On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 06:36:04PM -0500, Richard Aiken wrote:
>    On Wed, Jan 23, 2019 at 5:43 PM Phil Pugliese (via tml list)
>    <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
>    As far as the TU is concerned, those sysgen rules were never, at least in my
>    ,mind anyway, really intended to do much more than produce 'cool' systems w/
>    earthlike planets orbiting gas giants,etc. And it all could easily be explained
>    by all the 'meddling' that G'father & his clones did.
>

This is true. I also believe that the Book 3 generation system tends
to produce a very "beige" gamespace. I tend to drop the G'father
meddling though...

>    IMTU, it's *all* explained by Grandfather Et Al. Or - rather - by Some Really,
>    Really Old And Powerful Civilization. I took the fact that the TU is
>    two-dimensional (and thus significantly distorts real distances between stars)
>    and laid out on a hexagonal grid to mean that in the universe of the game jump
>    space is an artificial construct. NOTE: I also require that jumps take place only
>    along the rows of the grid - in order to "turn" one must emerge from jump and
>    then jump again in the new direction. Following from these "facts," I have the
>    general rule that the systems populating the grid are 1) liveable (at least
>    marginally), 2) junctions required to access the rest of the grid or 3)
>    academically interesting. On a case-by-case basis, I tweak canon system data to
>    the extent necessary to support this view.
>    In short, all of Charted Space (and everywhere else potentially reachable via the
>    jump grid) is an artificial construct.

That's a cool idea. I like the idea the Grandfather twiddled with
systems on a grand scale to increase the number of habitable systems
and to force interesting places in space.

But, as I said above, I tend to drop the overt G'father meddling and
hand wave way the two dimensionality and rigid hexagonal grid
components as simplifications necessary for game play. The players
know the universe is flat and are aware of the fact that a flat
universe is absurd but the characters don't.

     ObTrav: On the way to some component of the game, the players
     happen on a man with a sign that says that "The Universe is
     flat..." If they talk to him he espouses a theory that there is
     no Imperium and they are all actually part of an elaborate
     simulation in the shared hive mind of small group of
     extra-universal sophants.

--
Chris

     __o          "All I was trying to do was get home from work."
   _`\<,_           -Rosa Parks
___(*)/_(*)_____________________________________________________________
Christopher Sean Hilton                    [chris/at/vindaloo/dot/com]