I think it's more that they didn't think to put the amount of time & energy into continuity checking, over however many months or weeks that they had, as only part of their jobs, whereas we have had years to think about it. In other words, the playtesting and/or editing among different authors was hit & miss.
I was thinking about this as I re-read parts of Bear's Den last night-- I found two different dates and a very murky timeline as to when the 27th TD mutinied, and where it went. The authors had a different idea about how T2k worked than the authors of the other modules, and it shows.
I've read elsewhere that GDW was impressed with the sales of T2k, and thought that the setting chaos was a big element of that (they did try hard to introduce it in the first place). That led, indirectly or directly, to the Shattered Imperium that took Traveller to MegaTraveller (which turned out to be less popular) and the Virus that took MegaTraveller to Traveller: the New Era.
IMO, the Drought follows this line of thinking, too. "Aha, we'll make things SUCK even worse!" The Kafer Invasion of 2300AD might be a similar device, but not as universally destructive.
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My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
Last edited by Adm.Lee; 04-12-2012 at 08:26 PM.
Reason: added drought/Virus
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