<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by NightrimTNE:
I agree here, but I never allowed the canon events to influnce events which we'd already laid out as having gone awry the first time thanks to the players interaction. Plus, lets face it the same was true of CT and MT. If your people were in 1234 Diaspora at date X and they blew something up that in your universe changed the whole ballance of power and suddenlty two weeks later a challange magazine came out with Infonet reports that contridicted what you'd already laid out did you simply go back and say to your characters. "No, that didn't happen the way we played it out, apparenlty the Solomani nerve gassed the whole planet and you're all dead. Time to re roll characters." I think not.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Not to quibble too much -- of course you're right -- but to me it's a matter of degrees. In CT (and, to a lesser extent, MT) the universe was so large and there were so many mutually-independent storylines developing simultaneously that it was easy to ignore/change certain details while still remaining within the greater framework of the OTU. For instance, a CT game set in Solomani Rim would likely begin differing from OTU canon FOR THAT AREA over time, but the other 34+ Sectors could carry on unchanged. In TNE, by tying all official material into one storyline (well, two sub-stories that we can assume were eventually intended to intersect), the potential canon-conflicts were more immediate, and their potential repurcussions more dramatic.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The problem with a game company unfolding the campaign to early is players go out and buy the same things that GM's do which means that essentially nothing is a surprise to the players unless you happen to have that rare individual in the game who actually doesn't rush out and get the sames stuff as his or her GM.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Maybe I've grown naive in my old age, but I have more trust in my player-group than that. Sure, at one time back when we were all in Jr. High I had a problem with my players reading D&D adventures behind my back, but once they grew up and realized that it was more fun to play the game honestly all of that stopped (or maybe it's just that the books got more expensive).
Of course, this also comes down to a fundamental difference of opinion I have with Dave Nilsen (one of many). He went on record many times stating that the Ancients were 'killed' by having too much published about them, and that (by inference) he wasn't going to let that happen again. I always disagreed very much with that stance: as a GM, I LIKED having Twilight's Peak and Adventure 12 and the Droyne alien module telling me 'the whole story' which I could then decide to implement or not in my campaign as I chose to. YMM(and probably does)V
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If you let out the plotline to early what's the point in playing the game. If CT came out and say oh by the way in 15 years game time the Emperor will be assassinated and we're going to release a new game at that time and while we're at it here's every major event that's going to occure over those fifteen years. Would you have bothered attempting to create a game with any kind of flavor? Probably not.
If when MegaTraveller came out they told you, oh in thirteen years game time we're going to release a super weapon that's going to destroy they whole Imperium and here's exactly what's going to happen. You probably wouldn't bother buying the game once you heard this.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I'm not sure these examples really fit since, after all, both were explicitly deus ex machinae intended to dramatically alter the settings and 're-launch' the game. And, for what it's worth, I'm also not too crazy about either change. I would have prefered something closer to the approach we're getting nowadays with 'multiple official timelines' -- when MT came out, all official support for CT stopped, same for MT when TNE came out, as if we were all supposed to drop our campaigns and re-start in the new settings. I'd much rather (economically unrealistic though it may be) have seen all three timelines/settings continue to be supported/developed simultaneously.
A more suitable example (not to put words in your mouth...) would be the Fifth Frontier War. I'm willing to admit that if in JTAS #9 there'd been a sidebar explaining how the war was going to end in the OTU four years later, that would've been lame and anti-dramatic, but it goes back to the point I made way up at the top of this post -- it's a matter of scale. Prior to TNE, the meta-narrative events were far enough removed from the day-to-day lives of the PC group that they typically didn't interfere with individual campaigns, whereas in TNE the Big Picture meta-narrative structure of the campaign essentially WAS the day-to-day lives of the PC group, and the withholding of the larger campaign-structure became less like GDW not telling us how the Fifth Frontier War was going to end and more like if The Traveller Adventure had been published in a half-dozen separate volumes with the full extent of the Tukera-Vargr plot not explained until the last volume (or even possibly, considering DN's 'Ancients' comments, not explained at all).
Anyway, I'm clearly rambling too. The tight structure of the TNE campaign was a deliberate decision by Dave Nilsen and many of the things that I've pointed out as its weaknesses are precisely what he would point out as its strengths. What it comes down to is that I don't agree with the decisions he made or the reasons behind them -- IMO sweeping dramatic and mysterious plots are fine for fiction, for big whopping adventure supplements (The Traveller Adventure), and even for extended series of adventures (Ancients Saga, Sky Raiders), but on the scale of the Entire OTU Setting I still greatly prefer the Big Universe approach of CT.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I agree with you though, the possibility for confict with the offical storyline is much more likely the smaller your universe. That's a risk that I feel is worth taking because of the amount of story depth and background colour that you can work in with a smaller universe.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yup, it's a fundamental difference of opinion. I like the universe big enough that no single story could possibly effect the whole thing -- and the freedom that provides to me as an individual GM -- at the expense of decreased drama and players' sense of importance. Dave Nilsen (and, presumably, you) feel more-or-less the opposite. I wonder if there's a compromise in there -- perhaps a series of novels followed by a large-scale overview sourcebook? Hmm, I think I've heard that suggestion before. Martin?
