Re: First thoughts after reading _Survival Margin_

I have trimmed the esteemed Former Historian's lamentation down to what
I consider to be the most salient points:

Mike Metlay writes:

> What I AM saying is that I hate the game setting. HATE IT!
> What has happened is that I have seen the future and it STINKS.
>
> I am not stating facts here. Only my opinions. And I loved the classic
> Traveller universe. It was civilized; it was intelligent; it had solid
> background and a sense of depth to it that other games lacked. This
> was a huge, exciting, beautiful universe, from the Core to the Rim,
> from spinward to trailing! There was so much to see and do, so many
> different kinds of life to reflect, so many possible campaigns to run.

I'm with Mike here.  I can certainly understand the desire of the folks at
GDW to update the game system.  I'm not really hung up on game systems, per
se, despite all the fooling around that I've done with the MT design rules.
I don't agree with the perceived need for the update, but that is a long
digression that has no place here today.

The trouble that I have is that the new setting is DULL.  Ho hum...another
planet full of barbarians.  How clever can I be today?  "Yo, Starblade, bring
me my laser rifle...those guys have blowguns and they look a little more
dangerous than the last batch." :-( :-P  Was it here that someone mentioned
H. Beam Piper's "Gunpowder God" recently?  If not, they should have.  For
those of you unfamiliar with the works of Piper (shame on you! a seminal
influence on Traveller), "GG" is effectively an early draft of what became
_Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen_, a story of a 17th century tech level kingdom
menaced by its neighbors when their supply of gunpowder is cut off by the
priesthood of Styphon, a rather political religious organization which
zealously guards the secret of the manufacture of gunpowder in order to
maintain its authority over the secular authorities.  However, the similarity
ends there: In _Lord Kalvan_, the kingdom is located on an alternative time-
line, and is saved by the arrival of a Pennsylvania state policeman who is
accidentally dropped there after being caught up in a parallel-time machine
malfunction.  Calvin Morrison (Kalvan) fortunately knows the military history
of our own 17th century thoroughly, and is able to apply the lessons learned
to the situation in which he finds himself.  In "GG", the kingdom is located
on a distant planet and is saved by the intervention of a trading company
scout team with contra-gravity vehicles and machine guns, who massacre the
opposition in the course of a couple of days.

One of these is an exciting adventure story; the other was only reprinted
to round out an author's Complete Works collection.  What is the difference?
In Kalvan, the hero is challenged by the situation and has to struggle for
success.  In "GG", the heroes smash everything in sight without working
up a sweat.

Our games should resemble the former more than the latter.  The advantage of
the Old Imperium was that there were many planets providing _different_
levels of challenge, allowing the referee to provide interesting situations
without straining our sense of disbelief.  How is a ref supposed to keep
a game challenging when nearly every obstacle in the path of the characters
can be removed by blowing everything to bits?  It's not even like the Imperials
will hunt you down and send you to the Prison Planet (Adventure 8 (-:) if you
do something too antisocial.  Sure, you _could_ play the game without falling
into the "I've got the biggest gun" rut, but the internal checks and balances
of the setting have been removed.

Ah well--I've always maintained a continuously progressing timeline in my
own infrequent games, and for _me_, the year is still 1108.  It'll take
me a while to get to the point where I have to decide about the Rebellion.

Is civilization collapsing up there, ahead of me?  We'll see when we get
there.  But if it is, I think the universe is going to be a dull sort of
place, without the ability to inspire the near-fanatical devotion that we
oldtimers seem to have for the game.

Rob Dean