Apologies for the length of this post. It needed some in depth treatment...
MWM's been trying to get buy in for multiple times in the OTU setting for T5 for the last two years.
I don't buy into MWM's oddity.
Multiple settings are fine. Multiple timepoints in the same setting are not; it felt bad to be playing "In the past" with T4.
I would like to see a "fresh write" of the Imperial setting, matching the design sequences, rules mechanics, and "fill text" to make a cohesive core.
SOme examples of how this failed in prior editions:
1) Battle Dress. BD was mentioned in CT Bk3, required vacc suit skill only. Bk 4 made a separate skill for it, but not many marines got it, and fewer army types. JTAS, in an article which many claim to be canonical, had Loren put forth that ALL Imperial Marines are BD troops. MT completely ignored the article. TNE sidestepped it, but it is a baseline for RC Marines. T4 again did not make it automatic for marines. GT comes out, and in it ALL marines are required to have Battlesuit skill, albeit at a trivial level. In T20, there was serious argument in playtest over the canonicity of Loren's article. Sanity won out, and it was (in part due to my own longwinded diatribes) made it so GM's could mandate BD without making it mandated for GM's who didn't follow the "All marines are BD troopies" mentality.
Another such issue is the "Kinunir Controversy". Is it a cruiser? Well, in a Bk2 universe, sure. In a HG universe, it's a close escort.
Likewise, the Gazelle... in Bk2 universes, it's a real battlecruiser. In a median universe, where a Kinunir is a CL, it's basically a destroyer. In a HG2 universe, it's a target, and below the scope of real military vessels.
The Type T: Is it a Corvette? A Cutter? A Cruiser? In a pure Bk2 universe, it's a functional light cruiser. In a HG universe, it's a gnat, perhaps a cutter. In a Median universe, it's smaller than a Gazelle, so it might be a decent corvette (fast escort).
Bridges: the kind on ships, that is. Bk2 and Bk5 ships have a minimum size of 20 T, and require 2% of hull or the minimum size... but we know that that excludes the computer. MT Ships have no bridge design sequence; total the control panels and the seats to find the bridge space... seldom terribly big. TNE goes to 1T per bridge crewman... T4 keeps that. T20 is back to the HG 2%/20T min.
Ship Sizes: The Bk2 universes are 5000Td or less. The HG/T20 universe tops out at 1MTd. The TNE/T4 universe, due to radiator constraints, tops out about 50KTd for warships, and IIRC, around 250KTd for merchantmen. I don't know the limits for GT.
Is the army local or imperial: CT makes it look imperial. MT implies local. TNE sidesteps, by being RC, and Local. T4 is apparently imperial. T20 is local, but GM's can make it imperial easily. GT is localized, but GM's can have an Imperial Army by using GTL12 for IA troops.
Nobles: How much power do they have? Canon addresses only the power of world nobles. CT, we have two articles, and a lot of innuendo implying, but never stating, vast amounts of power for the Serving Landed Nobility. MT does little to mitigate this, and reprints one of the two articles almost verbatim. TNE again sidesteps, by not being set in the Imperium. T4 makes it far less certain that nobles have a lot of power, but again, by being in a different timeline zone, can't be used to answer for the other setting points. T20 implies a good bit of power, but not direct power. GT, it depends upon which advantages you take...
These are the kinds of things a new setting NEEDS to solve to survive in todays market place, where "fill text" is often more than 3/4ths of the product.
(Most GURPS supplements, including much of the GT line, is this way. BTC is almost entirely fill, GTFT is about 1/3 fill... and most of that is explanation of the method, rather than actual setting info. As an Aside; GTFT is the prescribed trade and commerce model for GPD... where I see it fitting better, due to FTL commo.)
The lightest "Fill Text Level" products on the market are D&D3.5E PH and DMG, at about 10% (the religions, the technology, and some other bits, mostly scattered), Hero System Rulebook, at about 3% for HSR5, (vs 20% for 4th Ed Champions, and up to 30% for several HS3 products), and GURPS core rules, at about 10% based upon 3R (I don't have 4, and won't buy it. If you really think I need GURPS 4, send me a PM, and I'll send you the snail address to ship it to...)
Anything by WWG is about 50-80% fill. Most D20 core rules by other than WOTC run at least 25% setting fill. T20 among them.
By fill text, I'm talking anything which is neither rules nor direct explanation of why rules are or how they work. So examples are not "fill text" nor are rules, but the intro blurbs in the chapters of many games probably are. monster description texts clearly are, except for the parts that describe special abilities; monster stat blocks aren't.
Don't get me wrong: Fill Text is important in modern RPG's. It really helps when the fill supports and is supported by the rules.
Traveller has survived on Good Fill, and Good rules, but not Good Fill supporting Good Rules. They have disagreed often. I've had players decline to play upon finding out that MTU is not an "All marines are BD troops" or "Landed Nobles have direct charge of ALL starports."
So, I'd rather see a clear setting attached to the assumptions in the rules than any pre-extant setting tied to the new ruleset.
In that respect, TNE was fine; there was no imperium, so there were no multi-hundred-kilo-displacement-ton Battleships... and so the fact that they can't be built to "Known" specs in TNE is far less obvious until a gearhead tried to rewrite the AHL... and found that she can't be made to happen in FF&S, at least not with published stats from Supp 5.
Likewise, if you're going to have 500KTd BB's, you'd better be able to actually make them fly at relative combat speeds in the rules. If you're going to have a massive tradeflow setting, ala GTFT, you'd better have a world generation system which makes more sense in that environment.
