Errata: Tech-World UWP and write up don't match - Aslan and Trojan Reaches both broke

[MasterGwydion]

No one told you that they only need stories. That is a deliberate bad faith interpretation of what was said. People disagreed with what you think the rules should mean, when the designers have clearly stated that they are meant another way.

You flat out stated that, rules are fuzzy to allow Referees to do what they want. That is the definition of story over mechanics. How they designed it originally is relevant. I will always point out flaws in rule systems. That is how they improve. You seem to be of the impression that they are features, not flaws. That is why We cannot have a discussion. What I say is up, you say is down. You say it is fine how it is, I say not for an open-world, sandbox style play where worldbuilding needs to occur within rules that agree and make basic sense. If you say that a Population Code 6 is between 1,000,000 to 9,999,999, fine. Make it mean that every time. If you say that a Population Code of 6 is the interstellar trade equivalent of 1,000,000 to 9,999,999 people, fine. It should be one or the other. Not both. That is not fuzzy in any way. It gives you a wide range of possibilities within rock-solid boundaries. Not fuzzy. Not subject to interpretation. Hard. Not fuzzy.

Fuzzy is how you explain what is not defined by the rules. Maybe blue is a forbidden color on that planet. Maybe the whole planet is lactose intolerant. No idea. Maybe they use a robotic horse and buggy for their transportation or flying chariots. Of course, it is doubtful that they are using robots if they are too low of a TL to locally produce them, but some might in a cottage industry (hence not generally available) or they might be imported (which wouldn't effect TL anyhow). None of that is fuzzy and yet has almost unlimited options for customization of worlds and stories. Also... In your game, if you do not like concrete rules, then change them. That is your style of play. Quit raining on Our parade for enjoying Our style of play and trying to help Mongoose make their game better by knowing the thoughts of some of the buyers of their products. Or is that a problem?

What you suggest is not different from the current understanding of the rules. "They are fuzzy and subject to interpretation". You just want to relabel them so they are fuzzy and subject to interpretation with terminology that sounds better to you. IMHO, that label change makes things less useful. Because 99% of the use cases fall in the numbers range as given and that's overall easier for most people to visualize when creating their own stuff. The few instances where that isn't the case in published material, it is clearly explained why the disparity exists.

See above.

Once in a while you have a case where a 3 got typed as an 8 or someone just misread a source (as I suspect happened with the Mongoose Aslan module where the new Tech World description arises, I believe).

Now, a separate issue is derivative stats. I'm fine with derivative stats. But I disagree that they can be based on the UWP directly. That's where "story" comes in. IMHO, you have to do the interpretation into a realized world before you can extrapolate from it. You can make a book about that, but it is not a simple change.

No one is talking about typos. Typos happen and they can get fixed in a future update. They usually aren't, but they could be. Geir is good about wanting to fix any typos he makes... Then again, I am a fan of how Geir writes and thinks, even though he is way smarter than Me. That darned WBH proved that to Me lol...

 

[Condottiere]

Not in employment, education or training.

Pensioners.

Undocumented workers.

This should be fun.

 

[Vormaerin]

Quit raining on Our parade for enjoying Our style of play and trying to help Mongoose make their game better by knowing the thoughts of some of the buyers of their products. Or is that a problem?

Well, I will point out that you are the one who wants the understanding of the rules to be changed. You think the rules should be understood a certain way. The current publisher and the original author have both said that they don't expect them to be understood that way. So I'm not sure how your statement doesn't apply equally to you. If you don't like it, *you* change it. That's what everyone does. If you are entitled to lobby for it to be changed, others are entitled to speak to it not being changed.

You are not accepting that I, among others, do not think that your suggestion makes the rules better. So I am sharing my thoughts. I am not raining on your parade. I am not telling you how to play the game.

It is not possible to write hard rules that cover ever possible reasonable situation and also simplify into a single digit set. Earlier in one of these discussions you said that you wanted pop to be firm because all these other things are derived from it. IMHO, the problem is that those derived rules were mis-designed, not the UWP.

Arguably, the "correct" thing is to toss UWP out completely.

The Size rating of a planet has gravity values. Those are blatantly wrong from a pure fact basis. Should we change the Size from Diameter to Surface Gravity?

The Atmosphere rating is either shirt sleeves or filter mask. That's a fraction of the interesting atmospheres. If you lock that down, dozens of published planets are illegal.

Water ratings are actually pretty straightforward, but there are edge cases with ice and whether subsurface water oceans like Ganymede count.

Pop's issues are what most of these threads are about.

Government type super vague. Were the early US or the Ancient Greeks a democracy or an oligarchy? What % of the population has to have the franchise to make the change?

Law Level so vague I doubt anyone could actually tell you the difference between any two ratings except for the pretty silly weapons tables (body pistols and nukes at the same level of restriction? )

And then we have TL. Which is by far the fuzziest of these fuzzy stats. You might like T5 on that score. They replace most gear modifiers with just TL. Though that puts the TL by component. Because you can import components for the shipyard to use.

We could eliminate the UWP and then make systems using something like the WBH for everything. That would be a lot more solid. It would also mean a lot more work and make a lot of people cry when trying to build their own game settings.

Because, first and foremost, the Traveller rules are there so a ref can build their own campaign. The UWP is as simplistic and vague as it is so people can easily build their own worlds, subsectors, and sectors.

It is not like this is a new discussion originated by you. And sometimes the publishers tried to listen to the 'make the rules harder' crowd. The result was usually something like Fire, Fusion, and Steel. Amazingly awesome. If you could figure it out. And had a couple hours every time you needed a new planet, space ship, revolver, or whatever.

Population is rated by number of people because that's what's easiest for people to visualize as a reference point. It also used to have a population density equivilance. So HongKong is what Pop 12 would feel like on an earth sized planet. If you are doing an ecumenopolis rather than arcologies. Economic value might work best for those added much later optional stats like WTN and Efficiency, but how many people designing a planet are going to have any feel for what the "economic value" of 6 means? Essentially none. That makes it useless for its actual purpose.

I love the world building handbook, but getting hung up on a handful of edge cases that take advantage of Traveller's rules flexibility because it messes with the add on stats is not worth it. Vastly more people will be making their own worlds using the simple, flexibly vague basic UWP rules than will ever dive into the WBH.

 

[tytalan]

The UWP as you’ve been told repeatedly was never meant to be an absolute. This has been the case from the beginning where Marc created Darria with a TL 16 but that was stated by Marc himself to not actually be the case. Making the UWP both a GM tool and a RP tool with misinformation was intentional.

You say I’m trolling yet the two of you keep demanding something that you’ve be repeatedly told was never the intention so I’d say it the two of you who are trolling.

 

[Condottiere]

Pretty sure that it's meant that these are relics and artefacts.

I would think, stuff like organic based battle dress.

 

[Nelphine]

...

It is not like this is a new discussion originated by you. And sometimes the publishers tried to listen to the 'make the rules harder' crowd. The result was usually something like Fire, Fusion, and Steel. Amazingly awesome. If you could figure it out. And had a couple hours every time you needed a new planet, space ship, revolver, or whatever.
...

I really like this post overall. But the part I've left in, to me is super super important.

I am FIRMLY on the side of 'UWP could be designed better'. In that sense, I agree with MasterGwydion. However, this particular paragraph here, completely highlights where I am in agreement with Vormaerin and the others.

It is so very very easy to try to change UWP (or some other part of the game), because you have figured out something that is clearer and more functional. But in almost all cases (where I have encountered this), I end up heading towards Fire, Fusion and Steel. One change begets others begets even more. And then it's too far.

Determining that line, and what is too far? That is really really hard. And unfortunately on this exact topic, and the suggestion that population should mean 'economic value', as has been said elsewhere.. many refs simply do not care about the economic value. So changing it to that, would make things worse for them.

And so, the current use which is 'here's a rough number, but we won't tell you exactly what it means' DOES leave everything squarely in the hands of the ref. The refs who want it to mean permanent population.. it means that. Those who want it to mean physical population including indigenous/non imperial species - it means that too (this happens to be my definition). Those who want it to mean economic value? Great, it means that too. Those who want it to be a 'gotcha!' moment where its just flat out wrong? Great, that's good too.

It literally means.. whatever you need it to mean. Is that too fuzzy? I think so - but i have not found something better, that would actually cater to all of the different kinds of common games. And its very simple for me to define what it means in my game, so that my players can work with it and we're all on the same page. And when that disagrees with something published.. my players know that already, and they can intelligently act on that.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, UWP is an okay start point for your imagination, but that's it. It tells you kind of what you are looking at so you have some conceptual prompts when you work out the details. Obviously, the mere fact that Mercury, Ganymede, and Callisto are all have a UWP of X300000-0 IRL right now tells you just how vague the terms are. (yea, some new science suggests Ganymede might be 310, but whatever ).

 

[metlk]

The UWP as you’ve been told repeatedly was never meant to be an absolute. This has been the case from the beginning where Marc created Darria with a TL 16 but that was stated by Marc himself to not actually be the case. Making the UWP both a GM tool and a RP tool with misinformation was intentional.

You say I’m trolling yet the two of you keep demanding something that you’ve be repeatedly told was never the intention so I’d say it the two of you who are trolling.

I was under the impression we were discussing the issues with planets intentionally not matching the UWP and ways that could be corrected, not a fundamental change to the UWP system. The only suggestion I made was to consider a definition of what "population" actually encompasses for the majority of planets. The assumption currently is sophonts living on the planet, but as has been pointed out, that isn't always the case, and in my own random worlds, sometimes it becomes tedious to explain why the pop is so high (or low) for what would normally be a stopover planet with nothing happening. I don't think "misinformation" should ever be the intent, unless as I said before, it's a sudden, recent change or some other story-driven purpose (High tech alien planet hiding their high-techiness under mud homes type of situation., which would invariably be more rare than random generation would suggest.) Someone publishing under Mongoose should not use "misinformation" as an excuse to violate the rules just because they don't want to fix their world to match their setting. You're free to disagree with me and lie to your players all you want. I personally won't play in a standard setting where the ref intentionally tris to trip up the players by making the rules not be the rules, and I won't buy a published adventure with that mindset either.

With that, I'm out of this discussion.

 

[Vormaerin]

With that, I'm out of this discussion.

I know you are out of the discussion, but just fyi, I am not aware of any instances where the information was a deliberate lie to get the players. The adventures where the players were going into the unknown they were given incomplete maps or partial UWPs rather than any "rules like" handout that was full of wrong information.

As I mentioned, Tech World is wrong. In all the dozens of versions of this conversation I've seen, it is always the example used that isn't an obvious typo in the list. The UWP is the same as it has always been, the description is now different with no explanation of why the UWP isn't changed.

Every other example I know of, the author made a deliberate decision and explained why the UWP is different than you might expect. This is not breaking the rules. Personally, I would not build a world like Cordan where there is a bunch of people obviously around, but most of them don't count in the UWP. I don't like that usage, but it is not against the rules. It is not different in kind from saying "there's uncounted chirpers on the planet too" or "these Sword Worlders are living in the deep jungles of Tarsus and no one knows they are here so they aren't in the UWP."

Those are better reasons to use GM discretion than the one on Cordan. But it is the same principle. IMHO.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yeah, UWP is an okay start point for your imagination, but that's it. It tells you kind of what you are looking at so you have some conceptual prompts when you work out the details. Obviously, the mere fact that Mercury, Ganymede, and Callisto are all have a UWP of X300000-0 IRL right now tells you just how vague the terms are. (yea, some new science suggests Ganymede might be 310, but whatever ).

UWP should be no more vague the STR DEX END INT EDU SOC and PSI stats. All stats should have equal weight as far as accuracy goes. I do not know why that viewpoint is so controversial.

 

[Vormaerin]

Then use the World Builder's Handbook to detail your worlds and you'll have your hard stats. You can't meaningfully summarize planets into 8 numbers with a limited value range of rigid meanings. There's too many variations.

And it is controversial because people don't share your opinion on the subject. The majority of people playing the game for the past 50 years are fine with UWP and understand its limitations and purposes. When they want to move beyond those limitations, they use a more detailed creation system. Does a better system exist? Yes! Is it a lot more complicated than most players need? Also yes.

If you are just need a quick value for some decision before moving on, Size is an okay stand in for gravity for that game purpose. But it isn't actually a good stand in and shouldn't limit you when you get to details.

All the UWP values function like that. They give an adequate high level view for making a quick decision. They are not rigidly limiting because planets are complex and we don't want 30 values for atmosphere to be needed.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Then use the World Builder's Handbook to detail your worlds and you'll have your hard stats. You can't meaningfully summarize planets into 8 numbers with a limited value range of rigid meanings. There's too many variations.

And it is controversial because people don't share your opinion on the subject. The majority of people playing the game for the past 50 years are fine with UWP and understand its limitations and purposes. When they want to move beyond those limitations, they use a more detailed creation system. Does a better system exist? Yes! Is it a lot more complicated than most players need? Also yes.

If you are just need a quick value for some decision before moving on, Size is an okay stand in for gravity for that game purpose. But it isn't actually a good stand in and shouldn't limit you when you get to details.

I always thought tying Gravity to Size was stupid, but Traveller hates Mass, except at the human and vehicle scales for some reason. More of a problem for Me is, "I have a bunch of 4kg rifles. How many kg of rifles fit in 1 Dton of space? Or 1 Vehicle Space? Or 1 Slot? My problem is that We have too many values for things and the values are not related. Size of a Planet and the Gravity of the planet is just one of many examples of this. Law Level is what things are illegal, but it also modifies your roll to see how invasive a planet's law enforcement and judicial system are. To Me, what is illegal and how rigidly they are enforced are two separate things. Having them tied together is too limiting, just like with Size and Gravity.

All the UWP values function like that. They give an adequate high level view for making a quick decision. They are not rigidly limiting because planets are complex and we don't want 30 values for atmosphere to be needed.

If the only point in a UWP is to make a quick decision from a high-level view, then it works fine for that. It does not work if you get closer, but getting closer should also not invalidate the UWP. In the game world, We make the UWP first and then get into the details of how the planet works. In real life it would be those little details that when all added together, determine the UWP. It works the same with humans. Human Stats, STR DEX END INT EDU SOC and PSI. These stats tell you nothing about the sophont specifically. Size, muscle mass, muscle elasticity, if they are a quadaped or a biped, and a million other things go into determining that sophont's STR score, things that are written about nowhere in the game. The character stats are just like the UWP, but for a person instead of a planet.

What would you say to a player who told you that the STR 5 on their character sheet doesn't have a modifier of -1, it has a modifier of +3 becuase STR is fuzzy. It is not. You can describe a STR 5 in many ways, but one way you cannot describe a STR 5 is having a modifier of +3. Is this limiting? Yes, but it is supposed to be, otherwise you have no way to differentiate between STR 5 and STR 6

 

[Vormaerin]

Yes, but I'm not actually making any die rolls based on the UWP (unless you do the random chance to be worked over by the cops thing). So those are two completely different types of mechanics with different needs. STR doesn't tell me if my PC is wiry, bulky, or anything else because a lot of body types can have a given capacity to lift. Character stats are modifiers to actions. Planet stats are descriptions.

I agree that the most accurate thing to do is throw the UWP out the window and just do the WBH. But it is handy to have a high level, minimalist overview of a planet for when you don't actually care about the details because your players are just skipping through the downport on the way to somewhere else. And it lets you put your whole sector on a single page instead of a system per page (or pages)

If you try to lock down the UWP to hard values, then it stops serving its purpose. It either becomes a straitjacket because there's too few values available or it becomes the WBH.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yes, but I'm not actually making any die rolls based on the UWP (unless you do the random chance to be worked over by the cops thing). So those are two completely different types of mechanics with different needs. STR doesn't tell me if my PC is wiry, bulky, or anything else because a lot of body types can have a given capacity to lift. Character stats are modifiers to actions. Planet stats are descriptions.

All planet stats were written to be used as modifiers. Read the Trade chapter of the CRB. It uses modifiers based on TL and Population to make your Broker checks as well as for amount of cargo and passengers.
"A supplier will have all Common Goods available, the Trade Goods that match the world’s Trade codes and a quantity of randomly determined goods equal to the Population code of the world. Roll on the Trade Goods table to randomly determine the goods available."

I agree that the most accurate thing to do is throw the UWP out the window and just do the WBH. But it is handy to have a high level, minimalist overview of a planet for when you don't actually care about the details because your players are just skipping through the downport on the way to somewhere else. And it lets you put your whole sector on a single page instead of a system per page (or pages)

If you try to lock down the UWP to hard values, then it stops serving its purpose. It either becomes a straitjacket because there's too few values available or it becomes the WBH.

There needs to be a middle ground between a UWP that means nothing and the WBH. Also, for the record, Population has always been an exact range of population. the Population Code is how many zeros the population number has after it. Pop 1 is from 10-99 people. That is a "hard value". This seems to line up with what others have quoted from CT as well.

 

[Vormaerin]

CT population 6 was anything from 100,001 to 9,999,999. But CT pop 5 was anything from 1001 to 999,999. They overlapped.

 

[MasterGwydion]

CT population 6 was anything from 100,001 to 9,999,999. But CT pop 5 was anything from 1001 to 999,999. They overlapped.

Really? The other guy quoted CT numbers that didn't overlap. Maybe that was a typo?

 

[Vormaerin]

Anyway, UWP doesn't mean *nothing* It just doesn't mean as much as you want it to.

Population 6 almost always means that you have millions of people on your world, but not tens of millions. Every once in a while you have an edge case where that isn't exactly true. Vanejen has "uncounted numbers of chirpers" that aren't included in the POP score. Tarsus has a batch of previous colonists that live deep in the unexplored wilderness and no one knows they are there. So they aren't in the POP score. Craw also has a non human population that isn't counted. For whatever reason, the guy writing Cordan felt it was important to do the same with some of the human population. Tech World, imho, is a problem because there is no indication of any explanation for why the figures don't match.

Pretty sure the pop value of Vanejen and Tarsus wouldn't be shifted by the uncounted people because its large enough. This mostly matters with really low pop planets like Cordan, Craw, and Tech World.

So that's like 3 worlds out of the 750 or so in the two sectors? And for that you want to make UWP significantly more complicated and/or more restrictive?

So Planet Disneyworld. A couple hundred full time residents & employees. Tens of thousands of visitors on any given day. What's the right pop code?

Techworld? Is the correct pop code 3 (for the 4k humans) or 6 (for the million+ robot workers)?

Does the pop code of a depot world include the many thousands of sailors and Marines on the ships stationed there? Even if they are out patrolling?

 

[Geir]

From the facsimile edition:

 

[Vormaerin]

Really? The other guy quoted CT numbers that didn't overlap. Maybe that was a typo?

CT just gave a single figure for each POP Code. Pop 5 was 100,000. POP 6 was 1,000,000. The explanatory text said you could vary it from just above the next lower number to just below the next higher number.

 

[MasterGwydion]

From the facsimile edition:
View attachment 2056

Is that CT?