Another TRO Update...

As everyone is aware, the 'Rona hit us rather harder than we thought.  Well, harder than some people thought, and nowhere near as hard as some people predicted.  I am almost 61 and have been controlling diabetes for a couple of years.  No illness yet.  We're blessed.

But... the crisis has passed from being a medical problem to a political opportunity.  Some folks, having tasted the power granted them under temporary conditions, have done and are continuing to do their best to make sure that our present 'pandemic state of emergency' will never end.  We've had an election 'fortified', a euphemism chosen by the victors to describe what folks in the old days would have called 'ballot stuffing'.  All under the cover of a 'crisis' of the virus.  But I don't care about any of that.

There have been no local gatherings of BattleTech players for over a year.  A lot of the folks playing the game have other things on their mind - such as gainful employment and making their payments on time, or at all.  I don't blame them.  The annual wargaming convention has been cancelled once, and will likely be cancelled again.

The current (and forever ongoing) insanity has affected my schedule as well.  I originally intended to have TRO: 3063 Updates (circa 3069) ready to go in April 2021.  I figured a year was enough time to get the art, writing and so on together in a timely manner.  After all, been down this road before.

But it's been one damn thing after another, even while CGL relentlessly 'updates' their product and pushes it and the available technology into the future of BT - I think 3145 was the last date I heard of, but I cannot be sure.  It is hard to remember that the Jihad, Devlin Stone and the Republic of the Sphere, and the Dark Age are all in the rearview mirror, and getting smaller each day.  

These things were current and larger than life when I published the original TRO:3063.  However, from hanging around fan sites and reading posts, I gather that even today, many folks are playing in the eras of the past, and not the present.  Not sure why.  Clanners are the most vocal of the online faces I see, but I always thought of the Clans as the Klingons of the Inner Sphere.  They are meant to be level bosses, or the Ultimate Boss, of a video game.  You don't play the Klingons, unless you're OPFOR.  

But folks have made fetishes of the Clans, despite any number of unreal 'facts' about them that clash with human behavior or even the little we know of how the human body works.  It's why a goodly amount of BT fiction, fan or professional, comes across as Mary Sue.  It's wish-fulfillment.  

So I will STILL not deal with the Clans in 3063.  There is no shortage of fanboi Clanners - let THEM write their own TRO for that era.  It has been almost nine years since our work came out; anyone could have done something like it in that time.  One effort originally started in 4Chan looked good in 2014, posting some truly impressive progress over the years, but.... it's been seven years and the book's not finished.  It may never be finished.

People grow old, people change.  But I still have an abiding interest, if not love, for the game and a respect for the world-building that lies behind it.  I will move my Updates schedule to April of 2022, cross my fingers and clear the decks.

Wish me luck!

Thank you for stopping by.

Steve Satak