What happened after 1118?

[Icosahedron]

I bought the JTAS CD a few months back, and I've been reading through the back issues in the odd spare evening.

I created my own TU back in 77 and never really followed the OTU (apart from what I picked up in the various rulebooks I acquired). But then a few weeks ago I was reading the Traveller News Service articles and started to get interested in the history of the rebellion via the TNS.

However, on the CD the story ends abruptly at the tail end of the year 1118 in Challenge 35. The index suggests though that TNS reports kept coming out until issue 74.

Is there anywhere I can read the other 39 reports, cos at the moment I feel like I'm halfway through a shaggy dog story?

I know there were disagreements at GDW around that time, so no political issues, please, I just want to read the story as it eventually panned out.

 

[Vargas]

I bought the JTAS CD a few months back, and I've been reading through the back issues in the odd spare evening.

I created my own TU back in 77 and never really followed the OTU (apart from what I picked up in the various rulebooks I acquired). But then a few weeks ago I was reading the Traveller News Service articles and started to get interested in the history of the rebellion via the TNS.

However, on the CD the story ends abruptly at the tail end of the year 1118 in Challenge 35. The index suggests though that TNS reports kept coming out until issue 74.

Is there anywhere I can read the other 39 reports, cos at the moment I feel like I'm halfway through a shaggy dog story?

I know there were disagreements at GDW around that time, so no political issues, please, I just want to read the story as it eventually panned out.

Not having the CD I can't speak to what's on it, but I thought TNS continued into the early 1120s until Virus happened.

And what "disagreements at GDW" are you talking about?

 

[GypsyComet]

Probably the several people who held the position of Line Editor during the MT era.

There were indeed TNS entries continuously through MT, running up to the point that Virus hit the TNS network and took it offline. Most of these are collected in Survival Margin. No idea why they would not be on a JTAS collection, though, since that's where they first appeared, unless the fading of the JTAS *name* was used as the criteria for inclusion. After a while, Traveller material ceased to be a discrete section within Challenge, so that may be what you are seeing.

 

[Nick Nova]

Is there anywhere I can read the other 39 reports, cos at the moment I feel like I'm halfway through a shaggy dog story?

Survival Margin will definitely give you the rest of the story as conveyed through the TNS, as well as some other very interesting material such as speeches, maps and excerpts from Strephons journal. It's a great read for anyone interested in the history of the Imperium.

For a more in depth look at the consequences of the breakdown of society during this period, you might also like to look at Hard Times.

 

[Icosahedron]

Purely to answer your question, Vargas, and not to enter into the topic, I was under the impression that the game's founders were in some disagreement over the direction it should take, Marc took more of a back seat and eventually brought out T4 through dissatisfaction with TNE. I could be wrong, because as I said, the politics doesn't interest me.

Thanks for the replies guys. Excuse my ignorance, but is Survival Margin a book I should look out for at conventions, or is it available online?

I'm a CTer myself, so I'm not too familiar with the supplements for this era. I've just used a few to cherry-pick rules and equipment.

 

[Droyne668]

Thanks for the replies guys. Excuse my ignorance, but is Survival Margin a book I should look out for at conventions, or is it available online?

You can get it in PDF format from RPGNow.com. I don't know what kind of quality the scan would have. I've found them in used book stores, and it turns up on eBay fairly often.

Best,
Will

 

[GypsyComet]

Purely to answer your question, Vargas, and not to enter into the topic, I was under the impression that the game's founders were in some disagreement over the direction it should take, Marc took more of a back seat and eventually brought out T4 through dissatisfaction with TNE. I could be wrong, because as I said, the politics doesn't interest me.

T4 didn't come out until TNE was "done" due to GDW having gone out of business, an event that had nothing to do with TNE's success. Loren Wiseman (who lurks here sporadically) has stated in several fora that the ugly realities of mainstream book distribution and the dangers of predicting the path of the first Gulf War before it actually happened were what killed GDW.

I don't know if Marc has publicly stated his reasons for "backing off" during the MT/TNE era, though it may have been due to DGP taking so much of the direction of MT that GDW found time to concentrate on other things that Marc wasn't as interested in.

That T4 was quite different from the mechanical direction of TNE *might* say something about Marc's opinion of TNE, but since Marc's mechanics (CT, T4, and the bits of T5 that have surfaced) indicate (to me, at least) that he seems to be more of a "just roll the dice and MOVE ON" kind of gamer, leaving the complex stuff for between sessions, I could see him having a problem with just the presentation of TNE, never mind the actual rules.

I'm a CTer myself, so I'm not too familiar with the supplements for this era. I've just used a few to cherry-pick rules and equipment.

As long as you are somewhat conversant in Striker, most MT weaponry should be vaguely translatable back to CT.

Robots were visited again late in TNE, but their treatment in MT was pretty shoddy despite a book full of designs.

The TNE "Ship shares" approach to ship acquisition during CharGen and the concepts of wear values and maintenance hours for *any* hardware are potentially very useful regardless of edition. Since they are in the main TNE rulerook, they are often lost to the "baby with the bathwater" reaction many people have with other TNE concepts, namely Virus and HEPlaR.

 

[Vargas]

I don't know if Marc has publicly stated his reasons for "backing off" during the MT/TNE era, though it may have been due to DGP taking so much of the direction of MT that GDW found time to concentrate on other things that Marc wasn't as interested in.

I know that around 1991 Marc was working on software related endeavors and with overseas distributors. I think the hiring of Chuck Gannon for MT was a sign, at least to me, that he wanted to farm Traveller out for someone else to work. (The fact that DGP was largely on point during the MT run would appear to support this).

Since they are in the main TNE rulerook, they are often lost to the "baby with the bathwater" reaction many people have with other TNE concepts, namely Virus and HEPlaR.

HEPlaR grew out of a desire by certain key individuals, in and out of GDW, to get away from MT's reactionless thrusters and back to the reaction based drives they assumed were part of CT. It was a well intentioned but fatally executed attempt.

 

[Icosahedron]

T4 didn't come out until TNE was "done" due to GDW having gone out of business, an event that had nothing to do with TNE's success. Loren Wiseman (who lurks here sporadically) has stated in several fora that the ugly realities of mainstream book distribution and the dangers of predicting the path of the first Gulf War before it actually happened were what killed GDW.

I don't know if Marc has publicly stated his reasons for "backing off" during the MT/TNE era, though it may have been due to DGP taking so much of the direction of MT that GDW found time to concentrate on other things that Marc wasn't as interested in.

That T4 was quite different from the mechanical direction of TNE *might* say something about Marc's opinion of TNE, but since Marc's mechanics (CT, T4, and the bits of T5 that have surfaced) indicate (to me, at least) that he seems to be more of a "just roll the dice and MOVE ON" kind of gamer, leaving the complex stuff for between sessions, I could see him having a problem with just the presentation of TNE, never mind the actual rules.



As long as you are somewhat conversant in Striker, most MT weaponry should be vaguely translatable back to CT.

Robots were visited again late in TNE, but their treatment in MT was pretty shoddy despite a book full of designs.

The TNE "Ship shares" approach to ship acquisition during CharGen and the concepts of wear values and maintenance hours for *any* hardware are potentially very useful regardless of edition. Since they are in the main TNE rulerook, they are often lost to the "baby with the bathwater" reaction many people have with other TNE concepts, namely Virus and HEPlaR.

Thanks for the background. mega:
Yes, I'm a 'move on' sort of person myself, hence largely sticking with CT and taking only a few ideas from MT and TNE.
I'll recheck, I must have missed the ship share thing - I don't think I more than skimmed the chargen section of TNE - but I extracted (and slimmed down) the wear and maintenance idea and a few others.

I'll see if I can find the rest of the Rebellion story. Thanks guys.