I am afraid that I am going to have to give up on the TML -- I
thought maybe some of you would be interested in my reasons why,
so I thought I'd post this last public note about it. I
probably won't be able to see your responses unless you e-mail
them directly to me :-).
Essentially, I'm leaving the TML because I no longer have any
real interest in Traveller. There's two major reasons for this:
First, it has become clear that GDW is an organization that I
don't want to support, even indirectly. Somehow, the premise
that "the customer is always right" seems to have been
completely forgotten by a corporation which, when all is said
and done, is entirely dependent on the goodwill of its
customers. When the president of a company *publicly* threatens
to sue one of the company's own customers, who has voluntarily
contributed a great deal to the company's product, it *doesn't
matter* whether the man has a legitimate gripe or not -- I'm
going to stay as far away from that company as possible.
In case you haven't yet guessed, I won't be buying any GDW
products, Traveller or otherwise, and I will encourage my
friends to follow suit. But I also feel that any minute
contribution I make to the continued success of Traveller via
my participation in the TML also indirectly supports GDW,
inasmuch as it is selling its products under the Traveller name.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, "Traveller" is unplayable
by novices such as myself. I reach this conclusion reluctantly,
but I reach it nonetheless. Consider that there are now 3
"official" versions of Traveller! The first of these has
itself perhaps 2 dozen supplements which are apparently such an
important part of the game that they are difficult to do
without. The result of all this richness of rules and settings
is, for me at least, a system into which it is impossible to
bootstrap myself without a *massive* investment of time and
energy.
Consider that the only Traveller I've ever played was original
Traveller in the pre-Imperium setting 10 years ago. Imagine my
shock when, 6 years later, I decided to buy, read, and
understand enough source materials to run a Traveller
campaign. I made a vague effort, but with 2 different versions
and all those supplements and the whole Imperial History to
deal with and a million "well understood Ancient technologies"
and 50 kinds of "well known" aliens and ... Bleah.
It's a wonderful universe, but *all the important bits need to
be in one self-contained book*. I really don't care if that
book is actually 3 volumes of 500 pages each, and costs $150.
I just want to be able to buy it, read it, and be ready to run a
Traveller game with fairly experienced players without making a
fool of myself. While it would seem that I could do this with
MT+MC (MegaCorrections :-) or TNE, most of the Traveller
players I am familiar with rely so extensively on material not
from these sources that they would be uncomfortable with my
refusal to honor this material.
I submit that this is the big attraction of some of the
cyberjunk games that hit the market a couple years back; not
the teen-angst, not the cool cover art, but just the fact that
you shelled out your $100 up front and were ready to play with
your experienced friends for a long time. In fact, I would
have bought one of those systems *but* for the fact that I
don't particularly enjoy roleplaying in that genre.
(I'm afraid I must add that a minor third reason for leaving
the list is a certain participant, who, in spite of obvious and
deep familiarity with Traveller and respect from the Traveller
community, seems remarkably juvenile and egocentric. I mustn't
name names, but it will be a relief not to read any more of
this participant's messages.)
So in all sadness and dismay, I must sign off. I will
certainly miss the intelligent discussion, the lighthearted
fun, and the passionate commitment to FRP gaming expressed by
most members of this list, but I'm going to go look for some
more viable sci-fi game to run. Thanks to most all of you for
your help and support!
Bart Massey
[email removed]
P.S. -- I am not a lawyer, but I think I understand intellectual
property law at least a little. GDW can copyright texts, but
not just names. Thus, "Gauss Rifle" or "Zhodani" or even
"Imperium", in and of themselves are not copyrightable. They
*are* protectable, but by *trademark*. And these names are
either not trademarked or their trademarks are not protected (I
think -- have you seen any GDW publications with "Vargr(TM)"
anywhere in them?) So if your story has "Aslan" in it, this is
perfectly fine. In addition, one cannot protect intellectual
concepts. Thus, I can write a story "set in the universe" of
Traveller with impunity, as long as I don't use copyrighted
texts in the story, or infringe on trademarked names, or violate
any contractual agreements I may have with GDW. Publish away --
I believe the lawyers will just laugh at GDW, for all their
hollow threats.
Now there is such a thing as "game copyright", which says that
I can't publish a game just like Monopoly except with the names
of everything changed, or a game which uses many of the same
names used in Monopoly. This form of copyright has been
interpreted very loosely by the courts, so if you use any of
the gaming rules of Traveller in your published materials, or
if you publish gaming rules yourself, you must be very
careful...