Thoughts for today:

1.  Do not load your iPod when you are in a pissed-off mood.
2. No matter how much you move it around, your iPod will not move the cursor on your screen......dammit !

I was old School before YOU were old school.......

 So, right.   Here is why I'm paraphrasing the wonderful words of the Tubes....Its not just that I started pretty much in 1975 with three little books that explicitly mentioned Balrogs (more on this later), Ents and Hobbits; it's not just that the only other guy I know personally that has played longer than me has a brown box that he bought from EGG on the basis of it being a chainmail expansion. Nor is it that I never needed an OSR clone* because I still own multiple copies of the original rules, and use them whenever I want to run D&D.  ...It's not even that basically, I've never liked 1E or 2E and firmly considered B/X to be kiddie sanitized marketing tools. 

Hell, it's not even relevant that I'm old enough to want to quote the Tubes on my Blog......

See, those things just mean that I'm an ancient opinionated grognard blowhard who is  ....well, opinionated, possibly undersocialized, certainly too damn sure of himself, and has been playing games since the internet really didn't exist unless you were a colossal technical geek, as well as a gaming geek -and being a gamer had nothing to do with the crude computer ported video games you played. 

Here is why I was OS before you were OS:  In the mid 1980's, back when ADD was all the rage, and the edition wars were about B?X vs ADD......

(and let me tell you, without the forums and blogs and websites, you had to work your ass off to be a divisive polarizing black-and-white-thinking shit-stirring partisan about editions.)

......my buddy and I decided that it would be really cool to run an old fashioned D&D game, using the three little books and some hunt and peck from the supplements.    And we did. For several years. We called it the Nostalgia game at first, but it was really really always the real D&D game to us.

We did this when D&D as a CONCEPT Was Barely Ten FrikkinYears Old ; Gary was still at TSR (abeit fighting with the Blumes and Lorraine Williams and on the way out).  TEN YEARS OLD

yes that's right.  Less than eight years after AD&D was on the Market, He and I were all nostalgic for the simpler retro days of D&D.  .......and that was more than 25 years ago. One quarter of a century ago we were consumed by the desire for a simpler ruleset that was less than a decade old.  We were loons. 

 He is currently posting his campaign stuff on his blog, including (so far) the campaign intro and guidelines, and the surprisingly effective set of house rules for playing my unselfconsciously gonzo OD&D rules approved BALROG. Named Nesbitt.  Read here.  I so command it.

That children, is why I Was a Punk before You Were a Punk.

*Note that I still buy them , run them and play them; and as we know, shill willingly for Swords and Wizardry. That is because I am A Hopeless Case. And they are Excellent rules.  And, well...hopeless case.  Me.  Y'know.

Some last thoughts on the T5 Kickstarter

Well, it broke 2000 backers and $250,000; as has been posted elsewhere, to the grump all this proves it that it is mindless peer pressure and fanboi lack of critical thinking (1) ;  a somewhat questionable assumption, but perhaps they know best.  However, reading one reasonable complaint (2), I realized why I chipped in, and it has little to do with critical thinking (of the kind that weighs everything in terms of what fungible value it gets for me right now)

Here's my thought on the matter:

Honestly, I could not care less [about where the money raise over and above producing the promised product if there is any] . Seriously, I get a product I already like the beta version of, in a format that is, by todays expenses, worth the basic retail price: 75$. If the extra money goes to Marc and FFE for their 501K, no problem for me. plus, consider how much of the final price of any gaming product does not go tho the actual author - I can easily see it as helping him getting a better than 20% return for each dollar you spend on his product when it goes thru normal production. Basic wholesale is 30 -40% of cover -and ask Matt how much of that gets lost due to every other damned thing before the owner gets paid.

See, I like RPGs, I appreciate the work and passion that goes into them, and the ways they enrich my free time and friendships. Assuming even 75% of the money is over and above the upgraded version that the stretches represent, amortize it over 40 years of RPG design for Marc, and it is a small annuity indeed.

Frankly, too, of the main designers of my favorite hobby, a distressing number of them can hardly be said to have profited by their efforts; and if one of them gets a bit of a bump at the end of his career, well, okay by me. Perhaps that will encourage the next generation when faced with the choice of making a decent living from not doing RPG design work or following their muse, and thus making my life more entertaining. In fact, it represents about a $ 2.50 per person per year 35 year subscription for the 2000 backers alone. Not a bad deal for 35 years of traveller fun; especially given the number of crappy movies and books I've plopped down more than 2.50 (or even 25.00) for in any given year, each of those years.

Honestly, for what we give to creators vs what get, we have a great deal going; and I'm speaking of the whole industry here.

Just a few more hours ! That's all the time we've got ! (T5 news & link)

JOIN.  US.

 About 41 hours left as of 4:30 pm PDT

1,709  Backers

$239,263 pledged of $24,000 goal

~41hours to go

Honest to god, this is so cool, I must squeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE!

And, despite the usual three-five bitter online cranks complaining about "how dare it exist" and "I sure hope it crashes and burns" this project represents 1709 other people contradicting the cranks and nerdpundits  about  just how frikkin great traveller still is after all these years (35 of em)..and using money to make the point, as opposed to obsessive passive-agressive gripe posts on traveller forums and personal echo chambers.
 
So, to the grumpy brigade: TOUGH NOOGIES !

U Fail epic ! SUXXOrZ to B U !

(this explicitly excludes any of you who actually produced your own vision of traveller using the easily available traveller SRD and OGL to at least put your sweat and time where your mouth is as regards traveller's failings)

If you like traveller, and want (must have desire ) the T5 600 pg omnibus , go for the basic $100.00 pledge that gets the book ($75.00 retail, eventually), CD-ROM and various cool swags. Note that if $100 seems unreasonable (as some maintain) consider that the retail price looks to be 75$ when it eventually gets to your FLGS, and most 600 page gaming doorstops cost very similar amounts . How much of a full players handbook, DMG and Monster manual ?  Even for ADD 1 ed ?   MGT costs about 40.00 with less than half the content(this is not a criticism, just an observation).  But, if that doesn't float your grav raft yet, or the money really is tight, how bout just hit a pledge of $1 to make the point if you are happy to see this ?
If you haven't found the link(s) to the site yet, click HERE.
Okay.  Ranting, self-indulgent commercial is over. 

This, BTW is absolutely unsolicited by FFE, Marc Miller or anyone, and is naught but my own dogheaded fanboi opinions.  Don't like em ? post your opinions, and damn the torpedoes -or tell your mom, I'm sure she'll listen. Soy Bomb !

 Back to actual content next post.  Thanks for your toleration  .

Down on the (industrial) Farm; or company town and Latafundi, all in one !

For the new hellhole, I present another Bizarre UWP: a High tech, industrial high population Poor World......
Nevis B6339DC-C
Originally a hardscrabble colonial outpost, half penal colony, half dumping ground for losers and refugees from the collapse of the OLDCULTURE Empire, Nevis entered the long night in great obscurity and remained there until recontacted early in the third Imperium. Minimally habitable, and possessed of no great natural or artificial resources, Nevis shuddered along with only occasional contact and no known raids. Population –originally estimated to be in the 6-7 range was dropping (estimated 5 at recontact), and the local government had become quite repressive in encouraging austerity and survival at all costs.
Ironically, recontact by scout service encouraged the government to bankrupt the remaining resources and economy in attempting to find a local resource to export. And find it they did. A life form native to an inner, less pleasant planet in the system was transplanted to Nevis, in the hopes of developing a new source of protein. Unfortunately, it failed to completely adapt; and while it grew modestly, it was unable to reproduce, and additionally required intensive culturing to survive. All in all it would have been written off as yet another disaster in the colonies miserable history; except that final studies found that one result of decay after the life forms death was capable of easy processing into , locally referred to as Freem. Attempts to process the product on its native planet failed, and it became clear that the final product was a result of the source life form having initial exposure to its home environment, partial adaptation to Nevis’ ecosystem, and the interaction of native & Terran decay organisms following death; Further, the longer the life form was able to survive on Nevis, the greater the yield of Freem.



The local Government petitioned for, and received partial intervention by the scout service, allowing them to control access to the crucial final steps in the process, and to be able to negotiate export conditions from a position of strength; once deals were signed, and bribes finalized, the Government appealed for limited economic contact with its new partners, and the favored megacorps simultaneously turned the screws for access from the other side. *
The subsequent development of the processing industry was to either save the planet or doom it, depending on which side of the fence you lived on.
The need to produce the life forms on their native planet and then gather and safely move them to Nevis for secondary habituation (and eventually processing) pulled in significant off planet capital, and resulted in a boom to Nevis’ previously rudimentary space capacity. Off planet corporations involved in shoved money into the main city, and generously padded the accounts of the local government and the few wealthy native industrialists Rapidly a huge infrastructure was built on Nevis, absolutely dedicated to the management and production of Freem.

Money and technology rapidly became available, and the only remaining bottleneck was population – the husbandry required on Nevis was highly manpower intensive, and absolutely crucial. Accordingly, as time passed and the credits rolled in, the government moved most of the agricultural and industrial population to producing Freem, and simply purchased the needed food and goods from off planet. Additional labor was obtained by the same means that Nevis was originally settled by, as well as the reintroduction locally of the concept of immigration indentures.
Today, the system is a monument (of sorts) to the company town system of industry and a monoculture economy; almost no-one living in the system is uninvolved with the Freem trade, and the vast bulk of the population is little more than subsistence labor, generally hideously indebted to the government. It also should be noted that most of the rank and file suffer from the addictive nature of Freem, and would have significant problems leaving the system.


Thus, life on Nevis can only be said to have improved for the worse; there have been several investigations of reports of outright slavery on the planet, but the government and corporations involved have always been able to just skirt Imperial intervention. There have also been attempts to “export” the source of Freem, but all have failed – as a result, the “customs” patrol in the Nevis system is extremely large, tough and hard-bitten. Similarly, with a huge mass of workers to manage, the police militia is also large, well equipped, and almost entirely composed of off planet advisors. The government is still completely native, but almost all administrative and management positions in the “Nevis General Freem Corporation” (NGFC) are off world employees of the guest megacorps. The government has not changed except thru death or petty internal intrigues**, and is still highly controlling and repressive, and completely self-perpetuating. Indeed, the governing class is essentially hereditary, and, for all intents and purposes, a ruling caste.





* It should be noted that the “Freem Scandal” as the wholesale manipulation of the ISS contact regulations came to be known, did result in a complete revision of contact and interdiction procedures, as well as not a few retirements in the Scout Administration.



**for instance, the vice minister of economic development being fired and his responsibilities divided up between the Ag department and the department of trade; not exactly a tanks-in-the-town-square type of coup.



Adventures:

In the case of Nevis, the opportunity for mildly sociopathic adventurers should abound. Being hired as security team for NGFC can be lucrative for a game emphasizing mercenary contracts, either as cadre or basic security; or, for really mean GMs, as boots on the ground anti-insurgent forces; or hunting down illicit smuggler run farms (think pot farms in Mendicino in the 1980’s.

The system patrols are also an interesting source of employment – if the players have a ship with more than average weapons and/or sensors or engines (gee. Players with an upgunned hotrod. What are the odds of that ?) they can become part of the anti-piracy and smuggling patrols; again, to throw a bit of Moral quandary, perhaps the smuggler is not trying to get cut rate Freem products, but rather to get people off the planet.

Other possibilities are obvious also: they are the smugglers of pirates, or, perhaps, a Merc Cadre down on its luck that is hired by the insurgents to give them a chance; of just a rescue operation for off planet family who has lost people to the plantations.

Run a harmless mission to the capital as a courier; be contacted by anoff-planet executive who is looking for his son, who may or may not have broken a local law, or is reported as “captured or killed by insurgents”; and yet, there is a note that claims to be from him smuggled out of a plantation where he is enslaved……or is it a false flag action to wreck the executives career ?

Finally, consider that a mildly benevolent empire may well be looking for proof of servitude or other abuses, particularly by off-planet interests…….