Josh:
My beard's greyer than yours, I betcha. |-> Welcome to the TML; my
name's Metlay, and I'm the Group Historian (although my efficiency
is a lot higher when my books and I are in the same city, alas).
I can answer, or refer you to someone who can answer, most questions
about the game these days, although I won't adjudicate rules problems.
In a nutshell, since 1986, the aftermath of the Fifth Frontier War was
barely in its first decade when a bozo Archduke with delusions of
grandeur put a bullet in the Emperor, and the whole house of cards
came crashing down. The Imperium is a total mess right now, an admirable
parallel to the erratum-ridden and sloppy new rules system marketed by
GDW in 1987 as "MegaTraveller". Fortunately, a third-party licensee of
the rules called Digest Group Publications has patched a lot of the
holes and produced some excellent supplementary material. The older
"Traveller Classic" rules are now out of print and no longer supported
except in occasional pre-assassination adventures etc.
And as for stories, well, I've been known to post a few now and again;
the problem is that I was sent out of town on a two-week research trip
and had to put my game on hold. That was in January, and I haven't been
able to get home yet. Argh.
metlay