It's not Traveller? OK, Why not??

[ravells]

Um no, I'm saying that if a man in a bowler hat walked up to my character claiming himself to be a hiver, it just wouldn't be traveller to me.

Sure if the changes were so incidental that they wouldn't make any difference to the adventure (one star / two stars), then yeah - no difference at all apart from the loss of one cool mental image which could have been tossed into the description.

Ravs

 

[mbrinkhues]

Originally posted by Heretic Keklas Rekobah:
Would any of the following make Traveller into Traveller-Not, whether considered in whole or in part?

1) No Aslan or Vargr. Instead, an uplifted canine-feline hybrid (or precursor species) with intense curiosity and an unpredictable temper, which takes over the respective niches of the Aslan and Vargr.

Yes. Aslan and Vagr are part of the Setting as is. Besides the description of the new race barely fits the Vagr and has nothing Aslan in it

2) "Stargates" as per the movie and series' of the same name, maximum one per subsector. They are usually located on marginal worlds, or in marginal environments on populated worlds.

Yes. They dramatically shorten the time of a news transfer. Suddenly Sylea-Regina takes 4-6 weeks using two J6 couriers and two Stargates. Barons and above can attent the Moot in person for important decisions and sending politicians to Sylea instead of having nobles becomes practical similar to the 19th century USA

3) A region of space that is at least one sector in volume, in which no culture has had any recorded contact with the Imperium or its neighbors. Technology is similar to, but not always the same as, normal Imperial standards.

Depends on what is different and how the "no contact" is explained. If the culture is between J5+ Rifts and obeys Traveller Physiks it might work but even than it stretches the concept. Works better if it is "far beyond known space" similar to 1248.

4) A slight modification of the world generation procedure that provides a POP DM based on the the "867" environment of Terra, so that greater human populations occur on worlds closest to Terra's environment, and progressively less population on worlds that are progressively less like Terra.

Should work

5) A system-generation method that does allow for tide-locked marginal worlds orbiting brown dwarf stars, but that does not allow them to be the dominant star system form.

No problem IMHO

6) A rule that allows for a branch of the Psionics Institute to be found on a POP-8 world on a 2D roll of 12+.

IMHO that would break Traveller for me. Psionics, Magic, The Force etc. have always been elements that are best restricted to NPC and bad guys. With that many potential institutes, it would be hard to argue against PC Psis (a No-No IMTU)

Thank you.

Please.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by The Shaman:
]That's setting the bar a little high, don't you think? A personal preference isn't really something you can prove to someone else's satisfaction.

It's one thing to say "I don't think that's what Traveller is about". It's another to say "that's not Traveller". The former is clearly an opinion, the latter sounds more like a statement.

I don't think that's a compelling argument for either leaving it alone or making a change to "fix" it - if it has no effect on playing the game, then what purpose does the change serve?

Again, that depends on what you're after. If verisimilitude and realism and consistency matters to you, then it does serve a purpose.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
If it's a change with minimal impact on the setting, then why change it at all?

Why not change it though? If you can fix it for minimal effort then why not fix it? It just strikes me as being intellectually lazy to ignore it.

I mean, if you're writing a program and you see a programming error that doesn't really affect the output but is still a flaw nonetheless, do you just ignore it or do you fix it so it's not a problem in future? I'd fix it myself.

Those minor details you dismiss are a big part of the speculative fiction aspect of the Traveller universe in my experience. K'kree starships are designed with the psychological and physiological differences of the K'kree in mind - changing the K'kree to "human militant vegetarian xenophobes" eliminates the whole aspect of what life among the K'kree is like.

You'd have to change it, undoubtedly, but if you're a psychotic homicidal xenophobe then you can find another justification to use than vegetarianism .

The point of my example of changing the aliens was to illustrate that you could still have the basic setting and history of Traveller remain roughly unchanged, so long as something else similar filled their niche.

Many of the aliens presented in the OTU are remarkable for their Otherness, and do a fine job of conveying an alien presence while at the same time being playable enough to make them fun to encounter in the context of the game.

I've never really found any of the aliens in Traveller to be that unique or interesting myself. They've largely been one-dimensional space opera cliches, IMO, and it's not as if you couldn't theoretically replace them with "human with a funny attitude".

In any case, I think that replacing the aliens with different human cultures would be a dramatic and unwelcome change.

Sure. But if that was what was presented at the start instead of the alien-filled OTU, I don't think many would really care because the attitudes of the races would remain similar. I don't think that it's the pointy ears that makes people like Vulcans in star trek, or the crinkly foreheads that make them like Klingons - its the society and the culture and the characters you get from those races that makes them interesting.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Stars move around planets in your concept of a realistic universe?!?

OK, I missed that in the editing .

Originally posted by Malenfant:
The big question in my mind is, what purpose does making these changes serve? How do they make the experience of the game more enjoyable?

Most of these are just hypothetical (extreme) examples. I'm not actually saying we should drop all the aliens in Traveller or anything, just trying to illustrate my point.

Saying that a planet orbits a different star doesn't suddenly break the game and make it "not Traveller", as some people might claim

My question as a referee or player for anyone looking at changing the current assumptions isn't, "How can you make this more realistic?" but rather "How does changing the system improve on what I already have? How does it make the experience of the game better?" If you can't answer that question succinctly, then you're probably peddling a solution for a problem I don't have.

Depends how you want it improved really. If the existing trade system doesn't work for larger entities, then sooner or later you're going to wonder how the botched-together small-scale one can be adapted to work at that scale. But if you had a usable system that worked equally well regardless of scale, wouldn't you want to use that instead?

I would much rather have an abstract system that's playable, even if it's a little goofy, than a realistic one that adds nothing to the enjoyment of the people sitting around the table.

I'd rather have an abstract system that is based on realism myself. The less goofy it is, the better - but I certainly don't want to drown everyone in formulas and tables during gameplay either.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
From the way you phrase this question, you assume that your perception of what is important or not about the setting is universal.

I'm assuming that there's a core definition of Traveller that people are using by which to define the game - and if something deviates from that, then people cry "that's not Traveller!". My opinion or perception of that doesn't come into it.

What I'm unconvinced by is the assertation that making those changes really does makes it "not Traveller". Again, people can get into a tizzy if I (or anyone) suggests changing a star or a planet into something else, even if nothing else about the system changes. Why should that make a difference to whether it's really "Traveller" or not?

Instead of posing a question that cannot be answered, how about offering us all the reasons why you think making the game more "realistic" would be an improvement over what we have now?

I think I already have, many times. It makes the setting more believable and internally-consistent, and adds verisimilitude where there was none before. Let's face it, if everything made sense in Traveller, then we wouldn't keep having the same arguments all the time about trade or realism or budgets and how they all can't possibly work as they stand.

How does realistic star system generation make for more exciting adventures? As I mentioned earlier, we played Traveller for years with almost no thought to this at all and had a blast, so how does my game get better by including a more up-to-date system for detailing mainworlds or star systems?

It can give you more possibilities for things to do elsewhere in the system or on the mainworld that wouldn't have been apparent otherwise, for one thing. If you have more information at hand then you can use it in more ways.

I'm a Traveller player - sell me on your vision. Convince me why I should care.

I don't really think that I need to convince you though, to be honest. If you're happy with what it is, then you don't need the extra realism. If you're not happy with how it is but would be happier with more realism, then won't need any convincing

.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Originally posted by Michael Brinkhues:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Heretic Keklas Rekobah:
Would any of the following make Traveller into Traveller-Not, whether considered in whole or in part?

1) No Aslan or Vargr. Instead, an uplifted canine-feline hybrid (or precursor species) with intense curiosity and an unpredictable temper, which takes over the respective niches of the Aslan and Vargr.

Yes. Aslan and Vagr are part of the Setting as is. Besides the description of the new race barely fits the Vagr and has nothing Aslan in it

2) "Stargates" as per the movie and series' of the same name, maximum one per subsector. They are usually located on marginal worlds, or in marginal environments on populated worlds.

Yes. They dramatically shorten the time of a news transfer. Suddenly Sylea-Regina takes 4-6 weeks using two J6 couriers and two Stargates. Barons and above can attent the Moot in person for important decisions and sending politicians to Sylea instead of having nobles becomes practical similar to the 19th century USA

3) A region of space that is at least one sector in volume, in which no culture has had any recorded contact with the Imperium or its neighbors. Technology is similar to, but not always the same as, normal Imperial standards.

Depends on what is different and how the "no contact" is explained. If the culture is between J5+ Rifts and obeys Traveller Physiks it might work but even than it stretches the concept. Works better if it is "far beyond known space" similar to 1248.

4) A slight modification of the world generation procedure that provides a POP DM based on the the "867" environment of Terra, so that greater human populations occur on worlds closest to Terra's environment, and progressively less population on worlds that are progressively less like Terra.

Should work

5) A system-generation method that does allow for tide-locked marginal worlds orbiting brown dwarf stars, but that does not allow them to be the dominant star system form.

No problem IMHO

6) A rule that allows for a branch of the Psionics Institute to be found on a POP-8 world on a 2D roll of 12+.

IMHO that would break Traveller for me. Psionics, Magic, The Force etc. have always been elements that are best restricted to NPC and bad guys. With that many potential institutes, it would be hard to argue against PC Psis (a No-No IMTU)

Thank you.

Please. </font>[/QUOTE]Hmm... yes... I see... Thank you.

How about...

1) The uplifted canine-feline precursor occurs in a "1248"-like region of space where neither the Aslan or Vargr have ever appeared?

2) There is only one "Stargate" per sector, instead of one per subsector?

3) It is far beyond known space.

4) It seems to work for me, as well.

5) It seems to work for me, as well.

6) Just because a POP-8 world has an Institute, does not mean that the characters are any more likely to find it, or that they are any more likely to have Psi or be trainable. It could work, for those who allows psi in their campaigns. Then again, the only psi character I've allowed had a latent ability, which the character knew nothing about (and the player barely suspected), so that I could manifest it as a plot device when needed.

"No, there is no obvious reason why that device works only for your character. Maybe you should look into it... after you escape from prison, of course."

(And the Hiver took notes.)

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Heretic Keklas Rekobah:
[QB] Would any of the following make Traveller into Traveller-Not, whether considered in whole or in part?

1) No Aslan or Vargr. Instead, an uplifted canine-feline hybrid (or precursor species) with intense curiosity and an unpredictable temper, which takes over the respective niches of the Aslan and Vargr.

I think two different races would still be necessary. There's two societal niches to fill - an unpredictable, balkanised status-based society for the Vargr, and a proud warrior/noble savage type for the Aslan. Again, I don't see why you can't have both replaced by culturally different humans to be honest.

2) "Stargates" as per the movie and series' of the same name, maximum one per subsector. They are usually located on marginal worlds, or in marginal environments on populated worlds.

Well one of the stated aims of Traveller was to keep up an "18th century sail in space" theme, so instant traveltimes would definitely break that. I do think that even if you had the transit take a week, this would definitely be "not Traveller" though - you'd be funnelling all the traffic into specific routes (where the gates are), everything would be surface based (little need for spacecraft at all), and so on. This would be a change that would be very noticeable I think.

3) A region of space that is at least one sector in volume, in which no culture has had any recorded contact with the Imperium or its neighbors. Technology is similar to, but not always the same as, normal Imperial standards.

4) A slight modification of the world generation procedure that provides a POP DM based on the the "867" environment of Terra, so that greater human populations occur on worlds closest to Terra's environment, and progressively less population on worlds that are progressively less like Terra.

5) A system-generation method that does allow for tide-locked marginal worlds orbiting brown dwarf stars, but that does not allow them to be the dominant star system form.

6) A rule that allows for a branch of the Psionics Institute to be found on a POP-8 world on a 2D roll of 12+.

I don't think any of these would suddenly make the game "not Traveller".

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by ravs:
Um no, I'm saying that if a man in a bowler hat walked up to my character claiming himself to be a hiver, it just wouldn't be traveller to me.

Sounds like Traveller to me. I'd just assume it was a manipulation...

 

[Jeffr0]

How many rules in Soccer would we have to change before it would cease to be soccer?

That's not quite the same question, of course.

There's the OTU, there's the early Proto-Traveller universes, there's the necessary ATU that every referee undertakes even if he desires to play in the OTU, and there's the intentional ATU that plays with a few key premises but nevertheless does not stray to far from the implied universe of Books 1-3 or Books 1-8.

I think we all agree that the OTU with a few technical details changed for pedantic "scientific" reasons would still be Traveller. But take away the flat-space hex maps and create a 3D system generation system that is completely "realistic" and I think you begin to stray into something that really isn't Traveller anymore-- which is the point of that web comic I linked to.

If we were to go back and edit out all of the scientific errors in H G Wells novels or classic Star Trek episodes... would it still be what it was? The changes that Mal calls for can be as jarringly inappropriate to me as George Lucas's reworking of the Star Wars special effects in the 90's....

Mal is in fact playing GURPS Space. Not Traveller.

Traveller can be re-envisioned in the same way the Battlestar Galactica was... but that's a whole different game.... Change the system generation details and then where do you stop? If you don't revise everything else to be just as realistic, then you'll have a stylistic mismatch that's as incomprehensible as Greedo shooting first!

 

[Rover]

Mal,
This is a rather interesting conversation. Thanks for starting it.

For me Traveller is kinda like ⌧ography, I may not be able to define it but I know it when I see it. But I’ll give it a shot. (define Traveller that is.)

Sure there are purists that want everything by the book, and if they have fun playing that way hey more power to them. Then there are those who want to change things up, tweak things to their own satisfaction, hey that works too.

Traveller was never intended to be an astrophysical simulation sure we can look at the rules and say wouldn’t be more realistic if we changed this or modified that. If I wanted realism I wouldn’t be playing Traveller. Sure I’d like to hop planets on my own spaceship IRL, but I would never want to get in a gunfight, not even once, but that is something that happens to my characters on a regular basis.

As for the rules, I never looked at the rules as defining Traveller, or even the setting. I have played in CT, T2300, T20 and a couple of home brewed variants including 1 based on the old TSR Top Secret game system that I remember being great fun to play. I played in the OUT, in various ATU’s and I rum my own TU. Geographically it is in the Spinward Marches, but I do not allow aliens, not a one in the whole of MTU. (Oh there are rumors) I barely even use the variants of Humaniti

For me Traveller must have a few basic concepts for me to call it Traveller:
-SF setting with a hard science feel, no fantastical elements. No Magic, no ghosts etc.
-Jump based space travel, that takes a week.
-No FTL communication
-A vast universe populated with various tech levels and cultures, a monolithic empire spanning thousands of worlds
-Skill based characters generated by terms of Service.

And as far as I am concerned the most important aspect of all
-A small space ship with a diverse crew hopping from planet to planet trying to make a buck and stay a head of the law.

For me it more of a feeling than a rule set that defines traveler. I bought the games in the late 70;s and the LBB’s are dear to me, but I love playing T20. So as far as I am concerned you can change almost the whole thing, just keeping the loosest of frameworks, and it is still Traveller to me.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
There's the OTU, there's the early Proto-Traveller universes, there's the necessary ATU that every referee undertakes even if he desires to play in the OTU, and there's the intentional ATU that plays with a few key premises but nevertheless does not stray to far from the implied universe of Books 1-3 or Books 1-8.

Yep.

I think we all agree that the OTU with a few technical details changed for pedantic "scientific" reasons would still be Traveller.

We should all agree on that, but there are a few who probably wouldn't.

But take away the flat-space hex maps and create a 3D system generation system that is completely "realistic" and I think you begin to stray into something that really isn't Traveller anymore-- which is the point of that web comic I linked to.

Well first, the point of that web comic was that a realistic universe would contain a lot of gas giants and rockballs around dim red stars. I disagree that it would be "more boring" or less interesting as a result though.

But the question of a 3D vs a 2D universe is one that I don't think people have really explored properly. A lot of folks have dismissed a 3D universe as being "not Traveller" but I don't think they've made much of an effort to see what it would take to bring it closer to Traveller. I don't believe it'd be impossible to make a 3D universe that would look and feel like Traveller in practical terms.

Let's leave out the realism issues and just say that the aim is to make a universe that is 3D in distribution but as close to traveller as possible. And let's also assume we have some way to present the universe in a manner that is easily interpretable. Some of the problems/issues touted with a 3D universe include that empires would be smaller (because they're not all spread out on a single plane), or that borders would be more porous because there are more ways around a given planet.

If the 3D universe must be present, then can we tweak the existing Traveller technologies to avoid or minimise these issues? Has anyone even tried doing this? I know I've made a 3D map of stacked subsectors of the real stars near Sol, available on my website. All Jump drives needed was to factor in the vertical distances between the stars too, and that was it. So jump tech can work the same way... can we contrive any way to avoid the porous border issue? Maybe one way to solve this and make the empires feel bigger is to totally disallow deep space jumps, so you HAVE to go from one end of the empire to the other via a specific route.

Has anyone really thought about this at all? I don't recall seeing much discussion of what it would actually take to keep a Traveller feel in a 3D universe.

The changes that Mal calls for

Most of those I'm not actually "calling for" - again, they were hypothetical examples.

But let me ask this. If you had been presented at the start with a universe identical to Traveller in terms of its setting and history, except where all the aliens were actually different races/cultures of humans (and their cultures and how they get along with everyone else is otherwise the same as in the OTU), would you be doing anything different with that game compared to the OTU? Because I think you'd be playing exactly the same games in that TU as you're playing now in the OTU.

Traveller can be re-envisioned in the same way the Battlestar Galactica was... but that's a whole different game.... Change the system generation details and then where do you stop? If you don't revise everything else to be just as realistic, then you'll have a stylistic mismatch that's as incomprehensible as Greedo shooting first!

I don't think you would actually. You can easily have different levels of realism across various aspects of the setting. Take DP9's Jovian Chronicles for example - a realistic solar system, with giant robots and cinematic action. Does it clash? Not really. One's in the background, the other's in the foreground.

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It's one thing to say "I don't think that's what Traveller is about". It's another to say "that's not Traveller". The former is clearly an opinion, the latter sounds more like a statement.

I think the latter is just the former in fewer words.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
If verisimilitude and realism and consistency matters to you, then it does serve a purpose.

As the cast of "Sesame Street" might sing, "One of these things is not like the others!"

A setting and a rules system can provide verisimilitude ("the appearance of truth") and consistency without being realistic. Verisimilitude strives for the suspension of disbelief, not a rendering of objective truth.

Many fantasy roleplaying games and settings offer both consistency and verisimilitude, but are not realistic.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Why not change it though? If you can fix it for minimal effort then why not fix it? It just strikes me as being intellectually lazy to ignore it.

It strikes me as intellectually remiss to expect others to disprove a negative - that's a rhetorical dodge.

(An analogy: You don't get to claim that 37582 Faraday is a giant primordial mallomar, and then tell your critics to prove you wrong! )

The burden is on you to show why making the OTU more realistic is an improvement, not on others to prove that it isn't.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I mean, if you're writing a program and you see a programming error that doesn't really affect the output but is still a flaw nonetheless, do you just ignore it or do you fix it so it's not a problem in future? I'd fix it myself.

Most end-users run the program without ever examining the code at all, and therefore it's a complete non-issue for them either way.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
The point of my example of changing the aliens was to illustrate that you could still have the basic setting and history of Traveller remain roughly unchanged, so long as something else similar filled their niche.

For me, and I imagine for a number of other Traveller gamers, "humans with funncy cultures" aren't really similar enough to fill the niche, not by a long shot.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I've never really found any of the aliens in Traveller to be that unique or interesting myself. They've largely been one-dimensional space opera cliches, IMO, and it's not as if you couldn't theoretically replace them with "human with a funny attitude".

This sounds a lot less like, "What makes the OTU the OTU?" and more like, "Here's stuff I can't stand about the OTU that I think should be changed."

Originally posted by Malenfant:
But if that was what was presented at the start instead of the alien-filled OTU, I don't think many would really care because the attitudes of the races would remain similar.

Now we're no longer talking at all about what makes the OTU the OTU, and talking solely about an ATU that is built around your personal preferences.

That's not a bad thing of course - if you wrote it and published it as a .pdf, I might even buy it - but it doesn't really seem to be what you started out asking.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Most of these are just hypothetical (extreme) examples. I'm not actually saying we should drop all the aliens in Traveller or anything, just trying to illustrate my point.

Saying that a planet orbits a different star doesn't suddenly break the game and make it "not Traveller", as some people might claim.

Okay, but my questions as to how this makes the game better than it is now is still open. . .

Originally posted by Malenfant:]Depends how you want it improved really. If the existing trade system doesn't work for larger entities, then sooner or later you're going to wonder how the botched-together small-scale one can be adapted to work at that scale. But if you had a usable system that worked equally well regardless of scale, wouldn't you want to use that instead?

Ah, now we have something to discuss.

My answer is, "It depends." Is the system easy to use? Does it provide the same options the players have now, or more options without additional complexity? Does it actually fit my campaign?

This last one goes directly to the issue of scale. I've had no problem with characters running small shipping lines using nothing but the LBB 2 trade tables and the variant speculation rules in JTAS, so scaling up the rules hasn't been a problem in search of a fix.

On the other hand, I've never tried a game where the adventurers are running an Al Morai-size line, and such a system, if playable, could prove handy.

My question is, do we really need to change the OTU assumptions to create a workable, character-scale variant that would make that possible?

Moreover is it impossible to write a rules variant without first creating a top-down economic model of the Third Imperium?

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I'd rather have an abstract system that is based on realism myself. The less goofy it is, the better - but I certainly don't want to drown everyone in formulas and tables during gameplay either.

If you can balance the two, great. In my experience it takes an exceptional game designer to do that - many try, few succeed.

I prefer those who err on the side of playability, since that's where the rubber meets the road.

I don't believe for a moment that the OTU has a total of thirty-six goods and commodities that make up the whole of the speculative trade, but the playability of the trade rules is more important than a more complete and more complicated system.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I'm assuming that there's a core definition of Traveller that people are using by which to define the game - and if something deviates from that, then people cry "that's not Traveller!".

Flash! Gamers have strong opinions!

In other breaking news, water is still wet!

Originally posted by Malenfant:My opinion or perception of that doesn't come into it.

Ah, but it does, it does, considering how many of the things you so vocally proclaim need to "fixing" happen to coincide with your personal likes and dislikes.

I wager you're not as objective as you'd like to believe.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
What I'm unconvinced by is the assertation that making those changes really does makes it "not Traveller". Again, people can get into a tizzy if I (or anyone) suggests changing a star or a planet into something else, even if nothing else about the system changes. Why should that make a difference to whether it's really "Traveller" or not?

For me, most of it doesn't. I fool with canon all the time - my perogative as a referee.

Many gamers, regardless of system or setting, value portability - in my experience these people are the ones most concerned with preserving canon unchanged. They are a tough crowd to convince otherwise - about as tough as those who demand a high degree of realism in their science fiction roleplaying games.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I think I already have, many times.

No, you've said, "Realistic is better!" and invited others to challenge your assumption. That's not the same thing.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It makes the setting more believable and internally-consistent, and adds verisimilitude where there was none before.

See above for verisimilitude, realism and consistency.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Let's face it, if everything made sense in Traveller, then we wouldn't keep having the same arguments all the time about trade or realism or budgets and how they all can't possibly work as they stand.

Yeah, and no one EVER has these same arguments about OTHER gaming systems or settings.

Dude, that's just gamers. It has nothing to do with Traveller.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It can give you more possibilities for things to do elsewhere in the system or on the mainworld that wouldn't have been apparent otherwise, for one thing. If you have more information at hand then you can use it in more ways.

See, now this is how you make your argument! This is a selling point.

That said, in my experience playing Traveller, we didn't need Scouts, or World Builders' Handbook, or First In, to come up with different and varied worlds to explore. Most of these systems were too cumbersome, too detailed, for our fast-moving games.

That doesn't mean we lacked for double-planets or tidally-locked worlds or gas giant ring systems or iceballs in our games - we just added them in where we wanted them, as the adventures or circumstances called for. We had variety and mystery and wonder, and we didn't need a rules system to create that for us.

I think the bottom line is this: You value realism as a desireable goal in and of itself, and you have strong opinions about what you like and don't like, so why not leave the OTU to those who like it as it is, and stick with your ATU, where everything can be as you think it ought to be?

 

[Ptah]

Originally posted by The Shaman:
[QB] </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:
It's one thing to say "I don't think that's what Traveller is about". It's another to say "that's not Traveller". The former is clearly an opinion, the latter sounds more like a statement.

I think the latter is just the former in fewer words. </font>[/QUOTE]Good manners is all about how you say things as much as what you say. Even more important on a message board where we can't hear tone or read facial expressions. Grammatically, the former statement is qualified as personal opinion. The latter statement is declarative, and connotates an assertion of fact.

 

[Malenfant]

This is a digression from the point, but picture this situation:

----------------
Joe: "hey, I'm playing this great fantasy game, it's really fun, especially when I bash people to death with my sword!"

Fred: That's grea- wait, what? You bash people to death with your sword?

Joe: Yeah! We bash kobolds into a pulp with them all the time, it's great!

Fred: But that's not how swords are supposed to be used. You're supposed to ideally stab or slice with them - they're not bashing weapons!

Joe: Huh, well the rules don't say anything about stabbing or sliceing. Who cares anyway, I'm having fun. Tell you what, you tell me why it'd be better to change the rules so that my sword can be used "realistically", and I'll change them.

Fred: Uh...
----------------

That's really what people seem to be expecting me to do here. You want me to demonstrate to you why the game would be better if minor changes were made to make it based more on how things actually work? It'd be better because that's how things actually work!. Things would make more sense then, and not conflict because it was randomly thrown together. But it can still be just as fun as it was before, the fun's just reoriented a bit. That's the bottom line really - I can't really offer any further defence than that.

I think people have an irrational fear of realism in game settings - they think it somehow will make everything dull and boring. I've seen no evidence to support this at all. I've had as much fun in realistic games as unrealistic ones, as have other players I've gamed with in both situations.

 

[mctesla]

Wow-- go to work and come home to 3e6 posts in this discussion (on TWO threads, no less)!

Originally posted by The Shaman:
Whole bunch of stuff snipped

Sir--- you've made my arguments better than I could have done. Thank you for both your eloquence and your mannerly response.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It'd be better because that's how things actually work!.

Again, if realism is the goal, there are much larger elephants in the room than whether a O class star is less appropriate for a published star system vs. a G or K.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by loyal_citizen:
Again, if realism is the goal, there are much larger elephants in the room than whether a O class star is less appropriate for a published star system vs. a G or K. [/QB]

True. But the point is that changing it from an O to a G doesn't suddenly make the game "not Traveller". That being the case, I'm not sure I understand the fear that people have of what the game would be if it was made more realistic. If that was to happen... then it wouldn't really make much difference at all to the game you're playing.

 

[Anthony]

My general reaction is that, well, fixing cosmetic oddities such as star types wouldn't make the game Not Traveller, and fixing things that are ragingly nonsensical, while it has a meaningful effect, wouldn't make the game Not Traveller either.

However, a key question here is opportunity cost. Fixing these things (and distributing the changes) takes effort. Does this fix really get us anything that makes it worth the effort?

 

[flykiller]

Again, if realism is the goal

"realism" is the wrong word here - perhaps "precison" would be a better descriptor. the pursuit of precision may be a rewarding personal drive, but excess precision is wasted and useless effort. over and over again one sees the question popping up: "will this proposed change get my game anywhere? will it help my game? will it matter in the game?" clearly the answer is no, so a referee may decide he has more pressing game matters to attend.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Again, if realism is the goal

"realism" is the wrong word here - perhaps "precison" would be a better descriptor. the pursuit of precision may be a rewarding personal passtime, but excess precision is wasted and useless effort. </font>[/QUOTE]Actually, no.

You can be very precise and still be unrealistic and incorrect. But you can also be realistic and not necessarily be precise about it. I'd rather have realism than precision.

 

[Hal]

From my perspective, I'm in agreement with Mal's premise, that it is best to create something that has as much accuracy and realism as we can muster. As it is, I am running a Traveller Campaign where the old data is being tweaked and made to be more realistic (as best as I can that is). Worlds that had neither a Gas Giant or Water will remain as presented within the Traveller Universe unchanged. However, worlds that are improbable or impossible get changed.

Let us take an example from CT's Books 2 & 3 ok? Roll 2d6-2 for world diameter. Lets say for the sake of argument, we get a 4 on 2d4. That becomes a 2 after subtracting 2 right? Now we have a 2,000 mile diameter world as our starting block in visualizing a world right? Now, lets roll 2d6-7+world diameter size. We roll a 12! 12-7+2 is 7. So our world here has a diameter of 2,000 miles, and an atmosphere type "Standard - tainted". Rolling a 10 on 2d6, our hydrographics will, oddly enough, be a 10 (or 100% covered by water). After all, 10-7 plus atmosphere type of 7 becomes a 10. So our new world has a diameter of 2,000 miles, has a Standard Atmosphere, tainted by something as yet undefined, and has a hydrographics rating of 100%. Now, turning to pages 36 and 37 of CT's book 2: Starships, we find that the world's gravity is listed as being .25 g's. In real life? Such a world is incapable of retaining water vapor in its atmosphere. Such a world would lose its oceans in short order and become a desert world. Now I ask you - why place details of a world in the game, if you're going to ignore the details? And if you're given the numbers to crunch in the game (ie gravity rating for a world), and you realize that such number crunching proves that the world as generated can't exist - what do you do?

Me? I do NOT like the stellar details for the Spinward Marches as presented in THE SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN. The rules were implemented in a flawed manner so as to not match SCOUTS or MEGATRAVELLER. For me, the best thing to do is go back to SUPPLEMENT 3: SPINWARD MARCHES and redo the entire thing using the star system generation of choice and saying "That was old stuff and clearly wrong. This is the new stuff and as right as I can make it". If my players within the campaign don't bother to compare the original data from CT on the spinward marches - aren't going to know that I've been changing the data myself so as to be somewhat consistent with the old dataset, but has been corrected as best as I can using GURPS SPACE 4e.

If they can't tell the difference NOW with the modified rules - how can it be said it isn't TRAVELLER?

These are the changes that I'm implementing for use with Traveller: The Spinward Marches in my traveller Univese:

1) Atmosphere type takes precendence. If a world is intended to be a Standard Atmosphere type and has a lot of people living on it - I change its low diameter to one that will have that kind of atmosphere.

2) On worlds where the hydrographics are higher than zero, then the world's minimum diameter has to be large enough to retain water vapor. If it isn't, then I change the diameter to at least the minimum required.

3) On worlds where the population value is HIGH, and the atmosphere type is Standard, then the star type may not be an M class star. I automatically make it at least a K class star.

How does this impact on the game? It doesn't impact all too much on the TRAVELLER game! The world's history remains the same. The star's location on the map remains the same. The general stats remain the same. The only thing that changes are:

As a result of the star type also determining its radius, the 100 diameter limit for habitable worlds becomes changed over that listed in MEGATRAVELLER or THE SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN. The 100 diameter limit for the world in question also changes. The odd thing is? Unless they compare the material in MEGATRAVELLER against my universe, they can't even TELL there's a difference. All they know is that a world with a diameter of 5,000 miles has a 100 diameter limite of 500,000 miles instead of the original 2,000 miles as generated by die rolls and a faulty system. All they know is that they're told that the star in the system they're in is a K class star when instead, in MEGATRAVELLER or THE SPINWARD MARCHES campaign, it is listed as an M8 or M9 class main sequence star. It has NO impact on the game as far as they can see (or I for that matter).

So - my take on Mal's question is this:

If the history of the worlds remains consistent with what it was originally, and only minimal changes are made such as stellar types, orbial positions, etc - then make the changes. Think about it - how many worlds within the Traveller Universe has ever been FULLY detailed? A full detailed write up would include the following:

1) When was the world originally settled?
2) what is the world's average temperature?
3) What is the world's history for the last 100 years?
4) Who is in charge of the government on that world?
5) What does the atmosphere smell like?

Those are just SOME of the details one would perhaps need to make a world come alive for their players. I'd wager however, that if you took away the OLD material and replaced it with the same material that had been corrected and upgraded - that the Traveller Campaigns would play the same unless a GM happened to have that one world's stats memorized from the times of old...

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Mal, I think I've got what the basic disagreement is here. You feel that the lack of realism in Traveller is a major problem for the game. OK, I can grok that. However, when you say that Traveller should be rewritten in order to bring more realism into the game, then you are trying to install a personal viewpoint onto the game that not everyone shares.

Nobody is stopping you from modifying Traveller to what suits you best. In fact, there have been quite a few who have encouraged you to do so, because they'd like to see the result (like myself). Yet it is an unrealistic expectation to believe that since you find the lack of realism to be a problem in your own Traveller game, that Traveller players in general find that also to be a problem in their games and want it corrected.

It's like what Kipling said:
"There are Nine-and-Twenty ways
Of making tribal lays,
And every one of them is Right!"

 

[flykiller]

So our new world has a diameter of 2,000 miles, has a Standard Atmosphere, tainted by something as yet undefined, and has a hydrographics rating of 100%.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040810.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070207.html

here we have a real-life example (not the result of some simulation) of something almost exactly like this. book 3 says that the hydrographic percentage doesn't have to be water. so there you are.

book 3 and 6 have always been recognized as being a little hinky at the edges. good referees spin a good story out of it, or reach down with a pencil and change a number or two if they feel a better story will arise from it. saying book 3 or 6 aren't good enough is like saying 3.14 for pi isn't good enough. if you're a nasa scientist plotting a multi-million dollar probe's ten year course to pluto, it might not be. if you're a gamer running a game, it certainly is.