> To me, a serious flaw is one that means the setting just makes no physical sense. I guess other people can ignore those more easily, but with my science background I can't.
FWIW, only the Marches seem to be inviolate, and even there the stars are being looked at. Other sectors are being vetted for at least some of these issues, if not all of them.
> - the apparent non-existence of rogue planets
More "non-coverage", I think. As you say, Book 6 implied strongly that such worlds are out there, but since we hadn't actually found any in 1977, they would have been tough to characterize. I'm certain that had GDW issued rules for them we would be ridiculing those just as much as you now bemoan their absence.
> - the broken stargen tables that allow habitable worlds to be preferentially found around white dwarfs and subdwarf stars
Based on my own recent reading, I suspect this resulted from getting two generations of stellar terminology blended together. I gather astronomers now often use "degenerate star" for what Traveller and the last fifty years of popular science publications refer to as "dwarf stars", while the proper usage of "Dwarf" includes our own Sun and anything else that isn't a "Giant". Statements to the effect that X% of the stars in the Milky Way are Dwarf Stars are *really* easy to parse as the CT and MT stellar tables if you don't know that the terminology has sharpened.
> the stars that inexplicably gain mass when they age (brought about by a lack of research on stellar evolution)
Since I have no idea where the stellar characteristics table in Book 6 came from, I will not otherwise comment.
> - the ridiculous amount of systems with close white dwarf companions
Perhaps you have a different definition of "Close" than Book 6 does?
> - habitable worlds around high mass giants and main sequence stars with lifespans too short to allow them to exist
I think Dave's "Stamp collecting" explanation covers this one, plus the random nature of the CT/MT tables. Are those tables fixable? That depends on whether the average player is willing to accept a system generation chapter three times the size of the CT/MT/TNE chapters put together. The DMs and special cases get prohibitive after a while. There is a compromise, I'm sure, but would anyone actually be happy with it?
--- In , "constantine_thomas_uk" wrote:
>
> To me, a serious flaw is one that means the setting just makes no physical sense. I guess other people can ignore those more easily, but with my science background I can't.
>
> (things like:
>
> - the tiny cannonball worlds with breathable atmospheres
> - the apparent non-existence of rogue planets (contradicted by the rules in book 6, which require there to be a LOT of rogue planets to allow the required 1 in 3 systems to be able to have at least one captured planets)
> - the broken stargen tables that allow habitable worlds to be preferentially found around white dwarfs and subdwarf stars
> the stars that inexplicably gain mass when they age (brought about by a lack of research on stellar evolution)
> - the ridiculous amount of systems with close white dwarf companions
> - habitable worlds around high mass giants and main sequence stars with lifespans too short to allow them to exist
>
> etc... )
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>
FWIW, only the Marches seem to be inviolate, and even there the stars are being looked at. Other sectors are being vetted for at least some of these issues, if not all of them.
> - the apparent non-existence of rogue planets
More "non-coverage", I think. As you say, Book 6 implied strongly that such worlds are out there, but since we hadn't actually found any in 1977, they would have been tough to characterize. I'm certain that had GDW issued rules for them we would be ridiculing those just as much as you now bemoan their absence.
> - the broken stargen tables that allow habitable worlds to be preferentially found around white dwarfs and subdwarf stars
Based on my own recent reading, I suspect this resulted from getting two generations of stellar terminology blended together. I gather astronomers now often use "degenerate star" for what Traveller and the last fifty years of popular science publications refer to as "dwarf stars", while the proper usage of "Dwarf" includes our own Sun and anything else that isn't a "Giant". Statements to the effect that X% of the stars in the Milky Way are Dwarf Stars are *really* easy to parse as the CT and MT stellar tables if you don't know that the terminology has sharpened.
> the stars that inexplicably gain mass when they age (brought about by a lack of research on stellar evolution)
Since I have no idea where the stellar characteristics table in Book 6 came from, I will not otherwise comment.
> - the ridiculous amount of systems with close white dwarf companions
Perhaps you have a different definition of "Close" than Book 6 does?
> - habitable worlds around high mass giants and main sequence stars with lifespans too short to allow them to exist
I think Dave's "Stamp collecting" explanation covers this one, plus the random nature of the CT/MT tables. Are those tables fixable? That depends on whether the average player is willing to accept a system generation chapter three times the size of the CT/MT/TNE chapters put together. The DMs and special cases get prohibitive after a while. There is a compromise, I'm sure, but would anyone actually be happy with it?
--- In , "constantine_thomas_uk" wrote:
>
> To me, a serious flaw is one that means the setting just makes no physical sense. I guess other people can ignore those more easily, but with my science background I can't.
>
> (things like:
>
> - the tiny cannonball worlds with breathable atmospheres
> - the apparent non-existence of rogue planets (contradicted by the rules in book 6, which require there to be a LOT of rogue planets to allow the required 1 in 3 systems to be able to have at least one captured planets)
> - the broken stargen tables that allow habitable worlds to be preferentially found around white dwarfs and subdwarf stars
> the stars that inexplicably gain mass when they age (brought about by a lack of research on stellar evolution)
> - the ridiculous amount of systems with close white dwarf companions
> - habitable worlds around high mass giants and main sequence stars with lifespans too short to allow them to exist
>
> etc... )
>
> 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).
>
> 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.
>