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

If the laws of physics are not constant, they are not the laws of physics. That is not an opinion. As soon as you can disprove it, and others can repeat that same disproval, it is no longer a law. Just like rules in RPGs. If the rule can be disproven, then it is not a rule.
First rule in every TTRPG is THESE RULES ARE GUIDELINES. The ideal that the rules in a RPG is absolute runs counter to the whole concept.
 
As for the original post the answer is again in the world description PoD book pg 189 “
The human population of Tech-World is around four thousand. The robot population is around a million
and rising, depending on how one tallies distributed- intelligence computer with numerous slave bodies. Experiments in using nanotechnology, cloning and other technologies of questionable legality are ongoing, and Tech-world is attracting increasing numbers of researchers who wish to pursue lines of inquiry not permitted in the imperium”. This is a world that by the description is rapidly growing in population from the influx of researchers to the use of cloning the world is changing fast.
Tech World is listed in the UWP as Population Code 1. The fluff text is wrong. Unless, population does not mean population. If it means the economic value of a Population Code 1, then fine, but that is not what the UWP Population Code means currently.
 
First rule in every TTRPG is THESE RULES ARE GUIDELINES. The ideal that the rules in a RPG is absolute runs counter to the whole concept.
Rules are absolute. What you are talking about is changing to house rules from printed rules. This is absolutely allowed. This is true of every tabletop rule system ever. "These are the rules. If any of them do not work for your game, change them or get rid of them." I am not saying anything different than every game designer, ever.
 
Actually if you read pirates of Drinax no where do they say they can maintain TL 14 in fact there are strong indications they can’t for example much of the Harrier is only TL 14 yet Drinax couldn’t even repair that (the repairs using ship shares represent the PCs resources). Another example is when the hydroponics broke down Drinax had to invade Asim in order to feed its people. It’s even explicitly stated that Rachando control the palace’s economy and makes money by trading Drinax Art for repair parts. The palace has no factories only a few work shops (pg 21 PoD book 2). Saying that Drinax can repair TL 14 is completely counter dictating the whole description in book 2.

Why would local charts be more accurate? You don’t have the imperium updating them they got enough to do with out sending surveys to worlds not members of the imperium? Also PoD book 2 pg 125 “The Imperium has little knowledge of the rest of the sector, especially Aslan-held subsectors and Menorial, Egryn, Yggdrasil and Dpres. Surveys of Menorial were only completed in 1105, and the Scout Service rates all charts of the sector as ‘questionable’. “ Yes you’re likely to get more accurate information locally from local merchants and governments but both will depend much on the important of the world. Drinax for example gets maybe a few merchants a year if that ( same book at the other information). The UWP is a tool its accuracy is up to the GM. there are worlds where the description itself indicates that the UWP is currently inaccurate. You should actually look it up by the way the second survey is the primary source of the UWPs but in the imperium the scout service updates it with information gotten from the Starports(this is why the UWP is more accurate in the boarders of the imperium) but its software and without instant communication the data changes can lag and sometimes the changes get lost.
Why would local charts be more accurate? Seriously? Because the 3I surveys worlds every few hundred years. Local charts are not made by the 3I. They are made and maintained locally on a timescale more like yearly. No idea why something updated yearly would be more accurate than something only updated every few centuries. Also Aslan do not use Imperial charts. They use their own charts, not made by the Imperial Scout Service. Same with every other race and polity and large to mega corporations. Local charts can be purchased locally for a fee.

If the description makes the UWP inaccurate, then the description is wrong. The description is not a game mechanic, it is fluff text. Therefore, when they disagree, the UWP is what is right.
Infrastructure is a lot more than just resources! It’s the ability to refine and fabricate with those resources. Drinax would take decades possibly a century to restore its infrastructure to support a TL 14 or 15. World Builder Handbook pg 173 “ A world’s Tech Level represents the technology that is commonly available and representative of the world’s infrastructure.” Drinax doesn’t have any infrastructure anymore (This is actually one of the hidden drives for the restoration of the Drinax empire )

The UWP is a Resource for a quick reference but the worlds with actual descriptions (about a third of listed worlds) it’s the description which will tell the current story. Other worlds are completely left to the GM to flush out and how much he wants to use the UWP.
 
Rules are absolute. What you are talking about is changing to house rules from printed rules. This is absolutely allowed. This is true of every tabletop rule system ever. "These are the rules. If any of them do not work for your game, change them or get rid of them." I am not saying anything different than every game designer, ever.
Funny the fact that you say Rules are Absolutely tells me you don’t know any game designers.
Discounting the text and saying it’s just fluff tells me you don’t understand the purpose of this text. Traveller uses almost no pure fluff text this has been true since the early days.
Traveller has never been a hard Rules as Written game system and inconsistencies have always been an intended part of the game including especially in the UWP.

Maybe you should check out a few more games if you think rules are absolute.

By the way what part of “These Rules Are Guidelines” Can you not understand?
 
Tech World is listed in the UWP as Population Code 1. The fluff text is wrong. Unless, population does not mean population. If it means the economic value of a Population Code 1, then fine, but that is not what the UWP Population Code means currently.
The fluff you discount explains the discrepancy. The fact that you discount this text as unimportant tells me you don’t understand its purpose
 
Edit: also not to argue but as far as I know Pirates book 2 “The Trojan Reach” is still the official MgT2 source book. Or has there been a new Trojan Reach book release or in the works?
I believe he was making a joke referencing the Pirates of the Caribbean movies where Barbossa, talking about the "Pirate Code" says "They're more like guildelines than actual rules."
 
I've made a few worlds using the WBH, largely thanks to Geir (walking me through a substantial amount of it.) Because of the way the population code is generated separate from anything on the world that would have a direct impact on world survivability, more than once I've had completely uninhabitable worlds with high pop codes and low enough tech that I have to "bump" it to the minimum. It becomes an even more difficult situation when the "Sophont" existence roll says "No." Then I'm stuck having to dream up a way to explain why millions of sophonts with no starport and no tech to have migrated to the planet can somehow exist.

With this in mind, I can see Gwydion's point to an extent of the rules maybe needing some consideration. There isn't a rule to explain this discrepancy, which means the numbers become somewhat irrelevant since I have to hand-wave an explanation. It can make for some interesting worlds that have regressed, but it happens far more often than I care for, precisely because the population code is not in any way tied to the actual planet condition. A more concrete definition of what "population" represents and a better tie-in to world generation would go a long way to shore up a weak spot.

On the flip side, it can always be hand-waved and explained. Perhaps they used to be a high-tech, sentient species when it was first charted, and have devolved into slugs. They're still millions of them, and they may someday make it back to the stars, but for now don't spill the salt. I see the need for both a better population code system, and the ability to alter it as needed.
 
The original statement on Tech World, in Third Imperium Magazine #4 is this:

"TECH- WORLD is populated by 30 scientist/technicians and several thousand robots. Its main industry is the production and export of
high-tech goods such as fusion guns, computers, and black globe generators".

But if you use that to say that the Pop rating is 1, then there are definitely people who will freak out that the robots should count and the population should be rated much higher. Because I've seen that exact argument repeatedly already with the existing Mongoose text of 4000 humans and 1 million robots.

You have other problems, like the flavor text of the world is that it is a giant factory, but its trade code is Non Industrial. Also, having a world producing black globe generators for export is a bit sus :P
 
The original statement on Tech World, in Third Imperium Magazine #4 is this:

"TECH- WORLD is populated by 30 scientist/technicians and several thousand robots. Its main industry is the production and export of
high-tech goods such as fusion guns, computers, and black globe generators".

But if you use that to say that the Pop rating is 1, then there are definitely people who will freak out that the robots should count and the population should be rated much higher. Because I've seen that exact argument repeatedly already with the existing Mongoose text of 4000 humans and 1 million robots.

You have other problems, like the flavor text of the world is that it is a giant factory, but its trade code is Non Industrial. Also, having a world producing black globe generators for export is a bit sus :p
I figured with the cloning and the influx of researchers and their families that the population just increased. That’s what the text is for in many ways is to explain these changes and give examples for when you need to do your own.
 
I've made a few worlds using the WBH, largely thanks to Geir (walking me through a substantial amount of it.) Because of the way the population code is generated separate from anything on the world that would have a direct impact on world survivability, more than once I've had completely uninhabitable worlds with high pop codes and low enough tech that I have to "bump" it to the minimum. It becomes an even more difficult situation when the "Sophont" existence roll says "No." Then I'm stuck having to dream up a way to explain why millions of sophonts with no starport and no tech to have migrated to the planet can somehow exist.

With this in mind, I can see Gwydion's point to an extent of the rules maybe needing some consideration. There isn't a rule to explain this discrepancy, which means the numbers become somewhat irrelevant since I have to hand-wave an explanation. It can make for some interesting worlds that have regressed, but it happens far more often than I care for, precisely because the population code is not in any way tied to the actual planet condition. A more concrete definition of what "population" represents and a better tie-in to world generation would go a long way to shore up a weak spot.

On the flip side, it can always be hand-waved and explained. Perhaps they used to be a high-tech, sentient species when it was first charted, and have devolved into slugs. They're still millions of them, and they may someday make it back to the stars, but for now don't spill the salt. I see the need for both a better population code system, and the ability to alter it as needed.
Here is Marc Miller's specific comment on this issue in the first edition of the rules:

"This procedure for world creation is intended to provide a wide variety of features for worlds to which adventurers will travel. Specific characteristics should be taken as guides rather than strict statistics. For example, a population digit of 6 indicates a population of 1,000,000; it can be construed to actually cover a range from slightly more than the next lowest level (100,000) to slightly less than the next highest level (10,000,000). Similarly, a world with 100% water would still possibly have small islands capable of serving as a starport or land base.

At times, the referee (or the players) will find combinations of features which may seem contradictory or unreasonable. Common sense should rule in such cases; either the players or referee will generate a rationale which explains the situation, or an alternative description should be made."

The modern Mongoose system is is only slightly tweaked. I don't remember exactly when the "Population as a continuum" where values overlapped changed and the current, non overlapping ranges were formally implemented.
 
It is his world We are playing in anyhow. His world, his rules. lol
100% wrong.

Mark Miller wrote the original Classic rule set, a novel and some other things. We are coming up on 50 years of hundreds of people writing about Charted Space.

This is MY world, MY choice of rules, MY campaign. I am the one responsible for providing an enjoyable game for my players. It does not matter what someone from 40+ years ago thinks is an enjoyable game, it matters what my players today think is enjoyable. It matters that in 10 years I have been flexible enough to understand how my players have changed to continue to create an enjoyable game for them.

NO ONE is beholden to some idea of a perfect game that we all have to follow some hidebound set of rules because one person one time said "this is the way it is." That is religion not roleplaying.
 
Here is Marc Miller's specific comment on this issue in the first edition of the rules:

"This procedure for world creation is intended to provide a wide variety of features for worlds to which adventurers will travel. Specific characteristics should be taken as guides rather than strict statistics. For example, a population digit of 6 indicates a population of 1,000,000; it can be construed to actually cover a range from slightly more than the next lowest level (100,000) to slightly less than the next highest level (10,000,000). Similarly, a world with 100% water would still possibly have small islands capable of serving as a starport or land base.

At times, the referee (or the players) will find combinations of features which may seem contradictory or unreasonable. Common sense should rule in such cases; either the players or referee will generate a rationale which explains the situation, or an alternative description should be made."

The modern Mongoose system is is only slightly tweaked. I don't remember exactly when the "Population as a continuum" where values overlapped changed and the current, non overlapping ranges were formally implemented.
I get it. I've tried to create a co-dependent system where the population code would be affected by the world creation process, but no matter how many ways I tried to make a coherent roll system, I would end up with rolls that still didn't make sense (usually to the other extreme.) In the end I settled for just manually adjusting values where needed, and coming up with flavor text where feasible. I just don't think it's avoidable. I understand the frustration that can happen when the UWP doesn't match actual conditions, and perhaps that's the fault of authors not re-adjusting the UWP to better reflect the world they've built.

The "Outdated star charts" is a good, in-universe explanation to use for older material and why it doesn't match. Across 50 years, things have changed and the codes aren't always what they once were. We need to be honest about that and not use the excuse to justify continuing to make worlds that's don't make sense. I would encourage Mongoose to use that only as a way to explain pre-existing discrepancies and moving forward encourage writers to make their UWP reflective of what's actually on the surface. When the UWP clearly does not match the planet, it does slowly chip away at the rules holding the universe together. If a series of adventure modules dropped tomorrow that were "official canon", yet suddenly TL5 represented space travel, it would give the green light for every author to make the TL what they want regardless of what the official rulebook says, because, hey it's all fuzzy anyway, and overnight TL is a meaningless number. I think that's the point Gwydion is trying to make. What we do in our own worlds is ours, but when it comes to canon, recognizing the ebb and flow of time and change while maintaining consistency as best as possible is a necessity.
 
100% wrong.

Mark Miller wrote the original Classic rule set, a novel and some other things. We are coming up on 50 years of hundreds of people writing about Charted Space.

This is MY world, MY choice of rules, MY campaign. I am the one responsible for providing an enjoyable game for my players. It does not matter what someone from 40+ years ago thinks is an enjoyable game, it matters what my players today think is enjoyable. It matters that in 10 years I have been flexible enough to understand how my players have changed to continue to create an enjoyable game for them.

NO ONE is beholden to some idea of a perfect game that we all have to follow some hidebound set of rules because one person one time said "this is the way it is." That is religion not roleplaying.
Also, Marc Miller's vision of Charted Space was "make your campaign. Here's some starting points if you want"

From Book 0 "Introduction to Traveller"

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I get it. I've tried to create a co-dependent system where the population code would be affected by the world creation process, but no matter how many ways I tried to make a coherent roll system, I would end up with rolls that still didn't make sense (usually to the other extreme.) In the end I settled for just manually adjusting values where needed, and coming up with flavor text where feasible. I just don't think it's avoidable. I understand the frustration that can happen when the UWP doesn't match actual conditions, and perhaps that's the fault of authors not re-adjusting the UWP to better reflect the world they've built.

The "Outdated star charts" is a good, in-universe explanation to use for older material and why it doesn't match. Across 50 years, things have changed and the codes aren't always what they once were. We need to be honest about that and not use the excuse to justify continuing to make worlds that's don't make sense. I would encourage Mongoose to use that only as a way to explain pre-existing discrepancies and moving forward encourage writers to make their UWP reflective of what's actually on the surface. When the UWP clearly does not match the planet, it does slowly chip away at the rules holding the universe together. If a series of adventure modules dropped tomorrow that were "official canon", yet suddenly TL5 represented space travel, it would give the green light for every author to make the TL what they want regardless of what the official rulebook says, because, hey it's all fuzzy anyway, and overnight TL is a meaningless number. I think that's the point Gwydion is trying to make. What we do in our own worlds is ours, but when it comes to canon, recognizing the ebb and flow of time and change while maintaining consistency as best as possible is a necessity.
The slippery slope argument is a poor one at best. Gwydion’s problem is he’s decided that text is just fluff and has no effects on the game. This is a great case that it’s not true in Traveller. the description in Trojan Reach explains why the population is different and that it’s a recent thing. There are reasons that sector book are not just a book of UWPs it’s because the numbers don’t always reflect the whole situation. For example Tech World is listed as having a population of 30 another explanation for the difference is the 30 is the permanent population and the 4000 includes transient population.
 
I get it. I've tried to create a co-dependent system where the population code would be affected by the world creation process, but no matter how many ways I tried to make a coherent roll system, I would end up with rolls that still didn't make sense (usually to the other extreme.) In the end I settled for just manually adjusting values where needed, and coming up with flavor text where feasible. I just don't think it's avoidable. I understand the frustration that can happen when the UWP doesn't match actual conditions, and perhaps that's the fault of authors not re-adjusting the UWP to better reflect the world they've built.

The "Outdated star charts" is a good, in-universe explanation to use for older material and why it doesn't match. Across 50 years, things have changed and the codes aren't always what they once were. We need to be honest about that and not use the excuse to justify continuing to make worlds that's don't make sense. I would encourage Mongoose to use that only as a way to explain pre-existing discrepancies and moving forward encourage writers to make their UWP reflective of what's actually on the surface. When the UWP clearly does not match the planet, it does slowly chip away at the rules holding the universe together. If a series of adventure modules dropped tomorrow that were "official canon", yet suddenly TL5 represented space travel, it would give the green light for every author to make the TL what they want regardless of what the official rulebook says, because, hey it's all fuzzy anyway, and overnight TL is a meaningless number. I think that's the point Gwydion is trying to make. What we do in our own worlds is ours, but when it comes to canon, recognizing the ebb and flow of time and change while maintaining consistency as best as possible is a necessity.
The problem is that there is not going to be agreement on what that hard value is. If you say that Tech World is 30 scientists and 4000 robots like the very first fan version, there will be people complaining that the robots should count as population, so the Pop figure is still wrong.

The reason they make that argument is that Non Industrial and Industrial are based on population. So if you have a million robots making stuff (like Mongoose's Tech World, it should not be "non industrial".

So you get into 'what is counted in the population?'. Do Chirpers count? Do Robots? Do soldiers stationed at the military base? What about tourists and other visitors? You'll get different values (especially for the lower pop levels) depending on whether you count citizens, legal residents, or actual number fo people present on any given day.

O'ahu, where I live, has a permanent population of of a little under a million people. So that's Pop 5 in Traveller terms. But, there's about a quarter of a million tourists here on any given day. If they are counted, its Pop 6. A full on Disney World resort planet would have a vastly bigger discrepancy.

You might think that's kind of minor. But it matters if you are going to try to build a bunch of derived statistics off of it.
 
I think you're just adding to the argument that population needs a more clear definition (moving forward, as we can't change the past, only learn from it.) For example, It could explicitly be stated that the population code represents all sentient sophonts living and working on the planet, excluding tourists, visitors and non-sentient species.
 
I think you're just adding to the argument that population needs a more clear definition (moving forward, as we can't change the past, only learn from it.) For example, It could explicitly be stated that the population code represents all sentient sophonts living and working on the planet, excluding tourists, visitors and non-sentient species.
🙄
 
The slippery slope argument is a poor one at best. Gwydion’s problem is he’s decided that text is just fluff and has no effects on the game. This is a great case that it’s not true in Traveller. the description in Trojan Reach explains why the population is different and that it’s a recent thing. There are reasons that sector book are not just a book of UWPs it’s because the numbers don’t always reflect the whole situation. For example Tech World is listed as having a population of 30 another explanation for the difference is the 30 is the permanent population and the 4000 includes transient population.
It's no less of a relevant argument than saying "Oh, outdated star charts..." That's not an explanation, that's a workaround to resolve an existing discrepancy. It should not be used as a justification to continue to bastardize the rules as written in the book.

It feels like there's two arguments: One arguing why the codes should be rigid and strictly enforced, and one arguing why the rules aren't important at all. Neither addresses the issue of how and why this is now an issue. Whoever wrote the Tech World fluff knew what the planet code was, and used the excuse of "Well, outdated star chart, I can do whatever I want" and used that as an out of universe creation rule. Same with Drinax. These are both canon, and run completely contradictory to the world generation rules. At some point in the past, there was a discrepancy between old world generation and new, so the in-game justification for this became 'old star charts" in an effort to support cross-compatibility and players that wanted to run old stuff with new stuff. It is NOT an objective rule for out of game generation. It's extremely suggestive and open to a wide range of interpretation. It's an excuse to circumvent the rules as written. In your own world, great. You're world, do what you want and come up with an in-game way to explain to your players why the world doesn't match the code. In what's supposed to be canon, I'm not sure using suggestive interpretation of the rules is good for the long-term health of the universe. Mongoose needs to try to limit how much "interpretation" happens in the OTU.

By and large, this doesn't really affect me as I prefer to create my own systems. I don't even acknowledge the Imperium as a thing for the most part. I don't think anyone is trying to suggest people can't do what they want in their own universes, they just want consistent rules. I'm struggling to see that as a bad thing.
 
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