Thread: Re: interesting question on telekinesis.

Interesting question indeed. I have always seen psionics--Telekinesis as a mental rope connecting the Psion to the object they are trying to move. First if the Psion tried to move the 10 kg object in a gravity field the gravity field would "hold the Psion down". In a no-gravity arena I believe that both the object and the Psion would move. A level one Psion would move at a rate on one meter per combat turn and the object being one tenth their weight would move ten times as fast. Your Psion could also use his skill to push an object away to alter their course. Also I would have the Psion make a willpower skill save to find his center (forgive: I'm drawing on my martial arts experience and lifeguard training here). What you are saying is most defiantly a panic ridden scenario (saw Gravity yesterday) and people have a tendency to loose their higher thinking and their animal instincts take over, hence the willpower check.
Roger

Only the wreckage would move. The TK force is acting directly on it from
out of J+ space without any inertial linkage to the psi-guy. If what
you're getting at is a TK analogy to the way the two bodies would be
pulled toward each other (equal and opposite reactions) if they were
connected by a string, that would not work. However, the psi could pull
the wreckage toward him, hit himself with it, and some of that momentum
would be imparted to him in the collision through normal collision
physics. That is already VERY non-Newtonian if that is your intent.

That's the way it would work in the TNE rules, but you can do what you
want in your universe to make it interesting. I don't remember what the
rules said about telekinesing yourself (flying), but it was probably
something like some "field of yourselfness" saying you couldn't do it.

I like Uxi's suggestion about giving penalties to accuracy in
really-really-really-small G due to fineness of control compared to
working in a g-field which tends to stabilize you (but more on how it's
really the same in micro-G below).

HOWEVER, here is where it gets interesting/stupid. I'll unpack "stupid"
first.

Traveller psi powers took your typical "magickal" (Gygax spelling)
"mental" powers from popular culture and pulled them in as-is. But a
pencil sitting on a table on Regina is not actually "stationary." It's
moving at an ungodly absolute vector, being pulled toward the center of
Regina + rotational vector of Regina's surface + orbital vector of Regina
around (I don't remember name of) star + rotational vector of (name of)
star around center of Milky Way + vector of Milky Way away from the Big
Bang. The fact that Traveller grandfathered in the fantasy of classic
magickal TK means that this physics is not a problem, it is abstracted
down to/calculated on the Psi's "stationary" relationship to the object
being TKed. Does this mean that the psi is actually controlling forces
scaled to to the actual ungodly vector? Or somehow due to the magic of
sloppy thinking about the actual physics embedded in taking over the
classic magickal model does that stuff all cancel out due to the supposed
"stationariness" of the TK actor and TK object relative to each other? On
the one hand it doesn't matter, because CT said it existed, so there you
have it, it must work. On the other, how does the classic TK on Earth's
surface (from where it was photocopied) translate into TK in micro-G?

So, back to where you can make it "interesting." If the psi is
manipulating forces on the "ungodly vector" scale, then arguably he's got
a lot more power at his disposal (the only reason I can apply a small
number of Newtons to a pencil is because I am leveraging my vector towards
Earth's center among others, which is why "picking up" a pencil in orbit
creates the problems felt almost disastrously by Gene Cernan, Michael
Collins, Dick Gordon, et al.). Which is good, because if he and the
wreckage are in low Earth orbit, their orbital vector is ~8 km/sec for
back-of-the-e-mail calculations (which you may be aware is the gaping plot
hole at the center of "Gravity"--an MMU cannot generate enough force to
appreciably bend a LEO vector--not counting Earth around Sol, Sol around
Milky Way, Milky Way into the void, more on that in a moment). This might
allow you as Ref to rule, "you try to apply some force to the thing, but
nothing happens" because of the "invisible" size of the orbital vector.
HOWEVER again, since you can do it on Regina's surface you are surmounting
those absolute vectors because the psi force has nothing to do with your
inertial link to the object. AND from a practical game standpoint, the Ref
is NOT going to say, "okay, that's it for tonight, come back next week
when I've calculated the vectors." So, from a practical and
internal-handwavium-"CT-said-it-was-possible-so-we-have-to-make-it-work"
standpoint, the TK process must have an internal normalizing effect, which
means that if the TKing Psi and the TK target are both in the same "local
frame of reference," i.e., "semi-stationary compared to each other"
(whether that is on the surface of Earth/Regina, in the galley of a moving
starship, or in a common orbit), the force calculated to move an object is
only related to each other, and the other vectors outside of their "local
frame of reference" wash out, with the understanding that there is no
equal-and-opposite reaction on the TKing psi.

I will lay money that GURPS already has an approach to this which is
perfectly useful. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you wish to be
a TNE purist, the psi force does not come from any physical manifestation
between the body of the Psi and the body being TKed, so no Newtonian
equal-and-opposite-reaction. If you want to think about why this is, you
must start from clairvoyance and clairaudience as described in CT and work
backwards from there. You might draw different conclusions/make different
decisions than TNE did, but TNE did make a significant decision.

Food for thought. Or, after all this typing, maybe "Junk Food" for
thought. This was a better answer with only the first paragraph by itself,
but I couldn't help myself.

Dave

> I have a scenario in mind to throw at my players in the future, however
in
> pondering the variables that players are so expert at inventing, I ran
in
> to a mental roadblock!
> Basically, the scenario involves the need to be EVA in a barely operable
suit, and as events transpire, the suit thrusters die. *(Yes, Gravity was
> a
> small inspiration, though I have not yet seen the movie) One of the
characters has telekinesis. How can this be used to manipulate himself or
> objects in zero gravity? I suspect the laws of conservation of
> energy momentum may not work as envisioned by Newton 8-) example with
round
> numbers. player in vacc weighs 100 Kg, tried to 'pull' a 10kg piece of
wreckage with his TK in order to develop momentum for a push to another
more massive object. will player and object close at velocities relative
to
> each others mass? will only the wreckage move? or only the player? Or in
a
> true anti newtonian wrench, is TK dependant on some form of gravity as a
medium?
> In keeping with as much of a "hard science" flavor as an RPG game can
handle, I want the scenario to play out with as much believability as
possible, in order to minimize the handwavium affect.
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
for
> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
their
> kids pay for it."
>

There is also the fact, as I'm sure some of you are preparing to point
out, that the "relative stationary" of a pencil on Earth/Regina is not
merely notional, but also real, as all objects have almost infinite forces
acting on them at a given time. For my previous yammer I was trying to
think of an extreme, the pencil taken in theoretical isolation.

The reason for that is because the TNE-asserted J+ space non-Newtonian
force acts "in isolation" when it impinges on real space. The reason TNE
says this is so is because Traveller established (more accurately, failed
to establish the contrary--while absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence, I had to make a call on which it was) that there is no evidence
that the body of the Psi is generating energy to perform the work of TK.
If it were, this should be measurable and have other effects. For example,
Psis could be detected by the energy they were generating to perform these
functions. Where in your body are these effects generated? Does the
standard human physiology support this? How? Psis don't have special
organs, or thicker skulls to protect against the heat being generated in
their brains when they TK something. Therefore, that stuff takes place
entirely outside the Psi, the psi merely accesses/directs that force. And
the conservation of energy compensations take place outside of the Psi,
outside of "real space" in J+ space.

Is this all hooey? Duh. Traveller is an SF game which appropriated all
kinds of SF/fantasy tropes, which singly or collectively are hooey. But
having chosen our hooey, we try to figure out interesting ways to explain
how they internally work, since the books say they do.

> Only the wreckage would move. The TK force is acting directly on it from
> out of J+ space without any inertial linkage to the psi-guy. If what
> you're getting at is a TK analogy to the way the two bodies would be
> pulled toward each other (equal and opposite reactions) if they were
> connected by a string, that would not work. However, the psi could pull
> the wreckage toward him, hit himself with it, and some of that momentum
> would be imparted to him in the collision through normal collision
> physics. That is already VERY non-Newtonian if that is your intent.
>
> That's the way it would work in the TNE rules, but you can do what you
> want in your universe to make it interesting. I don't remember what the
> rules said about telekinesing yourself (flying), but it was probably
> something like some "field of yourselfness" saying you couldn't do it.
>
> I like Uxi's suggestion about giving penalties to accuracy in
> really-really-really-small G due to fineness of control compared to
> working in a g-field which tends to stabilize you (but more on how it's
> really the same in micro-G below).
>
> HOWEVER, here is where it gets interesting/stupid. I'll unpack "stupid"
> first.
>
> Traveller psi powers took your typical "magickal" (Gygax spelling)
> "mental" powers from popular culture and pulled them in as-is. But a
> pencil sitting on a table on Regina is not actually "stationary." It's
> moving at an ungodly absolute vector, being pulled toward the center of
> Regina + rotational vector of Regina's surface + orbital vector of Regina
> around (I don't remember name of) star + rotational vector of (name of)
> star around center of Milky Way + vector of Milky Way away from the Big
> Bang. The fact that Traveller grandfathered in the fantasy of classic
> magickal TK means that this physics is not a problem, it is abstracted
> down to/calculated on the Psi's "stationary" relationship to the object
> being TKed. Does this mean that the psi is actually controlling forces
> scaled to to the actual ungodly vector? Or somehow due to the magic of
> sloppy thinking about the actual physics embedded in taking over the
> classic magickal model does that stuff all cancel out due to the supposed
> "stationariness" of the TK actor and TK object relative to each other? On
> the one hand it doesn't matter, because CT said it existed, so there you
> have it, it must work. On the other, how does the classic TK on Earth's
> surface (from where it was photocopied) translate into TK in micro-G?
>
> So, back to where you can make it "interesting." If the psi is
> manipulating forces on the "ungodly vector" scale, then arguably he's got
> a lot more power at his disposal (the only reason I can apply a small
> number of Newtons to a pencil is because I am leveraging my vector towards
> Earth's center among others, which is why "picking up" a pencil in orbit
> creates the problems felt almost disastrously by Gene Cernan, Michael
> Collins, Dick Gordon, et al.). Which is good, because if he and the
> wreckage are in low Earth orbit, their orbital vector is ~8 km/sec for
> back-of-the-e-mail calculations (which you may be aware is the gaping plot
> hole at the center of "Gravity"--an MMU cannot generate enough force to
> appreciably bend a LEO vector--not counting Earth around Sol, Sol around
> Milky Way, Milky Way into the void, more on that in a moment). This might
> allow you as Ref to rule, "you try to apply some force to the thing, but
> nothing happens" because of the "invisible" size of the orbital vector.
> HOWEVER again, since you can do it on Regina's surface you are surmounting
> those absolute vectors because the psi force has nothing to do with your
> inertial link to the object. AND from a practical game standpoint, the Ref
> is NOT going to say, "okay, that's it for tonight, come back next week
> when I've calculated the vectors." So, from a practical and
> internal-handwavium-"CT-said-it-was-possible-so-we-have-to-make-it-work"
> standpoint, the TK process must have an internal normalizing effect, which
> means that if the TKing Psi and the TK target are both in the same "local
> frame of reference," i.e., "semi-stationary compared to each other"
> (whether that is on the surface of Earth/Regina, in the galley of a moving
> starship, or in a common orbit), the force calculated to move an object is
> only related to each other, and the other vectors outside of their "local
> frame of reference" wash out, with the understanding that there is no
> equal-and-opposite reaction on the TKing psi.
>
> I will lay money that GURPS already has an approach to this which is
> perfectly useful. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you wish to be
> a TNE purist, the psi force does not come from any physical manifestation
> between the body of the Psi and the body being TKed, so no Newtonian
> equal-and-opposite-reaction. If you want to think about why this is, you
> must start from clairvoyance and clairaudience as described in CT and work
> backwards from there. You might draw different conclusions/make different
> decisions than TNE did, but TNE did make a significant decision.
>
> Food for thought. Or, after all this typing, maybe "Junk Food" for
> thought. This was a better answer with only the first paragraph by itself,
> but I couldn't help myself.
>
> Dave
>
>> I have a scenario in mind to throw at my players in the future, however
> in
>> pondering the variables that players are so expert at inventing, I ran
> in
>> to a mental roadblock!
>> Basically, the scenario involves the need to be EVA in a barely operable
> suit, and as events transpire, the suit thrusters die. *(Yes, Gravity was
>> a
>> small inspiration, though I have not yet seen the movie) One of the
> characters has telekinesis. How can this be used to manipulate himself or
>> objects in zero gravity? I suspect the laws of conservation of
>> energy momentum may not work as envisioned by Newton 8-) example with
> round
>> numbers. player in vacc weighs 100 Kg, tried to 'pull' a 10kg piece of
> wreckage with his TK in order to develop momentum for a push to another
> more massive object. will player and object close at velocities relative
> to
>> each others mass? will only the wreckage move? or only the player? Or in
> a
>> true anti newtonian wrench, is TK dependant on some form of gravity as a
> medium?
>> In keeping with as much of a "hard science" flavor as an RPG game can
> handle, I want the scenario to play out with as much believability as
> possible, in order to minimize the handwavium affect.
>>
>> --
>> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for
>> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
> their
>> kids pay for it."
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

I love the supranormal theory entries on J-space in RSB.

More than just fine control, microgravity is counter intuitive to most
dirtyfeet. Space-born reared in microgravity would probably have the
opposite offsets. Course, outside of the low G worlds traveller doesn't
seem to make much note of such in general.

I apply similar skill offsets to most physical activity, as well as psi.
Even movement outside of a CG environment. Not enough space rpgs take
microgravity (or radiation or even atmosphere beyond basic pressure and
toxicity) in account at all, mostly doing the Trek "class M" planet of the
week. I mostly adapted rules off the Cyberpunk 2020 Deep Space and made it
a point to periodically revisit (CG on the fritz, EVA repairs for numerous
systems, deep space cold recoveries, etc). Fancy hi tech were appreciated
conveniences or luxuries, depending on TL.

- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Feb 28, 2014 10:12 AM, <> wrote:

>
>
> There is also the fact, as I'm sure some of you are preparing to point
> out, that the "relative stationary" of a pencil on Earth/Regina is not
> merely notional, but also real, as all objects have almost infinite forces
> acting on them at a given time. For my previous yammer I was trying to
> think of an extreme, the pencil taken in theoretical isolation.
>
> The reason for that is because the TNE-asserted J+ space non-Newtonian
> force acts "in isolation" when it impinges on real space. The reason TNE
> says this is so is because Traveller established (more accurately, failed
> to establish the contrary--while absence of evidence is not evidence of
> absence, I had to make a call on which it was) that there is no evidence
> that the body of the Psi is generating energy to perform the work of TK.
> If it were, this should be measurable and have other effects. For example,
> Psis could be detected by the energy they were generating to perform these
> functions. Where in your body are these effects generated? Does the
> standard human physiology support this? How? Psis don't have special
> organs, or thicker skulls to protect against the heat being generated in
> their brains when they TK something. Therefore, that stuff takes place
> entirely outside the Psi, the psi merely accesses/directs that force. And
> the conservation of energy compensations take place outside of the Psi,
> outside of "real space" in J+ space.
>
> Is this all hooey? Duh. Traveller is an SF game which appropriated all
> kinds of SF/fantasy tropes, which singly or collectively are hooey. But
> having chosen our hooey, we try to figure out interesting ways to explain
> how they internally work, since the books say they do.
>
> > Only the wreckage would move. The TK force is acting directly on it from
> > out of J+ space without any inertial linkage to the psi-guy. If what
> > you're getting at is a TK analogy to the way the two bodies would be
> > pulled toward each other (equal and opposite reactions) if they were
> > connected by a string, that would not work. However, the psi could pull
> > the wreckage toward him, hit himself with it, and some of that momentum
> > would be imparted to him in the collision through normal collision
> > physics. That is already VERY non-Newtonian if that is your intent.
> >
> > That's the way it would work in the TNE rules, but you can do what you
> > want in your universe to make it interesting. I don't remember what the
> > rules said about telekinesing yourself (flying), but it was probably
> > something like some "field of yourselfness" saying you couldn't do it.
> >
> > I like Uxi's suggestion about giving penalties to accuracy in
> > really-really-really-small G due to fineness of control compared to
> > working in a g-field which tends to stabilize you (but more on how it's
> > really the same in micro-G below).
> >
> > HOWEVER, here is where it gets interesting/stupid. I'll unpack "stupid"
> > first.
> >
> > Traveller psi powers took your typical "magickal&quot; (Gygax spelling)
> > "mental" powers from popular culture and pulled them in as-is. But a
> > pencil sitting on a table on Regina is not actually "stationary." It's
> > moving at an ungodly absolute vector, being pulled toward the center of
> > Regina + rotational vector of Regina's surface + orbital vector of Regina
> > around (I don't remember name of) star + rotational vector of (name of)
> > star around center of Milky Way + vector of Milky Way away from the Big
> > Bang. The fact that Traveller grandfathered in the fantasy of classic
> > magickal TK means that this physics is not a problem, it is abstracted
> > down to/calculated on the Psi's "stationary&quot; relationship to the object
> > being TKed. Does this mean that the psi is actually controlling forces
> > scaled to to the actual ungodly vector? Or somehow due to the magic of
> > sloppy thinking about the actual physics embedded in taking over the
> > classic magickal model does that stuff all cancel out due to the supposed
> > "stationariness" of the TK actor and TK object relative to each other? On
> > the one hand it doesn't matter, because CT said it existed, so there you
> > have it, it must work. On the other, how does the classic TK on Earth's
> > surface (from where it was photocopied) translate into TK in micro-G?
> >
> > So, back to where you can make it "interesting." If the psi is
> > manipulating forces on the "ungodly vector" scale, then arguably he's got
> > a lot more power at his disposal (the only reason I can apply a small
> > number of Newtons to a pencil is because I am leveraging my vector
> towards
> > Earth's center among others, which is why "picking up" a pencil in orbit
> > creates the problems felt almost disastrously by Gene Cernan, Michael
> > Collins, Dick Gordon, et al.). Which is good, because if he and the
> > wreckage are in low Earth orbit, their orbital vector is ~8 km/sec for
> > back-of-the-e-mail calculations (which you may be aware is the gaping
> plot
> > hole at the center of "Gravity"--an MMU cannot generate enough force to
> > appreciably bend a LEO vector--not counting Earth around Sol, Sol around
> > Milky Way, Milky Way into the void, more on that in a moment). This might
> > allow you as Ref to rule, "you try to apply some force to the thing, but
> > nothing happens" because of the "invisible&quot; size of the orbital vector.
> > HOWEVER again, since you can do it on Regina's surface you are
> surmounting
> > those absolute vectors because the psi force has nothing to do with your
> > inertial link to the object. AND from a practical game standpoint, the
> Ref
> > is NOT going to say, "okay, that's it for tonight, come back next week
> > when I've calculated the vectors." So, from a practical and
> > internal-handwavium-"CT-said-it-was-possible-so-we-have-to-make-it-work"
> > standpoint, the TK process must have an internal normalizing effect,
> which
> > means that if the TKing Psi and the TK target are both in the same "local
> > frame of reference," i.e., "semi-stationary compared to each other"
> > (whether that is on the surface of Earth/Regina, in the galley of a
> moving
> > starship, or in a common orbit), the force calculated to move an object
> is
> > only related to each other, and the other vectors outside of their "local
> > frame of reference" wash out, with the understanding that there is no
> > equal-and-opposite reaction on the TKing psi.
> >
> > I will lay money that GURPS already has an approach to this which is
> > perfectly useful. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you wish to
> be
> > a TNE purist, the psi force does not come from any physical manifestation
> > between the body of the Psi and the body being TKed, so no Newtonian
> > equal-and-opposite-reaction. If you want to think about why this is, you
> > must start from clairvoyance and clairaudience as described in CT and
> work
> > backwards from there. You might draw different conclusions/make different
> > decisions than TNE did, but TNE did make a significant decision.
> >
> > Food for thought. Or, after all this typing, maybe "Junk Food" for
> > thought. This was a better answer with only the first paragraph by
> itself,
> > but I couldn't help myself.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> >> I have a scenario in mind to throw at my players in the future, however
> > in
> >> pondering the variables that players are so expert at inventing, I ran
> > in
> >> to a mental roadblock!
> >> Basically, the scenario involves the need to be EVA in a barely operable
> > suit, and as events transpire, the suit thrusters die. *(Yes, Gravity was
> >> a
> >> small inspiration, though I have not yet seen the movie) One of the
> > characters has telekinesis. How can this be used to manipulate himself or
> >> objects in zero gravity? I suspect the laws of conservation of
> >> energy momentum may not work as envisioned by Newton 8-) example with
> > round
> >> numbers. player in vacc weighs 100 Kg, tried to 'pull' a 10kg piece of
> > wreckage with his TK in order to develop momentum for a push to another
> > more massive object. will player and object close at velocities relative
> > to
> >> each others mass? will only the wreckage move? or only the player? Or in
> > a
> >> true anti newtonian wrench, is TK dependant on some form of gravity as a
> > medium?
> >> In keeping with as much of a "hard science" flavor as an RPG game can
> > handle, I want the scenario to play out with as much believability as
> > possible, in order to minimize the handwavium affect.
> >>
> >> --
> >> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> > for
> >> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
> > their
> >> kids pay for it."
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

Thanks, I always tried to put "bookmarks&quot; for "more content coming" in the
glossaries, like in RSB.

Good point on the counter-intuitive. This is most true in the orbital
environment as opposed to deep space, where you have to slow down to
"catch up" and can't point your nose at something and accelerate toward
it: all you've done is change your orbit.

> I love the supranormal theory entries on J-space in RSB.
>
> More than just fine control, microgravity is counter intuitive to most
> dirtyfeet. Space-born reared in microgravity would probably have the
> opposite offsets. Course, outside of the low G worlds traveller doesn't
> seem to make much note of such in general.
>
> I apply similar skill offsets to most physical activity, as well as psi.
> Even movement outside of a CG environment. Not enough space rpgs take
> microgravity (or radiation or even atmosphere beyond basic pressure and
> toxicity) in account at all, mostly doing the Trek "class M" planet of
> the
> week. I mostly adapted rules off the Cyberpunk 2020 Deep Space and made
> it
> a point to periodically revisit (CG on the fritz, EVA repairs for numerous
> systems, deep space cold recoveries, etc). Fancy hi tech were appreciated
> conveniences or luxuries, depending on TL.
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
> On Feb 28, 2014 10:12 AM, <> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> There is also the fact, as I'm sure some of you are preparing to point
>> out, that the "relative stationary" of a pencil on Earth/Regina is not
>> merely notional, but also real, as all objects have almost infinite
>> forces
>> acting on them at a given time. For my previous yammer I was trying to
>> think of an extreme, the pencil taken in theoretical isolation.
>>
>> The reason for that is because the TNE-asserted J+ space non-Newtonian
>> force acts "in isolation" when it impinges on real space. The reason TNE
>> says this is so is because Traveller established (more accurately,
>> failed
>> to establish the contrary--while absence of evidence is not evidence of
>> absence, I had to make a call on which it was) that there is no evidence
>> that the body of the Psi is generating energy to perform the work of TK.
>> If it were, this should be measurable and have other effects. For
>> example,
>> Psis could be detected by the energy they were generating to perform
>> these
>> functions. Where in your body are these effects generated? Does the
>> standard human physiology support this? How? Psis don't have special
>> organs, or thicker skulls to protect against the heat being generated in
>> their brains when they TK something. Therefore, that stuff takes place
>> entirely outside the Psi, the psi merely accesses/directs that force.
>> And
>> the conservation of energy compensations take place outside of the Psi,
>> outside of "real space" in J+ space.
>>
>> Is this all hooey? Duh. Traveller is an SF game which appropriated all
>> kinds of SF/fantasy tropes, which singly or collectively are hooey. But
>> having chosen our hooey, we try to figure out interesting ways to
>> explain
>> how they internally work, since the books say they do.
>>
>> > Only the wreckage would move. The TK force is acting directly on it
>> from
>> > out of J+ space without any inertial linkage to the psi-guy. If what
>> > you're getting at is a TK analogy to the way the two bodies would be
>> > pulled toward each other (equal and opposite reactions) if they were
>> > connected by a string, that would not work. However, the psi could
>> pull
>> > the wreckage toward him, hit himself with it, and some of that
>> momentum
>> > would be imparted to him in the collision through normal collision
>> > physics. That is already VERY non-Newtonian if that is your intent.
>> >
>> > That's the way it would work in the TNE rules, but you can do what you
>> > want in your universe to make it interesting. I don't remember what
>> the
>> > rules said about telekinesing yourself (flying), but it was probably
>> > something like some "field of yourselfness" saying you couldn't do it.
>> >
>> > I like Uxi's suggestion about giving penalties to accuracy in
>> > really-really-really-small G due to fineness of control compared to
>> > working in a g-field which tends to stabilize you (but more on how
>> it's
>> > really the same in micro-G below).
>> >
>> > HOWEVER, here is where it gets interesting/stupid. I'll unpack
>> "stupid"
>> > first.
>> >
>> > Traveller psi powers took your typical "magickal&quot; (Gygax spelling)
>> > "mental" powers from popular culture and pulled them in as-is. But a
>> > pencil sitting on a table on Regina is not actually "stationary." It's
>> > moving at an ungodly absolute vector, being pulled toward the center
>> of
>> > Regina + rotational vector of Regina's surface + orbital vector of
>> Regina
>> > around (I don't remember name of) star + rotational vector of (name
>> of)
>> > star around center of Milky Way + vector of Milky Way away from the
>> Big
>> > Bang. The fact that Traveller grandfathered in the fantasy of classic
>> > magickal TK means that this physics is not a problem, it is abstracted
>> > down to/calculated on the Psi's "stationary&quot; relationship to the
>> object
>> > being TKed. Does this mean that the psi is actually controlling forces
>> > scaled to to the actual ungodly vector? Or somehow due to the magic of
>> > sloppy thinking about the actual physics embedded in taking over the
>> > classic magickal model does that stuff all cancel out due to the
>> supposed
>> > "stationariness" of the TK actor and TK object relative to each other?
>> On
>> > the one hand it doesn't matter, because CT said it existed, so there
>> you
>> > have it, it must work. On the other, how does the classic TK on
>> Earth's
>> > surface (from where it was photocopied) translate into TK in micro-G?
>> >
>> > So, back to where you can make it "interesting." If the psi is
>> > manipulating forces on the "ungodly vector" scale, then arguably he's
>> got
>> > a lot more power at his disposal (the only reason I can apply a small
>> > number of Newtons to a pencil is because I am leveraging my vector
>> towards
>> > Earth's center among others, which is why "picking up" a pencil in
>> orbit
>> > creates the problems felt almost disastrously by Gene Cernan, Michael
>> > Collins, Dick Gordon, et al.). Which is good, because if he and the
>> > wreckage are in low Earth orbit, their orbital vector is ~8 km/sec for
>> > back-of-the-e-mail calculations (which you may be aware is the gaping
>> plot
>> > hole at the center of "Gravity"--an MMU cannot generate enough force
>> to
>> > appreciably bend a LEO vector--not counting Earth around Sol, Sol
>> around
>> > Milky Way, Milky Way into the void, more on that in a moment). This
>> might
>> > allow you as Ref to rule, "you try to apply some force to the thing,
>> but
>> > nothing happens" because of the "invisible&quot; size of the orbital
>> vector.
>> > HOWEVER again, since you can do it on Regina's surface you are
>> surmounting
>> > those absolute vectors because the psi force has nothing to do with
>> your
>> > inertial link to the object. AND from a practical game standpoint, the
>> Ref
>> > is NOT going to say, "okay, that's it for tonight, come back next week
>> > when I've calculated the vectors." So, from a practical and
>> > internal-handwavium-"CT-said-it-was-possible-so-we-have-to-make-it-work"
>> > standpoint, the TK process must have an internal normalizing effect,
>> which
>> > means that if the TKing Psi and the TK target are both in the same
>> "local
>> > frame of reference," i.e., "semi-stationary compared to each other"
>> > (whether that is on the surface of Earth/Regina, in the galley of a
>> moving
>> > starship, or in a common orbit), the force calculated to move an
>> object
>> is
>> > only related to each other, and the other vectors outside of their
>> "local
>> > frame of reference" wash out, with the understanding that there is no
>> > equal-and-opposite reaction on the TKing psi.
>> >
>> > I will lay money that GURPS already has an approach to this which is
>> > perfectly useful. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you wish
>> to
>> be
>> > a TNE purist, the psi force does not come from any physical
>> manifestation
>> > between the body of the Psi and the body being TKed, so no Newtonian
>> > equal-and-opposite-reaction. If you want to think about why this is,
>> you
>> > must start from clairvoyance and clairaudience as described in CT and
>> work
>> > backwards from there. You might draw different conclusions/make
>> different
>> > decisions than TNE did, but TNE did make a significant decision.
>> >
>> > Food for thought. Or, after all this typing, maybe "Junk Food" for
>> > thought. This was a better answer with only the first paragraph by
>> itself,
>> > but I couldn't help myself.
>> >
>> > Dave
>> >
>> >> I have a scenario in mind to throw at my players in the future,
>> however
>> > in
>> >> pondering the variables that players are so expert at inventing, I
>> ran
>> > in
>> >> to a mental roadblock!
>> >> Basically, the scenario involves the need to be EVA in a barely
>> operable
>> > suit, and as events transpire, the suit thrusters die. *(Yes, Gravity
>> was
>> >> a
>> >> small inspiration, though I have not yet seen the movie) One of the
>> > characters has telekinesis. How can this be used to manipulate himself
>> or
>> >> objects in zero gravity? I suspect the laws of conservation of
>> >> energy momentum may not work as envisioned by Newton 8-) example with
>> > round
>> >> numbers. player in vacc weighs 100 Kg, tried to 'pull' a 10kg piece
>> of
>> > wreckage with his TK in order to develop momentum for a push to
>> another
>> > more massive object. will player and object close at velocities
>> relative
>> > to
>> >> each others mass? will only the wreckage move? or only the player? Or
>> in
>> > a
>> >> true anti newtonian wrench, is TK dependant on some form of gravity
>> as a
>> > medium?
>> >> In keeping with as much of a "hard science" flavor as an RPG game can
>> > handle, I want the scenario to play out with as much believability as
>> > possible, in order to minimize the handwavium affect.
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults
>> pay
>> > for
>> >> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
>> > their
>> >> kids pay for it."
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>

Thank you all for the responses, I think I can see how this is going to
create even more of an interesting scenario than I originally anticipated
now.
In fact, I believe I can see some comedic elements thrown in as well if I
present it correctly. 8-)
But I am still going to have to exercise strong caution on how microgravity
is going to affect/effect motion.
I like the idea on will save to keep your cool, especially if the expected
Newtonian physics fail to apply as expected.
Now as far as TK being a Jspace effect, and one cannot truly fly per se, is
there anything rules wise that prevents them from moving something, while
hanging on to it? thus flying in a way?

--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

> Now as far as TK being a Jspace effect, and one cannot truly fly per se,
> is
> there anything rules wise that prevents them from moving something, while
> hanging on to it? thus flying in a way?

Yeah, I figured you would ask that. Like I said, there is a typical rule
in RPGs about some kind of "personal space" area around you that controls
things that you can/cannot do. For example, when you teleport, you
teleport WITH your clothes. I'm pretty sure TK did not allow flight,
though, and I would bet the rules fell back on, "you can't do it to
yourself (or your clothes)."

However, I would say that your case of TK in space would probably be a
case that would get around that. Put a sufficiently massive object (piece
of junk) on the end of a rope, push it away from you (outside your
"personal space field," and start TKing it, and it would tug you along.
There would probably be a fair amount of flinging and spinning around
before you got into a stable relationship (attachment point to TK "tug,"
attachment point to spacesuit), and Ref would say that "breaks the
concentration" so the TK effect cannot be kept up.

Can this be done in atmo? I suppose. Then why can't I TK the chair I'm
sitting in and ride it? I'd need to see the rules to refresh my memory on
what was implied to be allowed and prohibited. I suspect it has mostly to
do with, in atmo people want to fly like Superman (prohibited), in your
scenario it sounds like an unusual circumstance after an accident, needed
to travel a relatively short distance to safety (feasible).

I still like the idea of the guy having to bombard himself with debris to
push himself toward safety, though. :-)

> Thank you all for the responses, I think I can see how this is going to
> create even more of an interesting scenario than I originally anticipated
> now.
> In fact, I believe I can see some comedic elements thrown in as well if I
> present it correctly. 8-)
> But I am still going to have to exercise strong caution on how
> microgravity
> is going to affect/effect motion.
> I like the idea on will save to keep your cool, especially if the expected
> Newtonian physics fail to apply as expected.
> Now as far as TK being a Jspace effect, and one cannot truly fly per se,
> is
> there anything rules wise that prevents them from moving something, while
> hanging on to it? thus flying in a way?
>
>
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for
> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> kids pay for it."
>

The brute force approach is often the one PCs fall back on. It is very rare
to find one pc, let alone a group who can engage in actions of finesse.

--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

My group would be firing plasma weapons as propulsion devices.

Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPhone...

> On Feb 28, 2014, at 16:38, Another Carpenter <> wrote:
>
> The brute force approach is often the one PCs fall back on. It is very rare to find one pc, let alone a group who can engage in actions of finesse.
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it."
>

Welll THAT is certainly a brute force approach if ever I heard one 8-)

--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

Never underestimate a PC's ability to bring a fusion gun to a knife fight... Or in my case an umbrella to a gun fight...

Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 28, 2014, at 5:53 PM, Another Carpenter <> wrote:
>
> Welll THAT is certainly a brute force approach if ever I heard one 8-)
>
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it."
>

With a little more time to think about misdirecting the PCs with things
they don't expect, as Uxi pointed out it is the pure Newtonian nature of
micro-G that usually gives people trouble (it nearly killed Gene Cernan).
If the player is used to using his TK dirtside, he's probably not that
familiar with any Newtonian/Non-Newtonian considerations with TK, because
when your feet are firmly planted in a G-field it's hard to learn some
Newtonian lessons to begin with. So it might not surprise him in free-fall
when it remains non-Newtonian, because he wasn't "smart" enough to expect
it to be Newtonian anyway.

If you rig it right you could get a pair of Players where you surprise the
first (non-Psi) one with Newtonian free-fall problems, and he and/or the
Psi learn the lesson, expecting to apply that to the Psi problem, then
when it's non-Newtonian they get in even deeper.

> Welll THAT is certainly a brute force approach if ever I heard one 8-)
>
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for
> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> kids pay for it."
>

Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to the
surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this happy event
occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)

--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.

> Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to the
> surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this happy
> event
> occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
> rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
> Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for
> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> kids pay for it."
>

One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then the TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:

Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot). Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...

Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could transfer momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest barrier to that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.

Sent from my iPad

On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:

> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.
>
> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to the
> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this happy
> > event
> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
> >
> > --
> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> > for
> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> > kids pay for it."
> >
>
>

Correct. I mentioned the same thing, but I envisioned him pummeling
himself, while you have proposed something less masochistic. :-)

> One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then the
> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>
> Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it
> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
>
> Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could transfer
> momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest barrier to
> that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:
>
>> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.
>>
>> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to the
>> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this happy
>> > event
>> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
>> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
>> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
>> >
>> > --
>> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults
>> pay
>> > for
>> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
>> their
>> > kids pay for it."
>> >
>>
>>
>

Makes me contemplate other physical phenomena behind the Empress Wave, if
not in normal space beyond it (just more rare).

- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Mar 1, 2014 9:00 AM, "Eamon Watters" <> wrote:

>
>
> One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then the
> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>
> Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it
> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
>
> Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could transfer
> momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest barrier to
> that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:
>
>
>
> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.
>
> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to the
> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this happy
> > event
> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
> >
> > --
> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> > for
> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> > kids pay for it."
> >
>
>
>

Such as?

> Makes me contemplate other physical phenomena behind the Empress Wave, if
> not in normal space beyond it (just more rare).
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
> On Mar 1, 2014 9:00 AM, "Eamon Watters" <> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then
>> the
>> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>>
>> Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
>> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it
>> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
>>
>> Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could transfer
>> momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest barrier to
>> that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.
>>
>> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to the
>> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this happy
>> > event
>> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
>> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
>> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
>> >
>> > --
>> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults
>> pay
>> > for
>> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
>> their
>> > kids pay for it."
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>

Everything from unexplained weirdness visions, deja vu, and random GM
malevolence heh, heh like malfunctions, etc to plain strange astophysics
and scientific events. Comets and asteroids changing speed in their orbits
to cloud patterns in gas giants.

Maybe muted psi effects that have been discussed before either directly or
indirectly as a result of unexplained/unexplainable events in supranormal
space.

- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Mar 1, 2014 9:45 AM, <> wrote:

>
>
> Such as?
>
> > Makes me contemplate other physical phenomena behind the Empress Wave, if
> > not in normal space beyond it (just more rare).
> >
> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
> > On Mar 1, 2014 9:00 AM, "Eamon Watters" <>
> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then
> >> the
> >> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
> >>
> >> Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
> >> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it
> >> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
> >>
> >> Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could transfer
> >> momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest barrier to
> >> that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPad
> >>
> >> On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.
> >>
> >> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to the
> >> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this happy
> >> > event
> >> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
> >> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
> >> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults
> >> pay
> >> > for
> >> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
> >> their
> >> > kids pay for it."
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>

Yes, the trick was going to be writing it in such a way that, "this can
happen in your campaign" without making it seem like it was completely
pulling the rug out from under the "Traveller Universe As We Knew It."

> Everything from unexplained weirdness visions, deja vu, and random GM
> malevolence heh, heh like malfunctions, etc to plain strange astophysics
> and scientific events. Comets and asteroids changing speed in their
> orbits
> to cloud patterns in gas giants.
>
> Maybe muted psi effects that have been discussed before either directly or
> indirectly as a result of unexplained/unexplainable events in supranormal
> space.
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
> On Mar 1, 2014 9:45 AM, <> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Such as?
>>
>> > Makes me contemplate other physical phenomena behind the Empress Wave,
>> if
>> > not in normal space beyond it (just more rare).
>> >
>> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
>> > On Mar 1, 2014 9:00 AM, "Eamon Watters" <>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then
>> >> the
>> >> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>> >>
>> >> Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
>> >> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to
>> it
>> >> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
>> >>
>> >> Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could
>> transfer
>> >> momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest barrier
>> to
>> >> that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.
>> >>
>> >> Sent from my iPad
>> >>
>> >> On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.
>> >>
>> >> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to
>> the
>> >> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this
>> happy
>> >> > event
>> >> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
>> >> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
>> >> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
>> >> >
>> >> > --
>> >> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults
>> >> pay
>> >> > for
>> >> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
>> >> their
>> >> > kids pay for it."
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>

The face of the Empress appeared in my toast! And on a gas giant. I have visions of the sandstorm bit in "The Mummy" here.

Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPhone...

> On Mar 1, 2014, at 12:55, wrote:
>
> Yes, the trick was going to be writing it in such a way that, "this can
> happen in your campaign" without making it seem like it was completely
> pulling the rug out from under the "Traveller Universe As We Knew It."
>
> > Everything from unexplained weirdness visions, deja vu, and random GM
> > malevolence heh, heh like malfunctions, etc to plain strange astophysics
> > and scientific events. Comets and asteroids changing speed in their
> > orbits
> > to cloud patterns in gas giants.
> >
> > Maybe muted psi effects that have been discussed before either directly or
> > indirectly as a result of unexplained/unexplainable events in supranormal
> > space.
> >
> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
> > On Mar 1, 2014 9:45 AM, <> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Such as?
> >>
> >> > Makes me contemplate other physical phenomena behind the Empress Wave,
> >> if
> >> > not in normal space beyond it (just more rare).
> >> >
> >> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
> >> > On Mar 1, 2014 9:00 AM, "Eamon Watters" <>
> >> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then
> >> >> the
> >> >> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
> >> >>
> >> >> Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
> >> >> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to
> >> it
> >> >> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
> >> >>
> >> >> Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could
> >> transfer
> >> >> momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest barrier
> >> to
> >> >> that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.
> >> >>
> >> >> Sent from my iPad
> >> >>
> >> >> On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works out.
> >> >>
> >> >> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma to
> >> the
> >> >> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this
> >> happy
> >> >> > event
> >> >> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the game
> >> >> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of some
> >> >> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
> >> >> >
> >> >> > --
> >> >> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults
> >> >> pay
> >> >> > for
> >> >> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
> >> >> their
> >> >> > kids pay for it."
> >> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>

OK, blast it, I hate being in the dark, where is the hard data on the
Empress Wave located. the 1248 book?

--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

An important detail is that if the psion keeps pullin on the object,
that means that he's exerting a constant force. Which means the
object will *accelerate*, So the longer he pulls, the faster it'll be
moving.

This could be *really* bad when they meet.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com

Dear Dave -

I, for one, thank you for imparting us with your collective hooey.

;-)

(I'm a terrible fan of peeking at the "man behind the curtain" - to find out
what's actually going on, why certain decisions were made, what the
designers were smoking at the time, etc etc. For example, I love watching
the "behind the scenes" extras on movie DVDs... ;-)
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                   
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"

hmmm, I thought the whole NON-Newtonian aspect has already been nailed
down. because now that I go back and refresh my neurons, didn't FF&S have a
PSI JUMP as alternative tech? meaning the JSPACE connection between psi and
a Newtonian universe has already been established?
just saying 8-)

--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

Yeah, but none of the alternate tech was canon. Subspace is my favorite
for a home brew I started up but never finished

- Sent from my SM-N900T
On Mar 1, 2014 7:11 PM, "Another Carpenter" <>
wrote:

>
>
> hmmm, I thought the whole NON-Newtonian aspect has already been nailed
> down. because now that I go back and refresh my neurons, didn't FF&S have a
> PSI JUMP as alternative tech? meaning the JSPACE connection between psi and
> a Newtonian universe has already been established?
> just saying 8-)
>
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
> their kids pay for it."
>
>

Subspace was too ..... trekkie for me. However, "PSI-DRIVES&quot; have an
exceptional sci fi progenitor in the entire "Rowan" series by Anne
McAffrey. A truly worthy read if you can find all the books. Hmmm, a TK
cargo handler, who can grab boxes from orbit and 'port them to ground? all
with Hi Tech pseudo scientific Psi enhancing techno handwavium around 8-)

--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

I believe that Psi-Jump Drives were also the central concept for the SPI
Starforce series, but those were boardgames rather than RPGs. The Guild
HighLiners (something close to that) were also Psi drives.

> Subspace was too ..... trekkie for me. However, "PSI-DRIVES&quot; have an
> exceptional sci fi progenitor in the entire "Rowan" series by Anne
> McAffrey. A truly worthy read if you can find all the books. Hmmm, a TK
> cargo handler, who can grab boxes from orbit and 'port them to ground? all
> with Hi Tech pseudo scientific Psi enhancing techno handwavium around 8-)
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for
> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> kids pay for it."
>

Depends on what you mean by "hard data." The 1248 book was Martin
Dougherty's version, not TNE's version. Also, I have not read the 1248
book, so I can't tell you what the differences are. The "hard data" was
never published in TNE, and Dougherty did not base his 1248 books on any
TNE information other than what had been published + his
speculation/decisions.

> OK, blast it, I hate being in the dark, where is the hard data on the
> Empress Wave located. the 1248 book?
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for
> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> kids pay for it."
>

You're very welcome. Where I can remember the details (in some cases very
clearly, in others, not so much) I am happy to do so. In this group
anyway. Other groups have cranky gatekeeper trolls that make me tired of
wasting my good will.

> Dear Dave -
>
> I, for one, thank you for imparting us with your collective hooey.
>
> ;-)
>
> (I'm a terrible fan of peeking at the "man behind the curtain" - to find
> out
> what's actually going on, why certain decisions were made, what the
> designers were smoking at the time, etc etc. For example, I love watching
> the "behind the scenes" extras on movie DVDs... ;-)
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                   
> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>
>

> The face of the Empress appeared in my toast!

I like that. Not in published game terms (except Challenge 59 1/2), but I
just like it. Of course that's exactly the sort of thing that the people
who hate me accuse me of liking.

> And on a gas giant. I have
> visions of the sandstorm bit in "The Mummy" here.
>
> Derek Stanley
> Sent from my iPhone...
>
>> On Mar 1, 2014, at 12:55, wrote:
>>
>> Yes, the trick was going to be writing it in such a way that, "this can
>> happen in your campaign" without making it seem like it was completely
>> pulling the rug out from under the "Traveller Universe As We Knew It."
>>
>> > Everything from unexplained weirdness visions, deja vu, and random GM
>> > malevolence heh, heh like malfunctions, etc to plain strange
>> astophysics
>> > and scientific events. Comets and asteroids changing speed in their
>> > orbits
>> > to cloud patterns in gas giants.
>> >
>> > Maybe muted psi effects that have been discussed before either
>> directly or
>> > indirectly as a result of unexplained/unexplainable events in
>> supranormal
>> > space.
>> >
>> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
>> > On Mar 1, 2014 9:45 AM, <> wrote:
>> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Such as?
>> >>
>> >> > Makes me contemplate other physical phenomena behind the Empress
>> Wave,
>> >> if
>> >> > not in normal space beyond it (just more rare).
>> >> >
>> >> > - Sent from my SM-N900T
>> >> > On Mar 1, 2014 9:00 AM, "Eamon Watters" <>
>> >> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian,
>> then
>> >> >> the
>> >> >> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to
>> boot).
>> >> >> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up
>> to
>> >> it
>> >> >> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Of course, if the TKer can make the conceptual leap, they could
>> >> transfer
>> >> >> momentum to themselves - but psychology could be the biggest
>> barrier
>> >> to
>> >> >> that, much like Niven's Detective with the "imaginary&quot; third arm.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Sent from my iPad
>> >> >>
>> >> >> On 1 Mar 2014, at 13:14, wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Good, glad to be of help. Look forward to hearing how it works
>> out.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> > Well, it is going to take about 2 weeks to bring said dilemma
>> to
>> >> the
>> >> >> > surprised notice of the PCs, I shall update this post when this
>> >> happy
>> >> >> > event
>> >> >> > occurs. Thanks to everyone for replying to this. Knowing the
>> game
>> >> >> > rule non-Newtonian nature of TK now gives me the beginnings of
>> some
>> >> >> > Deliciously Villainous thoughts. 8-)
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > --
>> >> >> > "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and
>> adults
>> >> >> pay
>> >> >> > for
>> >> >> > it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want
>> and
>> >> >> their
>> >> >> > kids pay for it."
>> >> >> >
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >>
>> >> >
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>

Did it? If our FF&S had it (I think that some subsequent versions of
Traveller have retained the title) I don't recall, but we did put in a few
"bookmarks&quot;/"thumbnail sketches" of alternative FTL drive concepts. I
remember we had the 2300 stutterwarp, a kind of Star Trek warp drive, and
maybe a couple other things. Those were mostly to drive home the point
that, with a relatively minor change in the way you characterized your
central FTL drive, you could use the rest of the book to create a universe
with a wholly different feel. And also to set up TNE to be able to support
some parallel or one-off campaigns, like 2300. Which never happened. We
definitely did intend to do 2300, and we wanted people to think, "Hey, I
could do Dune with this, or Star Trek with this," or whatever.

> hmmm, I thought the whole NON-Newtonian aspect has already been nailed
> down. because now that I go back and refresh my neurons, didn't FF&S have
> a
> PSI JUMP as alternative tech? meaning the JSPACE connection between psi
> and
> a Newtonian universe has already been established?
> just saying 8-)
>
>
> --
> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
> for
> it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
> kids pay for it."
>

Right, they were all "NOT the 3d Imperium universe storyline."

> Yeah, but none of the alternate tech was canon. Subspace is my favorite
> for a home brew I started up but never finished
>
> - Sent from my SM-N900T
> On Mar 1, 2014 7:11 PM, "Another Carpenter" <>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> hmmm, I thought the whole NON-Newtonian aspect has already been nailed
>> down. because now that I go back and refresh my neurons, didn't FF&S
>> have a
>> PSI JUMP as alternative tech? meaning the JSPACE connection between psi
>> and
>> a Newtonian universe has already been established?
>> just saying 8-)
>>
>>
>> --
>> "Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay
>> for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and
>> their kids pay for it."
>>
>>
>

We made use of the psionic transfer drive in FFS1 and then extrapolated, if
the drive could amplify teleport then another version could amplify
telepathy, psychokinetics etc. Then you have the basis for Bradley's
Darkover psi matrix technology, Babylon 5and that setup on the world above
which Babylon Five orbited. The monsters of the ID from Forbidden Planet
etc.

Antony

Attachment(s) from Antony Farrell

1 of 1 Photo(s)

Dear Folks -

Eamon wrote:
>One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then the
TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>
>Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it
again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...

Why be so strict? Allow them to use it as a surfboard!

(_Dark Star_ and the Silver Surfer^TM both come to mind.)

In one game I was running, Ervmisbe the Droyne (in Efate orbit) hatched a
cunning plan to teleport to a Zho cruiser (also in orbit) to attach a small
nuke to its hull. After a bit of "gunboat diplomacy" (and one less Zho
cruiser), the remaining Zhos in the squadron allowed the PC's (and the
remnants of a Marine task force) to depart in a requisitioned transport.
That was back in the early 90's, and the guys still chuckle about it.

Of course, being a Droyne he had Psi-15. Otherwise, you do realise how
self-limiting psionics in Traveller psionics normally is? It's not like the
_Compleat Psionics Handbook_ for D&D. You can't turn your arm into a mithril
sword, for example.

A psion usually doesn't have enough "juice" to do much harm (or doesn't dare
to, depending on milieu); why dampen their creativity when they do come up
with a great idea?
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                   
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"

Your Dark Star reference reminds me of strong SF memory. Back in high
school all of us wargamers would get together in the library in the
mornings to resolve the previous night's PBS (Play By School) orders--at
various times I had four, five, or six different games set up in my
bedroom at the same time: Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, Mech War '77, some
SPI Frederick the Great game, a couple others I can't think of. I remember
one morning I had heard a commercial on the radio the night before, with
weird sound effects in it, followed by the narrator saying, things like,
"Don't worry, that's just the sound of the Death Star blowing up a
planet." It seemed like it must be an ad for a SF movie, so I asked the
guys, "hey, does anyone know about a new SF movie coming out that this
would be the ad for?" Everyone just looked at me blankly and finally Eric
Walters, who would go on to become a Marine officer said, "No, you're just
confused. You're just thinking about Dark Star."

That was probably the last time in history that a Star Wars reference
would elicit mute shrugs, and also the last time anyone would ever confuse
it with Dark Star.

It's similar to an old BBC recording of Led Zeppelin on Old Grey Whistle
Test, I think, of probably the first time Zep played Stairway to Heaven
live. You can hear there is a live audience, and then the opening notes of
Stairway start playing, and the familiar tune keeps going, but IN SILENCE,
because the audience has never heard it before. Last time in history that
ever happened too.

> Dear Folks -
>
> Eamon wrote:
>>One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then the
> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>>
>>Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it
> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
>
> Why be so strict? Allow them to use it as a surfboard!
>
> (_Dark Star_ and the Silver Surfer^TM both come to mind.)
>
> In one game I was running, Ervmisbe the Droyne (in Efate orbit) hatched a
> cunning plan to teleport to a Zho cruiser (also in orbit) to attach a
> small
> nuke to its hull. After a bit of "gunboat diplomacy" (and one less Zho
> cruiser), the remaining Zhos in the squadron allowed the PC's (and the
> remnants of a Marine task force) to depart in a requisitioned transport.
> That was back in the early 90's, and the guys still chuckle about it.
>
> Of course, being a Droyne he had Psi-15. Otherwise, you do realise how
> self-limiting psionics in Traveller psionics normally is? It's not like
> the
> _Compleat Psionics Handbook_ for D&D. You can't turn your arm into a
> mithril
> sword, for example.
>
> A psion usually doesn't have enough "juice" to do much harm (or doesn't
> dare
> to, depending on milieu); why dampen their creativity when they do come up
> with a great idea?
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                   
> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>

Re: your other points, I agree on giving players rope to try out their
creative ideas. I shared a similar story about smuggling a nuke aboard an
orbiting warship on this list. Too many Traveller adventures were written
that just pushed the players through a movie script with rings through
their noses.

I also know what you mean about the self-limiting nature of psionics. It
got to the point where psionics had just about been written out of
Traveller by neglect. The psionic institutes figured in almost all of the
early LBB adventures, but after a while it was as if it never existed, the
game went other directions. Part of what I was trying to do with TNE was
say, "remember psionics? It's still there, and you can do stuff with it."
Still waiting for that other life for my dreams to show up.

> Dear Folks -
>
> Eamon wrote:
>>One thing has occurred to me: if the TK effect is non-Newtonian, then the
> TKer could use their TK to transfer momentum to themselves:
>>
>>Move a big enough piece of debris (and a non-jagged piece to boot).
> Accelerate it towards them - momentum transfer. When knees feel up to it
> again, repeat the process. Kind of like a Psi Project Orion...
>
> Why be so strict? Allow them to use it as a surfboard!
>
> (_Dark Star_ and the Silver Surfer^TM both come to mind.)
>
> In one game I was running, Ervmisbe the Droyne (in Efate orbit) hatched a
> cunning plan to teleport to a Zho cruiser (also in orbit) to attach a
> small
> nuke to its hull. After a bit of "gunboat diplomacy" (and one less Zho
> cruiser), the remaining Zhos in the squadron allowed the PC's (and the
> remnants of a Marine task force) to depart in a requisitioned transport.
> That was back in the early 90's, and the guys still chuckle about it.
>
> Of course, being a Droyne he had Psi-15. Otherwise, you do realise how
> self-limiting psionics in Traveller psionics normally is? It's not like
> the
> _Compleat Psionics Handbook_ for D&D. You can't turn your arm into a
> mithril
> sword, for example.
>
> A psion usually doesn't have enough "juice" to do much harm (or doesn't
> dare
> to, depending on milieu); why dampen their creativity when they do come up
> with a great idea?
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                   
> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>

I'm sorry Anthony, but as much as I would like to open and read it, it
fails to completely open for me.
--
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for
it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their
kids pay for it."

Dear Folks -

Dave wrote:
> I also know what you mean about the self-limiting nature of psionics. It
got to the point where psionics had just about been written out of Traveller
by neglect.

One of the coolest things that TNE did was to dust off psionics and enhance
them enough that they became desirable again. Not to mention making them
more useful than in the original rules, with better explanations of how the
various abilities should be handled in-game (e.g. the detailed breakdown of
telepathic effects - how you used it, and what you "got back" - great
guidance for us poor referees. ;-).

A few new "Specials&quot; were also included, although even a few more would have
been even better. I've thought about allowing some Droyne-only abilities
(e.g. "psionic invisibility", obviously stolen from Niven's _A Gift from
Earth_) to be granted to humans as Special (TNE: Arcana) psi skills. The
trick is to make them gimmicks (as handy and useful as "normal" skills)
without making them over-powering. (Anyone else have other Special skills in
mind? Pun intended...)
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                   
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"

Thanks, David, I'm glad that turned out to be something that worked for you.

A lot of the excitement that I had about rejuvenating psionics in TNE came
from just have finished editing/developing the Dark Con Empathic and
Protodimension sourcebooks (You may not find my name in any those because
by then it had gotten to the point where I was editing and developing
everything we did, Gygax included, and I felt like I'd look like some kind
of narcissist and make GDW look short-handed if my name was on everything.
A lot of writers adopt multiple pen names to avoid this same problem, but
I just said "screw it" and left myself out). I felt like DC was just
finally hitting its stride as we were having to shut it down (too many
games to manage at one time, had to let something go), and even though we
had to let DC go, some of the work we had done on DC Empathic SB could be
transplanted into TNE (part of the point behind the House Rules concept),
which is where some of the new abilities came from. I didn't add more
because I was trying to be careful, I didn't want Traveller players
complaining about how TNE turned Traveller into Dark Conspiracy. Always
trying to walk a fine line.

> Dear Folks -
>
> Dave wrote:
>> I also know what you mean about the self-limiting nature of psionics. It
> got to the point where psionics had just about been written out of
> Traveller
> by neglect.
>
> One of the coolest things that TNE did was to dust off psionics and
> enhance
> them enough that they became desirable again. Not to mention making them
> more useful than in the original rules, with better explanations of how
> the
> various abilities should be handled in-game (e.g. the detailed breakdown
> of
> telepathic effects - how you used it, and what you "got back" - great
> guidance for us poor referees. ;-).
>
> A few new "Specials&quot; were also included, although even a few more would
> have
> been even better. I've thought about allowing some Droyne-only abilities
> (e.g. "psionic invisibility", obviously stolen from Niven's _A Gift from
> Earth_) to be granted to humans as Special (TNE: Arcana) psi skills. The
> trick is to make them gimmicks (as handy and useful as "normal" skills)
> without making them over-powering. (Anyone else have other Special skills
> in
> mind? Pun intended...)
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
> http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw                   
> "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
>
>

I wouldn't be too sure of that, it may have been the audience culture of the time. I was once gobsmacked when watching an early Black Sabbath concert on TV. All of the audience were sitting nice and quiet as the metal classics washed over them - save one guy at the back perched on his seat playing an imaginary drum set.

--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 2/3/14, <> wrote:

Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Re: interesting question on telekinesis.
To:
Date: Sunday, 2 March, 2014, 21:44


It's similar to an old BBC recording of Led Zeppelin on
Old Grey Whistle Test, I think, of probably the first time Zep played
Stairway to Heaven live. You can hear there is a live audience, and then the
opening notes of Stairway start playing, and the familiar tune keeps going,
but IN SILENCE, because the audience has never heard it before. Last time in
history that ever happened too.

Point taken. I got my impression from the liner notes which said, "You can
tell this is the first time Stairway was played live because..." and the
performance was before the release of Zep IV/"Zoso."

But, to buttress your point, I attended a show back when Tom Petty & The
Heartbreakers, Bob Dylan, a The Grateful Dead were touring together at RFK
Stadium. The show went something like: Tom Petty & HBs, then Dylan backed
by HBs, going back and forth like that for a few short sets, then the Dead
at the end. I was appalled at the way the crowd, mostly Dead-Heads,
behaved. All during all of the TP & HB and Dylan sets they were standing
up, wandering around, selling each other hand-braided bracelets and weed,
etc. Then as soon as the Dead came on, a hush came over the stadium and
they all SAT DOWN like they were in church. Really? I could see them doing
that to Petty, but to Dylan as well? Unbelievable. But the point is, I
have seen hard-core fans behave as you describe.

> I wouldn't be too sure of that, it may have been the audience culture of
> the time. I was once gobsmacked when watching an early Black Sabbath
> concert on TV. All of the audience were sitting nice and quiet as the
> metal classics washed over them - save one guy at the back perched on his
> seat playing an imaginary drum set.
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Sun, 2/3/14, <> wrote:
>
> Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Re: interesting question on telekinesis.
> To:
> Date: Sunday, 2 March, 2014, 21:44
>
>
> It's similar to an old BBC recording of Led Zeppelin on
> Old Grey Whistle Test, I think, of probably the first time Zep played
> Stairway to Heaven live. You can hear there is a live audience, and then
> the
> opening notes of Stairway start playing, and the familiar tune keeps
> going,
> but IN SILENCE, because the audience has never heard it before. Last time
> in
> history that ever happened too.
>
>
>

---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

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
>

Cool. I'm glad AotR is one of them, that was one of my favorites.
Definitely a case of lemons and lemonade.

Frank described it this past year at Celesticon as proof that "TNE was the
first post-modern RPG." That may or may not be true, but it's amusing to
get to the point where you can discuss an RPG as if it were literature in
the NYT Review of Books, even tongue-in-cheek.

>
> ---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
>
>
>

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
>>
>

Yeah, probably my single favorite source book of any RPG, not having had
the nostalgia for Spinward Marches (though of course, I very much enjoy
the refs section).

- Sent from my SM-N900T

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

---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

Yes, you are of course correct. And in getting distracted by the shiny
object of how so many people wanted to collect "All of the UWPs for All Of
Charted Space(TM), And We Must Have Them All Now!" (the chant of the mobs
outside my window) I didn't touch on the REAL, and (semi) USEFUL purpose
of the UWPs all along. Which you all know, so why am I wasting your time
saying this? Idunno, stimulus response, I guess. Struck a nerve.

Since I'm not plowing any new ground here, I'll try to hit the key point
and back out.

UPPs certainly do serve to "prod the imagination" to guide (force) the Ref
to make different worlds different in the way they "realistically" "would
be." (Annoying finger quotes because we don't really know any of this, but
it's SF so we make the best effort we can.) And in this they were helpful,
but became a problem because they were not helpful enough. In Kantian
style I will say that "there were those who experienced this," and those
who did not, so I am really only speaking to those who did. And I think
there were always Traveller fans who were mostly or exclusively Refs,
mostly or exclusively players, and mostly or exclusively
readers/collectors. And those groups were always going to need/want
different things, and it was very hard (impossible?) to know who was who,
and what the demographic breakout was.

As someone who was almost exclusively a Ref, I also knew what many others
did, that the UPPs were "not helpful enough," because of an almost
universal Traveller effect that we have also discussed, the great mobility
of players. They were always seeing the planet whose UPP you HAD carefully
and painstakingly, and with great effort fleshed out, and saying, "screw
that, we're flying someplace else," to a UPP you had NOT yet worked out.
(Frank and I and Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert were discussing this at this
last Celesticon, and I think it was Jim who pointed out, "Starships, hell,
it's worse than that. With air rafts the players just fly over everything,
what's the good of animal encounter tables?") So you had to hastily work
out what that UPP meant, and over time you felt this frustration that the
UPPs weren't really making the worlds different, they were just making
them "more of the same," in the form of a collection of tortuously weird
stereotypes that you had to fall back on: the domed Hi-Pop world, the
"Agricultural" world with no sunlight, the water world with (and it was
easier to mix this one up) floating cities or islands with dense cities,
or sub-surface domed cities, or the world you ripped off from one of the
double adventures and simply re-used every time they landed on a world
with a similar UPP. And this was creatively frustrating, because in some
essential way way the wide variation and random nature of the UPPs was
inherently "indigestible" in the fast-paced way that Traveller
allowed/required them to be used. Where you WANTED to be Poul Anderson,
you felt more often like a plagiarizing hack. And how many times did we
ask ourselves the question, "what the hell does Feudal Technocracy mean
this time?"

This issue was semi-obscured by the way UPPs were ALSO designed to be
used, in the mathematical Free Trader campaign using the trade tables,
where the group would skip from one world the next, spending five minutes
to consult the trade table, calculate their profits, use their JOT or
Admin or Trading skill (depending on which generation of the game you were
using) and move on.

And that really ends my observation on "the trouble with UPPs", but I will
give you two "choose your own adventure" endings to this, because I'm
tapping a vein of memory and am on a roll.

Ending 1, "Quick and Get Outta Here":

This led to various attempts to "fix" this over the years, like the 2300
system with stylized Garden worlds, Hot House Worlds, etc. However, the
lure of the UPPs kept sucking us back to them. First, because they were
published Canon (this usage began life as a pejorative term, by the way),
but also, and more insidiously, there is just something so damned
attractive about the numerological beauty of all that compacted data in
the subsector and sector data (like in Star Trek's "By Any Other Name"
where the Kelvans push the button on their belts and turn the crew into
gypsum/drywall/ceiling tile cuboctahedrons [I just looked that up on
Wikipedia; I wanted to say "icosahedron" but knew they weren't]--I still
watch one scene very carefully, because I am convinced that Rojan mixes up
the yeoman and security guard before he kills one), so we kept sticking
with it.

The End

Ending 2, "More Dave Chunky Hooey Yammer Dance Re-Mix":

This led to various attempts to "fix" this over the years, like the 2300
system with stylized Garden worlds, Hot House Worlds, etc. When I said to
Terry McInnes, "Yes, go ahead and write World Tamer's Handbook," (Terry
was like a one-man mob outside my window, and I mean that in a charming
and affectionate way) I also instructed him, "try to cross-breed the
world-generating system with the 2300 system," not realizing what a stupid
meaningless instruction that was. Terry, being the true gentleman that he
is, suffered in silence and never once called or wrote me to say, "You
idiot!...." When I got the MS, I looked at the system Terry had come up
with and thought, "What a mess, I'll have to re-do this." And then sat
down and pulled out my books and realized that all of the 8 or 10 2300
world types were basically two UPPs, the medium size full-atmo, and the
airless rock, and screamed at myself, "You idiot!" (I can only hope that
Terry felt my scream rippling Vulcan-USS-Intrepid-style through the
space-time continuum and felt some small measure of satisfaction.)

Then Frank took over some of the development of World Tamer's (I was
scheduled for something else that was already running late, I came back to
finish WTH later and added stuff like acclimatization, not as much as I
wanted to, but better than nothing) and decided that Terry's
colony-building system was too loosey-goosey (i.e., player-scaled, not
wired up to world-scale economics) and created the more complex economic
development system. Which I liked, but it also reminded me of another
issue we always ran up against in Traveller.

You know how I'm always whining about how we always felt stretched
(crucified) between two poles? And there were several sets of these:
Campaign background vs. open-ended "any universe" rules, How it "would
really work" vs. Player-expected SF (or established Traveller) tropes,
Player-scale actions vs. Bigger storyline, Detailing individual worlds vs.
skipping across whole sectors, whatever I called the two cross-cutting
poles in my long post about space missiles, and so on. Well here's another
one: Mathematical, systematic, economic-scale models vs. Player-scale "I'm
gonna build me a village" scale.

The economic-scale stuff Frank did was always good, but had the danger to
me of feeling too deterministic. It is absolutely correct and logical and
utterly unassailable, but can complicate some of the story-telling nature
of the background and not give players adequate "hooks" to get or feel
involved. As examples, you see early examples of this in the "battalions
per world" tables in LBB Book 4 (Mercenary) which is endlessly useful to
refs trying to work out local military forces in a campaign (and for which
I used it many times), continued on into Fifth Frontier War, the similar
"ships per world" calculator (in what, Path of Tears?) and continuing on
to the WTH colony-building economics model.

AS AN ASIDE on economic models vs. storytelling backgrounds... Every
incompetent writer who writes a "how to write compelling characters"
column always gets to the gaggy cliche, "when you find your characters
getting up off the page and talking to you, and acting in ways you didn't
expect..." (I have one particular incompetent writer in mind, but s/he's
dead now.) Every once in a while Traveller would do that to us (insert
your speculation on whether we were incompetent writers here). In this
specific example, you take the "ships per world" calculator, and one day
Frank came in and announced, "Oh crap, Solee." So the choice we had was:
hand-wave it away ("a particular virulent form of Virus hit here..."--and
there's nothing wrong with that, who here really believes that the whole
3I went kaflooey after one lousy assassination--they never thought of
that?), or say, "okay, let's follow our own rules and ride this out, it
will be interesting." You know how we went.

Meanwhile, back at determinism, I loved Frank's economic model, and tried
to marry it (i.e., cross-wire it down to player level) with some of
Terry's player-level stuff. My recollection is that I was unhappy with the
seamlessness of the marriage, but such is publishing to deadline so you
can keep the lights on. I would say, "the rest is history," but it
sometimes feels like, "the rest is an unmarked grave off to the side of an
old battlefield where they're getting ready to build a shopping mall."

Did anyone ever try playing a WTH campaign? My guess is that those who
bought it mostly used bits and pieces of it as generalized resources, and
I think there were some good multi-purpose resources in there. And YES, a
lot of that was as good as it was because it was recycled DGP WBH stuff,
which I documented in the credits but am repeating again here.

The (other) End (Have I said all this before? I'm getting this sick
feeling...But I also feel like I don't have time to research my old posts
beforehand.)

> ---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
>
>
>

I used the WTH mass combat system - because it is the complete version of the half-baked mass combat system presented in the back of Striker-II.

If you have a decent scale hex map from another board wargame and create counters for the combat units it works well to resolve military campaigns.

Otherwise, I preferred the later Pocket Empires to WTH as an overall system.

I forgot the mass combat system was in there, and actually don't remember
it even now. I do remember that "mass combat systems" were something that
was always looping around needing to be bolted onto this, that, or the
other game, and also that in most cases it didn't scale down well to
player level, i.e., if PCs were part of the "mass," what happened to them,
how were their unique skills represented at the mass level, etc. "Perfect
world" is always a sampling error.

"Pocket Empires" being from a post-TNE Traveller incarnation, right?

> I used the WTH mass combat system - because it is the complete version of
> the half-baked mass combat system presented in the back of Striker-II.
>
> If you have a decent scale hex map from another board wargame and create
> counters for the combat units it works well to resolve military
> campaigns.
>
> Otherwise, I preferred the later Pocket Empires to WTH as an overall
> system.

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.


WTH also had the black powder design sequences that were an addition to FF&S.

I've always thought, and thus agree with you, that he collection and creation of UPP / UWP codes simply for the sake of creating data or completionism was a perfect example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should" taken to the Nth degree.

The typical player is unlikely to ever have more than a passing moment of influence on even 1% of the stars in the 3rd Imperium.  Why do you need to have ALL of them?  I suppose there's a small amount of comfort in being able to hold up a peice of paper and say I know what's out there and you do to but to be honest that's never really appealed to me.  The small "B reaking News" stories in Survival Margin gave me far more useful information on what was going on in the Imperium than 10,000 UWP codes ever did. 

I can also understand the GM's frustration in fully realizing a hand full of worlds to the left only to have the players decide to exit stage right and thus render a weeks worth of blood sweat and tears into a pointless pile of paper.  I've probably done this to more than one GM on more than one occasion over the years.  All the games I ever did typically started with me picking a subsector and then detailing every subsector that touches that one.  So basically you end up with 9 sub sectors and a few pages of info on the worlds contained there in.  PoT was smart in that it focused the players attention in 2 cardinal directions and then focused on those areas.

I feel the frustration that the G-Raft and G-Belt introduced into the game, shame MMO designers didn't figure this out before they let the genie out of the bottle.

I had another point but...  I'm falling asleep at my desk here so I have no clue in which direction I was headed...   Blast...

----- Original Message -----

From:
To: "Traveller TNE" <>
Sent: Friday, March 7, 2014 1:06:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Re: interesting question on telekinesis.

 

Yes, you are of course correct. And in getting distracted by the shiny
object of how so many people wanted to collect "All of the UWPs for All Of
Charted Space(TM), And We Must Have Them All Now!" (the chant of the mobs
outside my window) I didn't touch on the REAL, and (semi) USEFUL purpose
of the UWPs all along. Which you all know, so why am I wasting your time
saying this? Idunno, stimulus response, I guess. Struck a nerve.

Since I'm not plowing any new ground here, I'll try to hit the key point
and back out.

UPPs certainly do serve to "prod the imagination" to guide (force) the Ref
to make different worlds different in the way they "realistically" "would
be." (Annoying finger quotes because we don't really know any of this, but
it's SF so we make the best effort we can.) And in this they were helpful,
but became a problem because they were not helpful enough. In Kantian
style I will say that "there were those who experienced this," and those
who did not, so I am really only speaking to those who did. And I think
there were always Traveller fans who were mostly or exclusively Refs,
mostly or exclusively players, and mostly or exclusively
readers/collectors. And those groups were always going to need/want
different things, and it was very hard (impossible?) to know who was who,
and what the demographic breakout was.

As someone who was almost exclusively a Ref, I also knew what many others
did, that the UPPs were "not helpful enough," because of an almost
universal Traveller effect that we have also discussed, the great mobility
of players. They were always seeing the planet whose UPP you HAD carefully
and painstakingly, and with great effort fleshed out, and saying, "screw
that, we're flying someplace else," to a UPP you had NOT yet worked out.
(Frank and I and Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert were discussing this at this
last Celesticon, and I think it was Jim who pointed out, "Starships, hell,
it's worse than that. With air rafts the players just fly over everything,
what's the good of animal encounter tables?") So you had to hastily work
out what that UPP meant, and over time you felt this frustration that the
UPPs weren't really making the worlds different, they were just making
them "more of the same," in the form of a collection of tortuously weird
stereotypes that you had to fall back on: the domed Hi-Pop world, the
"Agricultural" world with no sunlight, the water world with (and it was
easier to mix this one up) floating cities or islands with dense cities,
or sub-surface domed cities, or the world you ripped off from one of the
double adventures and simply re-used every time they landed on a world
with a similar UPP. And this was creatively frustrating, because in some
essential way way the wide variation and random nature of the UPPs was
inherently "indigestible" in the fast-paced way that Traveller
allowed/required them to be used. Where you WANTED to be Poul Anderson,
you felt more often like a plagiarizing hack. And how many times did we
ask ourselves the question, "what the hell does Feudal Technocracy mean
this time?"

This issue was semi-obscured by the way UPPs were ALSO designed to be
used, in the mathematical Free Trader campaign using the trade tables,
where the group would skip from one world the next, spending five minutes
to consult the trade table, calculate their profits, use their JOT or
Admin or Trading skill (depending on which generation of the game you were
using) and move on.

And that really ends my observation on "the trouble with UPPs", but I will
give you two "choose your own adventure" endings to this, because I'm
tapping a vein of memory and am on a roll.

Ending 1, "Quick and Get Outta Here":

This led to various attempts to "fix" this over the years, like the 2300
system with stylized Garden worlds, Hot House Worlds, etc. However, the
lure of the UPPs kept sucking us back to them. First, because they were
published Canon (this usage began life as a pejorative term, by the way),
but also, and more insidiously, there is just something so damned
attractive about the numerological beauty of all that compacted data in
the subsector and sector data (like in Star Trek's "By Any Other Name"
where the Kelvans push the button on their belts and turn the crew into
gypsum/drywall/ceiling tile cuboctahedrons [I just looked that up on
Wikipedia; I wanted to say "icosahedron" but knew they weren't]--I still
watch one scene very carefully, because I am convinced that Rojan mixes up
the yeoman and security guard before he kills one), so we kept sticking
with it.

The End

Ending 2, "More Dave Chunky Hooey Yammer Dance Re-Mix":

This led to various attempts to "fix" this over the years, like the 2300
system with stylized Garden worlds, Hot House Worlds, etc. When I said to
Terry McInnes, "Yes, go ahead and write World Tamer's Handbook," (Terry
was like a one-man mob outside my window, and I mean that in a charming
and affectionate way) I also instructed him, "try to cross-breed the
world-generating system with the 2300 system," not realizing what a stupid
meaningless instruction that was. Terry, being the true gentleman that he
is, suffered in silence and never once called or wrote me to say, "You
idiot!...." When I got the MS, I looked at the system Terry had come up
with and thought, "What a mess, I'll have to re-do this." And then sat
down and pulled out my books and realized that all of the 8 or 10 2300
world types were basically two UPPs, the medium size full-atmo, and the
airless rock, and screamed at myself, "You idiot!" (I can only hope that
Terry felt my scream rippling Vulcan-USS-Intrepid-style through the
space-time continuum and felt some small measure of satisfaction.)

Then Frank took over some of the development of World Tamer's (I was
scheduled for something else that was already running late, I came back to
finish WTH later and added stuff like acclimatization, not as much as I
wanted to, but better than nothing) and decided that Terry's
colony-building system was too loosey-goosey (i.e., player-scaled, not
wired up to world-scale economics) and created the more complex economic
development system. Which I liked, but it also reminded me of another
issue we always ran up against in Traveller.

You know how I'm always whining about how we always felt stretched
(crucified) between two poles? And there were several sets of these:
Campaign background vs. open-ended "any universe" rules, How it "would
really work" vs. Player-expected SF (or established Traveller) tropes,
Player-scale actions vs. Bigger storyline, Detailing individual worlds vs.
skipping across whole sectors, whatever I called the two cross-cutting
poles in my long post about space missiles, and so on. Well here's another
one: Mathematical, systematic, economic-scale models vs. Player-scale "I'm
gonna build me a village" scale.

The economic-scale stuff Frank did was always good, but had the danger to
me of feeling too deterministic. It is absolutely correct and logical and
utterly unassailable, but can complicate some of the story-telling nature
of the background and not give players adequate "hooks" to get or feel
involved. As examples, you see early examples of this in the "battalions
per world" tables in LBB Book 4 (Mercenary) which is endlessly useful to
refs trying to work out local military forces in a campaign (and for which
I used it many times), continued on into Fifth Frontier War, the similar
"ships per world" calculator (in what, Path of Tears?) and continuing on
to the WTH colony-building economics model.

AS AN ASIDE on economic models vs. storytelling backgrounds... Every
incompetent writer who writes a "how to write compelling characters"
column always gets to the gaggy cliche, "when you find your characters
getting up off the page and talking to you, and acting in ways you didn't
expect..." (I have one particular incompetent writer in mind, but s/he's
dead now.) Every once in a while Traveller would do that to us (insert
your speculation on whether we were incompetent writers here). In this
specific example, you take the "ships per world" calculator, and one day
Frank came in and announced, "Oh crap, Solee." So the choice we had was:
hand-wave it away ("a particular virulent form of Virus hit here..."--and
there's nothing wrong with that, who here really believes that the whole
3I went kaflooey after one lousy assassination--they never thought of
that?), or say, "okay, let's follow our own rules and ride this out, it
will be interesting." You know how we went.

Meanwhile, back at determinism, I loved Frank's economic model, and tried
to marry it (i.e., cross-wire it down to player level) with some of
Terry's player-level stuff. My recollection is that I was unhappy with the
seamlessness of the marriage, but such is publishing to deadline so you
can keep the lights on. I would say, "the rest is history," but it
sometimes feels like, "the rest is an unmarked grave off to the side of an
old battlefield where they're getting ready to build a shopping mall."

Did anyone ever try playing a WTH campaign? My guess is that those who
bought it mostly used bits and pieces of it as generalized resources, and
I think there were some good multi-purpose resources in there. And YES, a
lot of that was as good as it was because it was recycled DGP WBH stuff,
which I documented in the credits but am repeating again here.

The (other) End (Have I said all this before? I'm getting this sick
feeling...But I also feel like I don't have time to research my old posts
beforehand.)

> ---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
>
>
>

Derek--

My response to the note below is, "thanks," and "amen brother." It is
always nice when "my experience, which I think is shared by others" is
confirmed by others. In other words, "I may be crazy, but this case is not
the proof that will put me away."

Your observation on PoT is correct in what we were trying to do: open up
the former 3I from at least two directions (RC and Regency, MAYBE add a
pocket empire or so as time permitted) so we could articulate, "here's
where we're looking right now," and do them with a better level of detail.

Re: Your comment on G-raft and G-belt, I will make a differing observation
on design choice. In a SF game, you had to have those to represent the
expected flavor. If anything, including the animal encounter tables was
the mistake, as no one would ever meet them. But on the other other other
hand, the animal encounters were necessary to provide that other-worldly
flavor that SF demands. Traveller always bit off more than ANYONE could
chew, but that is an essential part of a) its charm, and b) the
dissatisfactions it has always prompted. Other SF games always had a way
to say, "yeah, but that's not what we're doing." Traveller never met a
"we're not doing that" that it didn't try to turn into, "yeah, we're doing
that too." And I think that Quixotic, tilting at windmills quality is in
Traveller's DNA and the DNA of those who prefer it to the more proscribed
vision of a Star Wars RPG. Dreaming the Impossible Dream and all that.

> I've always thought, and thus agree with you, that he collection and
> creation of UPP / UWP codes simply for the sake of creating data or
> completionism was a perfect example of "just because you can doesn't mean
> you should" taken to the Nth degree.
>
> The typical player is unlikely to ever have more than a passing moment of
> influence on even 1% of the stars in the 3rd Imperium.  Why do you need
> to have ALL of them?  I suppose there's a small amount of comfort in
> being able to hold up a peice of paper and say I know what's out there and
> you do to but to be honest that's never really appealed to me.  The small
> "B reaking News" stories in Survival Margin gave me far more useful
> information on what was going on in the Imperium than 10,000 UWP codes
> ever did. 
>
> I can also understand the GM's frustration in fully realizing a hand full
> of worlds to the left only to have the players decide to exit stage right
> and thus render a weeks worth of blood sweat and tears into a pointless
> pile of paper.  I've probably done this to more than one GM on more than
> one occasion over the years.  All the games I ever did typically started
> with me picking a subsector and then detailing every subsector that
> touches that one.  So basically you end up with 9 sub sectors and a few
> pages of info on the worlds contained there in.  PoT was smart in that it
> focused the players attention in 2 cardinal directions and then focused on
> those areas.
>
> I feel the frustration that the G-Raft and G-Belt introduced into the
> game, shame MMO designers didn't figure this out before they let the genie
> out of the bottle.
>
> I had another point but...  I'm falling asleep at my desk here so I have
> no clue in which direction I was headed...   Blast...
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From:
> To: "Traveller TNE" <>
> Sent: Friday, March 7, 2014 1:06:18 PM
> Subject: Re: [Traveller_TNE] Re: interesting question on telekinesis.
>
>  
>
>
>
> Yes, you are of course correct. And in getting distracted by the shiny
> object of how so many people wanted to collect "All of the UWPs for All Of
> Charted Space(TM), And We Must Have Them All Now!" (the chant of the mobs
> outside my window) I didn't touch on the REAL, and (semi) USEFUL purpose
> of the UWPs all along. Which you all know, so why am I wasting your time
> saying this? Idunno, stimulus response, I guess. Struck a nerve.
>
> Since I'm not plowing any new ground here, I'll try to hit the key point
> and back out.
>
> UPPs certainly do serve to "prod the imagination" to guide (force) the Ref
> to make different worlds different in the way they "realistically" "would
> be." (Annoying finger quotes because we don't really know any of this, but
> it's SF so we make the best effort we can.) And in this they were helpful,
> but became a problem because they were not helpful enough. In Kantian
> style I will say that "there were those who experienced this," and those
> who did not, so I am really only speaking to those who did. And I think
> there were always Traveller fans who were mostly or exclusively Refs,
> mostly or exclusively players, and mostly or exclusively
> readers/collectors. And those groups were always going to need/want
> different things, and it was very hard (impossible?) to know who was who,
> and what the demographic breakout was.
>
> As someone who was almost exclusively a Ref, I also knew what many others
> did, that the UPPs were "not helpful enough," because of an almost
> universal Traveller effect that we have also discussed, the great mobility
> of players. They were always seeing the planet whose UPP you HAD carefully
> and painstakingly, and with great effort fleshed out, and saying, "screw
> that, we're flying someplace else," to a UPP you had NOT yet worked out.
> (Frank and I and Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert were discussing this at this
> last Celesticon, and I think it was Jim who pointed out, "Starships, hell,
> it's worse than that. With air rafts the players just fly over everything,
> what's the good of animal encounter tables?") So you had to hastily work
> out what that UPP meant, and over time you felt this frustration that the
> UPPs weren't really making the worlds different, they were just making
> them "more of the same," in the form of a collection of tortuously weird
> stereotypes that you had to fall back on: the domed Hi-Pop world, the
> "Agricultural" world with no sunlight, the water world with (and it was
> easier to mix this one up) floating cities or islands with dense cities,
> or sub-surface domed cities, or the world you ripped off from one of the
> double adventures and simply re-used every time they landed on a world
> with a similar UPP. And this was creatively frustrating, because in some
> essential way way the wide variation and random nature of the UPPs was
> inherently "indigestible" in the fast-paced way that Traveller
> allowed/required them to be used. Where you WANTED to be Poul Anderson,
> you felt more often like a plagiarizing hack. And how many times did we
> ask ourselves the question, "what the hell does Feudal Technocracy mean
> this time?"
>
> This issue was semi-obscured by the way UPPs were ALSO designed to be
> used, in the mathematical Free Trader campaign using the trade tables,
> where the group would skip from one world the next, spending five minutes
> to consult the trade table, calculate their profits, use their JOT or
> Admin or Trading skill (depending on which generation of the game you were
> using) and move on.
>
> And that really ends my observation on "the trouble with UPPs", but I will
> give you two "choose your own adventure" endings to this, because I'm
> tapping a vein of memory and am on a roll.
>
> Ending 1, "Quick and Get Outta Here":
>
> This led to various attempts to "fix" this over the years, like the 2300
> system with stylized Garden worlds, Hot House Worlds, etc. However, the
> lure of the UPPs kept sucking us back to them. First, because they were
> published Canon (this usage began life as a pejorative term, by the way),
> but also, and more insidiously, there is just something so damned
> attractive about the numerological beauty of all that compacted data in
> the subsector and sector data (like in Star Trek's "By Any Other Name"
> where the Kelvans push the button on their belts and turn the crew into
> gypsum/drywall/ceiling tile cuboctahedrons [I just looked that up on
> Wikipedia; I wanted to say "icosahedron" but knew they weren't]--I still
> watch one scene very carefully, because I am convinced that Rojan mixes up
> the yeoman and security guard before he kills one), so we kept sticking
> with it.
>
> The End
>
> Ending 2, "More Dave Chunky Hooey Yammer Dance Re-Mix":
>
> This led to various attempts to "fix" this over the years, like the 2300
> system with stylized Garden worlds, Hot House Worlds, etc. When I said to
> Terry McInnes, "Yes, go ahead and write World Tamer's Handbook," (Terry
> was like a one-man mob outside my window, and I mean that in a charming
> and affectionate way) I also instructed him, "try to cross-breed the
> world-generating system with the 2300 system," not realizing what a stupid
> meaningless instruction that was. Terry, being the true gentleman that he
> is, suffered in silence and never once called or wrote me to say, "You
> idiot!...." When I got the MS, I looked at the system Terry had come up
> with and thought, "What a mess, I'll have to re-do this." And then sat
> down and pulled out my books and realized that all of the 8 or 10 2300
> world types were basically two UPPs, the medium size full-atmo, and the
> airless rock, and screamed at myself, "You idiot!" (I can only hope that
> Terry felt my scream rippling Vulcan-USS-Intrepid-style through the
> space-time continuum and felt some small measure of satisfaction.)
>
> Then Frank took over some of the development of World Tamer's (I was
> scheduled for something else that was already running late, I came back to
> finish WTH later and added stuff like acclimatization, not as much as I
> wanted to, but better than nothing) and decided that Terry's
> colony-building system was too loosey-goosey (i.e., player-scaled, not
> wired up to world-scale economics) and created the more complex economic
> development system. Which I liked, but it also reminded me of another
> issue we always ran up against in Traveller.
>
> You know how I'm always whining about how we always felt stretched
> (crucified) between two poles? And there were several sets of these:
> Campaign background vs. open-ended "any universe" rules, How it "would
> really work" vs. Player-expected SF (or established Traveller) tropes,
> Player-scale actions vs. Bigger storyline, Detailing individual worlds vs.
> skipping across whole sectors, whatever I called the two cross-cutting
> poles in my long post about space missiles, and so on. Well here's another
> one: Mathematical, systematic, economic-scale models vs. Player-scale "I'm
> gonna build me a village" scale.
>
> The economic-scale stuff Frank did was always good, but had the danger to
> me of feeling too deterministic. It is absolutely correct and logical and
> utterly unassailable, but can complicate some of the story-telling nature
> of the background and not give players adequate "hooks" to get or feel
> involved. As examples, you see early examples of this in the "battalions
> per world" tables in LBB Book 4 (Mercenary) which is endlessly useful to
> refs trying to work out local military forces in a campaign (and for which
> I used it many times), continued on into Fifth Frontier War, the similar
> "ships per world" calculator (in what, Path of Tears?) and continuing on
> to the WTH colony-building economics model.
>
> AS AN ASIDE on economic models vs. storytelling backgrounds... Every
> incompetent writer who writes a "how to write compelling characters"
> column always gets to the gaggy cliche, "when you find your characters
> getting up off the page and talking to you, and acting in ways you didn't
> expect..." (I have one particular incompetent writer in mind, but s/he's
> dead now.) Every once in a while Traveller would do that to us (insert
> your speculation on whether we were incompetent writers here). In this
> specific example, you take the "ships per world" calculator, and one day
> Frank came in and announced, "Oh crap, Solee." So the choice we had was:
> hand-wave it away ("a particular virulent form of Virus hit here..."--and
> there's nothing wrong with that, who here really believes that the whole
> 3I went kaflooey after one lousy assassination--they never thought of
> that?), or say, "okay, let's follow our own rules and ride this out, it
> will be interesting." You know how we went.
>
> Meanwhile, back at determinism, I loved Frank's economic model, and tried
> to marry it (i.e., cross-wire it down to player level) with some of
> Terry's player-level stuff. My recollection is that I was unhappy with the
> seamlessness of the marriage, but such is publishing to deadline so you
> can keep the lights on. I would say, "the rest is history," but it
> sometimes feels like, "the rest is an unmarked grave off to the side of an
> old battlefield where they're getting ready to build a shopping mall."
>
> Did anyone ever try playing a WTH campaign? My guess is that those who
> bought it mostly used bits and pieces of it as generalized resources, and
> I think there were some good multi-purpose resources in there. And YES, a
> lot of that was as good as it was because it was recycled DGP WBH stuff,
> which I documented in the credits but am repeating again here.
>
> The (other) End (Have I said all this before? I'm getting this sick
> feeling...But I also feel like I don't have time to research my old posts
> beforehand.)
>
>> ---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
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>