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All:

 

I don’t usually answer from work, but let’s remember:

 

        1)      Traveller is a game.

        2)     Traveller was designed after Marc and friends saw “Star Wars.”

        3)     Initially, Traveller was designed like all other RPGs, for a “universe” designed by the Referee/GM/DM.

        4)     I played in three different “universes” run by three different GMs (1979 – 1980).

a.      Poul Anderson’s Flandry and Van Rijn

b.     Asimov’s Foundation

c.      Herbert’s Dune Series

        5)     It’s “science” fiction, so whatever you make the universe, that’s it.

        6)     Try to explain jump drive (another absurdity).  I bet you can get at least three explanations since it isn’t real.

        7)     Remember, it’s a game.  YMMV

 

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7am to 5pm Mountain Time             8pm to Midnight Mountain Time

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From: Traveller Mailing List <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
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Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2015 3:16 PM
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Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe - Jim Vassilakos (16 Nov 2015 22:51 UTC)

Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe - Evyn MacDude (17 Nov 2015 00:36 UTC)

Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe - Kelly St. Clair (17 Nov 2015 00:56 UTC)

Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe - Kurt Feltenberger (17 Nov 2015 02:32 UTC)

Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe - Ken Burnside (17 Nov 2015 00:12 UTC)

Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe - Tim (17 Nov 2015 03:56 UTC)

(Previous discussion continued)

Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe - Phil Pugliese (17 Nov 2015 18:22 UTC)

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Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe by Jim Vassilakos (16 Nov 2015 22:51 UTC)
Reply to list

Timothy Collinson wrote: "Did Marc Miller do such an excellent job of envisioning and describing a 57th century because of his background as a history major (IIRC)?" to which I responded, "I'm somewhat less enthusiastic with Traveller's future history than you are," to which he responded, "Oh? You've got me curious. Less enthusiastic about the detail?Or the scope? Or certain bits? (I know some struggle with TNE)" to which I am responding as follows:
Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe
1. Grandfather
We are told that “grandfather” (aka Yaskoydray) was a supergenius born into a TL10 society who pretty much single-handedly led his people to the stars. From Adventure 12: “Secret of the Ancients”, page 42: “He decided that he needed help with his experiments, so he took over the world. He decided that he didn’t want to get old and die, so he found out how to live forever. He wanted to know some facts about the stars and about other worlds, so he invented the jump drive and went to visit them. Then he decided that the Droyne were not intelligent enough to help with the really important projects, so he decided to have children.” I don’t care how smart somebody is. You can be Einstein times ten. You are not going to be able to do this. Progress takes time, and there’s usually politics that gets in the way. One might argue that although this abbreviated history doesn’t make sense in a human context, it still might be possible in the context of an alien race with a very different socio-political system. Hence, maybe this is just a failure of imagination on my part, but just not buying it. For one thing, if he was able to find a way to live forever by using TL10 as a jumping off point, why hasn’t the Imperium been able to find the same at whatever its maximum tech level happens to be? No, there’s just too much here that doesn’t add up.
2. Humans/Earthlings being all over the place
Here, we are led to believe that “grandfather” in his infinite wisdom, took a liking to human beings and decided to bring them to various star systems where they were able to create their own star-spanning civilizations. This is so that the Imperial History can conform to the backdrop of the board game Imperium [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperium_(board_game) ]. But how realistic is this? I mean, putting aside what I just said about “grandfather”, how realistic is it that humans would become the primarily beneficiaries of this sophont/slave transplant program? Consider that you get two human “empires” as a result of this, the Vilani and the Zhodani. Futhermore, the Vargr, albeit not human, began as earthlings, so out of the six major races, two of them just so happen to derive from Earth, and between them they control over half of known space. It just seems sort of incredible that humans/earthlings ended up being so lucky.
3, Solomani take-over
Speaking of the Vilani, how likely is it that the upstart Solomani would be able to defeat them? This has been talked to death on the list before, and the main arguments in favor of this was that the Vilani had been pushing their weight around for too long, and so the Solomani came around at just the right time to topple their house of cards. But if the Vilani Imperium was primed to collapse, then why was it the Solomani humans (the privileged race from the privileged planet) who got to end up being the benefactors of extraordinary timing and not some other race or society? Once again, we have to bear in mind that this whole history comes out of a board game. One could argue that I’m suffering from a lack of imagination, but to my way of thinking, the whole premise just seems terribly unlikely, as unlikely as, say, Boudicca’s army conquering Britain and then marching through France and Spain and on to Rome to conquer the Roman Empire. Granted, if GDW had adopted my mindset, Imperium (the board game) wouldn’t have been much fun to play. And when it comes to board games, I would agree that playability is definitely more important than realism. But when you port that same setting into an RPG, now you’re dealing a whole different animal, and so things sort of need to make sense.
4. Psionics
I know that psionics is a trope coming out of the pulp-SF literature, but it’s absurd. It feels to me like somebody was trying to wedge magic into science fiction, and the result is, predictably enough, science fantasy. That’s fine if that’s the genre you want, but just understand that that’s the genre you’re getting.
5. The Imperium
This last one is potentially a very long topic, and I don’t want to go into too much detail here, but my main premise is that even putting aside the unlikelihoods of “grandfather”, his human/earthling seeding program, and the Solomani takeover, you still have to deal with the final unlikelihood of there being a massive, star-spanning, mostly human-governed empire that lasts for over a thousand years but which still somehow manages to remain essentially hands-off with respect to the politics of its member worlds. Politically and historically, I find this final premise to be inconceivable. If there is anything we have learned from history, it is that power begets the use of power, and the use of power begets the abuse of power. Granted, not all empires throughout history have been the epitome of evil. One could argue that the British Empire, in particular, did a lot more good than evil, but, of course, this may have been a function of the increasing influence of parliament, something that has no analogue in the Imperium save for the largely toothless Imperial Moot that has but one power that it seems very unlikely to ever use.
Having said all this, I don’t think we can really fault the game designers. Traveller’s Imperium was birthed fairly early in RPG history, and so it probably wasn’t put through the sort of critical review process that a modern RPG would be subjected to prior to publication. Likewise, we have to remind ourselves that the setting grew out of a board game, and given the nature of board games, it doesn’t seem to me that you even need a critical review process. After all, board game settings are not typically explored and detailed to the same extent as RPG settings. Hence, I think we should respect the OTU as being remarkable for its time, sort of like we might view the 1st edition of Greyhawk. In short, it is a triumph of early RPG literature, but we should move beyond it, either by modifying it, which many have done, or by creating our own unique settings which may be substantially different in a number of ways. I think the biggest mistake that we have made as a community is our apparent determination to stick with the OTU for so long when the resources have long been available to create wholly new Traveller settings, each of which could have its own unique set of standards and assumptions. Granted, a proliferation of such alternate Traveller universes would substantially change the feel of Traveller, perhaps even spawning a variety of offshoots. Traveller purists and those longing for a sense of nostalgia would no doubt rue the day the fan-base fragmented, but I think that ultimately it would be for the good, as although Traveller has been kept alive by a succession of publishers, my sense is that it has grown increasingly out-of-touch with the changing face of science-fiction in the 21st century.
Now where did I put those asbestos skivvies?

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Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe by Evyn MacDude (17 Nov 2015 00:36 UTC)
Reply to list

Well since it is a Science Fiction game based on the Literary SF of the 50's and 60's you failed to compare and contrast your absurdities with appropriate ones from the source fiction. Thematically everything you list is a trope in the periods SF. Traveller is a game of Pieces, everybody use different bits, including the Bits of the "Official" background. 


My current inconsistency is the 217 people killed in drive implosion of the 800 ton liner Trimkhana-Brilliance at Regina/Regina on Date:156-1106.



--

Evyn

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Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe by Kelly St. Clair (17 Nov 2015 00:56 UTC)
Reply to list

On 11/16/2015 4:36 PM, Evyn MacDude wrote:
> Well since it is a Science Fiction game based on the Literary SF of the
> 50's and 60's you failed to compare and contrast your absurdities with
> appropriate ones from the source fiction. Thematically everything you
> list is a trope in the periods SF. Traveller is a game of Pieces,
> everybody use different bits, including the Bits of the "Official"
> background.

Beat me to it. Most of the silliness of the OTU can be traced directly
to the source material: space opera of the 20th century, particularly
the middle decades, with some influences from before and after. It's
every bit as much a period piece/relic of its era as cyberpunk and Space
1889, though only the last of those was deliberate as of its writing.

--
---------------
Kelly St. Clair
xxxxxx@efn.org

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Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe by Kurt Feltenberger (17 Nov 2015 02:32 UTC)
Reply to list

On 11/16/2015 7:56 PM, Kelly St. Clair wrote:
> On 11/16/2015 4:36 PM, Evyn MacDude wrote:
>> Well since it is a Science Fiction game based on the Literary SF of the
>> 50's and 60's you failed to compare and contrast your absurdities with
>> appropriate ones from the source fiction. Thematically everything you
>> list is a trope in the periods SF. Traveller is a game of Pieces,
>> everybody use different bits, including the Bits of the "Official"
>> background.
>
> Beat me to it. Most of the silliness of the OTU can be traced
> directly to the source material: space opera of the 20th century,
> particularly the middle decades, with some influences from before and
> after. It's every bit as much a period piece/relic of its era as
> cyberpunk and Space 1889, though only the last of those was deliberate
> as of its writing.

This is, IMO, not a bad thing. I play games to escape "real life" and
to imagine something greater, neater, different, and cool; not have to
worry if what I'm doing doesn't square with a formula (that often
doesn't make sense other than to standardize something) or if it "can't
be done" based on current knowledge.

But that's me. I like the 3I and while I think it has some bumps and
issues, it's playable. I think many of the issues that are brought up
are done so only because so much time is spent thinking about them. I
know that during all the years I've gamed, none of my players have
voiced any of the issues mentioned and I'd bet that is the same for most
players.

--
Kurt Feltenberger
xxxxxx@thepaw.org/xxxxxx@yahoo.com
“Before today, I was scared to live, after today, I'm scared I'm not
living enough." - Me

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Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe by Ken Burnside (17 Nov 2015 00:12 UTC)
Reply to list

I admit that I really wanted to like Traveller in the 1980s.  I had heard so much about it from my older friends who played it...all the awesome stories about being space smugglers kicking around from star to star.

Then someone verbally explained the 3I to me, and my interest just went "pfft."  At the cynical age of about 15, circa '85, I had trouble believing in not one, but three "human" cultures dominating space, the Vargr as uplifted dogs, and the idea that a Lassiaz Faire imperium would last for how long?

If someone had explained that we could've played a campaign modeled off of Space Viking during the Long Night of the Ramshackle Empire...now, that, I'd've loved.

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Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe by Tim (17 Nov 2015 03:56 UTC)
Reply to list

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 02:51:37PM -0800, Jim Vassilakos wrote:
> For one thing, if he was able to find a way to live forever by using
> TL10 as a jumping off point, why hasn’t the Imperium been able to
> find the same at whatever its maximum tech level happens to be?

It has. There are at least 4 different ways, using only existing
canon tech, that they can do it. The question is not so much "why
could Grandfather do it", but "why doesn't the Imperium already do it
routinely?"

As far as I can tell, the answer is basically just "we didn't want
that sort of game".


> 2. Humans/Earthlings being all over the place

Well, yeah. I figure this is pure pandering to appeal to players who
happen to be humans. Especially combined with the following point
about the Solomani conquest, so players can imagine that the far
future is basically just a continuation of their own present-day
culture taken to the stars. It makes it easier to identify with, and
easier to play while still allowing plenty of "you're not in Kansas
anymore" moments if desired.


> It feels to me like somebody was trying to wedge magic into science
> fiction, and the result is, predictably enough, science fantasy.
> That’s fine if that’s the genre you want, but just understand that
> that’s the genre you’re getting.

Yes, though I think it has always been very clear that's the genre
Traveller fits into.


> 5. The Imperium

I find a lot of the detail in this area somewhat unbelievable also,
especially the rather stretched timescales. There's also the massive
institutional and cultural conservatism somehow combined with being at
the technological forefront of the known universe throughout thousands
of years of history. How does that work again?


> Traveller purists and those longing for a sense of nostalgia would
> no doubt rue the day the fan-base fragmented, but I think that
> ultimately it would be for the good, as although Traveller has been
> kept alive by a succession of publishers, my sense is that it has
> grown increasingly out-of-touch with the changing face of
> science-fiction in the 21st century.

I agree. It has now been quite a while since I played or GMed any
Traveller, and this is mostly the reason. The rules don't cover most
of the stuff that players expect to be able to do in The Far Future
anymore. The setting is definitely also showing its age, as well as
being basically too large and rigid to give room for some storylines,
while being not detailed enough to be a lot of use in others.


- Tim

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Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe by Phil Pugliese (17 Nov 2015 18:22 UTC)
Reply to list

--------------------------------------------
On Mon, 11/16/15, Kurt Feltenberger wrote:

Subject: Re: [TML] Five Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Date: Monday, November 16, 2015, 7:32 PM

On 11/16/2015 7:56 PM,
Kelly St. Clair wrote:
> On 11/16/2015
4:36 PM, Evyn MacDude wrote:
>> Well
since it is a Science Fiction game based on the Literary SF
of the
>> 50's and 60's you
failed to compare and contrast your absurdities with
>> appropriate ones from the source
fiction. Thematically everything you
>> list is a trope in the periods SF.
Traveller is a game of Pieces,
>>
everybody use different bits, including the Bits of the
"Official"
>> background.
>
> Beat me to it.  Most
of the silliness of the OTU can be traced
> directly to the source material:  space
opera of the 20th century,
>
particularly the middle decades, with some influences from
before and
> after.  It's every bit
as much a period piece/relic of its era as
> cyberpunk and Space 1889, though only the
last of those was deliberate
> as of its
writing.

This is, IMO, not
a bad thing.  I play games to escape "real life"
and
to imagine something greater, neater,
different, and cool; not have to
worry if
what I'm doing doesn't square with a formula (that
often
doesn't make sense other than to
standardize something) or if it "can't
be done" based on current knowledge.

But that's me.  I like
the 3I and while I think it has some bumps and
issues, it's playable.  I think many of
the issues that are brought up
are done so
only because so much time is spent thinking about them.  I

know that during all the years I've
gamed, none of my players have
voiced any
of the issues mentioned and I'd bet that is the same for
most
players.

--
Kurt Feltenberger

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ditto for me Kurt!

Besides, when studying this world's history, it doesn't take long at all to come across all sorts of seeming anomalies, inconsistencies, incongruities, etc. It's enough to make one wonder if history isn't really just a series of randomly-connected events.
But that doesn't mean that we don't have our 'limits'. For me it was the 'mega-absurdity' of MT. In retrospect I've come to believe that it was a perfect storm of assigning a group that wasn't as well versed in TU canon as they thought they were or should have been, the task of 'shaking up' the OTU by wrecking the 3I. And let's not even get into VIRUS! But that's just me. Still, everyone's gonna' find something if they "spend enough time thinking about it" .

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