Strephon.

[weasel fierce]

Allright, time for a bit of a spoiler question again.

From what Ive gathered from reading old posts, the "real" strephon was indeed the real strephon.

BUt it was alluded to, both in the long "ask nielsen" thread and in gurps traveller, that he had specific reasons for being wherever he happened to be.

So.. what were these reasons ?

Whats the lowdown ?

 

[Roman]

Why he wasn't at Capital when Dulinor shot his family and his clone? It was answered in Survival Margin - because he was off overseeing Project Longbow, learning more about the Empress Wave.

 

[kafka47]

I once ran a Regency Campaign, in which, the Real Stephon emerged from hypersleep after crossing the Claw in a slow boat. This created all sorts of problems for the powers that be...I had two different game groups going at the time, one group that met up on Mondays played the forces aiding Stephon reclaim the throne and other group which met on Fridays who played with the power bloc that represented the new status quo. Needless, to say, my work as a referee was largely done by the two groups.

As merely set up a couple of interesting locales in the Marches. At the end of the 8 weeks of summer break, I brought the two groups together to confront in each other in a gruelling 7hr deathmatch, in which, loyalties and alliances shifted. altered as each jockeyed for positions.

Until, they were granted an audience before the Regent who pulled out her pistol and shot the Real Stephon to the surprise of everyone, and declared, "The Imperium is dead. Long live the Regency."

Only later was it revealed that advance scouts had hooked up with the RC and the RC had kidnapped the Regent, cloned her, and performed a mind wipe with memory altercation to preserve the semblance of a Republic government for the eventually unification. As a result, both parties united and vowed vengeance upon the RC but that is a story for another day...

 

[daryen]

In the eventual storyline that appeared in Survival Margin and was referred to in GURPS Traveller, Strephon was at Longbow Central (my name; I forget the real world) getting the skinny on the very little that was known about the Empress Wave. Or something like that.

Eventually (as revealed in Arrival Vengeance and the Regency Sourcebook) we find out that the Empress Wave was wiping out Longbow stations, and Strephon eventually geneered a psionic son named Avery to go and figure out what happened. (BTW, to find the rest of the story, check out Out of the Darkness by Avenger.)

But that is all the ultimately revised storyline. The metastory is more like this ...

When MegaTraveller was created, the "Real Strephon" was an obvious phony. Everyone knew he was a phony, and the story writers had pretty much written his faction to the point of extinction in Hard Times.

However, at some point, fan reaction was sufficiently negative, and there was perceived to be popular sentiment to make the "Real Strephon" actually Strephon for real. So, they revised the storyline to make him the real Strephon. The revised storyline was presented in Arrival Vengeance where the readers were unequivocably told outright in the omniscient voice that Strephon was really Strephon, and not an imposter. It was this revised storyline that was put into Survival Margin and in all of TNE, making it all the way to the 1248 series of books.

But do understand that part of the confusion is caused because the storyline was overtly revised. Originally, in Imperial Encyclopedia, Rebellion Sourcebook, and even Hard Times the real Strephon had died with Dulinor's bullet, and the "Real Strephon" was an obvious phony. That is why there always seemed to be some mixed messages to the whole thing.

 

[Roman]

But do understand that part of the confusion is caused because the storyline was overtly revised. Originally, in Imperial Encyclopedia, Rebellion Sourcebook, and even Hard Times the real Strephon had died with Dulinor's bullet, and the "Real Strephon" was an obvious phony. That is why there always seemed to be some mixed messages to the whole thing.

I always thought this confusion to be quite well thought. Some people support Strephan and swear he's the real Emperor, others try to make him look as ridiculous as possible.
BTW: Wasn't there a poll in Challenge-magazine asking the readers to vote wether Strephon is/isn't the true Strephon back then?

 

[daryen]

I always thought this confusion to be quite well thought. Some people support Strephan and swear he's the real Emperor, others try to make him look as ridiculous as possible.
BTW: Wasn't there a poll in Challenge-magazine asking the readers to vote wether Strephon is/isn't the true Strephon back then?

There may have been. I don't remember a Challenge poll, and I do not have the collection that allows for such a check. However, it is quite possible they did. But if so, it would have been done as a reaction to the fan interest, not as an initial plan.

In different venues, both Joe Fugate and Loren Wiseman have said that Strephon being alive was a retcon. (My word, not theirs, but that is what it was.)

Which isn't a bad thing, mind you. I don't mean to imply they "cheated" or did something wrong with the change. It is just to try and help explain why the material sent "mixed messages" about Strephon until late in the (MegaTraveller) game.

 

[Roman]

There may have been. I don't remember a Challenge poll, and I do not have the collection that allows for such a check. However, it is quite possible they did. But if so, it would have been done as a reaction to the fan interest, not as an initial plan.

I guess this was one of the main problems with MT - someday the storyline just took a life by itself.
I too think it does not seem like a bad plan to promote clone-Strephon to real-Strephon to build a figure that could rally a majority of the players (and their characters) for a post-Rebellion era. Perhaps some last try to save the OTU without using a Vampire-induced-Collapse ;-)


Just finished checking my Challenge-collection, seems as there has been no poll... Perhaps I just start to grow old...

 

[pendragonman]

Perhaps I just start to grow old...

Don't feel bad about it. Like the rest of us,your just getting closer to being a "classic".

 

[Gruffty]

Why he wasn't at Capital when Dulinor shot his family and his clone? It was answered in Survival Margin - because he was off overseeing Project Longbow, learning more about the Empress Wave.

...cos *we* manipulated the situation to get him to go there....

 

[GypsyComet]

I guess this was one of the main problems with MT - someday the storyline just took a life by itself.
I too think it does not seem like a bad plan to promote clone-Strephon to real-Strephon to build a figure that could rally a majority of the players (and their characters) for a post-Rebellion era. Perhaps some last try to save the OTU without using a Vampire-induced-Collapse ;-)

In the end, we see the real Strephon's reasons for first rising as a faction, then "admitting" to being a fake when he was, in fact, the real thing. The internal dialog in Survival Margin and his appearance in Arrival Vengeance make it clear that, whatever comes after, the Third Imperium is done.

With the Third Imperium also passed MegaTraveller and the Rebellion, arguably the largest spectator event in all of gaming. For a while, Traveller was almost the worst of the "overwhelming metaplot" settings (Vampire et al. still managed to hold the title of "worst" due to the nature of their published adventures). Had DGP kept running the plot, there was a strong possibility that The Rebellion would have simply wound down, only to have the Imperial Successor States run over by "The Baddies From the Core".

Yes, there was another crisis in planning that would have kept Traveller in metaplot for years more. While I don't know for certain, I suspect that DGP's presentation of this follow-up is what awoke GDW to the fact that they had all but lost Traveller and needed to reclaim control. That control started with Hard Times and culminated in TNE.

While Virus polarized the Traveller fanbase like nothing had before, TNE still had a very successful five year run before non-Traveller factors killed GDW (a tale told elsewhere), and I'm not so sure that DGP had much more in them in any case, new metaplot or not. Announced products aimed at the Rebellion period had gone vaporware, and the material DGP was producing showed little sense of an empire in the throes of destructive civil war. Not a good thing for a company proposing massive invasions of an already war-torn setting.

 

[Dreadnought]

About right

However, at some point, fan reaction was sufficiently negative, and there was perceived to be popular sentiment to make the "Real Strephon" actually Strephon for real. So, they revised the storyline to make him the real Strephon. The revised storyline was presented in Arrival Vengeance where the readers were unequivocably told outright in the omniscient voice that Strephon was really Strephon, and not an imposter. It was this revised storyline that was put into Survival Margin and in all of TNE, making it all the way to the 1248 series of books.

daryen's account in his 4 July 07 post on the previous page is correct except for the causal analysis quoted above. I simply made Strephon the real Strephon because it was more interesting. Popular sentiment had nothing to do with it, except that there were always a lot of people asking, "is Strephon real or fake?" In my perception the sentiment was, "we want to know the truth," which is a reminder that we had deliberately never officially said one way or another. When I got to GDW, the conventional wisdom was that Strephon was certainly a fake, following the False Dmitriy model, which I think contributed to my decision to reverse it. The premise that venality and deceit were the order of the day was just too normal and pedestrian, and finding a way to allow the guy to be the real deal, with all of those complex emotions, was more interesting. Although Arrival Vengeance was literally an MT product, it was more of a TNE product, having been written after after the basic TNE decisions had been made, so it was actually a contemporary of SM, rather than a precursor. Hard Times was the last MT product from the MT out-of-house design era. The three folios were actually transitional products from MT to TNE. AGto Diaspora and Vigilante were based on some accumulated Gannon material, but repurposed to set up TNE themes and adventures. AGtD was to provide the "last known data" to RCES players for the neighboring sector, and included the vampire shipyard used in Guilded Lily, for example. Arrival Vengeance was the new transitional MT product, intended to "stick a fork" in the Rebellion prior to TNE. For that matter, SM was a transitional product as well, library data and general discussion, summarizing and wrapping up the MT themes. Although it was numbered as first in the TNE series, it was a one-off format before we went to the final TNE presentation.

But aside from those quibbles or clarifications, the account is correct.

Dave

 

[SanDragon]

"The Truth is Out There." ~ Special Agent Mulder, IBIS

 

[Dreadnought]

"The Truth is Out There." ~ Special Agent Mulder, IBIS

"IBIS". Is that the career from the old White Dwarf (I think) article (that got re-packaged later as IRIS), or is that actually what they called them in "X Files?"

 

[SanDragon]

The Dragon magazine, issue #35, sir!

I thought it was funny, becuase in Survival Margin, Strephon is exclaiming "Who the hell is IBIS?!?"

 

[Dreadnought]

The Dragon magazine, issue #35, sir!

I thought it was funny, becuase in Survival Margin, Strephon is exclaiming "Who the hell is IBIS?!?"

You know your Traveller Bibliography, sir!

Ah, yes. Having written that, my excuse for not recognizing it is that by that point someone, maybe in a Challenge article, had repackaged them as IRIS ("Regency" vice "Bureau"), but it was still basically a super-spy career. I think they got rid of the anagathics from the original Monty Haul/Munchkiny Dragon article, though. In the original you could emerge from a six-seven term career with a bazillion skills and still only be 22. Then Chuck Gannon was trying to use it as a device to undo the Rebellion and declare Margaret the winner, or something.

 

[SanDragon]

Yep. And nope!

Dug up Survival Margin and leafed through it.

It has been renamed IRIS.

As for bibliographic knowledge... LIES!!! I found a boxful of Dragons in a comic book shop and bought them.

Last I checked, I had issues #35 to 235, skipping a few here and there.

Once it went heavily into D&D 3rd edition, I quit buying it.