                   TRAVELLER Digest 158

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) Star Wars Exhibit in San Francisco
     by "Glenn M. Goffin" <sudet@well.sf.ca.us>
  2) Replacing military bases
     by Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com>
  3) Gazelle
     by Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com>
  4) Star Wars quote
     by "Glenn M. Goffin" <sudet@well.sf.ca.us>
  5) Re: Nobles
     by Martin Fay <MFAY@fs2.cp.umist.ac.uk>
  6) Re: Oriflamme and Spencer
     by bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE)
  7) Question for GDW
     by Mark Fletcher <mf1@st-andrews.ac.uk>
  8) Glisten part 1
     by "Bruce Johnson" <JOHNSON@tonic.pharm.arizona.edu>

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Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 23:01:03 -0800
From: "Glenn M. Goffin" <sudet@well.sf.ca.us>
To: macrocosm@wri.com
Cc: hiwg-list@fwe.com, traveller@MPGN.COM, xboat@MPGN.COM
Subject: Star Wars Exhibit in San Francisco
Message-ID: <199501100701.XAA18638@well.sf.ca.us>

"The Art of Star Wars" is showing through 12 March 1995 at Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, 701 Mission (at 3rd), San Francisco.  I saw it on
Sunday, and it was very nice.  There are large models of many kinds of ships
from the movie series, both familiar and obscure, maquettes of multitudinous
aliens, costumes, and weapons (yes, Han Solo's pistol really is a modified
broom-handle Mauser). Tickets $8.00; call (415) 978-ARTS.  I paid at the
door, and the crowd was not too thick, but it was pouring.

This one is worth checking out if you're in the SF Bay area.
--Glenn
"Traveller and Star Wars are really inseparable in my mind."
      (poorly remembered and no doubt mangled quote from an interview with
either Marc Miller or Loren Wiseman, I think -- someone can surely find it
in Travellers' Digest, Megatraveller Journal, or Challenge)

------------------------------

Date: 10 Jan 95 03:05:25 EST
From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com>
To: <traveller@MPGN.COM>
Subject: Replacing military bases
Message-ID: <950110080525_100326.446_BHG107-2@CompuServe.COM>

>>8) It's been 700 years.  How many 700-year old military 
bases  do you know of still operational? <<

Then again, how many 50-100-year-old merchant (marine) 
ships are carrying passengers ? (Except the QE2 and lookit!)




------------------------------

Date: 10 Jan 95 03:05:30 EST
From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com>
To: <traveller@MPGN.COM>
Subject: Gazelle
Message-ID: <950110080529_100326.446_BHG107-3@CompuServe.COM>

>>Well, the logic is that a Gazelle is streamlined, but 
that a Fiery  is more streamlined than a Gazelle making it 
an AF and much more cooler lookin<<

Basically, yeah. Gazelle is streamlined and can go 
diddly-ump miles an hour in atmosphere; Fiery is airframe 
and can go much faster in an atmosphere. As you say, cool 
points are the only benefit once out in space...




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Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 01:10:32 -0800
From: "Glenn M. Goffin" <sudet@well.sf.ca.us>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Cc: hiwg-list@fwe.com, macrocosm@wri.com, xboat@MPGN.COM
Subject: Star Wars quote
Message-ID: <199501100910.BAA28042@well.sf.ca.us>

"To this day, I cannot think of Traveller and Star Wars separately ...
thoughts of one invariably call up images of the other."
Loren K. Wiseman, quoted in A Decade of Traveller, Challenge No. 29, at 20
(1987).
I guess I was pretty close.
--Glenn

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 12:02:58 BST
From: Martin Fay <MFAY@fs2.cp.umist.ac.uk>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Nobles
Message-ID: <7E4716614FF@fs2.cp.umist.ac.uk>

> "Rank" nobles are often for Imperial bureaucrats.

This once provided me with a really cute plot twist: one of the 
characters in my 'Dentus' campaign, a bureaucrat named Strudekin 
Bellakar IV (his most prized possesion was an ancestral fountain 
pen!) become "Sir" Strudekin when he was appointed acting governor of 
Dentus. He even managed to declare war on the Vargr raiders who took 
the system at the start of the rebellion (Dentus is on the old 
imperial frontier coreward of Regina, pop 1/2 million anarchy), just 
before the scout base in the system was nuked to dust 8-()

Anyway, Jim, who was playing Strudekin was much more interested in 
being an officious pen-pusher than anything else so it gave a real 
depth to the character! In fact the whole game was made by the fact 
that the players spent a lot of their time talking to each other in 
character and finding out each others dark secrets :-) I didn't even 
get to hear half of it but it gave me plenty of time to deal with 
players individually.

---------------------------------------------------------
T.Eldritch - Regency Intelligence Service - Regina/Regina
martin.fay@umist.ac.uk
---------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 09:05:24 +0600
From: bonn0015@flipper.itlabs.umn.edu (STEVEN M BONNEVILLE)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: Oriflamme and Spencer
Message-ID: <9501101505.AA08855@daffy.itlabs.umn.edu>

John Bogan <john.bogan@asb.com> writes:

>How many troops does Oriflamme have on Spencer?  Page 34
>"Offensive Ground Troops" first says they have "over a dozen
>divisions" but just after that says Oriflamme only has "five full
>combat divisions".  It really can't be more than a few thousand
>troops, and even that assumes they patched together an old
>bulk freighter to use as a troop transport.  Bringing them over
>in Broadswords a platoon at a time doesn't really cut it ;-)
>Remember they would have started this before the Auroras
>would be available to be dedicated for the Spencer operation.

I got worried there was a bad typo here, but a close look at page 34
of _Path of Tears_ read something like this: 

Under "Defensive Forces", the table in column one indicates that Oriflamme 
has 56 "division equivalents" of ground troops; they aren't necessarily 
arranged into fifty six divisions.  Technically, Army units can be used
for off-world operations, and 12 Oriflamme Army divisions are being used
that way on Spencer.  Five more of those fifty-six "division equivalents" are
Oriflammen Marines, and are trained to operate routinely off-world.  They're
too useful to tie up on Spencer in a garrison.  The rest of the ground
troops are still on Oriflamme, I guess.

Furthermore, the RC as an interstellar government maintains another Marine
brigade (Spearhead Brigade) of five battalions made up of volunteers from 
those five Oriflammen Marine divisions, as part of the three-brigade RCMC.
The name suggests that Oriflammen Marines are used to being "spearhead"
troops for some force which is following them, like Army units.  The Third 
Imperium used to do that.

As for the jump-3 spacelift capability of Oriflammen, that's a bigger
problem, but _Path of Tears_ does note that the planetary governments 
do own a fair number of hulls not listed with the hulls owned directly by 
the RC.  Maybe they have (or had) enough to do it.  They have adequate 
access to space to have five trained Marine divisions, after all.  
Maybe it's less plausible, but at least it isn't a typo!

  Steve Bonneville
  <bonn0015@gold.tc.umn.edu>


------------------------------

Date: Tue, 10 Jan 1995 14:14:01 +0000 (GMT)
From: Mark Fletcher <mf1@st-andrews.ac.uk>
To: Traveller <traveller@MPGN.COM>
Subject: Question for GDW
Message-ID: <Pine.3.87.9501101401.B4214-0100000@pasta>

Dear GDW,

What plans do you have for the Islands subsectors in Reft sector? I know 
you have a company running a PBM set after the collapse in the subsectors 
in question, but is the outcome of the PBM to be included in the RPG 
background as well?

Fletch.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
|"Yesterday I shot an elephant in my pyjamas.     |Mr M Fletcher.    |
| How the elephant got in my pyjamas I dont know."|(mf1@st-and.ac.uk)|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+



------------------------------

Date:          Tue, 10 Jan 1995 11:46:33 MST
From: "Bruce Johnson" <JOHNSON@tonic.pharm.arizona.edu>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Glisten part 1
Message-ID: <MAILQUEUE-101.950110114633.416@tonic.pharm.arizona.edu>

This is to Alvin Plummer, but my mail to him keeps bouncing (unknown host 
error)

My mail reader could not decode the MIME encoded first part of the 
Glisten Adventure...is it avaliable on any FTP site, are you going to 
re-post it here, or could some kind soul mail it to me?  I can get 
MIME encoded mail at johnson@elixir.pharm.arizona.edu.

Thanks
Bruce Johnson
Information Technology/College of Pharmacy
The University of Arizona
johnson@tonic.pharm.arizona.edu 

My opinions, All Mine! Bwahahahahah! 

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End of TRAVELLER Digest 158
***************************
