World Builders Handbook/Book 6?

[rust]

A better approach is to work out the ecosystems and food chains, because so many cultural traits and beliefs have to do with food and food acquisition ( such as territory needs...look at the Aslan, for example, and compare to medeival Japanese. :twisted: ). Many large scale historical events as well....
Climate beyond simple temp table, which affects food production in the ecosystem sense.

Yes, a lot of plausible conclusions can be drawn from the way an environ-
ment influences the everyday lives of the inhabitants. While there are of
course still many different ways to deal with a specific environment, the
environmental base of a society can provide a good frame to work with.

The problems appear where societies are "illogical" and not or only bad-
ly adapted to their environment, for example a very traditional society
that migrated from a different environment and continues to follow cus-
toms that do not fit in with their new environment, or a society that refu-
ses to adapt to a changing environment.

On the other hand, such cases are often the most interesting ones for ro-
leplaying purposes.

 

[BP]

Yeah - I have no problem with the low TL, high pop, vacuum world... That is just a technical challenge to describe (natural underground honeycomb, atmo providing rocks and fauna, etc.).

As long as the mechanics don't make it the norm, of course.

A few illogical items don't really break believability for most folks...

 

[Treebore]

Any of you know of any good scientific papers on the Pillars of Creation? I would love to read up on the current hypothesis and theories surrounding that.

For those not in the know:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Nebula

Astronomy magazine published a series of even more awesome enhanced Hubble pictures.

 

[DFW]

3000 years of human experience?..WHICH human experience?????
Inuit?
Maori?
Apache?
Bedouin?
Sillan or some other Asian culture?
Norse?
Toltec?

Well, for mtu I'd be looking at those that advanced beyond the Iron age. So, the 2nd from last is where I'd start as I'm more interested in how national gov types, econ systems, etc., influence prosperity & high tech development. Not as interested in societies that have been around a long time and never climbed out of primitive status (dead ended). Except of course they can make interesting adventure areas sometimes.

 

[Blix]

I think it's interesting how physical realism and social realism are perceived by people. I think physical realism tends to get dismissed or ignored a lot of the time, but social (and economic) realism tend to be more deeply scrutinized.

Both fields are arguably as obtuse and arcane as eachother though, and I wonder if people who aren't necessarily social, legal, or economic experts think they can speak in depth about the latter more easily because that sort of thing seems more familiar to everyday life than physical sciences.

 

[rust]

Any of you know of any good scientific papers on the Pillars of Creation? I would love to read up on the current hypothesis and theories surrounding that.

Unfortunately I know only ones in German, but it should not be too diffi-
cult to find some good material when searching for "Cassiopeia W5", the
official designation of the star forming region.

A good place to start would be the search function of Astronomy & Astro-
physics, although I am not sure whether it is possible to download the
PDFs of the articles without registration:

http://www.aanda.org/

 

[captainjack23]

I think it's interesting how physical realism and social realism are perceived by people. I think physical realism tends to get dismissed or ignored a lot of the time, but social (and economic) realism tend to be more deeply scrutinized.

Both fields are arguably as obtuse and arcane as eachother though, and I wonder if people who aren't necessarily social, legal, or economic experts think they can speak in depth about the latter more easily because that sort of thing seems more familiar to everyday life than physical sciences.

It works both ways. Experts in the physical sciences often think they can speak in depth on social issues becuase they are people and live among people.

Plus, though arguably equally obtuse, I think its important to recognize that the kind of expert thought that works in one of them, often can be very misleading in the other. FREX, social science uses probablity to discuss issues far more than (say) planetolgy; the result is a deep misunderstanding of what the other field means in some basic cases, such as when discussing if somthing is possible.

My 2cr. I'm a social scientist trained by medical scientists who finds myself working amongst chemical and engineering scientists. Its an interesting education every damn day. :lol:

 

[captainjack23]

Yeah - I have no problem with the low TL, high pop, vacuum world... That is just a technical challenge to describe (natural underground honeycomb, atmo providing rocks and fauna, etc.).

As long as the mechanics don't make it the norm, of course.

A few illogical items don't really break believability for most folks...

Well said, that man.

 

[Ishmael]

The problems appear where societies are "illogical" and not or only bad-
ly adapted to their environment, for example a very traditional society
that migrated from a different environment and continues to follow cus-
toms that do not fit in with their new environment, or a society that refu-
ses to adapt to a changing environment.

I don't see this sort of thing as a problem as much as some evidence that the people in question migrated to this location and the old customs are evidence of where they migrated from. No problem unless the setting cannot describe that migration in any plausible sense.

Well, for mtu I'd be looking at those that advanced beyond the Iron age. So, the 2nd from last is where I'd start as I'm more interested in how national gov types, econ systems, etc., influence prosperity & high tech development. Not as interested in societies that have been around a long time and never climbed out of primitive status (dead ended). Except of course they can make interesting adventure areas sometimes.

All of the cultures listed are still around on our tech 7.8 world. They each had their own unique technologies/methods for dealing with their environment, some of which are lost or adapted to modern uses. They were either absorbed or merged with other cultures (sometimes peaceably, sometimes not ) which give further clues as to the history of a region or group of people, and the old customs can still be seen in many cases although they do drift as time passes. They are often passed down through legend and folk stories which other societies might embrace, even if they don't understand the underlying significance. Tracking such movements and culture shifts provides a rich background history.
These things can't be settled with a simple dice rolling plus tables......
However, dice rolling plus tables can help to get the process started by not allowing the ref to make the same subconscious choices again and again which might make the setting repetitive.

.I think physical realism tends to get dismissed or ignored a lot of the time, but social (and economic) realism tend to be more deeply scrutinized.

I find that the opposite is true. People seem to rattle on endlessly about how this technology or that technology works and argue how a certain handwave or such MUST be true. Yet the social nuances are quietly assumed to be a certain way ( normally whatever the culture that the players belong to says ) simply because that is how the players themselves live. I often wonder what it would be like to play in different groups from around the world and see how the play differs from my own ideas. Is Traveller played the same in America as it is in Germany?..or France?..or Japan?

okay...now I'm just rambling....

 

[Blix]

In the interest of clearing up any confusion caused by DFW's unfounded statements, here are some links about GRBs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst - wiki article. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst_emission_mechanisms .

http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March04/Piran/paper.pdf - technical review paper.

I have found absolutely nothing online suggesting that relativity or E=mc² is being broken or falsified by GRBs. There is a "compactness problem", but this actually can be explained by relativity (if the system is moving towards Earth at relativistic speeds, it looks like it's coming from a smaller region of space than it is).

I have no doubt that GRBs generated some theoretical head-scratching when they were first (accidentally) discovered in the 1960s by US military satellites that were designed to look for nuclear explosions on Earth. But those problems seem to have been solved now.

I'd ask again in light of this for DFW to provide some evidence for his statements, but since he's consistently failed to do so (and responded contemptuously) when similar requests have been made before, I think I would be wasting my time.

 

[rust]

I don't see this sort of thing as a problem ...

Bad wording on my part. With problem I did mean that it is difficult to in-
clude such atypical societies in a system of random generation tables.

I often wonder what it would be like to play in different groups from around the world and see how the play differs from my own ideas. Is Traveller played the same in America as it is in Germany?..or France?..or Japan?

There are differences in the way roleplaying games are played, although
only minor ones. I am not yet sure when it comes to Traveller, there is
not yet a specific "Traveller culture" over here, it is still young and deve-
loping. An already visible difference - and advantage - is that Traveller
canon is much less a topic, because most players do not know it anyway.

A very obvious difference in the general "national roleplaying styles" is
the importance of weapons and the absence of sex in roleplaying games
from the USA, while over here weapons are less the focus and sex is not
banned.

To give an example, the introductory solo adventure in the German ver-
sion of Call of Cthulhu puts the player into a female character who is preg-
nant because she has been raped by Deep Ones, but does not remember
what happened to her, and now has to find out - a lot of dark psychology,
with sex not far in the background, and no combat scene. I would find
such an adventure in a roleplaying game from the USA rather unusual.

 

[DFW]

All of the cultures listed are still around on our tech 7.8 world. They each had their own unique technologies/methods for dealing with their environment,

Yes, of course. But for my purposes I'm not interested in dead end, low tech cultures. IMTU there is one human home world and the rest that are human were never that low of a TL. Ie: they didn't evolve on other planets.

 

[Ishmael]

Yes, of course. But for my purposes I'm not interested in dead end, low tech cultures. IMTU there is one human home world and the rest that are human were never that low of a TL. Ie: they didn't evolve on other planets.

Then they migrated to other planets and took cultural beliefs and attitudes from their historic lo-tech days with them. They certainly took folklore and quirks like greeting rituals ( handshakes or salutes ), family rituals ( marriage ceremonies and attitudes towards raising children ) and the predominant moral codes for proper social interactions ( caste systems, other customs )
http://www.twainquotes.com/Custom.html

A dead end culture only became 'dead-end' through internal power struggles, external conquerors or disasters that disrupted their livelihood. Note that these events were usually driven by one faction or another grabbing limited resources, or else an event that made resources/food more difficult to acquire. If everyone is happy, then there is no reason to change or advance, is there.
Most of the cultures in the examples I gave were conquered by another stronger group or were assimilated peacefully ( rather than violently ). Of all of them, the Sillans were probably the most advanced. They unified the Korean peninsula and even faced down the Tang Dynasty.

Keep in mind that technology exists to make the acquisition on resources/food easier. Technology makes taking others goods easier and defending your own goods easier.
Technology makes extracting resources from nature easier. Technology makes trading resources easier.
Ultimately, technology serves no other purpose.

 

[BP]

...
Ultimately, technology serves no other purpose.

Entertainment.

 

[Ishmael]

perhaps I should have said the advancement of technology....
I can't think of any technologies invented strictly for entertainment purposes other than non-entertainment technologies adapted for entertainment.

Of course a major reason for wanting to make the acquisition of resources easier/faster is to create more leisure time.

In Traveller terms, which technological innovation was made strictly to entertain? Adapting a gadget to this purpose doesn't count....

but yes... how a culture feels about leisure time and what a culture chooses to fill that leisure time with is important for a social write-up.
I'm just not convinced that it is a driver of technology advancement.

 

[BP]

Man, as a species, has never absolutely needed technology to survive... Technology has been used to address things such as food, shelter, war, entertainment, etc. but none of it has been absolutely necessary.

The motivation behind the initial 'development' of technologies cannot, in a universal way, be pinned to simply 'needs'. In many cases the underlying motivation has often been - just because we could (or, someone was bored ).

The technology we are using for this method of information interchange has its roots in quite a diverse set of underlying motivations - and under it all, the solid state transistor that made it practical was an accident.

War, of course, often drives the production of technologies - but more than often, the underlying ideas and concepts were pre-existing - they just needed an application with enough interest to stimulate the investment of resources. Such is the case with entertainment being the driving cause for the advancement. A prime example is computer graphics. NVidia spent almost half the adjusted cost of the U.S. space shuttle program developing revolutionary GPU technologies - that now see direct application in all types of research (from pharmaceuticals to guided weapons to planetary probe mission simulations).

In many other cases, just because there was a justification for investment in technology doesn't mean there was any. Food is an excellent example - a great many cultures and societies would have been wiser to spend their considerable resources on the development of food technologies - but failed to do so. However, their art and the technologies they used to implement it are evidence of their existence today.

Another great motivator behind technology advancements - health.

 

[DFW]

A dead end culture only became 'dead-end' through internal power struggles, external conquerors or disasters that disrupted their livelihood. Note that these events were usually driven by one faction or another grabbing limited resources,

Yes, there are many reasons for a culture to be tech dead ending society, some external, many internal. Sub-Saharan Af is a fascinating example of the internal type. In any event, they are just a side show and unimportant to the game at hand. If I ever wrap up the table I'll post it.