... you didn't mention anything about Rocky sequels ... I'm dissapointed.
Traveller's direction; history and future
- Thread starter Blue Ghost
- Start date
Aero-planes, if you squint and fudge, might not be far off, assuming Virgin Galactic start thrie launches within the next five or tenn years.
I didn't want to make any cynical and sarcastic comments, but maybe BitCoin is the MWH.
And: yeah, my flying car seems to be caught in a web of mechanical issues and regulations, legal and security based probably. But I don't want to think about it.
Well, Traveller is caught in the crux in that it's difficult to predict future capabilities. The flying car ( http://www.moller.com/ ), however, is one of those things that requires stable air or little wind to be feasible, unless it's using Traveller grav technology.
Anything using air foil based technology is inherently unstable because it requires a relatively known medium in which to operate. Grav tech doesn't require that (well, not much ... gravity fields aren't that turbulent, insofar as we know).
Anything using air foil based technology is inherently unstable because it requires a relatively known medium in which to operate. Grav tech doesn't require that (well, not much ... gravity fields aren't that turbulent, insofar as we know).
I think he was showing his vision of the future of humanity, more than being right about the specifics. Never attribute to incompetence what can be equally ascribed to differing priorities.
Sounds recursive to me, although I don't think he meant it that way. :rofl:
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Safest thing to do is assume that he meant what he said. Question is, who is in the 10% left?
That is a question. Pretty serious eugenics program to implement any particular answer... aaaaand I think I've drifted far too off topic now...
The future of Traveller, people 
Frankymole
SOC-12
ETA: sorry, I wrote this before seeing the last post above. Consider this my last word on the subject 
"Perhaps I am in no position to criticise: in 1971 I predicted the first Mars Landing in 1994; now we’ll be lucky if we make it by 2010. On the other hand, I thought I was being wildly optimistic in 1951 by suggesting a mission to the moon in 1978. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin beat me by almost a decade."
It's more the sequence than the "dates" that matter. As it says about his 60s predictions: "Some of what he said was prescient: “These things will make possible a world in which we can be in instant contact wherever we may be. Where we can contact our friends anywhere on earth, even if we don’t know their actual physical location. It will be possible in that age, possibly 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London.” We still don’t have monkey servants (and by ‘we’ I mean anyone outside the Royal Family). But Clarke could see the power of the remote communication, computing and 3D printing making us lazy and avaricious."
He does say: "No one can see into the future. What I try to do is outline possible “futures” – although totally expected inventions or events can render predictions absurd after only a few years. The classic example is the statement, made in the late 1940s, by the then chairman of IBM that the world market for computers was five. I have more than that in my own office.
"Perhaps I am in no position to criticise: in 1971 I predicted the first Mars Landing in 1994; now we’ll be lucky if we make it by 2010. On the other hand, I thought I was being wildly optimistic in 1951 by suggesting a mission to the moon in 1978. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin beat me by almost a decade."
It's more the sequence than the "dates" that matter. As it says about his 60s predictions: "Some of what he said was prescient: “These things will make possible a world in which we can be in instant contact wherever we may be. Where we can contact our friends anywhere on earth, even if we don’t know their actual physical location. It will be possible in that age, possibly 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London.” We still don’t have monkey servants (and by ‘we’ I mean anyone outside the Royal Family). But Clarke could see the power of the remote communication, computing and 3D printing making us lazy and avaricious."
And, going through T5s projected rules on "leap drives" and so forth, I'm at odds as to how to gauge adding tech to a game that probably should have been there to begin with, apart from the official setting.
This ties in with the previous post because the technology prediction by Traveller, I think, was again hampered somewhat (not entirely, but partially) by the official setting's need to have a crew spend two weeks in space (which later became one week with MT) to get from system A to system B.
I'm curious to see what else Mongoose will do.
This ties in with the previous post because the technology prediction by Traveller, I think, was again hampered somewhat (not entirely, but partially) by the official setting's need to have a crew spend two weeks in space (which later became one week with MT) to get from system A to system B.
I'm curious to see what else Mongoose will do.
It was one week under CT, too. One week in space, one dirtside; repeat.
I believe it was two weeks; several days to get to a jump point, one week jump, then several days to get to the destination world. It even says so in the book.
Regardless of the time spent going from mainworld to mainworld, one of the fundamental assumptions is that the players must be empowered, and the setting assumptions must support that.
Traveller is comfortably a golden-era science fiction setting. The scope is set so that the players may have the autonomy to act and be able to defend their actions. The rest is commentary.
Having further-ranged interstellar drives can hurt this or help this.
Consider what it would take to publish a Dumarest module for Traveller. Or Piper's Terro-Human history. Or Asimov, Starship Troopers, Hammer's Slammers. Even Niven's Known Space isn't unapproachable. Niven and Pournelle's CoDominium universe. The differences may be in how the Jump Drive works, or who owns the shipyards, or how the Maneuver Drive works, or the TL of the White Globe. Minor issues.
Traveller is comfortably a golden-era science fiction setting. The scope is set so that the players may have the autonomy to act and be able to defend their actions. The rest is commentary.
Having further-ranged interstellar drives can hurt this or help this.
Consider what it would take to publish a Dumarest module for Traveller. Or Piper's Terro-Human history. Or Asimov, Starship Troopers, Hammer's Slammers. Even Niven's Known Space isn't unapproachable. Niven and Pournelle's CoDominium universe. The differences may be in how the Jump Drive works, or who owns the shipyards, or how the Maneuver Drive works, or the TL of the White Globe. Minor issues.
I agree that, in any space-faring science fiction setting, maximum prominence is going to be on the nature of space travel. But it's no surprise that the jump drive is a core mechanic rather than just an option, much in the same way the magic system in D&D is. You can build a setting around jump technology, just like you can build a setting around the D&D magic system. However, nothing is stopping anyone from creating a setting that utilizes warp drives, jump gates, or black hole bottles, either.
The reason the jump drive is no surprise as a core mechanic is that the amount of work necessary to dovetail a new tech with the rules is going to be a lot of work. Starship construction is at the top of that list. Offering several options at the get-go would just complicate the rules. Also, with a "jumpspace" mechanic, you don't really have to get too uptight about things like time dilation the way you would (or, at least to some, should) if you were traveling in realspace at speeds faster than light.
And there are other setting-related mechanics in the rules, like Social Standing and the way worlds are classified, that are just as much or more determinant. They can all be overcome with a little imagination, though.
I guess the question to ask is, does there exist a Science Fiction RPG that doesn't have at least this much setting built into its core rules?
creativehum
SOC-14 1K
[Cross-posted with previous two posts!]
Here is a passage from the 1981 edition of Traveller Book 2 Starships:
The 1977 edition says the same thing with different words.
But lets move on:
Blue Ghost, is your argument that Traveller, as a rules set needs (or needed), to cover every permutation of technology we don't have yet? Because, as far I can tell, that's impossible. Each permutation in every SF book (or movie, or whatever) creates a new kind of reality. Some technologies make others absolute, some are the core conceit of the story, others are simply background noise. But the assumption off what the future is can change story to story simply by adjusting a few core concepts of a new invention.
Since these different futures are by definition contradictory, and endless, I'm not sure how a single game book could handle them all.
I'm going to go further: I'm not sure it should.
The Classic Traveller text made it clear that the players of the game had been handed a baseline for play: A singular method of travel between the stars; trade between the stars; personal weapons ranging from the primitive to more advanced than we have today; several drugs that can alter the health and physiology of the human body in ways we can only imagine right now; a system for using the mind in dramatic ways to affect objects and people; methods of arranging enchanters with both people and animals; a system for generating random worlds to spark the imagination of Players and Referee... and that's it.
After that, according to the book, it was up to the players to add anything they wanted to the mix (inspired by SF fiction, if they wished) to create the setting, environments, and adventures they wish.
Apart from the method of interstellar travel, I'll say again, it was all a baseline and framework. Anything you wanted to needed to extrapolate from beyond that point was up to the people who played the game. (And, again, given the infinite number of permutations of "the future" I'm not sure how it could be more.)
The only "baked in" tech was the Jump drive, which killed two SF premises: near instantaneous travel and near instantaneous communication between the stars. (Anything else that wasn't mentioned certainly could exist. It existed beyond the baseline framework... but that was the way the game was supposed to work. What wasn't mentioned was for the players to fill in with their own imagination.)
I always assumed that this core concept was baked in on purpose for a very specific reason: It make anomalies and strangeness and new SF premises possible. Something could exist in a chunk of space that was really novel and unique compared to what had already occurred in play. The Players Characters could travel a great distance and encounter something strange -- whether it be a culture or a technology or whatever. It would be novel and new because distances still meant something and travel took time and a place that was far away and unknown was still far away and unknown because interstellar travel was neither instantaneous or convenient.
That, at least, was always my assumption.
So, here is my question: Are you saying that a game book about SF in space should cover every kind of fictional tech? Every permutation of what the future will be? (Even though, as noted above with Clarke, we're doomed to get it wrong anyway?) Is there a line you would draw somewhere? Are all the techs existing at once? Would an encyclopedic listing of SF notions also cross-reference which are at odds with each other?
I ask because I find the core premise untenable. (Though this might not be what you're asking for!) Moreover, I think Traveller, as a baseline and framework, works gangbusters as is. If the GM wants to fill in those higher TLs, then the game is ready and waiting for him to do it. But at that level it should, I think, really be the thing that most strikes the imagination of the Referee and turns him on -- not a list that was dreamed up by a publisher telling him what tech will be like once it reaches a point it is indistinguishable from magic.
I might be missing your point, so if you could break that out for me? I'd greatly appreciate it.
Here is a passage from the 1981 edition of Traveller Book 2 Starships:
The 1977 edition says the same thing with different words.
But lets move on:
Blue Ghost, is your argument that Traveller, as a rules set needs (or needed), to cover every permutation of technology we don't have yet? Because, as far I can tell, that's impossible. Each permutation in every SF book (or movie, or whatever) creates a new kind of reality. Some technologies make others absolute, some are the core conceit of the story, others are simply background noise. But the assumption off what the future is can change story to story simply by adjusting a few core concepts of a new invention.
Since these different futures are by definition contradictory, and endless, I'm not sure how a single game book could handle them all.
I'm going to go further: I'm not sure it should.
The Classic Traveller text made it clear that the players of the game had been handed a baseline for play: A singular method of travel between the stars; trade between the stars; personal weapons ranging from the primitive to more advanced than we have today; several drugs that can alter the health and physiology of the human body in ways we can only imagine right now; a system for using the mind in dramatic ways to affect objects and people; methods of arranging enchanters with both people and animals; a system for generating random worlds to spark the imagination of Players and Referee... and that's it.
After that, according to the book, it was up to the players to add anything they wanted to the mix (inspired by SF fiction, if they wished) to create the setting, environments, and adventures they wish.
Apart from the method of interstellar travel, I'll say again, it was all a baseline and framework. Anything you wanted to needed to extrapolate from beyond that point was up to the people who played the game. (And, again, given the infinite number of permutations of "the future" I'm not sure how it could be more.)
The only "baked in" tech was the Jump drive, which killed two SF premises: near instantaneous travel and near instantaneous communication between the stars. (Anything else that wasn't mentioned certainly could exist. It existed beyond the baseline framework... but that was the way the game was supposed to work. What wasn't mentioned was for the players to fill in with their own imagination.)
I always assumed that this core concept was baked in on purpose for a very specific reason: It make anomalies and strangeness and new SF premises possible. Something could exist in a chunk of space that was really novel and unique compared to what had already occurred in play. The Players Characters could travel a great distance and encounter something strange -- whether it be a culture or a technology or whatever. It would be novel and new because distances still meant something and travel took time and a place that was far away and unknown was still far away and unknown because interstellar travel was neither instantaneous or convenient.
That, at least, was always my assumption.
So, here is my question: Are you saying that a game book about SF in space should cover every kind of fictional tech? Every permutation of what the future will be? (Even though, as noted above with Clarke, we're doomed to get it wrong anyway?) Is there a line you would draw somewhere? Are all the techs existing at once? Would an encyclopedic listing of SF notions also cross-reference which are at odds with each other?
I ask because I find the core premise untenable. (Though this might not be what you're asking for!) Moreover, I think Traveller, as a baseline and framework, works gangbusters as is. If the GM wants to fill in those higher TLs, then the game is ready and waiting for him to do it. But at that level it should, I think, really be the thing that most strikes the imagination of the Referee and turns him on -- not a list that was dreamed up by a publisher telling him what tech will be like once it reaches a point it is indistinguishable from magic.
I might be missing your point, so if you could break that out for me? I'd greatly appreciate it.
..... ..... ..... *nods in agreement*
Yeah, and I guess when Avery laid down the core work this was the framing he had in order to make it work as a game.
Interesting.
Well, with all the films, games, comic books and novels I've seen or read, the thrust of the rules I read in Traveller way back in 79 or 81, was that you could emulate all those settings, and anything not explicitly defined in the rules could be referenced via the tech level chart.
And to me, the tech level chart could be projected to address tech above and beyond and otherwise not addressed by the basic rules.
I guess you could say that I subconsciously expected Traveller to move beyond the CT 3I setting (which wasn't all that prevalent to me and my friends until circa 84), and to bring something "new" to evolve the system ... maybe with a "new setting", whatever that may entail. The rules didn't say that would happen, but it did say you could create your own setting with the rules, and, as you say, use your imagination to mimic or emulate a variety of sci-fi venues.
But it never happened. And when I wanted to throw in stuff from the Stewart Cowley books, or stuff from the Bantam Trek novels from the 70s, or even stuff from Star Wars or Doctor Who, even in my efforts to write for the system to this day, I just felt really stymied by the need to adhere to not just the setting, but the limitations of the core mechanics that, as you say, were baked in.
So on one hand you had this set of rules that said "create anything want!", and then on the other hand said "you can't do this in the official setting!"
That's kind of my "core beef" with Traveller, if I ever had one.
I hope that makes sense.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Piper's Terro-Human history works pretty well, just eliminate the energy weapons, and make the jump time depending on the distance jumped. I am working on such a module. Norton's Solar Queen series works as well, along with some of her other books. Ordeal in Otherwhere, set on Warlock, has a nice concept for Free Traders as well. There is a lot of what I would call "Classic Science Fiction" from the 1950's and 1960's that would work well.
