> There's only so many times (once or twice maybe) that you can blame the
> Ancients for this sort of thing. Fact is, there's no 'in-setting39; reason
> for these - it's all down to the authors failing or not bothering to do
> their research (this was all known in the 1970s).
The way I characterized this in TNE when I tried to fix the stars was that
they were added like a stamp collection. Someone felt that Traveller
should include every type of star ever heard of, never mind if they were
Pop I or Pop II so would be remotely close to each other, made any sense
with the worlds supposedly around them, and just scotch-taped them on that
way.
It was a continuation of the way the Pop triad in the UPP were generated
independently of the size triad which made no sense to begin with, and
then adding stars randomly on top of that just put the cart further out
ahead of the horse. And then when you have DGP getting all excited and
randomly generating these things by the thousands and putting them out on
GEnie so poor Traveller players could get invested in them and cry "foul"
if we tried to discard them just made it worse. (Because that was my
original plan, but after having dug into it, realized that the barn door
had been open for too long and the horses were long gone.)
The thing that bugs me the most is when you pointed out that we tried to
fix them but didn't go far enough. I thought we had made a good effort,
but by the time you pointed that out to me I could no longer clearly
remember the process we tried to implement.
> What gets me isn't so much that these problems are still in the worldgen
> system (even in T5, from what I've heard), it's that some people will
> acknowledge that these issues exist, and then happily make up reasons to
> explain them that make even less sense than the problems themselves.
>
> As I said elsewhere, the scientists in the OTU must be so confused by
> their inconsistent, contradictory physical universe. How on earth could
> they explain it all?
>
>
> --- In , "James" wrote:
>> Depends on the definition of "serious flaw" I suppose.
>>
>> To me, a serious flaw would be something that was both difficult to
>> ignore or remove from the setting AND prevented the setting from telling
>> the sorts of stories/sessions/campaigns that the game is intended to
>> tell.
>
>
>
>
> Ancients for this sort of thing. Fact is, there's no 'in-setting39; reason
> for these - it's all down to the authors failing or not bothering to do
> their research (this was all known in the 1970s).
The way I characterized this in TNE when I tried to fix the stars was that
they were added like a stamp collection. Someone felt that Traveller
should include every type of star ever heard of, never mind if they were
Pop I or Pop II so would be remotely close to each other, made any sense
with the worlds supposedly around them, and just scotch-taped them on that
way.
It was a continuation of the way the Pop triad in the UPP were generated
independently of the size triad which made no sense to begin with, and
then adding stars randomly on top of that just put the cart further out
ahead of the horse. And then when you have DGP getting all excited and
randomly generating these things by the thousands and putting them out on
GEnie so poor Traveller players could get invested in them and cry "foul"
if we tried to discard them just made it worse. (Because that was my
original plan, but after having dug into it, realized that the barn door
had been open for too long and the horses were long gone.)
The thing that bugs me the most is when you pointed out that we tried to
fix them but didn't go far enough. I thought we had made a good effort,
but by the time you pointed that out to me I could no longer clearly
remember the process we tried to implement.
> What gets me isn't so much that these problems are still in the worldgen
> system (even in T5, from what I've heard), it's that some people will
> acknowledge that these issues exist, and then happily make up reasons to
> explain them that make even less sense than the problems themselves.
>
> As I said elsewhere, the scientists in the OTU must be so confused by
> their inconsistent, contradictory physical universe. How on earth could
> they explain it all?
>
>
> --- In , "James" wrote:
>> Depends on the definition of "serious flaw" I suppose.
>>
>> To me, a serious flaw would be something that was both difficult to
>> ignore or remove from the setting AND prevented the setting from telling
>> the sorts of stories/sessions/campaigns that the game is intended to
>> tell.
>
>
>
>