Yes, PoT is remarkably dense, and represented the standard we intended to
follow for future "here's the area of space we're telling stories in now"
products. Just to try to make you feel as badly as I still do.
UPPs tend towards suckingness!* But they are part of what I call the
"Traveller collector obsession" where there is this illusion that you can
distill all of the knowledge of the universe into these strings of digits
and somehow when you have that you own something. DGP was the worst in
this regard, or I should say, they took it to its farthest extreme
(remember their universal cultural profile? which included "religious
fetishes"?). I would say "logical conclusion," but given how useless those
strings were, it was an irrational conclusion.
*Actual UPPs (the original short string from the LBBs) aren't so bad. It's
when they got expanded to the UWPs which REQUIRED the addition of the star
for no discernible ROI that they got really corrosive, because they
embedded bad logic, bad tables, and buggy code into "Eternal, Timeless
Encyclopedia Galactica" information which, although no one used it, had
become "Canon". Like OCRing the 1 AD Galileean Phone Book and adding it as
an appendix to the Bible.
"Don't get me started." --Hot Shots: Part Deux (a phrase used frequently,
in the proper accent, at the GDW offices)
> Path of Tears is an incredible wealth of information. That one book has
> more useful adventure information than the previous 15 years worth of
> publishing put together.
>
> UPP's are ... Well they're pretty useless, reducing an entire planet to a
> short string of numbers is a disservice to everything that's going on down
> there.
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>
>> On Mar 6, 2014, at 7:50, <> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
>>
>> So throw stimuli my way and we'll see what happens. I just saw a post
>> from
>> Frank on some wargame bulletin board from five days ago saying,
>> "writing
>> TNE was a joy." A lot of work, but the kind of work that is
>> simultaneously
>> a joy, at least in retrospect.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> =======================
>>
>> A decade or so later it's still a joy reading the various books. I pull
>> one of them out at random (usually Path of Tears or Aliens of the Rim)
>> and just give them a good read now and then.
>>
>> Matt
>>
>
follow for future "here's the area of space we're telling stories in now"
products. Just to try to make you feel as badly as I still do.
UPPs tend towards suckingness!* But they are part of what I call the
"Traveller collector obsession" where there is this illusion that you can
distill all of the knowledge of the universe into these strings of digits
and somehow when you have that you own something. DGP was the worst in
this regard, or I should say, they took it to its farthest extreme
(remember their universal cultural profile? which included "religious
fetishes"?). I would say "logical conclusion," but given how useless those
strings were, it was an irrational conclusion.
*Actual UPPs (the original short string from the LBBs) aren't so bad. It's
when they got expanded to the UWPs which REQUIRED the addition of the star
for no discernible ROI that they got really corrosive, because they
embedded bad logic, bad tables, and buggy code into "Eternal, Timeless
Encyclopedia Galactica" information which, although no one used it, had
become "Canon". Like OCRing the 1 AD Galileean Phone Book and adding it as
an appendix to the Bible.
"Don't get me started." --Hot Shots: Part Deux (a phrase used frequently,
in the proper accent, at the GDW offices)
> Path of Tears is an incredible wealth of information. That one book has
> more useful adventure information than the previous 15 years worth of
> publishing put together.
>
> UPP's are ... Well they're pretty useless, reducing an entire planet to a
> short string of numbers is a disservice to everything that's going on down
> there.
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>
>> On Mar 6, 2014, at 7:50, <> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
>>
>> So throw stimuli my way and we'll see what happens. I just saw a post
>> from
>> Frank on some wargame bulletin board from five days ago saying,
>> "writing
>> TNE was a joy." A lot of work, but the kind of work that is
>> simultaneously
>> a joy, at least in retrospect.
>>
>> Dave
>>
>> =======================
>>
>> A decade or so later it's still a joy reading the various books. I pull
>> one of them out at random (usually Path of Tears or Aliens of the Rim)
>> and just give them a good read now and then.
>>
>> Matt
>>
>