Why do you hate the Virus

[Adam Dray]

I've seen a lot of hostility toward the idea of the Virus. Is it the concept or how it played out in the setting? It seems like a cool idea, but I prefer a darker, apocalyptic space setting to Traveller's fairly new and shiny feel (yes, even in the frontier).

Why do you hate the Virus?

Is there a version of the Virus that you could love?

 

[CliffBates]

I just think it was highly unlikely... given the means the virus transmits from ship to ship via comms would be a treat from the get go. The backwardness of Vilani computers at first did not make this an issue, but the Terrans history of computer virus I doubt that this problem was not planned for.

An AI would wreck hacoc but not make Vampire ships.

 

[atpollard]

Don McKinney has a message from Mike Metlay to the TML that Don felt captured his feelings better than he could express them. I believe that it is a good articulation of a legitimate criticism of the difference between the Third Imperium of Classic Traveller and the post-virus ruins.

Bundle: 457
Archive-Message-Number: 5440
From: metlay@netcom.com (metlay)
Subject: First thoughts after reading _Survival Margin_
Date: Mon, 10 May 93 10:44:28 PDT


"A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping...she is
weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are no more."

Hi, gang. Let me start off by thanking Loren Wiseman for his prompt note
about the print run of TNE; such news is always appreciated.

I read _Survival Margin_ from cover to cover on Saturday, and spent a
surprising (to me, anyway) portion of the next two days brooding.
SM (and _Arrival Vengeance_, which I got at the same time) affected
me very deeply, in a way no Traveller book has done since the Rebellion
began. While I applaud Dave Nilsen for at least being able to do THAT,
I am saddened by the fact that the emotions he evoked were those of
revulsion, disgust, and yes, even hatred.

I hate this game setting. I just hate it.

I want to make very clear what I am saying here, and make even MORE
clear what I am NOT saying here. I am not saying that GDW produced yet
another substandard piece of Traveller material. Far from it; I think
that SM was excellently put together, clearly organized, and
accomplished its task, namely as a bridge from MegaTraveller to TNE,
eloquently and effectively. Its reprinting of previously published
material meshed very well with the newly written pieces and produced a
coherent and useful whole that was a very worthwhile read. The
behind-the-scenes journals and extra data filled in a lot of holes
that I had wondered about, and finally removed IRIS as a de jure (if
not de facto) force in the Imperium, a move which alone is worth the
price of the book. I will ignore for the moment my personal disgust at
the utterly pointless annihilation of the Antares Regency (my own
favorite spot in the MegaTraveller milieu), and simply say that if
future releases hold to this level of quality, I will gladly give GDW
my business and encourage others to do so as well. I am also not
saying, although some mean-spirited part of me would LIKE to, that
this is the final nail in Traveller's coffin as a rules system. I
think that in the light of the current market trends in RPGs, GDW is
making a very wise move here in updating Traveller from its admittedly
long-in-the-tooth beginnings and attempting to compete on a
fundamental level with the heavy hitters like GURPS and Shadowrun. If
the prior problems of poor proofreading and unprofessional artwork are
licked, and it looks as good as SM reads, then I think that GDW will
have a solid competitor on its hands, and I wish them well.

What I AM saying is that I hate the game setting. HATE IT!

On the Pocket Empire mailing list, we have held our breaths for
months, pausing in midstride as we waited for GDW to officialize the
tantalizing hints we received about how things are to work. We do not
agree 100% with the decisions made there, but we are abiding by them,
and the list is now swinging into high gear, awaiting only the rules
themselves to begin applying hard numbers to the ideas and frameworks
we have devised. Why, then, am I suddenly completely uninterested in
doing any more work there? I don't want to let these people down; my
contribution is admittedly small but I would like to think that it is
important enough not to simply drop without notice. What has happened?

What has happened is that I have seen the future and it STINKS.

I am not stating facts here. Only my opinions. And I loved the classic
Traveller universe. It was civilized; it was intelligent; it had solid
background and a sense of depth to it that other games lacked. This
was a huge, exciting, beautiful universe, from the Core to the Rim,
from spinward to trailing! There was so much to see and do, so many
different kinds of life to reflect, so many possible campaigns to run.
It was balanced; it gave characters a chance for excitement and fun at
whatever power level they wanted, up to and sometimes even including
the governance of whole worlds. And, pivotal to any long-standing
campaign with realistic characters, it allowed people to rest once in
a while. There were places one could go to relax and enjoy the beauty
and wonder of this universe, and if adventure sneaked up on you while
you were working on your tan, so much the better.

Now, what do we have? A map of the Imperium smeared with grey paint,
with a big black SPLOTCH in the middle and a little chunk in one
corner or another that the paintbrush didn't reach. The grandeur of
Capital, the intrigue and espionage of the Solomani Rim, the exciting
new possibilities of the Hinterworlds and Gateway, the battle and
diplomacy of Reaver's Deep, the worldshattering implications of the
Aslan revelations, the horrible reality of the K'Kree and their plans
for humaniti-- all gone. Nothing left but piles of dead bodies and
rusted metal, scrabbled over by bands of savages and man-eating
computers. Big fat hairy ▮▮▮▮▮▮n deal.

It just makes no sense to me on an artistic level. I know why they did
it. I've read their reports and I've tried, believe me, to support
them as wholeheartedly as I did in 1987 before I read about the
assassination of Strephon and watched the universe to which I'd
devoted years of my gaming career start to unravel. But it just makes
no sense. If all they wanted was a ruined-empire universe where
everything was forgotten, why not hire some writers and build one from
scratch? FASA did that with the BattleTech universe, and did very
well for themselves: no one yearned for the Star League when the game
was predicated on its aftermath. Why did they feel the need to hack up
the best gaming campaign setting in the history of roleplaying and
throw the carcass to the vultures? It wasn't necessary. It really
accomplished nothing, except to absolve GDW of responsibility for
maintaining consistency in a game universe that had grown too large
for them to control. It substituted grand, far-reaching excitement for
petty, animalistic excitement, thought-provoking political and
economic problems for simple military exercises and head-smashing, a
broad view for a narrow one. And I hate it with a passion. The Imperium
is dead-- long live the Dawn League and the Star Vikings? No thank you.
I quit. I'm leaving. I can not deal with this now, call me a coward, a
stick-in-the-mud, an elitist, an old fogey, whatever you want.

That having been said, what am I going to do now?

To be honest, I just don't know. I will continue to read the
TNE-Pocket material, and will see if the little spot of color we are
preparing to add to The Big Grey Map inspires me enough to start
working again on my part. I will remain on the TML, and I will almost
certainly continue to playtest the TNE rules I have until I can obtain
the published versions. When those rules are in hand, I will begin to
type up the text of a sourcebook for TNE on the unbroken Third
Imperium, an idea that may or may not ever see approval by GDW and
which I will not discuss here until its future is known for certain,
one way or the other. I will finish running my MegaTraveller campaign
to its end, and see if the last set of people I care about in the
Traveller Universe, Grant and Company, make it to safety in Deneb
before the end (it's ironic that in Hector, the CymBiotic who ran
Grant's computer for him, I anticipated the Virus by over three
years). The PBEM I run with Mark Cook will continue-- the characters
have left the known Universe anyway, and we have time to consider what
sort of homecoming they will eventually endure.

And after that, when TNE is finally here? Who knows?

Perhaps I will take refuge in the old Imperium and dust off my ratty
old Classic Traveller books, and try to pretend none of this ever
happened. But I doubt it; that smacks of cowardice. Perhaps I, like
many others of my stripe, will take comfort from the highly unlikely
but metasatisfying pre-rebellion status of the Regency of Deneb, and
actually grow intrigued with the new mix of races and ideas there--
and perhaps I will learn to ignore the iron wall surrounding my new
little universe, beyond which there is nothing but grey paint. Right.

Perhaps my idea for a universe/campaign module allowing the unbroken
Third Imperium to be played using the newer (and hopefully better) TNE
rules set will fly, and I will be able to produce a work that both
serves those saddened by this turn of events AND provides GDW with a
worthwhile product that will generate good revenue. I hope so; in a
Universe once full of my grand designs, I now find that that little
as-yet-nonexistent book is my only real dream.

But one thing is certain: in my current ambivalent state, I am of no
use to anyone here as a resource, and must now officialize what has
been a de facto state of affairs since my mistakes in answering
questions have become more frequent and handled with more consistency
and accuracy by many others, all of whom have my thanks. I am hereby
resigning my post as Historian of the Traveller Mailing List, and am
remanding my duties to those who feel they can continue what I once
took joy in doing. I salute you all, and I'll see you, in some state
of mind or another, in the New Era.


Mike Metlay goes off the air immediately. I keep the flame. Good luck.
Communication ends.

 

[atpollard]

To answer your question on a personal level, I was never that fond of the Imperium. A 'frontier' settled for thousands of years (like the Spinward Marches) really didn't feel very frontier-like. I preferred the atmosphere of MegaTraveller's Hard Times with clusters of civilization, transitional frontiers and dark, wild areas to explore.

Coming from that personal preference, the virus, as presented, seemed a little too 'boogey man' for my tastes. It transmits itself like a radio message and can even take over my TL4 radio, transforming it into a Borg monster ... it snapped the suspenders of disbelief a little too hard for my comfort. It could work for a 'Cuthulu-in-space' type of dark terror game, where you enter the game with that as a given expectation. It does not really work with the rest of Traveller.

all IMO.

 

[CliffBates]

Don McKinney has a message from Mike Metlay to the TML that Don felt captured his feelings better than he could express them. I believe that it is a good articulation of a legitimate criticism of the difference between the Third Imperium of Classic Traveller and the post-virus ruins.

I wholly sympathize with Mr. Metley... I missed the ugly mess. I stopped playing and Following Traveller arround while doing my doctoral studies (mostly because there were no one who were gamers among my classmates and most of the grad students where hostile to it). When last year I heard about T5 and rediscovered Traveller and opted to play Catch UP and getting hold of everything I could between the Start of MT I had in 90/91 when both my subscription to Challange and The Traveller Digest lapsed.

 

[mike wightman]

I like Virus.

I like the TNE setting - the only thing I would have done differently is move it further into the future by a couple of centuries.

I like FF&S and the changes to the technological assumptions of the MT authors.

I didn't like the d20 house system that GDW developed for its rpgs, I liked T2300 and even original T2300 much more.

Oh, and Virus would have no affect on a TL4 radio, nor could it even store a simplified copy of itself since there is no storage medium built into it. There is an awful lot of misunderstanding about what Virus was and its abilities and effects.

Take the time to read the original source material again and you may well surprise yourself.

TNE also gave us the Empress Wave which I would love to have seen developed along the lines that Dave Nilsen posted about many years back.

 

[whulorigan]

. . . I like the TNE setting - the only thing I would have done differently is move it further into the future by a couple of centuries.

Agreed. It wasn't so much that the setting was bad as much as: "Hey, we just flattened your current Game Universe. Either role up new characters for 70 years later in the New Era, or you are on your own to build an ATU from the CT/MT Universe going forward, and good luck . . ."

(Of course, I was one who was not a particular fan of the Rebellion as presented, either; I much prefer the idea of the relatively stable GTU-Lorenverse, or a more limited Rebellion that resolves itself in some fashion after a time, and moves on . . . )

I like FF&S and the changes to the technological assumptions of the MT authors.

I didn't like the retcon of G/Thruster Drives to HEPlaR Drives. I would have liked to see HEPlaR added in addition to G/Thrusters, or perhaps have G/Thrusters be "relic" technology from the 3I, with HEPlaR being standard in the New Era outside the Regency. (i.e. make G/Thruster Drives TL12+, as they eventually became in T4, and HEPlaR the TL10-12 standard drive).

 

[atpollard]

Oh, and Virus would have no affect on a TL4 radio, nor could it even store a simplified copy of itself since there is no storage medium built into it. There is an awful lot of misunderstanding about what Virus was and its abilities and effects.

Perhaps, I never used the setting (TNE) so I never looked that hard at the virus. This was based on someone else complaining about it's ability to magically jump to lower TL systems of dubious electronic nature ... I think they also complained about a toaster oven.

However, I too loved the power of FF&S and hated its organization.
I have yet to recreate one of the official lasers using the rules. [damn batteries]

 

[mike wightman]

CT manoeuvre drives were fusion rockets (defined as such in HG1) until MT defined them as reactionless thrusters, although it could be argued that since the manoeuvre drive wasn't defined at all in HG2 that's were the reactionless thruster was born.
The folks at GDW were retconning a retcon...

Apparently they wanted to go back to the original intent and make fuel a resource players would worry about, or so I've read in the designer interviews.

 

[Supplement Four]

Why do you hate the Virus?

Over the years, I've grown to accept TNE and its concepts. But, when it came out, the reason I hated the game was that it isn't what I thought I had bought.

I thought I had bought Traveller, with updated rules. I thought what I had gotten was the newest version of Classic Trav and MegaTrav.

But, TNE is an entirely new game. It's as different from Classic Trav and MegaTrav as is 2300.

TNE would have worked fine for me as an alternative gaming universe, as long as the main type of universe presented in Classic and Mega Trav was the primary.

TNE not only changed the dice, changed the average 7 to an average 6, changed the task system from Mega--changed all sorts of stuff--it also changed the entire universe.

And...I didn't like that. "They" were crapping on my beloved standard Traveller universe.

Would people like a new Forgotten Realms universe where the dice was percentile based and the story was that the citizens have discovered that the Realms is post-apocalyptic Earth? Probably not.

For that same reason, I didn't like the Virus or TNE.

Is there a version of the Virus that you could love?

So, it's not really the idea of the Virus that I've objected to over the years. It's the extreme change made to the standard Traveller universe.

Taken just by itself, I actually think the Virus is pretty cool.

 

[whulorigan]

CT manoeuvre drives were fusion rockets (defined as such in HG1) until MT defined them as reactionless thrusters, although it could be argued that since the manoeuvre drive wasn't defined at all in HG2 that's were the reactionless thruster was born.
The folks at GDW were retconning a retcon...

Apparently they wanted to go back to the original intent and make fuel a resource players would worry about, or so I've read in the designer interviews.

Understood. But having some type of G/Thruster at TL12+ makes for a nice feel regarding the advancement of technology over the increasing TLs. And most player ships were TL12 or less anyway; easy enough to say that common small commercial & private vessels typically used HEPlaR as a standard, and G/Thruster was a cutting edge Government/Military technology at TL12.

 

[mike wightman]

Perhaps, I never used the setting (TNE) so I never looked that hard at the virus. This was based on someone else complaining about it's ability to magically jump to lower TL systems of dubious electronic nature ... I think they also complained about a toaster oven.

However, I too loved the power of FF&S and hated its organization.
I have yet to recreate one of the official lasers using the rules. [damn batteries]

Virus could only achieve sentience in a computer system capable of running it at full capacity and only if it had the time to learn - read the story about the smallcraft infected with Virus, it brings a tear to my eye every time.
In less capable systems its code would interfere with the operating system and cause it to crash.

The toaster story is an often touted but misunderstood story.

In a TL7.8+ home the toaster could well be tied into the home computer system so it can be controlled remotely by the house computer or under instruction from your smartphone.

Virus infects the home computer and scrambles everything, the smart fridge, the smart oven, the smart TV - everything tied into the home network.

Today we have NFC, induction charging etc - imagine Virus playing with that stuff.

Another thing to consider is the power of even a model 1 computer in Traveller, it is capable of controlling a multi gigawatt fusion reactor, control avionics, gravitics, inertial fields and at the same time run a multidimensional hyperspacial transfer calculation to allow jump to be plotted.

I have no issues at all with the Imperium TL16 research base manufacturing a quantum code computer virus, based on lessons learned from dissecting the sentient silicon lifeforms taken from Cymberline.

 

[mike wightman]

Understood. But having some type of G/Thruster at TL12+ makes for a nice feel regarding the advancement of technology over the increasing TLs. And most player ships were TL12 or less anyway; easy enough to say that common small commercial & private vessels typically used HEPlaR as a standard, and G/Thruster was a cutting edge Government/Military technology at TL12.

I agree, I quite like the idea of introducing gravitic drives at a higher TL.

 

[Adam Dray]

So it seems to me that people thought the Virus was a cool idea, though maybe heavy handed in actual implementation, but they resented having all of their investment in the current universe "table-flipped" out of existence.

I recall similar reactions to the Barbarian Horde when Forgotten Realms transitioned to the AD&D 2nd Edition rules. I think Ed Greenwood's home tabletop group told him, "That did not happen to our campaign."

What if the Virus had an effect similar to what is stated, except the more populated and high-TL worlds (and their entire subsectors) were able to beat it back pretty easily? Low-TL worlds weren't really affected much at all. That leaves some of the mid-TL worlds in weaker sectors as pockets of Virus trouble.

I'm envisioning a bubble around the "big empire back home" that is clean of Virus problems, as well as "clean" pockets of civilized worlds further from the cores. Further out, though, there are lots of Virus issues. The frontiers become a place you have to worry about that stuff. Sure, there are protocols for verifying that a ship is clean before it enters a system, but things slip through.

 

[SanDragon]

I bought MT because it was the newest edition of Traveller.

Didn't really care about the background, because I could never get the players I DM'd to break away from AD&D 2nd edition or Marvel Super Heroes or Magic: The Gathering. XD

And, (maybe this reflects on me) I could never get a campaign to last long enough to actually get more than a year or two in-the-game time to pass.

So, I doubt we would have ever got to the point of Virus.

I also think that radio-transmitted code being able to physically etch its code into the hardware was stretching things... a bit. Okay, a lot!

I understood it was limited to the computing power it invaded, thus, it would try to egg itself, but, still... etch itself?!?!? It's software code!! Were did it get the etch-ant?!?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

For a while I did not like Virus because it did not seem to fit the idea how at the time I perceived computer hardware worked. Also, I was getting into Vampire LARP to date hot goth chicks.
Now from a tech standpoint with Flash BIOS, EEPROMs, and SSDs, it seems to be fine for me.
As far as destroying what some felt was the beloved setting, I had no issues with it. I played games back in the day where the setting progresses or ends. Also playing Vampire LARP with princes dying often...

AD&D - Fate of Istus/Greyhawk Wars(Greyhawk), and The Avatar Trilogy (Forgotten Realms)
Shadowrun
Star*Drive (or was going to )
TORG
Anyone play in Chicago Knights (before OWBN took it over), Immortal Underground or go to Kenosha - Where Characters Go To Die back in the day?

My perception being on the "I Like Virus" side of things was that at some level, those not liking it had a feeling of being betrayed. Then again, I missed a lot of this. I was out dating goth chicks. :devil:

 

[robject]

Is there a version of the Virus that you could love?

Yes, but it is one that is time-distanced from Virus, to the point where they are indistinguishable from plain old, autonomous, AI Ships and AI Fleets.

 

[mike wightman]

I also think that radio-transmitted code being able to physically etch its code into the hardware was stretching things... a bit. Okay, a lot!

I understood it was limited to the computing power it invaded, thus, it would try to egg itself, but, still... etch itself?!?!? It's software code!! Were did it get the etch-ant?!?

Not etch - copy

The etching is a misremembering or misinformation of what the original cymberline chips could do, but then they lived in an environment that was basically a big etching plant.

If the virus infected a chip production plant it could make hard copies of itself, or if it infected a device that already had the chip etching capability, there is even the chance that some TL8+computers are quantum computers and use some sort of configurable neural network architecture, otherwise it could only reconfigure software. The trick is to understanding just how capable Traveller computer systems have to be, by modern standards even a model 1 is a supercomputer.

A quantum computer Virus, modelled on the 'neural' patterns of a silicon lifeform - not unlike wafer technology but using a cymberline chip as the personality...

now there is an evil thought :devil:

 

[Garnfellow]

I think my problem with the Virus is it falls right into the Uncanny Valley: it creates a setting looks a little like Charted Space, but it really ain't Charted Space.

If the result were much more similar, or much more alien, I'd probably be OK with it. As an idea, I'm fine with a post-apocalyptic space empire setting. A lot of the 1248 work on the Black Imperium, for example, is really very cool.

But as written, the Virus ravaged setting is both too close and too far away from the setting I know and love to fill me with much more than revulsion.

 

[mike wightman]

What if the Virus had an effect similar to what is stated, except the more populated and high-TL worlds (and their entire subsectors) were able to beat it back pretty easily? Low-TL worlds weren't really affected much at all. That leaves some of the mid-TL worlds in weaker sectors as pockets of Virus trouble.

That could have been a more plausible version of the 1200 TNE setting. The safe areas really were not very large by the end of Hard Times, throw Virus at them and they contract further. SO you could still have your RC based campaign but have more remnants of the old Imperium around.

I'm envisioning a bubble around the "big empire back home" that is clean of Virus problems, as well as "clean" pockets of civilized worlds further from the cores. Further out, though, there are lots of Virus issues. The frontiers become a place you have to worry about that stuff. Sure, there are protocols for verifying that a ship is clean before it enters a system, but things slip through.

Sounds like a pretty good setting to me.