(2989) Computer Aided Traveller: More Ideas

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
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