If for no other reason than we aren't playing RuneQuest, so they don't need
that "used this skill" check mark by the end of the session.
To some extent the growth of the Imperiums setting is responsible. The cry
of "no open frontiers!" is a common one, at least in the 1100s. The Scouts
are all doing other things instead of walking around looking for something
new to talk to. Of course, if the Scouts and others spent more time
walking, we probably wouldn't still have first contacts going on *within
the Imperium*. Someone would have tripped over DGP's Sparkle Gators, TNE's
Schalli, and CT's Shriekers/Denuli much sooner.
This is less of an issue in rougher times. Both the New Era and Milieu
Zero feature a lot of ground work, if only because those eras do have
issues with flying everywhere. Anti-aircraft guns are every Virus
incursion's favorite toy, and probably feature heavily in TED armories as
well.
If the Imperium wasn't already set 11,000 years into the Era of Humanity in
Space, I would be tempted to sprinkle Ancients facilities far more
liberally, with a general folklore about them that keeps people from flying
anywhere near most of them. "There's bugeye ruins in that jungle, son.
Nobody flies over it twice."
On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 3:55 AM, dcnilsen13 wrote:
> Derek raises an excellent point. As well armed and armored(TM) as the
> average Traveller party is (Traveller was the original gun nut game), it
> doesn't matter what you roll on the A/E table, there's just a red(/local
> blood-colored) mist in a couple seconds. And no one cries, "Hey, I didn't
> get to use my Cutlass skill!"
>
> > I've done a few orbital insertions that required a trek to get to our op
> > zone and then a mad dash to our extraction zone followed by mad screaming
> > natives.
> >
> > Derek Stanley
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> >> On Mar 10, 2014, at 7:46 PM, Jim Kundert <> wrote:
> >>
> >> Loren, I think, explained it on the TML many years ago. To paraphrase:
> >> "The format of Air/Raft was purposely chosen to make it OUR word."
> >>
> >> The Animal rules and planetary encounter tables are a wonderful thing,
> >> though I really want to do a statistical cross section of the animals as
> >> generated by each edition and see how they change. The tables for
> >> generating them certainly change.
> >> The problem that I had not really grasped until I ran Tarsus for a new
> >> group a few years ago was that those tables really are just Wandering
> >> Monster tables, and that your PCs *really* have to volunteer (or get
> >> shot down by Pirates over a trackless jungle, which I've done) to face
> >> those tables, or you as a Ref will never use them.
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> I note that you make a point of using the ORIGINAL, CLASSIC,
> >>> CANONICAL
> >>> formulation "air/raft." I deliberately did not, in order to dispense
> >>> with
> >>> the dissonance of always thinking, "why air SLASH raft?" every time I
> >>> wrote it. Do you use it out of a sense of purity/faithfulness to
> >>> source
> >>> (which I admire), because you understand why it uses the slash (some
> >>> styles, often British, use the slash instead of the hyphen), or
> >>> perhaps
> >>> because you know of the original antecedent (say, E.C. Tubb or another
> >>> original Traveller source, but Tubb, being British, might use the
> >>> slash).
> >>> Detail is the key to everything--which is why I made the point of
> >>> saying
> >>> "Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert" instead of just "Frank said"--and
> >>> "air/raft" is one that I never found/made the time to run down.
> >>>
> >>> > I started that line of thought with "just getting some PCs out of the
> >>> ship
> >>> > is a challenge," but I thought Frank was the source of the Air/Raft
> >>> line.
> >>> > We have all experienced the phenomenon, I suspect, and at this point
> >>> I
> >>> > tend to adopt either a Zen approach ("it is not the destination, but
> >>> the
> >>> > journey that matters") or a Muppets/Indiana Jones approach ("How did
> >>> you
> >>> > get here so fast?" "Oh, we traveled by Map.") depending on group.
> >>> > Air/Rafts tend to encourage the second method, of course, but you
> >>> can
> >>> > occasionally get good mileage out of depriving PCs of their ride.
> >>> Too
> >>> > often and you generate your own cliches, though.
> >>> >
> >>> > ---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
> >>> >
> >>> > (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?")
> >>> >
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
that "used this skill" check mark by the end of the session.
To some extent the growth of the Imperiums setting is responsible. The cry
of "no open frontiers!" is a common one, at least in the 1100s. The Scouts
are all doing other things instead of walking around looking for something
new to talk to. Of course, if the Scouts and others spent more time
walking, we probably wouldn't still have first contacts going on *within
the Imperium*. Someone would have tripped over DGP's Sparkle Gators, TNE's
Schalli, and CT's Shriekers/Denuli much sooner.
This is less of an issue in rougher times. Both the New Era and Milieu
Zero feature a lot of ground work, if only because those eras do have
issues with flying everywhere. Anti-aircraft guns are every Virus
incursion's favorite toy, and probably feature heavily in TED armories as
well.
If the Imperium wasn't already set 11,000 years into the Era of Humanity in
Space, I would be tempted to sprinkle Ancients facilities far more
liberally, with a general folklore about them that keeps people from flying
anywhere near most of them. "There's bugeye ruins in that jungle, son.
Nobody flies over it twice."
On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 3:55 AM, dcnilsen13 wrote:
> Derek raises an excellent point. As well armed and armored(TM) as the
> average Traveller party is (Traveller was the original gun nut game), it
> doesn't matter what you roll on the A/E table, there's just a red(/local
> blood-colored) mist in a couple seconds. And no one cries, "Hey, I didn't
> get to use my Cutlass skill!"
>
> > I've done a few orbital insertions that required a trek to get to our op
> > zone and then a mad dash to our extraction zone followed by mad screaming
> > natives.
> >
> > Derek Stanley
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> >> On Mar 10, 2014, at 7:46 PM, Jim Kundert <> wrote:
> >>
> >> Loren, I think, explained it on the TML many years ago. To paraphrase:
> >> "The format of Air/Raft was purposely chosen to make it OUR word."
> >>
> >> The Animal rules and planetary encounter tables are a wonderful thing,
> >> though I really want to do a statistical cross section of the animals as
> >> generated by each edition and see how they change. The tables for
> >> generating them certainly change.
> >> The problem that I had not really grasped until I ran Tarsus for a new
> >> group a few years ago was that those tables really are just Wandering
> >> Monster tables, and that your PCs *really* have to volunteer (or get
> >> shot down by Pirates over a trackless jungle, which I've done) to face
> >> those tables, or you as a Ref will never use them.
> >>
> >>
> >>>
> >>> I note that you make a point of using the ORIGINAL, CLASSIC,
> >>> CANONICAL
> >>> formulation "air/raft." I deliberately did not, in order to dispense
> >>> with
> >>> the dissonance of always thinking, "why air SLASH raft?" every time I
> >>> wrote it. Do you use it out of a sense of purity/faithfulness to
> >>> source
> >>> (which I admire), because you understand why it uses the slash (some
> >>> styles, often British, use the slash instead of the hyphen), or
> >>> perhaps
> >>> because you know of the original antecedent (say, E.C. Tubb or another
> >>> original Traveller source, but Tubb, being British, might use the
> >>> slash).
> >>> Detail is the key to everything--which is why I made the point of
> >>> saying
> >>> "Glenn Goffin and Jim Kundert" instead of just "Frank said"--and
> >>> "air/raft" is one that I never found/made the time to run down.
> >>>
> >>> > I started that line of thought with "just getting some PCs out of the
> >>> ship
> >>> > is a challenge," but I thought Frank was the source of the Air/Raft
> >>> line.
> >>> > We have all experienced the phenomenon, I suspect, and at this point
> >>> I
> >>> > tend to adopt either a Zen approach ("it is not the destination, but
> >>> the
> >>> > journey that matters") or a Muppets/Indiana Jones approach ("How did
> >>> you
> >>> > get here so fast?" "Oh, we traveled by Map.") depending on group.
> >>> > Air/Rafts tend to encourage the second method, of course, but you
> >>> can
> >>> > occasionally get good mileage out of depriving PCs of their ride.
> >>> Too
> >>> > often and you generate your own cliches, though.
> >>> >
> >>> > ---In , <dcndcn13@...> wrote :
> >>> >
> >>> > (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?")
> >>> >
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>