A Dear John letter to an entire universe.
Sep. 11th, 2010 05:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gridloreDear Third Imperium,
It's not you, it's me. I know, we've been together for over thirty years, but I've grown in that time and you? Well, let's be honest. You're still rehashing things that were first published decades ago, trying to make them look shiny in new editions. I remember when we first met. Adventure 1: The Kinunir. How young we were! How naive! The Imperium had Senators? 1200dt was a battle cruiser? Oh, the fun we had! And the fun went on, for a time, but then things started turning. Although I didn't see it at the time, you were already stagnant, already crippled by your inability to grow. You promised me epic games of exploration, and what did I get? A default setting surrounded on all sides by long-established cultures, not a frontier in sight!
What's worse is how mundane you made everything. I'm capable of getting on a plane and going to any number of paces on this planet where the language, culture, religion.. all of it changes and is fascinating. But you, given thousands of star systems and dozens of alien races and variant humans, distill everything down to a pale vanilla. Why travel, when every world is the same? Then there are your alleged "threats." Yes, I'm bitter. Remember the barbarians from the original Battle of the Two Suns? They became the evil Zhodani.. but you couldn't leave well enough alone and hemmed and hawed until Zhodani society began to look a damn slight better than Imperial society did! You emasculated the big threat in the setting! What else did you have? The Vargr? Established that they couldn't organize enough to be a threat. The Aslan? For some reason this allegedly fractious band of clans has saw fit not to launch any kind of attack for several centuries. The Solomani? Dime-store fascists still plotting to get their capital back. The Hivers? Clever idea, but badly executed. And the one race that should have been launching million-ship, epic space opera, damn we need a hero now, crusades against human space, the K'kree, seemed content to trade with species that we were told represented absolute evil in their mindset. A K'kree wouldn't trade with a human just because that particular human stuck with a vegan diet for a month. Humans are g'naack! We eat meat, and deserve to die! The Imperial Navy and Marines should have been locked in a centuries-long war against the unending hordes from K'kree space! But no, they - and you - wimped out.
What's that? "The Rebellion"? Don't make me laugh. First of all, competing factions fighting over the throne is not a rebellion, it's a civil war. Had Dulinor attempted to leave the Imperium, that would have been a Rebellion. But even then you failed. It took about seven books before somebody realized that wars suck, and released Hard Times. Too little, too late. Traveller: TNE failed because instead of a frontier, it gave us established settings that hadn't really fallen that far. Marc Miller's Traveller could have been good, but you filled up too many worlds with space faring cultures! Again, no damn frontiers!
So the time has come, Third Imperium. I've found a new universe. The GrimDark future of Warhammer 40k. I'll admit we've been flirting for a while now, but having read several of the novels (something you never bothered to do more than half-heartedly) and read the rules for Dark Heresy, I'm leaving you. WH40K gives me what I need, endless variety, conflicts with a real bite and reason, adventure possibilities up the wazoo, and with warp storms and the variable nature of the immaterium, frontiers opening up constantly. Aliens that are truly alien, and an over-arching foe in Chaos that can drive campaigns for years. A living universe teeming with culture, flavor, and opportunities for desperate struggles to win fame, fortune, and the future of mankind.
Good luck with the updated material from the 80s.
It's not you, it's me. I know, we've been together for over thirty years, but I've grown in that time and you? Well, let's be honest. You're still rehashing things that were first published decades ago, trying to make them look shiny in new editions. I remember when we first met. Adventure 1: The Kinunir. How young we were! How naive! The Imperium had Senators? 1200dt was a battle cruiser? Oh, the fun we had! And the fun went on, for a time, but then things started turning. Although I didn't see it at the time, you were already stagnant, already crippled by your inability to grow. You promised me epic games of exploration, and what did I get? A default setting surrounded on all sides by long-established cultures, not a frontier in sight!
What's worse is how mundane you made everything. I'm capable of getting on a plane and going to any number of paces on this planet where the language, culture, religion.. all of it changes and is fascinating. But you, given thousands of star systems and dozens of alien races and variant humans, distill everything down to a pale vanilla. Why travel, when every world is the same? Then there are your alleged "threats." Yes, I'm bitter. Remember the barbarians from the original Battle of the Two Suns? They became the evil Zhodani.. but you couldn't leave well enough alone and hemmed and hawed until Zhodani society began to look a damn slight better than Imperial society did! You emasculated the big threat in the setting! What else did you have? The Vargr? Established that they couldn't organize enough to be a threat. The Aslan? For some reason this allegedly fractious band of clans has saw fit not to launch any kind of attack for several centuries. The Solomani? Dime-store fascists still plotting to get their capital back. The Hivers? Clever idea, but badly executed. And the one race that should have been launching million-ship, epic space opera, damn we need a hero now, crusades against human space, the K'kree, seemed content to trade with species that we were told represented absolute evil in their mindset. A K'kree wouldn't trade with a human just because that particular human stuck with a vegan diet for a month. Humans are g'naack! We eat meat, and deserve to die! The Imperial Navy and Marines should have been locked in a centuries-long war against the unending hordes from K'kree space! But no, they - and you - wimped out.
What's that? "The Rebellion"? Don't make me laugh. First of all, competing factions fighting over the throne is not a rebellion, it's a civil war. Had Dulinor attempted to leave the Imperium, that would have been a Rebellion. But even then you failed. It took about seven books before somebody realized that wars suck, and released Hard Times. Too little, too late. Traveller: TNE failed because instead of a frontier, it gave us established settings that hadn't really fallen that far. Marc Miller's Traveller could have been good, but you filled up too many worlds with space faring cultures! Again, no damn frontiers!
So the time has come, Third Imperium. I've found a new universe. The GrimDark future of Warhammer 40k. I'll admit we've been flirting for a while now, but having read several of the novels (something you never bothered to do more than half-heartedly) and read the rules for Dark Heresy, I'm leaving you. WH40K gives me what I need, endless variety, conflicts with a real bite and reason, adventure possibilities up the wazoo, and with warp storms and the variable nature of the immaterium, frontiers opening up constantly. Aliens that are truly alien, and an over-arching foe in Chaos that can drive campaigns for years. A living universe teeming with culture, flavor, and opportunities for desperate struggles to win fame, fortune, and the future of mankind.
Good luck with the updated material from the 80s.
Douglas Berry, aka Sir Arameth Gridlore
Master and Commander of theFree Rogue Trader Estimated Prophet
Master and Commander of the
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Well...
Date: 12 Sep 2010 03:22 (UTC)I'm glad to see something close to my dreams in Rogue Trader, only wish it wasn't so GrimDark...
If tomorrow morning you could write the Traveller of your dreams, what would it be?
Re: Well...
Date: 12 Sep 2010 06:50 (UTC)Re: Well...
Date: 12 Sep 2010 13:32 (UTC)I've posted two (http://gridlore.livejournal.com/1330708.html) variant (http://gridlore.livejournal.com/1510261.html) Imperiums. Either of those would have been better than the OTU in my opinion. I also would have made the Zhodani more evangelical about spreading the joys of their telepathic mind-control paradise.
no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 03:27 (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 03:29 (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 13:36 (UTC)A lot of the Space Opera setting guides were good, and remain useful for idea looting.
no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 16:00 (UTC)odd what if thought.. what could Michael Stackpole have done with a traveller novel?
no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 05:20 (UTC)... and I -love- the name of your ship!
no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 13:40 (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 08:04 (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 13:48 (UTC)A good comparison is Iain Bank's Culture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture) in terms of scale and reach.
no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 16:03 (UTC)no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 16:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Sep 2010 21:05 (UTC)by Douglas & Kirsten Berry
music: "American Pie" by Don McLean
A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how the first game stirred my soul
Known Space on the StarForce map
A handfull of stolen dice and that
Was all it took to make my dreams take flight
Every weekend at the game store
With my ten hard-earned bucks to buy some more
Now twenty years have flown past
With wars and life and mishaps
I know I'm not that wide-eyed teen
But I still look up and I still dream
Whatever comes I do believe
I still will play this game
(Chorus)
So bye bye, I'm goin' Travellin' tonight
The rules set may be changing
But the concept's all right
And it lets me travel through the stars and through time
Saying: Gonna play this game 'til I die
Gonna play this game 'til I die
Do you remember when CT
Was only Books 1,2, and 3
and a homespun setting that you wrote
Do you recall Bill and Andrew Keith
Early FASA and JG [3]
All the products out to help us play
And slowly the Imperium came to light
With enemies for us to fight
Then in Supplement 3
We First met the Zhodani
It was a glorious time of change and growth
And we couldn't ever get enough
So we sat down and wrote our own stuff
And I still played this game
I told my mother...
(Chorus)
Then came some folks called DGP
About as passionate as you or me
About this universe we'd made
They filled in all the holes and cracks
They fixed some rules, they wrote a patch
And changed the way the game was played
But GDW had a plan
Strephon died at an assassin's hand
The Imperium fell to war
Much worse than before
And in '87 we got MT
To play through this galactic catastrophe
But the new rules didn't mean much to me
'cause still, I played the game
I told my girlfriend.
(Chorus)
For six years, we played through Hard Times
While pretenders fled and planets died
And we wondered how it all would end
Then we got the horrid news
About a Virus that would use
Any means to kill humaniti
TNE made its bright debut
While the Old Timers hissed and booed
Much dissent was spoken
The TML was broken!
And while X-Boat waxed on days gone by
GDW up and died
The hard core fans sent up a cry
They can't have killed our game
They told their children...
(Chorus)
Then Marc Miller took back control
And promised Traveller like we had before
But did they try to push too fast?
For T4 was a sorry mess
Barely edited and the rest
Of the releases, well they didn't shine much more
The authors grumbled we've not been paid
Imperium Games quietly sped away
Then Loren brought our reprieve
A deal with Evil Steve
A return to all those Classic themes
Of hard-sf and future dreams
It may be GURPS, but what the beans?
I still will play this game
We'll tell our grandkids...
(Chorus)
(slowly)
Now twenty years and more have past
From first edition to the last
But the setting is the game to me
I went down to my local store
Where I bought the first books years before
But that store now is part of history
And nowadays the kids play Magic
Glitterboys or Vampires tragic
No more the sound of parties-
Instead, the hum of PCs
And books for which I once did lust
Sit on the shelf collecting dust
But I have them and that's enough
For still, I play this game
(Chorus, slowly)
(Chorus)
no subject
Date: 12 Sep 2010 16:35 (UTC)always been an Imperium free zone.
no subject
Date: 13 Sep 2010 19:54 (UTC)no subject
Date: 13 Sep 2010 20:56 (UTC)But the problem...
Date: 14 Sep 2010 19:22 (UTC)Re: But the problem...
Date: 14 Sep 2010 23:27 (UTC)