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On Wed, 11/18/15, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 1:09 PM

 On 11/18/2015 11:36 AM,
 Jeffrey Schwartz wrote:

 > I dunno, a lot of that just doesn't
 completely add up.
 > I saw someone write
 up a "review" of WWII as if it were a novel,
 and
 > they pointed out the places the
 author had unbelievable stuff.  Ah,
 >
 found it: http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html?page=1

 All of those things /have/
 been analyzed.  In considerable detail, over
 and over through the decades (unsurprising,
 given that that's how
 academic
 reputations and careers are made and toppled), dwarfing even

 the amateur musings of this list and
 others.

 As noted by at
 least one other poster, real history has the advantage
 that - while it had even more actors, and some
 parts of what we "know"
 are
 likely to be extrapolated/interpolated/guessed at/made up -
 it
 mostly actually happened, unlike the
 OTU, which is *entirely* made up,
 by a
 succession of writers with widely varying levels of
 knowledge of
 history, biology, physics, etc
 etc - most of whom were much much more
 concerned with meeting deadlines and/or
 producing enjoyable,
 understandable and
 easy-to-use game material over maintaining absolute
 accuracy and consistency.

 tl;dr:  reality rarely condenses down into a
 neat 2d6 table, but guess
 which makes a
 better game?

 > Given
 things like that, I figure that the Traveller books we have
 are
 > just "incomplete" and
 "summary" for what actually happened/is
 > happening/will happen.

 Fair enough.  The problem, IMO, comes with
 some rules literalists /
 fundamentalists
 I've run into, who claim that if it's in the books

 ("/which set?/", I sometimes ask;
 they can't ALL be correct and Holy
 Truth), it must be exactly so, and if it's
 not in the books, it must not
 exist.

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So much for 'canon', eh?

My experience is that it comes down to "My TU is better than yours", esp when it concerns published materials & esp when the authors of such material are concerned. (remember the little tiff a while back concerning SJG's "Ground Forces" supplement?)

Everyone has their, including me, has their 'Golden Calves' but that's what the GM is there for, right?
Still, I've seen some sessions go 'belly up' almost from the get-go due to an argument 'tween the GM & PC/s.

My position if that it's all equally 'canon' & the inconsistencies, etc, are just the same same as the we see today in differing viewpoints on 'real-life' history.

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