Re: (2823) Re: physics nullifiers and 2810: A Discussion from GEnie

In his letter dated Mon, 26 Aug 91 14:06 EDT, Gerry Williams wrote:
>
> Of course, you could also forget about justifying everything and
> simply play the game 8-).
>

You could.  (And in the real world, mostly I do...)  What I have an aethetic
objection to is any game in which really strange things are done to the
'reality base' for no apparent gain in the game's play.  I think of it as
the same sort of trouble I would have with a fantasy game that made swords
better than halberds for wounding someone in plate armor, or a modern game
which is supposed to be 'realistic' in which characters can routinely absorb
a couple of .50 caliber machine gun bullets in the head <!> without becoming
unconscious.  It destroys my suspension of disbelief.

For Traveller, we basically have to accept the Jumpdrive and the grav plate
in order to stay with the game.  My aesthetic preference is that new
technologies not be multiplied to cover what were probably intended as
approximations in the rules.  What Traveller really needs is a set of
Designer's Notes, to tell us what sort of things they skimped over and
why.  I also tend to see most of these new explanations for rules as
creating more problems than they solve.  If an inertial compensator is
really a misnomer for a grav plate system that is aligned opposite the
engine, then we haven't altered the assumptions of the game.  If it really
'neutralizes mass' then we have to spend a lot of time explaining why this
simple <?> TL9 invention <per the GEnie note> isn't used to ease transport
problems at higher tech levels, and why (for example) we don't just put a
little tiny rocket on the ship, nullify the mass, and accelerate at 150Gs
for a couple of hours until the fuel runs out instead of carting around
those big fusion plants.

Despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that I have done extensive work
with the new vehicle design system, I feel that it was not especially
improved by addding all the extra detail compared to High Guard or Book 2.
However, because it is so detailed, my aesthetic sense is once again offended
when someone suggests to me that thousands of megawatts of power can be pumped
into some sort of mysterious agility generator, when the system requires me
to specify every piece of electrical equipment down to the cigarette lighter.
(-:  Where is this agility generator hiding, and how much does it weigh per
kl? (-:  If the inertial compensators are responsible for agility, then
the rules should tell me that a ship that has none has no agility, right?

Ah well, what can I say?  The current rules are just not very well thought out
in a lot of important ways.  (All cargo is worth the same amount per kl?  Makes
for a very dull merchant game, let me tell you...I'm tossing that out and
using Book 2 again for the moment...)  The strength of Traveller is in the
background.

Enough ranting for now.  Is anyone else going to be at the World Science
Fiction Convention in Chicago?  Leave a message for me on the Voodoo message
board if you are.  (If you've been to a worldcon you know what I mean...if not
ask a native.)

Rob Dean