My feelings about TNE have changed over the years
Glad to hear it. Your original post just pushed my buttons as it sounded to me like another TNE is depressing, TNE is bleak, everythings smashed, vitriol against TNE.
My view of the setting is that pocket empires should be emerging in every subsector.
Your view may be entirely correct. My view after reading the TNE materials is that pocket empires are few and far between.
Granted, that in the published material GDW only detailed one or two pocket empires in the scant handfull of subsectors outside the Regency that they managed to get into print before they went under. However I beleive they layed the foundation for, if not the creation of more, then at the very least the expansion of those that they did detail. Path of Tears and Vampire Fleets detail planets in nearly every subsector that just need some help and they would return to the stars.
However, the Regency sees nothing. Not even 1248's surviving state in Vland is visible as nothing much seems to be in the way of the Viral attacks on the Regency's Denebian Quarantine wall.
Well my understanding of the Regency is that they put up their wall and then hid behind it. The quarantine zone is some six parsecs deep and they patrol at most another six parsecs beyond that. No one is alowed out prior to 1202 and should they go they're not allowed back in. Bill, you can't see what you wont go to look at.
On the Regency, wasn't it you that posted on the Colony thread last year something along the lines of "What does it take to make a pencil?"
I don't see alot of A class ports in the wilds so other than within the black curtin I don't see Virus building new starships or robots etc etc. But I do see Virus knowing the Regency is building new ships, new bodies for them to host, thus that is my reasoning for the Regency having a hard time of it.
The RC sees little more outside it's much smaller borders.
Perhaps because it travels widely beyond its borders (funny I never really thought of the RC as having borders. An edge to it's AO, which they explore beyond, but not borders like the Regency). Plus they have co-opperation with the free trader network rather than impounding their ships at the quaratine zone and putting the crews in quarantine camps whilst they wait months for the quaratine inspectors to clear the backlog to inspect the traders ship and cargo.
Thanks to the 'Law of Large Numbers', you can make the case for some survivors among the tens of thousands of worlds in Chartered Space, but even Promise, one of MT's better detailed and better positioned post-Hard Times successor states, did not 'survive' Virus. What happened to Promise is far more indicative of what happened everywhere outside the Spinward States. Aubaine and the rest of very rare excpetions in my opinion.
I'm familiar with TNE's collapse rules and have atleast read through Hard Times collapse rules, familiar enough to know that a TL13 PE has further to fall than a TL 9 or 10 world. Plus the Promise PE is far from well positioned! It sits astride the express lane of the Vampire Hiway no less.
The Dawn League ships, the Ashtabula, the world of Promise, the Vampire Highway, the Regency's continued need for the Quarantine, the Black Curtain, and too many other canonical bits all challenge your view. Virus is still out there, Virus is still deadly, and Virus is still evolving.
Very few of the Dawn League ships fell to Virus. Two atleast fell to the Guild, one misjumped and then fell to a TED, whilst most of the others fell to the first TED they met. The RC did much better second time around when they sent warships instead of blind, thinly armoured and poorly armed merchants. Lady Elize is the only ship to have fallen to Vampires that I can recall offhand. I don't recall that it was ever revealed what got the Ashtabula?
The Vampire hiway is rarely more than a subsector wide stretching coreward to rimward from Capital or Celetron to Cymbeline. That's three subsectors in SolRim, four in Diaspora and Massilia and a few in Core. The Spinward Marches alone encompasses more space the the Vampire Hiway. In any event I don't believe I said Virus wasn't out there or that it wasn't still a threat. If I gave you this feeling it wasn't intended. What I meant is that Virus has attritioned itself faster than it has increased it's numbers, and by 1200 we have finally reached a point where its numbers a low enough that we dare stick our collective noses back into space, even knowing full well that we'll get them bloodied from time to time. I tried to follow the Refs advice from Path of tears;
" Finally, and most importantly, avoid filling your campaign with Virus. The effects of Virus are omnipresent, but the actual reality of Virus should be very rare, for two reasons.
First, if the characters encounter Virus every time they turn around, they will either routinely defeat it, or they will die alot. If they routinely defeat it, it will have very little perceived danger value, and instead will become an annoying nuisance. If, instead, they die alot you are likely to have some very unhappy campers on your hands.
Second, there are limmits to your creative energies, no matter how imaginative you are. Each active Virus should not only be dangerous, it should be unique and fascinating. So keep them rare to enable you to lavish the time and attention on them they deserve, as well as keeping your players guessing." PoT pg 143.
By the way, has everyone forgotten Tatiana's projected viral activity graph? It was a big part of one of TNE's few published adventures.
It was a side note for Refs who wanted to go that direction. You could just as easily couple it with the mention of specific - recognizable fleets observed by The Covenant of Sufren passing through their space at timed intervals. So much time to go to Cymbeline, so much time to get up past the Covenant again. I took this to mean traffic on the hiway ebbed and flowed and Tatai's graph merely suggested another wave in the ebb a flow. YMMV.
Also, read Vampire Fleets more closely.
Sandman and his ilk were being set-up for far more work than knocking the Solee Empire's relic ships for a loop.
TL 15 and 16 Regency Fleets perhaps? Vampire fleets also strongly suggested there would be more than mere friction when the two met.
It is a time of building, rebuilding, and exploration. A vibrant, happy, dynamic time.
Tell that to the crews of the Dawn League vessels. Tell it to the Regency quarantine crews. Tell it to 'Hoss' Ritter and don't forget to point at his Ashtabula ship's patch too.
Optimistic would have been a better word than happy though I stand by every other word in that sentence, as I suspect Ritter would too. You think he was out there doing what he was just for the paycheck?
Plus I think you're a little harsh on GDW's work on TNE.
I'm not harsh regarding their work. I'm reminding people that TNE is a harsh setting. Check out
World Tamer's Handbook by way of example. The new RC colony there has nearly an equal chance of trading ships or vampires making orbit. That may be happy and vibrant to you. It's dangerous and harsh to me.
It also makes for damn good role playing.
Have fun,
Bill [/QB][/QUOTE]
Yes, a little bit more to worry about than making your next payment on the Jayhawk, or if the Imperial Navy will do a stop and search in the amber zone you have to pass through to get those widgets you picked up cheap to a sellers market. Not that this can't make for good roleplaying too, my players just preferred shaping the destiny of a world or two.
In any event I don't think you need fear many Pocket Empires in the Hinterworlds. I have a passing familiarity with the Hinterworlds and from memory I think there are, or from 1248's perspective, were only two TL 15 worlds in the entire Sector and only about 15 to 20 TL 14's.
The bulk of it was in the TL 5 to 9 range which is where I suspect it will still be at circa 1248. I light of maintaining some of it's character though, it would be a better playing environment if there were atleast some semblance of space fairing among each of the minor races that inhabit the region that had space fairing empires circa 1129, don't you think?
