person to tell you that one of the things he loved most about Traveller was the way that “the truth” wasn’t necessarily the truth; it was complex and subjective. We had a number of talks about this at the offices while I was at GDW. The reality of Zhodani society, the Aslan minor race thing, Norris and the Warrant. Marc loved to talk about that stuff, and obviously I was of a similar mind.
I don’t see that as being lazy writing, or lazy referees, although I take your point that it could cover for that. I think that some players have a more existential, non-concretist take on reality, where “reality” in an RPG has a great deal to do with the fact that in real life we don’t always know what things are, or agree on the meaning of events. (Take George Bush, for example. God-fearing, right-thinking man of courage able to make the hard decisions, or addle-brained superstitious nincompoop who found a new Vietnam? There is almost 50% of the United States on either side. Were there WMDs in Iraq? Is Schroedinger’s cat dead yet? Who knows?)
It’s also interesting that you describe yourself as a wargamer and concretist, and Frank Chadwick, who is perhaps one of the most hardcore wargamers there is was so involved in the narrativist aspect of TNE as well. I think that people are sufficiently complex that seemingly specific terms like wargamer and concretist still admit to subcultures and fault lines.
I recently came across a quote attributed to Chester Nimitz, “if you’re not making waves, you’re not under way.” I suppose that one of the things that Traveller periodically rediscovers is that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and there is no such thing as all things to all people. Strangely, I think that an article of faith for Traveller players is that we can cast the net wide enough to include all of us, that we can make a game that includes everything. But I think the more we keep pursuing that, the more often we find ourselves back bobbing in someone’s wake.
I’m thinking that you might find yourself more attracted to the GT approach. It follows the GURPS approach which is much more encyclopedic, much more steady-state, and appears to me to be less interested in narrative.
I don’t remember the source of this, but at the time, I had gotten a large dose of the “in Traveller, aliens aren’t just people in funny suits” soundbite. I don’t recall if this came mostly from some people saying, “remember, in Traveller aliens aren’t…” or from reviewing some of our old material or ad copy, but it was probably some of both. And with that in mind, the thought occurred to me, “well, actually they are.”
And I think here I am treading on that razor’s edge of heresy like trying to define how Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine. No matter what you say, it quickly becomes heretical, because the point is that it’s a paradox. So I’ll try to be careful. (But I’ve managed to run into trouble before, and I’m sure it pays you no dividends to let me get away with being careful!
)
When or if I say, “Traveller aliens really are people in funny suits,” I don’t mean that Traveller aliens are poorly done. Traveller aliens are extremely well done. There have been many examples in literature, film, TV, RPGs, etc., where aliens were just a guy in a Tony the Tiger suit, or “people with seafood glued to their foreheads,” and Traveller’s aliens were always quite a bit above that, perhaps to the limit of the writers’ ability to do so. But even at the highest level of achievement, any attempt to describe the psychology and motivations of an alien being are drawn 100% from human experience and the breadth of human experience and imagination.
As humans with “point identity,” if I may quote myself, we only know the subjective sensation of consciousness within our own heads. I will never know how it feels to be inside your head, nor will you know how it feels within mine. I will never know what my dogs really think, what it means to think like a dog. We do all share a common sense of relevant shared experience, and we have the ability to sympathize and empathize, and draw conclusions based on similar mammalian behavior, but we can’t ever plug into another brain and KNOW. Our efforts to empathize are efforts to use our own experience and imagination to “put ourselves into his shoes.” If we haven’t experienced it, we can’t empathize it. Think of a child learning about a hot stove, or falling in love for the first time, or whatever. Things that you just can’t explain until another person has experienced it. And so if we have that problem with people of our own species (or critters within our own Class), we have no basis to speak of what it is like to think as an alien, evolved in a different ecosystem, based on different chemical combinations, etc. So literally, by definition, any fictive alien designed by a human being is literally not other than a human in a “funny” suit. It may be very good, very imaginative, very well thought out, but it will not be truly alien, i.e., “differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility …synonym see EXTRINSIC…. EXTRINSIC, EXTRANEOUS, FOREIGN, ALIEN mean external to a thing, its essential nature, or its original character. EXTRINSIC applies to what is distinctly outside the thing in question or is not contained in or derived from its essential nature <sentimental value that is extrinsic to the house's market value> (Merriam-Webster)
So the point is that “humans in funny suits” is not a dig or a cut. In fact, what it leads to is a much higher compliment. In roleplaying an alien, you don’t become a better alien, you become a better person. Our Thespian brethren will sometimes point out that acting gives them more understanding of other people, more compassion. I have no great experience with acting, but I do do a lot of roleplaying as part of Army training at Fort Knox. I play warlords, village elders, ambassadors, reporters, etc., but one that I particularly remember was while training the Louisville Police SWAT and Hostage Negotiation Teams last year. I was a gunman, a Pinkerton security guy, who was holding my wife and her lover hostage, and was on the phone with the hostage negotiator when I found that I had gotten into the character and situation so deeply that I actually felt real grief, real hopelessness, and a real desire to kill myself in character after releasing the hostages. (I ended up not following through on that, by the way, because I thought the officer had done a good job and didn’t want to dork up her good work with my messy suicide—although I did get beat up by the SWAT guys, who were really pissed at me. SWAT guys, Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, they don’t know how to pretend. It’s all real to them, and we roleplayers have the scars to prove it.) The ability to feel those emotions was very striking, and not because I thought, “hey, I know how to become an alien.” Rather, I was able to extend my human empathy to another sort of human. I did not become a hostage taker, but a hostage taker became at that moment understandable to me. What might before have been a criminal now was me; that sort of criminal became a human to me, in the sense of “there but for the grace of God go I.” My sense of humanity stretched to cover and understand another person in a way that it hadn’t previously. So being a human in a funny (cuckolded Pinkerton hostage-taker) suit is not a trivial, contemptible thing. It is a hell of a thing, but let’s call it by it’s proper name. Playing aliens makes us not better aliens, but better people, and what more could you want than that?
I hope that makes it make a little more sense to you, and I seriously hope that you and your group will accept my sincere apology for the way that editorial made them feel belittled, as apparently I did not do an adequate job getting my point across. Perhaps I could have worded it better, but that was a long time ago. It was really a very minor philosophical/spiritual/ethical point that seemed important at the time, but I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that I would rather not have bothered with it.
but I digress.)
And I’m sure that Hunter does not want to have to start a “Religious Pulpit” section, so I will keep this brief, but
<personal faith observation>
in my opinion, the hierarchy of the Incarnation and the Resurrection are the reverse of yours. To me, the true miracle is the Incarnation, and if you accept that the almighty and ever-living God came to Earth to live as one of us to redeem us, the Resurrection is a subordinate and logical conclusion to that. Further, I would place a third event in second place between the Incarnation and the Resurrection, which was the crucifixion three days earlier. As Paul wrote,
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
--1 Cor 1: 22-25
And lest you misread this, I am not calling into question your piety nor your opinion. I am merely sharing mine in response to your having shared yours.
And to those who may be put off by proselytizing, this is not an attempt to proselytize.
Peace.
</personal faith observation>
Sincerely,
Dave
Wil/Aramis—
Wow.
“What a remarkable creature you are, Stephen.”
--Jack Aubrey, off the coast of….somewhere.
Thank you for the interesting and forthright replies.
If this were the old days and Frank were around, I think he be tempted to wrangle over the game mechanics, lethality, how it’s not just damage points but game effects such as stun, etc., but personally my attitude is if you’ve found a system that you like, that’s what you ought to use, and none can say thee nay.
When you say you’d relegated TNE to flame war ammunition, do you mean that you’re something of a flame hobbyist?
)Your discussion of the concretist vs. narrativist positions is interesting. However, as I recall the times, the concretist position in RPGs was definitely on the wane in favor of the narrativist position. I think you could almost see that as part of a trend that we were part of, rather than choosing it per se. I think also in terms of your narrativist position you’d find yourself on the opposite side from Marc Miller and Joe Fugate from the pre-TNE period. Marc was the first person to tell you that one of the things he loved most about Traveller was the way that “the truth” wasn’t necessarily the truth; it was complex and subjective. We had a number of talks about this at the offices while I was at GDW. The reality of Zhodani society, the Aslan minor race thing, Norris and the Warrant. Marc loved to talk about that stuff, and obviously I was of a similar mind.
I don’t see that as being lazy writing, or lazy referees, although I take your point that it could cover for that. I think that some players have a more existential, non-concretist take on reality, where “reality” in an RPG has a great deal to do with the fact that in real life we don’t always know what things are, or agree on the meaning of events. (Take George Bush, for example. God-fearing, right-thinking man of courage able to make the hard decisions, or addle-brained superstitious nincompoop who found a new Vietnam? There is almost 50% of the United States on either side. Were there WMDs in Iraq? Is Schroedinger’s cat dead yet? Who knows?)
It’s also interesting that you describe yourself as a wargamer and concretist, and Frank Chadwick, who is perhaps one of the most hardcore wargamers there is was so involved in the narrativist aspect of TNE as well. I think that people are sufficiently complex that seemingly specific terms like wargamer and concretist still admit to subcultures and fault lines.
I recently came across a quote attributed to Chester Nimitz, “if you’re not making waves, you’re not under way.” I suppose that one of the things that Traveller periodically rediscovers is that you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and there is no such thing as all things to all people. Strangely, I think that an article of faith for Traveller players is that we can cast the net wide enough to include all of us, that we can make a game that includes everything. But I think the more we keep pursuing that, the more often we find ourselves back bobbing in someone’s wake.
I’m thinking that you might find yourself more attracted to the GT approach. It follows the GURPS approach which is much more encyclopedic, much more steady-state, and appears to me to be less interested in narrative.
Do you mean by that your previously mentioned perception that the system favored PCs over NPCs? Or do you mean something about the roleplaying? I think that certainly if you want historical events to take place and have the PCs be involved, you prefer to allow the PCs to do some of the heavy lifting, rather than having them sit and watch a scenario played by NPCs unfold, and I’ve seen adventures like that. Perhaps your preference is the more typical CT approach where there are a variety of patrons or tickets or nuggets that the PCs can play rather unintrusively against a larger historical backdrop without necessarily impinging on it.
I’m sorry it made you and your group feel that way. I’m not going to try to defend the notes line by line, but rather re-present what I intended to get across by it (and perhaps failed at).
I don’t remember the source of this, but at the time, I had gotten a large dose of the “in Traveller, aliens aren’t just people in funny suits” soundbite. I don’t recall if this came mostly from some people saying, “remember, in Traveller aliens aren’t…” or from reviewing some of our old material or ad copy, but it was probably some of both. And with that in mind, the thought occurred to me, “well, actually they are.”
And I think here I am treading on that razor’s edge of heresy like trying to define how Jesus Christ was fully human and fully divine. No matter what you say, it quickly becomes heretical, because the point is that it’s a paradox. So I’ll try to be careful. (But I’ve managed to run into trouble before, and I’m sure it pays you no dividends to let me get away with being careful!
When or if I say, “Traveller aliens really are people in funny suits,” I don’t mean that Traveller aliens are poorly done. Traveller aliens are extremely well done. There have been many examples in literature, film, TV, RPGs, etc., where aliens were just a guy in a Tony the Tiger suit, or “people with seafood glued to their foreheads,” and Traveller’s aliens were always quite a bit above that, perhaps to the limit of the writers’ ability to do so. But even at the highest level of achievement, any attempt to describe the psychology and motivations of an alien being are drawn 100% from human experience and the breadth of human experience and imagination.
As humans with “point identity,” if I may quote myself, we only know the subjective sensation of consciousness within our own heads. I will never know how it feels to be inside your head, nor will you know how it feels within mine. I will never know what my dogs really think, what it means to think like a dog. We do all share a common sense of relevant shared experience, and we have the ability to sympathize and empathize, and draw conclusions based on similar mammalian behavior, but we can’t ever plug into another brain and KNOW. Our efforts to empathize are efforts to use our own experience and imagination to “put ourselves into his shoes.” If we haven’t experienced it, we can’t empathize it. Think of a child learning about a hot stove, or falling in love for the first time, or whatever. Things that you just can’t explain until another person has experienced it. And so if we have that problem with people of our own species (or critters within our own Class), we have no basis to speak of what it is like to think as an alien, evolved in a different ecosystem, based on different chemical combinations, etc. So literally, by definition, any fictive alien designed by a human being is literally not other than a human in a “funny” suit. It may be very good, very imaginative, very well thought out, but it will not be truly alien, i.e., “differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility …synonym see EXTRINSIC…. EXTRINSIC, EXTRANEOUS, FOREIGN, ALIEN mean external to a thing, its essential nature, or its original character. EXTRINSIC applies to what is distinctly outside the thing in question or is not contained in or derived from its essential nature <sentimental value that is extrinsic to the house's market value> (Merriam-Webster)
So the point is that “humans in funny suits” is not a dig or a cut. In fact, what it leads to is a much higher compliment. In roleplaying an alien, you don’t become a better alien, you become a better person. Our Thespian brethren will sometimes point out that acting gives them more understanding of other people, more compassion. I have no great experience with acting, but I do do a lot of roleplaying as part of Army training at Fort Knox. I play warlords, village elders, ambassadors, reporters, etc., but one that I particularly remember was while training the Louisville Police SWAT and Hostage Negotiation Teams last year. I was a gunman, a Pinkerton security guy, who was holding my wife and her lover hostage, and was on the phone with the hostage negotiator when I found that I had gotten into the character and situation so deeply that I actually felt real grief, real hopelessness, and a real desire to kill myself in character after releasing the hostages. (I ended up not following through on that, by the way, because I thought the officer had done a good job and didn’t want to dork up her good work with my messy suicide—although I did get beat up by the SWAT guys, who were really pissed at me. SWAT guys, Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, they don’t know how to pretend. It’s all real to them, and we roleplayers have the scars to prove it.) The ability to feel those emotions was very striking, and not because I thought, “hey, I know how to become an alien.” Rather, I was able to extend my human empathy to another sort of human. I did not become a hostage taker, but a hostage taker became at that moment understandable to me. What might before have been a criminal now was me; that sort of criminal became a human to me, in the sense of “there but for the grace of God go I.” My sense of humanity stretched to cover and understand another person in a way that it hadn’t previously. So being a human in a funny (cuckolded Pinkerton hostage-taker) suit is not a trivial, contemptible thing. It is a hell of a thing, but let’s call it by it’s proper name. Playing aliens makes us not better aliens, but better people, and what more could you want than that?
I hope that makes it make a little more sense to you, and I seriously hope that you and your group will accept my sincere apology for the way that editorial made them feel belittled, as apparently I did not do an adequate job getting my point across. Perhaps I could have worded it better, but that was a long time ago. It was really a very minor philosophical/spiritual/ethical point that seemed important at the time, but I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that I would rather not have bothered with it.
Okay, I’ve got to admit that I am not tracking with you here at all. Santa Claus is in fact a secularization of Christmas, so making light (and I believe there is a difference between making light of and making fun of) Santa Claus is making light of the secularization of Christmas, and not making fun of Christmas qua Christ Mass. (Were I a suspicious person, I’d suspect a red herring here….is this more flame war ammo?
but I digress.)And I’m sure that Hunter does not want to have to start a “Religious Pulpit” section, so I will keep this brief, but
<personal faith observation>
in my opinion, the hierarchy of the Incarnation and the Resurrection are the reverse of yours. To me, the true miracle is the Incarnation, and if you accept that the almighty and ever-living God came to Earth to live as one of us to redeem us, the Resurrection is a subordinate and logical conclusion to that. Further, I would place a third event in second place between the Incarnation and the Resurrection, which was the crucifixion three days earlier. As Paul wrote,
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
--1 Cor 1: 22-25
And lest you misread this, I am not calling into question your piety nor your opinion. I am merely sharing mine in response to your having shared yours.
And to those who may be put off by proselytizing, this is not an attempt to proselytize.
Peace.
</personal faith observation>
I do not mean to be flip, but I hope that you can accept the notion that the way a thing feels to us is not necessarily the same thing as what was intended, nor sometimes what in fact objectively happened, and on that basis can find it in your heart to forgive me.
Sincerely,
Dave
DED
SOC-12
The "favorite Depeche Mode album" question was meant in jest. At the time (and post flame war), I thought that the topic could use a bit of levity.
I started playing Traveller with CT back in 82. Nothing about TNE offended me. I always found the 3I to be a tad bit staid and monolithic. MT's factionalism made sense to me as it reflected my view of the world (probably more so now). At the time TNE came out, my group of players welcomed, what we perceived to be, the darkened, almost cyberpunkish turn to Traveller. Maybe it's because it meshed well with how I stylied my TU.
I didn't find the writing style itself to be dark. For the players, it was time to clean up the mess made by narrow-minded, self-serving people who claimed to be "leaders." While I understand that there are those who prefer the CT setting, I don't. TNE was more of a "let's do it right this time" kind of feel.
My only disappointment with H&I was the lack of astrographic data. I liked the view inside the minds. It really gave you the sense of who those aliens were. I found nothing offensive about it at all, from any perspective.
I'm part of the 1248 playtest. Although I've been accused of "cracking the whip" on certain matters, I really like what Martin's come up with. I hope that when it's published (next year I hope), that the Traveller community will be open-minded enough to give it a fair read through. IMO, though I know I'm not alone in this, the setting really does provide CT, MT, & TNE like regions where GM's can place their campaigns. I don't know if die hard milieu fanatics will change their minds and run campaigns there. One thing I've learned over the years is that Traveller fans always break out the flamethrowers (or should that be fusion guns ) when the new setting developers make something that isn't exactly like what they had in mind.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and answer all of these questions Dave.
I started playing Traveller with CT back in 82. Nothing about TNE offended me. I always found the 3I to be a tad bit staid and monolithic. MT's factionalism made sense to me as it reflected my view of the world (probably more so now). At the time TNE came out, my group of players welcomed, what we perceived to be, the darkened, almost cyberpunkish turn to Traveller. Maybe it's because it meshed well with how I stylied my TU.
I didn't find the writing style itself to be dark. For the players, it was time to clean up the mess made by narrow-minded, self-serving people who claimed to be "leaders." While I understand that there are those who prefer the CT setting, I don't. TNE was more of a "let's do it right this time" kind of feel.
My only disappointment with H&I was the lack of astrographic data. I liked the view inside the minds. It really gave you the sense of who those aliens were. I found nothing offensive about it at all, from any perspective.
I'm part of the 1248 playtest. Although I've been accused of "cracking the whip" on certain matters, I really like what Martin's come up with. I hope that when it's published (next year I hope), that the Traveller community will be open-minded enough to give it a fair read through. IMO, though I know I'm not alone in this, the setting really does provide CT, MT, & TNE like regions where GM's can place their campaigns. I don't know if die hard milieu fanatics will change their minds and run campaigns there. One thing I've learned over the years is that Traveller fans always break out the flamethrowers (or should that be fusion guns
) when the new setting developers make something that isn't exactly like what they had in mind.Thanks for taking the time to stop by and answer all of these questions Dave.
Dreadnought
SOC-12
Matt--
Glad you liked the Ithklur, and sorry if you didn't like the designers' notes.
That's cool that your Hiver character was named Heather. I like that name.
I used "feral" not in the sense of wearing loincloths and using flint daggers, but in the sense of, "not domesticated or cultivated," in the same way that freeing the flowers would be making them feral.
Please forgive me if some of this stuff comes back slowly and in pieces, and feel free to ask me more again.
The "feral" or non-domesticated Ithklur are not separate from the "semi/pseudo/maybe domesticated Ithklur" described, but are contiguous with them, socially and even spiritually/emotionally. The big thing is that these are the Ithklur that live in the Ithklur autonomous region, or whatever it was called. It shows up on some maps someplace, maybe only in CT/MT. This map was not published in H&I because it was to have been revealed over the course of the IBOB Epic, and H&I was intended to describe a snapshot in time of what the RC could know of the situation, not what was true back within the Federation where the RC campaign could not see.
The Ithklur in the Ithklur Autonomous Area live under their own government and laws, rather than under Hiver government. They have their own starships and technology, although most of it is Hiver knock-offs. Think of the Warsaw Pact technology's relation to Soviet technology. Part of the "deal" between Hivers and Ithklur that provides Ithklur military services to the Federation is the guarantee of the Ithklur autonomous area, and the ability of Ithklur to pass back and forth from the AA and the Federation (although as you can guess, the Hivers impose screenings and difficulties for those doing so).
In addition to the Ithklur, the AA includes members of the "resistance," i.e., resisting, "unbroken" members of the Gurvin and Za'tachk races (I had completed some work on comparing the native and Hiver-manipulated states of these races for the GT book, but as I've observed, I don't know how it worked out). Hivers are not allowed free travel within the AA, or rather I should say Hivers that represent the Hiver Federation policy. Hivers such as M. Devela would be welcome, but remain under observation.
Hivers within the AA are subject to Ithklur law, including execution for violation of Ithklur standards of honesty. The Exposer of Deceit member of any Ithklur group is also permitted to exercise these rules under certain circumstances, and the Hivers allow this extremely rare case as part of the balance of power with the Ithklur. Knowing that they are incapable/unwilling to exercise a variety of necessary violence, the Hivers accept the usefulness of the Ithklur, and are willing to accept some costs to have this capability. In addition, they also don't wish to find out what the Ithklur might do if they don't maintain this friendly detente.
In practice, "feral" Ithklur will travel to go "work" in the Federation for a while, and others will return back to the AA to retire, to learn and study, etc. Ithklur organizations within the AA are regarded as generally more reliable, trustworthy, and "true" than those in the Federation. Organizations within the AA are believed to be more ancient in authority as well, although this is often not true. Many of these are as influenced by manipulation as any Federation Hiver.
One aspect of the cultural difference is that there are some "older" Ithklur words as opposed to the the common Federation Ithklur lexicon. These older words are those like the artillery competition, pick-up game, etc., in H&I as distinct from many of the shorter, more streamlined words.
More as I think of it.
Dave
Glad you liked the Ithklur, and sorry if you didn't like the designers' notes.
That's cool that your Hiver character was named Heather. I like that name.
I used "feral" not in the sense of wearing loincloths and using flint daggers, but in the sense of, "not domesticated or cultivated," in the same way that freeing the flowers would be making them feral.
Please forgive me if some of this stuff comes back slowly and in pieces, and feel free to ask me more again.
The "feral" or non-domesticated Ithklur are not separate from the "semi/pseudo/maybe domesticated Ithklur" described, but are contiguous with them, socially and even spiritually/emotionally. The big thing is that these are the Ithklur that live in the Ithklur autonomous region, or whatever it was called. It shows up on some maps someplace, maybe only in CT/MT. This map was not published in H&I because it was to have been revealed over the course of the IBOB Epic, and H&I was intended to describe a snapshot in time of what the RC could know of the situation, not what was true back within the Federation where the RC campaign could not see.
The Ithklur in the Ithklur Autonomous Area live under their own government and laws, rather than under Hiver government. They have their own starships and technology, although most of it is Hiver knock-offs. Think of the Warsaw Pact technology's relation to Soviet technology. Part of the "deal" between Hivers and Ithklur that provides Ithklur military services to the Federation is the guarantee of the Ithklur autonomous area, and the ability of Ithklur to pass back and forth from the AA and the Federation (although as you can guess, the Hivers impose screenings and difficulties for those doing so).
In addition to the Ithklur, the AA includes members of the "resistance," i.e., resisting, "unbroken" members of the Gurvin and Za'tachk races (I had completed some work on comparing the native and Hiver-manipulated states of these races for the GT book, but as I've observed, I don't know how it worked out). Hivers are not allowed free travel within the AA, or rather I should say Hivers that represent the Hiver Federation policy. Hivers such as M. Devela would be welcome, but remain under observation.
Hivers within the AA are subject to Ithklur law, including execution for violation of Ithklur standards of honesty. The Exposer of Deceit member of any Ithklur group is also permitted to exercise these rules under certain circumstances, and the Hivers allow this extremely rare case as part of the balance of power with the Ithklur. Knowing that they are incapable/unwilling to exercise a variety of necessary violence, the Hivers accept the usefulness of the Ithklur, and are willing to accept some costs to have this capability. In addition, they also don't wish to find out what the Ithklur might do if they don't maintain this friendly detente.
In practice, "feral" Ithklur will travel to go "work" in the Federation for a while, and others will return back to the AA to retire, to learn and study, etc. Ithklur organizations within the AA are regarded as generally more reliable, trustworthy, and "true" than those in the Federation. Organizations within the AA are believed to be more ancient in authority as well, although this is often not true. Many of these are as influenced by manipulation as any Federation Hiver.
One aspect of the cultural difference is that there are some "older" Ithklur words as opposed to the the common Federation Ithklur lexicon. These older words are those like the artillery competition, pick-up game, etc., in H&I as distinct from many of the shorter, more streamlined words.
More as I think of it.
Dave
Dreadnought
SOC-12
DED--
At the same time, however, I seem to recall having railed in the past about "People are People," and if any of that spew ever made it into Traveller lore, wanted to reprise that.
I just mentioned in my immediately previous post about the lack of astrographic data, as that is an obvious omission from the book. As I said, the reason for that is that I would have introduced it sequentially as part of the IBOB Epic, basically "as you went" deeper into the Federation. The size of the Federation, and its distance from the RC, would have made it impossible to include all of that in the H&I book. If you think of how dense that data was in the RSB, you can imagine how hard that would have been for the Federation.
I'm very pleased to meet someone that I have never offended, and I promise to remain on my best behavior!
DAve
I figured that, but I took it as a point of honor to answer every single question in that topic, including the silly one.
At the same time, however, I seem to recall having railed in the past about "People are People," and if any of that spew ever made it into Traveller lore, wanted to reprise that.
I just mentioned in my immediately previous post about the lack of astrographic data, as that is an obvious omission from the book. As I said, the reason for that is that I would have introduced it sequentially as part of the IBOB Epic, basically "as you went" deeper into the Federation. The size of the Federation, and its distance from the RC, would have made it impossible to include all of that in the H&I book. If you think of how dense that data was in the RSB, you can imagine how hard that would have been for the Federation.
I'm very pleased to meet someone that I have never offended, and I promise to remain on my best behavior!
DAve
Dreadnought
SOC-12
Randy Tyler--
Q: So cyber-Lucan was:
1) In sole control of the Black Curtain as it's emperor?
2) Co-emperor alongside Virus?
3) A figurehead emperor puppet of Virus?
A: Closest to 2), but really more like:
4) A sort of symbiotic/parasitic hybrid of his human personality augmented/corrupted by Vampire machinery and data systems.
Q: Did Sabmiqys (the TL 17 world of intelligent robots) play any part in the Black Curtain?
A: No, I don't recall using the Sabmiqys in any official way. Although I was aware of them, I had not made any plans to feature them. Although as you mention it, they could make a nice subplot within the Black Curtain thing.
Dave
Q: So cyber-Lucan was:
1) In sole control of the Black Curtain as it's emperor?
2) Co-emperor alongside Virus?
3) A figurehead emperor puppet of Virus?
A: Closest to 2), but really more like:
4) A sort of symbiotic/parasitic hybrid of his human personality augmented/corrupted by Vampire machinery and data systems.
Q: Did Sabmiqys (the TL 17 world of intelligent robots) play any part in the Black Curtain?
A: No, I don't recall using the Sabmiqys in any official way. Although I was aware of them, I had not made any plans to feature them. Although as you mention it, they could make a nice subplot within the Black Curtain thing.
Dave
No need for an apology. Not significant, but I find it entertaining.
On the back of one of the Challenge feedback forms, I scratched out a letter saying how much I liked TNE, and oh yeah, who's that Lady in Black on the cover of the book?
So Commodore Bwana, bless his soul, made it a contest. Which no one entered, apparantly.
I'd done some reading in Survival Margin, then about 6 months after the first feedback form, I wrote out another note, asking if the LiB was the woman in Strephon's vision in SM. Congrats, I was right [well, I'm sure lots of others got it first, but if you don't write in, you don't win the contest!], have a gold star.
More time goes by, I pick up the Regency Sourcebook, WHAM - double-take, yes, that is my name on page 83, as the Longbow duty psion when His Imperial Majesty stops by for a visit. [Too bad I couldn't have warned him about that sneaky Dulinor...] I'd have loved the book regardless, but getting a mention was icing on the cake.
Dreadnought
SOC-12
Falkayn--
Hey there! I am now caught up with everyone who posted before my first follow-up posts (Thurs night). Woo-hoo!
I still have a lot of follow-up questions to answer, but that is progress.
However, I have to go now, as a lovely woman has invited me to dinner. Wasn't that nice of her?
See youse,
Dave
Hey there! I am now caught up with everyone who posted before my first follow-up posts (Thurs night). Woo-hoo!
I still have a lot of follow-up questions to answer, but that is progress.
However, I have to go now, as a lovely woman has invited me to dinner. Wasn't that nice of her?
See youse,
Dave
Dreadnought
SOC-12
Jon Crocker--
Well, all right! It sounds like I was more on the ball than I remembered. I'm glad that I did something subtle, clever, appropriate, proportional, and right-thinking, even if I didn't remember.
When you brought it up, I was sure it was deliberate, as character names are things that I usually pay significant attention to.
And thanks for being the sort of "fellow traveller' that Commodore Bwana would invite along for a jaunt.
Bring us some Figgy Pudding!
Aboard the Starship Roxy Music,
Dave
Do the Strand, love. When you feel love.
Well, all right! It sounds like I was more on the ball than I remembered. I'm glad that I did something subtle, clever, appropriate, proportional, and right-thinking, even if I didn't remember.
When you brought it up, I was sure it was deliberate, as character names are things that I usually pay significant attention to.
And thanks for being the sort of "fellow traveller' that Commodore Bwana would invite along for a jaunt.
Bring us some Figgy Pudding!
Aboard the Starship Roxy Music,
Dave
Do the Strand, love. When you feel love.
Rupert Boleyn
SOC-12
Most of the time the replies I get online after doing so suggest the person in question would be saying nice things to me while backing away slowly, were we face to face.
Thanks. I first heard it over a decade ago, and if I could remember who said it I'd attribute it.
stephentempest
SOC-1
Dave -
Regarding your writing style, I thought that the more evocative, emotional passages you wrote were some of the best things I've ever read in an RPG book - things like the 'dream of fire' and the 'keep the flame' parts from Survival Margin being excellent examples. Did you write the Guild-style account of a Star Viking attack in the main TNE rulebook too?
I enjoyed some of the humorous comments too, but did feel that they became a bit too over-the-top and self-indulgent in the later books. Jokes on the credits and acknowledgements page are one thing, but not when they spread into the main text of the book... It's interesting that you admit Hivers & Ithklur was a rush job to beat the deadline, because frankly I got that impression myself at the time. Back then I hated the book, but now I understand better what you were trying to achieve I can appreciate it more.
A handful of questions now:
Some people in the RC seemed very upset with Oriflammen feudal technocracy - was this tension ever planned to degenerate into a shooting war?
Why did you get rid of the jump routes in the Regency? I always thought they were the most interesting parts of a Traveller map...
One end of the Vampire Highway was, presumably, the Black Curtain. Was there anything significant at the other end?
What happened to (the real) Strephon's worlds after Virus hit? Completely destroyed?
Thanks!
Stephen
Regarding your writing style, I thought that the more evocative, emotional passages you wrote were some of the best things I've ever read in an RPG book - things like the 'dream of fire' and the 'keep the flame' parts from Survival Margin being excellent examples. Did you write the Guild-style account of a Star Viking attack in the main TNE rulebook too?
I enjoyed some of the humorous comments too, but did feel that they became a bit too over-the-top and self-indulgent in the later books. Jokes on the credits and acknowledgements page are one thing, but not when they spread into the main text of the book... It's interesting that you admit Hivers & Ithklur was a rush job to beat the deadline, because frankly I got that impression myself at the time. Back then I hated the book, but now I understand better what you were trying to achieve I can appreciate it more.
A handful of questions now:
Some people in the RC seemed very upset with Oriflammen feudal technocracy - was this tension ever planned to degenerate into a shooting war?
Why did you get rid of the jump routes in the Regency? I always thought they were the most interesting parts of a Traveller map...
One end of the Vampire Highway was, presumably, the Black Curtain. Was there anything significant at the other end?
What happened to (the real) Strephon's worlds after Virus hit? Completely destroyed?
Thanks!
Stephen
Mr Nilsen -
Given you wrote the 'future history' sections of the rulez books with the Vikings as a past tense - how were they 'stuffed/elevated' (choose option) in your vision?
Also - can you expand on Earth in TNE - what was envisioned beyond the 2nd Terran Confederation - were they rabid Solomani or more liberal. What would have happened when they met the thieving RC in the Concord subsector?
(by the way I didn't like the RC but dont let that put you off answering)
Many thanks and i'm glad you are here.
Given you wrote the 'future history' sections of the rulez books with the Vikings as a past tense - how were they 'stuffed/elevated' (choose option) in your vision?
Also - can you expand on Earth in TNE - what was envisioned beyond the 2nd Terran Confederation - were they rabid Solomani or more liberal. What would have happened when they met the thieving RC in the Concord subsector?
(by the way I didn't like the RC but dont let that put you off answering)
Many thanks and i'm glad you are here.
Mr. Tempest,
Cymbeline was the other end of the Vampire Highway. It's written somewhere in the various TNE materials.
If you'll remember, during the Black War period someone nuked the bejabbers out of that planet's near-airless highlands (Cymbeline's atmosphere was concentrated at the bottoms of a planet girdling series of canyons.) The planetary highlands; continually swept by gasses from volcanos, were the home of the Signal GK chips and they were Virus' ancestors.
Put simply, the Virus Highway has the Viral version of Oldevai(?) Gorge at one end and Heaven/Hell at the other.
Sincerely,
Bill
Dreadnought
SOC-12
David "Hyphen"--
2300 was a lot of fun to work for, as there was a lot of opportunity to figure out how the stuff would work, and then find the SOPs and conventional wisdom that would result from them.
There is often a lack of attention to this in pretty high-visibility arenas, too. Such as the "Picard Maneuver" from ST:TNG, where the single most basic artifact of light-speed drive which would have been second nature in their continuity since shortly after Zephram Cochrane was some unforeseen stroke of brilliance? That's one of the reasons I would write about things like c-lag in the RSB, to make sure refs and players could understand some of the inevitable state-of-the-art issues that resulted from the in-game physics.
2300 was a good opportunity, I think, because the game was still sorting itself out and open to such interpretation, where sometimes fictional universes have principles written into them which may not actually follow from other principles states in them.
Thanks,
DAve
2300 was a lot of fun to work for, as there was a lot of opportunity to figure out how the stuff would work, and then find the SOPs and conventional wisdom that would result from them.
There is often a lack of attention to this in pretty high-visibility arenas, too. Such as the "Picard Maneuver" from ST:TNG, where the single most basic artifact of light-speed drive which would have been second nature in their continuity since shortly after Zephram Cochrane was some unforeseen stroke of brilliance? That's one of the reasons I would write about things like c-lag in the RSB, to make sure refs and players could understand some of the inevitable state-of-the-art issues that resulted from the in-game physics.
2300 was a good opportunity, I think, because the game was still sorting itself out and open to such interpretation, where sometimes fictional universes have principles written into them which may not actually follow from other principles states in them.
Thanks,
DAve
Dreadnought
SOC-12
Casey--
DAve
Yeah, I was experimenting around to see what happened when you changed your publicly displayed name, if it "retconned" back to previous posts, or if it remained displaying what it was the time it was posted. The former, in case anyone wondered.
DAve
Small Ithklur question ... the current T20 material talks about Ithklur getting "enlightened", something that has little in-game effect but is of considerable interest socially for Ithklur. Do you know what this is?
Is it something like becoming aware of the possibility of being "feral", or even so becoming? Or is this something unique to T20?
Is it something like becoming aware of the possibility of being "feral", or even so becoming? Or is this something unique to T20?
Dreadnought
SOC-12
Hyphen--
I know what you mean about favoring revamped old things. My favorite Cold War era aircraft carriers were HMS Victorious and USS Coral Sea for very similar reasons.
Our intent in RCVG was to have based them on the Martian Metals Imperial Marine Grav APC. However, we could not get a complete physical copy, nor good photos. I think we had a hull top, but not a turret. This might have been for the best, because the original had a kind of shot trappy look that also looked like the wind would get under it at high speeds and lift it off.
I think that Kirk may have reduced the effect of the lower trapezoid on that design in favor of the upper trapezoid for artistic reasons, or perhaps because in the illos we had, that's just the way it looked to him. I know that in the famous Martian Metals magazine ad, the front view was very easy to misinterpret.
I think that Kirk Wescom did an outstanding job on those illos. We didn't have the time to go over individual vehicles in detail, but I put together a matrix for him showing common hulls and levels of electronics. We worked out a few conformal arrays and blister and teardrop and blade fairings for sensors, ECM, ECCM, etc., and he worked those into low, medium, and high electronics suites, and it worked out extremely well, I thought. He also had an excellent feel for the difference in design flavor we posited for the TL 14 Trepidas and the TL 15 vehicles, which I thought really paid off with the Meson sled.
DAve
I know what you mean about favoring revamped old things. My favorite Cold War era aircraft carriers were HMS Victorious and USS Coral Sea for very similar reasons.
Our intent in RCVG was to have based them on the Martian Metals Imperial Marine Grav APC. However, we could not get a complete physical copy, nor good photos. I think we had a hull top, but not a turret. This might have been for the best, because the original had a kind of shot trappy look that also looked like the wind would get under it at high speeds and lift it off.
I think that Kirk may have reduced the effect of the lower trapezoid on that design in favor of the upper trapezoid for artistic reasons, or perhaps because in the illos we had, that's just the way it looked to him. I know that in the famous Martian Metals magazine ad, the front view was very easy to misinterpret.
I think that Kirk Wescom did an outstanding job on those illos. We didn't have the time to go over individual vehicles in detail, but I put together a matrix for him showing common hulls and levels of electronics. We worked out a few conformal arrays and blister and teardrop and blade fairings for sensors, ECM, ECCM, etc., and he worked those into low, medium, and high electronics suites, and it worked out extremely well, I thought. He also had an excellent feel for the difference in design flavor we posited for the TL 14 Trepidas and the TL 15 vehicles, which I thought really paid off with the Meson sled.
DAve
