That was a concept from the DGP Starship Ops Manual which I loved so much I
immediately implemented it in TNE. You see it at least 2-3 times in my jump
rules even for a Solo Jump. More for coordinated/slave jumps.
Not required, but... advisable.
- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Mar 10, 2014 10:12 AM, "DEREK STANLEY" <> wrote:
>
>
> Why do I suddenly have the starship version of the "Check Engine" light
> covered in black tape popping into my head?
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>
> On Mar 10, 2014, at 9:59, Master Uxi <> wrote:
>
>
>
> 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.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>
immediately implemented it in TNE. You see it at least 2-3 times in my jump
rules even for a Solo Jump. More for coordinated/slave jumps.
Not required, but... advisable.
- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Mar 10, 2014 10:12 AM, "DEREK STANLEY" <> wrote:
>
>
> Why do I suddenly have the starship version of the "Check Engine" light
> covered in black tape popping into my head?
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>
> On Mar 10, 2014, at 9:59, Master Uxi <> wrote:
>
>
>
> 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.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>