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

[tytalan]

That isn't explaining why the population is recorded differently. UWP are fuzzy, not irrelevant. It is possible to change UWPs. Regina went from TL 10 to TL12.

If they say "hey, most of the people on the planet are visiting scientists", that would be a reason why the pop code remained 1. But the author doesn't say that and the author doesn't say "while TechWorld generally at has a Pop 1, at this moment it's a 4 because of recent immigration. Whether that will last remains to be seen". The author just changed the description of the planet without doing any of that, as far as I can tell.

Dynamic is fine. Fuzzy is fine. Both are intended. But you have to do the work. ie explain what's going on to the people buying your product and why you are doing it that way. The purchaser should not need to invent the reasons themselves. They need to be provided. Because otherwise, the complainers are right and the numbers don't mean anything.

It very much explains why the population is recorded differently that’s what dynamic means. The population is changing thanks to the efforts of GeDeCo push. And it is provided the quote I included was pg 189 Trojan Reach Pirates of Drinax. In fact if you actually read the description the fact that there is any population is a recent thing “The first colony here – a Solomani outpost – was destroyed by the Sindalian Empire’s Punitive Armada. The world lay empty for hundreds of years, until the GeDeCo funded the construction of a starport here to encourage Imperium-Hierate trade through the Borderlands. To reduce the costs of constructing the starport, they contracted with renegades from the technologically advanced world of Neumann in Gazulin subsector.” This whole Quote from the same page same book tells us everything.

There is literally no need for the purchasers to make anything up and even if they did that’s common in RPG settings especially when changing editions/publishers. It used to be considered a way for the GM to tweak the setting to their game. The whole of these thread is people complaining that a largely RP tool that has errors that actually make sense in RP (Who’s making these data entry? How old are they? With travel times in the time frames of months and years as well as no central authority to oversee database changes outside of the major governments a lot of these data entries are going to be things passed around from merchant to merchant.). Common sense saids that there’s going to be errors and new developments especially in a dynamic universe.

 

[tytalan]

Maybe a example might explain things better

It the Yosemite super volcano were to blow tomorrow by next week everyone would be wearing a mask because the atmosphere would be tinted possibly for a 100 or more years depending on the degree of the eruption. The world would enter an Ice age tho the Ice would take 50 to a 100 years to actually start covering even the middle of Canada. So let’s say this happened and the earth was a part of the third Imperium. 2-3 months after this happened possibly longer the news reaches capital. Now it takes the bureaucracy 6 to 18 months to update the Imperium database. Now the data is sent through the X-Boat network for some worlds on the network it can take up to two years to get the database updated. For worlds outside of the network it could take up to a decade to get updates. So it can take as much as 15 years for the fact that the planet earths atmosphere is now tinted to reach all the worlds in the third imperium.

Now suppose that earth wasn’t a member of the third Imperium. With no direct connection it might be as long as 3-5 decades possible longer depending on when the information got to the imperium bureaucracy and the importance to put on the information.

Now with a world like tech world where to information would take about 2 years to travel to capital by the X-Boat route and that’s once it actually once the imperium finds out about the changes which GeDeCo is not going to offer up because it’s trying to downplay the research going on Tech World (Especially since much of it is illegal in the third Imperium). So not only do you have a long information loop but also you have a megacorp trying to cancel that information.

Dynamic Universe means just that which is a big part of why the descriptions are included in every sector supplement

 

[Nelphine]

Sure, but make a note 'the UWP is now pop 3'. Don't leave it as pop 1?

In your example the equivalent is having players fly to earth, ask what the UWP is, telling players it's atmo 6.. then telling them they need tasks after they landed because tainted atmospheres need masks.

Don't say it's atmo 6. change it to atmosphere 7.

 

[tytalan]

Sure, but make a note 'the UWP is now pop 3'. Don't leave it as pop 1?

The UWP list is a database in the library data program it’s on the players side a RP tool that is as accurate as you should expect from the communication times and the source. On the GM side it’s a Starting point and the text that some worlds get is what’s going on now and how things have changed from the database. Changing the UWP would literally take away the dynamic aspects of the as well as handicap the GMs ability to incorporate their own dynamic changes to the universe. Literally the text burp tell the GM that while the database says their only 40 people living on tech world the actual case is there’s 4000 people living here and here’s why.

What you want is either a static universe where you always get what the UWP lists (removing GMs control) or two books for each sector one with the database that the players can access and another with the updated UWP and a set of largely redundant text burps telling the GM about the changes. The only time there’s an issue with the listed UWP is when something like say the description text with important GM information changes things and those should only be available to the GM. This whole thread is literally about UWP list that the PCs use not matching the information that the GM gets.

 

[Vormaerin]

That is not remotely necessary nor has been suggested. And this thread isn't about the difference between player knowledge and GM knowledge. It has been about how rigidly authors are constrained. Numbers are intentionally fuzzy so that you can introduce variation beyond the limits of the very finite numbers.

There's nothing wrong with TechWorld having 4000 people and saying its Pop 1. IF the author intentionally did that for a declared reason. Then the GM knows that the published list conflicts, why it conflicts, and can decide if they accept that reasoning or not. That's the case with Cordan, for example. Techworld does not do that. So every Referee buying that product has to decide if it was intentional or a mistake. Then then have to figure out what reason for the conflict if they don't think it is a mistake.

Spell it out. That's an author's obligation. Then you don't have arguments about typos and and what was intended. You just have "I agree with that reasoning" or "I don't.

 

[tytalan]

That is not remotely necessary nor has been suggested. And this thread isn't about the difference between player knowledge and GM knowledge. It has been about how rigidly authors are constrained. Numbers are intentionally fuzzy so that you can introduce variation beyond the limits of the very finite numbers.

There's nothing wrong with TechWorld having 4000 people and saying its Pop 1. IF the author intentionally did that for a declared reason. Then the GM knows that the published list conflicts, why it conflicts, and can decide if they accept that reasoning or not. That's the case with Cordan, for example. Techworld does not do that. So every Referee buying that product has to decide if it was intentional or a mistake. Then then have to figure out what reason for the conflict if they don't think it is a mistake.

Spell it out. That's an author's obligation. Then you don't have arguments about typos and and what was intended. You just have "I agree with that reasoning" or "I don't.

And the text does spell it out if you actually read it. It literally commented that there’s been researchers moving there and lots of cloning experiments. As for authors being rigidly constrained that’s not been the focus of this thread at all. The original post is literally complaining that the number in the text doesn’t match the UWP and I quote it
“
Okay, I might be crazy, but a UWP population digit of 1 means how many zeroes after the population value of index of 4? Exactly ONE! That does not line up with a population four thousand!

So either we need a UWP population digit of 3 for Tech-World, or all of a sudden the magical robot run spaceport is being managed entirely by a maximum of 40 people, not 4000. Hmmm.... maybe not impossible, but not what the text in Aslan indicates.

So, which is it? I personally imagine the UWP digit should be 3 for Tech-World. 4000 staff does not seem ridiculous for a type A port, whereas 40 might well be a bit ridiculous.”. The original author of the post ignores the rest of the text and complains the the UWP (PC information) doesn’t match the Text (GMs information). So yes this is about GM information and PC information and not in anyway about Writers Restrictions.

 

[Vormaerin]

That original poster dude was posting 4 years ago. You are replying to me and to Nelphine. And possibly Gwydion (not sure, he asked me to stop interacting with him so put him on ignore to comply with his wishes). None of us have been talking about that.

The point is that this material is a published campaign adventure (Pirates of Drinax). That altered the text from the pre-Mongoose version, which did have 30 scientists supervising the robots. And they are setting adventures on this world and expecting the players to routinely interact with it. So it is pretty important that the referee be told why the author changed the description and whether that affects any of the adventures.

It is up to the Referee to decide how much information the players have. The players are probably not reading the PoD sourcebooks. The author's job is to convey their intent to the reader (almost certainly the referee). There are lots of possible reasons for the discrepancy. Which one is the intended one that presumably affects the adventures published in which Tech World factors? That's the author's obligation.

 

[tytalan]

And as I pointed out if the referee reads the text description of the world they see the reason or do you not accept the text as being legitimate Referee information?
“Experiments in using nanotechnology, cloning and other technologies of questionable legality are ongoing, and Tech-world is attracting increasing numbers of researchers” common sense tells that attracting people is going to increase the population as will cloning. All it would take is about a thousand researchers relocating with their families to do the trick. So yes the referee is told why it changed. You keep arguing there’s no explanation but I have repeatedly pointed out there is or do you have a rebuttal to my point?

 

[Vormaerin]

The fact that it changed is not the problem. That's what was explained. But how does that explain why the pop rating is still a 1 in a book that intentionally and openly increases the population value of the world? There's nothing wrong with changing the population. There's something wrong with changing the population and not saying why the UWP published in that exact same book is not matching.

You can change the UWP value. No problem. This is the new official Mongoose value while Travellermap still shows the older value. Done. You can explain why the UWP is not changed even though the situation has changed. It's temporary population or something. Or you can do neither of those things and be outside the bounds of intent of the rules. Values are fuzzy so you can have unusual situations covered with an appropriate explanation.

Not so you can just say "oh, I didn't like the UWP so I'm just going to ignore it." That's abusing the rules not using them. Just say "I changed the pop from 1 to 3 for this campaign." Or "There's now 4000 scientists, but the pop is still 1 because they are all visiting researchers and support personnel, not permanent residents." It's not that hard to stay within the rules, given how flexible they are.

It is not the book author's role to create disinformation.

 

[Nelphine]

The author could even say it's now pop 4000, and the UWP is still listed as 1 on purpose because it hadn't been updated by the scouts. However, as soon as a scout ship comes by, the world is expected to change to pop 3 for it's UWP - and this should happen soon as families of those 4000 talk and scouts hear about the discrepancy.

 

[Anstett]

...as soon as a scout ship comes by, the world is expected to change to pop 3 for it's UWP - and this should happen soon as families of those 4000 talk and scouts hear about the discrepancy.

This is a side thought to the thread but....

Just how often do the Scouts actually survey things outside the 3I? and other than them who would the person in the system report discrepancies to?

As I constantly say at work, "I am glad you figured out the change to the settings for the printers for this set of jobs. Did you tell anyone else what those settings are?" Sure eventually someone might be a retired Scout who also is an engineer who visits the system and goes "Huh, there are more people here than I thought there should be." Who else would care to see this as a problem?

Earlier it is mentioned how it might take decades to intentionally disseminate information when someone sees it is wrong. But that needs the person to see the problem, recognize it as a problem, know to to report the problem to, and then fill out the paperwork.

How many players with a retired Scout Traveller would stop in system and go "Ah, we need to go file report XYZ with a priority code of 6" and then go do that?

 

[Vormaerin]

Classic Traveller has an adventure (The Imperial Fringe) that states the IISS is supposed to do a basic fact check of every system in the Sector every 20 years. The players are paid Cr50,000 per planet they do a proper light survey of. If they finish all 440 worlds in 20 years, they get a bonus of MCr4.4 They don't have to do red zones, but they get double pay if they do them on the down low.



Detached Duty scouts (aka all of them no longer in active duty) are supposed to be debriefed regularly, but I don't know how often anyone actually makes that an element of play.

Once you get any distance from the Imperium's borders, the data gets more and more out of date. The CT adventure Leviathan gives the Imperial Corporation that hires the PCs this much information about the Egyrn subsector, which is adjacent to the partly Imperial controlled Pax Rulin subsector.:

 

[Geir]

How many players with a retired Scout Traveller would stop in system and go "Ah, we need to go file report XYZ with a priority code of 6" and then go do that?

Scouts don't retire, they detach (or "there are bold scouts, and old scouts, but no old, bold scouts"). If they get a scout ship, when they stop by a scout base for free maintenance, they probably get to fill out an FORM 0407F-IV PART C, addendum report for worlds they have visited.

Then that get's filed at the base. If there's a discrepancy from the official data (which beyond the borders might go back to the Second Survey, fiftyish or more years prior), it probably needs a corroborating report, which might just be waiting for the next scout to come by and fill out another form, but might possibly prompt someone to send an another active or detached scout to have a look-see (adventure seed opportunity). Then, the local scout commander puts "write up a report on Whatever World" on a to-do list and eventually passes this report up until it hits the x-boat network and bounces all the way back to Reference in Core Sector. Then somebody either updates the records, or passes back a request for more corroboration, and then, finally five years down the road an updated database gets pushed back out to scout bases and probably shows up as a new addendum to the Refence Public Star Chart maybe a decade after it was initially reported. Or something like that.

 

[Vormaerin]

On the larger subject of whether any *players* would care that there is a discrepancy, not in my experience. Sometimes the scout player likes the detached duty element and sometimes they'd rather ignore it. I don't generally make a big deal of it if they aren't into that.

I've run a lot of Traveller campaigns over the past 45 years for a bunch of different groups. My anecdotal experience is that not many players who aren't also GMs give a damn about the UWP or want to bother learning to read it. They ask for a library data fact sheet, news reports, and/or talk to other folks in the starport to get information. And I generally give that information in a paragraph, not the UWP. Because they are usually more concerned with the actual gravity or type of taint than the size of the world or that there is *some* kind of taint there.

Pretty sure I've never had the players make a plan that was contingent on the UWP being accurate. And they know that information that they have may be out of date. Out of date data and long communications times are a core principle of Traveller.

 

[tytalan]

Classic Traveller has an adventure (The Imperial Fringe) that states the IISS is supposed to do a basic fact check of every system in the Sector every 20 years. The players are paid Cr50,000 per planet they do a proper light survey of. If they finish all 440 worlds in 20 years, they get a bonus of MCr4.4 They don't have to do red zones, but they get double pay if they do them on the down low.

View attachment 2096

Detached Duty scouts (aka all of them no longer in active duty) are supposed to be debriefed regularly, but I don't know how often anyone actually makes that an element of play.

Once you get any distance from the Imperium's borders, the data gets more and more out of date. The CT adventure Leviathan gives the Imperial Corporation that hires the PCs this much information about the Egyrn subsector, which is adjacent to the partly Imperial controlled Pax Rulin subsector.: View attachment 2097

The problem with you whole premise is the fact this is not a imperium world

 

[tytalan]

The fact that it changed is not the problem. That's what was explained. But how does that explain why the pop rating is still a 1 in a book that intentionally and openly increases the population value of the world? There's nothing wrong with changing the population. There's something wrong with changing the population and not saying why the UWP published in that exact same book is not matching.

You can change the UWP value. No problem. This is the new official Mongoose value while Travellermap still shows the older value. Done. You can explain why the UWP is not changed even though the situation has changed. It's temporary population or something. Or you can do neither of those things and be outside the bounds of intent of the rules. Values are fuzzy so you can have unusual situations covered with an appropriate explanation.

Not so you can just say "oh, I didn't like the UWP so I'm just going to ignore it." That's abusing the rules not using them. Just say "I changed the pop from 1 to 3 for this campaign." Or "There's now 4000 scientists, but the pop is still 1 because they are all visiting researchers and support personnel, not permanent residents." It's not that hard to stay within the rules, given how flexible they are.

It is not the book author's role to create disinformation.

Again the UWP is PC knowledge it’s not changed because it’s not generally known. This is not a imperium world that get in theory data updated every five years. The scout service does not invade independent or other empires worlds every 20 years.

 

[tytalan]

So now we have the IISS invading independent and other empire worlds every 20 years just to update their data. No that’s not a war waiting to happen not at all..

And now we came to the jest of the argument all over again. Vormaerin the UWP is primarily a RP tool as such it being wrong breaks no rules. The text is tell the GM the true current story. The Author recognizes that sometimes the Players shouldn’t necessarily have the most accurate information. So since the UWP is player information the Author game the GM the actual data through the text. It’s no different than a patron telling the PC that they are delivering cargo A when it’s Cargo X. If you’ve never had a patron mislead or out right lie to the PCs I’m wondering if you’ve ever actually ran a game. This is again a matter of GM knowledge vs PC knowledge.

 

[tytalan]

Scouts don't retire, they detach (or "there are bold scouts, and old scouts, but no old, bold scouts"). If they get a scout ship, when they stop by a scout base for free maintenance, they probably get to fill out an FORM 0407F-IV PART C, addendum report for worlds they have visited.

Then that get's filed at the base. If there's a discrepancy from the official data (which beyond the borders might go back to the Second Survey, fiftyish or more years prior), it probably needs a corroborating report, which might just be waiting for the next scout to come by and fill out another form, but might possibly prompt someone to send an another active or detached scout to have a look-see (adventure seed opportunity). Then, the local scout commander puts "write up a report on Whatever World" on a to-do list and eventually passes this report up until it hits the x-boat network and bounces all the way back to Reference in Core Sector. Then somebody either updates the records, or passes back a request for more corroboration, and then, finally five years down the road an updated database gets pushed back out to scout bases and probably shows up as a new addendum to the Refence Public Star Chart maybe a decade after it was initially reported. Or something like that.

I agree entirely and that’s probably something fast tracked because it’s important atmosphere, lack of gas giant, something major like that. Something minor like a growth in population is probably just as likely to get lost in the paper shuffle especially if it outside of the imperium boarders. So population numbers might get changed in 4 or 5 decades maybe

 

[tytalan]

On the larger subject of whether any *players* would care that there is a discrepancy, not in my experience. Sometimes the scout player likes the detached duty element and sometimes they'd rather ignore it. I don't generally make a big deal of it if they aren't into that.

I've run a lot of Traveller campaigns over the past 45 years for a bunch of different groups. My anecdotal experience is that not many players who aren't also GMs give a damn about the UWP or want to bother learning to read it. They ask for a library data fact sheet, news reports, and/or talk to other folks in the starport to get information. And I generally give that information in a paragraph, not the UWP. Because they are usually more concerned with the actual gravity or type of taint than the size of the world or that there is *some* kind of taint there.

Pretty sure I've never had the players make a plan that was contingent on the UWP being accurate. And they know that information that they have may be out of date. Out of date data and long communications times are a core principle of Traveller.

See over my past 45 years of running with various groups ( often with long periods between groups) most of my players have first checked out the UWP which I’ve always considered a part of the library data then they do their research using that data as a starting point. But anecdotal evidence is just that. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Vormaerin]

I fundamentally disagree. I have never had a player in any game, Traveller or otherwise, look something up in a sourcebook and rely on that information in character without confirming with the GM. Nor is it the author of a supplement's job to decide to add disinformation to the campaign without explicitly calling out the reason for doing so. What happens at the table is up to the individual referee. The game's author does not know anything about the campaign or what level of information the players would have about the world in question. So the "it's in character info and can be wrong" is BS. That's something only the referee can decide.

The UWP is primarily game mechanic for describing worlds in a short hand for the GM's use. It is a flexible set of values that allow for divergence from literal readings. This is important because there are lots of things that don't easily fit into the simplistic set of numbers. Some people would prefer that they were less flexible. That's what the last dozen or so pages of this thread (all the recent ones) have been about.

Authors should not be free to just ignore the UWP entirely and just do whatever they want without acknowledging the UWP at all, because that is not what the rules allow. And that actually does result in the "then there are no rules" situation that some folks have complained about. It is not too much to ask that an author take care to explain why he is diverging from the existing material. This is true for a sourcebook and it is especially true when dealing with an adventure campaign.

If an author of a sourcebook has a cool idea that they really can't quite fit into the UWP as written, they have some flexibility as per the rules. They can change the UWP and note that fact. They can present an explanation for why the actual situation diverges from the stated UWP without actually resulting in a change to the UWP. Because their job as a writer is to convey their story intent to the reader, who is almost certainly the referee.

The author clearly thought his story needed 4000 technicians and a million robots instead of the 30 scientists and 4000 robots of all previous published versions. That's fine. But acknowledge that you are changing it on purpose and tell us what the reason for the change was. Don't just have conflicting information with no explanation for why the information conflicts. That's not within the spirit of the rules.

UWPs are not rule free, RP fluff. They also aren't carved in stone rigid values. A ref at a table can disregard the rules if they wish. An author should thread that rather wide needle in a published book.