Interesting, though not sure whether things might be too abstract at the scale they are talking about. There seemed to be 2 scales being discussed in that thread, that of faction leader and that of fleet commander. The thing is at the high faction leader level, I think there need to be some more strategic, political, or economic choices for players to make. Otherwise I could see Dulinor and Lucan players just shoving their fleets into a meatgrinder in the middle and whoever lucks out on the dice rolling wins.
Was the Rebellion as a setting sustainable?
- Thread starter Iracundus
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Interesting, though not sure whether things might be too abstract at the scale they are talking about. There seemed to be 2 scales being discussed in that thread, that of faction leader and that of fleet commander. The thing is at the high faction leader level, I think there need to be some more strategic, political, or economic choices for players to make. Otherwise I could see Dulinor and Lucan players just shoving their fleets into a meatgrinder in the middle and whoever lucks out on the dice rolling wins.
Although I don't see how differing historian perspective can reconcile divergent timeline differences, like whether Dulinor assassinated Strephon (or his body double) vs. Dulinor dying in an explosion in the GURPS Traveller timeline.
I think the AotI Zhodani dance gives an out, at least for me. I can say the Zhodani (partially) succeeded and the timeline diverged into my ATU.
Ok, mind blown. I was just working toward a Rashomon "resolution" of the alternate timelines.
I didn't realize that canon now includes Reality Benders!
Probably ought to read the book.
Of course the problem with the reality alteration is that it is impossible to prove its success within the universe to people that don't believe in it.
For example, if someone said they were doing a funky dance to prevent you from being killed in a year from a freak falling llama accident...In a year, if you are still alive, the person could claim success in altering the timeline, whereas other people would say he was just delusional and there was never a destined falling llama accident. The same goes for the Zhodani and their claims of trying to avert the Rebellion, Empress Wave, Virus etc... If they succeed, only we as readers outside the universe would ever fully know or appreciate what was avoided. Even the Zhodani would just believe they avoided Something Bad, without knowing the full details.
For example, if someone said they were doing a funky dance to prevent you from being killed in a year from a freak falling llama accident...In a year, if you are still alive, the person could claim success in altering the timeline, whereas other people would say he was just delusional and there was never a destined falling llama accident. The same goes for the Zhodani and their claims of trying to avert the Rebellion, Empress Wave, Virus etc... If they succeed, only we as readers outside the universe would ever fully know or appreciate what was avoided. Even the Zhodani would just believe they avoided Something Bad, without knowing the full details.
When that timeline is written 2000 years post events by historians of different successor polities, oh, it certainly does... They're all fudging the tech sysms based upon very different successor tech and failing to properly back-tech their assumptions...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
That is not a very good answer since it fails to take account of the paradigm shifts in technology.
MT jump drive fuel is a fraction of other editions - future historians would not make this mistake
TNE HEPlaR replaced reactionless thrusters across the board - the game designers wanted rid of reactionless drives.
We have RL written accounts based on eye witness accounts of an assassination attempt on an Emperor over 2,200 years ago, written in ink on wood. There was never any disagreement about what happened or who died that day, even by that emperor's political enemies and those that villified him hundreds or even thousands of years after his death.
Similarly we have no confusion that Julius Caesar died to assassins, not that he stabbed a bunch of people on that same day.
Even after a "dark age" we still are sure of historical details like that for key pivotal events. I can't see any starfaring civilization that cares enough to keep records about the 3rd Imperium not knowing who walked out alive on that day in 1116, not when the ramifications are so vast (difference between GURPS Traveller timeline and Megatraveller Rebellion).
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The Galaxiad is 1900, only a few centuries on from 1248, not 2000 years. Hardly enough to justify the differences as historical errors. Move it a few thousand years hence it would make a better - but still weak - case.
Hmm, how mistaken are we about Roman Army regulations and equipment circa 12BC?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
And think of the fun we will have arguing about it all in the years to come
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
T5 is a great toolkit and Marc's novel is a great read and definitive guide to the Imperium as it was.Ok, mind blown. I was just working toward a Rashomon "resolution" of the alternate timelines.
I didn't realize that canon now includes Reality Benders!
Probably ought to read the book.
We will have to wait and see how close CT, GT, MgT, DGP canon is to what Marc eventually writes.
Note, I would rather he changes canon to make for a good story than stick slavishly to contradictory, barely explained. false assumption based canon.
It is his universe I want to read about.
That's a very good point. And over the last four decades or so, he's written up a pretty interesting and entertaining universe. I'm another one who'd like to see where he wants to take it.
The nice thing is that whatever he chooses to write in the OTU setting is only as canonical as either he wants it to be, or as individual referees want it to be. The much nicer thing is that he respects his own canon, so we can expect that incorporating any new works into the game universe won't be too terribly wrenching.
(Now that I wrote that, watch him recast everything that happened after 1116 as just a nightmare that Empress Iolanthe had, and Bobby Ewing didn't get hit by a car -- oops, I meant Emperor Strephon wasn't assasinated -- in the first place.)
Spoiler:
He was talking post galaxiad. As in, even the galaxiad is a half-known distant past post singularity historian's view of 1900...
As for the Army of Rome... We know that the archeology doesn't match the records for 1900 AD... nor for 20 AD. We can't know how wrong our written views are without a time viewer...
I will say that events I participated in were written up from very slanted views, which said views are not what happened, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the "official account" is the trial proceedings, not the statements of the participants.
History, and I say this as one trained in that discipline, is worse. It's all about making stories up based upon incomplete evidence.
It may be one thing to have one side's political spin on an event and different details. It is another to have a completely diametrically opposite end result of the event.
Brutus killed Julius Caesar, not the other way around. Else we would not have had the Battle of Philippi, and all other subsequent events as a result of Julius Caesar's assassination.
Similarly, either Dulinor killed someone that had the role of Strephon in the palace, or his ship blew up before he ever reached the palace for his audience. This is not disagreement over a detail such as whether he took 1 shot or 6 to do the deed. Either Dulinor did the deed and the Golden Age of the Imperium ended in the fiery holocaust of the war of the Rebellion, or it didn't. However skewed or incomplete the records, I do not think people would forget entirely about the existence of a war spanning a good chunk of Charted Space destroying within a generation the largest interstellar state of the time, not unless we are talking about a huge time jump into the future, not merely a few centuries or a few thousand years.
And if we are, that does not really help us IMO. If it's that far into the future, post singularity or singularities, then how is it Traveller anymore if humans are unrecognizable to us and the Imperium might as well be cave paintings? If people are still people, and there have been more dark ages, then how is it really any different from another version of TNE wiping the board?
Brutus killed Julius Caesar, not the other way around. Else we would not have had the Battle of Philippi, and all other subsequent events as a result of Julius Caesar's assassination.
Similarly, either Dulinor killed someone that had the role of Strephon in the palace, or his ship blew up before he ever reached the palace for his audience. This is not disagreement over a detail such as whether he took 1 shot or 6 to do the deed. Either Dulinor did the deed and the Golden Age of the Imperium ended in the fiery holocaust of the war of the Rebellion, or it didn't. However skewed or incomplete the records, I do not think people would forget entirely about the existence of a war spanning a good chunk of Charted Space destroying within a generation the largest interstellar state of the time, not unless we are talking about a huge time jump into the future, not merely a few centuries or a few thousand years.
And if we are, that does not really help us IMO. If it's that far into the future, post singularity or singularities, then how is it Traveller anymore if humans are unrecognizable to us and the Imperium might as well be cave paintings? If people are still people, and there have been more dark ages, then how is it really any different from another version of TNE wiping the board?
Essentially, that "arguing historians" is a post-play-settings analysis. Each setting (Ignoring GT) is one specialist writing a sim based upon multi-thousand year old, garbled histories, and trying to filter News, Propaganda, Entertainment, and Speculation without having a solid reference document showing which is which.
Note that a LOT of people know nothing about a number of wars. Most US nationals don't know about the Aleutian Islands Campaign. Many know of the Solomon Islands campaign from a TV show only.
Not knowing whether or not there was a Rebellion and Imperium ending war (or Virus vampire zombie apocalypse) is more like the world not knowing or remembering there was ever a WW2, not just one campaign within it. These were paradigm shifting events, not just a little speed bump and then old status quo continuing.
Again, if it is so far into the future that it is beyond history and more into the realm of mythological tales (Dulinor the Lucifer-like Rebel thirsting for change triggers a War in the Heavens), then again I don't see the point. It might as well be a complete background or universe wipe and an entirely different or new setting.
The Virus is, at least as of September 2016, the end result of the Lorenverse, too.
Which is why in January I posted This Survey to sober the rest of you up.
It's not easy being Sutter Kane...
Or as my favorite villian says
:devil::smirk:
I should mention that Marc has not, as far as I know, yet figured out when and how it's released, but TNE is to happen in the Lorenverse, too.
Really? New one on me. OK lets go with this one.
I thought originally, the benefit of Lorenverse was to have a pretty pretty place without Rebellion, where the Starburst of Third Imperium never set. So when AotI came out I was shocked and like "So much for that. Mwuah, hahaha! We're all doomed!"
Seriously, however, what would the ATU look like with No Rebellion, but with TNE?
Was Virus activated or what was the catalyst to burn out Charted Space?
Does anyone survive sort of intact like the Marches? Or do they all go Pocket Empires and Star Vikings?
I thought originally, the benefit of Lorenverse was to have a pretty pretty place without Rebellion, where the Starburst of Third Imperium never set. So when AotI came out I was shocked and like "So much for that. Mwuah, hahaha! We're all doomed!"
Seriously, however, what would the ATU look like with No Rebellion, but with TNE?
Was Virus activated or what was the catalyst to burn out Charted Space?
Does anyone survive sort of intact like the Marches? Or do they all go Pocket Empires and Star Vikings?
