Should the OTU UWP Data be Updated?

[rancke]

In that case, let's hear your top four reasons why there is this particular J-5 leg in what is supposed to be a J-4 network. I'd also like to hear some explanation about why similar solutions haven't been put into place in other areas as well.

In this case I have to support Supplement 4. Not only would one reason be enough, I'm also quite ready to believe that coming up with one is perfectly possible.

(Now, coming up with an explanation for why Tenalphi has a population level of 1 is not possible, and I was happy when Marc Miller told robject that he intended to retcon that to a PL of 7 for T5 (provisionally happy, anyway; I want to see it before I really believe it )).

But just because it is possible to explain some of the odd data from canonical works, it does not follow that it is possible to explain all of it. I can provide several examples of oddities that I've come up with explanations for. It's not them I worry about, it's the ones I can't come up with explanations for.

Then there are the inconsistencies where you can't point to any specific UWP and say that this one is wrong but you can point to a whole group of UWPs and say that some of them must be wrong.

For instance, there are exactly as many high-population garden worlds as there are high-population hell-holes. And exactly as many low-population garden worlds as there are low-population hell-holes. In fact, there are exactly as many of any combination of physical and social stats you care to name as there is of any other combination. IMO that just ridiculous. Truly, truly ludicrous.

I don't know how [Twilight's Peak explained why Fulacin has a Class A starport with a population measured in the hundreds, but I have doubts that it is an explanation widely applicable to other worlds with excellent starport ratings and tiny populations.

You're absolutely right. In fact, the explanation is such that Fulacin's UWP should have been changed in The Spinward Marches Campaign.

If we're bringing up questions about canon... why does the Xboat network have a dead-end at Capon (Spinward Marches 2324)?

My explanation is that someone with a financial interest... oh, wait a minute... Capon? That's obviously a misprint. If you have an X-boat station at Capon and an X-boat station at Lunion, you have a route between them, since X-boats doesn't need tracks to follow.

Wouldn't it seem important to have messages from Mora, the sector and Domain capital, over to the Lunion-Strouden area more quickly than the rather meandering way that the Xboat network dips down into Trin's Veil and Glisten subsectors?

The thing is, the Navy can get official reports and orders from Mora to Lunion in two jumps, so why should the Imperium worry if the X-boat network meanders? That just means more money for X-boat manufacturers and more bribes for Scout officials.

well, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.


Hans

 

[Captain Midnight]

Are you going off the online Traveller map? 'Cuz if you are, it's wrong. My 1979 edition of Supplement 3 clearly shows an Xboat link between Glisten and Mora subsectors, via Resten to Capon, then Carey and Fornice.

I was going off the online map, but my copy of "Spinward Marches Campaign" (1985) matches it in both the centerfold map and the one inside the front cover.

Is one a correction of the other? The S3 version seems to make more sense, but the SMC version postdates it. Does it reflect a change? What if my game depended on the slower information transit time between Resten and Capon?

Sometimes we need to look at things and try to figure out what makes sense for the background assumptions. Accept that there will be oddities, and that there will be errors. Come up with something that makes for the best game, even if it means changing something that was printed in a supplement now old enough to legally buy its own drinks. Maybe the best game comes from keeping some bits... but maybe it ought to change.

 

[rancke]

Are you going off the online Traveller map? 'Cuz if you are, it's wrong. My 1979 edition of Supplement 3 clearly shows an Xboat link between Glisten and Mora subsectors, via Resten to Capon, then Carey and Fornice.

The map in SMC doesn't have any connection between Capon and any system in Lunion subsector.

But Lunion to Resten to Capon to Carey to Fornice to Mora is a ridiculous route, if you believe the canonical statement about the X-boat network being designed for maximum efficiency. Jump-5 has been available for four centuries. If the Imperium really wanted speedy communication between Lunion and Mora, all it had to do was buy a couple of jump-5 couriers and establish a route from Lunion to Mora via Mercury (Which is exactly what I believe the Imperial Navy does). Even if you limit the Service to jump-4 ships, you can cut two jumps off the route by jumping directly from Lunion to Capon and from Carey to Mora.

Because there are methods for altering the Xboat network beyond the blunt tool of retconning. Going back to Supplement 3 again, the text mentions that Tureded (Lanth Subsector) is "expected" to be upgraded to a Class B starport and Scout Base, for the likely purpose of establishing an new Xboat route through that system to Dinomn (with presumably another as-yet undecided link between the two).

It's really unfortunate that later works didn't follow up on that. Tureded was not upgraded to Class B. Entrope's starport was not repaired. Fulacin's shipyard was not either shut down (lower starport class) or put to work (increase population).

I agree with you that this sort of change is possible, and I've done bit of it in my work for JTAS Online. But no amount of that kind of changes can alter the fact that some situations are very unlikely to've cropped up in the first place.

Meta-gaming reasons for altering an in-game environment -- whether it's because the world in question is physically "impossible" under current theories of stellar development, or is socio-economically "ridiculous" under someone's personal idea of cliometrical analysis -- need a lot more backing than that.

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. First you have to make a real effort to come up with an explanation, and only when that fails should you begin thinking about a change.

Though I guess I disagree with some people about what a real effort entails. When we did Sword Worlds we had half a dozen worlds with too small populations for their canonical historical roles. A couple we came up with rather bland explanations for (I can't even remember what they were); one (Colada) we came up with an explanation (nuclear world war) for that gave us a really neat RPG background; and three we got permission to change. We could have come up with bland explanations for all six, or have given all six of them population-decimating disasters. But we felt that that would have been worse than ret-conning half of them.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Now, why ya gotta go picking on Strouden, huh?

Everybody picks on Strouden. It's not the Duchy capital. It'll always be second best. Nah na na na nah!

The Strouden-Tenalphi run shouldn't be deleted (slaps your hand). No, not at all. You just need to think creatively about it.

Why is it like that?

Well, maybe that run is important. Maybe it's political. Maybe it was important a hundred years ago, and now it's just "like" that, a result of politics a century ago.

Right. Tenalphi is so important it has a population of 60 people. It's a T-prime world. It's not interdicted. People can live there and it lies on a major trade route. It has been on the border to the Sword Worlds for 7 centuries and were a neutral world between them for centuries before that. But somehow people haven't gotten around to settling on it, probably because a habitable border world on a major trade route is such an uninteresting place.

But it is important enough to have an absolutely exceptional jump-5 X-boat route running to it.

Look that the world data. Spirelle is a Rich world, but it only has a Class C starport. What if a powerful noble family calls Spirelle home? What if they were able to convince the powers-that-be to station an out-system base there. Since the Jump Lane came so close to their world, they tried and tried to get it to go through Spirelle, but the best they could muster was the outsystem base.

Jump lane? There's no such thing as a jump lane. A jump route is nothing more than a statement by the X-boat service that they plan to regularly send X-boats from one system to another. And an X-boat that goes to Tenalphi is effectively as remote from Spirelle as one that goes to Strouden.

Or, maybe it's just a meeting point for a couple of X-Boat Tenders out from Tenalphi. Either way, the actual run is Tenalphi - Spirelle - Strouden and back.

That would be changing the route. Erasing the black line from Strouden to Tenalphi and drawing a new line from Tenalphi to Spirelle and another from Spirelle to Strouden. You can tell the difference because in the first case it takes one jump to get from Strouden to Tenalphi and in the second case it takes two.

[Two other suggestions that involves Spirelle instead of Tenalphi.]

You see. Don't look at issues like this as a "problem". Consider them opportunities to get creative and add "life" to the Traveller Universe.

An admirable idea, but I prefer to avoid changing fundamental facts about the Traveller Universe when I add life to it.

And, don't get rid of all these peculiarities just because you think they are misprints or "wrong" or whatever.

You're just not thinking about the OTU creatively (the way a GM should).

Your thinking is way to creative for me.


Hans

 

[daryen]

Now, why ya gotta go picking on Strouden, huh?

Actually, I wasn't picking on Strouden, only a jump route associated with it.

Note, however, that, in an ironic twist, I do end up picking on Strouden and put it under the jack-boot of military subjugation, but that is an entirely different story ...

The Strouden-Tenalphi run shouldn't be deleted (slaps your hand). No, not at all. You just need to think creatively about it.

Why is it like that?

much silliness deleted

If "thinking creatively" means "ignoring whatever portion of canon I feel like", then, sure, I can make anything work. Actually, at that point, having canon becomes irrelevant.

However, I figure if a canon is actually worth writing defining, I figure it aught to at least be taken into consideration, especially more fundamental ones like "The X-boat route uses J4 ships."

Fundamentally, the Strouden-Tenalphi jump route is a flat out contradiction in canon. You have chosen the solution of changing the entire OTU history by inserting J5 X-boat capability. I, instead, decided to actually maintain the majority of OTU history and simply delete an impossible X-boat route.

Note that this is completely different from my desire to "fix" Tenalphi. Which, BTW, is such an egregious example of silliness that even MWM himself agrees it should be fixed.

No, this particular route is a flat out contraction of canon. Therefore, instead of tossing out the entire history around X-boats and X-boat routes, I chose to toss one single route.

You're just not thinking about the OTU creatively (the way a GM should).

No, sorry, I am thinking creatively. It is just that I like to also think about consistency and continuity when I come up with creative solutions, too.

 

[rancke]

[Mostly true and sensible stuff].

But:

Fundamentally, the Strouden-Tenalphi jump route is a flat out contradiction in canon. You have chosen the solution of changing the entire OTU history by inserting J5 X-boat capability. I, instead, decided to actually maintain the majority of OTU history and simply delete an impossible X-boat route.

A shipyard owner on Strouden used his political connections (a brother-in-law in the Scouts, perhaps) to get the Lunion office of the IISS to authorize the building of a prototype jump-5 X-boat. Lots of developmental costs involved, of course, since the Scouts don't use jump-5 X-boats. When it was finally built, they had to test it, so the Scouts set it up on a route from Strouden to some world that was both five parsecs away and within the Lunion subsector (that way they didn't have to involve Scouts from higher up the hierarchy).

In short, your basic boondoggle.

(Sorry to do this to you Mike; I know we're really on the same side )


Hans

 

[daryen]

A shipyard owner on Strouden used his political connections (a brother-in-law in the Scouts, perhaps) to get the Lunion office of the IISS to authorize the building of a prototype jump-5 X-boat. Lots of developmental costs involved, of course, since the Scouts don't use jump-5 X-boats. When it was finally built, they had to test it, so the Scouts set it up on a route from Strouden to some world that was both five parsecs away and within the Lunion subsector (that way they didn't have to involve Scouts from higher up the hierarchy).

In short, your basic boondoggle.

And, considering the entire X-boat system is an elaborate boondoggle, entirely plausible.

But only if you are looking at was would amount to a single point in time. Such a thing might last for a while (e.g. pre-5FW), but only for a while. Once something changed (oh, I don't know, a sector-wide war or possibly the disintegration of the Imperium), that particular piece of the overall silliness would have to stop. Yet that green line is always there.

So, it is still likely to be a contradiction in canon, not an exception.

(Sorry to do this to you Mike; I know we're really on the same side )

Eh, no problem. Your solution was entirely different than S4s. His solution basically said that history is wrong. Yours says this is a unique and specific exception. Very, very different solutions.

 

[Supplement Four]

Your thinking is way to creative for me.

That's too bad. No wonder we find ourselves on opposite sides of issues such as these so often.

I believe that creativity is one of the prime requisites for a good GM.

 

[rancke]

Your thinking is way too creative for me.

That's too bad. No wonder we find ourselves on opposite sides of issues such as these so often.

I believe that creativity is one of the prime requisites for a good GM.

I apologize for being too subtle (or too vague, if you prefer). To spell it out, I meant that your exercise of creativity was far too ready to ignore core aspects of the Traveller Universe for me to accept it. I'm rather puzzled that someone who is so adamant about the inviolability of Classic UWPs are so ready to disregard other forms of canon.


Hans

 

[Supplement Four]

I apologize for being too subtle (or too vague, if you prefer). To spell it out, I meant that your exercise of creativity was far too ready to ignore core aspects of the Traveller Universe for me to accept it. I'm rather puzzled that someone who is so adamant about the inviolability of Classic UWPs are so ready to disregard other forms of canon.

I know what you were saying, and I'll apologize for being too vague as well. To spell it out for you, your exercise in adhering to what you see as the core Traveller Universe stifles creativity too much for me to accept it. Your position is just as puzzling to me. And, this isn't a new thing--you and I have had discussions about X-Boat lanes on the TML a couple of years ago, and your position on that boggles the mind (or, my mind, at least).

 

[daryen]

To spell it out for you, your exercise in adhering to what you see as the core Traveller Universe stifles creativity too much for me to accept it.

Seriously, why do you even use rules, then?

What you are saying is that a string of random numbers, which don't even follow the rules, is much, much more important than the actual rules of the game? So, you want to wear that sequence of random numbers like a straightjacket, but will violate any, and all, rules of the game?

Wow. Well, no wonder Hans and I keep talking past you. Your whole worldview is just flat out different.

Oh, well, have fun. To each his own. With any luck you won't write any game supplements ...

 

[Supplement Four]

Oh, well, have fun. To each his own. With any luck you won't write any game supplements ...

Riiiggghhhhttt... And this coming from someone who thinks it's a "good" idea to up the technology of a TL 3 world just because the starport happened to be Class B.

 

[aramis]

Daryen: You and Hans, as well as S4, all baffle me...

S4 claims to run Straight CT, but keeps talking about all the rules he's houserulled, changed, imported, ignored, etc... but is fixated on change nothing in the official rules.

Hans sees the OTU as being something poorly described by the various rulesets.

Me, I'm in a different camp: each Edition is clearly a different OTU since each has different assumptions of drive technology.... so each versions' TU makes as much sense as any other... but those universes are not entirely bounded by real physics, either.

MTU, well, it's pretty much a Chanbarra version of the OTU....

 

[Supplement Four]

S4 claims to run Straight CT, but keeps talking about all the rules he's houserulled, changed, imported, ignored, etc... but is fixated on change nothing in the official rules.

I have been playing Traveller for 26 years, ya know. There's a lot of room in there for different types of play. Currently, I run CT straight out of the box, without house rules. I've run all sorts of house rules in the past, though, as well as multi-year MT and T4 campaigns.

Also remember CT encourages creative GMing. The task system is non-structured. So if I import an idea for running chases from the James Bond game, it's still straight CT I'm running.

You mis-represented me above, about this, and with the term "official rules". I'm against OTU UWPs being messed with--not the entire rule set.

In fact, I'd like to see a rule implemented that would make stellar masking easy to figure during a game.

 

[rancke]

Riiiggghhhhttt... And this coming from someone who thinks it's a "good" idea to up the technology of a TL 3 world just because the starport happened to be Class B.

I would first try to figure out an explanation, so I'd have to know which TL3 world you're talking about to say if I agreed with Daryen (changing the starport to Class C might be better, depending on the habitability of the world), but there's a good chance I would. That's because boatyards on worlds without the technology to support them makes even less sense than shipyards. Why would anyone build a boatyard in a system without customers? Not only do you have to import all the parts, you also have to export the finished product.


Hans

 

[Supplement Four]

Why would anyone build a boatyard in a system without customers?

Indeed. Which is why it would be cool and creative to figure that out.

Gawd, we're so on the opposite side of the page on this. We couldn't get any farther apart.

 

[rancke]

Why would anyone build a boatyard in a system without customers?

Indeed. Which is why it would be cool and creative to figure that out.

Indeed. And you might be able to come up with one explanation. Maybe even two. I doubt it, but I won't rule it out. But there are dozens of them. And as fond of creativity as you are, I'm sure you wouldn't want to reuse your explanations, right?

Gawd, we're so on the opposite side of the page on this. We couldn't get any farther apart.

About as far apart as a Flat Earther and a Round Earther.


Hans

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

Daryen: You and Hans, as well as S4, all baffle me...

S4 claims to run Straight CT, but keeps talking about all the rules he's houserulled, changed, imported, ignored, etc... but is fixated on change nothing in the official rules.

Hans sees the OTU as being something poorly described by the various rulesets.

It makes sense to me. S4's approach I know from OD&D. In order to houserule with confidence you do need a firm (if light) baseline. Hans OTOH = GURPS-esque simulationism. The two shall never meet. See the endless debates of Runequest/Harnmaster vs. D&D, dungeon ecology, cetera cetera.

It's totally appropriate that the issue should arise over the UWPs. Should a UWP be an incentive for homebrewing or a paragon of planetology? And of course the answer is... Yes!

 

[aramis]

It makes sense to me. S4's approach I know from OD&D. In order to houserule with confidence you do need a firm (if light) baseline. Hans OTOH = GURPS-esque simulationism. The two shall never meet. See the endless debates of Runequest/Harnmaster vs. D&D, dungeon ecology, cetera cetera.

It's totally appropriate that the issue should arise over the UWPs. Should a UWP be an incentive for homebrewing or a paragon of planetology? And of course the answer is... Yes!

I'd say the answer is "both".

Then again, one of my players got upset that there were Barons on the borders of Darrokin in my Mystara, since the RoD Gazeteer said that there were no changes to the stronghold rules....

 

[Rhialto the Marvelous]

See, that's the thing... I didn't go down the Mystara route, I used the Greyhawk gazetteer only. One paragraph per kingdom, no one's going to be able to quote Greyhawk lore chapter and verse back at you.

But with Traveller we have the TU--a half dozen OTUs, thousands of MTUs, and the ambition to be *some* kind of simulation on one hand, home of bipedal wolves etc. on the other. The only way out is unabashed pluralism. But how to implement that in a setting book, I have no idea.