Having watched 'the ball' pong back and forth a bit over
TNE, I'd like to add my comments.
To me, the virus is looking less and less believable
after having read the Challenge:64 description and thought
about it some. Not for how it works: looking at the details,
I can see how it could happen. ("Daylight come..." indeed 8-).
My problem is in believing that it hadn't happened earlier.
To massively summarize, the premise is that the Imperials
were using the Cymbeline silicon life chips as Transponder components
and (Lucan?) builds a virus from one of the Cymbeline predators.
That's all fine and good, but it requires a suspention of disbelief
that all n-billion starship designers and crew didn't know what was
being built into their starship (_nobody ever successfully pried a
transponder open and looked inside? gimme a break...) and didn't
notice as the transponders "chatted" back and forth all the time
between ships. Any military organization that didn't notice this
would be neglegent beyond belief and quite a few groups of characters
in campaigns I've been in would have noticed the chitchat of transponder
traffic and taken a closer look. It won't fly, even ignoring the
fact that the presumption is that the only application of these
little gems was in transponders (I can think of a few million other
uses for them, myself, and I'm sure someone else would have too...).
Given as how it's set in stone by now, however, that's sort
of a moot point (oh, shoot the Moot while we're at it). Moving right along,
I'm just going to keep writing adventures and such. I figure it can't
do too much damage. (heh). Good backgrounds always are worth working
with, no matter what the rules are. I figure that TNE is going to
be a background worth writing in. After all, MT was... 8-)
And on to point two-oh;
Every month, GDW puts out a Challenge with +- (argument's sake)
15,000 words of Traveller material. A rough approxomation of TML
traffic is more like 50kwords, at least 15kwords of which is non-story
or PBEM related. I.e. we're doing more talking about Traveller than
they are publishing by a large amount.
How come it is, then, that with dozens of great posts, rules,
and ideas bobbing around the group here, there are only a handful
of us getting published? Looking around, I strongly suspect that
there's more talent here than anywhere else in one grouping
(not impugning the GDW staff or HIWG, but there are a lot'o people
on TML... 8-) . So how come nobody here writing stuff and sending
it to GDW? While we're here fuming about GDW ignoring or disliking
the TML list or its people, they're sitting there going "Gee, we've
got this loud crowd of people that complain and argue a lot and never
submit us anything." ...
WRITE IT UP AND SEND IT IN! If you don't think you can write well,
bounce it off one of the better writers here for editorial comments
or help. (I volounteer if need be 8-). You're energetic enough to
argue about it for days; why not just write it up and see if GDW buys it?
- -george william herbert
ps: met Metlay last Thursday, while he was in Berkeley (Hi Mike 8-).