sablewyvern
SOC-12
I think the point was that, while there are people who know Traveller better, they do not know planetology better; and, while there are probably better planetologists, none of them know Traveller better.
Why do they change the Spinward Marches UWPs?
- Thread starter Able Baker
- Start date
I think the point was that, while there are people who know Traveller better, they do not know planetology better; and, while there are probably better planetologists, none of them know Traveller better.
hunter
Ancient - Absent Friend
So if atmospheres and hydrographics are the problem, fixing the size fixes the problem without changing anything significant.
IMO there isn't a need to retcon the Social or Tech UWPs and those are well outside of EDG's expertise.
sablewyvern
SOC-12
No argument from me on that.
Nor from me.
EDG's social changes are based upon his own biases, many disagree with those biases. They include a belief that people won't be willing to live in inhospitable environments.
Hell, *I* live in an inhospitable environment. Today was the first time the temp broke -5°C in a over week... Why do I stay? I can't afford to leave.
While I don't agree with the way EDG is doing it, I do agree with his assumptions. I don't think people will choose to live where they can't breath and where there isn't water to drink.
I know with lots of power, thats technically not a problem, but consider this...
When people first settled there ( hostile world ), EVERYTHING had to be imported and everything has to continue to be imported until a certain level of high tech infrastructure AND high tech capital investment is capable of locally maintaining that livable enviroment by manufacturing replacement parts/new equipment for expansion. Population can only grow as fast as that can be accomplished. and until it can produce enough product to break even ( export as much as it imports...or become technoligically independant ), it will be a constant expense/drag to its patron world.
and if power can make water and air, then maybe it can make other stuff too out of rocks...so why go far to settle a hellhole when you can do it in-system and have a nice world there too. ...and lower transport costs too.
I'm not saying its imposible, just not people's first choice.
Thats the main reason I made my uwp variant as I did.
Aramis: I wouldn't call that a hostile enviroment ( in trav terms ) ...you can breath unassisted at least...that makes it a paradise compared to the moon or mars or venus or titan, or...etc.
I know with lots of power, thats technically not a problem, but consider this...
When people first settled there ( hostile world ), EVERYTHING had to be imported and everything has to continue to be imported until a certain level of high tech infrastructure AND high tech capital investment is capable of locally maintaining that livable enviroment by manufacturing replacement parts/new equipment for expansion. Population can only grow as fast as that can be accomplished. and until it can produce enough product to break even ( export as much as it imports...or become technoligically independant ), it will be a constant expense/drag to its patron world.
and if power can make water and air, then maybe it can make other stuff too out of rocks...so why go far to settle a hellhole when you can do it in-system and have a nice world there too. ...and lower transport costs too.
I'm not saying its imposible, just not people's first choice.
Thats the main reason I made my uwp variant as I did.
Aramis: I wouldn't call that a hostile enviroment ( in trav terms ) ...you can breath unassisted at least...that makes it a paradise compared to the moon or mars or venus or titan, or...etc.
That one escaped my notice. I'm not sure if I should be glad or sorry it did. Choosing just one might have driven me mad with frustration. "I want the population of Pixie increased to 600,000. No, wait, I want Feri's size increased from 4 to 8. No, wait, I want Emape's TL increased[*]. No, wait... I want... I want... AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!"
[*] Actually, I came up with a fix for Emape (Crappy world, huge population, inadequate tech level). A really fun one, if I do say so myself. Granted, I had to invoke the Ancients, and in principle I'm dead set against the overuse of the Ancients. But if there's one place in Charted Space where you can use them, surely it's in Regina subsector.
The Marches are full of possibilities. At one point I was working on The Efate Run: Regina, Efate, and the seven worlds between them. Among those worlds alone, you have a world where you can fit every adventure you could filch from any story about 20th Century Earth, a world where technology is restricted by religion to roughly Renaissance/Early Industrial level, a world where a civil war threatens, a world with practically no legal restrictions on what you can buy, a world where using most of what you can buy on the previous one is illegal, and an empty (well, almost empty) world filled with ruins and artifacts of long-dead civilizations[**]. And that's just two percent of the worlds in the Marches. Granted, not all of them are quite that promising, but still.
[**] Note: No, you haven't missed any CT books. Most of what I base this claim on is non-canonical information; some of it can be found in articles I've written for JTAS Online and some in articles I'm still working on. But none of it contradicts any canonical information.
Hans
No, and that's rather important. People tend to accept what they're used to as the natural way of life. I can easily believe that many belters would infinitely prefer life in the controlled environment of a good, solid metal-rich rock in deep space to all the nasty, uncontrolled hazards of an icky biosphere.
Obviously there has to be a reason why people go there in the first place. But there's a limit to how inhospitable a world can be effectively. At the very least it can function as an anchor for space habitats. So maybe people aren't really living ON that world with the corrosive atmosphere; maybe they're living in orbit over it and just working in the atmosphere collecting valuable chemical compounds.
Space habitats are still more expensive than log cabins on garden worlds, so there still has to be a reason why people went there in the first place. But building more space habitats could be preferable to emigrating to another world, so once a community is established, it could conceivably grow on its own.
Hans
Plankowner
SOC-13
Hans, I can agree with your statement, but I am not sure it is supported by published information.
My understanding of the UWP is that it does NOT include the population living in space habitats. I cannot point to a source right now (at work without books), but I am almost positive that it is stated somewhere.
My understanding of the UWP is that it does NOT include the population living in space habitats. I cannot point to a source right now (at work without books), but I am almost positive that it is stated somewhere.
If that were true, the official population of the Glisten system would be 0
.Seriously, I can't recall any such statement, so if you can find it and provide a quote, I'd be most interested.
Hans
mild disagreement here.
Yes, people will prefer what they're use to, pretty much. But not the first belters. The didn't want to live there...they just wanted the possible profit more. Perhaps after a few generations, they might accept that they 'are children of rock' and not of earth, and maybe tales of dirtside are legend or about a mythical heaven.
in the end, however, given a choice, I feel people would rather settle in the Bahamas than in the Antarctic...
but thats my point...
Why spend the expense of building a space habitat over 'there' to get these chemical compounds when it'd be far cheaper and easier to build them in your own system here for less cash...and lower transport costs. It could only grow so much as the pop would be workers and the rest would be support industries for the workers. For it to grow past that, it'd have to diversify its economy, else when there's more profit somewhere else..otherwise it becomes a ghost town.
( imagine a huge and slowly decaying habitat, mostly deserted with a handful of people left who refuse to leave...and the habitat is too costly to tow away..or its cheaper to build a new one at higher tech )
the UWP variant I made and choose to use doesn't forbid settling hostile worlds, but it tries to keep it from happening more than is reasonable. There can only be so many space habitats harvesting chemical compounds. Special explainations for odd uwp's should be the exception and not the rule.
come to think of it, if one allows skimming rigs around gas giants or metals from belts or planets...why would any world need to go out of their own system for raw materials? A system would have more than any civilization could possibly use.
that would leave settlements as being merely strategic waypoints like the old west on well used trails and commerce routes. but little commercial reason to be there save trade route support.
it all depends on how you envision your TU, I suppose
( as for me, let all that canon stuff happen 'over there'. I'll be very happy with my own non-OTU custom redone islands..
Obviously these are special chemical compounds. That corrosive atmosphere is home to a highly complex biosphere and some of the local plants and animals are valuable and would be immensely expensive (or even impossible) to synthesize.
Sure, and many mining colonies do become ghost towns. But those that survive for long enough gets a 'civilian' populations. First come the grifters and the people belonging to that profession Marc Miller won't let us mention. Then come the spouses and children. Then come the teachers and doctors and preachers and entertainers and food servers and... you get the drift.
http://jtas.sjgames.com/login/article.cgi?613
Who can argue with that? Except... the word "reasonable" is a slippery little thing. I believe that having some outposts that has grown into societies is perfectly reasonable but that having too many isn't.
And then we examine the term "too many" and notice that it's just as slippery...
.Ah, but I'm more interested in the OTU. That means that I don't want to change any canon that I don't absolutely have to. And that in turn means accepting more exceptions that I would have introduced if I had been doing it from scratch. In fact, it means accepting the very highest number of exceptions that I can before my belief suspenders snap
.Hans
lol..
I'm afraid my suspenders snapped a couple of decades ago.
and why I'm of the position that the OTU is a drag on new game development. Trying to make a new and 'good' game while trying to remain true and compatible with what I regard as 'old mistakes' doesn't seem likely. Making changes to canon to fix what each of us things is wrong is dandy, until we see that each of us changes it completely different from everyone else, eh?
I guess thats why I am all ready to make changes to the 'odd' UWPs...
the old ones will always be there.
Our differeing viewpoints will probably mean that we won't agree very often, but at least we can agree that 'good' and 'odd' and 'reasonable' are all subjective.
I'm afraid my suspenders snapped a couple of decades ago.
and why I'm of the position that the OTU is a drag on new game development. Trying to make a new and 'good' game while trying to remain true and compatible with what I regard as 'old mistakes' doesn't seem likely. Making changes to canon to fix what each of us things is wrong is dandy, until we see that each of us changes it completely different from everyone else, eh?
I guess thats why I am all ready to make changes to the 'odd' UWPs...
the old ones will always be there.
Our differeing viewpoints will probably mean that we won't agree very often, but at least we can agree that 'good' and 'odd' and 'reasonable' are all subjective.
hunter
Ancient - Absent Friend
Yet we didn't have much problem working up a campaign book spanning 4 sectors of that OTU as well as a number of adventures set across those worlds.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, as the case may be) we don't have to convince each other. We just have to convince Marc Miller or one of his vicegerents.
Hans
Hunter: touche`
However I am thinking more in the way of ruleset changes. For example, if mongoose uses EDG's UWP system, then it invalidates many worlds of the Marches or else people can complain how the OTU doesn't match the rules. I beleive such criticisms haunt some aspects of the OTU where some data is not capable of being reproduced by the OT rules?
Yet we see now, by virtue of this thread even existing, that to do so is also seen as a terrible thing. Will all future Traveller rules be forced to comply with what has already been published despite what has be bemoaned as flaws?....
That is my concern. Whether they are changed or not really won't affect me as I don't use strict canon anyways.
ranke: also fortunate is that Trav is a 'universal' ( nyuk nyuk ) game system and thus an individual can make any TU he likes....
However I am thinking more in the way of ruleset changes. For example, if mongoose uses EDG's UWP system, then it invalidates many worlds of the Marches or else people can complain how the OTU doesn't match the rules. I beleive such criticisms haunt some aspects of the OTU where some data is not capable of being reproduced by the OT rules?
Yet we see now, by virtue of this thread even existing, that to do so is also seen as a terrible thing. Will all future Traveller rules be forced to comply with what has already been published despite what has be bemoaned as flaws?....
That is my concern. Whether they are changed or not really won't affect me as I don't use strict canon anyways.
ranke: also fortunate is that Trav is a 'universal' ( nyuk nyuk ) game system and thus an individual can make any TU he likes....
So what if a world description doesn't match anything that could be reached by following a set of tables, as long as it's plausible (or fun
)? The rules will inevitably describe a limited subset of the "real world" (in casu the OTU, which is why I put the quotes around 'real world'). Just because the character generation system doesn't allow you to create shoe salesmen doesn't mean there aren't any shoe salesmen in the OTU. Just because the rank tables doesn't include rear and vice admirals doesn't mean that the IN doesn't have rear and vice admirals[*]. Come to that, there are times when rules shouldn't include every possibility. For example, I wrote an article for JTAS Online that was essentially a set of tables for generating random passengers for free traders. You can't get an Imperial duke on those tables. Does that mean I think that it would be wrong, wrong, wrong for a GM to have an Imperial duke buy passage on a PC-run free trader? No, it means that I think it would be so unusual an occurrence that it should only happen by GM fiat (and it'd require a darn good story), never just as a result of random die rolls.[*] Though the reverse isn't true. The canonical existence of rear and vice admirals in the IN does mean that it's a flaw in the character generation system that they don't show up on the rank tables.
Haunt? Probably not. I've yet to hear of a Traveller editor or writer who worried about it
.Sure, but if that's all you want the rules for, why worry about the OTU at all? Surely the only reason to care about the OTU is because you'd like to be able to use material produced by other people, which requires that those other people base their work on a background that's not too different from that of your own game universe?
Hans
Not entirely sure about the Gateway domain (but then T20 has a tweaked system), but nothing published in the CT era looks even remotely like Book 3 or Book 6 worldgen. Note, that Book 6 in no way resembles Book 3 either, so trying to achieve even token consistency is already impossible. No matter what system Mongoose eventually choose, you're not going to be able to generate a sector that looks like the Spinward Marches, no matter what changes they make.
It's as if the designers knew the worldgen system was broken all along, as they never used it.... :devil:
tbeard1999
SOC-14 1K
It's important to note that the random world generation system was presented as an *option* for the referee. And a damn useful one it was, however "flawed" it might be. ("Illogical" would be the word I'd guardedly use instead).
The referee has always been encouraged to create his own worlds. That's what GDW clearly did with the Spinward Marches. I've done that with my own Commonwealth campaign (which is a two-sector sized empire). Basically, I make general notes about distant worlds and don't generate a planet until it's needed. (I do have a default UPP in case the players unexpectedly wind up there).
So while I don't mind a more "logical" system to generate mainworlds, it isn't a big deal to me one way or another. And it is not, in my opinion, necessary to re-do published sectors, especially well-travelled ones like the Spinward Marches. Indeed, it is not desirable to do so, since that will enrage old timers (and Mongoose is doing a good job of that already, it seems).
And surely Mongoose wouldn't be that stupid, right?
Right???
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The Spinward Marches are proof of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_theorem) - the systems described can be created as systems but not validated by the system creation rules.
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I just figured that if they don't change it to match whatever rules they decide on, new players will go " They didn't even bother with their own rules??..they must suck!!..I'll play something else."
I changed my mind
don't change it...but make sure there is information in the new book about the history of the game Traveller ( as opposed to Imperial history ) to explain any discrepancies and explain how new material for publishing must conform to older data..
I've thought about it and decided that the game of Traveller is not the OTU even though the OTU can be played using the game. But so can other non-official TU's
Disconnect the rules from the setting.
Encourage other detailed universes even.
Like CT did in the days when the Marches was just a new-fangled supplement.
please negate my 'yes' vote...I wish to not place a vote at all.
I changed my mind
don't change it...but make sure there is information in the new book about the history of the game Traveller ( as opposed to Imperial history ) to explain any discrepancies and explain how new material for publishing must conform to older data..
I've thought about it and decided that the game of Traveller is not the OTU even though the OTU can be played using the game. But so can other non-official TU's
Disconnect the rules from the setting.
Encourage other detailed universes even.
Like CT did in the days when the Marches was just a new-fangled supplement.
please negate my 'yes' vote...I wish to not place a vote at all.
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