Reminds me of a (perhaps golden age?) scifi novel where a kid left his place to venture and found out what he thought was a world was actually a spaceship - a generation ship - and the various factions or tribes were in fact corruptions of their original ship departments.
Well, you'd think I'd be the expert on identifying this but there are so many that might fit that description.
However, if you made me guess it's either Aldiss and _Non Stop_ or Harrison and _Captive Universe_. If it had an Aztec feel, it was the latter, if it wasn't strictly a 'kid' but perhaps young man and had a cramped, claustrophobic feel it was probably the former.
It could just possibly be Heinlein's _Orphans of the Sky_ but I don't think that was a 'kid' as protagonist. Of course, it's a while since I read it, so I may not be remembering it well.
I read another novel that took what looked like a 'kid leaves home, joins with travelling merchants' sort of post apocalyptic or low fantasy sort of story, and then later you find out that it was a space colony where some virus came up that impacted knowledge and/or higher reasoning and led to most of the people regressing and society sort of collapsing, and there is sort of a quest to find any higher-tech descendants that might have not regressed.... and I won't spoil it by saying that an innocuous seeming find turns out to be a huge agent of change for the entire society...
Well, again, that could be quite a few of the gen ship stories although that description reminds me most of Simon Roy's graphic novel _Habitat_. If it was strictly a 'space colony' then it wouldn't probably have made my bibliography. Although IIRC Ben Bova's _Exiles_ trilogy started with a station that they then took to the stars so you might be thinking of that but I don't recall the 'travelling merchants' bit and think the low fantasy comes later in the three books after they regress.
Can't recall the names of either and my books are well and truly boxed (by the thousands). Wish I could name them. Timothy's product looks it could support a scenario like the first novel I mentioned and the other one could be interesting for very low tech on-foot-or-wagon Traveller.... and the possibility to play an ongoing campaign with generational hops between each arc to show the progress back to a higher level of civilization.
I think Generation X could support either of those. There's enough in there on the 'regressed' state that you've got some characters and ideas to come up with something. When we played it, that section definitely drew on the 'low fantasy' genre people were familiar with. Although I managed to introduce the "language" (or speech stylings if you will) from _Dark Eden_ by Beckett as it just fit so perfectly.
That's was one of the great potentials of TNE - a chance to do that same sort of long timeline small arc at a time campaign. I never thought of that back in the day, but that could be pretty cool (to know your ancestors - because you played them! - and to know each arc would be in a further ahead part of the timeline). Lots of work for the GM to think through the interregnums between arcs and figure out what has changed (socially, politically, technologically, etc).
Yes, this seemed a natural fit for linking up with the Dynasty book. There's a lot of good ideas in there to utilise in this way and I only barely scratched the surface really trying to cram it into a four hour convention slot. You could do much more with much more continuity if you had time. But I also wanted to make sure that Generation X was accessible to those who didn't have, or weren't interested in Dynasty, hence the - in effect A and B streams of if you got it, this might work; if you don't, try this. I'm not entirely sure that that's clear but in all the time it's been in my head, I've not been able to come up with a better way of doing it. (Without writing two completely separate books which I wasn't interested in doing.)
All of this sort of stuff has great Traveller ideas to spring from it.
Absolutely. There's a bit of me that feels Generation X is less a typical adventure and more a book of inspiration to do with what you will. Hopefully it can serve both purposes.
And I'm glad someone has focused on the Generation ships!
It did seem about time. With the exception of Sky Raiders (sort of) and a chapter in The Long Way Home, they only really get passing mentions in Traveller. I've heard them dismissed in Traveller circles as impossible to game with as they're so far out of the "setting" (i.e. Charted Space and/or being "Traveller") but I hope I've proved that wrong on two counts: the fact that at least referred to and present in a lot of Traveller and with an example of how you could easily include them IN a Charted Space setting. (Even easier if you're elsewhere).
Thanks for your interest
tc