09-08-2012, 08:12 AM | #31 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
__________________
A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
|
09-10-2012, 05:02 PM | #32 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Moreover, this is one of the realism issues with the OTU that Centisteed mentioned up-thread. Both of the early published sectors (Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim) incorporate jump-1 mains of more than 100 systems each. The odds against generating a single such main by chance using the rules as written are something like a million to one.
|
09-10-2012, 08:41 PM | #33 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
__________________
A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
|
09-10-2012, 09:13 PM | #34 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
It is one thing to specify that the rules for adding additional advanced information (aka SCOUTS) to the original published sectors and then discover that the SPINWARD MARCHES CAMPAIGN data was flawed if it were supposed to have been generated via SCOUTS or MEGATRAVELLER rules. It is another to expect that the original published sectors were intended to be purely random.
__________________
Newest Alaconius Lecture now up: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/scourge-of-shards-schpdx Go to bottom of page to see lectures 1-11 |
|
09-10-2012, 10:22 PM | #35 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
No, the unrealism I see is the emphasis in setting material on mains as being immensely important to trade. This is true only as long as jump-2 or better is not available. Once it is, mains become practically irrelevant. Mains with J1 trade interrupting systems (no readily available fuel and/or low populations) doubly so. Hans |
|
09-11-2012, 05:45 AM | #36 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
The two worked examples of sectors from the CT era both include mains that no practical amount of die rolling would ever produce. The conclusion is that the developers knew that fudging the rolls was necessary to produce useful astrography, but didn't share that information with their customers. Remember, this is the same company who insists that wholly impossible combinations of size, atmosphere, and population are simply spurs to the imagination that should be accepted as-is and explained somehow, and that there are no "bad" randomly generated characters -- only challenges to roleplaying. |
|
09-11-2012, 06:12 AM | #37 | ||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Mind you, that particular problem could have been solved by dropping the jump-1 ship as a PC vessel and made jump-2 ships the default. Quote:
Hans |
||||
09-11-2012, 09:44 AM | #38 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
We could talk about how likely it is that chains of a hundred or more star systems, all one parcec (+/-) apart, exist in the real world, if you prefer. |
|
09-11-2012, 10:49 AM | #39 |
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Los Angeles
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Well, if the ship the players would usually have access to, in the original game, was the J1 Free Trader, then the designers would have to make those subsectors useful. A few, isolated clusters of J1 accessible worlds wouldn't be very exciting, given the scope of the game back then*. Plopping in a system here and there to make Mains would make the game more playable.
To me its just a fudge for playability. And while I don't really remember what my first subsectors looked like, I know I fudged dice rolls to get worlds I wanted. *To me the feel of the CT books was of 'grand vistas' where the player jump from world to world in a Star Trek/Star Wars fashion. This is the mobster world, this is the desert world, this is the city world, etc., instead of worlds with multiple societies, or detailed environments. Then again "I" was heavily influenced by the Star Trek/Wars ideals of story telling. |
09-11-2012, 10:55 AM | #40 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
|
Re: The Traveller Mindset
Quote:
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. How is it this myth persists after decades? Book 0 Introduction to Traveller - pg29 (emphasis mine): Quote:
__________________
Dan "far-trader" Burns Original material in this post may be employed for personal non-profit use with the origin noted. Any other use is subject to permission from the author. |
||
Tags |
canon, grognard, traveller |
|
|