The Premises of Traveller: 2. Space Travel is Unpleasant and Most Do Not Do It

The UWP is fuzzy goes all the way back to the first world building article in JTAS written by the Keith brothers. They took the planet Craw as an example of how to interpret the UWP to make an interesting world for adventure. They made the "taint" be low partial pressure of O2 so that the solution was a respirator, not a filter mask, even though pressure was standard. And they buffed up the population with an alien species the locals treat as a beast of burden, not people, so they weren't counted.

I don't think it's "lazy" to not change the demonstrated practice of 50 years of product development. To accomplish what? To make a few liberally interpreted worlds conform to a simplistic recording keeping system? To start arguments over whether Craw counts as a "Very Thin" atmosphere (because it needs a respirator) or "Standard, Tainted" (because air pressure is normal for all other purposes, like flight, despite the "tainted" rules requiring a filter mask not a respirator) or should just be rewritten to conform?

The UWP's purpose is to provide a short hand for "at a glance flyover" visits and be a starting point prompt for more in depth development if the GM is going to run full adventures there. It was never, ever intended to be a rigid categorization. And, honestly, I don't see what is gained by constraining the authors more than they already are. The UWP certainly has zero constraint on the people actually playing the game.

Honestly, I don't get what harm it causes. Nothing anyone publishes after you've started developing a world yourself is going to match, so you'll have to edit it. And if you haven't developed anything about the world yet, the fact that their use of the UWP is a bit stretched is not going to break anything.
 
Lazy world building is lazy world building. In the gaming world (especially Traveller) errata is taken as a given. People rightly get upset when they spend a fair amount of money on a product that has errors. Nobody here is asking for perfection - what they are asking for is to fix problems that have been pointed out. MGT is the current publisher of the (8th? 10th edition?), so it's a fair place to bring up these issues. What has been published has been published and unless it's in PDF format nothing can change.

It doesn't mean that people who have paid money to support said publishers can't and shouldn't point out the problems in order to get a better product. Making excuses for them will never get the problems fixed.

IMTU to fix inconsistencies and problems is a terrible way for gamers to have to be. If all people do is provide excuses for the problems then what publisher would ever even consider going back and attempting to clean things up to make them better? Isn't the whole point of paying for a game system is to get something you don't have to go out and fix the 2nd day you start playing (day 1 is always reserved to enjoying the shiny).
 
Making mistakes, like copying data wrong or changing things that are already defined because the existing info was overlooked is one thing. If we are just talking about errata, then sure. I got the impression that what was being advocated for was tightening the definitions of the UWP into inflexibility.

The example I gave of Craw/Spinward Marches was not a *mistake*. It was intentional design using the UWP as a loose guideline. Does it exactly conform to the UWP definitions? No. Should it have to? Not in my view. UWP is too limited to be taken that strictly.
 
Isn't the whole point of paying for a game system is to get something you don't have to go out and fix the 2nd day you start playing (day 1 is always reserved to enjoying the shiny).
No. The point of buying stuff is to get inspiration and save time by having a lot of work done for you. The idea of running something without tailoring it to your vision and your group frankly boggles my mind. But my point was this. If you have never visited Craw in your campaign, then the write up of Craw playing a bit fast and loose with the UWP is not going to be a problem. You just know there are respirators not filter masks needed. And they don't count the local equivalent of Chimpanzees in the population (even if they wrong and they should because they are sentient).

If you have visited Craw in your campaign before you bought a book with the "officia" version, you probably wrote up something completely different, so you would have to retcon your campaign or (more likely) not adopt the "official" Craw. But that would be the case whether or not the Keith Bros' Craw was 100% UWP definitions compliant or not.
 
No. The point of buying stuff is to get inspiration and save time by having a lot of work done for you. The idea of running something without tailoring it to your vision and your group frankly boggles my mind. But my point was this. If you have never visited Craw in your campaign, then the write up of Craw playing a bit fast and loose with the UWP is not going to be a problem. You just know there are respirators not filter masks needed. And they don't count the local equivalent of Chimpanzees in the population (even if they wrong and they should because they are sentient).

If you have visited Craw in your campaign before you bought a book with the "officia" version, you probably wrote up something completely different, so you would have to retcon your campaign or (more likely) not adopt the "official" Craw. But that would be the case whether or not the Keith Bros' Craw was 100% UWP definitions compliant or not.
You are looking at things from a strictly story point of view, and that is fine IYTU. What I am speaking of is strictly mechanical. The UWP of the worlds are not just a fluff description of the worlds. They are a mechanic that is used to derive many different things, including Trade, which is a huge part of Traveller. Therefore, if the UWP is inaccurate, none of the trade system works. You cannot determine trade routes or even X-boat routes. You cannot determine lines of communication or anything without having the UWP be internally consistent.

From a microstory point of view, you are correct. It does not matter. If you are trying to play in a cohesive, published game, then it is a huge problem as the mechanics do not work.
 
If you have visited Craw in your campaign before you bought a book with the "officia" version, you probably wrote up something completely different, so you would have to retcon your campaign or (more likely) not adopt the "official" Craw. But that would be the case whether or not the Keith Bros' Craw was 100% UWP definitions compliant or not.
Annoyingly, Craw got retconned to TL5 somewhere along the way... don't know why.
 
Wasn't it TL5 originally? I distinctly recall that one of the reasons that the Keiths wanted some extra sentients around was to have a budding industrial revolution going on and they felt they needed a laborer class.
 
No. The point of buying stuff is to get inspiration and save time by having a lot of work done for you. The idea of running something without tailoring it to your vision and your group frankly boggles my mind. But my point was this. If you have never visited Craw in your campaign, then the write up of Craw playing a bit fast and loose with the UWP is not going to be a problem. You just know there are respirators not filter masks needed. And they don't count the local equivalent of Chimpanzees in the population (even if they wrong and they should because they are sentient).

If you have visited Craw in your campaign before you bought a book with the "officia" version, you probably wrote up something completely different, so you would have to retcon your campaign or (more likely) not adopt the "official" Craw. But that would be the case whether or not the Keith Bros' Craw was 100% UWP definitions compliant or not.
Prepare to be boggled, sir! :p

Generally speaking I've never bought game modules to use as strictly inspiration for my game. I bought them because a) I wanted something already completed to minimize the time/effort required to jump in to gaming, and b) I wanted to support others efforts and work so that more work would be forthcoming. As age and economic situations have increased I find myself doing much more b) than a), and I'm ok with that.

I'm not at all above making tweaks to things as necessary - but that's a dodge of what I said originally. I think it's been made abundantly clear in many threads over the decades that UWP is, and has always been, an extremely high level description upon which every game referee will have to develop a backstory and explanation for. The original adventure LBB 0 - The Imperial Fringe started the accepted idea that many worlds were going to just be stopping over points - that is explicitly called out. They also call out already prepared adventures set within the same location (the Spinward Marches).

Over time more details on some worlds were provided - sometimes it was just a paragraph, sometimes entire adventures. Two entire supplements contain nothing but collected nuggets (the Library Data books) of background. All of that remains acceptable and would not fall under what I defined as lazy world building.

Lazy world building is the accepting on contradictory information and/or continuous logical fallacies/head scratchers. Using your example, Craw has some inconsistencies. Ok, fine, that's well within other accepted game concepts - the 20% overage for deck plans to make them more fun and less architecturally perfect has also reigned as accepted since the first deckplan and ship design rules existed. The lazy world building comes when these exceptions become the norm. If you purchase your supplement and have to tweak a few things to fit it into either what you are looking for or make it compatible with your group, all's the better. However, if you have to spend an excessive amounts of time because of contradictions or errors, then shame on the publisher.

This idea exists across the many editions - some errors were pointed out literally decades ago yet were maintained and replicated over and over. I'm not wanting to nitpick over a small thing here or there - while annoying it's easily tweaked and adjusted for. But there have been larger issues and later retconning to try to shovel new things into existing models. Making new versions should be about making the game better, fixing the potholes and adding new content. When your player community literally gives you the corrections to fix it's not unreasonable to have a fair expectation that errors DO get fixed (ideas and opinions for changes are entirely different and not the issue here).

All of this boils down people voting with their gaming dollars. Publishers are free to ignore this at their leisure just as players are free to move on to something else (or in the case of Traveller to use the LBB series they paid for many decades ago, or even switch to some of the free stuff that is out there and can be of high quality). Such is the nature of the game business.

Finally, I'd like to say a hearty thanks to all for engaging in debate without resorting to yard-school name calling and other tactics that are sadly found on the internet today. Sprited debates and honest disagreements are what the forums should be used for.
 
You are looking at things from a strictly story point of view, and that is fine IYTU. What I am speaking of is strictly mechanical. The UWP of the worlds are not just a fluff description of the worlds. They are a mechanic that is used to derive many different things, including Trade, which is a huge part of Traveller. Therefore, if the UWP is inaccurate, none of the trade system works. You cannot determine trade routes or even X-boat routes. You cannot determine lines of communication or anything without having the UWP be internally consistent.

From a microstory point of view, you are correct. It does not matter. If you are trying to play in a cohesive, published game, then it is a huge problem as the mechanics do not work.
I think that the fairly minor effect of a weebly wobbly UWP on a handful of planets is far down the list of problems with the trade system. Most of the fudges won't even effect the trade classifications.

Again, if you are talking about flat out mistakes, like the trade codes don't match the UWP or a 7 got turned into a 1 in an update, that' kind of editing failure needs to be fixed. But I'd like to see an example of a world where the write up diverges from the UWP in some way that actually causes a mechanical or story problem.

I don't consider Tech 7 colonies on a Mars like world to be a mechanics problem. Having some imported or legacy of better times tech for life support does not break the system mechanically.
 
Prepare to be boggled, sir! :p

Generally speaking I've never bought game modules to use as strictly inspiration for my game. I bought them because a) I wanted something already completed to minimize the time/effort required to jump in to gaming, and b) I wanted to support others efforts and work so that more work would be forthcoming. As age and economic situations have increased I find myself doing much more b) than a), and I'm ok with that.

I'm not at all above making tweaks to things as necessary - but that's a dodge of what I said originally. I think it's been made abundantly clear in many threads over the decades that UWP is, and has always been, an extremely high level description upon which every game referee will have to develop a backstory and explanation for. The original adventure LBB 0 - The Imperial Fringe started the accepted idea that many worlds were going to just be stopping over points - that is explicitly called out. They also call out already prepared adventures set within the same location (the Spinward Marches).

Over time more details on some worlds were provided - sometimes it was just a paragraph, sometimes entire adventures. Two entire supplements contain nothing but collected nuggets (the Library Data books) of background. All of that remains acceptable and would not fall under what I defined as lazy world building.

Lazy world building is the accepting on contradictory information and/or continuous logical fallacies/head scratchers. Using your example, Craw has some inconsistencies. Ok, fine, that's well within other accepted game concepts - the 20% overage for deck plans to make them more fun and less architecturally perfect has also reigned as accepted since the first deckplan and ship design rules existed. The lazy world building comes when these exceptions become the norm. If you purchase your supplement and have to tweak a few things to fit it into either what you are looking for or make it compatible with your group, all's the better. However, if you have to spend an excessive amounts of time because of contradictions or errors, then shame on the publisher.

This idea exists across the many editions - some errors were pointed out literally decades ago yet were maintained and replicated over and over. I'm not wanting to nitpick over a small thing here or there - while annoying it's easily tweaked and adjusted for. But there have been larger issues and later retconning to try to shovel new things into existing models. Making new versions should be about making the game better, fixing the potholes and adding new content. When your player community literally gives you the corrections to fix it's not unreasonable to have a fair expectation that errors DO get fixed (ideas and opinions for changes are entirely different and not the issue here).

All of this boils down people voting with their gaming dollars. Publishers are free to ignore this at their leisure just as players are free to move on to something else (or in the case of Traveller to use the LBB series they paid for many decades ago, or even switch to some of the free stuff that is out there and can be of high quality). Such is the nature of the game business.

Finally, I'd like to say a hearty thanks to all for engaging in debate without resorting to yard-school name calling and other tactics that are sadly found on the internet today. Sprited debates and honest disagreements are what the forums should be used for.

I don't think we are in disagreement. I think MasterGwydion and I are, though. There's a lot of things that are not intentional fuzziness but outright mistakes or flat out impossible. Those should be fixed. But I am not in favor of trying to lock down the definitions of the UWP even tighter and preventing intentional fuzzy numbers. I think that would break far more than any nominal benefit to the the trade system, which has far more serious problems then whether Craw's atmosphere is actually "7".
 
I don't think we are in disagreement. I think MasterGwydion and I are, though. There's a lot of things that are not intentional fuzziness but outright mistakes or flat out impossible. Those should be fixed. But I am not in favor of trying to lock down the definitions of the UWP even tighter and preventing intentional fuzzy numbers. I think that would break far more than any nominal benefit to the the trade system, which has far more serious problems then whether Craw's atmosphere is actually "7".
I agree with that. The UWP of a single world is inconsequential to an adventure or the game. The attempt to provide UWP's (i.e. like the Grand Survey) may actually be more of a mistake than anything else. Random dice rolls for so many worlds actually injects more problems than it actually solves.

I wish GDW would have gone on the same path as TSR did when they did Greyhawk. A map is fine, outlining the kingdoms is fine, giving them names and brief histories and some high points on their resources and points of interest is fine. Trying to identify all villages, cities, towns, roads, forests and lakes of every hex... sheer madness and completely unnecessary.
 
I think Travellermap is pretty neat. It makes it super easy for someone to grab a sector and go, whether they want to track down the "official" book for that area or just use the map to make up their own stuff instead of rolling and drawing it out by hand. :D Even used as is, it gives scope for letting things be very different while still having a baseline. Adventuring in the Trailing Frontier should feel different than in the Spinward Marches or the the Trojan Reach. I think they've done a pretty good job of that. I think the biggest problem is ideas suitable for the Core tend to seep into the Marches sometimes. Makes the Marches less March-y.

But I don't ever run campaigns *in* the Third Imperium. I like the Imperium to be the heavy *over there* and the players to be Imperials out in the boonies.

I'm a pretty big fan of the idea that folks would colonize the bejeezus out of their star system before they worried about interstellar trade and hellworld colonization. So I don't feel like they have developed the setting in the kind of detail you talk about. Very few systems are developed like Sol, not that many even have the prime world more than superficially developed.

If they tried to have a Tarsus or Beltstrike for every world, that would be crazy :D But I do think that the game could stand to put some more focus on running a campaign in a single system. Or even a single world. An Earth 2 type campaign primer might interesting.
 
I don't think we are in disagreement. I think MasterGwydion and I are, though. There's a lot of things that are not intentional fuzziness but outright mistakes or flat out impossible. Those should be fixed. But I am not in favor of trying to lock down the definitions of the UWP even tighter and preventing intentional fuzzy numbers. I think that would break far more than any nominal benefit to the the trade system, which has far more serious problems then whether Craw's atmosphere is actually "7".
Again. Cordan. See My post above. Pop Code 3, but this is only the baronial households. That does not include the however many millions of humans that exist on the planet. This has a large effect on many things as the actual Population Code is 6 to 8. How does that change all of the economic calculations as well as the Trade Codes?
 
Wasn't it TL5 originally? I distinctly recall that one of the reasons that the Keiths wanted some extra sentients around was to have a budding industrial revolution going on and they felt they needed a laborer class.
Supplement 3 has it as C573645-3
Have to go digging for the JTAS article but I'm pretty sure it was TL3 there as well.
 
Again. Cordan. See My post above. Pop Code 3, but this is only the baronial households. That does not include the however many millions of humans that exist on the planet. This has a large effect on many things as the actual Population Code is 6 to 8. How does that change all of the economic calculations as well as the Trade Codes?
That is a good point. It does affect trade calculations. Better to explain it away another way.

I would prefer working with the numbers as they are and coming up with an explanation, like robot labor on Tech-World. If there are more people than indicated, they should not have a potential to cause economic effects. Though one could argue that the robot labor on Tech-World could turn the planet into an Industrial world, not a Low Population world (except it can't be Industrial, because the atmosphere isn't polluted- another '70s holdover that I wouldn't mind putting to the curb). The MgT2 Core book has introduced negative DMs for starports for low population worlds, so some of that low pop class A starport nonsense is alleviated by generating systems using those rules.
 
Supplement 3 has it as C573645-3
Have to go digging for the JTAS article but I'm pretty sure it was TL3 there as well.
Oh, you are right. 3 is probably the proto industrial revolution. I guess the revolution was a success? I'm going to assume that's someone skeered of TL3 tainted atmosphere populations.
 
Again. Cordan. See My post above. Pop Code 3, but this is only the baronial households. That does not include the however many millions of humans that exist on the planet. This has a large effect on many things as the actual Population Code is 6 to 8. How does that change all of the economic calculations as well as the Trade Codes?
True, that's not fuzzy numbers. Changing thousands to millions is flat out altering them without admitting it. They should just say that the UWP on file with the scouts is wrong. Or do something that is less extreme. I agree there is a point where fuzzy numbers changes to just ignoring them. But I'd rather risk someone going overboard once in a while than lock down hard on the meanings.
 
For me, the distinction is whether the fuzzy number value serves to explain the UWP or bypass it. You want to know how a less than TL 9 planet has a Class A starport or why there's a Mars colony with TL 7, then you are going to inevitably do some fudging. And if you do it right, it doesn't change how the system works in the big picture, it'll just have some oddities.

Adding a population of Chirpers or Chimpanzees or whatever that are not part of any interstellar interactions because they are super hostile or isolationist or considered non sentient is entirely different than just saying 'there's more humans here than it says, but they don't count'. Why don't they count? In what way are they providing an interesting bit of color and story opportunity without making the UWP just wrong?

I would be fine with fixing transposed numbers and other mistakes, of course. I am fine with pointing out that any fuzziness needs to keep the numbers broadly true, even if dialing in raises questions.

Maybe I'm accidentally creating a strawman here and no one here is arguing this, but most often when I run into this topic, folks ALSO want to go through and scrape off all the worlds they don't think "should" work because of excessive fidelity to the UWP. Especially from supposed TL or starport rating issues.
 
True, that's not fuzzy numbers. Changing thousands to millions is flat out altering them without admitting it. They should just say that the UWP on file with the scouts is wrong. Or do something that is less extreme. I agree there is a point where fuzzy numbers changes to just ignoring them. But I'd rather risk someone going overboard once in a while than lock down hard on the meanings.
Adjustments to said world UWP changes could have come from the LBB0 adventure that sends new players across the Marches and surveying each system. As with many things, worlds grow and wither, and ports/tech levels do the same.
For me, the distinction is whether the fuzzy number value serves to explain the UWP or bypass it. You want to know how a less than TL 9 planet has a Class A starport or why there's a Mars colony with TL 7, then you are going to inevitably do some fudging. And if you do it right, it doesn't change how the system works in the big picture, it'll just have some oddities.

Adding a population of Chirpers or Chimpanzees or whatever that are not part of any interstellar interactions because they are super hostile or isolationist or considered non sentient is entirely different than just saying 'there's more humans here than it says, but they don't count'. Why don't they count? In what way are they providing an interesting bit of color and story opportunity without making the UWP just wrong?

I would be fine with fixing transposed numbers and other mistakes, of course. I am fine with pointing out that any fuzziness needs to keep the numbers broadly true, even if dialing in raises questions.

Maybe I'm accidentally creating a strawman here and no one here is arguing this, but most often when I run into this topic, folks ALSO want to go through and scrape off all the worlds they don't think "should" work because of excessive fidelity to the UWP. Especially from supposed TL or starport rating issues.
All of this is a by-product of generating lots of essentially garbage data from random rolls rather than actually trying to build the Imperium. To do thousands of worlds is...well, nuts!

You are entirely correct in stating having a colony or collection of whatever on a planet would never be reflected in the UWP. It probably wouldn't be reflected anywhere but very locally. One can find the exact same thing here in the US or in other Western nations (UK is a good example). You'll find pockets of Poles in London, Haitians, Jamaicans, etc - all peoples who clustered together but came from somewhere else. The US is even more polyglot, pulling in people from around the world. If you are a member of the community you tend to be near your own people to get the tastes/smells of home - so finding that sort of thing on a Traveller world is entirely within a norm (though I'd not have dolphins on a desert world - gotta draw the line with common sense somewhere).

It would be NICE if more care had been taken at the beginning to not make so many worlds that make no sense. At a minimum it would be nice to just have them clean up the Marches. A few attempts have been done, but there are still too many questionable worlds that have never been fixed.
 
Adjustments to said world UWP changes could have come from the LBB0 adventure that sends new players across the Marches and surveying each system. As with many things, worlds grow and wither, and ports/tech levels do the same.

All of this is a by-product of generating lots of essentially garbage data from random rolls rather than actually trying to build the Imperium. To do thousands of worlds is...well, nuts!

You are entirely correct in stating having a colony or collection of whatever on a planet would never be reflected in the UWP. It probably wouldn't be reflected anywhere but very locally. One can find the exact same thing here in the US or in other Western nations (UK is a good example). You'll find pockets of Poles in London, Haitians, Jamaicans, etc - all peoples who clustered together but came from somewhere else. The US is even more polyglot, pulling in people from around the world. If you are a member of the community you tend to be near your own people to get the tastes/smells of home - so finding that sort of thing on a Traveller world is entirely within a norm (though I'd not have dolphins on a desert world - gotta draw the line with common sense somewhere).

It would be NICE if more care had been taken at the beginning to not make so many worlds that make no sense. At a minimum it would be nice to just have them clean up the Marches. A few attempts have been done, but there are still too many questionable worlds that have never been fixed.
I agree with this in part, but in the US (I have no idea of how things are done in the UK or other parts of the world). The census data has all of that information and it is, more or less, accurate. Hell, even the wikipedia has better demographic info than Traveller, and wikipedia has no actual writers or editors as We would recognize them in the TTRPG industry.

By the Traveller Rules, any system that has a racial minority of 10%ish or greater should be listed Aslan1 or whatever the correct usage of that nomenclature is. I actually had entirely forgotten about that until now. How does this effect things in game? In the case of HRADUS (TR2714), a population that is 80% Aslan out of 2 billion sophonts, and Aslan can't eat human food. This is more nitpicky than anything else though...lol... I would like to see it fixed across the Imperium, but if it doesn't happen, no big deal. It would cause major changes in-game, but mechanically, it changes almost nothing.
 
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