When will Mongoose shoot Strephon?

[Baron_Vulk_Morden]

Having Dulinor stay would eliminate Lucan from the game. And with a certain claim (Right of assasination) to his deeds Dulinor might be abel to get the Moot to vote him Emperor. This has happened before (Barracks Emperors of the 7th imperial century) in the OTU. And with the Sollies attacking there would be a common threat as well

Actually I think the basic timeline works fine. One can vary the amount of damage the years 1117-1125 cause and change the size/capabilities of the Safe Areas to suit ones interests. But basically by 1128 the Empire is reduced to two big (Vilanie, Domain) and five small factions (Dulinor, Lucan, Brzk, Margaret, Craig). There are some external threads but those are treating lightly as to not give the factions reason to "hang together lest we hang separatly". The rebellion allowed the game to deal with smaller entities and, if set in the Wilds, for the players to become important movers and shakers (See the Adventures in Hard Times and Assignment:Vigilant)



The main problem with the Rebellion always was that GDW/DGP didn't plan for it to "end", they where not willing to find a new "Status Quo". Instead they decided to start from fresh by collapsing civilisation through "Virus". Many gamers had/have problems with the concept of Virus and the switch in systems that changed quite a bit of the techbase (Fuel-Guzzler M-Drives and Tomahawk-Sized Space-Space Missiles i.e) didn't help either. The final setting was quite well done allowing a new gamer to "start small" with a limited history and universe yet providing material for expansion into the "pre-Virus" Empire.

So what would be needed is an alternate ending. One was posted a few years back but that went along the lines of a "restored empire" (Similar to 1248 but without Virus) causing basically the same set of problems (To big a background, to small the players) as the 1105 "Bwaps and Bureaucracy" setting

For the most part, I agree. GDW screwed the pooch with the whole Virus metaplot, and in my own opinion, with the "Hard Times" book.

I personally prefer higher, not lower, tech-levels, and with the new options in the various books I really would like to do a pseudo-Star Wars Traveller setting built out of the Third Imperium. Not the actual war itself, but the adventures of a group of Travellers during the period.

(Mind you, there are several reasons for this.
1. My players are more familiar with Lucas' universe than CT/MT/MgT
2. CT DID stat up both Luke and Vader!
3. MgT statted Palpatine, albeit with a name change
4. SW actually works better as a specific sector of the Imperium, not the entire shebang, IMHO
5. We have Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, Mystic Order Psions with energy swords, and hyperdrives! It would be a true shame if someone didn't actually use these in a campaign!!!!!)

 

[kafka]

For the most part, I agree. GDW screwed the pooch with the whole Virus metaplot, and in my own opinion, with the "Hard Times" book.

I personally prefer higher, not lower, tech-levels, and with the new options in the various books I really would like to do a pseudo-Star Wars Traveller setting built out of the Third Imperium. Not the actual war itself, but the adventures of a group of Travellers during the period.

(Mind you, there are several reasons for this.
1. My players are more familiar with Lucas' universe than CT/MT/MgT
2. CT DID stat up both Luke and Vader!
3. MgT statted Palpatine, albeit with a name change
4. SW actually works better as a specific sector of the Imperium, not the entire shebang, IMHO
5. We have Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, Mystic Order Psions with energy swords, and hyperdrives! It would be a true shame if someone didn't actually use these in a campaign!!!!!)

Then the suggestion would be run Star Wars and only use the OTU nominally.

Hard Times, you have to place in the context of the times...it was an attempt at cyberpunking Traveller. Remember, this was the era of Max Headroom, Terminator, Blade Runner, Alien and a wraft other movies that marked the other Decade of Science Fiction film. So, if you don't like Hard Times...I can see that you would have trouble with the Extended Universe which essentially has fragmented polities much as the Hard Times universe postulates after the collapse of the 3i.

Ok, I am not going to do the funky colour scheme...as I do not know what you want to convey using different colours.

1. How familar are your players just the movies or the extended universe...as I have already eluded to...Traveller could take place in the distant past of SW universe (Sith Empire) or the New Order Jedi.
2. But CT also stat'ed Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat but I would not advocate that we have an entire universe around Stainless Steel Rat series as that would be less of a sandbox than the OTU.
3. Fine, you have me there...but that is just part of the games that gamers play with other gamers.
4. Can't question your opinion...but my understanding of the SW universe, is that it takes place in a Galaxy...which is significantly bigger than what Traveller attempts...
5. yes, we have a perfect toolbox for the Dorsai Campaign or Japanese anime - true the energy swords look like Samurai swords but who is to quibble.

By all means, run your own Traveller games, as if they are SW. The problem that you will encounter sooner or later...is that you will run out of source material. When that happens, raid the OTU for greater inspiration even if it is a lower tech...not every planet need be Corcursant as the will always be more Tatoonines out there.

Also, I do favor, a more high tech feel to Traveller but it is important not to be hung up on the gadgets but the people and the stories they can share. So what if I said I was talking to my friend in Argentina with a LAN phone or a Cell Phone or Meson Com...the point is that I was talking with my friend to arrange our trip to China. Our adventure there will not be contingent upon the means that we arranged things.

 

[Nuclear Fridge Magnet]

The more things change...
I recall having arguments with 'ardent Traveller fans' who WANTED me to run Virus-era scenarios -- as long as I bought all the books and did all the legwork for their benefit.
The fact I'd been their GM for nearly 10 years -- doing all the grunt work & getting barely a 'thank you' -- didn't register. Nor did the fact I had no interest in the whole Virus thing. I was expected to dish up the goods.

End result? I walked from gaming for 5 years.

The lesson I took away from that unhappy episode? Nobody has a right to force you to bow to 'their vision' of a setting. Minbari & Borg in the Spinward Marches, fighting the Aliens? Fine. Knock yourselves out. Just don't expect me to show up at the table...

 

[alex_greene]

I walked away from Traveller altogether. I looked back once, and found that it was no longer being published. That gave me a twinge of pain, but I moved on knowing that what I'd come to know and love had been long dead anyway, from around the launch of MT.

This relaunch of Traveller feels like the RTD relaunch of Doctor Who. It works. Better yet, it works as it is.

Mongoose have done this thing with Traveller that previous incarnations could not. They're trying to futureproof it, by taking the engine out of the setting. You can run the 3I into the ground, then maybe run Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog, or run another game altogether in your homebrew TU. Traveller's still going to be there for you.

The 3I setting's also going to still be there for you, because you can go back to the supplements currently released, which all take place around 1105 or so, while the 3I is still alive.

And its future rests in your hands, and those of your player characters. Not in metaplot.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I like that Mongoose seems to be striking a balance between Traveller RULES and the OTU.

There are things in the CSC that should never be used in the OTU, but I am happily incorporating into MTU.

I run two settings concurrently, an OTU setting based on TNE:1248 and a MTU that uses some of the things never found in Traveller before (Flux Swords, Wormholes, etc). I enjoy working on and playing in both settings. The rules now allow me to do that.

As someone who played Traveller back in 1977 (yes THAT long ago), when I started there was no Third Imperium, just a distant and vaguely undefined Imperium very far away. We made up our own settings and had a blast. Yes we had variations of Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica all mashed together, but it was fun and that's what it is all about.

If I wanted to go back and redo that mishmashed setting we all cobbled together now, I could; MGT lets me do that, or play in the OTU.

The OTU metaplot can be run however I want to run it.

 

[kafka]

So, as one can see Traveller grognards are not setting OTU in stone...

It is rather about reflexive play. Supplements and Adventures do not dictate the metaplay or metagame but merely service to enhance it. Sure, we might object that if in 1110 Regina is said to a world in its own right rather than merely a moon of a Gas Giant. Or that Mongoose releases two supplements within a month of each other that contradict each other without some sort of S&P rectifying article. But, on the whole the OTU should be viewed as a great big sandbox...for the Imperium alone has 11,000 places to adventure and when one starts to think Beyond...to Zhodani Space (including Galactic Core expeditions) to the wierdness of the Hiver Federation...lots of even stranger vistas await. Think of what Hamlet said to Horatio...and things are even stranger and more wonderous.

Back to the thread's topic, so even if after 5yrs, there will a fork that leads to MT or GT - let us not view as a plot against the players but as opportunities for even greater adventure. Whether, you want to classify this as Epic or Prestige level of play - so be it...remember the sandbox principle.

 

[apoc527]

So Metaplot(s) and moving/living univers(es) are a must for the Publisher to supply.

Wow, I have to emphatically disagree with this. Personally, I don't like metaplots. I rarely, if ever, have used premade adventures or modules in my nearly 17 years of gaming (I was born 4 years after Traveller came out, so you gotta give me a break!), so often I won't even know about the metaplot. I just didn't care about Militech vs Arasaka or whether Johnny Silverhand got wasted by Adam Smasher or not. It was (mostly) entertaining fiction, but it wasn't my or my group's fiction.

The only time I like metaplot is when it opens up new areas or parts of a campaign setting. WotC's Externals ESD did this for Star*Drive, but generally I have little use for the publisher's vision. If I want a Rebellion, there will be one; if not, Strephon lives.

 

[Nuclear Fridge Magnet]

I walked away from Traveller altogether. I looked back once, and found that it was no longer being published. That gave me a twinge of pain, but I moved on knowing that what I'd come to know and love had been long dead anyway, from around the launch of MT.

This relaunch of Traveller feels like the RTD relaunch of Doctor Who. It works. Better yet, it works as it is.

Mongoose have done this thing with Traveller that previous incarnations could not. They're trying to futureproof it, by taking the engine out of the setting. You can run the 3I into the ground, then maybe run Judge Dredd or Strontium Dog, or run another game altogether in your homebrew TU. Traveller's still going to be there for you.

The 3I setting's also going to still be there for you, because you can go back to the supplements currently released, which all take place around 1105 or so, while the 3I is still alive.

And its future rests in your hands, and those of your player characters. Not in metaplot.

I couldn't agree more. :wink:

 

[alex_greene]

You are not forced to use a metaplot young Grasshopper!

I beg to disagree. MT's launch began with the announcement of Strephon's assassination (to which my first reaction was one of sheer incredulity) and the ensuing breakdown of the 3I, followed by all the rest of the books revealing the degeneration and demise of the 3I.

The book's subtitle explicitly stated "The Shattered Imperium" and the game engine was welded into the middle of all of this like a bug in amber. To play MT was to play in this setting: no instructions were given on using this engine for other settings, whether they were for Star Trek, B5, Doctor Who or your own homegrown TU. MT meant Shattered Imperium, and nobody had any choice in the matter.

 

[kafka]

Yes, that is how it was presented...but remember the articles in Challenge in those early years - the Rebellion was just an afterthought. A good Referee should and can (assuming one still plays MT) play in the Safes and never leave the world of CT save one giant conspiracy replacing the Enigma (read your CT guys ~ here I am talking about the Introduction to Traveller & The Traveller Book not the LBBs) of the Emperor with that of High Level intrigue that would make Warhammer & Space Master pale in comparison.

So, yes, there was a Hard Wiring of the Rebellion into MT. No different than how 3e was hardwired into Greyhawk but that plan was quickly shelved. Same thing with MT...take the best of the culled knowledge of CT and add a final enigma. Whether that would be a Rebellion or some other secret...

I have a few ideas for a secret...if I would get back into MT but then again I am a self-professed grognard.

 

[andrew boulton]

MT meant Shattered Imperium, and nobody had any choice in the matter.

Of course they had a choice! There was nothing stopping you from ignoring the Rebellion and carrying on as before. IT'S YOUR GAME!

 

[rust]

MT meant Shattered Imperium, and nobody had any choice in the matter.

Well, we did use MT, but never for the Third Imperium, whether shattered
or not ...