Why?

[Psion]

Originally posted by Michael Taylor:
Just to humbly ask - has anyone actually liked the EPIC 4 Merchant Cruiser Adventure? I've only seen criticism of it. Did anyone actually like the design and background of the ship?

Well, if it means anything to you, it has moved to the front of my "must run" queue. I think there are a few things that could be managed better, but that's just a nit. Overall, my impression is fairly positive, and I was impressed how quick issues I identified got fixed. I like the setup and how it takes the concept of a classic adventure and gives it what that adventure was missing.

I have a review written up. I just haven't decided whether to put it on ENworld or JTAS yet. ENworld would be my norm, but JTAS would get me some GT swag I've been eyeballing.

 

[Psion]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Surely it's not that hard to convert First In output to UWPs?

Surely, indeed. I have been using GT:FI to flesh out the CT/Genii worlds in GtD. You sort of have to pick your way through it, but there is lots of good info in there.

 

[flykiller]

Frankly, I think if that's their attitude then the community is much better off without them.

those who make money from traveller might disagree with that.

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by Psion:
The two GURPS books I use the most for Traveller are First In and Alien Races 3. (DGP had the BEST alien books AFAIAC, but never got around to puting a Hiver book out and the CT hiver book is really too thin and has too little detail).

You might well like the TNE "Hivers and Ithklur". A nice take on the Hivers, entirely consistent with the CT version but with some new twists. (The facts are the same, but the implications are better explored.)

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Surely it's not that hard to convert First In output to UWPs? IIRC there's a conversion table from UWP to GURPS Space format in the GT corebook, can't you use that the other way round?

I'm a little tight on the budget right now.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Psion:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:
Surely it's not that hard to convert First In output to UWPs?

Surely, indeed. I have been using GT:FI to flesh out the CT/Genii worlds in GtD. You sort of have to pick your way through it, but there is lots of good info in there. </font>[/QUOTE]Any chance you have a conversion available?

I've got a copy of GT:FI on loan from a friend . . .

 

[flykiller]

But when people approach it as if they're authorative enough to tell authors where the game should be going and that their vision of the game is better than the authors, and that they know why the authors are doing something better than the authors do

there's an interesting question. who are the authors?

EGG said that if a game didn't follow the rules of AD&D then it wasn't AD&D. I thought, in that case then I don't know anyone who plays AD&D.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Frankly, I think if that's their attitude then the community is much better off without them.

those who make money from traveller might disagree with that. </font>[/QUOTE]I'm not sure they would, actually. I can't imagine any way that rantings of the anti-TNE mob would have encouraged anyone to buy into TNE - at best, I'd think that they would made no difference to sales, and at worst they would have meant less copies sold. More people put off buying = less money made by publishers.

So I'd imagine that those who make money from Traveller would be rather glad to see the back of the hostile crowd. That assumes of course that the hostile crowd have the decency to shut up about the game after they stomp off in a huff - if they don't, well the company is screwed either way.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />But when people approach it as if they're authorative enough to tell authors where the game should be going and that their vision of the game is better than the authors, and that they know why the authors are doing something better than the authors do

there's an interesting question. who are the authors?
</font>[/QUOTE]The authors are the ones who are being paid to write the books that are published. They have, presumably, sent in a submission, had it accepted by the publishers, had it vetted via editing and playtest and hammered into its final shape, and then had their book end up on the shelf. The publishers have, by implication, chosen to accept that author's take on things as the official view.

Let's use a real example - I wrote the Extraterrestrial Oceans chapter of SJG's Transhuman Space: Under Pressure - that describes the TS canonical view of what the oceans of Europa, Titan, and Mars are like and what's going on there. Anyone playing TS who disagrees with what I say there is perfectly entitled to run things differently in their own games - if they want alien relics or giant squid beings lurking under the ice, then great, more power to 'em, I hope they have fun (to be honest, I'd probably want to hear how it panned out ). Either way, I'm certainly not going to insist that everyone runs things on Europa and Titan and Mars in the way that I say in the book!

If however, someone spent two years writing up Europa but that turns out to be completely opposite to what I presented in the book, then while they can disagree with what I say, they have no right whatsoever to tell me that I was wrong to say what I said in the book. It's one thing to correct factual errors and for realism, but another thing entirely to want to correct things because you didn't like the way it turned out. Fact is, my material is the officially published canon is, and theirs isn't - and them's the breaks. If they were taking that much time on it and were that keen to make it official, they should perhaps have written it up as a proposal and submitted it to SJG themselves.


If you end up as an author of an official book, your material is what becomes canon. That's just how it works. This is why we have the OTU and YTU.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by flykiller:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />But when people approach it as if they're authorative enough to tell authors where the game should be going and that their vision of the game is better than the authors, and that they know why the authors are doing something better than the authors do

there's an interesting question. who are the authors?

EGG said that if a game didn't follow the rules of AD&D then it wasn't AD&D. I thought, in that case then I don't know anyone who plays AD&D. </font>[/QUOTE]Remarkably enough, if you read up on early Dragon and the 1st Ed. DMG, you will find that Gygax's opinion is open, that rules are guidelines and "do whatever you want, but get out there and play and have fun".

A few years later his position had dramatically reversed to, "Anyone who doesn't play the game by the rules as written isn't playing the game."

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Let's use a real example - I wrote the Extraterrestrial Oceans chapter of SJG's Transhuman Space: Under Pressure - that describes the TS canonical view of what the oceans of Europa, Titan, and Mars are like and what's going on there. Anyone playing TS who disagrees with what I say there is perfectly entitled to run things differently in their own games - if they want alien relics or giant squid beings lurking under the ice, then great, more power to 'em, I hope they have fun (to be honest, I'd probably want to hear how it panned out ). Either way, I'm certainly not going to insist that everyone runs things on Europa and Titan and Mars in the way that I say in the book!

If however, someone spent two years writing up Europa but that turns out to be completely opposite to what I presented in the book, then while they can disagree with what I say, they have no right whatsoever to tell me that I was wrong to say what I said in the book.

However, they are free to say that they don't like it. Which, returning to the original topic, is what Mike did. He said he didn't like the direction that the writers had taken his favourite game, and why he didn't like it.

Originally posted by Malenfant:
It's one thing to correct factual errors and for realism, but another thing entirely to want to correct things because you didn't like the way it turned out. Fact is, my material is the officially published canon is, and theirs isn't - and them's the breaks. If they were taking that much time on it and were that keen to make it official, they should perhaps have written it up as a proposal and submitted it to SJG themselves.


If you end up as an author of an official book, your material is what becomes canon. That's just how it works. This is why we have the OTU and YTU.

Mind you, ISTR that you were complaining about having to abide by Traveller canon at one point...

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Robert Prior:
However, they are free to say that they don't like it. Which, returning to the original topic, is what Mike did. He said he didn't like the direction that the writers had taken his favourite game, and why he didn't like it.

Sure, but they shouldn't expect any sympathy when they go on and on about how badly it's affected them emotionally.

Mind you, ISTR that you were complaining about having to abide by Traveller canon at one point... [/QB]

Yeah, but in the end it still usually wins out, doesn't it - unless the authors decide that canon is flexible enough to change. I can grumble about sticking to Traveller canon all I like, but that in itself isn't going to change it and I don't expect it to be changed because of anything I say outside of a book or other canonical source either.

I've got a vastly different Reaver's Deep sector that I made all written up here from when I was at school, but I'm not gutted that the official version is different from it.

 

[flykiller]

ah. so it's not just the anti-TNE attitude that you're responding to. you also have a commercial and personal interest in the matter. the light dawns!

do you think the game referees (however many there are) have any role to play in authorship? one notes that the volume of free material on the internet dwarfs the contributions of the copyright holders. one can only imagine the volume of material that never makes it to a webpage. the terms "OTU" and "YTU" speak to the fact that the OTU is just another option (or, rather, batch of contradictory options, given the state of traveller cannon). aside from financial issues, just how relevant is copyright to authorship here? if the copyright holders were to announce that their version of traveller is the only real traveller and everyone else was just a bunch of soreheads free to go their own way, how many would already be there? if everyone said that from now on we're going to use nothing but copyright material, could the copyright holders put out enough material to sustain a game?

 

[flykiller]

Remarkably enough, if you read up on early Dragon and the 1st Ed. DMG, you will find that Gygax's opinion is open, that rules are guidelines and "do whatever you want, but get out there and play and have fun".

I have 1st ed DMG and have just reread his introduction. sorry, while he said each game should have its own unique nature he was quite insistent on the rules, and spent several paragraphs explaining why.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
[QB]do you think the game referees (however many there are) have any role to play in authorship? one notes that the volume of free material on the internet dwarfs the contributions of the copyright holders. one can only imagine the volume of material that never makes it to a webpage.

In actual authorship? IMO, game referees have no role to play at all - unless of course, they're the ones writing the books.

To use another example. There's probably a gazillion virtual tons of Star Wars fan fiction out there. Is any of it an official part of the SW universe? No - only the officially sanctioned and published material is.

Note that this doesn't make any of the homegrown stuff any less valid for the people who wrote it. (of course, the IP owner could just as easily clamp down and say that nobody can publicly publish anything derivative of their setting in any form without his direct permission)

the terms "OTU" and "YTU" speak to the fact that the OTU is just another option (or, rather, batch of contradictory options, given the state of traveller cannon).

Yeah, but the OTU is special because it's the default option. It's the one that everyone has in common, since everyone has the books that it's presented in. Whereas a YTU is usually only known by a handful of people who either play in that game or have seen a link to the relevant webpage.

aside from financial issues, just how relevant is copyright to authorship here?

Fairly relevant, I'd say. The IP owners erm, own the IP. They can say or do whatever they want with it, and more to the point can allow other people to say or do whatever they want with it (which can range from "anything they like" to "nothing at all").

if the copyright holders were to announce that their version of traveller is the only real traveller and everyone else was just a bunch of soreheads free to go their own way, how many would already be there?

Well, they could say that, but it wouldn't stop anyone from actually doing their own thing. If they actually decided to enforce that by say banning all discussion of YTU and shutting down every webpage with alternate rules or backgrounds then I'd imagine that people would flee in their droves and the publisher would suddenly find themselves lacking in customers (especially for Traveller, which IIRC has traditionally been fairly open about this sort of thing).

if everyone said that from now on we're going to use nothing but copyright material, could the copyright holders put out enough material to sustain a game?

If they said that, I'd guess that they'd probably have to. They probably wouldn't say that if they didn't have a ton of stuff in the pipeline and a massive production rate. Or they could just open it up and say that everyone who wants to write something can send it to them and it'd get published. Though then you'll have a quality control issue to contend with

.

 

[flykiller]

game referees have no role to play at all

well, that about sums it up. on both sides.

 

[Malenfant]

well, what role do you see for GMs running individual games in determining what is and what isn't actually official? They might be able to make suggestions to authors, but beyond that I can't see much else they can do.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

So is that to say that you should have no regard for the opinion of your market base? The people that (like it or not) that put butter on the bread? Listening couldn't hurt... its called market research...

If I owned a bike company that made bikes with square wheels, I would hope I would get a postcard or two telling me that "Round is Good" before I noticed I had a warehouse full of square wheeled bikes...

While of course one should be wary of those taking it so seriously as to make death threats, but there are nuts in any aspect of life...

Now where's me Napoleon Hat?

 

[Psion]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
Any chance you have a conversion available?

I've got a copy of GT:FI on loan from a friend . . .

Well, my conversion breaks with canon in an effort to make smaller worlds with atmospheres more realistic. I use size as mass instead of radius. That is, 1 size digit = 1/8 Mterra. IIRC, GT:FI works from mass anyways. I generate atmosphere and hydrographics as normal for UWPS, and then use GT:FI to help me with the physical details beyond that.

If you are starting from scratch, you could probably just use it all the way though and convert straight over -- there are tables in GT:FI. You won't end up with worlds too small to hold their atmospheres, and your data sets will look different than you end up with using the old 2d6 for 8 digits method.

 

[Psion]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
More people put off buying = less money made by publishers.

And more people pleased with the products coming out = more money seen by the publisher. I think that's all he was saying.