Re: Marc Miller: Traveller is in good hands

On 8/28/2024 7:16 PM, Alex Schroeder wrote:

lkh <lkh@dwalin.uucp> wrote:

Since this is already making the rounds over on Reddit, I'm taking the
liberty to forward Marc Miller's email here:

 And, what are your thoughts on it? I am of two minds. Mongoose has been
good for Traveller, I think. I liked Mongoose Traveller 1st ed., which I
ran for a bit, and I have no reason to doubt that the current Mongoose
Traveller 2nd ed. is as good a system the many other Traveller editions
out there.

While MgT Traveller 1st ed. is my favorite Traveller version, I have found no actual reason to switch to 2nd edition. There are a few nice scenarios around, but altogether I find it quite unnecessary to switch, because I have been using CT, Gurps Traveller, and other stuff in my Traveller games without any problems beforehand. Also they changed the licensing terms for 3rd party producers, and the new art style feels somewhat grating.
Not a fan.

 I also have my doubts regarding Mongoose's quality in terms of editing
-- but who am I kidding, these days people are cutting corners all over
the place and sometimes they're cutting corners in editing. It happens.
It's the Zeitgeist. I guess in the world of quality assurance Mongoose
wouldn't actually be all that bad because I'm assuming they fix all the
typos in later printings. :)

Mongoose always had issues with editing.
There was no time when people didn't complain about that.

 Also they based a lot of follow-up products on the Traveller system and
what's not to like about more 2d6 systems! :D
 This at least ensures that they remain comitted to the basic idea. And
maybe that means that the PDFs will remain around for much longer.
That's certainly better than ending up being managed by kids or being
sold off to the highest bidder after Miller's passing. It's not the
greatest plan (wouldn't a real TAS be great, that had a board elected by
the community... an association based on Swiss law, like FIFA, or the
ICRC... anyway, that's a dream and it wouldn't be clear whether it would
work in the long run so perhaps passing it on to Mongoose was the best
idea) but it's a plan.
 I wonder if Mongoose has a better succession plan, though. Looking at
State of Mongoose 2023, it seems that the whole company is owned by
Matthew Sprange. Is he so much younger than Marc Miller? What's the long
term plan, here?
https://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/threads/state-of-the-mongoose-2023.
124344/

Yes, but it's at least a company and not the single person of Marc Millar who had a lost of issues getting his own products to the market (cough T5 cough)

 Anyway. Thinking about what happens to our games when we die is a
good idea.
 Perhaps Miller should have slapped a CC-BY-SA 4.0 or a CC0 onto the
products he owns and said: On the day he dies, these licenses go into
effect immediately.
 

Eh, I bet there would be some rights issues. I don't think you can do it that easy. I bet it's not possible to make changes to licenses like that, as you would be dead and not able to do proper contracts anymore. So now you would have a mess where the rules and rights are caught up in the deceased's estate, and that would mean that it now depends on the people who are executing the estate. And sometimes they might be more interested in selling these rights than doing something like open sourcing them.
That idea sounds like a giant headache just waiting to happen.

But that's not how these things go. I suspect some money changed hands
and that's probably for Miller's best.