John Orthoefer (haven't seen you on icb recently, John 8-)
commented that 3-D traveller isn't too bad, given computer
game aids and such. He's right, but it's still not a good
idea for many campaigns.
Doing a map-based (and 3D maps work, slowly and painfully ;-)
3-D system is possible if clumsy, and can be put into source
books and such, and doesn't require that the user have a particular
type of computer or calculator. The problem is that it's very
clumsy, unless you think really hard first.
Doing purely co-ordinates based, using a computer or calculator
for relative distance calculations, is more elegant and much harder
to reproduce. It's great if you're doing a campaign for your
own use... you can set up the computer program or calculator
functions to do the number-crunching for you, and don't have to
worry about having anyone else use the programs.
It's not portable.
The issue isn't doing one campaign, it's creating a system which
can be put on paper and sold in a source book, which is much much
harder. You can't put a calculator program in such a source
book and expect people to go buy that brand of calculator.
You might get away with shipping 3 floppies, one with a Mac
version of the program, and a 3.5 and 5.25 floppy with PC
versions which will run on anything from a 286 on up.
But that's going to add three or four dollars to the product.
[Or you could ship three different versions 8-)]
There are still some problems with doing it that way. It's
hard to visualze these 3-d representations, and the further
you get from having them on paper the harder it gets.
When it's a single subsector, it's not that bad... but at
larger scales, it's very hard to tell where you are relative
to nearby systems.
I don't like this.
I want to see a system which can be put down on paper,
can be mapped on paper, can be used without having to
resort to a calculator or computer, though those aids may
be very helpful. Such a system is possible.
- -george william herbert