---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
Yes, PoT is remarkably dense, and represented the standard we intended to
follow for future "here39;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.
==============================
Yes, PoT is probably one of the best 'area' sourcebooks ever written in any system.
As for UPP and UWP they actually are a good idea as a guide. You really need a compact way to rough out large amounts of systems or to reduce a system to more quantifiable values to do broad brush stuff. The problem is the tendency to obsess over them and get carried away.
Matt