Revised CT?

[rancke]

Originally posted by hunter:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rancke:
On the contrary, the contradictory details themselves invalidate each other, the problem being that if one detail is correct then the contradictory one is wrong and vice versa, but there's no way to tell which one is the correct one [*]. Thus every time GT nails something down, it validates a tiny part of the OTU.

(T20 could do the same, but sadly Hunter and Martin doesn't agree with my opinion in this matter .

Ok call me confused on what you are talking about...
</font>[/QUOTE]Don't you remember the discussion we had about using the (IMO obviously broken) CT rules for starship tickets when a very reasonable fix was available. Remember, my basic approach to the Traveller universe is that it is ONE universe[*] and that you and SJG are simply using two different rules set to describe it.

[*] Prior to 1116, anyway, and still very similar when it comes to the basics after that.

Note that I'm perfectly aware that there would be practical problems with achieving perfect coordination between you and SJG. I just think that you should try to get it as close to the same as is practical.

Actually, now that I think about it, I do believe I'm doing you an injustice. Didn't you and Jon do some work to ensure that a couple of races from the GT books with homeworlds in Gateway wound up the same?

Anyway, what I referred to was the opinion that you (and, IIRC, Martin) expressed during the aforementioned discussion to the effect that the things I considered flaws in CT worked just fine in your opinion and the fact that GT:FT had seen fit to change it din't matter one way or the other. I'm afraid I can't get any more specific than that.


Hans

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />
I compared 4 traditional D&D settings. And made an analogy between them being different settings the same way the major settings in Traveller are different.

The D&D settings are not in the same universe. As they stand now (with Spelljammer long defunct), you couldn't hop between them.

But you could hop between Gateway, Spinward Marches, the Rim, or any other sector in Charted Space because they are the same universe.
</font>[/QUOTE]But Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are part of the same "MULTIVERSE." They even have the same basic religous belief systems. (At least they used to.) You can hop between them through Astral or one of the other "Planes of existence!" Even if they aren't on the same planet. And it would be a much shorter trip between them that way then riding, even a Jump-6 courier, between the Spinward Marches to the Gateway Domain via the Solomani Rim. And as the MULTIVERSE was (whether it still is or not, I don't know) part of the rule system not part of the setting, divorcing one from the other is much tougher.

Remember, I raised this point because people couldn't even agree what Traveller actually was. I think the most logical and useful way to define it is to separate the ruleset ("Traveller") from the universe ("Charted Space"). And very clearly, from looking at a map of Charted Space that's appeared in all the versions of Traveller, you can see that Gateway, the Rim, the Marches, etc are ALL PART OF THE SAME UNIVERSE. And the upcoming GT:Interstellar Wars setting, T4's Mileu 0, the CT "Golden Age", MT's "Rebellion/Hard times" and TNE's "Collapse/1248" eras are all different parts of the history of the same universe too.

You can't do that with D&D. While Spelljammer raised the possibility that they were all different planets in the same magical universe, that doesn't really mean much. You may as well say that all the GURPS settings are actually part of the same universe because you can hop between them in an alternate universe campaign. In practical terms, that isn't the case, it's merely provided as an option for the GM to tie things together. But for all practical purposes Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and all the other published worlds are completely separate universes.

And as I said, just because they are all on a map doesn't mean that they are the same setting. Different rules and flavor apply. Like I said if you walk the streets at night in Indianapolis, IN, is likely to be very different that walking the streets at night in Harlem, NY or Bed Sty, NY. Even though they aren't just in the same universe, though if you walk the streets in both of them you might question that, they are on the same continent and less than 12 hours drive apart, or less than 3 hour flight. Physical proximity doesn't make the setting the same. The rules, if not the laws of physics, are different. The attitudes are different. The threat that you will encounter grevious bodily harm are very different. It is a different setting. From a PC perspective the same applies. How many campaigns actually travel from one side of the map of "Charted space" to the other? How many are long enough running to run from year 0 to 1248+

Now if you say the setting of Traveller is the entire Universe through space and time then I guess it is one setting. But by the same token D&D settings in the Same Multiverse would be one setting.


Now if we compare Indianapoils, IN to Witicha, KS then it is close to the same setting.

They aren't the same.
*snip*
Vegans will be almost exclusive to the Solomani Rim. Swordworlders would be pretty exclusive to the Spinward Marches, Kafoe would be pretty much exclusive to Gateway.

The "feel" of it, or the practical crossover potential is irrelevant for this purpose. Texas, Maine, Idaho, and California are geographically and culturally distinct "settings" in the US, but they're still all part of the United States of America. The latter is true regardless of how likely you are to find a Texan in Maine, or a Californian in Idaho.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />
On the other hand if I walk out the city gates of Waterdeep, or Greyhawk or THe CItystate of the Invincible Overlord I would expect to find Orcs, Goblins, Gnolls, Orgres, Dragons, and all of them are the same no matter which city I leave.

That's largely because D&D games don't make a big deal out of the geographical distribution of their monsters. In the D&D homebrew game I'm playing in, you can't find Goblins outside of the mountains that surround my character's homeland. You only find giants in another mountain range to the south. Orcs were found only in the plains to the east of our homeland. And so on. </font>[/QUOTE]But they are still Orcs, Goblins, Giants, etc. One of your reasons Traveller was one setting was it had the same alien races. Yet no matter which of your "D&D Settings" you play in you have a limited number of monsters and they are defined the same in each "setting."

 

[Malenfant]

Bhoins - I'm not going to bother replying on this "setting/universe" point anymore, I think I've made that point clearly enough now in previous posts. If you don't get what I'm saying by now, then I give up.

Yes, Charted Space is the same universe throughout space and time. That's what a universe IS.

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

The world of The Hobbit and the world of The Lord of the Rings are really quite different in a number of ways. No one argues that they are not the same universe. The latter is quite clearly an evolution of the former, in much the same way as successive versions of the Traveller universe evolve from earlier ones.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by FlightCommanderSolitude:
The world of The Hobbit and the world of The Lord of the Rings are really quite different in a number of ways. No one argues that they are not the same universe. The latter is quite clearly an evolution of the former, in much the same way as successive versions of the Traveller universe evolve from earlier ones.

That's the point though. We need to be able to define what Traveller is here, and despite the different feel of the individual editions, it's still the same universe - just like the example you use of all of Tolkein's work set in Middle Earth (which includes Unfinished Tales and Silmarillion).

We need to do that if we're going to be able to separate the Charted Space games from things like 2320AD and Honor Harrington etc. If we class TNE as being different from Gateway Era and MT simply because they use different systems then that doesn't help us at all and only confuses the issue.

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
That's the point though.

I know that. I was mainly responding to Bhoins et al. I'm firmly in the "different rules, same universe" camp.

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
But Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms are part of the same "MULTIVERSE." They even have the same basic religous belief systems. (At least they used to.) You can hop between them through Astral or one of the other "Planes of existence!"

Different pantheons and ways to become gods, basis of magic, Forgotten Realms (FR) has additional types of magic, cosmology, etc. . FR now has the Great Tree and doesn't connect to the Great Wheel and the whole plane concept is now a toolkit. I'm fairly certain that not all of TSR's settings were officially connected back then anyway (Dark Sun, Birthright).

What you're referring to with the multiverse would be more akin to Jamie pushing the wrong button again in the Tardis, or Grandfather waving his pinkie for that matter, and a campaign going from say the OTU in TNE to Cadallics & Dinosaurs, Dark Conspiracy, or TW2K. Going from place to place within the OTU is more akin to going from the city of Greyhawk to the Great Kingdom by horse. The first is going between universes/planes the second is traveling within a universe/plane.

But they are still Orcs, Goblins, Giants, etc. One of your reasons Traveller was one setting was it had the same alien races. Yet no matter which of your "D&D Settings" you play in you have a limited number of monsters and they are defined the same in each "setting."

So if I have humans and dinosaurs existing at some point in the OTU and I have the same in 2300AD and in Cadallics & Dinosaurs all those settings are the same? No. And again even between Greyhawk and FR there are differences in the major races. And frankly fantasy games don't need to explain species scientifically like a science fiction game like Traveller needs to.

Besides there is a plethora of non-vanilla fantasy d20 settings now that jumble up the clichés. Even the latest official D&D WotC setting Eberron has dinosaur riding nomadic halfings, shamanistic orcs, civilized goblins, and good undead jungle elves for starters.

To bring up another game perhaps more identical to the OTU setting take a look at Battletech. Mechwarrior, the RPG, has had three editions. Battletech, the boardgame, has had about six including Battledroids and Clicktech. No matter the various changes to the rules or how individual details have changed, the time period, or where the focus is in any one particular book it's still the same universe, still the same overarching setting. And said setting is in the rule books.

Just like the OTU, at least past LBB 1-3. [A]D&D does not and has multiple settings.

Like others have said I think 1) better support for creating other settings, esp. ones non-similar to the OTU, in the core rules 2) availability of non-OTU settings alongside OTU ones for a group that doesn’t want to or isn’t able to make their own from scratch and doesn’t want to play in a game set in the OTU 3) better placement and association of Traveller products would help matters.

Casey
[EDIT]added last paragraph, consistent usage of FT, and Grandfather waving his pinkie[/EDIT]

 

[aramis]

Hans: The "Broken" nature of the passages is the best argument for some form of price fixing in the OTU.

It's kind of like bus rides; If greyhound annouces that a ticket anywhere in zone costs $79, the competitors must pick one of a limited bunch of options:
1) provide lesser cost fares for lesser distances
2) provide better service
3) provide similar zone-bassed fares
4) not be competetive pricewise, and rely upon having space available as a draw.

Nowhere in any edition's canon does it say how the rule is enforced, but it does provide passage coupons as a means of payment, and those coupons have a cash value and a zone based fare. So, if you're looking for a J6 hop, you may wait a while.... but someone will cash that coupon, if there is any feasable way to fly and not take a loss at coupon rates.

I would argue that rules bit defines a part of canon; it became reasonable and customary somehow, and I suspect it was by Imperial Regulations, but I can't prove that.

Likewise, the various rules bits provide serious bits of setting issue (see above), but CTR will need to sort through, and if it's to be d6 version of t20, tech wise, it needs to have results similar to T20 in the mechanics.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Aramis:
Hans: The "Broken" nature of the passages is the best argument for some form of price fixing in the OTU.

It would be if there was any way to make the price fixing explanation work, but there isn't.

1) A price fixing scheme that applies from one end of Charted Space to the other is a ludicrous idea.

1a) A price fixing scheme requires an explanation of just how it works so that those referees who want their interstellar state a tad less intrusive can figure out the true economics of the situation.

2) If the CT prices really were as the rules claims, owners of regularly scheduled jump-1 ships woud make huge profits, owners of jump-2 ships would do OK, and owners of jump-3 and higher vessels would go bankrupt, which is particularly strange since jump-3 is the most cost-effective way of transporting goods and passengers across long distances if you look at the true costs.

3) Companies with sufficient cash reserves can circumvent the rules by formally buying the goods they are hired to transport at one price and formally selling them to the consignee at another price that just happened to give the company a competitive profit (Admittedly that won't work for passengers... )

Nowhere in any edition's canon does it say how the rule is enforced, but it does provide passage coupons as a means of payment, and those coupons have a cash value and a zone based fare. So, if you're looking for a J6 hop, you may wait a while.... but someone will cash that coupon, if there is any feasable way to fly and not take a loss at coupon rates.

No one will cash my coupon because there will be no jump-6 passenger ships around to cash it. There is no feasible way to fly a jump-6 ship with the revenues the CT rules allow. That's the basis of the claim that it can't be made to work. Don't take my word for it. Ask Jim McLean who is a professional economist.

Better yet, prove us wrong. Provide a detailed explanation of how such a scheme works.


Hans

 

[BetterThanLife]

Actually Small independent traders wouldn't exist beyond Jump-1. No other CT jump numbers, even with full loads, using the "Standard one week in Jump, one week planetside" can make its mortgage payment. Which would mean that the only people that have J2+ traders paid for them outright. This applies using Book 2, Book 5 or T20 formulas. Mega Traveller may work but I never sat down and actually worked up any merchants in MT. No ship, regardless of size can make a multi-jump engine profitable with the fuel load and the 1/240th mortgage payment using standard freight and passenger rates. Though the T20 Priority and other freight rates help, you are limited in quantity and unless you are travelling between two high pop worlds with close to equal tech levels you can't fill a far traders holds with priority cargo. For example there are exactly two routes you can run to stay above water in the Spinward Marches. (And one is in the Sword Worlds.) While travelling back and forth between two worlds might make sense for commerce it sucks for adventuring.

I have built freighters up to 5000T and the problem gets worse not better. (Filling a 5000T freighter is much tougher.) About 2000T is about as big as is practical for full loads under the standard rules.

This situation would mean that little trade would get off the main unless subsidized and anything not on a Main would be a backwater not a SubSector capital, a technologically advanced world or a major trading center as it is uneconomical to go there.

Originally posted by rancke:

2) If the CT prices really were as the rules claims, owners of regularly scheduled jump-1 ships woud make huge profits, owners of jump-2 ships would do OK, and owners of jump-3 and higher vessels would go bankrupt, which is particularly strange since jump-3 is the most cost-effective way of transporting goods and passengers across long distances if you look at the true costs.

 

[Ranger]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
Actually Small independent traders wouldn't exist beyond Jump-1. No other CT jump numbers, even with full loads, using the "Standard one week in Jump, one week planetside" can make its mortgage payment. Which would mean that the only people that have J2+ traders paid for them outright. This applies using Book 2, Book 5 or T20 formulas. Mega Traveller may work but I never sat down and actually worked up any merchants in MT. No ship, regardless of size can make a multi-jump engine profitable with the fuel load and the 1/240th mortgage payment using standard freight and passenger rates. Though the T20 Priority and other freight rates help, you are limited in quantity and unless you are travelling between two high pop worlds with close to equal tech levels you can't fill a far traders holds with priority cargo. For example there are exactly two routes you can run to stay above water in the Spinward Marches. (And one is in the Sword Worlds.) While travelling back and forth between two worlds might make sense for commerce it sucks for adventuring.

I have built freighters up to 5000T and the problem gets worse not better. (Filling a 5000T freighter is much tougher.) About 2000T is about as big as is practical for full loads under the standard rules.

This situation would mean that little trade would get off the main unless subsidized and anything not on a Main would be a backwater not a SubSector capital, a technologically advanced world or a major trading center as it is uneconomical to go there.


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

2) If the CT prices really were as the rules claims, owners of regularly scheduled jump-1 ships woud make huge profits, owners of jump-2 ships would do OK, and owners of jump-3 and higher vessels would go bankrupt, which is particularly strange since jump-3 is the most cost-effective way of transporting goods and passengers across long distances if you look at the true costs.

</font>[/QUOTE]I think that's a feature, not a bug and it gets to the heart of what Traveller "is". The system is clearly rigged against the small, privately owned trader. That's the point. Traveller is about a view of the future that is premised on the idea that technology may change the how we live, but not the way we live. In the future those with power will rig the system in their favor. To that end, the economic model is set up so the only way you can make it as a trader is operate under subsidy or skirt the law (smuggling) and take on high risk jobs (patron adventures) in hopes of a big score.

My take is that the OTU is simply one view of how that future social model would look, but any setting that has the same basic elements of that social model works just as well. I think this is why TNE doesn't "feel like Traveller" to so many people who played Traveller before TNE, it is a different social model than CT.

So, in that vein, I would suggest that CTR focus on rules rather than setting. Reconcile the CT rules with themselves, and make them "compatable" with the T20 stuff that is out right now. Integrate some CT stuff that was published outside GDW but people liked (FASA's Consumers Guide for example), maybe even throw in some deck plans (once again, FASA had some good ones that MWM seems to have the rights to, as he announced a plan to do a reprint of FASA stuff).

I'd recommend CTR be setting 'light' for two reasons. First, it is in keeping with the Book 1-3 tradition. Second is that it would keep maintain the commercial viability of the CT Reprints (especially the supplements).

I baught TA1, because it consolidated all the CT personal weapons stuff in one place. It made no sense that the most complete CT weapons table was in Alien Modual 4 and it still didn't have the archaic weapons. I'd love to see it done with the entire CT rules system.

Just my thoughts

 

[Flynn]

Okay, assuming that an ATU were to be developed for submission to QLI, would changing the passage values be acceptable? Or would that go against the grain of using the CT/CTR/T20 rules as a basis, and changing only the setting? i.e. Do you consider the passage rates to be part of the rules or part of the setting?

-Flynn

 

[Malenfant]

Passage values are be part of the setting, surely?

Personally, I don't even see what the big deal is with these. If you don't like 'em, change 'em. Surely there isn't a single standard passage rate across all of Charted Space - that makes no sense at all.

I think a problem with CT is that it inlcuded some setting-specific detail like this that were designed with no forethought for their effect on the setting. There's very little thought for the practical implications or consequences, which is why 27 years later we're all left arguing over things like passage rates and taxes and broken planets and god knows what other minutiae.

These things are not features - they're design bugs. I see this all the time with the UWPs, when people saying "ah, but it's a challenge to the imagination, to come up with a wildly contrived way to make this planet work. This is a feature, not a bug!". I disagree completely - it's a broken planet made using rules that had a somewhat shaky grounding in reality, and to deny that is to make problems for yourself as you try to get something sensible out of a nonsensical result.

Same applies to things like passage values, and how fleets are created and supported, and all that other economical stuff.

The more that people deny that these things are actually wrong, the less likely it is that anyone will actually fix them and get a result that everyone can find that uis consistent, logically acceptable, and sensible. I think a Revised CT should tackle these problems head-on and nail them once and for all, because god knows that people have been wasting their time having arguments over these things for long enough now.

 

[Flynn]

Malenfant,

As you are no doubt well aware, even in your field, theories and such change constantly. For example, the world generation methods of two and three decades ago, if based on science, were created using what you might consider outdated or just plain wrong theories. The TL tables are another example of that.

You seem to be proposing that CTR should fix these things, a proposal laden with the assumption that what we know right now is completely and whole-heartedly correct. I'm sure that's what they also thought two decades ago.

Reminds me of that French paper four centuries ago that detailed something like 17 universally accepted facts about the world and how it operated. In an interesting parallel, those same universal facts were all disproven, without exception, within two decades of their publication.

My apologies, but that's what I think of every time I hear the tired old mantra of "making things right."

I don't mind updating things, particularly for an ATU. You might lose some of that Golden Age Sci-Fi that I love about Traveller in the process, but using the justification that we'll never have to change it again once we "get it right" holds little water for me. (Not that you or others might be saying this directly, but the general tone and word selection lends itself to those implications rather easily.)

Just my two credits, anyway,
Flynn

 

[Malenfant]

It's not that what we know now is correct, and I've never said that it was. It's that we know that we can make something that works better, and that's all that matters.

For example, I know full well that any updated world generation system I come up with now will probably be as ridiculously out of date and unrealistic in another 27 years as the current system is today. But it's still better than using the current generation system with its flawed statistics and silly assumptions, isn't it?

And certainly with world generation, over those 27 years our understanding of planetary science and astronomy has changed enormously. I think that's definitely a good reason to update those.

And things like passage prices etc aren't tied to changes in economic theory are they> Most of those other things are just numbers that were decided on arbitrarily for the game that ended up causing problems in practice. Those can be fixed.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Actually there are two methods of computing passage rates in the rules. And the paragraph that states the second method is in CT, MT and T20.

The rule that is generally accepted is that the rate is per jump regardless of distance. Cr10,000 for High Passage, Cr8,000 for MidPassage Cr1,000 For cargo and LowPassage. So if I book high passage from RHYLANOR to POROZLO I pay Cr10,000 regardless of the jump potential of the ship and the ship gets there in one week. To take this example one step further, if I book passage from RHYLANOR to Jae Tellona (2 hexes away) it costs me Cr10,000 if it is a Jump2 or higher ship and it takes one week. Now if I take a Jump-1 ship via POROZLO to Jae Tellona I have to pay Cr20,000 and it takes me two to three weeks to get there.

However the rules state that:

"Difference in starship jump drive capacity have no specific effect on passage prices. A jump-3 starship charges the same passage price as a jump-1 starship. The difference is that a jump-3 ship can reach a destination in one jump, while the jump-1 ship would take three seperate jumps (through two intermediate destinations, and requiring three seperate tickets) to reach it. Higher jump numbers also make otherwise inaccessable destinations within reach. But for two ships of differening jump numbers going to the same destination in one jump, each would charge the same cargo or passage price." (Book 2 pg. 9 also copied directly into MT and T20 rules)

Without the statements in other places, one would imply that the charge is Cr10,000 per parsec. As a Free Trader going from RHYLANOR to Jae Tellona via POROZLO would charge (because two tickets have to be purchased) Cr20,000, so a Far Trader going from RHYLANOR to Jae Tellona directly would charge the same or Cr20,000. Travelling from EFATE to REGINA would cost Cr60,000 regardless of how, or on what combinations of ships, or how many interveneing destinations there were. Whether it took one week or 11 weeks, it would still cost Cr60,000.

Now I still think that is unrealistic. After all people are more than happy to pay FedEX a premium to ship something that gets there the next day instead of taking 2-3 days. (As much as 7 times as much.) But it is a better model than paying more to get there in 6-11 weeks than you have to pay to get there in less than 6 weeks. If I do it in one hop then it only costs me Cr10,000 and only takes one week. On A SubLiner via Knorbes it takes 3 weeks and costs me Cr20,000.

For the traveller, for the manufacturer, for the guy with the cargo he needs to get to market, this is one hell of a deal, but where is the incentive to buy faster ships to the Carrier? Commerce would slow to a crawl in the real world with this kind of price fixing. Oh and how much should I charge for my goods on the other end, because I don't know what I am going to have to pay for shipping?

We would still be using Stagecoach and Steam engines to get from NYC to LA. (If we were that advanced.) Aircraft would have military and government applications only.

Now T20 states specifically that the price is regardless of distance but still copies that paragraph word for word.

BTW using the Per Parsec interpretation of that paragraph fixes passage prices. A J-2 ship that averages 3 parsecs per month makes a small profit against the expenses (including mortgage) with full loads. A J-3 ship does the same thing with 5 parsecs per month. It gives incentives to travel to those worlds not on a Main and allows banks to finance ships over a period of 40 years.

Otherwise a starship with greater than Jump-1 in CT or T20 can never make its mortgage regardless of size. Now because of the different fuel requirements in MT and other versions I am not sure where the break even point is on J-2 ships, though an MT Far Trader can't make its payments.

And major corporations can, like they do today, buy ships on credit. After all if you can put 5 ships in space for the same up front cash as one or 20 for the same up front cash as 5 then you would stimulate more trade. Which is what the Imperium is all about.

This is not a feature, this is a bug. (Because it is written differently in two places so it is something the editor missed.)

Originally posted by Flynn:
Okay, assuming that an ATU were to be developed for submission to QLI, would changing the passage values be acceptable? Or would that go against the grain of using the CT/CTR/T20 rules as a basis, and changing only the setting? i.e. Do you consider the passage rates to be part of the rules or part of the setting?

-Flynn

 

[Flynn]

Now that I've said that I don't mind seeing updates to any of these methods, let me iterate a few points about what I would want to see.

</font>

• I want a game that I can play Sci-Fi and have a good time doing so. If I have to choose between realism and playability, realism goes out the window. Traveller is a game, not a simulation. In the Real World, I can't go to far away planets and live on them. The possibilities are far too unlikely, according to modern science. That's no fun to me.</font>
• I want worlds that make sense within the context of the above. I'm okay with inconsistent stellar types and world size vs atmosphere, etc., because I want a universe I can play in, where adventures can happen. I do not want dissertations on the correctness of astrography and astronomy IMTU. I can't play in that kind of milieu very well. If realism stops me from playing the Golden Age Sci-Fi flavor I enjoy from Traveller, I'd prefer that whatever level of realism robs me of that fun stays outside and didn't enter into my game room.</font>
• My game's rule set doesn't have to painstakingly simulate the Real World, on any level (economics, FTL travel, legal systems, etc.) Some realism is cool, and necessary for suspension of disbelief, but complexity and fun are not always good bedfellows.</font>
• I'm all for a CT/T20 crossover product, as I like the flavor that Hunter has maintained in T20, and I'm sure it will continue in CTR. I honestly feel Hunter has first and foremost the goal of preserving the flavor of Traveller in mind with his work. He proved it to me in T20, and I'm certain he'll prove it again in CTR.</font>

Now, that being said, people can do whatever they want to the rules at their own gaming table. If I don't like what's in print, I can change it for my game, and I won't be arrested by the Purist Police. So can anyone else, for that matter. (Gamers are pretty versatile that way).

Me, I'm looking forward to what Hunter has proposed. If I like it, I'll use it. If I don't, I'll still buy it to support Traveller, and then use the pieces I want from it, leaving the rest behind. No big deal.

Pitching in two more credits,
Flynn

 

[Flynn]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It's not that what we know now is correct, and I've never said that it was. It's that we know that we can make something that works better, and that's all that matters.

For example, I know full well that any updated world generation system I come up with now will probably be as ridiculously out of date and unrealistic in another 27 years as the current system is today. But it's still better than using the current generation system with its flawed statistics and silly assumptions, isn't it?

It's only better if it does not interfere with me having fun in my games.

And certainly with world generation, over those 27 years our understanding of planetary science and astronomy has changed enormously. I think that's definitely a good reason to update those.

I agree. Removing the more difficult-to-explain UWPs is a good thing, so long as I don't lose my ability to enjoy the game. Realism can remove a lot of the habitable worlds you see frequently in Sci-Fi, and losing those is something I want to avoid.

And things like passage prices etc aren't tied to changes in economic theory are they> Most of those other things are just numbers that were decided on arbitrarily for the game that ended up causing problems in practice. Those can be fixed.

I think a more logical solution would be to identify such as being milieu-dependent, and leave it at that. Offer two options, the CT and the GT:FT methods of determining passage cost, as examples and leave it alone after that point.

Many of the issues people might have with the OTU aren't with the rules, but address points that appear to be part of the rules, but are rather part of the setting instead. More accurately indicating those as setting-dependent would address what I perceive as many of your concerns. (The world/stellar thing is another point entirely, and I can't fault you for that one, as you come across it honestly in your line of work. It'd be like a military professional nutting up over how some weapon is described or how the combat system works, because of their intense familiarity with the subject matter.)

Hope this helps,
Flynn

 

[Malenfant]

# I want a game that I can play Sci-Fi and have a good time doing so. If I have to choose between realism and playability, realism goes out the window. Traveller is a game, not a simulation. In the Real World, I can't go to far away planets and live on them. The possibilities are far too unlikely, according to modern science. That's no fun to me.
# I want worlds that make sense within the context of the above. I'm okay with inconsistent stellar types and world size vs atmosphere, etc., because I want a universe I can play in, where adventures can happen. I do not want dissertations on the correctness of astrography and astronomy IMTU. I can't play in that kind of milieu very well. If realism stops me from playing the Golden Age Sci-Fi flavor I enjoy from Traveller, I'd prefer that whatever level of realism robs me of that fun stays outside and didn't enter into my game room.

Um, realism of the background setting has nothing to do with playability or your ability to have fun.

It doesn't matter if you're having fun chasing down crooks on a planet made using the current UWP system or an ultrarealistic one - you're still having fun chasing down the crooks, right? The fact that you could potentially know the exact atmospheric composition doesn't somehow change that, does it?

Similarly, you may jump into a system, fleeing pursuit by bounty hunters. Whether you're jumping into a system containing habitable planets orbiting a blue supergiant and a neutron star or habitable planets orbiting a sun-like star doesn't actually make any difference to your ability to play the game or have fun, does it?

I think the only time realism can really be obstructive to enjoyment is in the actual game engine rules - in the combat, task resolution etc. If combat takes an hour to figure out what's going on in each round because you're calculating every step of the process, then most people probably wouldn't consider that to be much fun (but some probably would) . But Realism in the background should make little or no difference to your game style at all.

Personally, physical realism in the background makes the game more enjoyable and fun for me, because it makes it that much more immersive and believable. But I don't like realistic game engines that are weighed down by minutiae - but Traveller isn't like that.

 

[Malenfant]

I agree. Removing the more difficult-to-explain UWPs is a good thing, so long as I don't lose my ability to enjoy the game. Realism can remove a lot of the habitable worlds you see frequently in Sci-Fi, and losing those is something I want to avoid.

Depends how they're "removed". A size 1 world with a habitable atmosphere could just be changed to a size 6 world with a habitable atmosphere to be made realistic. That doesn't remove the habitable world, but it does remove the problem .

Similarly, a blue supergiant can be removed and replaced with a yellow main sequence star without changing other things. The only difference now is that you're walking around under a yellow sun instead of a blue one that shouldn't even have planets in the first place.