Is Known Space too big...?

[RossWinn]

in my view it is too big. which is why I am changing some things in my new campaign.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
Don't forget Historical Battle Site Worlds. The sites of old battles are often great tourist spots and provide some more depth to Known Space. I'd suggest choosing one battle site which characterizes each major confict known.

How many battles would have actually been fought on the ground though?

I'd imagine it'd be kinda dull on the planet: "And here is where some generals pushed a few buttons and told a few spaceships to attack something".

 

[Whipsnade]

Don't forget all those Human Minor Race homeworlds. GT:Humaniti was rather disappointing(1), but it can add several worlds to your list. Let's see, I'll skip the few you've already listed like Daryen and Sylea...

Archeron - Archeron/Diaspora
Answerin - Answerin/Vland
Azhanti - Irale/Antares
Dynchia - Melantris/Leonidae
Floriani - Floria/Trojan Reach
Geonee - Shiwonee/Massilla
Iltharans - Drexilthar/Reaver's Deep
Irhadre - Chanad/Lishun
Kargol - Kargol/Leonidae
Luriani - Daramm/Ley
Nexxies - Nexine/Spinward Marches
Otrai - Otrai/Glimmerdrift Reaches
Yileans - Gashikan/Gashikan

You should throw the Sydites and their homeworld into the list too.

I should admit that most HMRs are not worth visiting. Unlike many other aspects of canon, Our Olde Game has shown a decided lack of imagination when creating them. Most are little more than slight tweaks of tired old tropes; honorable warrior race, race with flippers, etc., etc., etc. Few show any signs of originality.

If I had to trim the list to those actually worth visiting, I'd keep the Floriani, Irhadre, and Otrai and chuck the rest.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - Except for a few retreaded Jesse Degraff illos, the interior art was excreable. I doubt you could make it worse if you tried. Also, the smeary, grey scale, planetary maps are all but useless. All in all, not one of SJGames finer moments.

 

[daryen]

I don't know. I don't mind "tired old tropes" as long as they are done well and done once. (I.e. the "born warrior race" is a bit abused by Traveller. I really hate them at this point.)

So, I actually kinda like the Luriani (flipper people), Dynchia (animistic people), and Iltharans (born bad-guy people). I also don't mind the Geonee (heavy-worlders).

So, my "good" list is: Darrians, Dynchia, Floriani, Geonee, Iltharans, Luriani. I can live with the Irhadre. The rest can go.

(BTW, the comments about the art in Humaniti is completely correct. Besides Bill's complaints, there is also the fact that whoever did the art obviously didn't bother to actually read the descriptions before drawing. Any similarity between the drawings and descriptions are completely accidental.)

[Edit: Fixed a minor typo in the second sentence.]

 

[Flynn]

BTW, what would you consider to be the different tropes of alien races, particularly those that haven't been explored in Traveller?

I know we have the basics: born warrior, militant vegetarian, oppressed raider, evil (or just misunderstood) psions, multi-caste avian-reptilian-insectoids, space nazis, curious weirdos, and logic-driven humanoids.

What would you say are untapped resources in the "sci-fi tropes" regarding aliens?

Thanks,
Flynn

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
Don't forget Historical Battle Site Worlds. The sites of old battles are often great tourist spots and provide some more depth to Known Space. I'd suggest choosing one battle site which characterizes each major confict known.

How many battles would have actually been fought on the ground though?

I'd imagine it'd be kinda dull on the planet: "And here is where some generals pushed a few buttons and told a few spaceships to attack something". </font>[/QUOTE]Battle sites don't have to be groundside. A lot of people come to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii just to see the Arizona - and its underwater.

Now, I'll argue about the dullness of a space battle site. It'll all be in the eye of the beholder as to whether or not it is dull. By the time of the Third Imperium, a definite spacer culture will have evolved that would probably enjoy seeing a debris field from a battle or a large chunk of wreakage that is the remains of the Imperial Battleship Jacqueline or even the declassified sensor logs of the ships involved in the battle (hmm, this last one may be the most significant for historians as well).

Actually, now that I've had some coffee and am a bit more awake...

On planet, if the battle was large enough, there would occassionally be debris falling into the atmosphere and burning up. A good reminder of the sacrifices that were made in the space battle. (If you haven't seen Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, there is a wonderful seen in the beginning of a piece of debris falling into the atmosphere and streaking across the sky at twilight while farmers harvest their fields.)

I think the key to a tourist site of any kind is its historical and/or cultural significance to the population. Sort of a nod to the 80's and the CoDominion stories that I like to include in campaign settings is a world that has blown itself back into the stone age through a nuclear war - it is preserved by the Imperium and has a noble/military academy on it, it kept around as a reminder of what could happen to a world in the Imperium if the nobles and military are lackadaisical in their duties. Sort of a reminder of "lest we forget".

 

[Jame]

No, I don't think it's too big, but mainly because it allows many different people to use different settings in different ways, and no-one can automatically claim "hey, you stole my idea!"

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by Gaming Glen:
zoo planet? or one with a large land mass dedicated to such, with hidden-from-animals transportation system for the tourists.

Well, there is Kamsii, the amusement park planet. It is detailed in the first GT Planetary Survey booklet.

In the Marches, you have Marastan, which is a "wildlife reserve" planet. In TNE, it even gains a small K'kree population that is allowed to settle there after they get cut off by the Rebellion.

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by Flynn:
BTW, what would you consider to be the different tropes of alien races, particularly those that haven't been explored in Traveller?

I know we have the basics: born warrior, militant vegetarian, oppressed raider, evil (or just misunderstood) psions, multi-caste avian-reptilian-insectoids, space nazis, curious weirdos, and logic-driven humanoids.

Actually, I give Traveller credit for the K'kree. They are probably the most effectively alien aliens in Traveller, and they work pretty well as such. I don't remember seeing "genocidal militant herbivores" done before. And if they hadn't been labelled "centaurs" to start with, they might not have had that millstone around their metagame reputation.

The two most annoying tropes done repeatedly in Traveller are the "prefect warriors" and the "servant races". They just get tiring after a while.

One other type of trope Traveller gets hammered with is its anthropamorphic aliens. E.g. dog-men (Vargr), horse-men/centaurs (K'kree), lion-men (Aslan), cat-men (Kargol), lizard-men (Saurians), fish-men (Nexxies), frog-men (Luriani), dwarves (Genoee), elves (Darrians). Some of them have been developed well enough that we forget their origins (e.g. K'kree, Darrians), but to someone not steeped in Traveller lore, they are all just silly trappings of "old scifi".

As for new tropes, hey, if I had any I would be making money on my original ideas, not giving them away for free here.

 

[Gundiwolf]

One point about the anthropamorphic (sp?) aliens - most of them are presented with an eye to making them available as a player race, so they were set up to make it easier for a player to figure out how to play them. In the original JTAS article about K'Kree, there is a statement that they should not be used for PC's until the full "Contact" book comes out, because they have such an alien mindset.

And of course, the referee has to know how to play them, as NPCs. The "man in funny suit" thing just makes it simpler.

 

[daryen]

Well, that is kinda the problem with designing alien aliens. If they are truly alien, not just "men in rubber suits", then how do we relate to them?

So, instead aliens are described in terrestial terms (e.g. lion-man, dog-man).

Likewise, how do we make them act unlike humans? We have no basis for comparison.

Instead, aliens are actually restricted in their actions. Humans can operate in any manner and still be human. But aliens are put in boxes and not let out. So, Vargr *must* be charisma driven, Aslan males *must* desire "land", and so on.

You know, for a genre that is supposed to be about limitless options, science fiction sure likes to put things in little bitty boxes.

This goes for terrestrial worlds, too. You have have your jungle worlds, desert worlds, water worlds, ice worlds, even city worlds. But you rarely get worlds with significant variations in climate (like a real world would).

 

[flykiller]

You know, for a genre that is supposed to be about limitless options, science fiction sure likes to put things in little bitty boxes.

well, WE are the little bitty boxes. rpg's are like movies, they deal in stereotypes in order to get the adventure moving. does a referee have the free time to develop or study a truly alien creature and then commmunicate it to the players? and do players have the inclination to devote six months to understanding this strange being?

and sure, rpg aliens are restricted in their actions. that's part of their stereotypical alienness. if they were as varied as humans are then the aliens would seem more human and the rubber-suit problem would be worse, not better.

besides, humans can be alien enough to each other. consider the differences in mind set between a CEO, a boyscout troop leader, and a gangbanger in downtown los angeles. lots of room for alienness in the human range of experience.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

flykiller/daryen, I think you hit on the most important point: humans are terribly varied. I don't think you could build a truly alien race (at least that anyone would care about) that wouldn't have human characteristics. It's a bit humanocentric, but I honestly think we fill about as much of the range as possible where things like motivations/emotions/oulooks/etc go. (And, my reasons for believing so are not humanist.)

Also, most of the thoughtful renditions of "alien" mindsets have already been done in scifi. So, if your alien is truly "alien", it will be a cliche. If it's not a cliche, it will be humans in rubber suits.

 

[Ran Targas]

To b@$t@rdize the quote, "the universe is far stranger than we can imagine"

Humans (and Trav aliens) can have as varied motivations as the GM can adequately develop a reason for. But every GM is limited by motivations and influences he/she has experience with. A Vargr seeking universal harmony and equality with all species, an Aslan male subject to a vow of poverty, a naive Hiver falling under the thrall of a human manipulator, a philosophic K'kree desiring to eat cooked meat for the experience; all are possibilities.

Aliens can only be as alien as we can imagine them to be. Even the stereotypes provided in canon (only to give GM's a starting place) should only be considered gross generalizations. Not every Solomani is a racist party loyalist bent of returning 'true humans' to a position of power but as a group, Solomanis tend to behave a certain way. Regardless, the best sythesized alien motivations still can only be thinly veiled human motivations. After all, we know nothing else.

Developing a truly alien culture for Trav would almost require experience beyond the human norm and would, by its very nature, be difficult to adequately portray to GM's and players alike. So, regardless of your creativity, there will be individual humans who act just like your aliens do.

 

[aramis]

In the case of the Vargr, they literally are wolf-men.

The original aslan describes them as samurai in space. That samurai in space usually look like lions seems a bit staid, but it occurs elsewhere besides traveller.

By bringing the aliens to being at least as alien as the other cultures on planet, we can achieve verisimilitude. Lets face it, the introduction of the alien race modules catapulted traveller above several others (New Suns, Space Opera, Star Frontiers all come to mind) where the aliens are simply described as being based upon X creature.

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

Ron Targas said:

Not every Solomani is a racist party loyalist bent of returning 'true humans' to a position of power...

My fellow loyalty officers obviously haven't paid you a visit yet...

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Ran Targas:
Developing a truly alien culture for Trav would almost require experience beyond the human norm and would, by its very nature, be difficult to adequately portray to GM's and players alike. So, regardless of your creativity, there will be individual humans who act just like your aliens do.

Ran,

You hit the nail on the head right there. In order to use an alien race, a GM or player must be able to undersatand it thus limiting the 'alien' quality of the race.

Some here may remember a thread(1) from a few months ago regarding 'building' alien races for Traveller. I suggested the poster look at GURPS:Uplift and cautioned him that how alien he can make the race depends on a choice he must make at the beginning of the process. To whit: Is the race going to be 'playable' or 'understandable' as a PC/NPC or is the race going to be an noncomprehensible 'event'.

Most of the alien races in Traveller - or in any RPG for that matter - are fundamentally handicapped by the requirement that they operate as PCs or NPCs. Too few races are handled as 'events', incomprehensible or seemingly baffling to human ken. Traveller has a gas giant race, the 'Jgd il Jgd' or some such, that most closely approached that level. The GM can use them as 'events', using them as NPCs is far too problematic.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - You may also remember that the thread devolved into a disccusion of basic biology and evolution when a few posters suggested that the Star Blecch Paradigm operates in reality; that all sentient sophonts will be upright, bipedal, hominid-like creatures with various bits of plumbing supplies glued to their faces.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by daryen:
(BTW, the comments about the art in Humaniti is completely correct. Besides Bill's complaints, there is also the fact that whoever did the art obviously didn't bother to actually read the descriptions before drawing. Any similarity between the drawings and descriptions are completely accidental.)

Daryen,

Afte GT:H came out and the howls regarding the art(1) began, the 'explanation' was that the original artist or artists contracted failed to produce either acceptable illos or enough illos by the required date. In order to make the ship date, the art contract for GT:H was thrown to an individual who could rapidly grind out the required number of illos in the required shapes and sizes by the required date.

I can buy the second excuse; that the original artist(s) did not produce enough art in time to be used. I cannot buy the first excuse; that the original art was not acceptable. If the actual art in GT:H is acceptable, than the various fingerpaintings by my 3 year-old nephew that currently adorn my refridgerator are acceptable too.

I do not pretend to know what pressures and thought processes SJGames was operating under while preparing GT:H for publication. However, I cannot fathom why meeting a ship date - targets SJG routinely and correctly miss in order to get things right - suddenly became important enough to ship a product with such excreable interior art. From an art production standpoint, GT:H is an embarassment.

All this is IMHO of course. YMMV.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - Not the prose mind you, the art. Aside from the maps, the information in GT:H is great. The art might as well not be there as it takes up space that could have held more words.

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
I do not pretend to know what pressures and thought processes SJGames was operating under while preparing GT:H for publication. However, I cannot fathom why meeting a ship date - targets SJG routinely and correctly miss in order to get things right - suddenly became important enough to ship a product with such excreable interior art. From an art production standpoint, GT:H is an embarassment.

It's actually worse than that. Humaniti itself was already over a year late, and had already been pushed back at least three times once they revised the release date. If the art was really that bad, how was another month or two going to hurt the book?

Strange stuff.

To reinforce Bill's footnote, however, please note that for all its bad art, Humaniti is still the single best book for coherent, up-to-date descriptions of the various races it covers.

While the art does suck, and you might quibble with some of the races presented, Humaniti is still a useful, informative book that treats the included races in a fairly thorough manner.

(As an added plus, SJG apparently cooperated with QLI on the Luriani. Their description in Humaniti is, AFAICT, identical to their treatment in T20.)