[TML] What is Traveller?

[Brad Murray]

On Dec 3, 2007 8:10 AM, Michael Taylor <michaeltaylor1329 at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> I like the 'Proto-Traveller' idea. Make the universe a lot smaller an
> detail the Spinward Marches and leave the rest of it alone to the players.
>

I think my position on canon has already been made pretty clear (and
lengthy) but in researching for our Spirit of the Far Future project we
pinned down some critical elements of canon.  Well, the one critical element
-- it's in book 4, 5 and maybe more.  I paraphrase here:

The Traveller universe assumes a centralised interstellar government that we
will call "The Imperium".

That's it.  We've decided to include a subsector full of worlds just to
facilitate play right out of the gates but it will in no way be canon and it
will be largely undescribed.  We should stop stomping on GM toes just to
write fan-fiction.  Adventures don't need underlying history and detailed
political stories to be complete -- witness, well, practically every
adventure ever written before 1990 -- but adventures that contain them are
intrinsically harder to incorporate in a home fueled history.

What happened in the early 90s that caused the sudden bloom of detailed fan
fiction under most games?  Was it the fad for novelisation of games (I'm
looking at Dragonlance et al. here)?  Was it maybe the emergence of White
Wolf and its "meta-plot" concept?  I missed the 90s wrt gaming so I really
don't know -- I stopped gaming altogether from about 1991 to 2002 or so
which seems to be the period where this really flourished.  I apologise for
not being present to voice my dissent.  :D

-- 
Brad Murray (halfjack)