The Traveller Mindset

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by far_trader

This has never been true the way I read the first set of rules in those old LBBs. Certainly it was clarified and emphatically proven as untrue by Book 0 - An Introduction to Traveller in 1981 ! If not sooner. How is it this myth persists after decades?

It probably has something to do with the fact that GDW cheerfully published unvetted UWPs and refused to retcon them, arguing that wholly impossible combinations of size, atmosphere, and population are simply spurs to the imagination that should be accepted as-is and explained somehow.

Without, mark you, providing those explanations.

This continuing delusion that players are slaves to the dice rolls, much like the similar belief that the rules are somehow a true simulation of every possibly extrapolated minutia of the Traveller universe, have never been correct. Why do some people insist on saying they are?

See above. It's not players nor referees that are slaves to the dice rolls, it is the poor Traveller writers.


Hans

[Mike Wightman]

Originally Posted by far_trader

This continuing delusion that players are slaves to the dice rolls, much like the similar belief that the rules are somehow a true simulation of every possibly extrapolated minutia of the Traveller universe, have never been correct. Why do some people insist on saying they are?

Two reasons spring to mind.

They have never read LBB0.

They have brains that blank out every reference in LBB0-3 to the referee being free to make stuff up or change things to suit their game.

Let's face facts - the folks at GDW didn't treat the OTU as a self consistent setting, they used it as a sandbox for their rules and if those new rules shattered the setting paradigms they were not bothered.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Mike Wightman

They have brains that blank out every reference in LBB0-3 to the referee being free to make stuff up or change things to suit their game.

Or they feel that rules and setting details that rely on referees and players fixing the flaws are flawed rules and setting details.

It's not that I'm not fully capable of changing impossible UWPs for my own TU. It's that I shouldn't have to change impossible UWPs in officially published settings. When GDW published UWPs without vetting them, they were, in my opinion, publishing half-finished products, and I feel fully entitled to grouse about it. The fact that I can fix them myself is utterly and completely irrelevant.


Hans

[far_trader]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

When GDW published UWPs without vetting them, they were, in my opinion, publishing half-finished products, and I feel fully entitled to grouse about it.

I suppose I can understand that. Can I ask, when and what was your introduction to Traveller? I have a feeling that a lot of these type issues speak to a large degree to the expectations based on the personal background. Call me a grognard but I'm with Mike on this:

Originally Posted by Mike Wightman

Let's face facts - the folks at GDW didn't treat the OTU as a self consistent setting, they used it as a sandbox for their rules and if those new rules shattered the setting paradigms they were not bothered.

When I got the Spinward Marches Campaign book I took it as more sand for the box, used what I liked, changed what I didn't, never gave a thought to "canon"... I doubt I even knew the term then. I even seem to recall "deleting" a star system. And "adding" one for the Solomani Rim supplement when that came along. I never saw the products as half-finished. I took them as "starting points" to build on. FWIW our group did the same with Greyhawk for D&D, adding terrain features and new kingdoms to the maps. We never took the setting as sacrosanct (how appropriate a word)... and again probably had never heard the term canon. Ignorance is bliss ;-)

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

The fact that I can fix them myself is utterly and completely irrelevant.

The fact that I can fix them myself is the whole point... both of us in our own opinions of course.

Again, I think this may go back to the personal backgrounds. Older (generally) gamers from experiences of having to make up our own stuff and rules take what is given as something to be molded. Younger (again generally) gamers from experiences of buying adventures, settings, and such seem to freeze up and feel ripped off if there is any additional work required to use the material. There seems to be an expectation that they are stuck with the exact written word even if it makes no sense. THAT to me is what makes no sense.

I don't even think authors should be so limited, in fact quite the opposite. If an author feels something is wrong in previous material, in my opinion, they have a duty to correct it in their own contribution. It then falls on the publisher and editor to decide if the fix is required and valid. And when it is published then hey, I still get to decide for my game if I take it or ditch it. Though there will be others who will simply complain about it.

[Mike Wightman]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

Or they feel that rules and setting details that rely on referees and players fixing the flaws are flawed rules and setting details.

I don't think that was what the designers intended. Traveller was originally a set of rules without a setting but with many suggested setting elements which were very familiar if you had read the books that inspired them.
The aim of the rules was to allow referees and players to produce the setting they wanted to play in.

The 3rd Imperium setting was only broadly outlined in the introduction to LBB4, but tied in with what was published in the early supplements and adventures. The referee and players were still encouraged to modify and adapt.

I think it was the way things were done back then (in D&D and other rpgs of the era) - settings were not detailed to provide constraints, but rather left vague to allow referee and player freedom.

It's not that I'm not fully capable of changing impossible UWPs for my own TU. It's that I shouldn't have to change impossible UWPs in officially published settings. When GDW published UWPs without vetting them, they were, in my opinion, publishing half-finished products, and I feel fully entitled to grouse about it. The fact that I can fix them myself is utterly and completely irrelevant.


Hans

Now this is something I agree with completely. If the rules actually state that the referee can alter ridiculous randomly generated rubbish then it is annoying that the designers didn't take the time to do so.

But... there's always a but ;) ... the designers never used their own rules to design things. Broken ship design after broken ship design. Incompatible ship technology, TL paradigm changes; the list could be longer.

Maybe they just thought referees would enjoy changing things to suit their own vision so they didn't think such at source revision was necessary.

[far_trader]

Originally Posted by far_trader

B.S.

This has never been true the way I read the first set of rules in those old LBBs. Certainly it was clarified and emphatically proven as untrue by Book 0 - An Introduction to Traveller in 1981 ! If not sooner...

Having taken a minute to check, yes possibly even earlier (1977 maybe), and certainly more accessibly:

Book 3 World and Adventures - pg7 (emphasis mine):

At times, the referee (or the players) will find combinations of features which
may seem contradictory or unreasonable. Common sense should rule in such cases;
either the players or referee will generate a rationale which explains the situation,
or an alternative description should be made.

...said "alternative description" in my reading being " change the UWP numbers to make sense when a rationale can't be arrived at.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by far_trader

I suppose I can understand that. Can I ask, when and what was your introduction to Traveller? I have a feeling that a lot of these type issues speak to a large degree to the expectations based on the personal background.

I was planning an Interrail trip to England in the summer of 77 and had gotten in touch with several roleplayers with a view to visiting and maybe trying out this newfangled D&D stuff. One of them was the editor of an apa-zine called Trollcrusher, Bryan Ansell. He'd gotten hold of a Traveller set (little black box with three booklets) shortly before my visit and wasn't impressed with it, so he gave it to me.

(It may have been on my next visit in 1978. My memory of those days are hazy. It's a first edition, though.)

For many years thereafter I bought more Traveller books whenever I was in London, which was one or two times a year. I played and reffed with very little thought to these problems (my main efforts were my Fantasy campaign which ran for 15 years and at its peak involved three different PC groups and the occasional one-shot adventure, so the Traveller adventures were mostly one-shots).

I'm not sure when I began to care about the discrepancies in earnest (Again, my memory fails me). I know I discussed them from the very beginning of the TML, but I don't think I cared about them in anything but an academic way. My guess is it started to get personal when I began working on the history of the Spinward Marches as a sort of hobby. That was a couple of decades ago, IIRC.

Suffice it to say that my current opinions were developed slowly over a number of years.

Call me a grognard but I'm with Mike on this:

I'm with Mike on it too. But I don't see it as an excuse, merely a manifestation of a flawed attitude to an official setting. They should have been bothered, as self-consistency[*] is one of the main points of a game setting.

[*] Well, verisimilitude, one key element of which is self-consistency.

When I got the Spinward Marches Campaign book I took it as more sand for the box, used what I liked, changed what I didn't, never gave a thought to "canon"... I doubt I even knew the term then. I even seem to recall "deleting" a star system. And "adding" one for the Solomani Rim supplement when that came along.

And in doing so, you made sure that anything anyone else made up about the things you changed were inapplicable to your universe. Nothing wrong with that. My Trojan Reach has a minor human race called the Troiani, a homeworld called Troia, a much-reduced remnant of a sector-spanning human empire during the long night called the Glorious Empire, and several other successor states, including one called the Freedom League (alignment code 'Fl'). It's my universe and if I want to change the Trojan Reach, I will change it[**]. But it does mean that no one else can use anything I make up for the Trojan Reach without a lot of work. Which is, IMO, a bit of a pity.

[**] Well, the way it came about was that I wanted to run a special one-off adventure about a hunt for a pirate treasure and didn't think the Spinward Marches were suitable, so I did a major job on developing the Trojan Reach. About three months before DGP published the Trojan Reach in TD! (Arrrggghhh!!!)

I never saw the products as half-finished. I took them as "starting points" to build on. FWIW our group did the same with Greyhawk for D&D, adding terrain features and new kingdoms to the maps. We never took the setting as sacrosanct (how appropriate a word)... and again probably had never heard the term canon. Ignorance is bliss ;-)

I don't take them as sacrosanct either. I consider it a matter of simple pragmatism. The whole point of a shared universe is that it's, you know, shared. That if I write up Regina and someone else writes up Roup, we can both use both writeups.

The fact that I can fix them myself is the whole point... both of us in our own opinions of course.

The fact that you have to fix them if they are to make sense is what I consider the real problem. If I want to change a world from something that works but doesn't fit my plans, that's my business. If I have to change it because it doesn't work, I have a cause to complain.

Again, I think this may go back to the personal backgrounds. Older (generally) gamers from experiences of having to make up our own stuff and rules take what is given as something to be molded. Younger (again generally) gamers from experiences of buying adventures, settings, and such seem to freeze up and feel ripped off if there is any additional work required to use the material. There seems to be an expectation that they are stuck with the exact written word even if it makes no sense. THAT to me is what makes no sense.

I'm 56. I'm quite possibly the first roleplayer in Denmark (can't prove that, of course, but I've never met anyone that started before Christmas of 1976 ;-) ). I made my fantasy world by taking the JG Fantastic Wilderlands maps and adding the maps from Griffin Mountain, Divine Right, Tales From the Vulgar Unicorn and others to the edges and interpolating the terrain in between. Aerdy (the Greyhawk world) wound up on the eastern edge of the continent that my adventures were set on the western edge of. The City State of the Invincible Overlord became the capital of a Roman Empiresque empire called Gardia and the City State of the World Emperor became Vizantium, the capital of the Byzantiumesque Wester Gardic Empire. Tarantis became an East Gardic province called Tarantia. The three city states to the north became a league that funded an independent organization called the Armada, charged with allowing any non-warship free passage and keeping out any warship.

I'm quite able[***] to modify setting material to suit myself, and once again I must state that I don't consider that the least bit relevant.

[***] And used to.

I don't even think authors should be so limited, in fact quite the opposite. If an author feels something is wrong in previous material, in my opinion, they have a duty to correct it in their own contribution. It then falls on the publisher and editor to decide if the fix is required and valid. And when it is published then hey, I still get to decide for my game if I take it or ditch it. Though there will be others who will simply complain about it.

I agree 100% with what you said at the end. However, all Chris said was that GDW didn't do that. I agree with him there. They didn't, as a general rule, correct past mistakes, they just ignored them. Or argued that wholly impossible combinations of size, atmosphere, and population were not mistakes but simply spurs to the imagination that should be accepted as-is and explained somehow.


Hans

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Mike Wightman

I don't think that was what the designers intended.

Neither do I. But I do think that if people tell me that the rules aren't flawed because referees can correct any mistakes, then the argument implicitly assumes that they did. In other words, I was refuting what I percieved to be a flawed argument.

I think it was the way things were done back then (in D&D and other rpgs of the era) - settings were not detailed to provide constraints, but rather left vague to allow referee and player freedom.

I don't really blame GDW for putting out such incomplete works as The Spinward Marches over 30 years ago. They didn't know any better and they could not be expected to know better. Back then it represented a big step forward in setting support. But I do blame GDW and its successors for not fixing things once they ought to have learned better.

But... there's always a but ;) ... the designers never used their own rules to design things. Broken ship design after broken ship design. Incompatible ship technology, TL paradigm changes; the list could be longer.

I don't think "Other things are broken too" is an adequate way to refute a claim that something is broken.

Maybe they just thought referees would enjoy changing things to suit their own vision so they didn't think such at source revision was necessary.

No doubt because no one ever told them differently and they are, to this very day, blissfully unaware of any discontent.


Hans

[far_trader]

Heh, so you evolved modern gaming sensibilities while I remain less evolved :-) There's my problem ;-)

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

I agree 100% with what you said at the end. However, all Chris said was that GDW didn't do that. I agree with him there. They didn't, as a general rule, correct past mistakes, they just ignored them. Or argued that wholly impossible combinations of size, atmosphere, and population were not mistakes but simply spurs to the imagination that should be accepted as-is and explained somehow.


Hans

No arguement there, that they didn't change published data (much). I'm more saying the published data aren't strictly mistakes. At worst they are un-vetted, raw data in my opinion. Starting points not final ones.

What I take issue with is the second bit, that GDW promoted a "these are canon and must be used as is" stance and attitude when the very publications state unequivocally that you can (should) change them to suit if you can't reasonably explain them.

I think this assertion of "GDW canon enforcement" is far more imagined than real. Though I wouldn't put it past the publishers to have changed their tune along the way from "change it" to "live with it". I'd just like to see some evidence, nothing comes to mind, but I may well have missed it.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by far_trader

Heh, so you evolved modern gaming sensibilities while I remain less evolved :-) There's my problem ;-)

I don't really see a preference for self-consistent game settings as a particularily modern phenomenon.

No arguement there, that they didn't change published data (much). I'm more saying the published data aren't strictly mistakes. At worst they are un-vetted, raw data in my opinion. Starting points not final ones.

In my opinion un-vetted raw data ARE mistakes in a published game universe. Grave ones.

What I take issue with is the second bit, that GDW promoted a "these are canon and must be used as is" stance and attitude when the very publications state unequivocally that you can (should) change them to suit if you can't reasonably explain them.

You're attacking a position that I'm not defending. I don't think GDW said anything about referees having to stick to the official game setting. I do think that it's a self-evident proposition that if you don't stick to the official game setting then you're not sticking to the official game setting. In other words, if you don't use canon you're not using canon.

GDW enforced canon in the only place they could: In the official game publications. Including refusing to change wholly impossible combinations of size, atmosphere, and population on the grounds that they were not mistakes but simply spurs to the imagination that should be accepted as-is and explained somehow, only don't ask GDW to provide said explanations.

I think this assertion of "GDW canon enforcement" is far more imagined than real. Though I wouldn't put it past the publishers to have changed their tune along the way from "change it" to "live with it". I'd just like to see some evidence, nothing comes to mind, but I may well have missed it.

I'll take your word for it that there are people who make such claims. But don't look to me for defense of such assertations.


Hans