Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
No offense to Hans, but I've seen that as well.
I remember his charge to change all the UWP's so that they make "sense" to him.
My canon right or wrong
- Thread starter rancke
- Start date
No offense to Hans, but I've seen that as well.
I remember his charge to change all the UWP's so that they make "sense" to him.
GrayPennell
SOC-12
This shows something I have been thinking about that there has to be a different between a failed rule and bad canon.
In this case the rules seemed logical but only till you get thousands of people playing for years and creating campaigns do we see that J4+? is unprofitable as the rules state. The solution than is to change the rule and everything is fine.
In canon issues occur because writers make consistency errors The X-Boat might be one of those cases because one statement is more absolute than the other. The normal solution is call a convention and debate which one is real and in canon and others become heretical leading to people getting burned at the stake. Another is to ignore the meetings and just play your heretical game. A third and the more fun is to come up with a logical reason for the inconsistencies. Here I go.
The first step is to acknowledge the bad rule and switch to 1000cr per parsec. so jump 4 routes work. With that done we can explore the placement of Xboat routs. Generally transport routes occur for three reasons: first because there needed for the location or someone thinks the route will make the location better or because its a way point between A and Z. Assuming these three axioms hold true than X-boat routs most decide the start and end point of the route.
Next way points are established since your delivering mail it makes sense that they (A)go to major systems...defined by population. Now Some lobbyist might spend time and money to get (B)detour from this route so their master system development plan can be strengthen because hey an X-boat comes here. Finally a few worlds might just have to be used(C) to get the route to the end.
Now major trade will probably follow A easily, go to B if the developer succeeded and might go to C if there were not a better option. Minor and tramp trade will than spread out from the the A and B waypoints as needed.
Something else we don't talk about often is both maps and UWP data are static images of dynamic systems. The route and thus map was finished in 728 and the data came out second survey in 1065. So a GM can make changes to the X-boat route and or UWP data and remain canonical. As long as the work in question explains the dynamic change.
For example in 728 a system could have been a major world but by 1065 with the second survey a tradegy like a plague makes it look like a minor or even just an odd waypoint. The GM can than move the X-boat route to match what they think would be a logical place.
In both cases we stay in canon once we accept the faulty rule.
Too simply put. "Norris was 40 years old in 1103" is a canonical statement.
There's a difference between this and "can be logically deduced from canon". You can disagree that a conclusion follows from some canonical premise, and that perfectly fair, provided it doesn't follow logically, but if it does follow logically, it's canon.
A logical deduction is not creating anything. The creation all took place when the premise was created.
But by your previous claim if you use ANY of the three dates in print, you're ALSO contradicting canon. Which obviates the whole point of having a canon. As does treating self-contradicting bits of canon as valid.
If it's an intentional change that renders any other date non-canonical, yes. If it's just a mistake, no.
Which works splendidly if they have been errata'ed. Not so well if they haven't.
If by that you mean that I'm always trying to improve the internal consistency of the OTU, then I plead guilty as charged, and proud of it too.
But where does the distrust come in? By your own beliefs in what is and what isn't canon, anything I "manage" to get published (which mostly means anything I can convince an editor is firmly based in canon
) becomes canon. So what's the problem?Hans
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Vladika
SOC-14 1K
You must REALLY distrust Marc then.:rofl:
None taken. I consider it high praise. To improve the internal consistency of the OTU (while keeping it gamable) is IMO a laudable activity.
Now there you're mistaken. I only want to change the UWPs that don't make sense. An activity that I would like to point out that Marc Miller himself has been known to engage in. He and I occasionally disagree on what does and does not make sense, but we're in agreement about the principle of changing UWPs that don't make sense.
To reiterate: Some canon is good, some canon is bad. Changing the good canon is bad; changing the bad canon is good. Accepting bad canon for the sole reason that it is canon is foolish, as is accepting two mutually contradictory pieces of canon.
Hans
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Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Hmm, you must really regard most of Jules Verne's works as foolishness then, as they have quite a few contradictory pieces in them. The worst case is the chronology of 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas and Mysterious Island, where Captain Nemo and the Nautilus are clearly in two places at the same time. I have not sat down and determined if Nemo dies in the Mysterious Island before the Nautilus encounters the Maelstrom off of Norway, following the sinking of the ironclad off of France.
I do not worry about the inconsistencies, and enjoy reading the books, especially the new translations into English of both works.
A. C. Doyle, in his Sherlock Holmes series, also has a problem with being consistent, but again, I doubt if that many people care one bit about it.
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There's at least one SF fandom essay exploring just that discrepancy. More than one, I think. IIRC someone proposed that Nemo and Professor Moriarty are one and the same person. There's also an essay about there being three Moriarty brothers to explain some seeming inconsistencies in Dr. Whatson's accounts.
I don't worry much about inconsistencies in books, although some of them do annoy me. But a game setting is not the same thing as a book setting and have different requirements.
Hans
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson hedged his bet there, didn't he? A foolish consistency is per definition a subject of derision, so he didn't come up with anything very profound, did he? But what about sound, wise, judicious, prudent, sagacious, sensible consistency?
I too deplore foolish consistency. Indeed, who would argue otherwise?
Hans
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The problem is that what makes 'sense' to one person may not make sense to another. One explanation to justify a conclusion may be unsatisfactory to another person. There may be many possible causes for a given effect.
Different lines of reasoning based on common information may result in more than one 'sensible' conclusion which are both logical and contradictory.
Which ones should a person choose? Each will choose different explanations and thus argue relentlessly about it, even over decades.
Also, when changing an inconsistency in canon, the more pervasive that bit of canon is, the greater the follow-on chains of inconsistencies and broken canon there will be.
People should work to mold their TU to fit the canon background as they prefer instead than seeking to mold the OTU to fit their own private TU.
I can't help but wonder if excessively aggressive nit-picking might drive away potential players who don't care about that stuff.
Different lines of reasoning based on common information may result in more than one 'sensible' conclusion which are both logical and contradictory.
Which ones should a person choose? Each will choose different explanations and thus argue relentlessly about it, even over decades.
Also, when changing an inconsistency in canon, the more pervasive that bit of canon is, the greater the follow-on chains of inconsistencies and broken canon there will be.
People should work to mold their TU to fit the canon background as they prefer instead than seeking to mold the OTU to fit their own private TU.
I can't help but wonder if excessively aggressive nit-picking might drive away potential players who don't care about that stuff.
It is indeed a problem when that happens.
Which person? If it's Marc Miller or one of his minions, the person should choose one and stick to it. I might personally prefer one solution to the other, but as long as one of them is chosen, I'm content.
That depends on the kind of controversy. If canon says a+b=10 (for a and b being positive intergers), then there are several equally valid solutions. But a = 15 isn't one of them, and neither is a = 8, b = 7. And only one of those equally valid solutions can be true for any single universe. And the OTU, as the definite article indicates, is a single universe.
Sometimes disagreements are perfectly reasonable. If you want a to be 2, you'd valiantly oppose any attemt to define b as anything other than 8. That's when a person with the authority to do so should step in and make a decision.
But some disagreements are not reasonable. The sort of arguments that annoy me are the kind where you have several canonical statements that can't all be true at the same time, like:
a+b = 10
a = 8
b = 7
All to often, one side will point out that canon says that a = 8, so that MUST be true while the other will point out that canon says that b = 7, so that MUST be true. And when someone proposes that 'a+b=10' be changed to 'a+b=15', a third person has a fit.
That's certainly something to take into consideration.
Why? What do you believe the point of having an OTU is?
We'll just have to keep pointing out that they're not obliged to pay any attention to excessively aggresssive nit-picking, won't we? Or even to judiciously unaggressive nit-picking if it bothers them.
Hans
It does.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
That is the fastest way I know to drive players from a game.
It drives away people who do care for such things.
Based on some of the arguments that have gone on here, it happens with surprising frequency. The problem is when one person claims his arguments are the only possible correct ones and essentially implies that everyone else is ignorant.
Any person who then might have the rug yanked out from under his setting when someone else convinces TPTB to use a different solution.
A nice example that is only valid if a base 10 number system is being used, which was never specified.
There are a lot of things in the OTU that are never specified.
Yet is often is not.
To demonstrate one possible setting that can be created using the rules as published. Nothing more.
I'm certain that they do know that. Of course this probably leads them to ignore Traveller itself, or at least the official on-line forum for Traveller.
And that leads to threads such as this;
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=31285
or one of the other similar threads.
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The solution to all this gnashing of teeth?...
Should someone have an issue with canon, simply state that issue clearly and then offer a possible solution that you use in your own game. Don't claim it is the only solution, or even the best. Don't try to force it on anyone with extended aggressive nit-picking or petitions for a retcon.
Cream rises to the top, so the best most reasonable solution will eventually become the standard. anyways.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
I am greatly troubled with the turn this thread has taken. At some point it got away from a spirited discussion to thinly veiled personal partisan attacks. I could say much more but what's the point?
Some instigated it, some got caught up in it. At any rate the free flow of ideas and open honest discussion came to an end.
Some instigated it, some got caught up in it. At any rate the free flow of ideas and open honest discussion came to an end.
