mission demolished

Earlier in the week I mentioned I was helping out a friend on a game project of his. At the time I wasn't sure of the confidentialities involved, so I was rather coy about providing details. But the document in question is now available for download, so I guess I can blab. The friend who contacted me was Traveller guru Don McKinney and his project was a major overhaul of his excellent Traveller Integrated Timeline. Don's been working on this baby for longer than the 10+ years I've known him. You don't get more hardcore geekish than a project of this calibre. The Integrated Timeline is an attempt to catalog literally everything that ever happened in every Traveller product. With each item taking only a line or three this history goes on for about a hundred and thirty pages!

My contribution was very small, mostly pointing out grammar and punctuation errors (which ought to amuse regular Gameblog readers to no end) and asking the occasional stupid question like "Who are the Lords of Thunder and why should the reader care about them?" Duh. You care because these mofos call themselves the Lords of Thunder. That's badass. Still, I'm glad to help where I can. Don did the overwhelming lion's share of the work, pouring over nearly everything published for one of the most widely-written-about settings in the history of the hobby. I just nitpicked his work.

What's makes this project even cooler is that Don's timeline is about to become official Traveller canon. Marc Miller plans to include a copy in the forthcoming Classic Traveller CD-ROM. I don't have any details on the CD-ROM as I type this post, but the previous MegaTraveller CD-ROM contained everything ever published for the game, barring a very few items where rights did not belong to Mr. Miller. But you don't have to wait for that super-awesome disc to see the Traveller Integrated Timeline for yourself. Just click the link above. If you're a Traveller fan your mind will soon be crowded with a thousand nifty plothooks.