Another set of questions for Dave

[Zparkz]

As the main thread starts to go more or less off-topic I decided to gather the questions I saw from page 20 and onwards. They seems not to have been answered. If they have I offer my apologies.

Anyway here they come.


Zparkz:
1a) Gravitics. In MT the TL 12 gravmodules got a minimum volume of 3 liters. In FF&S the minimum is 30 liters. Why this change. It makes gravbelts far more bulky than what we knew them from CT/MT

1b) In MT Why was grav vehicles changed so that they needed a secondary thrust unit to be able to move? Was this a part of the removal of T-plates and redefinement of gravitics so you only could cancel most of the gravity vector from the planet?

2) Nuclear damper. In MT nuclear damers was defined as a permanent field like the meson screen. Why the change? I liked the posibility to produce ND turrets, but I never found it logical that it should have a ROF like lasers. I see it more as a projected field that needs to bath the nuclear warhead over time to be effective.


Badbru:
1) In Path of Tears there were numerous ships other than the first twelve that were listed as MFU (missing fate unknown). Were there any plans afoot to detail in a later product what happened to any of these ships? (especially the most famous one Ashtabula?)


Uxi:
1) Was the full Lancer/Fusilier design completed? Was it to be based on the shorter Group III (Thunderchild) or "stretch" Group IV (Maggart) Clipper spines? This affects the overall tonnage of the finished design, as well as the effectiveness of the spinal mount (particularly for the Lancer's meson).

2) Which of the internal politics of the RC meant to be developed as part of the setting arc and which were just left as color? The Ship Bill and New Worlds were core to the Centrist/Federalist conflict and I imagine these would have had to have been detailed... Eventually the Coalition is facing a Civil War over some of the ad hoc compromises that are not able to compromised over. The New Worlds just smacks of Slave/Free states prior to the US Civil War. Initially they'll be able to play them off each other one for one (Lancer vs Nex, for example) and do dual admissions but eventually, neither side will accept the admission for the other side... And I'm curious on what your ideas and thoughts were regarding this situation.


Dree:
In FF&S, the minimum requirements for jump drives changed. As a result, jump-capable ships of under 100 dtons were now capable of being created.

I for one liked this idea. I used my house rule of only allowing TL16+ societies of being able to create such beasties (economies of scale based on better understanding of prior technology--sorta how you can get an FM tuner in a spec of dust nowadays). This gave credence to why the Regency were the first ones to crank out this design w/the J-Boat and magically hand-waved Leviathian's J-Torpedo as a Naval Skunkworks project.

Other people weren't so gracious w/this "fundamental" change. But, I'm curious, from a designer's point-of-view, why was this change made?


Xavier Onassis:
One thing I wondered about; (apologies if someone asked about this already) Did GDW have any plans for the future of the Islands Clusters in Reft Sector?


Alanb:
My questions:
1. Would it have been likely for further details on the Hiver client states to have provided, say in the adventures that would have taken the PCs into Hiver space?

2. What did you see the Hiver client states as actually being? Were they engaging in significant expansion of their own, besides helping clear the trade routes to the RC? Were they totally dependent on the Hivers?


Antony:
Just a quick question. It's regarding FF&S1 and those dreaded work stations and accomodations. Was there a reason that the sizes were increased so much. For example crew in the Panther tank example in Striker 1, the seated crewmen take up 1.5m3 each with the standing crew taking 2.5m3 split between the turret and chassis. Now in FF&S1 they all require a crewstation requiring 3.5m3 which makes it very hard to get a vehicle anywhere near that of a real vehicle.

 

[daryen]

Only going back to your question is a pretty sleazy trick. If you really want to isolate the still unanswered questions, you have to go back much farther.

 

[Hyphen]

Originally posted by daryen:
Only going back to your question is a pretty sleazy trick. If you really want to isolate the still unanswered questions, you have to go back much farther.

Hey, dude, grab 'em and add 'em to the mix here...

 

[Zparkz]

As Daryen find it "sleazy" to start at page 20 scanning for questions, I have scanned the previous pages too and tried to find those that Dave haven't answered.

So in no particular order:

Daryen (p.18)
The only thing that holds the Aslan together and keeps them from being a complicated mess of feuding clans is the Tlaukhu. If the Tlaukhu is removed, then the Aslan are quickly reduced to a complicated (and dangerous) mess of intertwined clans, vassals, feuds, and wars.

So, did you intend for there to be a Tlaukhu successor to be in "power", or did you intend for there to be a gradual fragmentation of the Aslan

Daryen again (p.15)
Actually, the refugees are another one of my quibbles with the RSB. First, the number given isn't quite tenable. I mean 30 billion arriving in a single year? How can the logistics of just the traffic control even work?

TNE_GM (p.14)
1. Where did the time frame come from for the TNE story line? I mean the in-game time line. I have always wondered about the "Short Night" just being 70 years and how much history/knowledge would be lost in that time frame. It has always seemed too short a period for me. (Although it never detracted from my enjoyment of the TNE line.)

2. This is a combined question. What is you favorite TNE product? Also, what do you think makes (made) Traveller (and TNE) attractive to you?


Stephen Tempest (p.11)
One end of the Vampire Highway was, presumably, the Black Curtain. Was there anything significant at the other end?

What happened to (the real) Strephon's worlds after Virus hit? Completely destroyed?

Jon Crocker (p.11)
oh yeah, who's that Lady in Black on the cover of the book?

I think this was all. I have certainly missed some, but could you please post them below here?

 

[Uxi]

Dave answered my question on Lancer / Fusilier in the Belladonna thread.

 

[Elliot]

As to the Vampire Highway - I think DN confirmed it was Cymbeline.

But I have question being the Earth nut that I am - as Cymbeline is so near to Terra, that the Cymbeline lifeform is uplifted from the Terran Milspec chip - what was left at Cymbeline and how did the Virus deal with the fact that it originated partly on Earth?

Mr Nilsen - if there is no official answer I would be very grateful for you to just make on up.... (i'll probably regret that...)

By the way did the virus have any affection for the naval research base on Celeron (isn't that something to do with Intel (cue annoying tune)?)

 

[TheDS]

The one from Jon Crocker was a joke. It was explained that he was the only person who entered the "Who's the Lady in Black" contest, and so won, and that later, an important character was named after him (Jonathon Crocker, the guy who implanted the memory into Strephon).

 

[daryen]

OK, "sleazy" was probably too strong a word. It just looks bad when you start with your own question.

Thank you for pulling the others out.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by daryen:
OK, "sleazy" was probably too strong a word. It just looks bad when you start with your own question.

Thank you for pulling the others out.

Why?

 

[Zparkz]

Originally posted by TheDS:
The one from Jon Crocker was a joke. It was explained that he was the only person who entered the "Who's the Lady in Black" contest, and so won, and that later, an important character was named after him (Jonathon Crocker, the guy who implanted the memory into Strephon).

I did participate in that contest, but I never saw an answer, so then I ask, who is the black lady?

 

[jcrocker]

Originally posted by Zparkz:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by TheDS:
The one from Jon Crocker was a joke. It was explained that he was the only person who entered the "Who's the Lady in Black" contest, and so won, and that later, an important character was named after him (Jonathon Crocker, the guy who implanted the memory into Strephon).

I did participate in that contest, but I never saw an answer, so then I ask, who is the black lady? </font>[/QUOTE]She was the lady that gave the 'Empress Wave' its name. In SM, Strephon waxes poetic about "who is this lady, this Empress..." or something similar.

I think Dave answered that one already - she was some sort of 'please stand by' announcement, tuned to the recipient people - Vargr would have seen a archtypical mother with loads of pups, Imperial humans saw the 'Empress', and then the wave itself would come by later after having gotten your attention.

 

[Zparkz]

I got another question. Maybe not the right thread to ask it, but here it goes anyway.

How do you calculate the Unarmed Combat Damage for an Aslan that uses a Dew Claw?

Seperate the Dew Claw from the UCD and add 1D for the Dew Claw or add a fixed number to the UCD?

 

[Zparkz]

I add a new question asked by Randy Tylor in the original Thread. I post it here so Dave will most likely see it as the original thread is wandering all over the place.

Question for Dave: why did you include the jump boats (of less than 100 dton, I aausme) that Sigg mentions when the only reference to jump capable craft of less than 100 dtons is in an adventure based on the non-corrected (corrected in all later editions of CT and MT) 1st print run of Classic Traveller LBB1-3? Didn't it just add to the controversty of the mistaken inclusion of jump torpedoes without really adding to the game? Why add an obvious contradiction to the previous rulesets (CT, 2d printing+ and MT)?

So now, lets hope Dave re-appears soon =0)

 

[far-trader]

NO NO! No rogue threads just because of a little topic wandering. Why "they'll" just come in here and do the same thing and Dave will never answer our burning questions

Sorry, I kid, I like to imagine Dave will enjoy some of the wandering humor, there was humor wasn't there

We now return you to the new and improved "Ask Dave" thread, now with less off topic noise!

 

[Dreadnought]

Is 8 Years Too Long to Wait?

Let's see how long it takes for anyone to notice this, eight years later. Sadly, I might not remember the answers to these questions, particularly the more technical ones, as it is now 17 years since GDW went down.

As the main thread starts to go more or less off-topic I decided to gather the questions I saw from page 20 and onwards. They seems not to have been answered. If they have I offer my apologies.

Anyway here they come.


Zparkz:
1a) Gravitics. In MT the TL 12 gravmodules got a minimum volume of 3 liters. In FF&S the minimum is 30 liters. Why this change. It makes gravbelts far more bulky than what we knew them from CT/MT

I don't remember. Some of those discontinuities could have been unintentional, in that the overall sizes were set for a larger application and the end points weren't pinned down carefully enough.

1b) In MT Why was grav vehicles changed so that they needed a secondary thrust unit to be able to move? Was this a part of the removal of T-plates and redefinement of gravitics so you only could cancel most of the gravity vector from the planet?

Yes. This all comes from Frank's "No Reactionless Drives!" edict. While it was clear what Frank didn't want, we spent some time thinking about what it should be instead. We eventually settled on the idea that "contra-gravity" or "anti-gravity" was simply that: it cancelled out the vector due to gravity, but could not create other additional thrust in other directions. So that required another thrust unit to move them around.

2) Nuclear damper. In MT nuclear damers was defined as a permanent field like the meson screen. Why the change? I liked the posibility to produce ND turrets, but I never found it logical that it should have a ROF like lasers. I see it more as a projected field that needs to bath the nuclear warhead over time to be effective.

That had to have been because Frank wrote that section, as I remember being surprised by it myself. I remember talking to him about it, and I think we ended up liking the feel of it, because it's described as "focusing" the strong force and the anti-strong force at certain points to cause varying effects on fission or fusion warheads, so that feels like a firing action rather than simply a passive field. But then the ROFs got dorked up somewhere along the road. I think I would have preferred to allow it to be a middle case between a passive field and and active firing action, but that would have added one more special case, and it seemed cleaner to have it be a firing action.

Badbru:
1) In Path of Tears there were numerous ships other than the first twelve that were listed as MFU (missing fate unknown). Were there any plans afoot to detail in a later product what happened to any of these ships? (especially the most famous one Ashtabula?)

Yes, I believe that we would have detailed some of them, but not all. I think we even made a statement about some of them that, "GDW will never publish the official story, so you as a GM don't have to worry about your campaign being undermined." The thing about that is, as nice as it is to say that, as time goes by it becomes almost irresistible to finally say something about it. I know we had discussions about, "what happened to this one," and I'm sure stories about those would have eventually come out. Off the top of my head, can't think of any of them though.

Uxi:
1) Was the full Lancer/Fusilier design completed? Was it to be based on the shorter Group III (Thunderchild) or "stretch" Group IV (Maggart) Clipper spines? This affects the overall tonnage of the finished design, as well as the effectiveness of the spinal mount (particularly for the Lancer's meson).

I know I've had this discussion before, and I think that there has been an answer sometime in the past 8 years. I never completed the BL-level of detail design, but the BR ratings must have set some very clear requirements.

2) Which of the internal politics of the RC meant to be developed as part of the setting arc and which were just left as color? The Ship Bill and New Worlds were core to the Centrist/Federalist conflict and I imagine these would have had to have been detailed... Eventually the Coalition is facing a Civil War over some of the ad hoc compromises that are not able to compromised over. The New Worlds just smacks of Slave/Free states prior to the US Civil War. Initially they'll be able to play them off each other one for one (Lancer vs Nex, for example) and do dual admissions but eventually, neither side will accept the admission for the other side... And I'm curious on what your ideas and thoughts were regarding this situation.

We've discussed this recently over on TNE. But for those reading here, these were legitimate issues that we took seriously, and not just phony window-dressing, BUT given all of the other issues going on, Solee, Vampires/Sandman, the need to meet the Black Curtain and Regency eventually, that story-line would have almost certainly been subsumed in the larger narrative, probably in the "uniting against a common foe" mode.

Dree:
In FF&S, the minimum requirements for jump drives changed. As a result, jump-capable ships of under 100 dtons were now capable of being created.

I for one liked this idea. I used my house rule of only allowing TL16+ societies of being able to create such beasties (economies of scale based on better understanding of prior technology--sorta how you can get an FM tuner in a spec of dust nowadays). This gave credence to why the Regency were the first ones to crank out this design w/the J-Boat and magically hand-waved Leviathian's J-Torpedo as a Naval Skunkworks project.

Other people weren't so gracious w/this "fundamental" change. But, I'm curious, from a designer's point-of-view, why was this change made?

It was just more interesting, and more internally consistent with the "smoother" contours of the FF&S system. When there were just 3 LBBs, and fixed-size drives, the 100 ton limit didn't feel out of place, but when you're letting people make drives of any proportional size and bullets and meson guns and lasers and bays any size, the 100 ton limit just felt arbitrary, and likewise the one turret per 100 tons rule. It's just not the case that an airplane can have only X number of hardpoints per pound (the Super Hornet has 11--it can't carry diddly on them, but it has 11), any more than a car can only have four doors if it's more than a certain length. The 100-ton (1400 m3) limit just stuck out as arbitrary. Why not 1399 m3? 1395? I liked the idea of having jump-capable launches and couriers that could be carried by ships to take communications back home, and this made that easier. And the X-boat was always crippled anyway. The original broke the rules by having no power plant, and then later it was needlessly large for what it was described as doing, so why not let it get smaller? And I was planning on doing more with J-space dynamics anyway, including allowing drives of greater than Jump 6 at higher TLs. If life and technology and capabilities are a continuum, then 100 ton and Jump 6 limits just feel arbitrary. And while I always thought the jump torps in Leviathan were cool (and then buried in a shallow grave) I'm pretty sure that I deliberately never said anything that small was possible. Just say that 100 tons is no longer a lower limit and let the players and gearheads have fun with it.

Xavier Onassis:
One thing I wondered about; (apologies if someone asked about this already) Did GDW have any plans for the future of the Islands Clusters in Reft Sector?

Those are the ones that were in RSB and had their own LBB supplement, right? Yes, there would have been adventures there in the Regency campaign, mostly based on the fact that they are key ground among the calibration points, but no particular details had been developed.

Alanb:
My questions:
1. Would it have been likely for further details on the Hiver client states to have provided, say in the adventures that would have taken the PCs into Hiver space?

Yes, especially the Independent Ithklur state, but also secrets about the other Hiver subject races. Basically how they had all been warped and broken and corrupted by the Hivers trying to turn them into something that suited the Hivers.

2. What did you see the Hiver client states as actually being? Were they engaging in significant expansion of their own, besides helping clear the trade routes to the RC? Were they totally dependent on the Hivers?

Many would be behaving under Hiver control, but there would also be resistance movements that the RC/players would discover, and lots of disarray and conflict behind the Hivers' pretense of effortless shiny control. One of the reasons the Hivers were trying to get the RC to expand back toward the Imperial Core was to keep humans the hell away from the unsightly and dangerous disarray in their border areas.

 

[Dreadnought]

Part 2

I had to cut this off the previous post because I had exceeded the character limit.

Antony:
Just a quick question. It's regarding FF&S1 and those dreaded work stations and accomodations. Was there a reason that the sizes were increased so much. For example crew in the Panther tank example in Striker 1, the seated crewmen take up 1.5m3 each with the standing crew taking 2.5m3 split between the turret and chassis. Now in FF&S1 they all require a crewstation requiring 3.5m3 which makes it very hard to get a vehicle anywhere near that of a real vehicle.

I know of what you speak with the Panther example, but I can't remember the details of the FF&S workstations or the intent around them. I remember doing a lot of work around space required for passengers, ability to get in and out, etc. (and not honestly being satisfied that we had gotten it all the way), and that reasoning should have informed workstation size, but I can't remember much about it. Is it possible that the 3.5m3 workstations were for starships and long-term inhabited vehicles only, and there were smaller ones for short-term vehicles?

I will try to continue to answer all the questions on this thread in the coming days.

Hopefully some of you will see that your questions were answered, and have not all just gone away to other pursuits since 2004.

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

As Daryen find it "sleazy" to start at page 20 scanning for questions, I have scanned the previous pages too and tried to find those that Dave haven't answered.

So in no particular order:

Daryen (p.18)
The only thing that holds the Aslan together and keeps them from being a complicated mess of feuding clans is the Tlaukhu. If the Tlaukhu is removed, then the Aslan are quickly reduced to a complicated (and dangerous) mess of intertwined clans, vassals, feuds, and wars.

So, did you intend for there to be a Tlaukhu successor to be in "power", or did you intend for there to be a gradual fragmentation of the Aslan

Neither. Similar to post-3I, there would be one or more post-Tlaukhu claimants trying to pull things back together, but there is not a gradual fragmentation of the Aslan. Rather, we are seeing the fact of fragmentation prior to 1200 and the responses to it/fallout from it. You shouldn't see the idea of multiple Tlaukhu claimants in the same way as the Imperial "Rebellion" factions in that they deliberately went after each other, but as a response to the dislocation of the Collapse. Granted, this fragmentation will lead to conflict, but as you say that's supposed to be the nature of the Aslan. However, there would also be forces within the Aslan saying, "you know, we can learn something from this collapse thing and maybe we can do things differently." And of course there would be people (Aslan--they're all people, because they're all played by people--anyone hate me yet?) who don't agree with that.

Daryen again (p.15)
Actually, the refugees are another one of my quibbles with the RSB. First, the number given isn't quite tenable. I mean 30 billion arriving in a single year? How can the logistics of just the traffic control even work?

Quibbling means you read it. Traveller without quibbling is steel without iron. It wasn't supposed to be tenable. You can't very well say, "this is a bad thing" without details that demonstrate that it really is a bad thing. Clearly a vast amount of resources are being expended on this by all parties involved, and people are dying and starving and starting terrorist cells and displacing others who flee and displace others, and shipping is being sucked up, etc. The term "traffic control" presupposes control. If there isn't control, then it must be a bad thing.

TNE_GM (p.14)
1. Where did the time frame come from for the TNE story line? I mean the in-game time line. I have always wondered about the "Short Night" just being 70 years and how much history/knowledge would be lost in that time frame. It has always seemed too short a period for me. (Although it never detracted from my enjoyment of the TNE line.)

I wish that every time someone said, "the Long Night," "the Short Night," "the Short Nap," etc., they had to send Poul Anderson a nickel. But he's dead, so I suppose it doesn't matter. It was a compromise based on the goal that it had to be long enough to matter, but short enough so that in all of the locations where a GM might want to start a TNE campaign things could still be recognizable, and there would be multiple options to keep PCs alive through it, and relic technology might still work. 270 years vs. 70 might not matter much in the Wilds, but they would make for trouble for folks that wanted the Regency to still feel like the Spinward Marches or Domain of Deneb. Also, the point behind the RC and Hiver prodding that led to it was that the "night" (5 cents, Mr. Anderson) would/could have gone on much longer and kept spiralling down had there not been some kind of action. In fact, pressures on the Regency might have caused it to fail in 270 years, had not our plucky band of players seized on this ripe moment to go out and reverse the collapse. Also, 1200 was just a really nice, round, easily factorable number to restart a calendar at, something you cannot say about 1300 or 1400.

So, as a compromise, it makes no one happy, but if we had focus grouped it, they'd still be arguing.

2. This is a combined question. What is you favorite TNE product? Also, what do you think makes (made) Traveller (and TNE) attractive to you?

Probably RSB or RCVG, because those allowed me to go back and re-visit the oldest strata of Traveller, so it was a cool archaeological dig. For RSB I re-read almost every Traveller thing ever published to update it, and that was a lot of fun. Ditto for RCVG pulling out the old vehicles that had been established and updating them, or actually designing them for the first time based on the small bits of information that had been published, so it was a trip back to all of the Traveller stuff I played years before. Also H&I, because it let me play with all this established wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels dogma and think about what ground was firm or if it all was shifting. Frank has observed that TNE was the first post-modern RPG, which is a fun notion to consider, whether it's true or not. Finally, they say, "write what you know," and it gave me a chance to use going insane for inspiration. Striker II, RCEG, Star Vikings, BL, Arrival Vengeance (in reality a TNE product, though still MT system), Survival Margin, all hold special places in my heart for varieties of reasons.

What made TNE attractive to me? It was my job, I had a relationship far closer to it than one which allows you to ask if it's attractive or not. TNE and I were foxhole buddies, a bond far closer than attractiveness, but which makes it by definition attractive in its own right.

That was a fun question to answer, thank you. Hope you're still here to read it eight years later.

Stephen Tempest (p.11)
One end of the Vampire Highway was, presumably, the Black Curtain. Was there anything significant at the other end?

Cymbeline.

What happened to (the real) Strephon's worlds after Virus hit? Completely destroyed?

I never decided, but struggled with it. Logically, a lot of stuff had to just be flat out destroyed, you couldn't have a "unique" survivor at the heart of all of them. But Strephon was a sentimental favorite of mine, along with Craig. So I would have liked for them to survive in some fashion, even though logically, like everyone else, they probably had to get smacked by a truck.

Jon Crocker (p.11)
oh yeah, who's that Lady in Black on the cover of the book?

The vision in Strephon's mind that gave the name to The Empress Wave.

I think this was all. I have certainly missed some, but could you please post them below here?

More later. If you're still out there.

 

[Dreadnought]

Dave answered my question on Lancer / Fusilier in the Belladonna thread.

Okay, that sounds right. What was it, Lancer/Fusilier was short hull and Belladonna long? Or something more complicated? Kind of makes you wonder why you ask me questions if I have to ask you what my answer was.

 

[Dreadnought]

Chips

As to the Vampire Highway - I think DN confirmed it was Cymbeline.

But I have question being the Earth nut that I am - as Cymbeline is so near to Terra, that the Cymbeline lifeform is uplifted from the Terran Milspec chip - what was left at Cymbeline and how did the Virus deal with the fact that it originated partly on Earth?

Mr Nilsen - if there is no official answer I would be very grateful for you to just make on up.... (i'll probably regret that...)

By the way did the virus have any affection for the naval research base on Celeron (isn't that something to do with Intel (cue annoying tune)?)

Cymbeline is still there, but there is all manner of evidence that weirdness has gone on. Some suicidy vampires went there with the intent of destroying their misbegotten ancestors who caused the pain they live in, and slagged parts of Cymbeline. Other protector-y vampires defended them, and fought off the ones who wanted to hurt them. Hobbyists wanted to study them or build shrines to them, so imagine structures built from extemporized equipment and materials fashioned by whatever labor the vampire could coerce. And naturally all of these vampires would have ended up getting involved with the wild chips, infecting them, hybridizing with them, leading to the rise of new races of chips with different characteristics. Some of these became more stable personalities, some not. There are vampire supervised breeding farms, vampire supervised "wild game preserves," and these things by now exist in a form of uneasy balance, there having evolved a leadership of protectors/hobbyists who stay there, fend off violent ones who come in, and "re-educate" (i.e., infect, over-write) those they can with more acceptable motivations. These are probably the leaders and organizers who are behind the secret shipyard, but I don't know if Frank was going to go into that.

Actually, Elliot, I have no official answers, just "stuff that dumb old Dave says." As for the Earth connection, some Vampires would have gone there, but there is not the beaten path there that there is between Cymbeline and the Black Curtain.

Yes, a Celeron connection would be appropriate, as would many research stations, manufacturing facilities that might be taken over, etc., that a vampire would be aware of in its databases, but I had not had anything that detailed in mind. In general, you have to hold off nailing down a lot of details until you're actually working on that product. Until then, there are a lot of general ideas held in suspension, and some of those even change once ink starts hitting paper.

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

The one from Jon Crocker was a joke. It was explained that he was the only person who entered the "Who's the Lady in Black" contest, and so won, and that later, an important character was named after him (Jonathon Crocker, the guy who implanted the memory into Strephon).

Thanks for reminding me of that. I always thought it was funny that I would run these little contests in Challenge and get no responses at all. Sort of puts it all in perspective. Just a couple more letters saying, "I hate Commodore Bwana. Traveller is not supposed to be funny, and he's not funny anyway. No one enjoys a good joke more than me, except for my wife, and a few of her friends, and Captain Johnson."