Computer Aided Traveller

A thread of 2 messages, 7 October 1991 to 8 October 1991, in the order they were sent.

#2989 Computer Aided Traveller

[unnamed sender] · 7 October 1991

	Hello World,

	Well, this is my very first post to this list, but I've been
reading for a long while...  I hope my contribution is worth
something.  :)

	It seems to me that a modified IRC server would do nicely as
a Traveller's Aid.  Program in certain commands to bring up task
libraries, and even resolve the tasks, etc, etc.  This would only be
effective for role-playing on IRC, tho.  But that, in itself would
have advantages...  First, people no longer have the "I said that,
not my character!" syndrome.  The idea would also allow people from
all over the world to play in a campaign, instead of just a few
friends that have never played traveller before.  There are
dosadvantages as well, obviously.  For one, you wouldn't be able to
just get together with a few friends and play.  It would also be
kinda slow for the players to type in everything they say.  The
referee could speed a few things up by preparing text descriptions
of rooms, objects and the like, which he could then call up at will.

	While this has many disadvantages, another one being that
you couldn't play it on pc's that aren't hooked to the internet
somehow, the system would be virtually free, and there would be no
compatibility problems.


					Dan Andersen.
					[email removed]

#2995 (2989) Computer Aided Traveller: More Ideas

Brad Post · 8 October 1991 · reply to #2989

If you were going to do anything with a computer to help traveller, the only
thing I used it for, was a great deal of simple stuff.  For instance, the
computer would tell me what cargos were available, taking some random NPC's as
the owners, this way I have them on the screen.  The computer using the
cargo tables, just then randomly picked a NPC I had pre-generated and entered
as a file.  Also, the computer used to help in generating ships that might be
around as you enter a system.

You can surmise from all this I used the computer while I was playing with the
old rules, but I bet you can make this all happen with the new ones as well.
I also had the computer be the terminal in any spaceport, simply the players
would call up a bunch of selections and fumble around trying to find info.  I
could write up this type of interface in BASIC, since that's all I had, in a
hour and everyone had fun!

As a GM I believe that you have to have all the help you can get, but you should
not ask the computer to try and do it all.  That's the problem I found with
trying to write computer aides for such games like AD&D, Top Secret, BattleTech
and others.  I found it much more simple to make the computer do things that
I really want done, and are suited to it's task:  randomization, and being a
computer to play with!

If anyone is interested I could try and find the old stuff or if anyone wants
to we could write a program to do what I explained above for the new rules.
I could be fun and useful, and we could do it in almost any programming
language.

Brad Post
uunet.uu.net\!weldon\!brad