Gentlesophonts:
If you haven't read the discussion from last year's TML made available
by Jim Vassilakos [email removed] some of this might not make any
sense. Also, note that I originally sent this message as mail directly
to Jim. (So he's probably whom I mean when I write "you".)
My general feeling was that the discussion was starting to get a little
too complicated. I guess I agree with Jim's comment of 19 Feb 93:
> Hmm... this is starting to entail lots
> of variables.
I'm not much for rules in the first place. My approach to role-playing is
to generally ignore the rules except when they can provide a lot of useful
information with a relatively small amount of effort. This is illustrated
by the difference between the basic and extended canonical rules. The
basic rules give plenty of info on the main worlds for a relatively small
amount of effort while the extended rules give lots of info for the (less
important) rest of the system *and* requires a great deal more effort.
That said, I do feel the basic rules need work which is why I developed
variant world generation tables for the Earth Colonies campaign (but that
only address the main world).
The concern about spectral types interested the scientist in me (I was an
engineering major) but pretty much bores the role-player in me (I'm now a
humanities major). I realize some `garden' worlds get generated about
stars that sort of ruin the garden but I'm willing to deal with that on
an individual basis. (I realize though that this becomes an issue when
you seek to expand the system to include some sort of random life generation.)
I really liked the idea suggested by Bruce Pihlamae that proposed an
approach to developing worlds similar to that used to generate characters.
The generation of the geosphere, native biosphere, external cultural
influences and subsequent interactions seems very interesting. (I also
like the `resonance' of this approach with the character generation scheme.
This does begin to become a product of one's approach to one's particular
gaming universe though - another important point raised in the discussion.)
Unforunately, this particular stream of the discussion seems to have died
out. (I also agree with your sense that this is more `world building'
than `world generation' - sort of like the `expanded' character generation
rules - but I *do* like it.)
I've jimmied (Oops! Just realized you might not like that term. :-) with
the trade classifications myself. (In addition to many of the points raised
I've always found the fact that waterworlds - Hyd A - can't be agricultural
to be more a product of our own land-lubber bias than objective consideration.)
Generally, though I've never been satisfied with my limited attempts to
rectify this situation. This is probably due to the fact that trade codes
don't really matter except in the trade and commerce rules. Not being
much for rules anyway I just don't encounter the trade codes that much.
The other point I found of interest was the notion of some sort of `life
scale' that details the sophistication of native life. In general I come
down on the side of this measure not addressing technological accomplishment
(sentience is important regardless of TL, IMHO). On the other hand I'm
uncomfortable with randomly occurring sophonts but the idea of a code that
will tell me whether the local life consists of water-borne single-cell
organisms or highly sophisticated mobile predators does seem quite useful.
I see no problem just adding this code to the `Remarks' section of the UWP.
Say a code like `LX' where the `X' is the UWP digit. (I've added columns
under `Remarks' in the Earth Colonies campaign that address local defense
battalions and system defense boats already.)
I find the `Resource' measure of less use. Planets are pretty large bodies
and most will possess *some* sort of resources. It seems to me that more
important will be the *accessibility* of those resources which leads you
back to `good' biospheres. (No matter how much lanthanum there is on some
`hell-hole' there is a price to be paid to extract that resource in such
an environment - making it ultimately less valuable, unless you *can't* get
it somewhere else - and if I can't get it anywhere else, how did I find it
to be useful in the first place?)
The last issue I feel I need to address is the suggestion that government
and law level might influence tech level. First off, you'll see from the
variant world generation that I posted from the Earth Colonies that I've
rejected the government types from Traveller (which were always problematic,
IMHO) in favor of a government characteristic that attempts to address the
nature of popular consent and the exercise of authority that is unrelated
to the specific manifestation of that consent and exercise of authority.
I also abandon the `weapons restrictions' guidelines for law level in favor
of a more loosely defined level of government intrusiveness that primairly
manifests itself in `encounter throws' for the local police - whether
such an encounter occurs because of a weapons violation, expired license,
or your haircut is up to the referee.
That said, I would be very careful about any modification of tech level by
government type or law level because such modification is highly susceptible
to contemporary political views about the nature of technology and the
practice of science that are extremely lacking in objectivity. Even in
the TML discussion there was a great deal more ideology than technology - both
with respect to `oppressive vs. open' government types and with repsect to the
nature of government intrusiveness (law level) into the practice of science
and technology. (I say this as a practicing engineer currently involved
in the joint US-Russian space program *and* as a soon-to-be science and
technology policy graduate student.)
Happy Travelling,
David Johnson
Houston, Texas, USA