------------------------------ Bundle: 564 Archive-Message-Number: 7096 Date: Tue, 29 Mar 94 18:06:04 -0500 From: Derek Wildstar [-- REDACTED --] Subject: TNE-Pocket In Msg#7082 (Bun#564), George Herbert wrote: > For those who haven't seen previous discussions, TNE-Pocket is developing > a couple of subsectors of Reavers Deep sector as a set of Pocket Empires > for TNE, which GDW approved. The current status of when we can publish > the stuff is up in the air, which Guy Garnett could (should? 8-) send an > update about, but it is approved by Dave Nielsen @ gdw. Well, that looks like my cue to jump in and explain what's going on. TNE-Pocket is a discussion group which is developing 4 subsectors of Reavers' Deep as a pocket empire and general setting for New Era adventures. In our humble opinions, this location represents the best mix of a rich history (which we have taken considerable care to preserve and expand upon) combined with unique adventuring possibilities in the New Era. However, it is not accurate to say that our work is GDW "Approved" - it's not official background material. However, Dave Nilsen (Traveller product manager at GDW) is aware of what we are doing, and GDW has no plans to explicitly invalidate or contradict anything we write about Reavers' Deep in the New Era. J. Andrew Keith (who, along with his brother William H. Keith, was responsible for creating Reavers' Deep for Classic Traveller) is also aware of what we're doing, and has no objections. The overall tone of the background is considerably different from that of the official "Reformation Coalition" campaign. As always in Reavers' Deep, things are a little different from that of the (former) Third Imperium. The empires are smaller (typically only one or two worlds), the tech levels are lower (TL-9 is "average" for starfaring cultures in the region), and the political situation is very different. Alien cultures abound: Humans (Solomani, Vilani, and human minor races), Droyne, Aslan, and several other races are found in the area. Initially, player characters are Humans (or optionally Droyne, if the referee has the Classic Traveller materials to support Droyne PCs) from the Gralyn Union, a small (two star system, three inhabited worlds) pocket empire at one end of one of the major mains in the region. The initial theme is exploration - there's been no offworld contact for the last 70 years; the players are equipped with partial library data and full starmaps (all of it 70 to 100 years old), and get to explore the New Era firsthand. Material generated for TNE-Pocket is publishable, should we find a Traveller magazine willing to print it. Some of this material should start appearing in The Traveller Chronicle (hopefully beginning with #4; several articles have been submitted) and possibly other magazines in the future. Currently, most of the available resources are in the form of background material, outlines, and a set of adventure ideas that need development work. Complete UWPs (pre-Rebellion, Hard Times, and New Era) are available for the area, as is a set of library data entries, and a number of short world descriptions. History write-ups for the major worlds are also available, as is a players' introduction. This last was written for one of the two "playtest" campaigns. These campaigns are currently being run by TNE-Pocket contributors are in progress using the available background. I expect these campaigns to generate adventure material which will be used to fill out the resources available. Almost all of the material that has been generated to date is available for anonymous FTP from the archive site at typhoon.berkeley.edu in the \pub\Traveller\TNE-pocket directory (note the capitalization, it's important) and it's subdirectories. I just checked, and the archive is up to date as of about a month ago. You may have to sort through the archived messages (the files List.*) to find the most recent stuff. The current plan is to pull together sufficient background and adventure material, once it is all generated, and make a sourcebook for New Era adventures in Reavers' Deep that we can then make available on the archive site. There is, however, a considerable amount of work that needs to be done before that will happen. Guy Garnett, aka ... [-- REDACTED --] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Science-Fiction Adventure In Reavers' Deep ------------------------------