Ahead of his 77th birthday in a couple of days, Marc Miller, creator of Traveller, released the following statement through the Citizens of the Imperium mailing list:
Some years ago, fellow game designer Greg Stafford died, and I was impressed that his company announced almost immediately that he had a succession plan in place, and that his legacy and his designs would live on.
His example was an inspiration to me, and I resolved to emulate him. It would be a terrible loss if Traveller were encumbered, or somehow restricted in its outreach to present and future fans.
With that in mind, I have worked to make Traveller an asset to science-fiction role-players... with our user-friendly Fair Use policies, with the Travellers’ Aid Society programs, with the Cepheus editions of Traveller, and with Mongoose as a primary publisher of their edition of Traveller.
Over the past several years, I have turned over more and more responsibilities to Mongoose, and I have collaborated actively with them as they work to realize the Traveller dream. Earlier this year I passed full ownership of Traveller to Mongoose in order to secure its future.
With that in mind, I point out that, following the example of Greg Stafford, I have a succession plan in place: day-to-day decisions about the Traveller game system are already being made by Mongoose Publishing (with my co-operation and approval), and if anything should happen to me, they would carry on with my full knowledge and blessing.
That doesn’t stop me from speaking my mind: expressing opinions about Traveller, writing stories and lore, and even revealing secrets about the universe.
But Traveller is in good hands, now, and far into the far future.
And I thank you for your (continuing) support for Traveller.
Marc
I'd suspected something like this might be in the offing for some time, but this is the first confirmation of it that I've seen – and an official one at that. Since I know there are a lot of Traveller fans who read this blog, I thought they might find this news to be of interest. I may have further thoughts on the matter. If so, I'll save those for a future post.
This serves as reminder to all of us to have your digital last will and testament to your online presence and IP (including passwords!) if you have anything you've ever published!
ReplyDeleteIt does. I worry that n the future archaeologists will find nothing written down and wonder at who these people were surrounded by plastic and metal.
DeleteIndeed. Lost media is already becoming an issue for historians as we speak. A lot of electronic content created since the 1960s exists solely as 1’s and 0’s encoded on physical media that no one presently makes the hardware to read in many cases. In cases where hardware to read the media exists, the software to turn the raw code into something legible doesn’t exist anymore!
DeleteIt’s not too dissimilar from the state of Egyptology before the Rosetta Stone was discovered. There’s data carved into those walls / stored on that magnetic tape… It must mean something… But no one can read it.
I’ll go on record saying that Mongoose has produced the best and highest quality support for Traveler than it has had since the beginning. I for one am glad to see Traveller in the hands of people that really love it and are keeping it alive into the next century.
ReplyDelete