Subject: TRAVELLER digest 250
Date: 95-04-09 19:19:12 EDT
From: traveller@mpgn.com
Sender: traveller@mpgn.com
Reply-to: traveller@mpgn.com
To: traveller@mpgn.com (Multiple recipients of list)

			    TRAVELLER Digest 250

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) 	by gdw.support@genie.geis.com
  2) Viral magic and reactionless thrusters...	by mtr@globalx.net

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

Date: Sun,  9 Apr 95 01:09:00 UTC
From: gdw.support@genie.geis.com
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Message-ID: <199504090116.AA124380204@relay1.geis.com>

 traveller@mpgn.com
 
 From TRAVELLER Digest 239
 
 Dan Post
 > You can see that attacking a planet with a hostile enviroment
 > and no local allies would be a logistic nightmare.
 > Comments?
 
 Yep. That's why most people tend to ignore logistics in their
 recreational gaming (despite its vital importance in real life).
 What miniatures gamer (to use my own hobby as an example) would
 want to paint an army of 30 trucks for every tank?
 
 From TRAVELLER Digest 240
 
 Rob Prior
 
 >Derek Wildstar <wildstar@qrc.com> wrote:
 
 >>Bingo, Rob - you've just hit the nail on the head.
 
 >> Anybody who's worked in the field of computer hardware
 >> architecture, networkdesign, or computer security can
 >> poke many holes in the pseudo-technical
 >> gobbedygook behind GDW's Virus. So we're left having to
 >> accept the virus as a "magic" item which defies
 >> logical explanation or prediction (and therefore
 >>ruins the basis of a hard-SF roleplaying game,
 >> just as surely as if someone had written
 >> Alladin's Magic Lamp into _The Hunt for Red
 >> October_)
 
 To which Rob Replied
 
 > Possibly, but you seem to have ignored what I was
 > trying to point out, which is that an expert will find
 > problems in the rules no matter what they are.
 
 There _are_ "magic lamps" in _Hunt for Red October_. Its just
 such a good read that most people don't notice, and those who
 notice don't care. Traveller is a game. If it were as realistic
 as "real life" it would take as long to play and require as many
 PCs.
 
 (And who would we get to run campaigns for us?...I understand
 YHWH is busy these days)
 
 From TRAVELLER Digest 241
 
 John Kovalic
 
 > Geeez. You'd think Traveller was a *game* or something... :-)
 
 Once when I brought this up, the reaction was like I denied the
 absolute inerrentcy of the Bible during Baptist sunday school.
 
 From TRAVELLER Digest 242
 
 Mark Clark
 >  Well, I got my copy of H&I, and I thought I'd say a few words about it.
 
 Hmmm...a few more reviews like this and I might be put off
 writing Traveller stuff completely.
 
 < moment of sober reflection >
 
 NAAAH!
 
 ------------------------------
 
 > Eric B. Smith
 > Marc Miller, if memory serves correctly, designed
 > a game that could be set into any time period with
 > any magic system you want. That's the glory of the
 > Traveller universe!
 
 That was certainly the original notion...the first few
 supplements were non-background specific with this idea in mind.
 We rapidly found that the vast majority of our customers wanted
 (nay, _demanded_) a background, so Marc and Frank decided to give
 them one.
 
 ------------------------------
 
 Douglas E. Berry
 
 >I humbly offer my prostrate and pathetic form before
 > Loren (He Who Controls The Release Date) Oh,
 > forgive me great one, for playing an unpublished
 > variant and incurring you wrath.
 
 Ego absolvo de paccavi tui
 
 : )
 
 From TRAVELLER Digest 243
 
 > muskrat@msn.fullfeed.com (John Kovalic) writes:
 >
 > > > The OldTimers (ie. people who apparently have been playing
 > > > the game
 > > > since Reagan's first term)
 > >
 > > Egads! I could have SWORN I'd started late in the Carter
 > > administration! :-[
 > Late in the Carter Administration? Traveller was released
 > in the summer of '77, and Carter was inaugurated in January
 > of that year. I'd say that _I've_ been playing since _early_
 > in the Carter Administration. (-:

 Geez...I've only been designing stuff for Traveller slightly
 longer than that. We have customers that weren't born when
 Traveller came out.
 < sigh >
 Ah, well...as Betty Davis used to say: "Gettin' old ain't for sissies."
 ------------------------------
 Bob Brown:
 > Does anyone out there know what the likes of Tom
 > Rodgers, Rob Caswell and Joe Fugate are doing?
 Don't know about Tom Rodgers. As far as I know, Joe Fugate is
 still at the day-job he had before DGP was started. I think Rob
 Caswell is still illustrating, but I don't know who for.
 
 ------------------------------
 
 From TRAVELLER Digest 245
 
 Shalom Zaidfeld
 
 > I was just going through Challenge 73's Frank's Opinion
 > section and he mentioned that a movie deal was signed
 > with Anders International.
 >
 > Any word about the progress?
 
 Nothing yet.
 
 ------------------------------
 
 From TRAVELLER Digest 246
 
 Rob Prior
 > I've just picked up Aliens of the Rim and, frankly, I don't
 > think that it deserves all the abuse heaped on it.
 Thanks
 
 > The multiple views of history are canonical. Even back
 > in Classic Traveller times we had multiple views of alien races
 
 This was one of Marc's earliest guidelines to inside and
 outside authors both.
 
 ------------------------------
 
 And Now a word from Dave Nilsen:
 
 Report from GDW -- April 7, 1995
 
 This is something new we're trying here, to help GDW customers
 stay a little more up-to-date with what's going on around the
 Workshop. I'm thinking that some short update on a weekly basis
 from either Frank or myself would be nice, but just have to see
 what kind of schedule we can keep to.
 
 Vampire Fleets is typeset and is in the art department, having
 its maps and deckplans executed, etc. It will be out in May.
 
 Command Post Quarterly #9 is also in art, again, having its
 maps executed, and will also have a May release.
 
 Challenge 77 is in the art stage as well, same comments,
 although the issue's artists are also involved in drawing the
 interior art. Challenge 77 will be out in June.
 
 The second of the Traveller novels, _To Dream of Chaos_ should
 have its final rewrite back from Paul Brunette and into
 typesetting in about a week. The interior art is being executed
 concurrently, and so we will have it out in June.
 
 The _Regency Sourcebook: Keepers of the Flame_ is being
 written. To answer a common question, it will include several
 Regency-specific starships, such as the Quarantine Cutter,
 Inspection Launch, and TL-15 versions of common starships such as
 the Free, Far, and Fat Traders. It will be out in July.
 
 We are starting work on the Epics line (see elsewhere for what
 the ad looks like). The first of these will be a three-parter for
 TNE called _Virus Redux_. This will see the RC expand through the
 Diaspora Sector and into Massilia. Loren is also working on the
 first Twilight: 2000 Epic, which will be a retelling of the
 original Twilight: 2000 adventures Free City of Krakow, Pirates
 of the Vistula, etc. This is in response to overwhelming pleas
 for updated versions of these classic old adventures into the new
 Version 2.2 system. However, these will not be simple re-hashes
 of the old scenarios. The elements will be familiar to old-hand
 T2Kers, but there will be significant differences in play to
 allow old and new T2K players alike to enjoy them. Part 1 of the
 Vistula Epic will be out sometime this summer.
 
 Three other epics will follow, including a Regency epic,
 detailing the break-out into the Wilds, and a follow-on to the
 Virus Redux epic that will take the RC from Massilia up to the
 Black Curtain. (My apologies to those who have been expecting a
 Black Curtain adventure in Vampire Fleets. That was our original
 plan, but these plans were recast in the past few months when the
 project changed hands from me to Frank. We decided that there
 were still several interesting issues to explore closer to home
 before taking the campaign all the way to the Black Curtain, but
 we will get there.) The fifth epic is a Hiver & Ithklur epic
 entitled _Into the Belly of the Beast_,
 which will explore the questions, "Are the Ithklur really this
 crazy, and if so, why?" "Are the Hivers really this crazy, and if
 so, why?" and "What is really going on inside of the Federation?"
 
 Farther Down the Road:
 
 Paul Brunette is working on the storyline for the third
 Traveller novel, and beyond that will undertake a novel that
 springboards from the third novel of the Hornet trilogy into the
 Hive Federation.
 
 Frank is working with the authors of a second Traveller
 trilogy, although that trilogy is clearly not so far along as
 Paul Brunette's. Incidentally, Paul Brunette has produced a
 Challenge article that presents the characters of the Hornet
 trilogy as TNE characters, which will appear in Challenge 78.
 
 _Armor 21_ will also be out this summer as an adjunct to
 Twilight: 2000 in the same spirit as Merc: 2000. Armor 21 will be
 further supported in Command Post Quarterly by rules,
 organization, and vehicle ratings that will allow Armor 21 to be
 played using the Command Decision rules.
 
 And that's the way it is at GDW, April 7, 1995.
 
 Talk to you again soon.
 
 Love and kissies,
 
 Dave
 
 ------------------------------
 
 That's all for now.
 
 Loren K. Wiseman
         for GDW,Inc.
 

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

Date: Sun, 09 Apr 95 10:35:45 -0500
From: mtr@globalx.net
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Viral magic and reactionless thrusters...
Message-ID: <9504091739.AA0562@localhost>

> As for those who dislike the *magic* of Virus, please wave for me
> the magic wand of "unified field theory" that allows for gravtic
> technology, especially those really cool "reactionless" thrusters...

You didn't pay too much attention to the conversation (or to the rules
changes either).

First: I'm not a physicist.  I don't know enough about physics to
be unable or unwilling to suspend disbelief in jump drives or gravitic
technology.  I don't have that liberty in regards to Virus.

Second: The reactionless thrusters aren't part of canon anymore.
Thruster plates and related technology are optional technologies in
FF&S.

GDW felt the need to remove reactionless movement from Traveller for
the sake of "realism".  Why did they just handwave over the technical
and social stupidities of Virus?

---
Michael T. Richter
mtr@globalx.net
(613)592-7994

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End of TRAVELLER Digest 250
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