A Dear John letter to an entire universe.

[gridlore]

Dear 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.

Douglas Berry, aka Sir Arameth Gridlore
Master and Commander of the Free Rogue Trader Estimated Prophet

Comments

Well...

[zakueins.livejournal.com]

First of all, I think they did pull off a pretty good version in GURPS Traveller. The rest did kind of blow big biomatter chunks.

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?

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite ready to completely cross to 40K, but I agree on a lot of your points, please keep us informed on your 40Kish ramblings...

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

if I was to take a set non traveller sf gaming universe to re-engineer for traveller, two come to mind, The Merchantile League from Space Opera, or a very modified version of the Battletech universe sans mecha

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Great letter and valid complaints. Lo I recall the first days of Traveller, when I was deciding which game to referee - Traveller or Space Opera. To be honest waaaay back then I went with Space Opera because I heard Traveller was planning to put out 'several' more booklets .... and I wanted to go with the option that let me design the universe more to my liking. ^_^

... and I -love- the name of your ship!

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Isn't 40K's setting just as static, however? A more dynamic and chaotic equilibrium, yes - much like modern theories suggest of what we once considered boring, empty vacuum - but ultimately unchanging. Things have been the way they are for millennia and will continue to be so as far as we can foresee. There is little or no technological or social change, little hope for the future beyond another day's survival; only war, war without end. (By the grace of the Emperor, amen.)

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

and theres plenty of room for minatures battles, especially with the epic scale rules, epic scale is roughly 1/300th. so you could use other vehicle minatures etc too

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

Doug could you please re-post the song about traveller to the tune of American Pie, or just a link to it?

[crankyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

hence my use of the infrastructure implied in the rules rather than the setting.

always been an Imperium free zone.

[allen shock (from livejournal.com)]

Left Traveller myself. I am now running Thousand Suns when I run "Imperial science fiction". Dark Heresy was too dark for my crowd but the universe is way cool. I am slowly piecing together my own setting for TS and I like the gam way better than even the current iteration of Traveller.

But the problem...

[(Anonymous)]

...is that I cannot think of WH40K without THIS (http://media.gamerevolution.com/images/misc/image/hello-kitty-40k.jpg) image popping into my head....