Re: TML nightly: Msgs 5182-5185 V51#16

A thread of 2 messages, 12 February 1993 to 14 February 1993, in the order they were sent.

#5193 Re: TML nightly: Msgs 5182-5185 V51#16

Chuck McKnight · 12 February 1993

 u>To refresh the reader, Sonthert is a world of 30 million inhabitants.
 u>They subsist with almost no atmosphere to speak of in a technological
 u>state equivalent to the pre-indistrial era on Earth, circa 1800.
 u>The questions are "why" and "how".

 u>Sonhert/Lanth 1918 X6266AB-3    Ni              R  314 Im

[email removed] (Chuck McKnight) writes:

>Let me offer an alternative for Sonthert.  Like many other worlds
>during the Long Night, Sonthert was cut off from the Imperium
>mainstream.  As an underground colony, isolated from the rest of the
>subsector it's inhabitants lost much of their knowledge regarding their
>technology. The atmosphere generators continued to provide the
>underground habitations with adequate oxygen, and the colonists also
>found several variety of fungi that produced small amounts of gases
>that were breathable and began using them to supplement the atmosphere
>generators. As time progressed, the society grew more structured along
>the lines of 19th century England (Earth). Although the starport at
>Sonthert has been reestablished, the general populace retain the
>societal views developed during the long night. Why colonize a planet
>with a difficult environment?  Why look for gold or oil in Alaska?
><grin>  Seriously, there might have been something of value there when
>the colony was set up or it might have been a strategic point to
>occupy.

JV>Okay. You're making one basic argument here: that Sonthert's
JV>situation can be explained... that with some imagination, it can be
JV>rationalized, and that in the process, we can come up with an
JV>interesting and distinctive history and culture for the planet and
JV>its inhabitants. That's fine. I agree with you.

JV>However, in the process of making this argument, you've completely
JV>ignored mine. My argument was this: the system for UWP generation is
JV>broken because it gives us unwelcome results with such alarming
JV>consistency that it confounds the imagination to have to keep coming
JV>up with new explanations and rationalizations on why such and such a
JV>planet shouldn't exist but does. I think that having this sort of
JV>world appear every once in a while is okay. But making it a standard
JV>outcome of the system is only indicative of a broken system.

JV>Take a second and think about it. True, we have lot of people working
JV>the oil and minerals up in Alaska, but the system doesn't say
JV>anything about oil and minerals. The unmodified/broken system says,
JV>if you take a dinky, icy world (which happens to be the mainworld of
JV>a star system), and you compare it against any other main world (even
JV>the terra-prime worlds out there), the chances of the ice ball having
JV>a higher population are 50%. In real life, if you take 1000 square
JV>miles of alaska (or antartica, or sibera, or the sahara desert... any
JV>place which is "inhospitable") and you compare it against 1000 square
JV>miles of any place which is hospitable, ask yourself, what are the
JV>odds that the yuchy-foo place is going to have a higher population
JV>than the garden paradise? My guess is that the odds are well below
JV>50%. Of course, that doesn't preclude it from ever happening. The
JV>scenario you describe is still possible. All I'm trying to do is make
JV>the system more reflective of what we'd expect on average.

Actually, I haven't ignored your argument about the UWP system being broken.
I approach the UWP generation system (hell, I approach most random generation
systems) as guidelines that I'm free to modify if it suits me.  I don't view
the UWP as a sacred cow that must not be fiddled with, but more of a starting
point.  If I get a result that doesn't match what I'm looking for, I change
it.  I will also mention that I don't mass generate sectors, preferring to
hand generate each system so I can be sure that I don't get anomalies.  But
that's my personal preference and I won't undertake to speak for anyone else.
I'm not denigrating your UWP mods, they're nift, they make sense, etc.  That's
your style of GMing and I support your efforts.  :-)

>I lean far more toward space opera than hard sci-fi when I'm running
>FRP/SFRPs. I look upon the current system as the engine that makes me
>use my imagination, to try to reason why an otherwise inhospitable
>world would be colonized.  However, that's my viewpoint and nobody
>else's. <grin>

JV>No, I'm sure that a lot of other people share your view, but if you
JV>prefer feeling like an extremist, why don't you just scratch the die
JV>modifiers altogether? Why make any attempt to get the UWP to conform
JV>with our expectations unless the attempt is a good and reasonable
JV>one? I think our difference here may simply be one of degree. You are
JV>happy enough with the unmodified system that the work needed to
JV>change it and make it better acts as a sort of inertia (which is
JV>probably the same reason I'm still playing AD&D, albeit largely
JV>modified). And please don't take this as a flame. It's not meant as
JV>such. And I do agree with you, that the softer the science in your
JV>game, the less desirable a reality-based system for UWP generation
JV>becomes.

Personally, I suspect that if it isn't published in a GDW/TSG publication most
people don't use it at all.  :-)  Like I think I mentioned, the generation
system is merely a beginning if I'm stuck for an idea.  Personally, I think a
game's 'reality' is the one imposed and painted by the referee, but I'm into
escapism in my gaming. :-)

>Nah, I'd say the little ice ball was the spiritual center of a culture
>and all the populace lives ship board packed around the little ice ball
>either in space stations or some other technological marvel that masks
>the true nature of the ice ball (it's actually a size A world with one
>hell of a spacial distortion <grin>).  :-)  Of course, if it's pesky
>and annoying to you, you always have the option of changing the UWP.
>After all, when was the last time the IISS came through here?

JV>Again, it is pesky and annoying, and the unmodified system generates
JV>too many of these pesky and annoying planets to modify by hand. A
JV>better system is called for (IMHO). Either that, or we can chuck this
JV>so-called hard-science/reality-based approach and start playing Star
JV>Trek.

Difference of approach, I think.  If I've got to flesh out a world that my
players will be playing on, I'll customize it to suit myself generation system
or no.  However, you're entitled to your opinion and I agree that there are
things that need changing if you're mass generating sectors to make results
more uniform.  Of course, I've never approached Traveller as a hard
science/reality based game.  ;-)

JV>Or maybe I should just look for another hole to bury myself in. :-)

Nah, ya gotta suffer with the rest of us.

Chuck McKnight

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#5197 mainworld generation (more replies)

james vassilakos · 14 February 1993 · reply to #5193

[email removed] (Leonard Erickson) writes:
> There's something known as the "Roche Limit". Anything closer
> than that that will be subject to tidal forces stronger than
> its own gravity. Which means that satellites *cannot* form
> inside the Roche Limit of the parent body. And if a body is
> somehow moved to an orbit inside the Roche limit, it has to
> have enough structural strength to resist the tidal force.

Sigh... another humanities major (me) bites the dust. As I
said last night, I'm flip-flopping on my reply to Arthur
Green. While there may not be rail-road tracks in space, the
orbit #'s introduced in Book 6 now make more sense to me.
Thanks.

[email removed] (Chuck McKnight) writes:
>Actually, I haven't ignored your argument about the UWP system being broken.
>I approach the UWP generation system (hell, I approach most random generation
>systems) as guidelines that I'm free to modify if it suits me.  I don't view
>the UWP as a sacred cow that must not be fiddled with, but more of a starting
>point.  If I get a result that doesn't match what I'm looking for, I change
>it.  I will also mention that I don't mass generate sectors, preferring to
>hand generate each system so I can be sure that I don't get anomalies.  But
>that's my personal preference and I won't undertake to speak for anyone else.
>I'm not denigrating your UWP mods, they're nift, they make sense, etc.  That's
>your style of GMing and I support your efforts.  :-)

Yeah, well... I will admit to mass-generating sectors, but I should also
add that I agree with you about it being really necessary not only to
tweak the data but also to expand (greatly) on that data (and I think
most people would agree with this). One of the things I always hated
about the sector books was that they didn't go into detail on the worlds
they overviewed (this, of course, is the GM's job). Still, I always
preferred books like the Pilot's Guide to the Drexilthar Subsector,
which attached a few paragraphs to each mainworld. So although I do
rely on computer generated UWPs, I also take them as just the starting
point. And I think this is the intention of the rules.

One of the things I hope to do after this discussion is concluded (if
it is ever concluded) is to go over the sector data for my Traveller
campaign (tweaking and re-generating as seems appropriate) and then
write down the world descriptions, put them together with a subsector
viewer, and finally make the whole package available over the net.
Writing up the world descriptions will probably be the longest phase,
but when it's done, I think it'll be worth it (especially for all the
"Harrison" readers who want to investigate the story's backdrop for
themselves).

>Personally, I suspect that if it isn't published in a GDW/TSG publication most
>people don't use it at all.  :-)  Like I think I mentioned, the generation
>system is merely a beginning if I'm stuck for an idea.  Personally, I think a
>game's 'reality' is the one imposed and painted by the referee, but I'm into
>escapism in my gaming. :-)

Yeah, well, I think we can all testify to that. I, personally, can only
handle so much reality intruding upon my fantasy :-)

But seriously, when I refer to "reality" in a gaming or even a writing
context, what I'm really referring to is "suspension of disbelief."
In other words, if the game is pretending to conform to something
approaching the reasonable or "reality-analogous" (i.e., starports
being analogous to airports or shipping ports, worlds being analogous
to countries, etc), then it should be careful not to diverge in a
way which would cause people to "disbelieve" or otherwise "fall out
of character." As an example, I don't know of any "world-class" shipyards
which are run by a handful of people (as could occur under traveller
rules).

>Difference of approach, I think.  If I've got to flesh out a world that my
>players will be playing on, I'll customize it to suit myself generation system
>or no.  However, you're entitled to your opinion and I agree that there are
>things that need changing if you're mass generating sectors to make results
>more uniform.  Of course, I've never approached Traveller as a hard
>science/reality based game.  ;-)

Yeah... that's part of the beauty of all these RPGs. You can really
define your own approach. While I think many people would call Traveller
a hard-SF RPG (certainly harder-SF than many of its competitors), the
individual GM can shift the flavor of the campaign to whatever she or
he wants. As an example, I've been told by one TMLer that the "Harrison
Chapters" depict a "dark empire" while Traveller depicts a benevolent
one. I agree with him. My campaign (indeed, my entire setting) had been
customized to fit my peculiar prejudices, and I imagine this sort of
thing is fairly commonplace (at least, I hope it is). My fear (with
respect to the modified system I introduced) is that by making all
those changes in the UWP generation system, I may be catering too much
to my own preconceptions and that I may end up with very "uniform" looking
world descriptions. After all, you need a little variety to make things
interesting. What I want to do is make things more "realistic" without
chopping out the "interesting."

           _   /|       Jim Vassilakos
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