Lurking in the weeds...

We are quietly working on an update to the '3063'.  It will be a report from the year 3065 and feature mostly new machines, with a few significant updates to older units that could have been done better in the original TRO.  We're going to put out about 15 entries, so it won't be in the works for five years (!).

The new units are going to focus, again, on the technology of the Inner Sphere vehicles and 'Mechs.  It has been 11 years since the original TRO was published, and I see no change in the need for new Inner Sphere machines.  By 'need', I mean machines that are interesting, likely, function well in a reasonable tabletop scenario, and look cool.

In Memoriam...

The folks on 4Chan had a nice TRO project going.  It was started in 2014 or so.  It went along well for about six or seven years, then sputtered and ran out of gas.  Real Life can be hard on dreams.  I expected great things of it.  I was very favorably impressed with the designs and the thinking behind them.  I was less enamored of the sometimes harsh criticism of my own work, but 4Chan's gonna 4Chan.  

Nevertheless, I tried in my limited way to help get things going again.  Things looked up and it seems as though the project might actually get rolling.  Munin even graciously permitted me to do a few edits.  But it all came to naught in the end.  It seems that some folks behind the project were more concerned that they alone be perceived as 'owning' the project then actually get the thing done.  

I was (falsely) accused of trying to 'take over' the damned thing and claim it for my own!  Like I'd have access to art and files that they'd paid for.  Like I'd want to sink more years of my dwindling lifespan trying to 'take over' someone else's work instead of, you know, doing my own - *again*.  After a discussion between myself and Munin, I was quietly dropped.  I believe they decided to carry on themselves.  But after that, nothing happened.  No more comments on 4Chan.  No more updates to their blog.

So be it.  

I have been a member of many fan clubs at one time or another in the past, and watched with fascination (always from the outside) as the internal politics played out.  It was always the same.  There were so many promising ideas and projects, and so many wonderful things that could have been done by such talented people.  But the ones in charge seemed concerned mostly about their share of the credit and this idea of 'ownership' of the resulting projects.  And one thing was crystal-clear: if they weren't getting what they wanted out of it, neither would anyone else.

I wish the fellows who were on this project nothing but the best.  A lot of bad things were said about my character and my motivations, but I forgive them.  Talk is cheap, especially there, and I am old enough to separate the wheat from the tares.  It's a shame, really.  I have a copy of their initial demo and that is all.  

Like the Star Trek fan clubs of the early 1990s, it could have been a great thing.  Maybe one day someone will pick the 4Chan TRO up again, and in the words of Captain Picard, "make it so".  

We need our dreams.

Thanks for stopping by.

Steve