Hi de ho.
Well, with the blessing of Our List Admin who Art in Tektronix, I've become
historian for the List. I shall endeavour to do justice to my claims, having
now put my proverbial foot in it! |->
To work!
To C. Harald: I only do Traveller and MegaTraveller. I consider 2300 to be an
abomination for two reasons: first, it's predicated on Twilight, which is in
turn predicated on the utterly fallacious and dangerously stupid concept of a
limited and survivable nuclear war, and second, it looked like a positively
fascinating future history until they introduced the Kafers and blew it to
hell. Besides, if this List covers 2300 I'm not aware of it. And thanks for
the suggestion; Gerry and I have been GenCon pals for umpteen years now, and
he may well be able to help me. Does he have an Email address, or should I
(gasp) pick up the phone? I owe him a call anyway....
On the Hortalez family: there is virtually no data in the public domain on
these families that I know of. I believe that they've been deliberately set up
but left vague as a basis for future adventure ideas. You should do whatever
you want with them, and keep us posted! Also, there are so many
subcorporations of Hortalez, each larger than anything on Earth these days,
that you can easily "cauterize" your adventure if it turns out later that
you've done something wildly against "prevailing wisdom." I use a lot of
feeder corporations in my games, as industrial espionage is a blast
(literally).
On Manipulation: the Hiver concept of manipulation began thousands of years
ago, when the Hivers were first developing into city-states. The first
Manipulator, known to humans as M. Primus, suggested that a road be built
across a populated peninsula, linking several citystates together. This, he
said, would provide better markets and less food spoilage in transit. The road
was built, and within a few years, use of it had blended the cultures of the
various citystates to the point where it was decided to form a single nation.
Primus, at that point, stood up and revealed a sealed document, years old,
that stated that he had planned for this to happen all along! The people were
shocked and amazed, and overnight the concept of manipulation became a strong
facet of Hiver intellectual pursuit. (What happened to Primus? Well, some say
he was elected president; others say he was lynched. C'est la vie.)
Since then, the Manipulators' Club on Guaran, and later on Glea, has
listed Manipulations and accorded the status of Manipulator to worthy
applicants. A "legal" Manipulation must fulfill the following criteria:
1. It must be designed on two levels, a superficial level with superficial
effects, and a deeper level with unstated yet definite goals.
2. The parties being manipulated must remain unaware of the manipulation at
all times during the course of the manipulation.
3. The entire manipulation, with a full prediction of superficial and deep
effects and processes, must be filed with the Manipulators' Club before the
manipulation begins, and must not be opened until the applicant tells the Club
to do so, usually as part of a package of evidence demonstrating that the
manipulation has been completed successfully.
As an example, my player, David, has always been fascinated with the Hivers,
and in our first non-Spinward-Marches campaign he jumped at the chance to run
one, but eventually decided to take a human instead for other reasons.
However, the concept of manipulation appealed to him, so he elected to try to
become a Manipulator. He took the film crew of which he was producer, and made
a documentary on the unstable political situation on a world in the Solomani
Rim. Ostensibly, this was to inform the public and encourage sentiment to get
the Imperium to intercede. Of course, the Imperium did no such thing, but the
megacorporation from which he'd been fired years earlier got a copy of the
film, and decided to exploit the situation for their own ends. The problem was
that a Scout team caught them worsening the situation, and the vice president
in charge of the operation (who'd fired this guy at the age of 27) was hauled
before an Imperial High Justice Tribunal. The irony of it all was that to nail
this guy, he exploited the suffering of an entire planet, and if the situation
had taken one more year to mature, the Rebellion would have ruined everything!
The upshot was that the Manipulators' Club on Glea received his package,
looked at it carefully, and now his name is no longer Iscin Delano Jaeger,
it's M. Iscin Delano Jaeger! (He tells everyone the "M" stands for "Mister".)
Sick, huh? I love this stuff! |->
One final note: I'm looking into a membership in the HIWG, the History of the
Imperium Working Group, for myself. This will give me access to history and
development as it's being written, and will enable things not in the usual
literature to be disseminated (with due credit to the HIWG, of course) to the
List. Two questions, though: Is anyone on the List a member, and/or does
anyone know how "Official" the HIWG's work is? I've heard it's considered
gospel, but haven't had this confirmed yet.
Well, that's it for this report, folx. Keep asking them there questions, and
let me leave you with the answer to my first rhetorical question on the list I
gave last time: You'll get laughed at for buying a first printing of HIGH
GUARD because it was wrong practically from cover to cover; the second
printing corrected so many errata that it was literally a brand-new book.
Later,
metlay | HOW TO DIE YOUNG, #327:
Traveller Mailing List Historian|
| Walk up to a Vargr Corsair and scratch his
[email removed] | tummy to see if his hind leg starts kicking.
[email removed] |
The Traveller Mailing List is a courtesy of James Perkins and Tektronix, Inc.
All opinions and material above is the responsibility of the originator.
Send Submissions To: @RELAY.CS.NET:[email removed],
[email removed], or [email removed]
List Administrator: [email removed]
work is? I've heard it's considered
gospel, but haven't had this confirmed yet.
Well, that's it for this report, folx. Keep asking them there questions, and
let me leave you with the answer to my first rhetorical question on the list I
gave last time: You'll get laughed at for buying a first printing of HIGH
GUARD because it was wrong practically from cover to cover; the second
printing corrected so many errata that it was literally a brand-new book.
Later,
metlay | HOW TO DIE YOUNG, #327:
Traveller Mailing List Historian|
| Walk up to a Vargr Corsair and scratch his
[email removed] | tummy to see if his hind leg starts kicking.
[email removed] |