ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
That's a terrible mindset for a Traveller Referee to have.fusor said:
Just a random thought
- Thread starter PsiTraveller
- Start date
alex_greene said:
What a load of tosh. So Pluto was somewhat arbitrarily declared to not be a proper planet - that isn't a reason to scrub any mission to it. And believe me, NASA has its share of "black hats" to reality-check their ideas.
The point of that whole "coloured hat" paradigm is that all of the "hats" play a part in discussion - you don't get to cherry-pick the ones you like and ignore the rest. If you think you can just "liberally ignore" it then you have no comprehension of the paradigm at all and have no business bringing it up here.
Now you're really being ridiculous. They're not all going to be "wildly successful for various reasons", any more than any idea in the real world would be. Traveller may be an RPG, but that doesn't make it a total fantasyland where nothing has consequences and all ideas work.
People here are pointing valid flaws to ideas that are being proposed and should be encouraged to do so, not dissuaded. Pointing out the problems means that people can address them and try to come up with solutions (and maybe it'll turn out there aren't any solutions - but that's still a useful outcome because they would have still learned a lot by thinking through the process critically).
How would NASA react if their probe to Pluto detected a massive artefact located in orbit of the newly proclaimed dwarf planet but every sensor that probe has indicates this companion to Pluto is artificial?
Is there a reason NASA isn't interested in investigating Mars publically?
By that I mean that anomaly that looked like a face or the possibility certain geological formations resemble the Giza Pyramids?
All hypothetical but when do you decide enough is enough?
All in a Traveller game mind you!
Of course they'll annexe it but what if your players locate that wormhole maybe even accidentally traverse it, would they pass up on exploring or return immediately and hope they get some kind of payment for the discovery ignoring the possibility whoever wants that discovery might want to keep it under wraps meaning your players might have to find someplace to hide real fast!
Is there a reason NASA isn't interested in investigating Mars publically?
By that I mean that anomaly that looked like a face or the possibility certain geological formations resemble the Giza Pyramids?
All hypothetical but when do you decide enough is enough?
All in a Traveller game mind you!
Of course they'll annexe it but what if your players locate that wormhole maybe even accidentally traverse it, would they pass up on exploring or return immediately and hope they get some kind of payment for the discovery ignoring the possibility whoever wants that discovery might want to keep it under wraps meaning your players might have to find someplace to hide real fast!
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Hopeless said:
Outpost Mars for MgT covered such topics very well game-wise. But in real-life. That face on Mars turned out not to be a face at all when the Sun lit the same area from a different angle.
Annatar Giftbringer
Emperor Mongoose
Well, if they do find water on Mars, I wouldn't dare to use it, for refueling ships or otherwise... Just ask the good Doctor who how that worked out... 
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o9LrbdorS0Annatar Giftbringer said:Well, if they do find water on Mars, I wouldn't dare to use it, for refueling ships or otherwise... Just ask the good Doctor who how that worked out...
ShawnDriscoll said:
I need to re-watch that video it wasn't clear they used a different perspective rather than attempt to find out why the next time the satellite passed over there was no sign of that "Face".
Well that's Red Planet and Mission to Mars scrubbed! :twisted:
Have they been able to figure out exactly when Mars was left uninhabitable?
alex_greene
Guest
Science fiction celebrated its 200th anniversary yesterday.
June 21st, 1816, was the day Mary Shelley graced the world with the story of Frankenstein; the story of someone who pondered what would happen if the dead could be brought back to life, and what it could mean for the world, not to mention the first successful attempt at a reanimation.
For two hundred years, despite the fact that, in reality, we cannot revivify long-dead people, nor can we assemble a whole human out of disparate dead body parts, run a current through them and bring them to life, we have enjoyed the fiction that we can live in a world where such a marvel could be possible.
We lived through a century where the brightest minds on Earth all concluded that we would not know powered, manned flight before the start of this century. Two engineers thought otherwise, and invented aviation in 1903.
Professor Simon Newcomb, in 1901, had this to say about powered flight:-
And each generation has had detractors who sat there in their armchairs and loudly proclaimed that such a thing was never going to be possible, usually prefaced with words such as "Let's face reality."
Each generation of science fiction writer has basically written stories of how some bold inventor, some creative genius, has taken a wet haddock to the faces of the armchair "experts" and gone on to change the world - at least in the books and television shows. Some things are still impossible as of the time I write this post. Psionics may never be possible, as may FTL travel, FTL communications or gravitics. And yet Traveller is predicated on the existence of such essential impossibilities, and the exploration of what the world would be like if such things were possible - and, in the case of FTL comms, categorically impossible except in the form of hard data sent to the stars on ships.
Science fiction, and Traveller's concept of science fiction, is predicated, as has all science fiction for the last two hundred years, on imagining what the world would be like if the "impossible" was possible, and even commonplace and taken for granted. I could happily write a Traveller campaign based on the travels of a mutant supergenius who wanders from system to system on various starships, whose constant companion is a tiny yet cheerful supercomputer in his backpack, and the setting would be no less absurd than that of a 3I setting which steers strictly to the canon of the CRB and never deviates from the limits of what tech is possible in the Third Imperium.
Stop looking to tear down other people's ideas, and look instead to try and see what would happen if they could be made possible - and even to thrive. Otherwise, why on earth would you want to play Traveller anyway, knowing that you don't even believe in half the technology that the setting takes for granted?
June 21st, 1816, was the day Mary Shelley graced the world with the story of Frankenstein; the story of someone who pondered what would happen if the dead could be brought back to life, and what it could mean for the world, not to mention the first successful attempt at a reanimation.
For two hundred years, despite the fact that, in reality, we cannot revivify long-dead people, nor can we assemble a whole human out of disparate dead body parts, run a current through them and bring them to life, we have enjoyed the fiction that we can live in a world where such a marvel could be possible.
We lived through a century where the brightest minds on Earth all concluded that we would not know powered, manned flight before the start of this century. Two engineers thought otherwise, and invented aviation in 1903.
Professor Simon Newcomb, in 1901, had this to say about powered flight:-
All of the science fiction for the last 200 years has been the telling of ridiculous stories: about men creating robots (before they became a common feature in heavy industry and before the Roomba), inventing lasers (before Charles Hard Townes and Arthur Leonard Schawlow developed the theory and Theodore H. Maiman built the first one in 1960) and going into space (before October 4, 1957, when Sputnik I reached orbit).Professor Newcomb said:
And each generation has had detractors who sat there in their armchairs and loudly proclaimed that such a thing was never going to be possible, usually prefaced with words such as "Let's face reality."
Each generation of science fiction writer has basically written stories of how some bold inventor, some creative genius, has taken a wet haddock to the faces of the armchair "experts" and gone on to change the world - at least in the books and television shows. Some things are still impossible as of the time I write this post. Psionics may never be possible, as may FTL travel, FTL communications or gravitics. And yet Traveller is predicated on the existence of such essential impossibilities, and the exploration of what the world would be like if such things were possible - and, in the case of FTL comms, categorically impossible except in the form of hard data sent to the stars on ships.
Science fiction, and Traveller's concept of science fiction, is predicated, as has all science fiction for the last two hundred years, on imagining what the world would be like if the "impossible" was possible, and even commonplace and taken for granted. I could happily write a Traveller campaign based on the travels of a mutant supergenius who wanders from system to system on various starships, whose constant companion is a tiny yet cheerful supercomputer in his backpack, and the setting would be no less absurd than that of a 3I setting which steers strictly to the canon of the CRB and never deviates from the limits of what tech is possible in the Third Imperium.
Stop looking to tear down other people's ideas, and look instead to try and see what would happen if they could be made possible - and even to thrive. Otherwise, why on earth would you want to play Traveller anyway, knowing that you don't even believe in half the technology that the setting takes for granted?
alex_greene
Guest
The best science fiction stories start with someone saying something absurd, followed by someone else thinking "That idea is bonkers. Let's run with the idea and see what happens," and suddenly you have Vulcans and Klingons, sonic screwdrivers and Stargates, time machines and Vorlons, phasers and transporters, and you get all the tiny little ideas suddenly coming to life before your eyes like real lasers, automatic doors, universal translators, data storage media the size of thumbnails capable of holding the contents of the National Library with room to spare, and a world where bigotry and cynicism are a thing of the past.
Admittedly, we're still working on the last one, but the point is we are still working on it.
Point being - never tell a science fiction fan that he can't run the campaign his way. Unless you're expecting the reply in the form of a stream of xenomaledicta.
Admittedly, we're still working on the last one, but the point is we are still working on it.
Point being - never tell a science fiction fan that he can't run the campaign his way. Unless you're expecting the reply in the form of a stream of xenomaledicta.
Didn't they all begin with a variation of the premise of what exactly lies over the other side of that hill? 
I doubt anyone decided to base their latest premise on the current movie craze after all what would you think if someone said that one day humanity fell not to some outside force but because in their rise to power ascending beyond the confines of their star system they forgot to pay heed to the lessons of the past.
BUT as their main systems fell silent the one common value shared since primeval times the need to survive prevailed.
So where once there was a hundred star systems home to wonders that fell into legend it was on the outskirts of the now uninhabited human empire that life continued.
Where billions once flourished maybe a few hundred if you were lucky cobbled together the means to keep humanity afloat in a now grimdark universe where points of light became literal bustling ports of life.
Where dozens of spacecraft once used to travel from one end of known space to the other had been cobbled together into massive space stations intended to act as a lifeline between what few inhabitable systems remain.
And at one of the smaller ports you and your players have just arrived taking leave of the decrepid cargo freighter that ferried you from your last home and to a place you hope will allow you to rebuild your lives maybe finding a home with fresh water, breathable air, food fit to eat and a place to work and live and hopefully rebuild the family you lost...
Eh needs more work but this thread is working wonders for my imagination!
I doubt anyone decided to base their latest premise on the current movie craze after all what would you think if someone said that one day humanity fell not to some outside force but because in their rise to power ascending beyond the confines of their star system they forgot to pay heed to the lessons of the past.
BUT as their main systems fell silent the one common value shared since primeval times the need to survive prevailed.
So where once there was a hundred star systems home to wonders that fell into legend it was on the outskirts of the now uninhabited human empire that life continued.
Where billions once flourished maybe a few hundred if you were lucky cobbled together the means to keep humanity afloat in a now grimdark universe where points of light became literal bustling ports of life.
Where dozens of spacecraft once used to travel from one end of known space to the other had been cobbled together into massive space stations intended to act as a lifeline between what few inhabitable systems remain.
And at one of the smaller ports you and your players have just arrived taking leave of the decrepid cargo freighter that ferried you from your last home and to a place you hope will allow you to rebuild your lives maybe finding a home with fresh water, breathable air, food fit to eat and a place to work and live and hopefully rebuild the family you lost...
Eh needs more work but this thread is working wonders for my imagination!
alex_greene
Guest
As someone who has been a science fiction fan since I first learned to read, someone for whom science fiction is in my blood, I thank you. Just doing my bit.Hopeless said:this thread is working wonders for my imagination!
alex_greene said:
Wouldn't that be the Somnium by Kepler - 400 years ago?
alex_greene said:
You can do what you want in your games, I'm not stopping you. I'm just not interested in being told by someone else that I or anyone else should stop thinking critically about people's ideas - that's certainly not the bold, noble pursuit that you claim it to be, and it's not what science fiction is about either. You make it sound like being critical and analytical only destroys ideas when obviously it doesn't - it makes you realise that there are other possibilities to explore. But as I said, all those "hats" need to be present in a discussion, not just the ones you like to hear. "Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out" certainly applies.
But then I think it's obvious that you don't care for hard science fiction and realism (which thrive on such analysis), so of course you'll sneer at it.
Hopeless said:
It's been imaged several times at higher resolution and at different lighting angles, and it's obviously just a natural hill.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/mgs_cydonia.html
If it was ever habitable at all (in the sense of having a thicker atmosphere), that would have been around 4 billion years ago.
alex_greene
Guest
My word, there's a thought.msprange said:
alex_greene
Guest
So you're a telepath, then?fusor said:
Master your preconceptions. They are clearly mastering you.
alex_greene
Guest
That's why I never kiss them on the mouth.SSWarlock said:
Oh, I am so going to the special hell for that ...
