Originally posted by Malenfant:
Every time I propose trying to make something more realistic in the OTU, I get people saying "but that wouldn't be Traveller".
First, I don't think the reaction is universal to all of what you propose. Looking at this thread, the idea of eliminating the existing aliens clearly doesn't resonate with most of the posters, but the idea of changing star types to a distribution that is closer to what is known for planetary formation is largely met with a shrug and a "Whatever."
As I said earlier, some gamers value canon because they value portability, the idea that if they play with five different referees that the setting will be highly consistent between all five games.
Though you may not agree with that point of view, it's not necessarily A Bad Thing.
Now I play in an ATU, so such changes don't affect my game, but I can definitely understand why some gamers would take umbrage at a proposal to revamp the whole of the universe they've been using consistently for many years, whether those changes seem relatively minor or not to you. As Scarecrow noted in an earlier post, making Regina a canonical iceball might impact a lot of games, depending on the amount of detail the referee already established in the campaign, so some of this resistance you feel is out there may be entirely practical in that regard.
And while you may not agree with it, the canon IS
Traveller for that reason.
Traveller is both a rules system and a setting. The rules can be used to run many different kinds of games with no regard to setting (or even science or speculative fiction - Chaosium's
Thieves' World fantasy setting includes
Traveller conversion notes, for example) - conversely the setting can be used with many different game systems (there are setting conversions for d20 and GURPS of course, as well as FUDGE,
The Fantasy Trip, and HERO that I know of) independent of the
Traveller system. However, there is only one OTU, one shared canon universe in which scores of authors and tens of thousands of gamers invested for over three decades now. For many gamers that shared universe, no matter how wonky it may be when compared to our real universe, IS
Traveller.
I hope you understand why some gamers might get a little touchy when someone comes along and says, "Your setting is broken! Let me fix it!"
And by the way, you really need to drop the whole "fear of realism" thing. If you mean it to be as offensive as it sounds, you're not doing yourself any favors in generating support for your ideas about how to make the
Traveller experience better. If you don't mean it to be offensive, you need to take a step back and think about how that might come across to someone who values portability and playability more highly than fixing something that for them isn't broken in the first place.
I might as well toss this in here as well:
Originally posted by Malenfant:
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!.
So a realistic
Traveller universe is better because it's realistic?
Congratulations, the orbital eccentricity of your argument is 0.000!
As I noted upthread, clearly you place a high emphasis on realism with respect to planetary formation and star system organization. That's your thing - we get it. It's something that you value above existing canon. Other
Traveller players value portability - others still are invested in the shared history of the development of the OTU.
A game setting that realistically reflects what is known (and speculated) about our own universe is one of a number of competing values among
Traveller gamers - it is not the only value, nor is presumptively the most important of those values, particularly given the elephant in the room that's been largely ignored in this discussion: the entire
Traveller universe is a made-up place!
You know that realistic aspect of our universe I would love to see projected into
Traveller? I'd love a longer list of known stars and more accurate star positions. I'd love to be able to look up at night and say, "Yeah, that's where my character is right now!" more often than I can. The list of catalogued stars mapped in the game is pitifully short, but as much as I might want more such stars, it's not likely to happen because the star positions on the two-dee maps of
Traveller aren't meant to be an accurate representation of our real universe. It's a game setting, and it takes liberties with reality in the name of playability and practicality.
Let's say for the sake of argument that I could invest the time and effort to search SIMBAD and plot the positions of every possible star for which we have accurate distance measurements, developing some sort of algorithm that would allow me convert their positions to the two-dee mapping system of
Traveller. After my work is complete, I might come back to MWM and the
Traveller community and say, "'Lo, here's a list of stars and their positions. All we have to do is change the positions of a hundred and twenty of the stars in the OTU, and eliminate another two hundred altogether, and then our star maps will be REALISTIC. . ."
Would I like something like that? Yes. Do I expect other gamers to embrace it? Some. Do I think that the OTU should be modified to accomodate my work? No - it's an ATU, and I believe that's how it should be, because I respect the values of those who would like to see the OTU preserved as it's developed over decades. I wouldn't consider those who don't appreciate my astrometrical exertions hostile to my goals - I recognize that their priorities are simply not my own.
Food for thought.
Originally posted by Malenfant:
I don't know how many more times I have to say that [replacing aliens with humans] was a hypothetical example.
Given that MWM is unlikely to give you the opportunity to implement ANY of your proposed changes any time soon, I'd have to say it's all hypothetical - fanciful, even.
That said, you did bring it up as an example, so I don't know why you'd expect people not to respond to it.
Originally posted by Malenfant:
The fact that Hivers are big starfish or Aslan are cat-like isn't the thing that makes them cool. What people like about them are their culture and history and how they interact with others. Had they been defined initially as humans with those cultures, I suspect that few people would have thought they were less interesting.
Again I disagree.
The physiological and psychological needs of the K'kree result in a completely different approach to starship design. That's their alienness translated into something tangible that the players can explore through their characters. The culture of the K'kree is developed around their distinctive physical and mental traits, so one is an outgrowth of the other.
This is true of other aliens in the OTU as well, in my opinion. I don't believe this is readily replicated by "humans with funny cultures."
Originally posted by Malenfant:
By analogy, I don't think the fact that Planet X orbits a blue supergiant or a binary star or a red dwarf or whatever is what's making it interesting from a game perspective - it's the adventures that you can have on the planet and the people on it. Whether you have those adventures under a city-sized protective dome or in the open air, or in actinic blue light or dim red light doesn't really make much difference in practice.
I agree, but as I stated up-thread, that's not an argument for introducing a higher degree of realism either. If it's of no consequence to most gamers, then uch a change is superfluous.
Originally posted by Malenfant:
You say that, but I don't think it does matter to most people.
Unless you have some sort of concrete gamer survey data or something you can point to, I don't think saying "most people" share your values about this is valid. Some gamers, certainly - "most" gamers, sounds like overreaching.
Originally posted by Malenfant:
What you need is a Precursor race that left the odd ruin scattered around and who apparently destroyed a few planets in the process. Nobody in the Traveller setting even knows who Grandfather is.
The Ancients are pretty heavily woven into the backstory, and the discovery of the connection with the Droyne was a big part of more than one published adventure (and who knows how many homebrewed adventures).
You don't like the Ancients' shtick, take it out - it's your ATU. Expecting others to embrace such a change to the OTU? Well, I believe someone mentioned tilting at windmills up-thread. . .
It's been fun, but I actually have to get some "realistic" work done today, so forgive me if I don't respond to any further replies.
