Hardest SF possible
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Keklas Rekobah
SOC-14 1K
Wormholes, Stutterwarp, Time-Travel, Parallel Universes... all pseudo-science, and all in the realm of Soft SF.
2300/2320 allows itself one deviation from accepted science, and that's the stutterwarp. That's it. Some other things, like the thruster and like plasma weapons, may bend the rules a bit, but the only out-and-out violation is the stutterwarp. In fact, 2300/2320 follow an accepted convention in hard SF of only allowing one violation of the laws of physics.
Traversable wormholes are a bit beyond the "rules" of the setting of 2320, but it is an interesting idea. (Who defines the rules? Pretty much me, along with an adherance to what has gone before.) I don't have a problem with discussing such things, as long as there is an understanding that these things are not part of the "canon" of 2320. I also think that a new forum chould be created for them, under the alternate Traveller Universe section.
Traversable wormholes are a bit beyond the "rules" of the setting of 2320, but it is an interesting idea. (Who defines the rules? Pretty much me, along with an adherance to what has gone before.) I don't have a problem with discussing such things, as long as there is an understanding that these things are not part of the "canon" of 2320. I also think that a new forum chould be created for them, under the alternate Traveller Universe section.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
Wormholes, Stutterwarp, Time-Travel, Parallel Universes... all pseudo-science, and all in the realm of Soft SF. </font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, but they serve there purposes to advance the story of science fiction.
If we had a 2300AD game without stutterwarp, you'd basically have a game dealing with colonies in the Solar System only with perhaps a multi-stage colony ship arriving at Alpha Centuari and Tirane. In an alternate Universe where the Stutterwarp was not invented, you might want to post pone World War III to 2080, and before that launch a colony ship, the era or recovery would occur in the 22nd century with a return to space and the invention of the stutterwarp later that century. By 2300AD the first colonyship finally arrives and lands colonists on Tirane, and by 2320AD, the colony is 20 years old and has set down some roots, it would be the same technology as the 2320AD game except without stutterwarp. System ships would be slow.
Time Travel serves the same purpose as the Stutterwarp, except that I wouldn't want a timewarp drive that could be installed in a ship as the potential for abuse is too great. If I don't want the PCs exploring all eras of human history and being members of the time corps and observing all sorts of rule of noninterference and dressing like the natives, then what I'd want is a wormhole that leads to a specific era in the past and no place else.
Yes, I like dinosaurs, so sue me! I think its neat that nature actually made these creatures and that they weren't the product of some science fiction author's imagination. if someone doesn't like time travel, that's fine they can just say so, they can also give me reasons why they don't like time travel and I can give them reasons why I do. I like the alien vista of the past world revealed by fossils, and its fun to imagine what people would be doing had they lived in that world.
The world of 2320AD is alot like our world today socially and culturally, they do have space travel and more advanced science, but that just serves to make certain stories such as the mad man building Cyborg armies more plausible than they would have been had that story occured in the here and now. To be sure you can find stories like that in comic books and in pulp fiction, but for a more realistic edge you'd want to place it in the future.
As for exploring a Dinosaur world, it is more interesting if the PCs are forced by the technology to get closer to their subjects that if they just hover above the tree tops endlessly in their scout ship where the ravenous T-rex can't reach them. It would be nice in the PCs get out and about in their ATVs that sometimes get stuck in the mud and where someone sometimes has to get out and push, it is easier to have animal encounters that way than if they fly above the tree tops in their air/raft or speeder. If you use 2320AD technology the adventure becomes more like Jurassic Park, the PCs actually have something to worry about, like maybe the velociraptor is sneaking up on them in the tall grasses and getting ready to pounce. The wormhole just allows them to get there without seriously altering the setting, just like the DS9 Wormhole didn't alter the Star Trek Setting until the invaders came through, but that's no different than if they came from outside explored space, the wormhole is just simply another direction from which they can come. I'm done trying to justify the thing. If your interested, we can discuss it, otherwise we can discuss something else, but I'm interested in this subject, and if someone else is, then maybe we can have a discussion, it is just a game after all.
Space Cadet
SOC-12
Yeah, it would save us some pointless arguments, and I won't have people trying to make me "prove" that wormholes can exist, there is much debate in the scientific community about this, serious debate in fact, involving scientists putting up equations on the blackboard with some saying this is possible while others saying that its not.
I am not a scientist, I don't have the mathematics to enter into any sort of discussion with theoretical physicists about whether this is possible or not.
If it is possible, I don't have the mathematical equations to through the right equations on the blackboard to prove it.
If I took the opposite end of the argument, I do not have sufficient training to disprove it either. I think wormholes are at the hard science end of the time travel spectrum, something which some scientific types regard the whole idea of time travel as suspect, and wish to lump them together with UFOs, psionics, and Star Wars.
A seperate forum for My 2320 Universe would be a good idea, that way we wouldn't have confusion with Traveller.
I do like time-travel and alternate worlds (I play continuum and my own homebrew 'eye in the sky'). I just didn't think they belonged in 2320 (MY opinion).
Anyway, back to topic, I remember reading that a world at the end of the French Arm had 'huge lizards'(in the wolf cluster?). Did I mis-read this? I can't remember the source...*
Anyway, if it's correct maybe Space Cadet is THE guy to flesh this world out. It's a garden world with huge lizards after all...could make fertile ground for scenario ideas.
*Maybe someone can remember where this is from or that I imagined it after eating cheese before bedtime.
Anyway, back to topic, I remember reading that a world at the end of the French Arm had 'huge lizards'(in the wolf cluster?). Did I mis-read this? I can't remember the source...*
Anyway, if it's correct maybe Space Cadet is THE guy to flesh this world out. It's a garden world with huge lizards after all...could make fertile ground for scenario ideas.
*Maybe someone can remember where this is from or that I imagined it after eating cheese before bedtime.
Wolf something, as I recall. It's mentioned in the write-up for the Rockwell 12-81 Magnum.
I always though that part of the reason why we havent found any more advanced alien races could be that WE are destined to become those advanced and god-like aliens (if we manage to survive ourselves). There is a certain existential horror to be found in searching the galaxy and realising that in the end somebody has to be first, and it's us...
G.
I always though that part of the reason why we havent found any more advanced alien races could be that WE are destined to become those advanced and god-like aliens (if we manage to survive ourselves). There is a certain existential horror to be found in searching the galaxy and realising that in the end somebody has to be first, and it's us...
G.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Well, Wolf 359 is a real (and near) star (as well as being used as the location of the big borg battle in st). Maybe that's the location used.
Keklas Rekobah
SOC-14 1K
IMHO, it would still be as hard or soft as the original concept, provided that:
1) The Aliens were carbon-based, oxygen-breathing, water-needing, sentient beings.
2) Their society was internally consistent and constructive.
3) They had no special abilities that couldn't be extrapolated from known organisms.
4) Their form was logical -- one that makes sense given their native environment. Of course, one person's "Sensible and Logical" is another person's "WTF?!!" so there is a lot of wiggle-room for the way that an Alien might look.
5) In every other way possible, Aliens are ... well ... Alien. They do alien things, eat alien food, speak in an alien language, argue alien philosophies, and understand alien humour.
Q) "How many polychromatic efts does it take to disseminate an edict?"
A) "Six! Three to process the ethanol, two to collect the precipitate, and one to hool the edict to a fnurl tree!"
I thnk that description was in Traveller:2300, but the giant lizard bit got removed for 2300AD. I know that it is not in the description of the 12-81 for 2320AD.
G. </font>[/QUOTE]
It was the giant lizards of Wolf 424 B-1, M0 V companion star to the M5 V Wolf 424 (-13.8, -19, 2.2) (just to the NW of QAS/Beowulf).
G. </font>[/QUOTE]
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