Every history is different. The Elizabethan view of history was different from the Victorian view. That accounts for the seting discrepancies, such as Norris' or Strephon's character. I see the setting details to be the facts as known at the time, and as there can never be a truly definitive history of anything, any contradiction or discrepancy reflects the differing views ofthe time.
In the Rebellion period Norris could well have been seen as somewhat self-aggrandising by the commentariat of his age; by TNE historians regard him as a visionary of sorts. Both are the truth, to different people at different times.
Look at some of our own historical figures.
Julius Caesar : became hated as a tyrant, assassinated by his peers, now regarded as a military and political genius.
Oliver Cromwell: just ask an English patriot and an Irish patriot to give an opinion on him! They're not going to agree are they?
Napoleon: anti-christ or architect of European republicanism?
Churchill: energetic drunkard with a penchant for bombing brown-skinned people or the world's saviour from fascism?
Hirohito: naive patsy or monstrous war criminal.
(And btw, I'm not trying to provoke a political discourse, just stating that many people in our world have very different views of our history.)
History is a collection of opinions, and raw facts that can be interpreted in different ways. There's certainly no need for alternate universes to explain it all.
The rules may inform the setting and guide it's evolution, but they're not intrinsically linked. You could play in the OTU with a tweaked Serenity ruleset if you wanted. Or Spacemaster.
And the OTU is a hell of a lot more than the printed material. There's lots of gaps to the info we've been given, and there's been a tendency to think of the OTU in a rather uniform way. Just because robots are somewhat mistrusted by the Imperium doesn't mean they are treated so on every Imperial world. One of the constant frustrations with the various versions is the fact that so much material is repeated. Until very recently, apart I guess from GURPsT, there has been little expansion to the setting since CT times, apart from the history of that specific setting. What I mean here is the Rebellion changes the current affairs paradigm from CT to MT, but there's little deepening of the established data, such as what music is popular on Regina, or what the most prestigious university is in the Marches. Such details cross over the setting changes in the various versions of Traveller
In the Rebellion period Norris could well have been seen as somewhat self-aggrandising by the commentariat of his age; by TNE historians regard him as a visionary of sorts. Both are the truth, to different people at different times.
Look at some of our own historical figures.
Julius Caesar : became hated as a tyrant, assassinated by his peers, now regarded as a military and political genius.
Oliver Cromwell: just ask an English patriot and an Irish patriot to give an opinion on him! They're not going to agree are they?
Napoleon: anti-christ or architect of European republicanism?
Churchill: energetic drunkard with a penchant for bombing brown-skinned people or the world's saviour from fascism?
Hirohito: naive patsy or monstrous war criminal.
(And btw, I'm not trying to provoke a political discourse, just stating that many people in our world have very different views of our history.)
History is a collection of opinions, and raw facts that can be interpreted in different ways. There's certainly no need for alternate universes to explain it all.
The rules may inform the setting and guide it's evolution, but they're not intrinsically linked. You could play in the OTU with a tweaked Serenity ruleset if you wanted. Or Spacemaster.
And the OTU is a hell of a lot more than the printed material. There's lots of gaps to the info we've been given, and there's been a tendency to think of the OTU in a rather uniform way. Just because robots are somewhat mistrusted by the Imperium doesn't mean they are treated so on every Imperial world. One of the constant frustrations with the various versions is the fact that so much material is repeated. Until very recently, apart I guess from GURPsT, there has been little expansion to the setting since CT times, apart from the history of that specific setting. What I mean here is the Rebellion changes the current affairs paradigm from CT to MT, but there's little deepening of the established data, such as what music is popular on Regina, or what the most prestigious university is in the Marches. Such details cross over the setting changes in the various versions of Traveller
