Mike--
Well, poop. I think I tried to be as minimal as possible with the changes,
so as to avoid upsetting people (Traveller abhors change, as I think TNE
provides an object example), but you're saying it was too minimal. I know
that I hated all of the dwarfs as well, but the main reason to not excise
them is that red dwarfs are the most common type of star (according to
astronomical theory circa 1991-95). So the intent was to not violently
change the observed percentage distribution. (In reality, we did of
necessity change the percentage distribution, I just wanted to do so as
little as possible.) I have always taken as my assumption that the map of
"Charted Space" showed EVERY STAR, not just every inhabited stellar
system. I ran a Trav campaign for a while where my map showed ALL stars,
and there was one in almost every hex, and it totally took the
cartographic feel out of the game. Now if we left any WHITE dwarfs in that
was either by accident, because they would be post-supernova, and all
their planets would be burned off, or by design, i.e., we knew it was a
post-supernova system where these were cinders populated by research
stations or whatever. It sounds like you're saying that we left a lot more
white dwarfs than I thought. I had thought that almost all of the Ds left
were Ks and Ms. And it also sounds like you're saying that we left a lot
of D Dwarfs, not just main sequence K and M small-d dwarfs. Without the
books in front of me, maybe some of my notes or guidance to "Geo," or the
astronomy texts I was working from, I can't say much more right now.
On my list of "things I always really wanted to do" was like a six-page
article for Challenge where I would just explain astronomy and the H-R
diagram and the main sequence so players could understand that stellar
types were not just a list of collectibles, but mass families and dynamic
stages in stellar evolution, and the difference between Pop I and II
stars, and WHY it means something if a star is this type or that type, so
that they could see why we made the stellar changes.
And as for the star you cite, I'm sure it was a typo. I don't recall
having any Droyne gating any stars around, and if I had, I would have
referenced it in the text, "on XXX-11XX Regency scientists noticed a
stunning development..." What world was it?
By the way, Mike, I tremendously enjoy your messages, as you pay the kind
of demented attention to this stuff that I did.
Dave
> All I can do is give you my perspective ...
>
>> 1. Just out of curiosity, what did the folks on this list think of that?
>> I
>> don't think I had any choice.
>
> You didn't go nearly far enough. Quite frankly, even with the changes,
> there
> were a huge number of worlds with impossible stellar data. The biggest
> issue
> was just the vast number of "dwarf" stars. Really, a "dwarf" star has no
> spectral class (which all of the ones listed did have) and the presence of
> a white dwarf would eliminate the possibility of a habitable world in the
> system, even if it was the "other" star of a binary or trinary system.
>
> Don't get me wrong. It was a huge improvement. But it was only an
> incremental
> step. It didn't actually fix the problem.
>
>> 2. Did subsequent editions of Traveller hang onto the star changes, or
>> stick with the DGP computer run?
>
> In the only setting set after TNE, which was TNE 1248, we definitely did
> use the updated star information. For 1248 Spinward States, I used the
> updated stars as my basis, then updated them *again* to improve the
> situation. For the most part, all I really did was change any "D" star
> to a "V" star (without changing the spectral class), unless the main
> world was a vacuum or near vacuum world. In that case, I eliminated the
> spectral class (which is meaningless for a white dwarf) and kept it a
> white dwarf. I think there ended up being less than 10 white dwarf
> stars in all of the Domain of Deneb. (Which is actually a reasonable
> count.)
>
> I believe the Freedom League sourcebook did also. (The Freedom League
> was what the Reformation Coalition evolved into in the 1248 setting.)
>
> There was one exception to the limited changes: Pashus. In the RSB it
> was a naval depot and a research station that delved into temporal
> mechanics. I had them have a really, really, really bad accident that
> artificially aged the star (along with everything else in the system).
>
> I do have one question for you on that, if you can remember. For the most
> part, when you updated the star information, you did it retroactively. So,
> even though you listed both 1117 and 1202 data for every world, you only
> listed the new, updated stellar data. Except for *one* world. That world
> you listed both the old and the new stellar data, and the stars weren't
> anywhere close. I always assumed that was a typo. Was there an implied
> story there?
>
> Mike West
>
>
>