Timerover51
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I think that I will go back to ignoring it, like I do the Virus.
The Why of the FTL Wave
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Timerover51
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I am not sure if this is supposed to be facetious or not.How about this for an explanation?
Picture(s) vs 1000s of Words (and all that) ...
mike wightman
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That is total fanon - i know because I wrote it
It's one of my pet theories about secrets within the Third Imperium setting. The other is what actually caused the collapse of the Rule of Man banking system and what happened to the AI robots the Terrans built towards the end of the ISWs.
One day I will get it into an "official" supplement - fanon that becomes a vague recollection has a way of making it into books written by new authors
BackworldTraveller
SOC-13
Sadly, the EW is a classic case of accidentally totally destroying a valuable asset...namely Traveller 3rd Imperium. What with the "It happened" (TNE), the "Pretend it never happened" (T4) and the "It happened differently" (1248) threads this loss of control of the 3I timeline has never really been recovered from.
mike wightman
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The Third Imperium setting was destroyed by MegaTraveller and its rebellion setting. If you read between the lines of CT material, you will see the Third Imperium 1105 was set up to fail. It was corrupt, intolerant, oppressive, racist and authoritarian.
A terrible way for the Zhodani to "win".
When doing certain calcs for Marc (In re T5), he confirmed for me that J-space is explicitly a singular plane, not a 3d space.That is total fanon - i know because I wrote it
It's one of my pet theories about secrets within the Third Imperium setting. The other is what actually caused the collapse of the Rule of Man banking system and what happened to the AI robots the Terrans built towards the end of the ISWs.
One day I will get it into an "official" supplement - fanon that becomes a vague recollection has a way of making it into books written by new authors
Condottiere
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That would explain why there's no Upward and Downward on galactic cartography.
Spinward Flow
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Sounds a lot like Plane Space ... a 2D region that "follows its own rules" which differ from 3D space.
In Crest of the Stars/Banner of the Stars, the way that Plane Space works is that there are fixed points in space where it is possible to transition from 3D normal space into 2D plane space (locations called "Sords" in the series) which amount to "choke points" for interstellar travel. Ships have to generate 3D space-time bubbles in order to not be crushed into 2D debris objects by plane space, but inside the protective bubble of their 3D space-time bubbles they maneuver around through plane space like normal. Interestingly enough, the maps of plane space shown in the series look suspiciously like hex maps.
In a Traveller-esque context mapped onto Crest/Banner of the Stars, this would mean that the "jump drive" simply allows a ship to transition from normal space to plane space (and survive in plane space while there) and then back again into normal space ... but you need to use the maneuver drive to "go places" while in plane space (or as Traveller would call it, jump space). So it's more a case of "find the already existing keyholes" (Sords) and then maneuver between them in plane space (or merge with other ships in plane space to fight/support them) ... rather than what Traveller does of "rip a hole in the fabric of reality and fall down the tunnel" arriving at your intended destination a week later without interacting with anything along the way. Plane space thus becomes more of a "hyper/sub space" method of travel rather than a "jump" per se.
Of course, having jump space be conceptualized as a 2D planar construct solves all kinds of form and formatting issues with presentation ... such as how to depict otherwise 3D locations in an explicitly 2D PAPER LBB format.
Doesn't seem to me that's really his question. It's more a meta story question of why they needed to introduce some galaxy annihilating construct in the first place, especially on top of the Rebellion, and Virus. I guess "good things come in threes" for assorted values of "good".
Spinward Flow
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The result is a kind of "swamp castle" building scenario.
The Rebellion didn't finish off the Third Imperium.
The Virus didn't finish off the Third Imperium.
The Empress Wave rolled over, crashed and burned the Third Imperium into the ground.
But the Fourth Imperium stood up!
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The Empress Wave would have practically no effect on the Imperium since so few Imperial citizens are trained psions.
Condottiere
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Timerover51
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I suspect that the basic motivation was develop a new background so as to generate more sales of new products. A modified form of Academia's Publish or Perish.
Condottiere
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The trick is to understand the size of the market, and not oversaturate it.
Unless it's to strangle competition, and that only works in the long term if the products are quality to begin with.
With Fantasy it's easy, since you can use it's assumed multi universe to introduce new milieus.
Unless it's to strangle competition, and that only works in the long term if the products are quality to begin with.
With Fantasy it's easy, since you can use it's assumed multi universe to introduce new milieus.
As I've said before -- and I'm pretty sure I'm neither alone nor first in saying this -- it simply wasn't necessary. If you want a broken Imperium, move your campaign to one of the eras in which it's broken. If you want one being rebuilt, set it a little later during a recovery from a prior mess. If you want Virus (and who wouldn't?
), have it come in from outside. If you want common psionics without Zhodani domination, set it before the Psionic Suppressions.You don't have to wreck the Golden Era Imperium to get these effects.
Indeed. But the "new background" could just as easily have been a different era in the old background. They wrote thousands of years of history -- why not use it?
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Answering myself: The writers were also players and referees, running characters and campaigns in-universe. New setting material was seen as "what happens next to make the setting the way we want it to become" rather than "when within our already-written timeline would the setting have been the way we'd like it to be?"
It wasn't until T4 (1996) that any new material looked back through the Traveller timeline for its "new" setting.
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mike wightman
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The setting had change built into it from day 1.
First off it was pretty obvious the Third Imperium was getting close to collapse, at least on the frontier.
Events were taking place that would change the setting as they unfolded.
All of what follows is from the first setting book, S:3, I've underlined stuff that interests me. I think this is a much more interesting setting than later re-writes and interpretations of the Third Imperium and the Spinward Marches:
First off it was pretty obvious the Third Imperium was getting close to collapse, at least on the frontier.
Events were taking place that would change the setting as they unfolded.
All of what follows is from the first setting book, S:3, I've underlined stuff that interests me. I think this is a much more interesting setting than later re-writes and interpretations of the Third Imperium and the Spinward Marches:
Spoiler:
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Jump space, or the zone of normal space from/within which Jump is possible?
In other words, is the concept that the star maps are a representation of the positional relationships of stars within the 2D jump space -- that is, their positions in 3D space correspond with 2D relative positions within Jumpspace, then the charts are drawn of that?
Or they are an actual representation of the stars that are on the arbitrary 2D plane within 3D normal space between which Jump can happen?
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