I agree heartily!

In fact this reminds me how I used to generate maps while playing early CRPG's. (anyone remember 'Infocom'?)

Somewhat paradoxically, however, I still like to *look* at deckplans.
But they're definitely not really necessary to game with.
Not at all.


From: Douglas Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Sent: Monday, April 2, 2018 3:34 PM
Subject: [TML] A heretical suggestions on deckplans

An ancient grognard approaches, clad in the ragged remains of FASA deck plans, sheets of paper filled with arcane scribbling and broken scientific calculators. About his neck, a copy of Fire, Fusion, and Steel II is hung with a heavy chain.

I am about to speak heresy. Brace yourselves.

You don't need deck plans. Hardly ever. They take up space, are never right, and frankly, speaking as someone who has designed countless starships since High Guard first came out, people rarely give a damn. 

Let me repeat a point. They never come out right, but the ship design sequences are far too granular for that kind of fine detail. We can argue to the end of time about why computers take up so much space, or what percentage of stateroom tonnage goes to common spaces, but in the game, it does not really matter. 

So, a suggestion. Flowcharts. Make a flowchart of the ship, with each area labeled. show how each area is connected. You can add notes about the maximum combat range in that area, if it counts as being cluttered, etc. So you are no longer agonizing about where to place the freshers in each stateroom.

This even works for big ships. You can create boxes like "crew quarters, 24 bunkrooms" and in your notes, you'll know what's there. It speeds things up.

Playing with shapes and colors gives you quickly legible results. I use triangles for mission-critical areas: the bridge, engineering, turrets, and the like, and yellow for restricted areas. 

Pitchforks on the left, torches on the right, please.

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