Updating Traveller.

Scott writes:
>Nano-technology?  Well, that's tricky.  As Bertil pointed out, if you've
>got Nano-tech, why bother walking around in Battle Dress with a fusion
>gun when you can just send a cloud of nanotech thingies out to do all
>that nasty fighting for you?  But, if it is done carefully, and limited
>enough, I think it could be included without changing the feel of the game.

The thing one has to realize is that we not dealing with SF enactment but
SF gaming. Much of the hardware we have TODAY tends to outpower the people
involved. If you extrapolate a propable future technology lots of classic
science fiction and adventure ideas becomes unlikely or even impossible.
That's why I don't like infallible laser-guided bang-you're-dead guns,
pinpoint neutrino detectors, or gene-type identification methods. Sure,
a laser is really more a flashlight that kills, but would you like to
referee a fight with that kind of weaponry? "Roll a die and add your
<appropiate characteristic>. The one who rolls highest wins." Some of
my players complain that their slug-throwers are too damn mundane for a
science fiction game, but what's the fun of can't miss weaponry? Somehow
I don't think that I'd like gaming in a REALLY realistic future milieu.

>Ok, those are just some of the things Trav is light on that might
>work for TNE.  I've probably left out a bunch.  What do you all think?
>And remember, Trav is a TL 7 game after all.  It needs an update:  it
>had Air/Rafts & other grav transportation listed as tech level 8.
>(Not to mention fusion...  laser carbines...  interplanetary spacecraft...)

The thing that really needs to be done about the tech levels is to get them
divorced from Terran historical dates. Just because we have it in 1990 it
dosen't have to be TL 8, and just because we don't have it dosen't mean it
can't be TL 8.


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "A  subsector  official  pompously states that the
        subsector  armed  forces  have  four Kinunir class
        ships in service,  each with enough troop strength
        to put down any military operations that threathen
        the peace of the Imperium."

                        ---Adventure 1, The Kinunir