Congratulations on Traveller!

[far-trader]

...Airless anarchic mining camp contains more info than D200300 B, and you don't have to look up the definitions on awkward tables.

And then there's us Grognards who glance at a UWP and "see" the world It's a language like any other once you learn it and it is easy to learn. If you haven't then you look at D200300-B and see gibberish of course. If you have then you "see" a small airless rock with some thousands of people living in fairly advanced technological comfort but with few visitors who probably just want to be left alone in their independent freedom. I didn't need to look any of that up, I am fluent in UWP

It could be a mining camp if you want it to be but that's a choice and not the only one. It could also be a munitions factory and storefront for a small arms dealer.

So I find more freedom in a simple UWP than a text description that contains the author's own prejudices.

The fact that you found 1 UWP in a domain to fit your narrow requirements is remarkable imo. Random UWPs almost never produce anything that could match a given logical background as you note. The best thing to do if you need a specific setting is to erase the system of you choice and insert the one you want. And which is the better product for that, a simple UWP or a full description?

And in an area the size of a domain, in which the players are likely to only visit for any length or interact in any meaningful way with a handful of worlds which is the better product, a simple UWP or a full description?

As you note there is no consistency between two different game groups on what D200300-B will be. So what? That's the whole point in my opinion. Ref freedom. You want an anarchic mining colony for you adventure/group purposes, that works. I want a small arms operation, that works too. It's not like our players are ever to likely be in the same game run by one of us to know the difference.

That said I do agree random UWPs mean more often than not that any given world makes no bloody sense at all. That's not a fault of the UWP format though, that's the random nature and lack of clear explanation of the specific parts of it.

So, for me NO "thousands of random UWPs" please. I can do those myself, there's programs even to automate it for me. Settings with logical UWPs are what I want, with full clear explanations of just what each UWP data bit means, with details for a few key worlds as examples of how to apply UWPs and for jumping off points for adventures.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

I didn't need to look any of that up, I am fluent in UWP

That's my point though. The UWP makes you learn a new language, and you don't get very much in return.

The info contained in the UWP is little more than nothing. It's a half hearted format that has only encouraged laziness.

A capsule description contains far more information, you don't have to translate it, and you get the idea the author has actually bothered to use his imagination.

No offense to the grognards, but it's taken you years of working with UWPs for you to reach that level of familiarity. And you got used to it cuz that was all there was back in the day.

I doubt a newb would share the same opinion. They'd see pages of numbers, and constantly having to flip to the key to make sense of it.

I've always been disappointed with sector books with just UWPs. The only juice is in the capsules that are written up. The tables of UWPs are just a waste of paper.

 

[EDG]

I don't think they contain enough info to be useful, really. Nothing on biosphere, natural resources, wealth, or even what species is the dominant native.

They could do with having that info included in them, but they're still damn useful. For example:

Mongoosia  0117 D689884-4  S Ri                 432      F8 V* [G3 V]

This one line of information tells you:
1) the name of the mainworld of the system (Mongoosia)
2) the hex location of the system in the sector (0117)
3) the Starport type (D - a few buildings and a cleared area of ground)
4) the size of the world (6 - 6000 miles diameter)
5) the atmosphere type (8 - dense, breathable)
6) the hydrographics percentage (9 - 90% covered with liquid water)
7) the population exponent (8 - hundreds of millions of people)
8) the government type (8 - Civil Service Bureaucracy)
9) the law level (4 - fairly liberal, assault weapons prohibited)
10) the tech level (4 - late 19th century Earth equivalent)
11) Bases (S - Scout Base present)
12) Trade Codes (Ri - the world is Rich, with lots of resources)
13) Population multiplier (4 - so the world's population is (4 x 100,000,000) people).
14) Number of asteroid belts in system (3 - three belts present)
15) Number of gas giants in system (2 - two gas giants present)
16) Star type and size (the planet orbits an F4 V star - a main sequence star that is hotter, brighter, and by implication a bit younger than Earth's sun. The star also has a G3 V companion star in a Far orbit, a few thousand AU distant)

From one line, you've pretty much got a full description of the planet and its system. You know it orbits a younger yellow/white star, there are gas giants to refuel from in the system, belts to hide in, a habitable environment on the planet and lots of water, and a four hundred million people living at a Victorian-ish industrial tech level.

It's a damn useful and very compact shorthand that crams in a lot of information onto one line. I've added more info myself like what orbital zone the planet is in, what orbit it's in, and whether or not its tidelocked. It's quite possible to add more codes like what natural resources it has, whether it has life on it, how advanced the life is and so on.

Another product like AoTI (even one with UWPs) is likely to kill the Traveller brand. If new players/refs end up paying money for a book full of pointless numbers in lists, then they're likely never to buy anything with Traveller on it ever again; and they'd be right.

Another product as ill-considered as AotI would suck bigtime - it gave just enough info to be highly restrictive and not enough to be helpful. But a book containing all the UWPs in the OTU that were actually generated properly and made sense would be damn useful. It'd be much better if AotI was re-done in a way that included every single UWP in the OTU setting, fully described.

What people seem to forget is that the OTU is a pre-defined universe. Traveller lets you make your own settings and your own worlds for it, but the OTU itself is already pre-generated. The Solomani Rim is the Solomani Rim, the Spinward Marches are the Spinward Marches, and there's no room for new mainworlds in there. You can't just mix and match pregen worlds with user-generated worlds in the OTU - if you do that, then you're not playing in the OTU anymore. You're playing something close to it, but you're still diverging from canon.

Airless anarchic mining camp contains more info than D200300 B, and you don't have to look up the definitions on awkward tables.

But what exactly is the difference between having to remember what a code means and remembering what modifier you got from using a feat or a skill, or how many combat modifiers apply to your current attack roll? They both require you to memorise something, yet people seem to flip out specifically at the thought of a table.

Hell, what's the difference between reading a stat block and reading a UWP? If I'm new to D&D I don't know that STR 18 gives me a +4 modifier to damage beforehand. It's just a meaningless number to me until I read the rules.

The whole argument against UWPs is utterly specious. It basically claims that just because something isn't immediately familiar to a reader, it means they won't understand it - but the whole point is that you get a rulebook, you learn the rules, and then it makes sense to you. Or has everyone become so damn lazy nowadays that they can't even be bothered to do that?

 

[Marquis-de-Carabas]

Traveller without Universal Profiles, be the Personal, World, Starship or whatever, is not Traveller anymore.

 

[steffworthington]

Traveller without Universal Profiles, be the Personal, World, Starship or whatever, is not Traveller anymore.

haahhahaahhaa. The most ridiculous thing ive heard on this thread. You could Traveller without the OTU wouldn't be Traveller. I suppose though that the LBB's don't have the OTU in them.

Any setting that relies on a rule system to identify it can't be much of a setting.

Steff
(a CT,MT,& TNE referee for 25 years)

 

[far-trader]

I didn't need to look any of that up, I am fluent in UWP

That's my point though. The UWP makes you learn a new language, and you don't get very much in return.

But it's a dead easy language to learn, no verbs to conjugate, no worries about word gender, no complicated grammar or syntax

I "learned" UWPish before I was done rolling my first subsector a zillion years ago

What you get in return is equal to what you put into it. Specifically...

The info contained in the UWP is little more than nothing. It's a half hearted format that has only encouraged laziness.

...I find it exactly the opposite. The info in the UWP is a wealth of untapped resource for my imagination. I find it encourages not laziness but work. And the fruit of that labour of the mind is more alive and detailed than I'd ever get from some line like "anarchic mining colony".

This is another difference I find (just in general, not in every case) between old school refs and new age gamers. The old school refs work with the tools (that's all the UWP is for me) they have and apply imagination and make the game more alive. The new age gamers seem to want it all laid out for them to read from and it comes off sterile.

A capsule description contains far more information, you don't have to translate it, and you get the idea the author has actually bothered to use his imagination.

I disagree and doubt we'll ever change our different takes More to the point, from your first posting of "anarchic" I've wondered how many new age gamers would have to reach for a dictionary

No offense to the grognards, but it's taken you years of working with UWPs for you to reach that level of familiarity. And you got used to it cuz that was all there was back in the day.

No offense taken, but as noted it didn't take years, hours maybe. And we used it not because that's all there was, but because that's what the game was If it had been something else, like random tables of word descriptors we'd have used that instead.

I doubt a newb would share the same opinion. They'd see pages of numbers, and constantly having to flip to the key to make sense of it.

At least we do agree on this point, though I doubt we share the same opinion as to why

I've always been disappointed with sector books with just UWPs. The only juice is in the capsules that are written up. The tables of UWPs are just a waste of paper.

But you need the UWP filler to get the players from "juicy capsule writeup Alpha" to "juicy capsule writeup Gamma" in a campaign. If all you play are adventures then sure, you don't need the filler. But it isn't wasting much in the overall product and presents a much bigger and richer product for those who do use the filler

 

[far-trader]

...Or has everyone become so damn lazy nowadays that they can't even be bothered to do that?

EDG -> Hammer -> Nail

OK, maybe not everyone but a good number it seems

 

[Klaus Kipling]

What people seem to forget is that the OTU is a pre-defined universe. Traveller lets you make your own settings and your own worlds for it, but the OTU itself is already pre-generated. The Solomani Rim is the Solomani Rim, the Spinward Marches are the Spinward Marches, and there's no room for new mainworlds in there. You can't just mix and match pregen worlds with user-generated worlds in the OTU - if you do that, then you're not playing in the OTU anymore. You're playing something close to it, but you're still diverging from canon.

Well that's really my point. The UWP doesn't contain enough info to retain consistency. One persons noble reservation is another's experimental colony.

My version of Tarsus was nothing like the official one.

I get the elegance of it. It is neat, but I think it needs a second string to be truly useful (and consistent), stuff that contains biosphere, indigenous/dominant specias, resources or exports, etc etc.

It's just that as it is the UWP feels half finished, incomplete.

 

[EDG]

I get the elegance of it. It is neat, but I think it needs a second string to be truly useful (and consistent), stuff that contains biosphere, indigenous/dominant specias, resources or exports, etc etc.

Oh, I agree, it could do with more info. And a refinement of the info it already contains (government and law level are particularly useless).

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Well maybe that's the way to go, a sort of UWP+.

Of course, then it starts to resemble the Universal Ship Profile.....

 

[qstor]

Until the core rules are available, supplements are meaningless.

I disagree. I (and no doubt many others) will be interested in the setting material even if the rules do nothing for me.

I agree too. I doubt I'll get the core rule book but if there's new materials like sector books that haven't been done before I'll get those if they're useable with other versions of Traveller. No sense in reinventing the wheel.

The thing I like about the UWP is that a sector book done with CT style UWP's are easy to convert to other forms of Traveller. I like the UWP.

Mike

 

[AKAramis]

On UWP's...

the basic UWP, when the Allegiance code is "Im" presumes a human population. Several sector books include notation such as C:2 indicating 20% of the population is Chirpers...

The Trade Codes, likewise, add some depth to defining the worlds (even if they are determined by the UWP).

An extended UWP is quite doable. As a shorthand, it is awesome for data dense, yet human readable, databases. I took under 2.8 megs of data and had the UWP's for the entire Atlas.

(I do concur with EDG that the Atlas was bad. REALLY Bad.)

I do, however, feel that GT: Behind the Claw, was no better a product. It was rushed, and it showed. It was neither enough to be worth the extra pages, nor little enough to not get in the way.

I would love to see a subsector book with writeups on one or two pages per main world, plus a page per system, with an extended UWP for every body, adding a slightly randomized wealth code (but wealth was canonically implied by Starport, Population, and TL, plus a breathable atmosphere). I'd like to see a few left with just the system pages.

 

[toothill man]

I would like codes for general detail of faraway areas but if I am buying a supplement I whant details and would not buy a book of lists.that would not be a mongoose product with adventures.plots and loving detail goose is famed for 8)

 

[EDG]

I would like codes for general detail of faraway areas but if I am buying a supplement I whant details and would not buy a book of lists.that would not be a mongoose product with adventures.plots and loving detail goose is famed for 8)

A "book of lists" was done for T4, and it sucked balls (to add insult to injury, the UWPs were actually completely wrong in there too).

I don't think just a book full of UWP listings would be worthwhile, but if you had something like T20's Gateway book - with both UWPs and descriptions - that would be cool. You can have both together, there's no reason to just have one or the other.

 

[MJD]

I wrote the Gateway book, and it's my opinion that a number of well detailed worlds with adventure hooks along with UWP data for the remainder of the sector is the way to go.

UWPs are just a starting point but they ARE a lot better than just blanks or dots on a map.

I've heard the Gateway book described as the best Traveller setting book of all, so I do think that's the way Mongoose books should go.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Gateway is a good product. I would have preferred a few more detailed info on individual worlds, and more on how all the various polities developed, but I do realise it was covering a hell of alot of space.

I prefer the level of detail in the cluster books. I just feel the UWP doesn't quite go far enough. And wealth isn't really implied by existing codes. Without knowing what natural resources a world has, both mineral and biotic, real (and potential) wealth cannot be calculated.

T20 is aware of this: it includes rules for extending the UWP and including biosphere and wealth - this was just never implemented in the sourcebooks.

But back to my original point: How does world creation work when the UWP, as people have stated, is implicitly Traveller, and the companion IPs already have their own well defined take on things? SST will want other kinds of info, such as climate or topography; Strontium Dog or Dredd and the UWP is not a good mix, methinks.

 

[pasuuli]

...Airless anarchic mining camp contains more info than D200300 B, and you don't have to look up the definitions on awkward tables.

And then there's us Grognards who glance at a UWP and "see" the world

UWPs are mostly random ways to spur the imagination of whoever's running or writing an adventure. It's a referee's tool, and it gives you a skeleton. If you use some other tool (or none at all) to come up with your worlds, the game will be FINE. Traveller won't break just because you do things you own way...

When it's time to run the game, and the players get involved, you'd better have some text and some spin. A string of digits won't mean a thing (ok maybe a little hyperbolic but do you get my point?).

 

[Lazy Wombat]

UWPs are a great 'at a glance' tools to get a feel for a world or system in the absence of amplifying data.

A simple listing, along the lines of the original CT Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim supplements, can be done inexpensively as a prompt for the referee, whether to generate ideas or just support merchant applications, and as a way of creating a shared background. It's a good choice for those refs who like to do the heavy lifting themselves.

While I like to see more fully fleshed out descriptions of worlds as much as the next person, I think Behind The Claw demonstrated what happens when you try and write up 440 unique descriptions in a single product.

To me, the best mix is to detail a few systems and provide UWPs for the rest.

 

[EDG]

UWPs are mostly random ways to spur the imagination of whoever's running or writing an adventure. It's a referee's tool, and it gives you a skeleton. If you use some other tool (or none at all) to come up with your worlds, the game will be FINE. Traveller won't break just because you do things you own way...

Sure, but as a method of presentation the UWPs simply ain't broken (the numbers they contain are broken, but that's a different matter). For Traveller's 30 year history, there have been no significant complaints about the UWPs being incomprehensible or needing to be dropped, and there's no reason to get rid of them now.

Either way you need some method to generate worlds and systems - so you have a consistent framework in which to describe them. The UWP generation method provides that, and does it very well and has done so for 30 years (though as I said, the specifics of the method need to be changed so that the results actually make sense!).

I'm certainly not in favour of dropping UWPs just so that people who can't be bothered to read the rules and learn what they mean will be happier. I'm all for having the game appeal to new markets, but there's no need to dumb down the game at the same time.

When it's time to run the game, and the players get involved, you'd better have some text and some spin. A string of digits won't mean a thing (ok maybe a little hyperbolic but do you get my point?).

Then, to put it bluntly, the GM should get off his arse and do his job and write some text about it . The UWP provides all the information for him to do that - he can spend a few minutes generating the UWP (if it's not already done), and a few more minutes scribbling out some notes based on that. That's what the GM is supposed to do, after all - he's supposed to prepare the game, as well as run it.

 

[EDG]

But back to my original point: How does world creation work when the UWP, as people have stated, is implicitly Traveller,

It's not, though - they're very generic. What makes them specifically traveller really is the social stuff - the population, government, law, and tech level,a and those can just be tweaked for different settings.

and the companion IPs already have their own well defined take on things? SST will want other kinds of info, such as climate or topography; Strontium Dog or Dredd and the UWP is not a good mix, methinks.

Well Dredd isn't interplanetary/interstellar anyway is it? Climate can be added easily to the UWP, and topography isn't really an issue - if you want mountains or craters then you'd find them on pretty much any world.