> It was.
That's what I thought. As I've said to you before, I really like it.
On the other hand, for the sake of conversation, and putting on my TNE
Line Manager hat, it's the sort of thing that I would only "reluctantly"
or very carefully have layered on to official TNE. GDW was already
permanently criticized for making rules that were too fiddly, too
detailed, (in comparison especially to "cinematic" games like SW) too
anal-retentive. I would have wanted to make a resource like a "TNE
Referee's Resource" with "optional guidelines to introduce more detailed
XXX into your campaign," with the clear statement, "these are optional
ideas, and in no way should be taken to imply that you are not playing
"Real TNE" if you don't use them." We didn't have the self-imposed
requirement of claiming that there was a "universal tournament-standard
AD&D rules."
But no matter what caveats I placed around it, we would have still wound
up in that "Murphy's Rules" cartoon. I would have comforted myself with,
"the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
You know, the Miley Cyrus Law.
> It was. I originally used it in my old Star Wars RPG campaigns and found
> it much more suitable for TNE once I discovered FFS.
>
> It wasn't only a new/cutting edge thing but also very applicable to normal
> individual construction and even mass production. A design might have,
> for
> example 2d6-2* major bugs inherent in the design, some of which could only
> be discovered after a certain wear value degraded a crucial component,
> for
> example.
>
> But other bugs might be introduced not by flawed design, but by flawed
> production (made on Friday instead of Wednesday, bug on the construction
> droid, faulty materials not up to spec, etc) which could introduce 2d4-2*
> more! Even proven designs would thus still need shakedown cruises or
> breaking in/function checks. And if applicable, the skills of those
> doing
> the construction.
>
> This applies not only to ships which have zillions of parts but could
> expand to slug throwers as well as boots! As with most, not intended to
> encumber a game or create tedious checks, but to help explain that
> critical skill failure and/or mishap and offer a level of detail when
> desirable at refs discretion.
>
> These could also be mitigated by everything from "warning light" events to
> proper weapon safety. If the player isn't explicit, more than enough room
> to allow a skill roll...
>
> * modified by time taken with a table adding for additional time
> taken/more
> expensive materials and tighter tolerances 2x -1, 3x -2 etc or Rushed
> /substandard -10% +1, -15% +2, etc
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
> On Mar 10, 2014 9:18 AM, <> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I think Uxi and I discussed this system before, either on this forum or
>> directly, and I liked it. I think this is related to something you've
>> tried in your games, like those skill-related system charts?
>>
>> This reminds me of two things, and since I'm in a chatty mood lately:
>>
>> 1. I've mentioned this here before, but I was moving toward a
>> skill-related system in the TNE starship construction system. I found in
>> the process of designing Brilliant Lances (also rolled into FF&S) that
>> the
>> system's (incrementally) greater detail required more design trade-offs,
>> and this requirement could be turned into a virtue by introducing fiddly
>> little flaws and "personality" into ship designs (the sort that many
>> games, most annoyingly BattleTech, handled by fake fiat, as it was not
>> based on any actual antecedents in the design process) that would then
>> require crews to counterbalance. In BL you were always finding systems
>> that you could almost, but not quite, make as big as required. You could
>> design them this way, but they would function less effectively. There
>> would be defined thresholds based on % of actual requirement, and at
>> each
>> threshold the system would require a set of tasks (played day-to-day at
>> PC
>> level) or +1 skill, say Engineering (played at the long-term/fleet
>> level)
>> to keep the ship running effectively. I was already starting to put this
>> into designs in fuel purifiers and power plants that couldn't run the
>> whole ship at the same time (FP in the form of time to process full
>> load,
>> time to process J1, etc., or PP can run this, but not that at same time)
>> and was going to define engineering tasks for "here's what it takes to
>> seamlessly switch power between these systems under duress," but didn't
>> get there before the lights started going out at GDW. I was really
>> looking
>> forward to this, because players and refs and ship designers and fleet
>> builders who like "crunchy" details would have enjoyed it, although not
>> everyone would have used it, as it would have raised the level of
>> detail.
>>
>> 2. I did some work over the years on a ship design system kind of
>> broadly
>> based on things like the pre-WWI British-German naval arms race that was
>> like Uxi's system, except that instead of player skills, it would be
>> based
>> on investment in industrial plant and research through-put, where
>> instead
>> of a one-size-fits-all "tech level" the different nations (wet navy) or
>> races (SF) would have a "State-of-the-Art" (SOTA) which represented
>> their
>> farthest mass-producible engineering solutions. Obviously this would not
>> be Traveller, as the global TL is exactly what it was NOT doing. Rather,
>> it would be more like Imperium or Task Force's StarFire or Star Fleet
>> Battles. The SOTA would be defined in several areas, engineering plants,
>> weapons systems, sensor suites, etc. and these would embed various
>> design
>> trade-offs, so that one player might have systems that were lighter or
>> faster, while another might have systems that were more robust or damage
>> resistant, and these would interact to allow them to create ships that
>> were distinctively different, and would have different implications for
>> how they were operationally used, both at the fleet level and within the
>> design. Another example of this from the pre-WW1 arms race would be the
>> way the British a continuous powder train and the Germans had better
>> ammunition hoist practices which affected rate of fire, but also meant
>> the
>> Brits were more susceptible to catastrophic damage from flash. This is
>> very similar in feel and intent to what Uxi describes. I would say,
>> "great
>> minds think alike," but that would mean complimenting myself.
>>
>> Obviously Uxi's idea, though cool for your individual "IMTU," would be a
>> difficult fit over top of Traveller UWPs. As the UWPs were already
>> sufficiently buggy to begin with, adding an additional layer of
>> interpretation over top of them would make everyone's head explode.
>>
>> Finally, "Bonus Dave Crunchy Hooey," the mention of "folio games." One
>> thing we learned at GDW was that every time we tried to define a new way
>> to knock out a "simple, quick" product that would free up design time
>> for
>> the bigger projects it always worked in reverse. The time required to
>> develop them always became disproportionate to what we could make back
>> on
>> them proportionate to their size. The series of "folios" (what did we
>> call
>> them?) we put out for MT, Dark Con, and Twilight were blood baths. It
>> turns out, as famously observed by Mark Twain, that it takes longer to
>> write short than it takes to simply allow something to run long (observe
>> my e-mails, for example), just so you can set a lower price point for
>> it.
>> Another "hey, here's a good quickie we can knock out" idea was Star
>> Vikings. I think the end product was good, but it was not quick, nor a
>> time-saver.
>>
>> Ah, well, life's a bitch, and then you die. There are trolls out there
>> who
>> will observe that this demonstrates the need for real business models
>> and
>> MBAs in the gaming industry. When I was in the biz, GDW was still a
>> remnant of the "mom 'n' pop" operations that gave us the "golden age of
>> wargaming," and that's where a lot of its fun and eclecticism came from.
>> Besides, anyone with an MBA would know that there wasn't enough money in
>> that sort of wargaming to begin with. The two answers to that, WotC and
>> computer games are 1) life lessons on what happens when you get it, and
>> 2)
>> it's a completely different industry completely underwritten by
>> deliberate
>> government tax breaks. Welfare state for "slackers," perhaps.
>>
>> > That resonates with how in another Draft, skills could/should be
>> > integrated in. I like the idea of FFS being a *players* manual instead
>> of
>> > a
>> > ref one. The *character* can only do it, if they have the appropriate
>> > Advanced skills. And even once a design was done, a prototype would
>> have
>> > to be constructed the GM would run an opposed roll and introduce a
>> number
>> > of flaws/bugs (based on complexity, maintenance, and wear) into the
>> > prototype that have to be discovered the hard way during testing and
>> > evaluations.
>> >
>> > Then, tooling could be made for mass production, or slightly cheaper
>> > refined copies of prototype could be made depending on the funding
>> > available.
>> >
>> > Ultimately that could hint towards an economic modeling in the rpg, if
>> not
>> > into a UWP extension (ideally reverse conpatible with the existing
>> codes,
>> > particularly government and law).
>> >
>> > Which brings in more specific addendems in specific regional models
>> (Path
>> > of Tears vs RSB etc) if not things like folio adventures for the world
>> of
>> > the month and Vampire Fleets, etc. Which brings to mind the "society"
>> of
>> > Parent Virus entities I designed on the edge of Alpha Crucis/Leonis
>> and
>> > their economy-equivalent...
>> >
>> >
>> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
>> > On Mar 8, 2014 10:48 AM, <> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> For those just joining us, "WTH" may or may not stand for "What the
>> >> Huh?"
>> >> the lost TNE book.
>> >>
>> >> > Fair point. The WTH mass combat system essentially has the players
>> >> acting
>> >> > as commanders back at headquarters.
>> >> >
>> >> > But on page 63 of WTH you (or another author) put some rules for
>> >> trying
>> >> > to integrate PCs into the mass combat system. These assumed a PC
>> was
>> >> > acting as commander or military advisor for a particular mass
>> combat
>> >> unit
>> >> > in the field.
>> >>
>> >> That sounds like the sort of thing I would do (either assigned or
>> seeing
>> >> a
>> >> gap, throw myself on, usually the latter) and leads to my
>> recollection
>> >> "there were gaps between the poles." If I made the time to dig WTH
>> out I
>> >> could tell you who wrote it, as it's obviously easy-ish to pick out
>> my
>> >> writing from Frank's or Terry's.
>> >>
>> >> > WTH also had the black powder design sequences that were an
>> addition
>> >> to
>> >> > FF&S.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, I do remember those. I think Terry made a stab at it and then
>> Frank
>> >> re-did it. There was also a "choo-choo train design system" that I
>> >> dropped
>> >> because it mostly got at the visual appearance of a locomotive and
>> >> didn't
>> >> adequately touch on their engineering-physics (tractive effort,
>> wheels
>> >> for
>> >> speed vs. pulling power, size of boiler vs. combustion unit), and for
>> >> the
>> >> ROI was not worth the design time. Someone probably also tried a
>> >> "sword-pike-pointy stick" design system at one point.
>> >>
>> >> One "design system" that I definitely try to avert my eyes from is
>> the
>> >> "battle dress design system." It was one of those bad ideas where
>> >> someone
>> >> from the Art Dept said, "hey, shouldn't there be a design system for
>> >> this?" "Yeah, we don't have to send this to the printer until 5:00,
>> and
>> >> it's 2:00 now, so we've got time," so it was written half at the
>> >> conference table and half at someone's desk. When asked, "whaddaya
>> >> think?"
>> >> there wasn't enough time to form specific logical objections, the
>> best
>> >> one, "there39;s not enough time" having already been excluded.
>> >>
>> >> There was a spaceship design system made for Hard Times that was
>> >> extremely
>> >> detailed and fiddly and mostly seemed to be made to allow players to
>> >> design "every rocket propulsion system you've ever heard of," but it
>> had
>> >> that two-fold TL problem where 1) it focused on all of these
>> different
>> >> approaches that only fall into a fraction of one TL, and therefore
>> from
>> >> the standpoint of the larger game don't haul much freight, and 2) the
>> >> top-down logic that says TL ultimately has to be focused on "what was
>> >> found to work," not things that were tried but failed. But HT is
>> >> arguably
>> >> a MT product, so doesn't belong here. Spiritually it was a transition
>> >> product, but game system is obviously MT. There are a large number of
>> >> "MT"
>> >> products that are spiritually TNE products: Arrival Vengeance,
>> >> Astrogator39;s Guide to Diaspora, Assignment: Vigilante, some other
>> stuff
>> >> I
>> >> can't think of. It makes it hard for me to remember "when did you
>> start
>> >> work on TNE" because it literally goes back to my first day at GDW in
>> >> one
>> >> form or another.
>> >>
>> >> Last thought, there was always a typical error on the part of
>> >> "design-system designers" to mistake "when we on Earth got around to
>> >> thinking of a logical solution" for an actual TECHNICAL change (e.g.,
>> >> superfiring guns, ballast tanks in submarines, multiple locomotive
>> >> units,
>> >> etc.), which caused me to reject a lot of design sequences over the
>> >> years.
>> >> I would rather not have a thing than publish one that is wrong. In
>> >> fairness, it is easy to see how this confusion begins, as it's not
>> >> always
>> >> easy to separate "this is now possible/embedded technically" from
>> >> "there39;s
>> >> now enough related technical that it's easier for people to say, 'oh
>> >> yeah...'". That is especially the case where TL is saying two utterly
>> >> different things in the "pure" Traveller rules, where it is merely
>> >> descriptive and can be (theoretically) based on multiple parallel
>> >> technology systems (think tech for an aquatic species vs. tech for a
>> >> terrestrial species) all governed by the same laws of physics, vs.
>> what
>> >> it
>> >> is saying in the 3I campaign background where it tends to reflect the
>> >> dissemination of core Imperial technology. There's also the
>> >> understandable
>> >> tendency of writers to fall back on real world or Star Trek examples:
>> >> "this was solved by Thomas Edison or Dr. Richard Daystrom with the
>> XXX,"
>> >> but TL is not defined by a guy, that guy is just the expression of
>> that
>> >> TL
>> >> "fact" (a.k.a. "hooey assertion") in that timeline.
>> >>
>> >> To conclude, some TL vs. discovered principles things ARE easy. The
>> best
>> >> example of this is germ theory. The benefits of germ theory do NOT
>> arise
>> >> at TL...(whatever late 1800s Earth is). You can tell TL 0 people,
>> "don't
>> >> build your toilets next to your drinking fountains" and it works just
>> >> fine. If you're describing an isolated species with no transmission
>> of
>> >> knowledge from more advanced people, yes, they probably have to
>> invent
>> >> microscopes first to figure it out on their own. But you could just
>> as
>> >> easily posit that they are psionic and can sense the presence of tiny
>> >> life
>> >> forms all around them so don't need microscopes, or say that they
>> just
>> >> evolved to be neat freaks so gain the practical benefits of germ
>> theory
>> >> (at least in prevention of disease) without having to reach a certain
>> >> TL.
>> >> It's SF, if you're not confounding someone's pre-suppositions
>> somewhere,
>> >> you might as well stick with crossword puzzles.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
That's what I thought. As I've said to you before, I really like it.
On the other hand, for the sake of conversation, and putting on my TNE
Line Manager hat, it's the sort of thing that I would only "reluctantly"
or very carefully have layered on to official TNE. GDW was already
permanently criticized for making rules that were too fiddly, too
detailed, (in comparison especially to "cinematic" games like SW) too
anal-retentive. I would have wanted to make a resource like a "TNE
Referee's Resource" with "optional guidelines to introduce more detailed
XXX into your campaign," with the clear statement, "these are optional
ideas, and in no way should be taken to imply that you are not playing
"Real TNE" if you don't use them." We didn't have the self-imposed
requirement of claiming that there was a "universal tournament-standard
AD&D rules."
But no matter what caveats I placed around it, we would have still wound
up in that "Murphy's Rules" cartoon. I would have comforted myself with,
"the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."
You know, the Miley Cyrus Law.
> It was. I originally used it in my old Star Wars RPG campaigns and found
> it much more suitable for TNE once I discovered FFS.
>
> It wasn't only a new/cutting edge thing but also very applicable to normal
> individual construction and even mass production. A design might have,
> for
> example 2d6-2* major bugs inherent in the design, some of which could only
> be discovered after a certain wear value degraded a crucial component,
> for
> example.
>
> But other bugs might be introduced not by flawed design, but by flawed
> production (made on Friday instead of Wednesday, bug on the construction
> droid, faulty materials not up to spec, etc) which could introduce 2d4-2*
> more! Even proven designs would thus still need shakedown cruises or
> breaking in/function checks. And if applicable, the skills of those
> doing
> the construction.
>
> This applies not only to ships which have zillions of parts but could
> expand to slug throwers as well as boots! As with most, not intended to
> encumber a game or create tedious checks, but to help explain that
> critical skill failure and/or mishap and offer a level of detail when
> desirable at refs discretion.
>
> These could also be mitigated by everything from "warning light" events to
> proper weapon safety. If the player isn't explicit, more than enough room
> to allow a skill roll...
>
> * modified by time taken with a table adding for additional time
> taken/more
> expensive materials and tighter tolerances 2x -1, 3x -2 etc or Rushed
> /substandard -10% +1, -15% +2, etc
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
> On Mar 10, 2014 9:18 AM, <> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I think Uxi and I discussed this system before, either on this forum or
>> directly, and I liked it. I think this is related to something you've
>> tried in your games, like those skill-related system charts?
>>
>> This reminds me of two things, and since I'm in a chatty mood lately:
>>
>> 1. I've mentioned this here before, but I was moving toward a
>> skill-related system in the TNE starship construction system. I found in
>> the process of designing Brilliant Lances (also rolled into FF&S) that
>> the
>> system's (incrementally) greater detail required more design trade-offs,
>> and this requirement could be turned into a virtue by introducing fiddly
>> little flaws and "personality" into ship designs (the sort that many
>> games, most annoyingly BattleTech, handled by fake fiat, as it was not
>> based on any actual antecedents in the design process) that would then
>> require crews to counterbalance. In BL you were always finding systems
>> that you could almost, but not quite, make as big as required. You could
>> design them this way, but they would function less effectively. There
>> would be defined thresholds based on % of actual requirement, and at
>> each
>> threshold the system would require a set of tasks (played day-to-day at
>> PC
>> level) or +1 skill, say Engineering (played at the long-term/fleet
>> level)
>> to keep the ship running effectively. I was already starting to put this
>> into designs in fuel purifiers and power plants that couldn't run the
>> whole ship at the same time (FP in the form of time to process full
>> load,
>> time to process J1, etc., or PP can run this, but not that at same time)
>> and was going to define engineering tasks for "here's what it takes to
>> seamlessly switch power between these systems under duress," but didn't
>> get there before the lights started going out at GDW. I was really
>> looking
>> forward to this, because players and refs and ship designers and fleet
>> builders who like "crunchy" details would have enjoyed it, although not
>> everyone would have used it, as it would have raised the level of
>> detail.
>>
>> 2. I did some work over the years on a ship design system kind of
>> broadly
>> based on things like the pre-WWI British-German naval arms race that was
>> like Uxi's system, except that instead of player skills, it would be
>> based
>> on investment in industrial plant and research through-put, where
>> instead
>> of a one-size-fits-all "tech level" the different nations (wet navy) or
>> races (SF) would have a "State-of-the-Art" (SOTA) which represented
>> their
>> farthest mass-producible engineering solutions. Obviously this would not
>> be Traveller, as the global TL is exactly what it was NOT doing. Rather,
>> it would be more like Imperium or Task Force's StarFire or Star Fleet
>> Battles. The SOTA would be defined in several areas, engineering plants,
>> weapons systems, sensor suites, etc. and these would embed various
>> design
>> trade-offs, so that one player might have systems that were lighter or
>> faster, while another might have systems that were more robust or damage
>> resistant, and these would interact to allow them to create ships that
>> were distinctively different, and would have different implications for
>> how they were operationally used, both at the fleet level and within the
>> design. Another example of this from the pre-WW1 arms race would be the
>> way the British a continuous powder train and the Germans had better
>> ammunition hoist practices which affected rate of fire, but also meant
>> the
>> Brits were more susceptible to catastrophic damage from flash. This is
>> very similar in feel and intent to what Uxi describes. I would say,
>> "great
>> minds think alike," but that would mean complimenting myself.
>>
>> Obviously Uxi's idea, though cool for your individual "IMTU," would be a
>> difficult fit over top of Traveller UWPs. As the UWPs were already
>> sufficiently buggy to begin with, adding an additional layer of
>> interpretation over top of them would make everyone's head explode.
>>
>> Finally, "Bonus Dave Crunchy Hooey," the mention of "folio games." One
>> thing we learned at GDW was that every time we tried to define a new way
>> to knock out a "simple, quick" product that would free up design time
>> for
>> the bigger projects it always worked in reverse. The time required to
>> develop them always became disproportionate to what we could make back
>> on
>> them proportionate to their size. The series of "folios" (what did we
>> call
>> them?) we put out for MT, Dark Con, and Twilight were blood baths. It
>> turns out, as famously observed by Mark Twain, that it takes longer to
>> write short than it takes to simply allow something to run long (observe
>> my e-mails, for example), just so you can set a lower price point for
>> it.
>> Another "hey, here's a good quickie we can knock out" idea was Star
>> Vikings. I think the end product was good, but it was not quick, nor a
>> time-saver.
>>
>> Ah, well, life's a bitch, and then you die. There are trolls out there
>> who
>> will observe that this demonstrates the need for real business models
>> and
>> MBAs in the gaming industry. When I was in the biz, GDW was still a
>> remnant of the "mom 'n' pop" operations that gave us the "golden age of
>> wargaming," and that's where a lot of its fun and eclecticism came from.
>> Besides, anyone with an MBA would know that there wasn't enough money in
>> that sort of wargaming to begin with. The two answers to that, WotC and
>> computer games are 1) life lessons on what happens when you get it, and
>> 2)
>> it's a completely different industry completely underwritten by
>> deliberate
>> government tax breaks. Welfare state for "slackers," perhaps.
>>
>> > That resonates with how in another Draft, skills could/should be
>> > integrated in. I like the idea of FFS being a *players* manual instead
>> of
>> > a
>> > ref one. The *character* can only do it, if they have the appropriate
>> > Advanced skills. And even once a design was done, a prototype would
>> have
>> > to be constructed the GM would run an opposed roll and introduce a
>> number
>> > of flaws/bugs (based on complexity, maintenance, and wear) into the
>> > prototype that have to be discovered the hard way during testing and
>> > evaluations.
>> >
>> > Then, tooling could be made for mass production, or slightly cheaper
>> > refined copies of prototype could be made depending on the funding
>> > available.
>> >
>> > Ultimately that could hint towards an economic modeling in the rpg, if
>> not
>> > into a UWP extension (ideally reverse conpatible with the existing
>> codes,
>> > particularly government and law).
>> >
>> > Which brings in more specific addendems in specific regional models
>> (Path
>> > of Tears vs RSB etc) if not things like folio adventures for the world
>> of
>> > the month and Vampire Fleets, etc. Which brings to mind the "society"
>> of
>> > Parent Virus entities I designed on the edge of Alpha Crucis/Leonis
>> and
>> > their economy-equivalent...
>> >
>> >
>> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
>> > On Mar 8, 2014 10:48 AM, <> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> For those just joining us, "WTH" may or may not stand for "What the
>> >> Huh?"
>> >> the lost TNE book.
>> >>
>> >> > Fair point. The WTH mass combat system essentially has the players
>> >> acting
>> >> > as commanders back at headquarters.
>> >> >
>> >> > But on page 63 of WTH you (or another author) put some rules for
>> >> trying
>> >> > to integrate PCs into the mass combat system. These assumed a PC
>> was
>> >> > acting as commander or military advisor for a particular mass
>> combat
>> >> unit
>> >> > in the field.
>> >>
>> >> That sounds like the sort of thing I would do (either assigned or
>> seeing
>> >> a
>> >> gap, throw myself on, usually the latter) and leads to my
>> recollection
>> >> "there were gaps between the poles." If I made the time to dig WTH
>> out I
>> >> could tell you who wrote it, as it's obviously easy-ish to pick out
>> my
>> >> writing from Frank's or Terry's.
>> >>
>> >> > WTH also had the black powder design sequences that were an
>> addition
>> >> to
>> >> > FF&S.
>> >>
>> >> Yes, I do remember those. I think Terry made a stab at it and then
>> Frank
>> >> re-did it. There was also a "choo-choo train design system" that I
>> >> dropped
>> >> because it mostly got at the visual appearance of a locomotive and
>> >> didn't
>> >> adequately touch on their engineering-physics (tractive effort,
>> wheels
>> >> for
>> >> speed vs. pulling power, size of boiler vs. combustion unit), and for
>> >> the
>> >> ROI was not worth the design time. Someone probably also tried a
>> >> "sword-pike-pointy stick" design system at one point.
>> >>
>> >> One "design system" that I definitely try to avert my eyes from is
>> the
>> >> "battle dress design system." It was one of those bad ideas where
>> >> someone
>> >> from the Art Dept said, "hey, shouldn't there be a design system for
>> >> this?" "Yeah, we don't have to send this to the printer until 5:00,
>> and
>> >> it's 2:00 now, so we've got time," so it was written half at the
>> >> conference table and half at someone's desk. When asked, "whaddaya
>> >> think?"
>> >> there wasn't enough time to form specific logical objections, the
>> best
>> >> one, "there39;s not enough time" having already been excluded.
>> >>
>> >> There was a spaceship design system made for Hard Times that was
>> >> extremely
>> >> detailed and fiddly and mostly seemed to be made to allow players to
>> >> design "every rocket propulsion system you've ever heard of," but it
>> had
>> >> that two-fold TL problem where 1) it focused on all of these
>> different
>> >> approaches that only fall into a fraction of one TL, and therefore
>> from
>> >> the standpoint of the larger game don't haul much freight, and 2) the
>> >> top-down logic that says TL ultimately has to be focused on "what was
>> >> found to work," not things that were tried but failed. But HT is
>> >> arguably
>> >> a MT product, so doesn't belong here. Spiritually it was a transition
>> >> product, but game system is obviously MT. There are a large number of
>> >> "MT"
>> >> products that are spiritually TNE products: Arrival Vengeance,
>> >> Astrogator39;s Guide to Diaspora, Assignment: Vigilante, some other
>> stuff
>> >> I
>> >> can't think of. It makes it hard for me to remember "when did you
>> start
>> >> work on TNE" because it literally goes back to my first day at GDW in
>> >> one
>> >> form or another.
>> >>
>> >> Last thought, there was always a typical error on the part of
>> >> "design-system designers" to mistake "when we on Earth got around to
>> >> thinking of a logical solution" for an actual TECHNICAL change (e.g.,
>> >> superfiring guns, ballast tanks in submarines, multiple locomotive
>> >> units,
>> >> etc.), which caused me to reject a lot of design sequences over the
>> >> years.
>> >> I would rather not have a thing than publish one that is wrong. In
>> >> fairness, it is easy to see how this confusion begins, as it's not
>> >> always
>> >> easy to separate "this is now possible/embedded technically" from
>> >> "there39;s
>> >> now enough related technical that it's easier for people to say, 'oh
>> >> yeah...'". That is especially the case where TL is saying two utterly
>> >> different things in the "pure" Traveller rules, where it is merely
>> >> descriptive and can be (theoretically) based on multiple parallel
>> >> technology systems (think tech for an aquatic species vs. tech for a
>> >> terrestrial species) all governed by the same laws of physics, vs.
>> what
>> >> it
>> >> is saying in the 3I campaign background where it tends to reflect the
>> >> dissemination of core Imperial technology. There's also the
>> >> understandable
>> >> tendency of writers to fall back on real world or Star Trek examples:
>> >> "this was solved by Thomas Edison or Dr. Richard Daystrom with the
>> XXX,"
>> >> but TL is not defined by a guy, that guy is just the expression of
>> that
>> >> TL
>> >> "fact" (a.k.a. "hooey assertion") in that timeline.
>> >>
>> >> To conclude, some TL vs. discovered principles things ARE easy. The
>> best
>> >> example of this is germ theory. The benefits of germ theory do NOT
>> arise
>> >> at TL...(whatever late 1800s Earth is). You can tell TL 0 people,
>> "don't
>> >> build your toilets next to your drinking fountains" and it works just
>> >> fine. If you're describing an isolated species with no transmission
>> of
>> >> knowledge from more advanced people, yes, they probably have to
>> invent
>> >> microscopes first to figure it out on their own. But you could just
>> as
>> >> easily posit that they are psionic and can sense the presence of tiny
>> >> life
>> >> forms all around them so don't need microscopes, or say that they
>> just
>> >> evolved to be neat freaks so gain the practical benefits of germ
>> theory
>> >> (at least in prevention of disease) without having to reach a certain
>> >> TL.
>> >> It's SF, if you're not confounding someone's pre-suppositions
>> somewhere,
>> >> you might as well stick with crossword puzzles.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>