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

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Michael Brinkhues:
To me humans acting like KKree or Vagr Raiders of Hhkar or Hivers deserve to be shot where they stand and I freely admit that my real world reactions and dislikes shape my characters.

I think that's somewhat extreme myself. I mean, Hivers don't really act any different to clever politicians (a rarity, I know) or advertisers - not exactly something worth shooting someone where they stand. And I probably don't want to know what you think of other real world cultures that aren't your own...

I never said Aliens as PC, there are few races in Traveller that actually work as PC (Bwap maybe).

Bwap are classic "humans in funny suits", they have one one schtick and that's it - they're the "bureaucrat race". They could easily be replaced by humans filling the same niche, and nothing would really change much (hell, the Vilani are very bureaucratic as it is).

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I mean, Hivers don't really act any different to clever politicians (a rarity, I know) or advertisers - not exactly something worth shooting someone where they stand.

[Heinlein] Shooting politicians and advertisers sounds like fun. [/Heinlein]

One of the memes used to explore aliens and alien societies in speculative fiction is the role of convergent evolution on the development of alien lifeform and the potential for cultural similarity that may arise between intelligent species. I don't have the book handy to look up the specific quote, but one of the characters in Jack McDevitt's The Engines of God mentions this, something to the effect that all of the alien cultural evidence that humans discovered in their explorations pointed to certain universal traits among intelligent beings.

I think this is the meme around which Traveller aliens need to be viewed: that in the OTU, the physical and chemical constraints of habitable worlds contribute to similar ecological niches, that convergent evolution results from adaptation to those niches by different organisms, and that a comparable convergent cultural evolution takes place among intelligent species. This is a valid approach found in many works of speculative fiction.

While this may not appeal to those who want their aliens to be inscrutable enigmas of extreme biochemistry, it does offer the singular advantage of providing an eminently playable approach for a sci-fi roleplaying game, one in which players are likely to (1) want to interact with alien species or (2) actually play an alien character. Aliens which share similar physical or cultural traits are a feature, not a bug - it's to the game's advantage that aliens and humans share as much physical and cultural baggage as they do, not its detriment.

Of course, if that's not your cup of tea, then it's all going to be silly and pointless - create your own ATU where the conditions you prefer are prevalent, or try another system or setting altogether.

As a final thought, I think you may be underplaying the alienness of some of the OTU sophonts. I don't think anyone in my Traveller campaigns ever equated Hivers with "clever politicians" or "advertisers," if for no other reason than my Hiver manipulations are Rube Goldberg-like in complexity producing inscrutable results. Bwaps aren't just the "bureaucratic" alien - their complex minds and rigorous training make them the undisputed masters of social feng shui as they seek to create and patterns and structures from the living beings of the universe.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Brinkhues:
To me humans acting like KKree or Vagr Raiders of Hhkar or Hivers deserve to be shot where they stand and I freely admit that my real world reactions and dislikes shape my characters.

I think that's somewhat extreme myself. I mean, Hivers don't really act any different to clever politicians (a rarity, I know) or advertisers - not exactly something worth shooting someone where they stand. And I probably don't want to know what you think of other real world cultures that aren't your own...

</font>[/QUOTE]Sorry but Hivers are more than the mytical "clever politician". Unless you consider Stalin, Mussoline or Göbels "clever politicians". Manipulation the population of an enemy world to a point that the enemie has to perform genocide on them, massively changing a race and it's behaviour and doing what they did in 1248 is far past what is acceptabel.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />I never said Aliens as PC, there are few races in Traveller that actually work as PC (Bwap maybe).

Bwap are classic "humans in funny suits", they have one one schtick and that's it - they're the "bureaucrat race". They could easily be replaced by humans filling the same niche, and nothing would really change much (hell, the Vilani are very bureaucratic as it is). </font>[/QUOTE]That is why the Bwap are the race that might work. Again, there is more to a Bwap than that in GT but one might get away with wet Bureaucrat

 

[Liam Devlin]

Well, here we are...

I'm with 'Crow & others--removal of key portions of the setting = X < Traveller, & therefore not Traveller, but yields instead a setting with "Traveller (insert users choice) game mechanics".

+I'm not for removing any of Traveller's aliens --that's my job as a GM to make them more realistic/ believable in game play: that includes sentient & non-sentient creatures.

+Aliens as Player characters-- I've had folks play Vargr, Aslan, Ithklur, Droyne, and Hivers. No one played a K'Kree. Not one. They make a dandy NPC race though. Bwap? Sure. The perfect Bureaucratic race match up for the Vilani <grins>, and its damp/moist, not "wet" Pols, MB--think Skinks, walking upright

If I wanted "rubber-suited" aliens, I'd play in the Gene Roddenberry any-alien & humans are sexually viable/ compatible 'Verse, Not this one. I refuse to comment on the plethora of half-Vulcans, 1/2 Klingons, 1/2 Betazoids, Orions, and so on, beyond which is fantasy-setting shtuff in RPG's, not hard science of what we understand of DNA today. Again--Not Traveller.

+The Jump Drive is the Jump drive.--Now a more realistic way of using it/ explaining it would be using acceleration time, and then punching out when escape velocity is achieved--as Bryan Gibson does in his ATU "Terran Praesidium" setting. Same amount of time is used up/ and same distances crossed / Same TL needed for the Jays to achieve their distance/ fuel requirements. His is an ATU example using realism, & an alternate timeline-historical setting. The 'week-in-the-hole" still stands as one of the reasons why a great many Historical events occurred the way they did.

+Historical setting 1st Imperium to the 4th. Sorry GURPS fans, diverging off into 1117+ "it never happened" (no Rebellion) made GT an ATU as I define it.

+Realistic Stars & System generation --Here I as the GM like to use the best known science available. I know folks who've played this game from DAY 1, and they still haven't wrapped their brain around the UWP digit data string for worlds. CT began, then MT picked it up; TNE continued and added to the process (dropping the infamous Type VI stars). Why shouldn't a new version update the process? There is precedence, after all. Only MWM holds that answer.

+Realism in the game, per se. I like to put cause & effect into the game. I like the players to have to make real-life type decisions in their adventures.

Example: So ya'll Succesfully Hijack a starship, don't wonder why you're being hunted, okay? The law is the law, and while you can get away now..you're still running, they're still waiting.

Another example: Law level 0 means the same applies to any Law enforcement team of that System Government response to YOUR lack of lawfulness is one of my favorites. Don't expect a warm fuzzy shrug, and when you open up with an Autopistol in a crowded SPA terminal there, or yell "I've got a BOMB" there. Expect the most extreme prejudice to be meaningfully applied in the most expedient fashion.

Example: Choosing who lives or dies often occurs in real life, and sometimes you face the choice of the ones you love, the ones you can save, and the ones you can't.

Example: A Successful ending to an adventure isn't always "a Happily ever after". You can win against all of the odds, and still be a pauper. Sometimes the heroes die, the asteroid strikes the planet, the jump drive totally criticals out.

The above are all My takes on realism & Traveller. Thought I'd share.

Whose next?

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

As I said elsewhere, I'm with Mal all the way on the Aslan and Vargr. All other aliens I find tolerable if administered sparingly (again, no Star Wars cantina, please).

Thing is, as somebody (Mal himself?) pointed out somewhere: you can remove the cats and dogs from your TU no problem. They're very modular. What would really change? Especially if the niceties of canon history don't bother you?

I think Marc deserves some credit as a designer for this pick-and-choose modularity. You can almost not play D&D without Elves & Dwarves. But Traveller is different.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Rhialto the Marvelous:
Thing is, as somebody (Mal himself?) pointed out somewhere: you can remove the cats and dogs from your TU no problem. They're very modular. What would really change? Especially if the niceties of canon history don't bother you?

I think Marc deserves some credit as a designer for this pick-and-choose modularity. You can almost not play D&D without Elves & Dwarves. But Traveller is different.

Not sure if I was the one that pointed that out. I recall saying that the Aslan and Vargr are largely on the borders, and that most of the interesting stuff in the setting happens between the Vilani, Solomani and Zhodani. You could get rid of the Aslan and Vargr from your average 3I-set traveller game and not really notice that much difference.

I think it's mostly because they're on the borders of the 3I anyway, and the main settings for Traveller have focussed on Imperial space mostly. I don't see much evidence for any deliberately cunning modular design here... elves and dwarves in D&D are usually thoroughly mixed up with the humans, whereas the major aliens in Trav are mostly in their own empires away from the 3I.

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

That's my point, Mal! But you've been so grumpy these past couple of days you wouldn't give Marc credit for general relativity if he had discovered it.

I'm telling you, he's better than you think... simply to have made known space as BIG as it is is a stroke of genius. In a space this size, you can lose anything you don't like to see in your own TU.

 

[Malenfant]

Wait, you realise I'm disagreeing with you, right?

At first the 3I setting didn't even exist, so anything could go (well, so long as it had jump drive that worked a certain way, and PCs that were older than your D&D standards, etc). And the 3I setting was built fairly piecemeal anyway.

Yes, the blanks mean that you can customise it to how you please, but I don't think it was purposefully designed to be like that from the start, I think it's just an unintended but desirable side effect that fell out of the way the setting was growing.

And if that was actually the intent, then why is canon even an issue to anyone? I gather that Marc is wanting to produce a Second Survey for T5 where every sector in the 3I is defined - there's no gaps there for people to do their own thing in. So if it really was a 'stroke of genius' to allow people to do that, he seems to be taking steps to change that now.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
...And if that was actually the intent, then why is canon even an issue to anyone? I gather that Marc is wanting to produce a Second Survey for T5 where every sector in the 3I is defined - there's no gaps there for people to do their own thing in. So if it really was a 'stroke of genius' to allow people to do that, he seems to be taking steps to change that now.

As the original* Grognardy Gearheadonist Canonmonger(tm) (hey, where's my favorite and onlyist licensed GGC been of late anyway?) I tend to take up canon as an issue only for official answers to OTU matters. For my own game, and most any one I'd want to play in I expect certain creative deviations. Makes the whole "It's not Traveller" issue a bit of a moot point for me.

* well not really, but I did coin the turn of phrase I think

But anyway, onto the point I was aiming for, tangent to topic though it may be (hold still ya silly point, how am I s'posed to hit a moving target) I get the feeling that the current RPG crowd wants it all detailed, complete with guided adventures. Checklists to follow on how to present the scenario. Fully detailed NPCs including actual scripts of repsonses to expected lines of PC inquiry. Etc., etc...

So it's not surprising that Marc intends to attempt to give them that in the form of a fully detailed universe. It's what they want. He'll fail of course. Not for trying but because it's impossible to satisfy that level of completeness.

It used to be the ideal was "give me the tools" to create my game. Be that a fantasy setting with magic and swords, elves and trolls, dragons and demons. Or a modern setting, an historical setting, a horror setting, a campy setting, or a future setting. Now it seems the call from the market is "give me the setting" and tell me how to play your game. I dunno, maybe it's just the cynic in me. I long for the days of players and refs creating homespun stories rather than comforming to packaged modules of complete A to proceed to B by doing C Yeah I'm just an old coot

You young uns and your fancy percentiles, why I remember when all we had was a coin to flip. One coin mind you. We had to share that and wrap up the game before the pizza arrived since that was the delivery tip

 

[Blue Ghost]

*shrugs*

Is this discussion really neccesary?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
*shrugs*

Is this discussion really neccesary?

Very few discussions on this board can be called "necessary". If the existence of this particular discussion offends you so much, then by all means go find another discussion to post in that interests you instead - nobody's forcing you to contribute anything here or to even read this thread.

So far there's been six pages of discussion here, so evidently it must be something that some people consider to be worth talking about.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Come to think of it Mal, the earliest UWP's I recall seeing didn't even have stellar data on them, they were just: A987654-A B Ri 512 Im

MT's Rebellion Sourcebook (page 34) shows of the 19 Imperial Depot UWP's only three had gas giants, as late as 1987 (date of publication). But No Stellar data...zip, nada, zilch.

Berka's CT Sector site here:
http://zho.berka.com/data/CLASSIC/

for example, is entirely devoid of any Stellar data, making such an undertaking possible (gigantic of course, but possible).

Would it still be traveller afterwards? yes.

2.) On the issues of removal/ or transmogriphication of Aliens into Humans with differing cultures (aka the Aslan & Vargr), I see your point from the "where their empires lay" POV, but once they were meshed with the broader 3I, 2I, 1I historical perspectives it changes too much of that part of the setting for my taste.

Is it doable? Yes.

Would it be Traveller or an ATU with traveller mechanics?-IMO, an ATU.

3.) On the issue of habitable worlds/ and High Pop rockballs, it hasn't come up among in game play between players & I "why" there were 4-5 billion here, when there were utterly better survivable worlds elsewhere in my MT, TNE and later Tne: 1248 campaigns...(I played CT, never reffed it, FWIW). It added to the tragedy and near sightedness of the people in the metaplot of the Collapse--I simply looked at it as they went there for the Jobs & good economic benefis, unknowingly as the rebellion shattered the Imperium that in eight-ten years they'd be gasping for air, killing one another for a berth to get off a coffin of their own making.

Some of the Minimum TL's to survive on a world, and MSP issues we've taken to task in TNE:1248, which were both positive steps in the right direction, IMO, and were ones which I was but one among many helped to shape, yourself included.

That being said, applying those kind of changes to the pre-TNE, pre MT era Traveller would change the setting to some extent, poulation-wise. that's more of an undertaking than even I have time for, trust me.

Is it doable? yes.

Is it still traveller after it is done, or is it an "ATU"?

In so much as certain High Population centers might have to be "moved", yes, with minor tweaks to certain worlds.

The final line: The more you change, the less it becomes Traveller in its setting.

+Realistic Stars-No problem

+Retrofitting worlds to better reflect real Stars--minor tweak to orbits, and the majority of these worlds have never been done anyway. Again, no Problem. Start Changing all of the populations, you've bought yourself a self inflicted headache for 11,000 worlds+ the rest of charted space (see Berka's site and start counting the sectors thus done.. )

+Changing the Alien races--Nope.

I await your counter arguments,
sincerely,

 

[Madarin Dude]

I think the aliens are necessary alien to a point but nto so extreme. I agree what was said abotu Rodenberry aliens half vulcans etc. You need a few thigns one is slow communications and travel the stargates just kind of change the feel of it. One of the things that is so good is the feel of being at sea and beign detached from the universe in jump space add FtL coms and jump gates a major part of the feel is gone.

 

[Malenfant]

+Retrofitting worlds to better reflect real Stars--minor tweak to orbits, and the majority of these worlds have never been done anyway. Again, no Problem. Start Changing all of the populations, you've bought yourself a self inflicted headache for 11,000 worlds+ the rest of charted space (see Berka's site and start counting the sectors thus done.. [Eek!] )

I'm pretty sure I've presented a realistic Regina system somewhere on CotI before, at least in parts. That's one of the iconic systems, and it's so full of problems - the close white dwarf companion, the huge size of Regina and other satellites compared to its primary, the extreme distance of such a large satellite as Regina from its primary, the habitability of Regina itself (it'd be tidelocked to Assiniboia... and given its rather long orbital period its day length would be extreme).

All of that can be solved if the system is tweaked, but most likely the easiest way to do it is to have Regina as an individual planet orbiting Lusor in the habitable zone.

 

[Blue Ghost]

'Wasn't offended, Mal, just curious. It seems to be a lot of rehashed material, and I thought some of the veterans might've pointed that out.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
'Wasn't offended, Mal, just curious. It seems to be a lot of rehashed material, and I thought some of the veterans might've pointed that out.

Take a look elsewhere here. Can you honestly find many discussions about Traveller and the OTU that haven't been rehashed or done before?

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Blue Ghost:
Is this discussion really neccesary?

Some roleplaying gamers enjoy this sort of meta-gaming - others just aren't happy unless they have something to rail against.

I prefer "value-added" discussion myself, stuff I can take back to our game: rules interpretations or variants, setting chrome, or adventure seeds.

There are critics everywhere, and sites like this one give them an outlet. I refuse to let their issues spoil my fun.

 

[Malenfant]

Some people sneer at those who "play with games" instead of just play them, but personally I'd just tell those sneerers to mind their own business. As long as everyone is enjoying themselves then nobody else has any business telling others how they should enjoy their games - and certainly nobody else has any business telling anyone else what to do with what they've spent their money on.

You can refuse all you like to not let us "spoil your fun", but you're responding to a threat to your fun that doesn't exist. Personally I don't care if you play a completely unrealistic game, if you're enjoying yourself then by all means carry on as you are.

 

[The Shaman]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Some people sneer at those who "play with games" instead of just play them, but personally I'd just tell those sneerers to mind their own business.

Perhaps you'd be happier with the editorial control of a blog instead of posting your thoughts in a chaotic environment like a message board?

I'm not at all sure if this site is good for your blood pressure.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
As long as everyone is enjoying themselves then nobody else has any business telling others how they should enjoy their games. . .

Does that extend to telling them games are better if they are more realistic?

(The unspoken inference being that if your game isn't realistic, it is somehow inferior to one that is. I'm not assuming that's your intent, but you do tread very close upon that line, unwittingly or not.)

Originally posted by Malenfant:
You can refuse all you like to not let us "spoil your fun". . .

Oh, I am most decidedly a refusenik at heart!

Originally posted by Malenfant:
. . .but you're responding to a threat to your fun that doesn't exist.

No, I'm saying that there is no threat to my game that can come from discussions like this one, which incidentally I've been happy to play along with quite a bit more than is my usual inclination.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Personally I don't care if you play a completely unrealistic game. . .

In a courtroom they call that, "Assuming facts not in evidence."

You assert repeatedly that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow "anti-realism." Since you've never played with our group, I don't really think you're in a position to comment on that with any authority whatsoever.

What I have said is that I value playability first and foremost. That doesn't inherently preclude attempting to create a realistic setting.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
. . .if you're enjoying yourself then by all means carry on as you are.

Are you giving me permission, or offering a blessing?

 

[Malenfant]

Wow, I have no idea how anyone could possibly misread what I said so badly. Sometimes I think people are just looking to pounce on anything I say for the sake of trying to paint me as a bad guy. Your responses couldn't be further from what I said.

I don't recall ever telling anyone that they're playing their games wrong if they're not doing it realistically and shouldn't be enjoying themselves if they do that. My issue has always been with what's written in the books, it's never been with how people play their games.

What other people infer from what I say is entirely up to them, but that doesn't mean I'm actually saying that. On the contrary, I try to be as clear as possible about what I mean (the odd editing slip gets through occasionally though). So you can infer all you like that I'm claiming that people who play unrealistic games are playing it wrong and shouldn't be having fun that way, but as far as I can recall I've never said that or even implied that.

In a courtroom they call that, "Assuming facts not in evidence."

I thought it was quite clear from the context that I was talking generally, not specifying you (The Shaman) specifically. Replace "you" with "anyone" if it makes it any clearer.

The point is that how anyone plays their games or how they enjoy them or even if they play the games at all is completely irrelevant to any discussion about the merits of realism or what Traveller is.