The Aging Table: Why are We Scared of It?

[Condottiere]

A mid life crisis isn't just the realization that you've peaked, you're also heading downhill.

Whereas with Dungeons and Dragons, you're on the first rung to building your legend.

 

[vargr1]

3000 years in the future, and medical technology can't stop the human body from aging like it always has.

Are you unaware of anagathics? Given enough money you can live forever. This is generally unavailable of course, and for good reason.

I'm quote aware of anagathics. They are not what I'm talking about.

My question is this: Why doesn't simple TL of your homeworld allow you to live a longer and better life? We've seen that people who live in higher tech level countries generally longer and are healthier than people in lower TL countries. Without anagathics.

 

[Condottiere]

It would depend on the local healthcare system, and how accessible it is to all segments of society.

 

[-Daniel-]

It would depend on the local healthcare system, and how accessible it is to all segments of society.

This is a good point. I think of the movie Elysium where they clearly had majorly high tech medical abilities, but they restricted the access to a very small section of their population.

 

[alex_greene]

It's one more canon aspect of Traveller, handed down from Marc Miller, pbuh: Individual Travellers may seek immortality, and might even find it through some form of technology, but immortality is never for the masses.

However, I can well imagine routine rejuve treatments being made available in high tech worlds: pop in, spend a few hours in a tank having your telomeres torn apart and reset, and when you come out you'll be physiologically whatever age you set your body as, but your aging clock's been reset at zero, and you get one free term with no aging rolls before the aging rolls begin all over again.

It'd be available to anybody, but there is a waiting list - and the waiting list is notoriously long (you could suffer an aging roll before you get to 100th place in the list), so the race would always be on to obtain bootleg rejuve booths and to reverse engineer rejuve technology.

Aging pirates might risk everything - capture, spacing, destruction of their ships - just to obtain one data crystal containing reliable blueprints for a working rejuve booth, so they could get their own rejuve operation going and rake in millions from those few people who have more cash than sense, and who would pay a fortune to reset their nonagenarian bodies with their aching joints and give them even a few months of moving freely and not stinking of liniment for a time. Never mind the thrill of capture and being held for ransom, or being blackmailed afterwards for supporting organised crime.

Think of how the Travellers could be hired for such an endeavour.

Edit: AAAAND just as I posted this, I thought "Sarcophagus technology from Stargate."

 

[vargr1]

It would depend on the local healthcare system, and how accessible it is to all segments of society.

This is a good point. I think of the movie Elysium where they clearly had majorly high tech medical abilities, but they restricted the access to a very small section of their population.

Regardless - even the poorest of people in our TL8 societies live longer than people in TL1 societies. Basic sanitation and better nutrition does a lot for the average lifespan and quality of life.

In order for TL to have no effect on the ageing table, you'd have to postulate that *every* planet in Traveller has poor/non-existent/restrictive healthcare, wouldn't you?

 

[-Daniel-]

Regardless - even the poorest of people in our TL8 societies live longer than people in TL1 societies. Basic sanitation and better nutrition does a lot for the average lifespan and quality of life.

Are you sure? I think there are people in Sudan who might disagree with you or folks in many other third world countries that don't have oil we first world countries want. :| But as we are drifting into real world political conversations that are against the rules here, I will just leave it at; we will have to disagree that it is always better and that some high tech worlds might restrict their lower level citizens to equal access to care and others would not. Thus on the balance, it is nether a guarantied benefit nor negative.

In order for TL to have no effect on the ageing table, you'd have to postulate that *every* planet in Traveller has poor/non-existent/restrictive healthcare, wouldn't you?

No I think that Traveller already uses vast generalizations and abstractions within the rules so the idea that we should assume *every* planet in Traveller provides for 100% of their citizens would be as silly as saying that *every* planet in Traveller has poor/non-existent/restrictive healthcare. Therefore, in my opinion, it is best to leave it abstract and say that the balance between those who do and those who don't means an average character does not gain any advantage or disadvantage either way.

 

[Condottiere]

If you don't like the regime's policies; it's hard to leave, or at least, expensive.

One reason to enlist in the Imperium's service(s).

Now there you have a case that the Imperium would want to keep it's trained and experienced servants at optimum physical condition.

 

[alex_greene]

Now there you have a case that the Imperium would want to keep it's trained and experienced servants at optimum physical condition.

If that were the case, military men would live to be a thousand once they reached Brigadier, and there'd be nothing but Brigadiers occupying Capital and Vland.

There's more to it than just how well they serve the Empire. You just have to figure out why any Empire would keep a working rejuve procedure for a select few, such that not even trillionaires could get a hold on it. What would they want to bend over backwards for one man where there are a thousand even more worthy billionaires and elected leaders out there who seem to be even more deserving somehow?

Think about what element would cause an Empire to bend its might and main to keep those few people alive, even over moneymakers, elite superwarriors and great leaders.

 

[Condottiere]

Wormspit.

Also, there probably is a mandatory retirement age, tied to an up or out meritocracy.

 

[vargr1]

Basic sanitation and better nutrition does a lot for the average lifespan and quality of life.

Are you sure?

Yeah, pretty sure,

https://rstudio-pubs-static.s3.amazonaws.com/72531_b93600654dac404fb452b018edd010b5.html

Better sanitation and a cleaner water supply as well as better nutrition and more effective medical treatment and prevention will and does increase average lifespan. These things are all positively related to TL. Therefore, humans living in higher tect societies should live - on average - longer. Traveller ignores the effect of TL on health buy having no modifiers on the Aging Table for TL at all. I think this is a problem, and one that is also easily fixed.

 

[-Daniel-]

Better sanitation and a cleaner water supply as well as better nutrition and more effective medical treatment and prevention will and does increase average lifespan.

This is true.

Therefore, humans living in higher tect societies should live - on average - longer. Traveller ignores the effect of TL on health buy having no modifiers on the Aging Table for TL at all. I think this is a problem, and one that is also easily fixed.

This is where your logic fails. You are assuming that because a system has a TL that everyone in that system's society can take advantage of that TL's benefits. One need only look at our own system to see this is not true. We are, as a system, at about TL 8 or 9. But clearly we could never say, in honesty, that everyone in this society has access to all that TL has to offer. The TL does not impact all of the people the same.

The TL of the system you were born in does not and should not have any game rule impact on your life span in the rules automatically, IMO. Now if you want to argue your specific character, who is a SOC 11, should have some advantage based on the fact his home system was TL 15, then as a GM I would work with you to house rule something for that specific character. But to say the core rules should be changed, I do not agree with the faulty logic being used.

As for a general rule impact, I think a house rule to cover what ever you want at your table is what is called for in this case. That is the fun of a game like Traveller, we are free to adjust the rules as we each see fit for our own setting.

 

[alex_greene]

Better sanitation and a cleaner water supply as well as better nutrition and more effective medical treatment and prevention will and does increase average lifespan.

This is true.

Therefore, humans living in higher tech societies should live - on average - longer. Traveller ignores the effect of TL on health buy having no modifiers on the Aging Table for TL at all. I think this is a problem, and one that is also easily fixed.

This is where your logic fails. You are assuming that because a system has a TL that everyone in that system's society can take advantage of that TL's benefits. One need only look at our own system to see this is not true.

You're only seeing things through the lens of the early 21st century, and assuming that this is the perfect system and the only political system which will take us out to the stars. Clearly, it is not.

A lot of science fiction authors used to posit a Far Future where rejuve treatments and increased lifespans were available through some sort of socialised health care, available to all citizens, ensuring not only that every citizen would enjoy an increased lifespan, but that a higher proportion of that lifespan would be a time of reasonable health and physical fitness.

It is not unreasonable to assume that this current geopolitical model of our Balkanised world is an aberration, not the norm, for Humaniti - that we'd go out there to the stars to explore and to colonise, not to fight endless, unceasing wars - and that we'd build gleaming cities to be a shining beacon of civilisation, with healthy citizens living long and happy lives, rather than just keep the same squalid lifestyle of wearing rags and grubbing around in the ruins but just swap planets.

TL does have an effect on lifespan, and the problem with the aging tables is easily fixed.

 

[hivemindx]

TL does have an effect on lifespan, and the problem with the aging tables is easily fixed.

Lifespan and aging are not the same thing. The aging table does not represent the chance of you getting TB in your 20s and dying in your 40s.

I haven't seen anyone quote any studies about the life expectancy of people who are born in to low TL societies but live in high tech ones. This would be a far more useful comparison to the situation of a player character who may grow up on a world with no medical care but then spend the rest of their life in the TL 12 average Imperium.

Your assumption that the rules are broken is wrong. There is no inherent problem with the aging table. You have a problem with it based on your assumptions and you can easily fix it. Great for you. Don't assume it is broken just because you don't like the fact it doesn't carefully model every possible factor. If you want to go down that road there are other factors you might want to bring in. People who suffer critical injuries during life events are likely to die younger. People who engage in hard physical labour for 40 years are likely to die younger then those who don't.

As far as I'm concerned bringing the TL of your birth world in to the aging rules would be a waste of time.

 

[Condottiere]

Even in the socialist paradise of Star Trek, people grow old and die comparatively soon.

 

[alex_greene]

Even in the socialist paradise of Star Trek, people grow old and die comparatively soon.

One hundred and thirty seven years and still ambulatory ... sounds like a pretty good "comparatively soon" to me.

And then there was the cast of the Klingon version of The Expendables, still kicking some at the tender age of a hundred and fifty:-

If I could be given the chance to live that long, just long enough to take out a fleet of Jem Hadar ships with one vessel at almost 160 years old, I'd live in that socialist fantasy, thanks.

Then there's this guy, now in his seventies, aging in real time, and still on active duty:-

With a good few rejuves, he could still deliver righteous and brutal justice for another good few decades yet.

 

[vargr1]

Better sanitation and a cleaner water supply as well as better nutrition and more effective medical treatment and prevention will and does increase average lifespan.

This is true.

Therefore, humans living in higher tect societies should live - on average - longer. Traveller ignores the effect of TL on health buy having no modifiers on the Aging Table for TL at all. I think this is a problem, and one that is also easily fixed.

This is where your logic fails. You are assuming that because a system has a TL that everyone in that system's society can take advantage of that TL's benefits.

Well, yeah. If no one can take advantage of it's benefits, is the system really at that TL? Isn't TL the measure of common and easily available technology in a system? Also, the Ageing Table - following your logic - assumes that no one can take advantage of the TL benefits of better medical treatment. Isn't that just as bad of an assumption?

 

[vargr1]

TL does have an effect on lifespan, and the problem with the aging tables is easily fixed.

Lifespan and aging are not the same thing. The aging table does not represent the chance of you getting TB in your 20s and dying in your 40s.

The Ageing Table simulates available quality of medical care - something that does improve as TL improves. To assume that TL has no impact on that is provably false.

 

[-Daniel-]

Well, yeah. If no one can take advantage of it's benefits, is the system really at that TL?

Yes, this is true, but I am not assuming "no one" nor am I assuming "everyone". Rather I am assuming that except for a few utopian systems, the availability of both high TL medical as well as other high TL items will be available based on social status and funding levels.

Isn't TL the measure of common and easily available technology in a system?

Yes, this is true. The thing I think you are struggling with it the idea that commonly available does not equal affordable and given to 100% of the population of a system.

Also, the Ageing Table - following your logic - assumes that no one can take advantage of the TL benefits of better medical treatment. Isn't that just as bad of an assumption?

No, you might want to go back and re-read some of what I have written. I am saying the impact of the higher TL may or may not be available to everyone. For many reasons, part of the population may not be able to take advantage of the higher TL. Or the impact of the higher TL may not increase the life span compared to the whole universe. Say we have a TL14 world that is also a high industrial world with heavy pollution, the higher TL medical might just be helping the population stay up with the average life span. Not increase it beyond the average.

So to be clear, I do not believe the TL in and of itself should increase the expected life span of someone or change the aging table. There are so many other factors that would need to be taken into account, I believe the aging table, as it is now, is a good enough abstraction for our use.

 

[vargr1]

Well, yeah. If no one can take advantage of it's benefits, is the system really at that TL?

Yes, this is true, but I am not assuming "no one" nor am I assuming "everyone". Rather I am assuming that except for a few utopian systems, the availability of both high TL medical as well as other high TL items will be available based on social status and funding levels.

[/quote]

A good point, but there are no modifiers on the table for social status at all, therefore social status has no effect on aging. Maybe there should be.

Isn't TL the measure of common and easily available technology in a system?

Yes, this is true. The thing I think you are struggling with it the idea that commonly available does not equal affordable and given to 100% of the population of a system. [/quote][/quote]

"Easily available" generally encompass affordable. There are no modifiers for TL on the aging table at all. Therefore, the rules assert that TL does not affect the aging process in any way. This is provably false. For a game based on realism, I find this a disturbing oversight.

So to be clear, I do not believe the TL in and of itself should increase the expected life span of someone or change the aging table. There are so many other factors that would need to be taken into account, I believe the aging table, as it is now, is a good enough abstraction for our use.

I disagree. It's an abstraction that is much too abstract and based on faulty logic, therefore it leads to unrealistic results - that people from low TL worlds age at exactly the same rate and are at exactly the same risk of the same age-related effects as people from high TL words, no matter what.