Traveller's direction; history and future

[Blue Ghost]

That's the other thing, what if you have a Referee who just isn't that inventive? Does the written adventure need more detail to add flavor where the Referee can't supply any?

Do Referees want colorfully written adventures to help them impart the feel (genre?) of the adventure to the players?

 

[flykiller]

That's the other thing, what if you have a Referee who just isn't that inventive?

... really don't know what to say about THAT. for all my pre-mapping and background generation, it's primary purpose is to support my on-the-fly in-game decisions.

just run generic stuff, I suppose ....

 

[rancke]

... really don't know what to say about THAT. for all my pre-mapping and background generation, it's primary purpose is to support my on-the-fly in-game decisions.

just run generic stuff, I suppose ....

But aren't we talking about professional game aids? What any particular person requires to run a game is not terribly relevant. Referees are not all alike. Some can do it on the fly, some require reams of meticulous notes. I'm fairly good at making things up on the fly, but I'm terrible at keeping notes of what I make up, so I find pre-determined information quite useful. I also like to have handout in the form of (not completely accurate) world writeups and library data and newsbriefs.


Hans

 

[salochin999]

Rules of thumb based off world stats are a quick way to generate background scenery.

Examples

1) any world with a standard atmosphere ought to have a pop of 7 or 8 even with stone age farming techniques so if they don't you can assume there must be something wrong with them e.g. limited space. Tide locking is a great catch-all for this.

For example a world may have a standard atmosphere but only at the bottom of a giant canyon that runs across part of the bright face - the canyon providing protection - so there's a small colony down there farming and running the star port.

2) A lot of colonies only exist because they support or used to support J1 trade routes so a lot of "worlds" can just be a star port with a surrounding wilderness.

3) Hitech worlds with low pops are likely to have lots of: robots, automation, bio-engineered work critters or something like that.

4) When in doubt - add modified humans. Most of the aliens in scifi look like modified humans and thanks to the Ancients in the Traveller OTU they can be.

e.g. small lotech planet with a thin, tainted atmosphere and a massive population: short modified humans with engineered lungs turned light blue by the taint in their blood stream.

etc

#

The two biggest questions are
1) why does a good planet have a low pop?
2) why does a bad planet have a high pop?
and creating as many rule of thumb answers to those questions for a variety of world stat combinations eventually leads to the scenery generating itself.

 

[Enoki]

Why go to such lengths? As in science, the simplest answer is usually the most likely one...

Low pop worlds that are otherwise habitable? Maybe they just don't have much to offer outside decent planetary conditions. There are lots of places on Earth that are barely inhabited... Siberia comes to mind.

Rather than modify the inhabitants come up with a reason for them to be there. The planet has more unobtainum (yes, that idiotically named substance from the movie Dances with Aliens.... err... Avatar... :rant: )
than anywhere else in the sector so there's a mining operation there. You aren't with the company you aren't welcome.

Make sure to look at the law level and government type. Nobody is willingly going to live in the equivalent of North Korea if they have any sense... Or, it might be the Wild, Wild West with you having to watch your back at every turn.
Nothing like a planet run by the mob...

High population industrialized planet? Lots of imported "contract" (aka near slave) labor to feed the factories because working conditions are downright Dickson-like. 16 hour work days, everybody eats the company gruel in a company cafeteria, sleeps in a company dormitory...

Feudal technocracy? What technology makes sense there? Could a planet that is a paradise with a low population simply be a mega expensive resort for the wealthy that you can't afford to even orbit?

Maybe they are low tech on purpose. Something like a bunch of religious nutters that make killer good furniture that nobles everywhere dream of getting their hands on.

A planet that is rich in mines that produce rare gems and the local government is like DeBeers... They control production and the resulting jewelry. You can't live there because they won't let you.

Onerous immigration laws might be another.

There is plenty of room in the UWP to come up with all sorts of Orwellian and Machiavellian reasons for a world to be the way it is not based solely on its climate.

 

[salochin999]

Why go to such lengths? As in science, the simplest answer is usually the most likely one...

Low pop worlds that are otherwise habitable? Maybe they just don't have much to offer outside decent planetary conditions. There are lots of places on Earth that are barely inhabited... Siberia comes to mind.

Rather than modify the inhabitants come up with a reason for them to be there. The planet has more unobtainum (yes, that idiotically named substance from the movie Dances with Aliens.... err... Avatar... :rant: )
than anywhere else in the sector so there's a mining operation there. You aren't with the company you aren't welcome.

Make sure to look at the law level and government type. Nobody is willingly going to live in the equivalent of North Korea if they have any sense... Or, it might be the Wild, Wild West with you having to watch your back at every turn.
Nothing like a planet run by the mob...

High population industrialized planet? Lots of imported "contract" (aka near slave) labor to feed the factories because working conditions are downright Dickson-like. 16 hour work days, everybody eats the company gruel in a company cafeteria, sleeps in a company dormitory...

Feudal technocracy? What technology makes sense there? Could a planet that is a paradise with a low population simply be a mega expensive resort for the wealthy that you can't afford to even orbit?

Maybe they are low tech on purpose. Something like a bunch of religious nutters that make killer good furniture that nobles everywhere dream of getting their hands on.

A planet that is rich in mines that produce rare gems and the local government is like DeBeers... They control production and the resulting jewelry. You can't live there because they won't let you.

Onerous immigration laws might be another.

There is plenty of room in the UWP to come up with all sorts of Orwellian and Machiavellian reasons for a world to be the way it is not based solely on its climate.

That's the idea - the more rules of thumb you have the easier it gets.

 

[Blue Ghost]

A technocracy, to me, might come in two flavors that I can think of;

1) A George Lucas like "THX-1138" like dystopia that's more akin to a psychiatric ward, where education is a matter of hooking you up to an I-V, or a download to your cranium with pre-programmed ethics and values.

2) As per "Divine Intervention" (adventure number escapes me) where the monarch / dictator, or just "the ruler" has access to all kinds of tech, while the huddle masses slog it out in mud huts or thatched roof hovels.

Should there be more "Divine Intervention" like adventures in future Traveller stuff?

p.s. I first heard "unobtanium" used here on this forum way back in 2001. It makes me wonder if the powers that be who made Avatar scoured this BBS for ideas.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

2) As per "Divine Intervention" (adventure number escapes me) where the monarch / dictator, or just "the ruler" has access to all kinds of tech, while the huddle masses slog it out in mud huts or thatched roof hovels.

Double Adventure 6.

Is the govenment not the same as TED's in Traveller: The New Era in terms of the governance of the populace? The circumstances that brought TNE TED's to power are unique (um...Virus), but the source/effect of governance is the same.

I looked up definitions of Technocracy on the web. In Wikipedia, Technocracy was defined originally as "the application of the scientific method to solving social problems." I favor that definition. TEDs and Technocracy in the other use just seem like another oligarchy or dictatorship, with technology being the force to keep the leaders in power rather than social rules, religion or military power...

 

[Blue Ghost]

Thanks for the heads up.

I guess I was partially wrong about a technocracy then.

 

[GypsyComet]

I first heard "unobtanium" used here on this forum way back in 2001. It makes me wonder if the powers that be who made Avatar scoured this BBS for ideas.

The term is older than that, I think.

 

[robject]

The FUTURE of TRAVELLER

Traveller's future is in producing adventures in Charted Space. That's my opinion. The gems in my Traveller collection are the adventures in their various forms, and the useful all-purpose stuff from JTAS. I still use them.

 

[Blue Ghost]

The term is older than that, I think.

I'm pretty sure it is. I just can't remember the source of it.

 

[flykiller]

That's the other thing, what if you have a Referee who just isn't that inventive?

maybe he should be a player.

 

[rancke]

That's the other thing, what if you have a Referee who just isn't that inventive?

maybe he should be a player.

That's missing the point of game aids. They're supposed to, you know, aid. And some referees require more aid than others. Dismissing such people as being in the wrong line of work is, as I said, missing the point. The referee who can make up everything he needs on the fly is a fairly rare bird and he's not the target customer for game aids. It's the REST of the referees who need help.

The big problem seems to me to strike a working compromise between the amount of information that ought to be available and the amount of information it is practically possible to provide. If my players ask for information about the world their characters are heading for, there ought to be a wikipedia worth of information available to them, which is obviously impossible to provide. OTOH, I don't think that a one-paragraph writeup is anywhere near adequate.


Hans

 

[flykiller]

That's missing the point of game aids. They're supposed to, you know, aid.

of course. but there has to be something to aid. the whole point of an rpg is the interaction between players and referee, but if the referee lacks imagination and simply is implementing "aids" then the players would be just as well off with a video game.

 

[rancke]

of course. but there has to be something to aid. the whole point of an rpg is the interaction between players and referee, but if the referee lacks imagination and simply is implementing "aids" then the players would be just as well off with a video game.

I disagree. I've played in (and run) campaigns that were not as well run as they might have been, but were nevertheless a lot more entertaining than video games. That includes referees who were pretty much helpless when we strayed outside the bounds of the bought scenarios they were running. But we had fun as long as we stayed inside the bounds.

(And I've played with one referee who was a genius at improvisation but gave me the worst couple of hours I've ever experienced in an RPG session thanks to an ill-considered brainwave of his).


Hans

 

[aramis]

I disagree. I've played in (and run) campaigns that were not as well run as they might have been, but were nevertheless a lot more entertaining than video games. That includes referees who were pretty much helpless when we strayed outside the bounds of the bought scenarios they were running. But we had fun as long as we stayed inside the bounds.

(And I've played with one referee who was a genius at improvisation but gave me the worst couple of hours I've ever experienced in an RPG session thanks to an ill-considered brainwave of his).


Hans

I find a decent (say, 2nd quintile) videogame far more enjoyable than a badly run RPG. I've walked from several games and stayed home playing videogames on a number of occasions.

Videogames, however, don't scratch the same itch.

The only tools I find myself using for FtF gaming are...

1. Character Generators
2. Map programs
3. Spreadsheets for vehicle design
4. Word Generators

I don't much use:

1. Initiative helpers
2. Virtual Desktops
3. Character managers†
4. Story managers‡

† Programs for level-up, etc., as opposed to just initial generation.
‡ Including wikis, relational databases, etc.

See, if I need software to advance my character, it's too much work. (Bu-bye, Rolemaster.)
If I need more than a basic 4-function calculator to do the math, my players won't play it. (b'bye, FTL2448)
If a spreadsheet makes it faster by more than a couple minutes, my players won't bother, and it's probably more complex than they'll play (peter excepted).

 

[Blue Ghost]

Does anyone think the space Travel formulas put anybody off from playing the game?

 

[aramis]

Does anyone think the space Travel formulas put anybody off from playing the game?

Not just think, but know that they have prevented several people from running the game, and thus their players were denied the game to play.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Hmm interesting. I figured as much, but wasn't sure. A lot of the D&D types I grew up with locally were heavily into computers, so I figured they'd have the mathematics background to hack the travel formulae.

I've often wondered if a mechanic that was dumbed down a shade would provide a larger player base and larger audience in total (people buying and following the game like me).