Why do you hate the Virus

[nobby-w]

I like the idea of a late/ failing Rule of Man campaign. Right at the start of the Long Night.

I did a campaign setting in the Daibei/Reavers Deep region set as the ROM is falling apart. The banking crisis gets a mention in the DonM Timeline, and takes place in 2744AD. This is a synopsis of the setting that I posted in another forum.

Not currently playing, but I've started to build a Daibei/Reavers Deep setting around the fall of the Rule of Man.

This is a TL10-12 universe with a few key political entities. It's not too far off canon; I went through the events published in the Traveller Integrated Timeline and have more or less fitted it into that without having to significantly bastardise any published timeline. The game is set in the late 2700s (Gregorian Calendar), about 30 years after the 2744 banking crisis that brings about the collapse of the Rule of Man.

The region is somewhat independent from the ROM, so it had enough economic strength of its own to maintain a working interstellar economy. This also makes a good back story for the later genesis of the Reaver states that give grief to the Sylean Federation and early 3rd Imperium.

The region is a bit deficient in space travel, so many former colony worlds have been forced to develop (rather basic) quasi-independent economies, and there is some back story about a programme run by the ROM to assist with this through a transfer of low-high tech and tooling. However, there is no complete collapse of trade in the region as it contains several economies that are fairly independent of the Rule of Man.

The key political entities are:

Daibei Provisional Coalition

This is the former Daibei regional government of the ROM that has maintained a regional coalition after losing contact with the central ROM capital. A substantial naval and military presence had been established in the region (known in this setting as the Deep Fortification Programme) as a preventative buffer against the rise of the Yerlyaruiwo and Khaukheairl clans in the 2500s and 2600s. The Daibei has one of a handful of Class A starports in the region that are capable of manufacturing jump drives.

This region was a backwater in the Ziru Sirka and was largely bypassed by the Vilani wars. It had a more or less intact vilani population, although most worlds were sparsely populated colonies. Terran forces took over the region after the surrender of the Ziru Sirka.

With the fall of the ROM a rise of pro-vilani sentiment has triggered several Vilani political movements. The Daibei has also lost its subsidy from the central ROM government, so its naval and military budgets are a fraction of their former capability. There have been some secessionist movements and the DPC government is starting to show some instability.

Drexilthar

This is home to three minor human races, the Drex (pop 400m), Ilthari (Pop: ~1B) and Tring (Pop: 100m). plus numerous other smaller ethnic groups. Originally it was colonised under the auspices of Petty Emperor Zarissku (The Ziru Sirka regional governor of the Daibei region) ca. 2000 AD. This started to uplift the Ilthari tribes who, after a succession of colonial administrations, eventually industrialised and developed what is now the strongest planetary economy in the Deep.

Still a developing economy (think: something like a BRICS country), they now have the capacity to make jump capable ships and are a major economy in the Deep. A loose political bloc known as the Ilthari Commonwealth has formed as an economic and military alliance, although Drexilthar is still some decades off having a really substantial power projection capability.

I have deliberately avoided making Drexilthar into any sort of 'Evil Empire' and the Ilthari capital Vetawa is a sort of cyberpunk mega-city. It's modelled on Jakarta rather than Tokyo - think of something like a cross between a third world city full of street vendors and large slums, and the Neo-Tokyo trope from cyberpunk-themed anime.

Caledonian Federation

This was formed around Caledon and some neighbouring worlds settled by the Caledonian Society under Charles Stuart Scott in around 2300 AD. Caledon is now somewhat industrialised and has a population of around 150 million. The rest of the CalFed add another few hundred million in total population.

In the wake of the collapse of the Rule of Man the Daibei implemented a technology transfer and lend/lease programme to the CalFed to offset the rise of Drexilthar as a regional power. The CalFed is considered to be a few decades off developing a really effective starship building and power projection capability.

This has led to a neutral zone in the region between CalFed space and the Ilthari commonwealth. Neither side has the resources to effectively power project into the region, so it has become a sort of no-mans land and a haven for pirates and petty warlords.

The Saie

This brings a mysterious, dead race (in a 3I setting) back to life. Here we look at a race that were contacted by P.E. Zarissku and got jump drive technology. Their system has a (rare) source of naturally occurring Zuchai crystals so they can manufacture jump drives and starships to about TL9-10 level. They also sell jump drives to the CalFed, although the drives have to be tuned to the specific crystal and are somewhat maintenance intensive because of this.

The Saie had a massive civil war that rendered their homeworld uninhabitable, but a population survived in asteroid colonies. They have a treaty with the CalFed where they maintain large enclaves on habitable worlds in the region to raise breeding stock. The Saie have a parasitoid larval stage (a bit like xenomorphs or the Prawns from District 9), which grosses humans out, but the CalFed are still fairly dependent on the Saie for interstellar trade.

Saie merchants (and occasional raiding privateers) are an encounter in core-spinward regions of the sector.

Yerlyaruiwo and Khaukheairl clans

The two clans that collaborated to build Aslan jump drives have established colonies and an increasingly large economic presence in the rimward end of the sector. Occasional local land wars are fought against human settlers in a region, but neither clan has sufficient resources for large scale power projection. Note the consistent trope of a power vacuum - there is a land grab going on, but none of the powers has sufficient resources to effectively control the region.

Human-Aslan relations varies. There are some worlds with both human and aslan enclaves. Both clans sell some starships and components into the region, filling a gap left by the lack of support from the Rule of Man.

Others

There are a few minor races in the region (e.g. the Virushi).

Key Tropes

• Technology is distributed fairly unevenly. Some wealthy worlds have a TL11-12 industrial base, with a larger body of quasi-independent low-mid population worlds with TL4-6 fossil fuel economies and a few completely collapsed societies. A few worlds with developing economies sit in between.
  
• The fall of the Rule of Man has left a power vacuum in the area which none of the polities really have the resources to fill. This makes it a haven for petty warlords, pirates and adventurers looking to establish their own dominion (I have an NPC loosely based on Stamford Raffles, for example). The area is definitely the wild frontier - a region that Riddick, Han Solo or even Conan the Barbarian would not be out of place in.
  
• Pirates - ships are valuable, so a lot of piracy is about capturing working starships or other technology. There is an unwritten gentleman's agreement that if a crew surrenders they will be dropped off somewhere safe.
  
• Smaller ships - I've frigged the system to bring the sizes of starships down a bit. 100kt cruisers aren't a thing IMTU. Most starships range from a few hundred tons up to a few thousand with the biggest ships running to about 10-15kt or so. This was originally (many years ago) based on a re-balancing exercise that I did with High Guard to correct its balance issues with smaller ships. HG was good for large capital ships, but it's too hard for small ships with high agility and low factor batteries to hit other similar ships,1 and the damage from turret weapons is far too attritional. While big battleships and small fighters make a good cinematic combo, it doesn't work all that well for actual game balance.
  
• No evil empires - I didn't want to make any no-go areas on the map. None of the polities have been set up as purely an antagonist. You could have a party come from or adventure in any of the regions.
  
• Low and Low-High tech - there are relatively few large, wealthy economies in the region, so low and low-high tech is quite prevalent.

There is some timeline sketched out for events after this campaign (including the reason the Saie get wiped out) that goes through to the conflicts between the reaver states of the Daibei and Deep and the Sylean Federation. At some point I may set a campaign in a later period during the Reaver wars (from the Reavers' point of view of course - think something like Piper's Space Vikings) but this is a 'might be nice to do at some point' kind of thing.

 

[aramis]

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.

Most of the people I knew, even the TNE Fans, though virus was totally bogus. The TNE fans liked the setting because it was dark, it added cyberpunk to the setting, and it was easily the most flexible ruleset for Traveller. And it had LOTS of toys for gearheads.

A few, like Cryton, liked the effects it had on play... but even he had to jump through some mental hoops to swallow it. (For those who don't know, Cryton and I used to live in the same building, and shared about 5 core players of our separate pools of 15-20 players each...)

He cosigned signed my nasty-gram to GDW about Survival Margin, along with 14 other people from Anchorage. I mailed it; never got a response.

It's worth noting that, largely, TNE's fanbase was new to Traveller; CT/MT fans largely avoided the switch. There was some crossover; many of us had a couple pages of houserules to actually run CT and/or MT era settings with TNE rules...

The fan division was most noted on the Traveller Mailing List. It was so bad that the TML was split in twain to keep the Old Guard from wanting to do bodily harm to the TNE crowd and vice versa. ISTR only about 20-30% of either list were on both.

 

[Murph]

Why do I hate the virus, oh let me count the ways. I have despise the virus because it was some sort of stupid GDW Deus Ex Machina them to kill off the track or universe into a post apocalyptic mishmash because they got bored and stale. What they could've done instead is moved it to some of the front tier sector for faraway which would've been so much better.

But no, they decided to make it an aftermath or more a project in space rather than think outside the box and try and do something really creative like move to one of the frontier sectors. That way they could've stayed fresh up-to-date added new things and kept it alive in the interest of their players. But also at the time I have to admit post apocalyptic role-playing was the the hot thing. So I guess they wanted to get involved in that genre and decided to what the heck lets totally kill traveller, apocalyptic wasteland where are players can have new novel adventures.

Instead what they did is alienate many many players especially those like me and I noticed that their production quality, artwork, and even ideas took a severe nose dive at the time. Which material he aided in the demise of games designers workshop and their eventual becoming irrelevant.

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?

 

[atpollard]

No it can't. Virus is a living silicon lifeform found by the imperium and kept in a little box.

It is not a computer program that overwrites your operating system.

It cannot "grow" in my HP laptop. the Intel CORE i5 processor, using TL8 silicon chips is simple not a 'fertile ground" for it to grow. the gallinium arsenide type chips we use have micro transistors that are too far apart for the "virus" lifeform to grow.

Only at higher tech levels, using more advanced types of silicon chips, where the layers are thinner and the transistors closer together does "virus" find fertile ground to grow and reproduce.

The Imperium took this lifeform, neutered it, stuck it in a box and called it an IFF Transponder. Only when Lucan's scientists found a way to restore it's ability to reproduce did it become a threat. When it was accidentally released, it did what any animal would do. It mated with the IFF Transponder neuters and released "Virus" on the unsuspecting Imperium

I think this basic misunderstanding of what virus is/was is what turned many people off to the setting. They think of virus as we do, a software/malware problem, and not as a H1N1 Bird flu that mutates into something deadly in computers problem.

So does it spread through simple communication or does it require physical contact between two ships? I was under the impression that it spread through communication.

 

[aramis]

So does it spread through simple communication or does it require physical contact between two ships? I was under the impression that it spread through communication.

RAW, it spreads by simple communication.

 

[GypsyComet]

Which material he aided in the demise of games designers workshop and their eventual becoming irrelevant.

Based on Loren's accounts of that period and my own interactions with other game companies and stores, the demise of GDW can be squarely blamed on the greed of the games distributors with regard to the rise of MtG, the general books market, and the publishing deal with Gary Gygax.

The TNE fans liked the setting because it was dark, it added cyberpunk to the setting

Hogwash. Cyberpunk has been part of Traveller since CT, and as a genre has always been about society's dark edges or societies on the way *down*. Traveller's dead cat bounce is Hard Times and Survival Margin, and MegaTraveller in general is unrealistically bright and cheerful for taking place during a civilization destroying war.

TNE's dark side is that it embraced the Military SF trope that was rising in the 90s. A fringe part of Traveller previously, it was front and center in TNE. There is less Cyberpunk in TNE than in both prior editions, not more.

I'm out, since this was started as a negative opinions thread and is only going to get worse.

 

[nobby-w]

[...]
Hogwash. Cyberpunk has been part of Traveller since CT, and as a genre has always been about society's dark edges or societies on the way *down*. Traveller's dead cat bounce is Hard Times and Survival Margin, and MegaTraveller in general is unrealistically bright and cheerful for taking place during a civilization destroying war.
[...]

CT predates the publication of Neuromancer by the better part of a decade and is pretty squarely descended from golden-age space opera. I don't see a lot of cyberpunk look-and-feel in any of the CT era publications.

It does have a fairly low-key worldview and it features characters on the margins of society but it's not cyberpunk.

 

[aramis]

Based on Loren's accounts of that period and my own interactions with other game companies and stores, the demise of GDW can be squarely blamed on the greed of the games distributors with regard to the rise of MtG, the general books market, and the publishing deal with Gary Gygax.



Hogwash. Cyberpunk has been part of Traveller since CT, and as a genre has always been about society's dark edges or societies on the way *down*. Traveller's dead cat bounce is Hard Times and Survival Margin, and MegaTraveller in general is unrealistically bright and cheerful for taking place during a civilization destroying war.

TNE's dark side is that it embraced the Military SF trope that was rising in the 90s. A fringe part of Traveller previously, it was front and center in TNE. There is less Cyberpunk in TNE than in both prior editions, not more.

I'm out, since this was started as a negative opinions thread and is only going to get worse.

There is no cyberware defined in MT as published by GDW (it only appears in TD articles.) There is almost none in CT within GDW sources. And the Cybperpunk tone of nihilism and corporatism was absent, as well. Provide page numbers, or admit your error... (FYI, a search of the CT CD reveals Cybernet* only appears in 2 places: AM Hivers and the Trade Goods table. Albeit, the trade goods table appears in 4 documents - Bk2 77, Bk2 81, TTB, and ST.
Broadening it to cyber* only adds the GDW catalogue - and the Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook for 2300.)

CT was very much embracing the 70's military sci-fi. TNE wasn't. It was NOT showing much of the Cyberpunk vibe until TNE. And Marc and Dave BOTH have stated that TNE was aiming to add that vibe.

FF&S includes rules for cybernetic implants - something not in CT at all.

 

[mike wightman]

Almost none I assume includes the brain/computer interface implant in JTAS? Or the robots article mentioning cybernetics?

Then there are cybernetic parts as trade goods, 63 in the LBB2 table that you managed to find.

And as to no cyberware in MT I would look at the Knightfall adventure and the Cyborgs random nugget.

 

[GypsyComet]

And the frequent deniable asset Amber Zones, and the hacker in The Traveller Adventure, and the portrayal of SuSAg and Tukera?

The trappings and attitude were there from very early.

TNE has cyberware rules and evil AI. Whoopty. The rest of the cyberpunk vibe is entirely missing.

CT was very much embracing the 70's military sci-fi. TNE wasn't.

TNE was embracing the 90s rise of Mil SF, when that sub-genre all but buried the older Speculative Fiction.

Admit your error

Yeah, I'm done here.

 

[jcrocker]

I dislike Virus, but I think that was just a symptom of what the powers-that-be at GDW at the time saw as the bigger problem.

A few years back David Nilsen posted a long series of answers on this board, that I can't find right now. From what I remember, there was a turnover in staff, and the people running things wanted to move on from a Rebellion that was only grinding everything down as a series of events that all took place off-stage. One line I remember from his posts was "The Rebellion was a story essentially untold."

Which makes sense, I remember that for a long time the only support for MegaTraveller was the articles in Challenge and the TNS updates. Eleven thousand words fighting for survival, tens of billions killed, and while there were a few books, most were sourcebooks like COACC or Referee's Guide with one module, Knightfall, that was written by DGP anyway.
I guess GDW had other irons in the fire at that point.

I'd have to check the credits on Assignment: Vigiliante, Arrival Vengeance and Survival Margin to be certain, but I think those were done after the staff changes.

So they decided to move on. Virus was a big fat deus ex machina to do just that, and give players a chance to pick up the pieces.

What I liked about TNE was that, wow, it got support. I wasn't really happy that the Imperium had gotten trashed to do it, but at least the characters could work towards rebuilding for the future.

I had another look, I did find this:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=7264&highlight=david+nilsen&page=4

post 31 seems to sum it up.

So yeah, hated Virus.

Also hated the Black War that came before it - billions of 3I citizens slaughtered because they can't be loyal to more than one pretender to the throne, and killed to deny them to the other contender.

Disliked the fact that the Rebellion dragged on for so many years with no end.

Most of all, I disliked the fact that GDW put out so few Traveller books for me to buy in that period. For shame.

 

[jcrocker]

FF&S includes rules for cybernetic implants - something not in CT at all.

True, but to be fair, waferjacks are now in T5, and are the key to Marc's new novel.

Also, FF&S has computers sized a lot smaller than CT ever did. Technology had progressed, that's all. I enjoyed FF&S, but I never felt the need to design a cyberwarrior.

 

[nobby-w]

Almost none I assume includes the brain/computer interface implant in JTAS? Or the robots article mentioning cybernetics?

Then there are cybernetic parts as trade goods, 63 in the LBB2 table that you managed to find.
[...]

CT never had a comprehensive system for hacking or cybernetic enhancements in the way that Cyberpunk or Shadowrun did. There is nothing in the rules that (for example) covers generating a character with cybernetic enhancements. Cybernetics and hacking get a handful of drive-by mentions in various CT publications but they were never deeply embedded in the ruleset in the way that they are in purpose-built cyberpunk games.

 

[mike wightman]

Yes it did - look at the computer skill...

or do you mean the totally ridiculous netrunning stuff in the various cyberpunk games?

Ok I see what you mean

As to the cyber ware in such games it is closer to a supers game than a sci fi game. Advanced cybernetics may offer some augmentation, but not along the lines of the Six Million Dollar Man or Bionic Woman, which is what the various cyberpunk games wanted to emulate in a noir/punk setting.

For a while now I have allowed player to describe their character's stat gains during character generation as either cybernetic or bio-engineered augmentation just to add a bit of fluff. I notice that this is mentioned in T5...

 

[aramis]

Yes it did - look at the computer skill...

or do you mean the totally ridiculous netrunning stuff in the various cyberpunk games?

Ok I see what you mean

As to the cyber ware in such games it is closer to a supers game than a sci fi game. Advanced cybernetics may offer some augmentation, but not along the lines of the Six Million Dollar Man or Bionic Woman, which is what the various cyberpunk games wanted to emulate in a noir/punk setting.

And what TNE offered in FF&S.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Quick aside; one of the local tech CEOs (I forget his name and the company ... Google? But he was on KGO radio's evening commute news) was in the local news the other day, and he warned about AI becoming more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

*sigh*

His argument was that computers can be programmed to make themselves smarter, and that they'll reach a level of smarts as to think we're annoying (beyond pets, well beyond being its master, and so forth).

The problem with this argument is that typically you need a desire of some kind to "overthrow" your masters. In the animal kingdom we see wolves compete for dominance, we see rams and buffalo butting heads for mates, and so forth. In other words, it takes more than just intellect to become "smart" and self aware. You need some of the machinery that we have (arms, legs, what not), but not just that, but also senses and the experience and reward of reproduction or achievement.

You can certainly create code to emulate that, but that doesn't mean that your thing (computer, robot, what not) is going to be a self aware machine, much less be subject to something like virus.

I can see something like Traveller's virus manifesting, but it doesn't seem likely to me that it would be able to overcome all adversaries to spread like it's said to have in the Imperium and beyond. It seems likely to me that such a thing would need an environment with not just high tech, but the right tech, so that it could transfer. And given the diversity within the Imperium itself, it seems like such a thing couldn't infest/infect a coffee maker on a Vegan world that had some kind of AI, or toys in Vargr space, or ... whatever it is you can think of.

Just my take.

 

[whulorigan]

I like the idea of a late/ failing Rule of Man campaign. Right at the start of the Long Night.

It would have been a great idea. And instead of ruining an already existing current setting, it would have fleshed out the details of an already existing and interesting period in the history of Charted Space.

 

[nobby-w]

[. . .]
or do you mean the totally ridiculous netrunning stuff in the various cyberpunk games?
[. . .]

Which, while silly, is how it's actually portrayed in most significant cyberpunk literature of the era. Neuromancer, Hardwired et. al, Ghost In The Shell, and Snow Crash (to name a few) all portray this sort of thing.

 

[mike wightman]

IMTU the fall of the rule off man and the start of the long night was engineered by the smart machines that ran the banks.

In the MT IE it has this interesting entry in the history section:

-2,389Imperial AD 2129 Terran Navy uses artificially intelligent robots

Now this builds on what is written in LBB8 Robots:

in -2389, the Terran Confsderatlan Navy commissionad
a line of mass-produced tech level 12 robots as support staff for military personnel.
These were not warbots as we know them today. A few of the robots wore
expert medical robots or served as administrative support, but most were heavy duty.
hard-working construction robots, used to build temporary installations for
advanced bases.
Beginning in -2204, the ambitious Solomani carried their higher technology with
them as they established the Rule of Man over the dominions of the defeated Vllani
Empire. The Vilani, mill at tech level 11, had not yet developed true robots.
Less than two hundred years later, Naasirka Introduced the first line of robots
for private, non-military use. Dubbed ''Rashush", these housekeeping and valet
robots spread rapidly, thanks to a powerful, high-prestige advertising campaign.
Although expensive. ownership of these useful robots was within the reach of many
rich citizens of the Second Imperium. The Rashush line 1s still marketed today.

Of course the problem comes from defining artificial intelligence vs artificial sentience - it has long been my opinion that artificial intelligence is different to artificial sentience.
So my hypothesis was that the admin assistant AIs the Terran Navy granted to their Lt/Governors of Imperial worlds gradually learned and learned.
Some of them advanced a TL here or there, whether due to research found in secret Vilani archives (that's another pet theory of mine - and strangely enough I can now back it up with Marc's novel) or deliberate research on the machines' part.

Unlike Virus, when these machines achieved TL16/17 and true sentience they had not been programmed to destroy, they had always been builders and assistants.

So they decided to avoid the inevitable conflict with humanity by leaving chartered space - throwing the banking and trading network into chaos.

Notice that the long night was not as destructive as the rebellion or hard times, and nothing like the release of Virus, it was a slow disintegration of the Imperium.

I quite like setting adventures during the long night too - the Imperium is a myth, the group of worlds you start at have managed to build up an exploration/trade alliance - go out and find out what is out there. No need to even pick a 'real' subsector.

 

[mike wightman]

Which, while silly, is how it's actually portrayed in most significant cyberpunk literature of the era. Neuromancer, Hardwired et. al, Ghost In The Shell, and Snow Crash (to name a few) all portray this sort of thing.

And people can accept that but not Virus - doesn't make sense to me.