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After some back and forth about what kind of setting he'd like to see we settled on GURPS: Traveller: Interstellar Wars (IW).
I know the broad strokes of the interstellar wars from the overall history of Traveller.
This is more detailed.
The default campaign, is set in 2170 AD (1291 VI, IY -2351) right smack between the Third and Fourth Interstellar Wars in a period known as "The Empty Peace." This is also just after The United Nations morphs into The Terran Confederation.
I've read through IW before and made a sample character or two, but without players I wasn't paying enough attention.
Now I have a
In a lot of ways it's strange to run in this early time period. No Vargr. No other major races at all, actually. 2097AD (1237 VI) is when the Vilani meet their first ever major race besides themselves. Us.
They were as shocked about finding someone who'd figured out the jump drive on their own as we were about first contact being with humans.
I'm excited!
Exciting times. When the Terrans accidentally started falling into Empire, as the Vilani's inability to adapt opened holes in civilization that had to be plugged by... something.
ReplyDeleteI like the explanation why tech is so... antiquated even though it's high tech in Traveller. It's because of the Vilani. Their ancestors did it that way, so... Huge computers just this side of using punchcards and magnetic reels. Lack of automation because, well, what would a steward born into a steward's family do without a steward's job.
Enter into this moribund culture of, really, pre-modern homo-sapiens, comes the upstart, always changing, fast-moving, fast-advancing Terrans.
Marc Miller really created a very interesting universe to play in. Everything from far before today (if you play during the Rule of Man (hey, it's Vilani, tech hasn't changed that much) to after the 5th Imperium collapses and what is left over collapses and people are scavenging what's left.
Loren K Wiseman's contribution should never be discounted.
DeleteSomewhere in my Traveller tag I've gotten into the chilling effect on innovation that needing to KNOW you can buy a braided confabulation line fitting at any port in the Imperium has.
There's a point when conformity stifles innovation. When your jump drive goes 'blooey' and you need a new jump component A (found in every A drive ever built to Vilani plans, and you can buy the same component coreward of Sol or spinward of the Spinward Marches, the wish to make a better jump component A that works 3 times as well isn't there.
DeleteIt's like the Vilani thought Vilani-Fordi did well with the Model T, so all of Vilani will produce Model T components and cars forever.
Always liked the plucky Solomani, before the later game writers turned them into a combination of Nazis and Soviets. The Zhodani, on the other hand, were written as telepathic West Asian analogs, if you get my drift, down to the Psi-cops that parallel a certain area's purity-cops. Until later writers wrote them as better and nicer than the 3rd Imperials. And the Imps were originally benign bumbling giants with big nuclear hammers, until later rewrites turned the Imps nasty, and then went all weird with the Imperial breakup later.
But still, such a wide universe to choose from.
https://mcthag.blogspot.com/2015/05/because-it-was-easier.html
DeleteHow evil the Zhodani are is really dependent on how cynical/honest the Tavrchedl' are.
Genuinely working to the improvement of society and happiness of their citizens?
OR
Tool of the nobility's oppression of the common people through psionic brainwashing?
Having played Traveller since 1979... The political arc that makes the Solomani Commnazis is an organic one as the situation develops and they lose two nation-states to chaos and war.
Being the lineal descendant of the UN, "more but harder" in its genes.
This, This right here is why I struggled so long to be able to comment on your blog, and stumbled across the ability because my wife made me clean out the back-emails she's been sending me on my gmail account (some blogs and discussion boards disavow gmail accounts because of the very cookies and spy-carp that google now makes you write a policy about, go figure.)
DeleteHaving an intelligent, weird, discussion about the socio-political changes of the structure of a... game.
Love this stuff!!!
And I, too, started with the LBBs and kept them faithfully, along with the supplemental books until the great cat-pee wars.
So I was happy when I got the cd's later.
Have you considered tracking down a copy of Imperium and using that as a backdrop for an IW campaign?
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn't take much tracking, I have a copy.
Delete