Post-collapse Traveller

[cym0k]

Not sure if this is the correct place, but I'll ask.

On the verge of starting a traveller game and I like the idea put forward in the traveller wiki about the post-collapse era of known space. I imagine the players setting off and discovering many strange things in unknown or forgotten places.

The traveller system (CT/MgT/T4/T5 etc) is not a worry, but without reading up on the New Era material (I have MgT and CT in hardcopy) are there any "gimmies" I should be aware of? I imagine that as it's IMTU anything goes. But how could I impliment things like travellermap in a post-collapse era game? My limited understanding is that the T5ss data is dated prior to that. Or am I wrong/missing the point?

 

[san*klass]

I ran an 1130 Collapse campaign based in the Unity of Promise in Diaspora sector. For background I used the TNE Path of Tears and the MT Astrogators Guide to Diaspora.

PoT had 1201 UPP's for many worlds for Promise and Khulam subsectors in Diaspora, and another four nearby subsectors in Old Expanses sector. Also some 19 worlds are mapped and detailed. This shows what they became after 70 years of Collapse. It also has a few pages helping to detail governments, maps and armed forces in TNE.

AGD Hard Time/Collapse UPP's for all of Diaspora, and so shows what they were just before and around the Collapse. There is also a few pages of political/pocket empires info.

Comparing the two against each other gave me sufficient setting to extrapolate from.

 

[flykiller]

I imagine the players setting off and discovering many strange things in unknown or forgotten places.

not to mention things that were kept hidden and secret but that escaped or were let loose or that were deployed in panic as virus spread.

check out the forbidden science thread, linked in my sig below, for some other ideas.

 

[cym0k]

oh, I didn't consider the impact on UWPs and changes like that! This could get uber-complicated.

 

[robject]

I think it "shouldn't" be difficult getting Collapse and New Era UWP data. (But where? Does Travellermap have this data somewhere?)

I ran an 1130 Collapse campaign based in the Unity of Promise in Diaspora sector. For background I used the TNE Path of Tears and the MT Astrogators Guide to Diaspora.

I played in a Unity of Promise game. We used MegaTraveller rules.

 

[aramis]

If you want to set in an area not ravaged by virus, MT's Hard Times has collapse procedures for the breakdown of Imperial networks. There aren't quite as harsh, but a non-virus collapse was envisaged by Terry McInnes and Chuck Gannon, as is obvious from their MT efforts.

One of the big gotcha's with TNE is that the encounter tables are not in line with the text about how often Virus is encountered.

And one of the problems is that it's barely a 2.5 generation gap - the eldest are likely old enough to have been in imperial service. {Median generation time appears to be about 30 years now for industrialized societies; lifespan average is about 80 (78 per the WHO for 1st world), but the standard deviation isn't low. Assuming 1960's style lifespans, some 5% of the population in IY 1200 are old enough to have served in the Imperium (assuming the hard cutoff of 1135 with the virus). In practice, tho', many areas whoud still be trying to maintain the imperium for at least a decade past that, in a desperate tweaking of shipboard tech.

So, really, it's not enough time for "weirdness" to have asserted itself that much.

 

[epicenter00]

Not sure if this is the correct place, but I'll ask.

On the verge of starting a traveller game and I like the idea put forward in the traveller wiki about the post-collapse era of known space. I imagine the players setting off and discovering many strange things in unknown or forgotten places.

It's a very fun setting. In a sense it's actually a bit similar to T4's premise; both involve the slow re-expansion of "civilization" and "discovering" "new worlds." (I put that all in quotes, since many of the worlds that people discover will have fully-functional civilizations, obviously people live there if they're being discovered is pretty dubious and they're only new worlds to the players.)

Both T4 and TNE have parts of their settings that will feel "off" to you; it's pretty inevitable, how you handle the parts you don't like is obviously up to you.

T4's setting has the advantage of avoiding the 80-year gap that's tbh way too short for a lot of the weird societies you see in TNE showing up. However, T4 has its setting which I generally don't find as interesting as TNE's as you're not in the ruins of the Third Imperium.

The traveller system (CT/MgT/T4/T5 etc) is not a worry, but without reading up on the New Era material (I have MgT and CT in hardcopy) are there any "gimmies" I should be aware of? I imagine that as it's IMTU anything goes. But how could I impliment things like travellermap in a post-collapse era game? My limited understanding is that the T5ss data is dated prior to that. Or am I wrong/missing the point?

Generating post-Collapse data (there is a system, and it is work, though honestly, it's not anything you couldn't write a pretty simple computer script for, though most of us do it by hand) is a huge pain, but there's a few things to keep in mind:

* Consider how far your players really will go in your universe. You don't need to convert the entire Travellermap to post-Collapse. In fact, it's highly unlikely you'll even need to convert an entire Sector. Most games are about a subsector's worth of system, spread out over a few subsector (since players will not visit every star in a subsector). It's a dangerous universe now, so your players will likely not be going as far or wide as they would, say, in a medium- or long-term game in an intact Imperium, for instance.

* Certain materials, such as Path of Tears details a lot of the Post Collapse data for you, depending on where you choose to place your game.

* Obviously, if you're planning to use T5 (or MgT) there'll be some conversion work if you use TNE materials in your game. This honestly isn't that complicated - I'd suggest simply going to "best fits" instead of trying to directly convert equipment or characters.

 

[san*klass]

If you want to set in an area not ravaged by virus, MT's Hard Times has collapse procedures for the breakdown of Imperial networks. There aren't quite as harsh, but a non-virus collapse was envisaged by Terry McInnes and Chuck Gannon, as is obvious from their MT efforts.

One of the big gotcha's with TNE is that the encounter tables are not in line with the text about how often Virus is encountered.

And one of the problems is that it's barely a 2.5 generation gap - the eldest are likely old enough to have been in imperial service. {Median generation time appears to be about 30 years now for industrialized societies; lifespan average is about 80 (78 per the WHO for 1st world), but the standard deviation isn't low. Assuming 1960's style lifespans, some 5% of the population in IY 1200 are old enough to have served in the Imperium (assuming the hard cutoff of 1135 with the virus). In practice, tho', many areas whoud still be trying to maintain the imperium for at least a decade past that, in a desperate tweaking of shipboard tech.

So, really, it's not enough time for "weirdness" to have asserted itself that much.

Being a fan of the TNE, although I do appreciate that GDW did occasionally get carried away with the weirdness, much of it made sense (to me anyway).

I presume that older (and more frail?) people may have been greater affected by the die-off caused by lower tech and less efficient food producing abilities of many Collpased worlds.Not to mention actual failing life support systems on worlds with less than ideal atmospheres, increased polution from again lower tech and less efficient industries etc.

All these things would seem to me to be hazardous to older, frail people, so reducing younger people's access to the memory of "how things used to be". And, with everyone affected by this widespread death, I can imagine everyone being open to being afflicted by a wide range of minor mental ailments, so contributing to the social strangeness?

And, yes, I can imagine some well placed and gifted worlds holding interstellar society together (as the various proposed Pocket Empires), I cn also see that the Virus, and their ability to keep jump capable ships running on lower tech alternative equipment would seem to be obstacles for more than a few.

 

[epicenter00]

Being a fan of the TNE, although I do appreciate that GDW did occasionally get carried away with the weirdness, much of it made sense (to me anyway).

Heh heh, if you ask me GDW didn't go extreme enough with the weirdness. They had fertile ground to get REALLY weird in great ways, but I think GDW was going too far down the simulationist road to really understand it (though the Breeds in Virus Fleets was a sort of stab at it).

It has a lot to do with timespans of things. It's a problem that pops up quite a few times in TNE. I'm pretty sure (but not 100%) that Nilsen explained it once that there's a constraint involved - essentially they wanted to the pyramid scheme of the RC to give an impetus to expansion; that is, GDW wanted the idea that the RC felt this righteous anger that the TEDs (presumably) that were holding the remnant technology were misusing it while they back home didn't have enough of it.

The other constraint, of course, is that GDW wanted these totally different societies popping up all over the former Imperium to make things unique, so the universe isn't full of a bunch of same-y societies (a common criticism of the OTU, but inevitable given the size of the Imperium setting). So you have something where you have these hunter-gatherer societies or the universe littered with nations that are like Europe in the 1800s or America in the 1950s tech-wise; this is of course reinforced by the chronic problem of Traveller - bad art. So you have tall ships and the Australian Empire in PoT sailing around with Tall Ships (again, the evolution of tall ships is pretty much of the ultimate expression of the wood and cloth era ship and represented specialized shipbuilding knowledge that'd take hundreds of years to re-develop unless they had some sort of technical manuals explaining it and then were promptly lost as more effective technologies came along - I refuse to believe a society can drop to TL0 then rebuild to having Tall Ships on their own, and if they have technical manuals wouldn't they be higher TL?). Another picture and some guy on a WW2 tech level destroyer right down to the Jack-In-The-Box sailor hat.

(There's a few other constraints, like GDW not wanting the universe to become "Us vs. the AIs" and so on, more design decisions and opportunities squandered but that's my opinion.)

To get some sort of balance between the two, the writers basically decided to compromise, which resulted in a situation where canonically only 70 years have passed since the Fall of the Imperium (1130) and the New Era (1200). It's ... not enough time. They tried to write it away, saying that the elimination of medical care and the fact that the "Fall" of the Imperium had been happening even before 1130, probably around 1120 in a lot of places but it's not enough time.

* It flies against certain canon things in the setting. Like the fact that Vilani medical science is supposed to be behind that of the Terrans (for whatever reason, don't look behind the curtain, Dorothy) yet Vilani naturally live longer than Terrans. While 70 years might reduce human population who remember the pre-Fall to a small number of aged invalids, 70 years isn't enough to eliminate a sufficient portion of the Vilani population, the longest lived of whom iirc can live well past the century mark.

* Canonically, the Virus is relatively self-destructive and most strains burn themselves out pretty quickly. While the chains of technology are fragile, all knowledge may be stored digitally, and a lot (if not most) people will be useless and die in droves it still seems a bit unlikely that civilization would completely fall people would be reduced to TL0 hunter-gatherers using stone implements. People would know that humanity had done this before, and there's a sufficient number of people who have an interest in these things that I think rebuilding would occur much faster. In addition, a lot of devices, even if they contain a Virus "egg" are simply incapable actually turning murderously against their users. I suspect a lot of basic tools would be of this sort - tools that could be used to make newer, lower-tech tools to sustain civilization even as the higher-tech ones wear one. There's a link missing to keep humanity down for so long - my conclusion is that the Virus Fleets simply aren't active enough to keep humanity down according to the "Nilsen numbers" quoted in places like PoT; something I think the writers concluded as well as in Vampire Fleets, they started suggesting that Virus activity comes in waves.

* Even more unrealistic than the TL0 worlds (which I can see) are the weird TL1 - TL2 worlds. Seriously a world filled with middle ages knights / samurai / hoplites? I think GDW underestimates the level of knowledge that'd sustain a society like that. You'd need to find this balance where nobody knows to mass-produce enough steel for it to be useful for things besides armor and swords, yet has all this careful knowledge in things like the art of metal folding and pattern welding, knowledge that was built up over thousands of years on Earth and was lost quite quickly when other, cheaper and faster ways of producing steel were developed. It really only takes a few guys who remember something about the Bessemer Process; trip hammers, water-powered bellows, and so on are concepts, that if even people don't understand exactly how they work, if the principle is remembered, human ingenuity would eventually produce a working model by trial-and-error. This kind of knowledge isn't limited to ivory tower types who enjoy studying ancient history - there's plenty of "steel engineers" even today with dirt under their fingernails who understand such processes. There really should be an "knowledge gap" in the TNE post-collapse universe - like TL0 worlds then worlds at TL3.

My personal solution was to make the Virus a lot more active and much more "sane" (their agenda may not be easily understood to humans, but they do have one), but by curtailing Virus activity, particularly Virus Fleets, they pretty much left the door wide open for 'how does this setting even exist'?

 

[nobby-w]

Not sure if this is the correct place, but I'll ask.

On the verge of starting a traveller game and I like the idea put forward in the traveller wiki about the post-collapse era of known space. I imagine the players setting off and discovering many strange things in unknown or forgotten places.
...

I'll put forward an alternative that you might look into: Fall of the 2nd Imperium (Rule of Man). The 2nd Imperium was held together with duct tape and lasted about 400 years. When it fell it was monstrously corrupt - anything could have taken place. It fell hard and left the biggest power vacuum in history.

There are various regions that you could play (early Sylean Federation, Reaver States around the Daibei and Reaver's Deep regions etc.)

You could set your campaign anytime during the Long Night, which lasted around 1,700 years. That's long enough for all manner of weirdness to arise.

 

[robject]

Not sure if this is the correct place, but I'll ask.

On the verge of starting a traveller game and I like the idea put forward in the traveller wiki about the post-collapse era of known space. I imagine the players setting off and discovering many strange things in unknown or forgotten places.

You could roll up two subsectors, one with a small pocket empire, and one "there be dragons". Claim it's somewhere around the fringes of what used to be Charted Space.

 

[cym0k]

Lots if groovy ideas. Because of player input I am thinking of placing the game between empires (of man, and aslan/zho for example) and "exploring" the unclaimed space between. Ideas for border disputes and tense stand offs mixed with planetary randomness in between.

 

[mike wightman]

The fall of the rule of man and the long night are a favourite setting of mine.

 

[cym0k]

If I was doing this "off-cannon", how does this sound?

I want to keep this as light and easy to manage as possible, I could designate a sector aNd choose a sub-sector around the period in question (post-virus or post-fall). I could use the travellermap data, but tweak the planet data on a needs basis (reassign UWP tech and social data with dice rolls, capped at 1130-era levels as max, for example).

Imperial borders (of what ever empires) can become somewhat "fuzzy" and disputed. Roll back any overt military presence, and in a sense attempt a wilder atmosphere. The only words I can think of to elaborate on this would be "withered and dehydrated ". Then set the players off from an outpost with a macguffin of a mission and random encounters ensue.

It's all a bit IMTU, has a certain feel and has lots of wriggle room. Saves me doing lots of homework reading too, as the players are Traveller virgins! (There are empires, it all went to pot, go find out who needs help, oh and don't die while you're out there as the ship isn't paid for yet!)

 

[san*klass]

Heh heh, if you ask me GDW didn't go extreme enough with the weirdness. They had fertile ground to get REALLY weird in great ways, but I think GDW was going too far down the simulationist road to really understand it (though the Breeds in Virus Fleets was a sort of stab at it.

Yeah, I can only agree. I would have loved to have seen some more really extreme societies in the ruins of the Collapse, rather than just a myriad number of TED's. But I guess that would have made the Wilds a bit more sympathetic, and not really supported the RC SAG campaign?

Also the Virus could have been a lot weirder and it's implications more dramatic and invasive.

But, for me, the biggest disconnect was the spacefaring nations that just rediscovered sailing ships, plate armor and black powder muskets in the course of 70 years! I assumed existing tech was maintained, but with lower tech substitutes, with lesser abilities and, so game stats.

So, an ex TL12 world would have had TL 12 assault rifles with all sorts of aiming and stabilizing gizmos, and high velocity fire. So, if they are now at TL5, for example, they can still use similar gunsmith techniques, but without all the high TL gizmos, substituted weaker metals, so much lower power and rate of fire.

I still love TNE, but if I ran it today, I would work over it all to rationalize the Wilds much more. Hence why the Covenant of Suffren is very tempting, since much more is left for the GM to design.

 

[san*klass]

If I was doing this "off-cannon", how does this sound?

I want to keep this as light and easy to manage as possible, I could designate a sector aNd choose a sub-sector around the period in question (post-virus or post-fall). I could use the travellermap data, but tweak the planet data on a needs basis (reassign UWP tech and social data with dice rolls, capped at 1130-era levels as max, for example).

Imperial borders (of what ever empires) can become somewhat "fuzzy" and disputed. Roll back any overt military presence, and in a sense attempt a wilder atmosphere. The only words I can think of to elaborate on this would be "withered and dehydrated ". Then set the players off from an outpost with a macguffin of a mission and random encounters ensue.

It's all a bit IMTU, has a certain feel and has lots of wriggle room. Saves me doing lots of homework reading too, as the players are Traveller virgins! (There are empires, it all went to pot, go find out who needs help, oh and don't die while you're out there as the ship isn't paid for yet!)

Sounds great, and very Collapse/New Era. If you want an existing New Era setting then I would recommend the Covenant of Suffren in Challenge magazine No76. Lots of details and setting ideas are suggested by epicenter00 in another thread in this section of the Forums.

It has a little published information on the CoS itself, but almost no background on the surrounding worlds, so you can develop as you please. The only (TNE) canon aspect is the Vampire Highway nearby, which an be mined for loads of tense, atmospheric scenarios. Self aware ships, AI robots and subjugated cyberslave humans seem like an ideal mega-foe!

And then throw in some crazy, (make your own choice)phobic societies and Collapse twisted worlds, and you have the ideal campaign.

 

[robject]

If I was doing this "off-cannon", how does this sound?

...choose a sub-sector around the period in question

...tweak the planet data on a needs basis

....attempt a wilder atmosphere.

Then set the players off from an outpost with a macguffin of a mission and random encounters ensue.

Perfect.

 

[Drakon]

To get some sort of balance between the two, the writers basically decided to compromise, which resulted in a situation where canonically only 70 years have passed since the Fall of the Imperium (1130) and the New Era (1200). It's ... not enough time.

I would say the Imperium fell when Strephon was shot, in 1116. After Lucan pulled the fleets, and those territories subsequently lost to the Vargr and the Solomani, that was it.

Vland's declaration of Independence in 1118 was not a sign of a healthy Imperium.

* It flies against certain canon things in the setting. Like the fact that Vilani medical science is supposed to be behind that of the Terrans (for whatever reason, don't look behind the curtain, Dorothy) yet Vilani naturally live longer than Terrans. While 70 years might reduce human population who remember the pre-Fall to a small number of aged invalids, 70 years isn't enough to eliminate a sufficient portion of the Vilani population, the longest lived of whom iirc can live well past the century mark.

I don't see these as mutually exclusive. Perhaps the Vilani have better immune systems or are less supceptable to cancer or aging. If illness is rare, research into medicine would be less a priority.

* Canonically, the Virus is relatively self-destructive and most strains burn themselves out pretty quickly. While the chains of technology are fragile, all knowledge may be stored digitally, and a lot (if not most) people will be useless and die in droves it still seems a bit unlikely that civilization would completely fall people would be reduced to TL0 hunter-gatherers using stone implements.

Part of it could be explained by a cultural taboo against potentially kill crazy technology. "Remember the time when the machines came to kill us?"

People would know that humanity had done this before, and there's a sufficient number of people who have an interest in these things that I think rebuilding would occur much faster. In addition, a lot of devices, even if they contain a Virus "egg" are simply incapable actually turning murderously against their users.

Yet.
It's just sitting there, waiting in the ICloud to upload itself into a more lethal avatar.

I suspect a lot of basic tools would be of this sort - tools that could be used to make newer, lower-tech tools to sustain civilization even as the higher-tech ones wear one. There's a link missing to keep humanity down for so long - my conclusion is that the Virus Fleets simply aren't active enough to keep humanity down according to the "Nilsen numbers" quoted in places like PoT; something I think the writers concluded as well as in Vampire Fleets, they started suggesting that Virus activity comes in waves.

So, if the Vampire fleets are not enough, wouldn't that reduce the time needed to snap back?

A wrench can't be taken over by the Virus, but one has to pick up the wrench and use it. There could be a whole story here

My personal solution was to make the Virus a lot more active and much more "sane" (their agenda may not be easily understood to humans, but they do have one), but by curtailing Virus activity, particularly Virus Fleets, they pretty much left the door wide open for 'how does this setting even exist'?

Sane homicidal maniacs are more entertaining. Not sure how you make it more sane without changing its original goals and motivations.

 

[epicenter00]

I would say the Imperium fell when Strephon was shot, in 1116. After Lucan pulled the fleets, and those territories subsequently lost to the Vargr and the Solomani, that was it.

Vland's declaration of Independence in 1118 was not a sign of a healthy Imperium.

The "Fall of the Imperium" I'm referring to in this case is like the hyperbole of the 'Fall of the Roman Empire' - the Virus is released and the most of the remaining lights in Charted Space go out and stay out. Certainly there's a point of irretrievably that occurs sometime around when the Black War strikes begin and the maps start referring to things as "The Wilds" when civilization is going to hard downhill; the Virus' work was mostly done before it was ever released.

I don't see these as mutually exclusive. Perhaps the Vilani have better immune systems or are less susceptible to cancer or aging. If illness is rare, research into medicine would be less a priority.

The point is that GDW pointed out that these weird societies have begun, especially truly primitive hunter-gatherer societies have turned up on once high-tech worlds because without medicine human generations are shorter, everyone dies younger, and nobody has any memories of the high-tech old days. History turns to myth, and myth into legend. Knowledge is lost.

However, when Vilani naturally live that long, it's inevitable that history, in the form of people who remember it, will not die out because Vilani live long enough without assistance to make it to the 70 years of the New Era; they'll be old, but it's well within the average Vilani lifetime so it won't just be a few oldsters here and there, but quite a few of them who'll have survived all the nastiness who still remember and are sufficient in number to still remember key skills.

Part of it could be explained by a cultural taboo against potentially kill crazy technology. "Remember the time when the machines came to kill us?"

You may disagree, but I don't think any society would completely give up technology, even given this trend; certainly not to the level of hunter-gatherer societies using flaked stone spears and so on. They'd want to move back up. The benefits are simply too great. All but the most stubborn (and perhaps misogynistic) man is going to have second thoughts about rejecting technology when his wife dies giving birth and someone tells him afterwards, "Fatalities during childbirth? No, hardly ever happens with medical technology. Our infant and child mortality rate is very low, too. Miscarriage hardly ever happens either."

Modern day "technologically selective" societies have a certain distrust of modern technology or for that matter even Frank Herbert's "Dune" are a good example of this; they might reject computers, or even electronics, but what they consider "electronics" is a pretty fuzzy line. The line exists somewhere - a spear was made using technology. Certainly a computer was. So, computers are probably out. Spears probably aren't. But what's the computer? What is acceptable and what is not lies somewhere in between. A shuttle loom? Hand-worked bellows? Abacus? Waterwheel-powered trip-hammers? "Hamster-wheel" style Roman cranes (or horse-powered versions)? Steam engines? Reduction gearboxes? Internal combustion engines? Vacuum tubes? Mechanical typewriters? Simple digital calculators?

I'd imagine the dividing line is probably somewhere around Earth 1950s or so; vacuum tube powered computers is when they'd start looking at things with narrowed eyes and the pitchforks and torches come out.

Plus; if those killer machines are still around, you're going to want technology desperately -- at least the technology to kill the machines, who can't really be hurt by slings, arrows, or spears. Even black powder weapons aren't very reliable against them.

Yet.
It's just sitting there, waiting in the ICloud to upload itself into a more lethal avatar.
So, if the Vampire fleets are not enough, wouldn't that reduce the time needed to snap back?

If you assume that the Virus is going to hit things global data networks (or even local wireless), a Virus egg carrier equipment that has nowhere else for the Virus to go (no data network to plug into) is still plenty usable as a tool; this isn't my own speculation. It's stated several times in the GDW material that many Free Trader vessels in 1200 are actually of this kind; the Virus did infect their computers but the computers aren't sophisticated enough to run the Virus so the ships continue to work. Similarly, a lot of relic equipment is functional but still an insane hazard to bring back to the RC because of what you describe. Nevertheless on some TED's world without nice juicy data systems to infect, they're perfectly fine.

Sane homicidal maniacs are more entertaining. Not sure how you make it more sane without changing its original goals and motivations.

I personally disagree but obviously YMMV.

I think part of the fun is the acknowledgement that the Virus is an AI lifeform. The early versions are like Ebola - yeah, it's deadly, but it's so deadly it kills itself off. It's not a viable lifeform. However, when these things have suicide programming, natural selection occurs at a staggeringly fast rate. Seventy years is long enough for the "totally suicidal", "mostly suicidal and sometimes homicidal", "sometimes suicidal and very homicidal", and even the "occasionally suicidal and occasional homcidal" strains to have died out or are rare enough to be largely irrelevant. In fact, a flare-up of these kinds of strains are probably viewed by the later Virus AIs in the same way that murderers or serial killers among humans are viewed by other humans.

 

[Drakon]

However, when Vilani naturally live that long, it's inevitable that history, in the form of people who remember it, will not die out because Vilani live long enough without assistance to make it to the 70 years of the New Era; they'll be old, but it's well within the average Vilani lifetime so it won't just be a few oldsters here and there, but quite a few of them who'll have survived all the nastiness who still remember and are sufficient in number to still remember key skills.

On each and every planet? Agreed as a whole. Vilani should snap back faster, but each planet will be different, and you need a "critical mass" to keep the memory alive, to keep the knowledge.

Or a lot of old fashion paper books.

You may disagree, but I don't think any society would completely give up technology, even given this trend; certainly not to the level of hunter-gatherer societies using flaked stone spears and so on. They'd want to move back up. The benefits are simply too great. All but the most stubborn (and perhaps misogynistic) man is going to have second thoughts about rejecting technology when his wife dies giving birth and someone tells him afterwards, "Fatalities during childbirth? No, hardly ever happens with medical technology. Our infant and child mortality rate is very low, too. Miscarriage hardly ever happens either."

This is a good point. I will point out we have Amish folks who have given up alot of technology, including medical technology.

The "desire" to move up can be mitigated somewhat if the land has a ready source of food. Technical developement is geared to problem solving, to making life easier. A hammock on a tahitian beach can seem a very easy life. And less a hassle than with the interconnected high tech life.

Modern day "technologically selective" societies have a certain distrust of modern technology or for that matter even Frank Herbert's "Dune" are a good example of this; they might reject computers, or even electronics, but what they consider "electronics" is a pretty fuzzy line. The line exists somewhere - a spear was made using technology. Certainly a computer was. So, computers are probably out. Spears probably aren't. But what's the computer? What is acceptable and what is not lies somewhere in between. A shuttle loom? Hand-worked bellows? Abacus? Waterwheel-powered trip-hammers? "Hamster-wheel" style Roman cranes (or horse-powered versions)? Steam engines? Reduction gearboxes? Internal combustion engines? Vacuum tubes? Mechanical typewriters? Simple digital calculators?

stop at digital calculators until you can "vet" the object, and its software. Pre-electronic, pre computer stuff that has no chance of being infected can be returned to service pretty easily. Assuming it exists and there are adequent low tech informational such as the Bio Optic Organized Knowledge systems the planet retain.

I'd imagine the dividing line is probably somewhere around Earth 1950s or so; vacuum tube powered computers is when they'd start looking at things with narrowed eyes and the pitchforks and torches come out.

Different cultures will react differently. As we've discussed earlier, the fall was during a time of galaxy wide war. Some cultures may decide anything more complex than a spear and a hammock ain't worth the bother.

Plus; if those killer machines are still around, you're going to want technology desperately -- at least the technology to kill the machines, who can't really be hurt by slings, arrows, or spears. Even black powder weapons aren't very reliable against them.

Chemistry is your friend in those instances. And nuclear physics might come in handy.

Folks will respond to thier perception of the threat, and another likely tactic is to keep all that high tech stuff away.

Another possibility is a weird mix of techs, depending on local circumstances.

If you assume that the Virus is going to hit things global data networks (or even local wireless), a Virus egg carrier equipment that has nowhere else for the Virus to go (no data network to plug into) is still plenty usable as a tool; this isn't my own speculation. It's stated several times in the GDW material that many Free Trader vessels in 1200 are actually of this kind; the Virus did infect their computers but the computers aren't sophisticated enough to run the Virus so the ships continue to work. Similarly, a lot of relic equipment is functional but still an insane hazard to bring back to the RC because of what you describe. Nevertheless on some TED's world without nice juicy data systems to infect, they're perfectly fine.

So any planet that has a global internet will require any new devices connecting to undergo a scan, to make sure it is not infected. Firewalled until proven uninfected.

This would make communications aboard ship when they are in port rather restricted.

I think part of the fun is the acknowledgement that the Virus is an AI lifeform. The early versions are like Ebola - yeah, it's deadly, but it's so deadly it kills itself off. It's not a viable lifeform. However, when these things have suicide programming, natural selection occurs at a staggeringly fast rate. Seventy years is long enough for the "totally suicidal", "mostly suicidal and sometimes homicidal", "sometimes suicidal and very homicidal", and even the "occasionally suicidal and occasional homcidal" strains to have died out or are rare enough to be largely irrelevant. In fact, a flare-up of these kinds of strains are probably viewed by the later Virus AIs in the same way that murderers or serial killers among humans are viewed by other humans.

On this I think we can agree. Sooner or later, a species of Virus is going to adopt a much less kill crazy philosophy and morality. Especially after Lucan is eventually killed off, (Or is he?) as that event would serve as a morality tale to other virus strains. Sooner or later, a strain is going to find a supportive role in a larger biological ecosystem. Mother or God strain Viruses that could prove beneficial to the larger ecosystem.