Originally posted by Larsen E. Whipsnade:
You're a scientist and you know perfect knowledge is beyond us. The observer influences the observation, you can measure spin or charge but not both.
There isn't one actual event for which we have perfect knowledge. Why do you then insist on perfect knowledge in an RPG setting?
First, I don't claim perfect knowledge of anything. Second, we're not talking quantum mechanics here, so the Heisenberg Principle is totally irrelevant to the discussion.
I'm not talking about how WE have perfect knowledge of anything. I'm saying that there is an objective reality (on the macroscopic scale, if you insist
), regardless of how it's reported. If a person drops a plate on the floor, which shatters when it hits the floor, then the reality is that the plate hits the floor. An observer can say 'hey, you threw it on the floor!' when in fact it just slipped out of his fingers, but that doesn't change the fact that the plate left his hands and smashed on the floor.
Ditto for something on a larger scale in an RPG - if a battle takes place around Regina, then that's 'fact'. Anything that claims it didn't later on is wrong (unless it explicitly says that the first account is incorrect). Your argument about the Battle of Leyten Gulf is not relevant here because that was a subjective account of the battle, where in a game we should be expecting objective accounts unless the game designers are deliberately setting out to confuse their readers.
All the GM needs are suggestions on how to run HIS games for the pleasure of HIS group. No one adheres to canon perfectly. Everyone influences it as they use it.
This is the old Play versus Play With disconnect. You want perfect knowledge because you play with Traveller. However, that isn't needed to actually play Traveller.
Maybe so, but if I want to play a game set in the OTU, then I need to have sufficient knowledge of Traveller to do that. e.g. to use my earlier example, if I set my game in the OTU on Regina, then I need to know if there's a civil war going on there or not at the time. If nothing is stated, I have a simple choice to make. If something is stated, then I don't expect it to be contradicted later on.
No, it isn't. It's wrong from a 'play with' perspective but not from a 'play' perspective. Three shots is the 'truth' in that GM's setting.
OK, so tell me what the 'truth' is in the OTU. I don't care what you do in a game you run - tell me what actually happens in the OTU when you're presented with two or three different versions of the 'facts' in the setting. YOu don't have 'collapsing waveforms', you have two or three things that contradict eachother and collectively make no sense.
You seem to be arguing that there's no point in canon at all - or even in providing a game background - because the GM can make it all up anyway. Sure, a game setting is the framework on which a GM can build his game, but it doesn't help anyone when that setting condtradicts itself in places.
There is inconsistent material; like T4's First Survey, and then there are hiccups; like the various bits you're complaining about. A few systems out of over 10,000 'changed' between publications. So what? The GM observes the 'wavefront' and chooses to 'collapse' it in the manner that best suits his campaign.
Again, this isn't quantum mechanics. I'm not talking about a GM's campaign, I'm talking about what's presented in the books. I maintain that contradictory 'factual' material in an RPG is not a feature, it's a bug. If the writers want to deliberately make something ambiguous so the GM can decide, then that's what they should do - but many writers for Traveller haven't done that. Instead, they just wrote contradictory material because they didn't research the setting properly, and the result is that the GM has to wade through the inconsistencies and decide what's right on his own, rather than be actively presented with choices and suggestions to guide him. The canon itself is flawed.
It's the difference between saying "Vargr are chaotic and can have no large-scale political structure" (which leaves the GM wondering how they can have large sector-spanning empires) and "Vargr are generally incapable of forming large political structures, but some have - through coercion, intimidation, sheer charisma, or emulation of their neighbours - managed to claw together some large (precarious) empires." (which gives the GM a canonical way out to explain some of the larger empires).
The star is different than last time? There are then two responses. First, Horror! I 'play with' Traveller and this ruins everything. Second, Interesting! I 'play' Traveller and this gives me lots of ideas to hang adventures and campaigns on. Why did the IISS get it wrong? Has the sector database been corrupted? Was it an accident? Part of a plot? Both?
That's like buying a toaster that doesn't make toast, and then saying 'well, I can use it as a doorstop! How marvellous!'
Besides, the third response would be "the bloody writers screwed up again, I have to fix the mess now, and a canon nut that I play with is probably going to whine at me that the star type I used is 'wrong'".
Why would perfect consistency be boring? Why would everything being the same, everything being known, everything being just like everything else be boring? Do I really need to answer that? Imagine, every government coded 5 in the OTU is arranged exactly like every other government coded 5. I can just see the PCs now; "Oh it's a 5, good. Find Official X, bribe him, and we'll get our okay to lift out. It's worked at every other 5 and it will work here."
You're going to extremes here. Obviously each government type would be different within its classification. By 'consistent' I mean things like every Pop 9 world having a population between 1 and 9.99 billion (not 12 billion or 1 million). Or a statement like 'XXXX is the ship most commonly seen by Travellers in the Vargr Extents' not being contradicted later on by a statement that 'YYYY is the ship most commonly seen by Travellers in the Vargr Extents'
One man's 'inconsistent' is another man's 'interesting' or 'realistic'. It is all a matter of perspective, of what you actually do with the game. Do you 'play'? Or do you 'play with'?
Why should either response make the argument more or less relevant. I'm arguing that it's shoddy workmanship by the writers of the game to have allowed so many inconsistencies to creep into the setting. You seem to be arguing that we should be grateful for the mess it's in.
