Milieux for T5

[Shadow Bear]

Don't worry so much about when just put in rule support for all tech levels and let the Refree worry about when. Open it up for adventure for any time period following the current history outline and let the alternate universes flow.

 

[StrikerFan]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Shadow Bear:
Don't worry so much about when just put in rule support for all tech levels and let the Refree worry about when. Open it up for adventure for any time period following the current history outline and let the alternate universes flow.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'd agree. If I were trying to pick just one period to support, though, I'd pick M0. Why? Because it has more of what people want: a stable core, for trading; frontiers, for exploration; conflicts, for background and for military expeditions. The conflicts aren't so huge as to overwhelm the players, though, they could be avoided (just go to another side of the Imperium). The aliens are out there as well, but there's enough distance between the Third Imperium and their cores that all sides have room to explore and expand.
I would NOT do something post Virus, simply because then you're enforcing something a lot of people (myself included) find, at best, nonsensical. I would leave that for later, or for another company/group to do if they like.
An M0 milieu would also easily support Long Night gaming, because the history could be cut off by the GM at a given date and used as a sweeping, broad-brush background for the campaign. (I always felt that if GDW wanted to bring back exploration and so on into Traveller, rather than exploding the Imperium as they did for TNE, they should have done a Long Night book, the situation was already there in the history.)

StrikerFan

 

[mjwest]

I also ask that the Virus stuff just be ignored. It was the dumbest thing that ever happened to Traveller.

Why do I say that? This is why: It totally invalidated everything that happened before it. Nothing before is relevant. No stories matter. Strephon doesn't matter. Dulinor doesn't matter. Margaret doesn't matter. The Solomani don't matter. None of the border empires matter. Nothing matters because it was wiped out. All of the background and development and history was just wiped out.

I actually *liked* the Rebellion. It had a flow to it and it worked. It preserved the existing history, and worked with it. The Virus did none of that; it just wiped everything out and started over.

Please note I am not against the type of setting that resulted. The idea of a rebuilding setting with pocket empires and such is a good idea. (I always liked the Long Night as a setting.) I just hate that to get back there, they had to totally repudiate all that came before.

I have seen people call the GURPS setting the "dream" setting, ignoring the "real" history. To me, Virus is the setting that jettisons history for absolutely no gain.

(And this is all ignoring how ridiculous the idea of a computer program that can magically rewire itself. Why not just add holodecks and transports while you are at it?)

 

[Blue Ghost]

mjwest; I'm speculating here, but I think this may have been done by the designers to comply with Marc Miller's request to "get rid of the extreme violence" in the Traveller system. I agree, it was an idiotic maneuvre on their part, because they wound up torpedoeing all that had been published before it. My God, if I had known the contents of T4, I would have NEVER given dime one to Imperium games! I feel like I've been robbed. Myself, I liked the Rebellion period. I thought it was the best of all of them. I think what really brought down that system was the lack of support. And this continues to anger me to this day.

And getting back to the violence aspect, every single gaming group (I should say RPG group) I came across, who played Traveller, played primarily with the mercenary characters. I think if the publisher didn't want "extreme violence", then he should've kept all the weapons out, and placed the emphasis of the adventures elsewhere. Right now classic Traveller adventures, to me, seems to have a kind of leftist view of the application of violence. But I digress.

I liked the setting, and mechanics of the classic and mega systems. What I continually rage and rant against is the parcing out of rules for the sake of marketing, AND THEN not to follow it (the game) up with support by publishing adventures. Man, I cannot tell you how much outrage I have in that regard.

I can't tell you how many times I visited my game/hobby/comic/sci-fi-shops looking for more classic or Mega Traveller adventures, only to be told that there weren't any. With classic Traveller I wasn't too dissapointed, because there was continued support for it via JTAS, and some third party addons. But I got really angry with Mega Traveller, because I had spent all this damn money on a game system that never saw another publication beyond the Rebellion Source book, and to the best of my knowledge never had a single damn adventure published for it!

Then comes Imperium Games, and essentially the same thing happens!

I swear to God, here and now, if the publishers or Marc Miller pulls this same kind of thing with either T5 or T20, then I'll forever denounce them as money hungry game designers on this BBS. I don't mind making up adventures, but it'd be nice to have at least something to base it on, and by that I mean an adventure I can peruse and use as a template for my own.

 

[T. Foster]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
I can't tell you how many times I visited my game/hobby/comic/sci-fi-shops looking for more classic or Mega Traveller adventures, only to be told that there weren't any. With classic Traveller I wasn't too dissapointed, because there was continued support for it via JTAS, and some third party addons. But I got really angry with Mega Traveller, because I had spent all this damn money on a game system that never saw another publication beyond the Rebellion Source book, and to the best of my knowledge never had a single damn adventure published for it!

Then comes Imperium Games, and essentially the same thing happens!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not to defend the way GDW (mis)handled the MegaTraveller line, but to be fair there were third-party addons (including adventures) for MT, in the form of Digest Group's supplements and magazine(s); it's just that your local game/hobby/comics/sci-fi shops probably didn't stock the DGP stuff.

And as for T4, IMO you've got the situation backwards. While there was a dry-spell for a couple months after the rulebook first came out, it eventually got so that Imperium Games was drowning us with mediocre (at best!) support-material. Releasing a new product every month isn't worth a whole lot if only one in three or four of those was actually something worth releasing (remember 'Emperor's Vehicles,' 'The Annililik Run' et (too many) al). I'd much prefer 3-4 good supplements a year to 12 bad ones (or, in the case of GDW's MT line, 1 bad one).

 

[T. Foster]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by GypsyComet:
As a Future History, it works wonderfully start to finish. It echoes it's literary sources (Anderson and Piper) and keeps the genre.
You don't like the ending? Don't play there. But be assured that some of us will...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

While I agree with this, I'm just not sure that we should consider Milieu 1200 as 'the ending' of Traveller's Future History -- it certainly wasn't intended as such by Nilsen/Chadwick/Wiseman when they created it. It seems wrong to me that just because some folks don't like the era that the rest of us are stuck never being allowed to look beyond it.

No, I don't like Virus or the New Era setting either, but I like even less allowing it to put a cap on any further History or Development, and that's why I'd like to skip the timeline forward a couple hundred years and see what's there, not worrying about the specifics of Virus and the Black Curtain and the Empress Wave and all the other unpleasant details of the New Era any more than a CT campaign worries about the specifics of the Psionic Supressions -- they exist as part of the background, and some long-term effects are still felt, but only as incidental detail; they're by no means central to the setting or the ongoing historical Grand Plot.

Put aside your concerns with how Virus spread, or how anybody was able to visually observe a phenomenon moving at the speed of light (or why something that had already been moving across Charted Space for several hundred years was never mentioned earlier), fast-forward a couple busy centuries, and let's see what the new society that we were seeing the birth of in the New Era looks like in it's maturity. Surely not still Star Vikings, but a return-to-status-quo Fourth Imperium seems even less likely. I'm sure Milieu 1400 is something new, different, and previously unseen, with opportunities for stories and campaigns unlike those of any previous Era (TL 17+? Machine intelligence? Acceptance of psionics? "The First Mature Society"?). This is an as-yet-unwritten chapter in Traveller's Future History which I'd like to see explored, Virus-haters be damned.

[This message has been edited by T. Foster (edited 10 July 2001).]

 

[TJP]

I quess I'll de-lurk and offer my 2 cents.

First of all, let me say that I am one of those Virus Era haters as well. I agree with mjwest above, it was a terrible move for Traveller. It was like pressing a reset button for the whole Traveller universe. Like reading a book for 400 pages only to be told that, the last 400 pages didn't matter, forget them.

Someone said that TNE should have been called "Twilight: 1200" and I agree. Same kind of situation with same kind of goals (survive to see the next day).

Some of you want Traveller to move beyond the Virus Era and beyond TL 15. I fear that will produce something resembling Star Wars/Trek with lots of technobabble gadgets. To me that's what Traveller is not. I always liked Traveller at TL 12 or so. I originally was drawn to Traveller universe because it had more hard SF feel to it. It was very nice to see a SF-RPG without blasters/phasers.

To me the best Traveller milieu was the MT milieu. A great age for "high adventure." A close second being the CT milieu. I modified both quite heavily to fit my Traveller universe, however. I never bought T4 so I can't comment that milieu, but the idea of M0 seems okay to me. Nice possibiliies there.

I kinda like the year 200 milieu for T5. To me it seems better than the year 1400 or something. But then again, those both could resemble each other quite a lot.

Well, enough of my babbling. I'll return to Lurking Mode.

 

[T. Foster]

If anyone's sick of hearing me on this, just let me know and I'll give it a rest. That said:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TJP:
First of all, let me say that I am one of those Virus Era haters as well. I agree with mjwest above, it was a terrible move for Traveller. It was like pressing a reset button for the whole Traveller universe. Like reading a book for 400 pages only to be told that, the last 400 pages didn't matter, forget them.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree 100% that Virus and the clean-slate approach GDW used to transition from MT to TNE was an epic Bad Idea. I hated it at the time and I hate it still. That said, I still think that by moving far enough beyond it 'historical continuity' can be reestablished with the collapse of the 3I and ensuing Short Nap looking like just 2 more episodes in the grand Historical Sweep. True, the MT storylines are still thrown out, which is still a shame, but 2-3 centuries later you've still got all the same Races (Vargr, Aslan, etc) and Cultures (Vilani, Solomani, etc) and it's recognizably the same Universe, even if the folks in control dress and act differently (after all, the Interstellar Wars vs Long Night vs 3rd Imperium are all vastly different styles/settings, yet all accepted as part of the same Universe).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Someone said that TNE should have been called "Twilight: 1200" and I agree. Same kind of situation with same kind of goals (survive to see the next day).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But, following that analogy, 300 years from T2K gave us T:2300. The same magnitude of changes can occur over the same span of time in the OTU too. It's certainly possible for people to like the T:2300 setting while having no interest (or even distaste) for T2K (including me), and the same should be possible for M:1400 (or 1500 or 1600) vis a vis TNE.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Some of you want Traveller to move beyond the Virus Era and beyond TL 15. I fear that will produce something resembling Star Wars/Trek with lots of technobabble gadgets. To me that's what Traveller is not. I always liked Traveller at TL 12 or so. I originally was drawn to Traveller universe because it had more hard SF feel to it. It was very nice to see a SF-RPG without blasters/phasers.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Traveller (at least in MT, and probably FF&S though I don't have it on-hand) already has a technology spectrum defined up to TL-21, it's just that in every incarnation of the game thus far society has maxed out at 15/16. IMO it would be nice to actually have a setting which allowed us to use some of that 'ultra-tech' without having to resort to the old 'Ancients artifact' excuse. As long as our attitudes and approaches remain consistent, simply raising the TL another step or two won't automatically cause the game to throw logic out the window and become instant Star Trek.

Sure, the feel may be more 'fantastic' and the science a little less 'hard,' but IMO Traveller should be about providing diverse options, and an ultra-tech Far Future (still grounded on the 'hard science' Trav Tech-Scale) is one quite interesting option that hasn't been provided to date, to the game's detriment. There's ample room to set a Traveller game at any TL from 15 down, but (although the rules provide for it) there's currently no place in the OTU for anything higher-tech.

There's a definite market for sci-fi of a more exotic and less conservative nature than traditional TL9-15 Trav has provided, and I see no reason why we can't exploit that and bring those people into the Greater Traveller Universe rather than summarily turning our backs on a significant portion of 'the future' just because a) it doesn't feel like what we're used to, or b) it doesn't match our personal interests.

Which brings me to my last point: if you don't like the idea of a TL-17 post-TNE Future setting, don't play in it. That's the (theoretical*) beauty of having multiple settings and milieux within the same Future History: something for everybody. Adam's game is set during the Interstellar Wars, Betty's in Milieu 0, Chuck's during the Rebellion, and Doug's in Milieu 1500, but it's all still Traveller, and that's what's great (except that Betty uses half-dice and a weird task system, but that's an entirely different rant

).

*Theoretical, of course, because in reality the tendency will always be to follow what sells and give the biggest subset of fans what they're after: if you've got a vocal group clamoring for more detail on M:200, that's obviously going to take precedence over introducing a new self-contained Interstellar Wars milieu that will only appeal to a select few -- at least from the pov of actually moving product.

 

[Blue Ghost]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by T. Foster:
Not to defend the way GDW (mis)handled the MegaTraveller line, but to be fair there were third-party addons (including adventures) for MT, in the form of Digest Group's supplements and magazine(s); it's just that your local game/hobby/comics/sci-fi shops probably didn't stock the DGP stuff.
B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I won't dispute the T4 material, but I never saw one God-dammed publication for MT beyond Rebellion. I never did. I looked all over the area where I live, and I happen to live in one of the big gaming hubs; the San Francisco Bay Area. I looked in San Francisco, San Jose, up and down the peninsula, the North Bay (Marin), Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, and beyond, and not one of the stores I knew of had anything.

I mean there was NOTHING.

So my group was left holding the bag with the three core rulebooks, the Vilani and Vargr alien modual, the referee's screen, and Starship operations, and Rebellion. Mucho bucks for a college student. And then the system dropped off the face of the Earth.

It vanished.

It dissappeared.

It was no more.

It was gone.

If there were third party addons, then nobody out here bought them. At least nobody I knew, and I kept hunting on a weekly basis, high and low, under every rock I could pick up and roll. I was angry then, and just recalling the account is stirring up deep hatred and other forms of angst against the publishers and designer.

Like I said, if the same thing happens with this "new and improved" T5/TD20 version, then nobody will hear the end of it from me on this BBS. I will denounce anyone connected with this system if I find my gaming group getting screwed once more on support.

But you're right. I'd much rather have content quality addons than books that are thin on substance. Let's hope the folks in charge of the show can get it right this time.

 

[GypsyComet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
I won't dispute the T4 material, but I never saw one God-dammed publication for MT beyond Rebellion. I never did. I looked all over the area where I live, and I happen to live in one of the big gaming hubs; the San Francisco Bay Area. I looked in San Francisco, San Jose, up and down the peninsula, the North Bay (Marin), Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, and beyond, and not one of the stores I knew of had anything.

I mean there was NOTHING.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Interesting, since I acquired ALL of my MT material in those same stores. Gamescape SF, Game Gallery San Jose (RIP), D&J, Scenario, GoB...

I was in college for most of the MT run, and so did most of my buying in the South Bay, but the stuff WAS there. Game Gallery SJ was probably my biggest supplier (this was back before they sucked, BTW) with D&J being #2 and not infrequent visits to GoB (Games of Berkeley) close behind. Some of today's good stores weren't around then, which is why I haven't mentioned them. It wasn't until the 90's that I could boggle people by telling them that I had a good dozen game stores within an hour's drive...



[This message has been edited by GypsyComet (edited 11 July 2001).]

 

[GypsyComet]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by T. Foster:
While I agree with this, I'm just not sure that we should consider Milieu 1200 as 'the ending' of Traveller's Future History -- it certainly wasn't intended as such by Nilsen/Chadwick/Wiseman when they created it. It seems wrong to me that just because some folks don't like the era that the rest of us are stuck never being allowed to look beyond it.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
<other good stuff snipped>

Agreed. As with all the best Future Histories and other good stories, the end is only the end for now. It is still the end, however, until the author picks up pen once more, and that is my context...

 

[Gallowglass]

Also re the tech level thing, whilst TL9-15 will I suspect always remain Traveller's strongest range, it is possible to do "hard-ish SF" at higher tech levels, without resorting to techno-babble.

Star Trek's failing is that rather than deal with known physics and speculate a way round the problems, in terms that fit current physics, they invent a new frame of reference in which the problems don't exist. Which is fine for Star Trek but doesn't fit for Traveller. But I see no reason tyhat Traveller CAN'T do High Tech provided it is handled as speculation that extrapolates from current physics. And I fully acknowledge that our current knowledge may be wrong, but the Hard SF feel is the illusion created by using real world physics correctly that the bits of speculation that are slipped in are plausible.

And I personally would love to see a Traveller compatible source book for Ian M Bank's Culture...

[This message has been edited by Gallowglass (edited 11 July 2001).]

 

[T. Foster]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
I won't dispute the T4 material, but I never saw one God-dammed publication for MT beyond Rebellion. I never did. I looked all over the area where I live, and I happen to live in one of the big gaming hubs; the San Francisco Bay Area. I looked in San Francisco, San Jose, up and down the peninsula, the North Bay (Marin), Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward, and beyond, and not one of the stores I knew of had anything.

I mean there was NOTHING.

So my group was left holding the bag with the three core rulebooks, the Vilani and Vargr alien modual, the referee's screen, and Starship operations, and Rebellion. Mucho bucks for a college student. And then the system dropped off the face of the Earth.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK, a little bit of confusion comes from the fact that GDW's Rebellion Sourcebook was actually released before all those other items you mention -- it was actually the very first supplement released for MT -- so I thought you were claiming you only ever saw ONE MT supplement, when in actuality between GDW and DGP there were about 15 supplements (plus various magazines) released between 1987-91 -- not nearly enough, to be sure, but certainly more than one!

Also, though, I suppose I'm lucky that the game-store I used to frequent in those days (ABC Hobbycraft in Evansville, IN) was staffed by some seriously old-school gamers who always stocked the good stuff, and also that I was regularly attending several game cons in those days and could check out the dealers' booths.

Which, I suppose, brings up the point that regardless of how much good material is produced, it still has to be where folks can see it. I recently noticed the RPGs shelf at a local Border's: 70% D&D, 25% White Wolf, and a lone copy of the Call of Cthulhu core rulebook. Not too many kids are going to pick up a game when they've never even seen a copy.

 

[Blue Ghost]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by T. Foster:
OK, a little bit of confusion comes from the fact that GDW's Rebellion Sourcebook was actually released before all those other items you mention -- it was actually the very first supplement released for MT -- so I thought you were claiming you only ever saw ONE MT supplement, when in actuality between GDW and DGP there were about 15 supplements (plus various magazines) released between 1987-91 -- not nearly enough, to be sure, but certainly more than one!

Also, though, I suppose I'm lucky that the game-store I used to frequent in those days (ABC Hobbycraft in Evansville, IN) was staffed by some seriously old-school gamers who always stocked the good stuff, and also that I was regularly attending several game cons in those days and could check out the dealers' booths.

Which, I suppose, brings up the point that regardless of how much good material is produced, it still has to be where folks can see it. I recently noticed the RPGs shelf at a local Border's: 70% D&D, 25% White Wolf, and a lone copy of the Call of Cthulhu core rulebook. Not too many kids are going to pick up a game when they've never even seen a copy. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That may have been part of the problem. And Rebellion was the last thing I saw published. If this is the case then it may have been a simple case of low supply to meet a high demand. But, to further the point, if this was the case, then why didn't D&J or Games&Thins, or one of the other stores I used to frequent, buy more? I can't tell you how many hours I spent asking and searching the cluttered shelves of D&J hobby, or hours on the road heading up to Marin to a local knook sci-fi/game store I knew off of Lucas Valley Road.

I really liked the MT setting, and thought that this was the final and definitive version for Traveller, especially with its innovative hit verse penetration combat system that replaced the old 8+ DMable die throw. I thought this thing would catch on like wild fire, and anticipated oodles of new Traveller material. I'm sorry it never happened, and I'm sorry people found the task system cumbersome, because the game really did need saving throw type of mechanic.

I'm glad I held onto some of it, and all of my CT material, and I wish that the new era for Traveller would revisit the Rebellion, and finish that which was started ten years ago. But that's wishful thinking on my part. I suppose I'll wind up creating stuff to revisit that period, because I do think it holds the most promise for grand space opera, as well as hard sci-fi adventures.

And to echo mine and other's thoughts regarding the material; I don't care so much for the period as I do about the content, and have a great desire that all parts of the Imperium and its neighbor states be addressed in some way shape or form. I mean, just when the Hivers are published CT takes a nose dive, and not once did I ever see an adventure with the K'Kree, or some of the more exotic species. Again, I'd prefer the Rebellion Era, but short of that I'd prefer a good variety of content.

 

[T. Foster]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by GypsyComet:
Agreed. As with all the best Future Histories and other good stories, the end is only the end for now. It is still the end, however, until the author picks up pen once more, and that is my context...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

True enough -- but is it off-limits to try to encourage the author to pick up that pen? My pov is that both Mr. Miller and lots of folks hereabouts seem to be satisfied with the Traveller History as-is, limiting future development solely to filling in the already-existing past, and I just wanted to emphasize that there's also seemingly-overlooked potential for extending the History forward as well, and that doing so would help 'blunt the edges' of TNE, integrating it more comfortably into the Timeline, and serendipitously might also add more appeal for a new subset of potential fans.

After looking over the technology charts in the MT Ref's Companion last night, I'm thinking more and more me that a TL 17 'ultra-tech' setting that still maintains the traditional 'moderately-hard sf' Traveller feel is definitely possible.


[This message has been edited by T. Foster (edited 11 July 2001).]

 

[kafka47]

Return to the Rebellion.

As I said in a previous post, Traveller ought to support all Milieus each with their own separate sourcebook. The main rulebook ought to be nicely illustrated product that takes the starting point at the height of imperial power and technological might: 1100.

 

[lucasdigital]

I suspect that the argument over which mileu to promote will be everlasting.

I really don't care at all. Traveller was always great because we made it great, or bad because thats how we presented it.

I do have issue with the TNE haters. Not because they hated TNE, I had to 'up the tech' to become comfortable with the background, but with the attitude that it threw away all the old canon.

The greatest lesson of history is that we are not on some constant progressive track.
The gains made by one civilisation can and will be lost by the next. TNE was the Dark Night returned. The classic era was always there to play, but for some of us, making the best out of the worst was a more enriching experience.

I bet that if GDW had survived, by this time the whole thing would have come full circle and a reformation of the Imperium would have occured by the turn of the millenia.

Who could resist jaunts along the Spinward Main.....halcyon days.

Mk

------------------
Mark Lucas
Lucas-digital.com