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

[Merxiless]

Originally posted by ravs:
I'm reading an SF book written in 1943 called 'The Radium Rebels'...[snip]The 'science' is laughable but it's a good romp.

Ravs

Exactly. I love pulp stories like those. And roleplaying games based on them, a la WEG Indiana Jones, ICE Pulp Heroes, Hero Games' Pulp Hero, etc.

Great fun, screw the science. Fit the "pseudoscience" to the setting.

Death rays, Zeppelin airfields, Some huge mirror array that will be used to melt the South pole...all of that stuff is good stuff for a game, for use by Dr. Evil and his minions.

A lot of the sci fi authors started with those type stories.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Originally posted by Klaus:
You can have a certain level of realism without being dry.

Imagination and creativity work better when there's limits. You don't have to overwhelm players with incredibly long number strings (that's what High Guard's for) or complicated equations and relationships (oops, that's Book 6).

Basically, if there's already some arcane mechanics in the game, which there is, they might as well be as realistic as possible. They are not, but as Mal has proved, fixing it is a: possible, and b: not a game breaker.

I think the point is not to be hyper realistic, just not incredibly, and obviously, unrealistic, which half the OTU is, more or less.

Having a small planet with a thick breathable atmosphere is obviously wrong to any with the most cursory knowledge of planetlogy. Traveller is, after all, not the type of game where every planet speaks English and looks like Canada.

But where does one stop with "some realism"? Do we stop with what some people think planets should be?

Or maybe we should fix computers, they are EXTREMLY BROKEN as any engineer of Applied Computer Science, Speciality Process Control Systems can tell you.

Or maybe the ship crews. They are far too small, they need massiv computer/robot aid or more crew. Again, having done 24/7 operations in technical systems I can asure you about that.

How about technological differences? Shouldn't they have stopped long ago, at least in the core sectors? The 3I has Standard Data Packets for a small fee so uplift your planet

I can likel make a dozend valid points where Traveller is "Unrealistic" that need to be changed. None will have grave consequences but in the long run, it will stop being Traveller. And where does one stop?


Another problem is that the re-work costs unneccessary effort that I can spend better for other things.

And "Realism" is something I have 140+ hours per week, it's called a life. Same for my players/GM's. Roleplaying for us is escapism and there I WANT to be able to pull a "Chow Yun Fat" and add a "Walker" just for fun. If I want realistic weapons I go to the shooting range or a reservists shootng, not to an RPG session.

Add in that I find space rather uninteresting outside of SciFi books and movies and would rather see any efforts on missions past GEO and ALL manned missions stopped and the money used on earth and you might see why I have even less interest in "Reality".

 

[mbrinkhues]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It's down to priorities really - a ref should be prepared to do some er... preparation anyway. I'm sure some refs spend ages detailing an entire startown that players only visit a tiny part of, and that would just be classed as 'normal prep' for such people.

This is all pre-game prep anyway. When a ref is initially designing the subsector or whatever, that's when he'd do all this work. (presumably the ref is going to be doing actual work here too, not just grabbing random subsector sheets and throwing them together). It just depends on how much time one is willing to put into it is all.


But if that realistic data already existed in a usable form, would you use it?

Strange, I never constructed a subsector for Traveller. There where some around to use. Like the Spinward Marches, Diaspora...

Neither do I spend hours detailing a starport. A short walk through a harbor district sets the basics and off we go. None of my players want a 1:10000 military map for most games(1) they are happy with a rough description and a basic sketch.

To your last question: I would not care. I need a rough stellar map and some systems, don't care wether they are realistic or not unless I play 2300AD(2).

(1)And for T2K games I actually use REAL 1:10000 maps.
(2)In that case I would NEVER use a "realistic" map - breaks the game

 

[Merxiless]

Originally posted by Klaus:
When your player says. "But this planet is far too small for such a dense atmosphere."

My reply would be, "Yes, it's a mystery, isn't it. How will you go about finding out why?"

Then it is not just the single solution of mining for radioactives.

- Terraformed only a few millenia ago by some lost race
- It was once larger, and is shrinking from the inside out, due to some sort of high gravity dimensional rift or .. something.
- It does have a dense core, but the core is lead.. or some other non-radioactive metal.
- The players never find out, and it remains an unexplained enigma / puzzle, that might spin out for years, as they try to figure it out, meet with scientific NPCs in game, do their own surveys.

That's my spin on such a situation. Again, I'm seeking story factors for scenarios, not "realism"

Oncce something is explained, categorized, and defined, it is no longer a mysterious unknown, it is known, and...that's that.

Things that the players do not know keep up the uncertainty, and thus add to the dramatic tension.

Once it is resolved, it's no longer dramatic, time to move on.

 

[mbrinkhues]

Originally posted by Merxiless:
All good points, Jeff.

To skip back a bit, there is some kind of law or requirement of biology that to grow plants in soil you must have already had that soil "laced" with microbes, for some reason based in both organic chemistry and biology that I don't quite understand.

I read this in one of those Asimov or Heinlein "An SF-writer, writes on real science" books.

The end result is you can't take a world that has no native life, and just drop a colony that is designed to grow it's own food there in native soil without that soil being prepared over quite some time by microbial life. Plants just won't grow, is the gist of it.

Again, I'm no biologist. I respect the facts behind it on a science level, but it just blows my whole colony here, colony there setup out of the water, and messes with what I set up years and years before reading the specific book / article.

Actually you could do the "lacing" yourself, bringing your own microbes etc. That's what most likely would have to be done to use i.e Mars soil if some of the stranger Mars ideas ever find finance.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by Malenfant:

But if that realistic data already existed in a usable form, would you use it?

Depends on the data. If 90% of it is crap I or my players won't use, then why would I want it?

I enjoy Traveller and I enjoy astronomy, doesn't mean I want to tear apart the OTU and rewrite everything so that it fits in with the latest Hipparcos catalog data.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Originally posted by Klaus:
Yes. 15 years as an artist, studying, practicing, teaching. Varez. Can. Captain Beefheart. 8-bit Nintendo game music. Sushi. Picasso. Star Wars vs The Phantom Menace. El Mariachi vs Desperado. Doctor Who. Haiku. Chess. Einstein. Miyazaki. Tezuka. Bad Taste vs King Kong. Tetris. Ascii art. I could go on.

Not trying to be insulting, but could you be a little bit more clear in showing your proof? All I got out of the above was that you are claiming expertise as an artist.

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Klaus:

Having a small planet with a thick breathable atmosphere is obviously wrong to any with the most cursory knowledge of planetlogy.

And this disrupts actual game play how? </font>[/QUOTE]When your player says. "But this planet is far too small for such a dense atmosphere." You reply, Erm, it's really dense..
"So it must have loads of radioactives or heavy metals. Lets set up a mining base and get rich." or
"Yeah, but so were the last two planets we went to. What gives?"

And yes, I've had players who would ask such reasonable questions. [/QB][/QUOTE]

Sounds instead like the opportunity to create a new adventure path that the players are more interested in.

Besides, the high density atm/small world may only be the current conditions. Nobody said that they have to last.

 

[Merxiless]

Originally posted by Michael Brinkhues:
Neither do I spend hours detailing a starport.

Exactly. Placing it down on paper like the old Judges Guild 50 starport books just makes it one big space dungeon with the buildings outside.

I find that it constrains my ability to tell a flowing story, and bogs it down into minute details like:

It takes you 15 minutes to walk to the gun shop and another 15 to buy the scopes you ordered. 20 minutes to go to the tramway, then 15 minutes to get money exchanged, more to wait for the tram, after your party spends a few minutes at the ticket booth. 20 minute tram ride to the Cargo dealer. All faithfully followed on the map.

It's tedious.

I'd rather have it set up like this:

"We jump for Denali III, so we can sell off those rifles we got from the guys across the border."

You arrive at the Denali downport and there are clusters of ships leaving too and fro. An Oberlindes line freighter is boosting for orbit under full power, and the roar is deafening.

"We catch a tram to the Cargo Dealer's office."

Arriving at the Office, you all have been arguing with him for a good half hour.

The Cargo dealer says, "Good gods, you guys drive a hard bargain. Okay, here's the deal: 3.5 mil for the rifles, but you got to drop off 2 loads for me on Altos II by the end of the week, no questions asked. That's my final offer, take it or leave it."

And then the players decide.

If they want to do something different, I go with that, instead, thus nothing I ever set up is sitting there, unused, and I don't have to agonize over feet, yards, inches, and millimeters to do X.

 

[ravells]

And "Realism" is something I have 140+ hours per week, it's called a life.

Yes, I can relate to that! That's what I like about the 'evolution of a starport' project, I can just let my imagination run riot and forget about thankless clients, legal opinions and money grabbing so and sos who use the court system as an engine to make money rather than to resolve genuine diputes (and those arn't even the lawyers).

Playing traveller is the same...once a week on Sundays I enter this lovely fantastical realm on Grip with Valarian where I can lose myself for a couple of hours in something that isn't real. That said, if the rules were written with realism in mind, it would be better for me, because I'd actually be playing and learning at the same time. And if I felt the realism got in the way of a beautiful setting, I'd lose the realism. Like Merx said, having big zepplin airfields and people flying around wearing grav belts is the way to go for me.

Ravs

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Michael Brinkhues:
Outland and Alien realistic? Where? In the fact that anything around Jupiter will be roasted by the radiation for the Io-Jupiter link? The Alien eggs that survive for how long? The whole Alien species?

Sorry, little realism there. [/QB]

I think it's funny that you're even stricter about realism than I am.

Those are realistic movies as far as sf goes. But like I said, I don't demand 100% realism in everything, and I think expecting that is somewhat unreasonable. This is science-fiction we're talking about after all, not a science documentary.

I'm all for a good story, and I don't really care if the setting is realistic or not - what matters more to me is that it's consistent and coherent. And if you have to stretch reality in places to get that then I'm happy to do it, but only if it doesn't create a jarring inconsistency in the process. And if you have to stretch it in too many places then it just starts to get silly (which is basically what Traveller does).

 

[ravells]

Sorry don't mean to threadjack but one little quote went unnoticed:

Klaus said:

Yes. 15 years as an artist, studying, practicing, teaching.

WHERE are your traveller pictures???? I want to see!

Ravs

 

[Merxiless]

Originally posted by Klaus:
When I see space opera style, whether in rpg, book, or tv/screen form, I keep seeing the same old chesnuts over and over.

Pardon, but when I see writing in any form, in any media, I see the same old chestnuts over and over.

Boy meets girl.

Brother kills brother.

Coming of age.

Fish out of water.

Rebels against the Empire.

Empire against the Barbarians.

Zero to 100.

Fall from Greatness.

A daring enterprise.

The last mission before retirement / blaze of glory.

Save the earth, before doom befalls it.

And ALL of THOSE are valid.

It's all the human condition, human stories, of heroes, and villains, despite the specific set of rules used.

Just the details of setting and genre change slightly, (or more than slightly) in the telling.

And the setting of Traveller was set long ago, with evolutions over time via different editions, that some embraced, and some didn't. Thus results all of this division by rules set.

Making it more realistic is yet another refinement and revision, to Traveller pocket universe 326-A-v3.1b

Everyone's concept of Traveller is, I think, slightly different. But as long as there is general agreement on what is "Basic" to the setting, those people can play together.

 

[ravells]

What does zero to 100 mean?

Ravs

 

[Malenfant]

I also find it interesting that I've been saying "you don't need to go totally overboard on realism" (and that's coming from a member of the "realism is not a bad thing" camp) and yet others - who happen to be in the "realism = booooring" camp - seem to be insisting that if you have realism then everything has to be meticulously detailed and 100% realistic.

It seems to be a circular, strawman argument. Merx backed up his claim that realism must make a game boring by citing an example where he chose to run a boring realistic game. That doesn't prove anything at all - I've run interesting, realistic games myself, and there are several SF RPG lines out there that are realistic (e.g. Transhuman Space, Blue Planet) that people find enjoyable and definitely aren't bored by. They're certainly not for everyone, but if it's not for you then don't worry about it - carry on having fun doing space opera, nobody's stopping you!

But to drag this back on topic, the point was that adding some more realism to the setting doesn't necessarily make it "not Traveller" at all if it's done right.

 

[Merxiless]

Some person who:

Is in dire straits, and makes it good through hard effort (and thus success) - A Zero to 100 story

"Coal Miner's Daughter" (Life of Loretta Lynn)

or via luck (and since fortune is fickle, loses it all, when luck takes it away again, leaving them with appreciation of what they had, riches in spirit.)

"The Jerk" starring Steve Martin.

I could give more examples if you've never seen those, but I'd have to consult my screenwriting books in depth for some time.

 

[Klaus]

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:
Not trying to be insulting, but could you be a little bit more clear in showing your proof? All I got out of the above was that you are claiming expertise as an artist.

No insult taken. One of the main things you are taught at art college is to set yourself limits to work within. You get creative by challenging those limits. When you teach, you need to set defined limits to get the best out of your students.

An example. Doing life drawing with the wrong hand, with a 10 second time limit. That's a standard exercise. Produces interesting results.

Another example (probably contraversial): Pink Floyd wrote good songs, but knob twiddled all the soul out of it on their 32 track mixing desks. However, all the covers I've heard are fantastic.

With Star Wars, George Lucas was severely limited in what he could do with special effects, and with budget. He worked against them and produced an arguable masterpiece. TPM had no limits with budget or cgi, and was a lazy, godawful mess.

And you have to admit Bad Taste is far more creative than the cgi borefest that is King Kong.

Tezuka and Miyazaki tell epic stories in 5 frames a second.

Einstein's great leap of imagination came from struggling with the limits of known physics.

Originally posted by Jeff M. Hopper:


Sounds instead like the opportunity to create a new adventure path that the players are more interested in.


Besides, the high density atm/small world may only be the current conditions. Nobody said that they have to last.

Well, it is, the first time round. There's only so many excuses you can make. There are an awful lot of those tiny rocks with shirtsleeve conditions.

Agreed, the problems with the OTU don't have to spoil your fun. But it niggles, where it needn't have done.

BTW, does anyone think Firefly would be any better if the ships made zooming sounds in space?

 

[Merxiless]

With Star Wars, George Lucas was severely limited in what he could do with special effects, and with budget. He worked against them and produced an arguable masterpiece. TPM had no limits with budget or cgi, and was a lazy, godawful mess.

This can be easily argued to be the fault of the story / screenplay. With a better story, and more development, this could have potentially done much better, with the graphics as frosting on the cake.

As it was it was mostly a focus on visual elements of the setting, and not dramatic elements of the story (where it properly should have been to make an effective film).

 

[Klaus]

Originally posted by ravs:
WHERE are your traveller pictures???? I want to see!

Ravs

Well since my hard drive died I've kinda lost most of it (yup, this numbnutz failed to back up), but I do have a piece in the last issue of the Stellar Reaches, page 10.

Need to get out the graphics tablet again...

 

[Merxiless]

I've always been a fan of "zooming sounds, engines, weapons fire, and the like in space"

No realistic at all. But fun.

 

[Merxiless]

Oh yeah, and addendum:

Fighters turning like World war II planes, except with no air or lift in space is also on my list of pretty cool.