Thank's Dave.

[mike wightman]

Thanks Dave.

Just a visible big thank you to Dave Nilsen for popping back and answering all these questions.

It is very much appreciated to get an insight into TNE.

Is it ok to ask more

 

[Dragoner]

Yes! My thanks as well, it great to read the answers, and this isn't from the groggie POV but of a GM/Player where I use mong mechanics, but many ideas rooted in TNE. For example, virus keeps evolving ...

 

[Cryton]

Very much thank you Dave. And welcome back to the COTI boards! You have answered a lot of my questions about why TNE was set up as it was!

 

[Dreadnought]

You're very welcome.

Is it ok to ask more

Yes, that would be fine, I'll do my best to answer. Just try to keep the, "Is it true you suck because..." questions down to a minimum.

Dave

 

[Dreadnought]

... but many ideas rooted in TNE. For example, virus keeps evolving ...

What? You have virus in your campaign? Don't you know that would never happen? ;-)

 

[Dreadnought]

Very much thank you Dave. And welcome back to the COTI boards! You have answered a lot of my questions about why TNE was set up as it was!

You're welcome!

 

[Dragoner]

What? You have virus in your campaign? Don't you know that would never happen? ;-)

Never say never.

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/traveller-beyond-the-frontier/adventure-log

 

[Dreadnought]

Never say never.

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/traveller-beyond-the-frontier/adventure-log

Cool! I am a sucker for anything with dirigibles in it. Sadly, we keep not quite getting them to be the safe, reliable, serene skyships we want. One day when I was still in Bloomington I got to watch one of the Goodyear blimps struggle its way through cross-country flight past my house. It was down at low level, porpoising like crazy, staggering around, engines howling. And it was making just about walking speed. It seemed like a nice, normal day, but obviously not for the blimp.

Dave

 

[Dragoner]

Cool! I am a sucker for anything with dirigibles in it. Sadly, we keep not quite getting them to be the safe, reliable, serene skyships we want. One day when I was still in Bloomington I got to watch one of the Goodyear blimps struggle its way through cross-country flight past my house. It was down at low level, porpoising like crazy, staggering around, engines howling. And it was making just about walking speed. It seemed like a nice, normal day, but obviously not for the blimp.

Dave

With the airships, I started thinking about how the dense atmosphere would affect lift, it would take more heat to charge the air mass, but the air mass would retain the heat longer; then my thoughts wandered to the stoichiometric fuel air mixture in the engines with the dense atmosphere and I realized I was over thinking it and my players wouldn't care, and they never asked about either. C'est la trav.

I lived in California for years, everytime there was a game, the fuji and other blimps would come out and circle around the city, they really do rev their engines.

 

[Dreadnought]

I lived in California for years, everytime there was a game, the fuji and other blimps would come out and circle around the city, they really do rev their engines.

Back in the '70s if you sent a letter to Goodyear saying, "I like blimps" they'd send you a massive package of booklets and 8x10 glossies of the history of their blimps. I think they were Mayflower, America, and Columbia back then. I was a very happy teenager.

 

[Dragoner]

Back in the '70s if you sent a letter to Goodyear saying, "I like blimps" they'd send you a massive package of booklets and 8x10 glossies of the history of their blimps. I think they were Mayflower, America, and Columbia back then. I was a very happy teenager.

I had a model of the Goodyear Blimp (probably in the late 70's), where it had a battery powered scrolling display, pretty complex now thinking about it, all mechanical where now it would be just LED's and look far better.

Going back to TNE; you know that I can't help but think games like Eclipse Phase, that just recently came out, that have a sort of virus apocalypse, owe a lot to TNE. There is another, called Nova Praxis, with a similar meme, but I do not know as much about it.

 

[Dreadnought]

I had a model of the Goodyear Blimp (probably in the late 70's), where it had a battery powered scrolling display, pretty complex now thinking about it, all mechanical where now it would be just LED's and look far better.

Yeah, my little brother had that. I think it was Monogram or Revell. It was pretty sweet in its day, though.

Going back to TNE; you know that I can't help but think games like Eclipse Phase, that just recently came out, that have a sort of virus apocalypse, owe a lot to TNE. There is another, called Nova Praxis, with a similar meme, but I do not know as much about it.

Yeah, maybe we were just ahead of our time. ;-) I think that sort of stuff plays better to popular imagination now, with Stuxnet and all of that, than it did to the Traveller base who were computer early adopters back in the 90s.

 

[Greylond]

There's a guy that comes to MidSouthCon here(major regional SciFi Con) who comes in SteamPunk costume and brings a Remote Control Blimp. Very cool looking.

 

[Dreadnought]

There's a guy that comes to MidSouthCon here(major regional SciFi Con) who comes in SteamPunk costume and brings a Remote Control Blimp. Very cool looking.

I've seen pictures of those, usually in those airline in-flight catalogs, and vaguely wanted one. They'd have to be easier to fly than those helicopters, though I'm sure those are getting better.

I built a wooden model of the USS Macon (ZRS-5) in my 7th grade industrial arts class. And fantasized about building a flying model dirigible, but the technology wasn't really there back then.

 

[Dragoner]

Yeah, maybe we were just ahead of our time. ;-) I think that sort of stuff plays better to popular imagination now, with Stuxnet and all of that, than it did to the Traveller base who were computer early adopters back in the 90s.

Sometimes I think about what TNE could have been without being saddled with the enormous baggage of Traveller. I love Trav, though I would bet TNE could have stood on it's own as it's own game, esp after seeing Eclipse Phase and others.

 

[Greylond]

I've seen pictures of those, usually in those airline in-flight catalogs, and vaguely wanted one. They'd have to be easier to fly than those helicopters, though I'm sure those are getting better.

I built a wooden model of the USS Macon (ZRS-5) in my 7th grade industrial arts class. And fantasized about building a flying model dirigible, but the technology wasn't really there back then.

MidSouthCon is really good for Hardware SciFi Fans. There's another guy that brings a full size R2/D2 replica that is R/C that he built. It looks and sounds perfect.

 

[Dreadnought]

Sometimes I think about what TNE could have been without being saddled with the enormous baggage of Traveller.

Yeah, but GDW learned its lesson about that with Traveller:2300. You can't replace Traveller, you can only self-compete with it. The House Rules deal was supposed to allow us to make one-offs like Mongoose is doing now, but we didn't get that far. There was always going to have to be a Traveller. Back in the early '90s I don't think it was as clear as it is now how balkanized the base was. Or maybe it was as clear, but now there is just that much more experimental evidence to quantify and reinforce it.

It is interesting to read the grognard analysis of when Traveller went off the rails. Somewhere after Book 3 but definitely by Spinward Marches or Library Data. Selling Traveller is not like selling deodorant or laundry detergent.

 

[Dragoner]

It is interesting to read the grognard analysis of when Traveller went off the rails.

But what do they know?


I'm slacking right now from writing a paper on the analysis of degrees from BLS data; back at Purdue getting another degree after 20 years, this time in business. It would be interesting to see the actual data from GDW to do an analysis, much more interesting than the term paper I turned in last month on the rise and fall of IBM and GM, I called it: "Rise and fall of the Megacorps", my professor even wrote me a note she liked the name.

My instinct says that GDW went from leading edge to bleeding edge, a fairly normal situation as a market matures, and if any product began to cannibalize sales it was Solomani Rim.

However, my thoughts toward TNE being independent are more to what ideas could have been developed more, such as transhumanism, and what would not have had to have been there, such as the 2D stellar cartography.

 

[Dreadnought]

I'm slacking right now from writing a paper on the analysis of degrees from BLS data; back at Purdue getting another degree after 20 years, this time in business. It would be interesting to see the actual data from GDW to do an analysis, much more interesting than the term paper I turned in last month on the rise and fall of IBM and GM.

Since most things in life give me twinges of regret, I'll share this one. We had weekly production meetings at GDW, and at each one every staff member got the current production schedule and the current warehouse report of orders, shipments, current sales, YTD, etc. As is my wont, being a data/records/history freak, I saved them all in a series of boxes, until during one move, I finally listened to the people harping, "throw that stuff away, you'll never use it again" (I have always found these people to be wrong, but sometimes I am weak). So I did. You are only about the dozenth person who has reminded me that it would be cool to be able to look back at that stuff. Also, I can no longer remember release dates of our products.

Marc's wife remained as our office manager for a few years, and Marc obviously remained an owner, so I know he would have had this stuff, that's probably the only place where that stuff resides anymore. Frank was not a big paper-saver, and although Loren was, he has moved so many times since then I'm sure he's had to let it go.

Dave

 

[Dragoner]

No worries, nothing to regret, at some point it would be walking into a minefield; which tempers casual interest greatly.

I am very Thankful for what you did with TNE, I use the ideas now.