Recent content by Sinanju

Well...we *know* he played Superworld for years. The origin of the WILD CARDS novels was Martin (and a bunch of his fellow writers) trying to find a way to monetize all the time they were wasting playing superheroes. So Traveller isn't out of the question.

Presumably there is some sort of surrender protocol unless nobody every accepts surrenders. For instance, the moment you jump into a system you start blasting "We surrender! Please don't kill us!" (or codes/words to that effect) on the recognized frequency. Now, since nobody trusts pirates and...

I agree. And IMTU this is explicitly the case. While "true" AI is forbidden (and where it exists nonetheless is very carefully hidden for fear of both governmental reaction and "angry villagers with pitchforks and torches"), every computer has a natural language interface allowing people to...

I'm not sure of the canon, but IMTU the Imperium controls space; member worlds can run their own affairs as they see fit. So while slavery on a particular world can be legal, the "employment" or transport of slaves thru Imperial space would be illegal. A lot of worlds do a lot of things that the...

This is pretty much how I envision it working. Governments (or agencies of governments, depending on how finely you want to slice it) and banks and other entities have public keys, which are published for anyone to access. Anyone who expects to deal with these entities will keep these public...

My view is the Imperium has dominion over interplanetary and interstellar space. Period. It has NO authority over the planets that exist within Imperial space, except insofar as it retains sovereignty over starports, and makes rules regarding interplanetary/interstellar trade. The Imperium...

That's...not at all what I imagine a Motie looking like, but yeah.

One of the things I'm really liking about the Traveller setting (especially compared to the just-like-the-real-world global, instantaneous real-time communication of Star Trek, Dark Matter, The Orville and so forth) is the absence of FTL communication. Yes, on high-tech worlds, you'll have...

I've been thinking about this. When a ship jumps, it enters into a tiny pocket universe, I'm told. There is no possible communication with anyone or anything outside of that tiny pocket universe. I also remember reading (somewhere) that the hydrogen "fuel" required for a jump is actually used to...

I can't really see any practical reason for building a beanstalk in an environment where antigrav and M-Drives are available, even if they have to be imported from offworld. A lot of nations in Africa are leapfrogging over the cost and effort of stringing thousands or millions of miles of...

"Let's split up." "Good idea. We can do more damage that way." --Ghostbusters "Let's split up." "Good idea. We can take more damage that way." --Countless PCs So, if I'm not mistaken, in Classic Traveller, the first hit you took in combat all went into one stat. If that stat went to zero, you...

Yeah, I'm working up a Traveller campaign background now, and some of my planet descriptions explicitly include a note that the Law Level is X...for the bigwigs. Y for the clanking masses. Z for Travellers. And even if it's legal, if you're walking around in full SWAT kit, from armor and helmet...

I was in a gaming group for some years in which most of the players were ex-military and we were all rules lawyers and power gamers. Which I know a lot of people would hate, but we had a hell of a lot of fun. And one of the unspoken rules in our games was, "If it's a fair fight, you're doing it...

3D printed guns (and other items) today are a far cry from what actual atom-by-atom nanoassembly will make possible. The only limit on durability then will be the material limits of the elements involved.

Well, based on some quick googling, I've found figures for sleep cells that are 180cm long by 100cm tall and wide, and some 200cm x 110cm x110cm. So I think it's possible for most people to sit up in them without having to hunch. Yes, the ceiling will be right above your head, but you could sit...