New Era, how accurate?

[Erias]

I’m new and frantic about Traveller’s lore. I read In several sources (Wiki Traveller for a start) that the New Era’s virus wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea. Some hard Traveller fans didn’t like it. I’m reading about the Long Night, right after the fall of the Rule of Man and I am confused: in the Mongoose edition, has the New Era setting been completely obliterated? And, if so, what is the Long Night, how the Second Imperium fell

 

[Sigtrygg]

The Long Night is the name the Third Imperium gave to the time between the fall of the Rule of Man or Second Imperium and the start of the Third Imperium.

Traveller the New Era is set after the fall of the Third Imperium

 

[paltrysum]

The New Era hasn't happened yet in the official Mongoose setting, which primarily focuses on the Classic Era of Traveller, circa 1105, Third Imperium dating. If you have access to Survival Margin, one of the first New Era books, you'll see that Virus rips everything to shreds that wasn't already wrecked by the Rebellion in about 1130.

No, the New Era and Virus was not everyone's cup of tea; in fact, neither was the Rebellion. Taking the status quo and turning it upside down was not what all of the fans wanted. Some attribute the dark turn of events that Traveller took to the era of "dark gaming," in which grim and gritty settings dominated the scene.

 

[Erias]

Yes, but what lead to the fall of the second imperium? If it’s not the virus, what is it? And I have the feeling that even the virus was the proverbial last nail in the coffin but not the profound reason .The first imperium lasted because of Vilani’s protocols which managed to articulate a vast empire under common behavior, the earthlings acted like a chaos factor for the first imperium (I’m referring to Interstellar Wars from GURPS) and brought it down, but I guess Terrans didn’t have the logistic to keep an interstellar empire and Thus it fell. Am I right? And how did this happen?

 

[Erias]

Okay,, as you can tell I don’t have New Era and wasn’t aware it was set in the future, still, how the Rule of Man fell? ^^

 

[paltrysum]

Here's a nice post on that subject: https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Rule_of_Man

Essentially the Second Imperium collapsed due to its inability to manage an empire that stretched so far and wide, leaving individual polities to fend for themselves. Little in the way of long-range interstellar communication and transport occurred during the Long Night, making it sort of a sci-fi medieval era. Smaller empires prevailed during this time period.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The First Imperium, or the Vilani Imperium (Ziru Sirka) was old even before it encountered a world populated by a new race of humans.

These humans fought a war against the Imperium that lasted decades until they eventually sort of won. The commanding Admiral of the victorious forces was declared Emperor - technically still the First Imperium but it was now ruled by the victors - Terran Confederation humans from Earth.

For several centuries the humans of Earth tried to prevent the collapse and fall of the Empire, but eventually cultural, political and economic forces caused the banking system to crash and worlds to cease trading with each other.

 

[Ursus Maior]

No, the New Era and Virus was not everyone's cup of tea; in fact, neither was the Rebellion. Taking the status quo and turning it upside down was not what all of the fans wanted. Some attribute the dark turn of events that Traveller took to the era of "dark gaming," in which grim and gritty settings dominated the scene.

Traveller was the first of many established brands that had their universes obliterated in such fashion one way or the other: Battletech got the Clans first, then the Jihad, World of Darkness got killed off and rebooted completely, Dark Eye (Germany's prime brand) got a similar overhaul, Shadowrun got multiple softer reboots etc. pp.

Essentially, when publishers run out of ideas for a canon, they got only two tools left in their box: obliterate and reboot or reinvention by a new team of authors. Both are tricky, but at some point this is a business and you can only facelift a brand so often until it doesn't compete any more. The RPG industry and market have fashions of their own. Some stuff just gets outdated (for some time).

 

[Garran]

While it's true that material will eventually run out, you can evolve a setting into something new (or at least different) without going the lazy "rocks fall, everyone dies" route that happened with some of those brands. The Imperium getting into a civil war, a major schism/unrest, or even just starting a slide into decay, along with whatever is going on everywhere else in the setting, would have been more than enough to reshape it for a new round of content.

 

[paltrysum]

Something more subtle than Virus might have sufficed but I suppose that's all water under the bridge. If you want an alternative, there's the "Lorenverse," in which the assassination of Strephon never happens. It does still include the Empress Wave, though, which means death and destruction was only temporarily forestalled.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The seeds for the fall of the Third Imperium were there for all to see if you look at the early adventures and supplements. The exact nature of the rebellion was poorly handled in many ways and for many reasons. According to interviews interest in MegaTraveller fell to an all time low for a GDW Traveller related product, which was one of the reasons to attempt move forward into TNE, which by the way was better received and sold better than MT, they put out more products for it too.

Note that GDW never went the root of a re-boot, they always wanted to move the story forward. Likewise GT didn't start again at 1105, they started from hey what if the FFW has been fought etc but there is no rebellion and continued forward from there.

 

[paltrysum]

Kind of unfortunate, really. IMHO, MegaTraveller had some of the finest supplementary material and best lore ever published for the game. DGP's Traveller Digest and MegaTraveller Journal, as well as the two alien modules they put out, were really top-notch gaming supplements.

 

[Ursus Maior]

While it's true that material will eventually run out, you can evolve a setting into something new (or at least different) without going the lazy "rocks fall, everyone dies" route that happened with some of those brands.

You certainly can, many publishers show this is possible. But once numbers in sales drop, you need a solution. A simple edition swap is not everybody's cup of tea, some like to go with major in-universe changes, some do both at the same time (like GDW with MT and TNE). Those are management decisions and some work, some don't.

As was stated above: it's water under the bridge. I like what I get now and we'll see how it goes from here. Bonus: Old books don't become invalid, we can still mix 40 year old CT publications with whatever we got now.

 

[Old School]

I dislike the TNE ruleset, but really like the setting. I’d enjoy a star viking campaign using MgT2 rules.

 

[paltrysum]

The best thing I can say about TNE was that it taught me to use spreadsheets in the 90s. The Fire, Fusion & Steel book enabled you to build just about anything. We had so much fun with that book that there's not a whole lot else I remember about the game. Well, okay, there's one other thing: I ran a highly detailed mercenary campaign based in the Regency using the official TNE setting. My players still speak reverently about it, though it did end on a bit of a sour note because allegedly the ref made it too challenging. :roll: Pfah! Players! Buncha wimps.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I dislike the TNE ruleset, but really like the setting. I’d enjoy a star viking campaign using MgT2 rules.

You have summed up my feelings about it too.
As a setting it was great - we switched between a TED setting and Star Vikings. Our games were full of exploration, conflict, discovery, building a future.

The rules - not so much as you say. I tried to fix damage with some house rules, and then tried using BRP, finally gave up. A few years ago I ran a campaign again this time using my usual CT+ rules and it wasn't a problem at all so MgT2e shouldn't be a problem at all.

 

[Cdr Vimes]

Just started my TNE campaign last week using MgT2 rules. I bought TNE back in the 90s, never managed to get a game, and loved the setting but not the rule set, apart from FF&S where I spent many happy hrs designing loads of stuff. Id used the similar rules found in Twilight:2000.

I'm not sticking verbatim to the TNE lore but using bits and pieces. The premise, in my TNEU, is that the Reformation Coalition wants more ships, explorers, smash and grab teams but cant fully generate them. Therefore they are buying up majority shares in ships and employing crews to carry out some missions on their behalf and paying for some of the privilege. This is allowing the PCs to do some trading, have access to some tech and have a steady 'patron' who provides paying work.

The unscrupulous gits have already noted that they get direct access to some RC ports and when on a 'mission' they get little customs type interference when they bring tech in from the cold. Cue some smuggling shenanigans already.

 

[Ursus Maior]

With the Pirates of Drinax campaign and its Neumann-shenenigans, I could absolutely see Mongoose do a TNE-era spin-off. Maybe as an easter-egg April's Fool, though those two dates only match up again in 2029. :mrgreen:

 

[MyndkryM]

/pulls up old man pants

If I'm reading some of the items posted here, I'm under the impression that Mongoose is looking to spend more time exploring the classic milieu of 1105.

http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?t=122445

Which suits me just fine. When MT and later NTE came out, IMO, the backlash was due to the FFW pretty much being relegated to the war game and not much for CT. There was quite a bit of foreshadowing, and then the jump to the Rebellion and then the Virus, it just felt that GDW hand waved and moved on.

Anyway...there is a lot of cool stuff to be explored during the classic timeline. So much so that in the long run, the Rebellion and Virus will make more sense when those later era products come online.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I am an old man, I don't need the pants.

Classic Traveller bagan in 1105 bit moved the timeline and story forward vias JTAS TAS News articles in almost real time. The FFW was over for several years before the universe got flattened.

It is my contention that it was the Fifth Frontier War that critically damaged the Classic Traveller OTU. Gone were the adventure hooks and fascinating news articles, instead we got a few years of war reports. Gone was the setting were a small group of characters could get up to mischief and shenanigans, instead you had to worry about the battlefleet in the system you have jumped into.

It also subtly changed how the fanon viewed the Imperium. Pre-FFW the Imperials were often bad guys, then during the FFW they wee americanised and became the good guys.