Mongoose OTU vs. GDW/DGP OTU

[DickNervous]

Note that the Ancients as presented by the canon texts were never intended as limits for your games. I'm continually astounded when I read about people feeling limited by the OTU because something isn't in the canon texts. It's YOUR GAME, you can add elements.

"It's YOUR GAME"

This is something that I think way to many people who play RPGs seem to forget. It doesn't matter if you are playing Traveller, D&D, Star Wars, Pathfinder, or any of the other 3 million RPG games out there the bottom line is that the moment someone decides "I am going to run a game..." they have essentially created a "pocket universe" that is all theirs to do with as they will.

The settings that any of these games provide (including the races, classes/careers, skills, worlds, items, etc) are all just starting points, seeds, and guides to help the GM get started. To provide a general frame of reference. As the GM (and to a lesser extent a player) you have complete control.

You don't like the way Jump drives are in Traveller, so make them hyperspace drives. Not a big deal. Hate that laser rifles require a backpack to power them? *poof* now they are like blasters in Star Wars with tiny battery packs or weapons in Mass Effect which are limited by heat generation. Want elves in space, done. Instant galaxy wide communications, sure thing. IT IS YOUR UNIVERSE, PLAY GOD!

The only impact these decisions really have is when you want to incorporate materials or adventures that were written for the "official" universe of whatever game you are playing. You may need to adjust things as you go depending upon what changes you have made to your universe. But since you already made those changes, it shouldn't be an issue.

All that said, the benefit of sticking to canon is that what you create can easily be shared with others if you so wish.

 

[Quint]

The Mongoose Trojan Reach material is based on the same foundation the DGP material was (Mike Jackson's Third Imperium fanzine writeups of TR). Mongoose has been more creative with some of the more fantastic elements of that material, but the foundations are all in the DGP materials.

As to "overwriting DGP", more often than not we do try to keep it canon, but as time rolls forward, change should occur. The OTU cannot stay 1105 forever.

I was thinking this morning that Mongoose was more "gonzo" in some ways - it's not really the right word, but it's best one I have at the moment. Yes, it's the "same" OTU but at the same time it isn't. It's like Babylon Five as compared to the Foundation universe - both are great settings, but both have very different feels.

Which is really quite amazing when you think about it.

D.

 

[whulorigan]

I've been thinking about coming up with an FLT drive for Traveller that was inferior to the jump drive but correspondingly cheap, allowing player groups to own tramp ships that didn't requite investments in the tens of millions of credits. That it takes a month instead of a week to cross a parsec wouldn't affect a campaign significantly -- the referee just says "A month later..." instead of "A week later...".

However, I've never gotten around to the number crunching.

Jump-1 is roughly (give or take) about 170.0c. So a (roughly) month-duration drive (for 1.0pc range) would fall somewhere around 40.0c.

 

[Blue Ghost]

DGP got its start publishing Classic Traveller material back in '85 with The Travelle's Digest.

From what I understand from an interview with Fugate, the man who bought out the company has not kept the old material in print. Thus not part of the canon. Thus, apparently, forgotten by some.

Thanks for the reminder about the Journal. I'd forgotten.

Yeah, we've discussed the Fugate situation time and again. I've been told this, people have said that, blah blah blah, all the way on down the line. Assuming I'm still around, have my net, house, car and a career, I'll be able to splurge on some reprints in a few years.

Otherwise I say forget this guy and DGP for the time being. I don't know nor do I care what his issues are, but if someone wants to keep material that's in demand by fans out of circulation, well, then I think he knows where he can put that stuff.

I'm out.

 

[ovka]

The OTU does not preclude other spacefaring races.

IIRC, Grandfather provided the Zhodani with their special future seeing psionic artifact so that they would undertake the core-expeditions and eventually find the Primordials -- the race that our "Ancients" would consider to be their "Ancients."

There are also other indications of races that have visited this part of the galaxy. Remember the CT adventure Shadows (double adventure 1)?

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[WistfulD]

"It's YOUR GAME"

This is something that I think way to many people who play RPGs seem to forget. It doesn't matter if you are playing Traveller, D&D, Star Wars, Pathfinder, or any of the other 3 million RPG games out there the bottom line is that the moment someone decides "I am going to run a game..." they have essentially created a "pocket universe" that is all theirs to do with as they will.

The settings that any of these games provide (including the races, classes/careers, skills, worlds, items, etc) are all just starting points, seeds, and guides to help the GM get started. To provide a general frame of reference. As the GM (and to a lesser extent a player) you have complete control.

You don't like the way Jump drives are in Traveller, so make them hyperspace drives. Not a big deal. Hate that laser rifles require a backpack to power them? *poof* now they are like blasters in Star Wars with tiny battery packs or weapons in Mass Effect which are limited by heat generation. Want elves in space, done. Instant galaxy wide communications, sure thing. IT IS YOUR UNIVERSE, PLAY GOD!

The only impact these decisions really have is when you want to incorporate materials or adventures that were written for the "official" universe of whatever game you are playing. You may need to adjust things as you go depending upon what changes you have made to your universe. But since you already made those changes, it shouldn't be an issue.

All that said, the benefit of sticking to canon is that what you create can easily be shared with others if you so wish.

Now, the fact that each and every game and gaming group is an autonomous entity is a true and reasonable point that can and should be emphasized in any treatise of good GMing and GM story design.

However, the topic of this thread is a comparison between two discrete perspectives of the canon. The official interpretation of the official canon of the OTU is the topic of analysis.

So I guess I'm saying, "that's a very good point, but it's off point, don't you think?"

 

[creativehum]

I was thinking this morning that Mongoose was more "gonzo" in some ways - it's not really the right word, but it's best one I have at the moment. Yes, it's the "same" OTU but at the same time it isn't. It's like Babylon Five as compared to the Foundation universe - both are great settings, but both have very different feels.

Which is really quite amazing when you think about it.

D.

Dude, the Mongoose adventure module "The Pirates of Drinax" has the word "Pirates" right in the title. For the folks who argue most strenuously about the OTU that's already flying the freak flag high and proud.

 

[rancke]

Dude, the adventure module you referenced has the word "Pirate" right in the title. For the folks who argue most strenuously about the OTU that's already flying the freak flag high and proud.

Why would you say that? It's well established, by both rules and adventures, that there are pirates in the OTU. I can't think of any canonista who'd say otherwise.

Are you perhaps being misled by the perennial, entirely non-OTU-related, discussions about how plausible pirates are in various different Traveller settings?


Hans

 

[DickNervous]

However, the topic of this thread is a comparison between two discrete perspectives of the canon. The official interpretation of the official canon of the OTU is the topic of analysis.

So I guess I'm saying, "that's a very good point, but it's off point, don't you think?"

Oh, well, yeah maybe I did get a bit off track. Guess I just got a little excited. Sorry 'bout that.

I guess my point was that the whole idea of an RPG is to use your imagination and be creative and make the universe you create "your own". And just because the book doesn't say something doesn't mean it didn't happen, even from an official standpoint.

So in the case of the OTU, just because there is no mention of a hyper-intelligent species of blue from the 4th dimension that has been using the known galaxy to run large scale extremely long term simulations doesn't mean it's not true. It just means that nobody has figured it out yet.

 

[aramis]

Dude, the Mongoose adventure module "The Pirates of Drinax" has the word "Pirates" right in the title. For the folks who argue most strenuously about the OTU that's already flying the freak flag high and proud.

Ethically challenged armed merchantmen is the widely accepted euphemism...

It's a hot button topic. But the existence of piracy in canon is undeniable except by the most strident opponents, because there are entire careers, and large chunks of canonical history that involve pirate bands, even a few which become quasi-governments (the Kforzung) or even stronger.

As to how they work, the details are sketchy in canon. That they work is unassailably canonical. (Again, eg Kforzung. Also the 1120's in Corridor.)

 

[aramis]

Open Warning

[m;]A mildly offensive term was edited out of a post.[/m;]

Canonista has become an accepted (even, in my case, embraced) term.

Terms like "junta" are perjorative to most Americans, and not a few europeans; please do not apply them to members of this board past nor present.

 

[Quint]

As I chew my way through the differences between the MgT OTU and the GDW/DGP OTU there are a couple of other things that factor into the different feel. Even if we simply take the RAW for the two settings, there is (to my mind at least) what ends up being a very different assumed setting from the two games.

GDW/DGP has that very hard-science flavor and feel to it. MgT has barely reskinned WH40K weaponry, plus cybernetics (which goes far beyond the rules from TTD), plus a beefed up set of rules for psionics, plus alternate rules for FTL travel, plus...

The difference in OTU is a pretty direct reflection of difference in RAW.

In MgT we have huge floating nanotech black ovoid starports that dynamically reconfigure themselves based on volume of traffic - and this is a clearly high-tech (15ish) but ostensibly "normal if exceedingly rare or somewhat unique" thing - while in the GDW/DGP OTU such a thing could only be imagined as an Ancient artifact or something similar.

D.

 

[infojunky]

GDW/DGP has that very hard-science flavor and feel to it.

WHERE?!? >with an incredulous look on my face<

DGP produced some very nice and pretty books, but no "hard science" whatsoever, Heck if they produced a correct technical detail that wasn't directly cribbed from GDW I'd be surprised.

What they did do right in their products was Editing and Layout. Their advice and layout on adventure design were very good as well. They wrote good adventures except where the 4 wandering pinheads were involved.

With all that reprints would be nice if just to fill out the Apocrypha Disk for MT. That and have solid pointable examples of a working layout as/per Marc's awkward layout commandment.....

 

[Quint]

WHERE?!? >with an incredulous look on my face<

DGP produced some very nice and pretty books, but no "hard science" whatsoever, Heck if they produced a correct technical detail that wasn't directly cribbed from GDW I'd be surprised.

What they did do right in their products was Editing and Layout. Their advice and layout on adventure design were very good as well. They wrote good adventures except where the 4 wandering pinheads were involved.

With all that reprints would be nice if just to fill out the Apocrypha Disk for MT. That and have solid pointable examples of a working layout as/per Marc's awkward layout commandment.....

I'm not even going to try to argue that they got any science right, but how about "firmly grounded realism" - in fact I can still remember reading "In the Letters" of TTD about only breaking X rules of known physics/science. Namely Jump Space, and Fusion+/Cold Fusion, and maybe one other thing - I'll see if I can track down the response.

So compared to MgT - these are the guys who did World Builders Handbook as well as well as the whole MT vehicle design system, plus the Task System, plus Starship Operators Manual...

This is also why there aren't lightsabers, lasers have backpack-sized powerpacks, and psionic teleportation needs heat sinks or thermal underwear.

And, comparatively for the era, Traveller was the game for people who wanted hard science rather than space opera. We might look at it now with a certain jaundiced eye - but it was certainly more grounded in hard science than any other game. Certainly there wasn't any that wasn't any hard science scifi game that was as or more popular.

D.

 

[infojunky]

So compared to MgT - these are the guys who did World Builders Handbook

A rewrite of their two earlier books Grand Survey and Grand Census which took technical details from CT's Scouts book.

as well as well as the whole MT vehicle design system,

Which are copied out of Striker and High Guard almost Verbatim.

plus the Task System, plus Starship Operators Manual...

Both dubious gifts to Traveller But I'll give them those. But mind you the Virus of TNE can be directly traced back to the Starship's Operators Manual.

This is also why there aren't lightsabers, lasers have backpack-sized powerpacks, and psionic teleportation needs heat sinks or thermal underwear.

I will trade you those for the Incandescent Turrets, and other insane power requirements. Active and Passive sensors having the same power requirements. And other technical details that are to numerous to list off the top of my head.

But my biggest problem with MT/DGP treatment of Traveller was that It had become a Monoculture, there was only one flavor of Mainstream Traveller. Where with CT that hadn't been the case.

 

[salochin999]

I think what bothers me the most about OTU is the whole Grandfather thing and its closing the possibility of millions of years of prior civilizations. I think this was a huge plot mistake. I love Andre Norton's treatment of forerunner civilizations and the exploring of unknown alien ruins. I know the Canonistas (*****) will disagree with me but its one factor that makes the OTU a very boring vanilla universe to me.

In mine he's lying.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Enoff; it's why I started the legacy thread regarding Traveller's past and future, and similarly why I started the poll either last year or the year before last.

 

[Timerover51]

First, I am a massive, massive fan of the GDW/DGP OTU (the Rebellion and Virus, meh, but DGP pre-MT was great, great stuff IMO) but I've been digesting the Mongoose Third Imperium works and I have to say that the setting seems more... fun?

That isn't quite the term I'm looking for - but in the GDW/DGP supplements the players often seem like the Greek Chorus or otherwise "witnesses to history" - and despite the existence of the Ancients, the Third Imperium very much is presented as the utter dominating technological, military, and economic power of the universe. We've talked a fair amount about the lack of "frontiers" in the OTU but there is also a similar lack of mystery or wonder or even a sense of Arthur C. Clarke style "magic".

I think that is what drew me to Paranoia Press and their two sectors - it felt like science fiction, not "humans in rubber suits on a soundstage with a bad blue screen" which is often where the OTU seemed to end up despite it's best efforts because there seemed to be so much emphasis on the 3I being "biggest, best, and baddest" of the empires out there.

I was just reading the Mongoose Aslan book and their treatment of the Trojan Reaches - and suddenly it seemed like a very cool place to be adventuring. Without giving spoilers they managed to turn much of the established canon several degrees, give it a new spin, and give the GM lots of very cool mini-settings that let the players be, well, "players" in a way that I can't really remember from a GDW/DGP scenario save maybe the "Reveal the Aslan are a Minor Race!" adventure that threw everyone into a tizzy.

I see the same stuff in their treatment of "Secrets of the Ancients" or even modules like "Tripwire" where the universe seems to be full of mystery, even in areas where the Imperium has been settled for centuries. All of the Mongoose Alien modules seem to be sprinkled with this sort of thing, plus their adventures.

I guess I'm wondering if other people have noticed the same sort of difference? Have thoughts as to why it is there? Think I'm off my rocker?

D.

I am not a fan of the OTU in any of its permutations.

 

[rancke]

In MgT we have huge floating nanotech black ovoid starports that dynamically reconfigure themselves based on volume of traffic - and this is a clearly high-tech (15ish) but ostensibly "normal if exceedingly rare or somewhat unique" thing - while in the GDW/DGP OTU such a thing could only be imagined as an Ancient artifact or something similar.

Sounds like the sort of thing that got Paranoia Press' stuff decanonized for exceeding TL15.

I've no problem with MgT wanting to facilitate Flash Gordon-style play; I just wish they'd do in a different universe.


Hans

 

[Quint]

Sounds like the sort of thing that got Paranoia Press' stuff decanonized for exceeding TL15.

I've no problem with MgT wanting to facilitate Flash Gordon-style play; I just wish they'd do in a different universe.


Hans

Is that the stated reason for it being decanonized? Or did it simply get overwritten as part of various "company land grants" being revoked? It certainly makes sense on the one hand, but it has been made pretty clear that MM has approved the MgT version of the OTU.

In any case I have always been a fan of the Paranoia Press supplements.