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alien race generation in Traveller ?

I'm talking about Extensions (Infrastructure, Resources, Labour, Infrastructure, Efficiency, Resource Units, Homogeneity, Acceptance, Strangenes, Symbols), not Trade Codes. As far as I'm aware, Extensions aren't used to influence anything in trade or anywhere else, and are not influenced by things they probably should be influenced by (e.g. government, law, tech level). Unlike say, their equivalents in the DGP World Builders Handbook (extensiveness, aggressiveness, progressiveness).
Actually, Infrastructure, Resources, Labor: used to determine economic activity levels and RU. RU are holdovers from T4 Pocket Empires, but are also indicative of local economics. At present, descriptive. If one has T4 Pocket Empires, one can use the RU directly in that mechanic.
Homogenity, Acceptance, Strangeness, Symbols: provided solely for use in description; "The Cultural Extension [Cx] is a broad insight into the expected social behaviors of the citizens of the world." (p 427)
Importance: The most important world in the subsector is the subsector capital. See page 427.
 
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Actually, Infrastructure, Resources, Labor: used to determine economic activity levels and RU. RU are holdovers from T4 Pocket Empires, but are also indicative of local economics. At present, descriptive.

And therefore completely useless in T5. For "economic" attributes, you'd think they'd affect trade rolls, but they don't.

If one has T4 Pocket Empires, one can use the RU directly in that mechanic.

Also useless. How RU should be used and what they mean should be described in T5, not T4. (also, as far as I can see an RU for a low pop world isn't even worth the same as one for a high pop world because they're based on the exponential pop UWP scale).

Homogenity, Acceptance, Strangeness, Symbols: provided solely for use in description; "The Cultural Extension [Cx] is a broad insight into the expected social behaviors of the citizens of the world." (p 427)

Also useless. None of these (or the economic ones) affect or are affected by gov or law UWPs, and they don't affect trade or anything else. They may as well just be random numbers (especially Symbols. What does that even *mean*?).

As I said earlier, DGP's World Builders Handbook had equivalent codes that actually meant something and influenced and were influenced by things. It's not rocket science to design a system that does that (particularly when it's been done before), so why was it overlooked in T5?

Importance: The most important world in the subsector is the subsector capital. See page 427.

Importance is possibly the only thing of any use in the Extensions. The rest is a waste of space.

I'm sure you're aware of all this already, so I'm not sure why you're choosing to argue about it.
 
Evening EDG,

I'm talking about Extensions (Infrastructure, Resources, Labour, Infrastructure, Efficiency, Resource Units, Homogeneity, Acceptance, Strangenes, Symbols), not Trade Codes. As far as I'm aware, Extensions aren't used to influence anything in trade or anywhere else, and are not influenced by things they probably should be influenced by (e.g. government, law, tech level). Unlike say, their equivalents in the DGP World Builders Handbook (extensiveness, aggressiveness, progressiveness).

Infrastructure, Resources, Labor, and Resource units are in T4 Pocket Empires.
 
Hey gang this thread is not about T5 or what bits and pieces aren't useable as published. Can we get back to the originator's request on material that can be used for alien race generation in Traveller.

Since I am part of the ongoing off thread discussion I am sending myself to my time out room.;)

And therefore completely useless in T5. For "economic" attributes, you'd think they'd affect trade rolls, but they don't.



Also useless. How RU should be used and what they mean should be described in T5, not T4. (also, as far as I can see an RU for a low pop world isn't even worth the same as one for a high pop world because they're based on the exponential pop UWP scale).



Also useless. None of these (or the economic ones) affect or are affected by gov or law UWPs, and they don't affect trade or anything else. They may as well just be random numbers (especially Symbols. What does that even *mean*?).

As I said earlier, DGP's World Builders Handbook had equivalent codes that actually meant something and influenced and were influenced by things. It's not rocket science to design a system that does that (particularly when it's been done before), so why was it overlooked in T5?



Importance is possibly the only thing of any use in the Extensions. The rest is a waste of space.

I'm sure you're aware of all this already, so I'm not sure why you're choosing to argue about it.
 
Evening EDG,



Infrastructure, Resources, Labor, and Resource units are in T4 Pocket Empires.

So in order to use those in T5 you must go back and buy a supplement for an earlier version of the game(T4)!

That's the situation being described - like if in WotC's newest D&D iteration you had to pick up a 2E AD&D book to use something described in the newest rules-set.
 
I'm sure they are, but the problem is they're not explained or defined in T5, but they're used there.

They ARE defined in T5. Not everything in a game needs mechanical resolution; the cultural extensions are useful in building more detailed world treatments.

After all, there's no mechanical use of the allegiance code , but it's a viable and valuable part of the UWP.

Likewise, T5 character gen is pretty well abstracted out enough to allow for any of the systemically generatable races. (The problem being that the older alien races may not be replicated with fidelity to older editions without tweaking it.)
 
Hello BlackBat242,

So in order to use those in T5 you must go back and buy a supplement for an earlier version of the game(T4)!

That's the situation being described - like if in WotC's newest D&D iteration you had to pick up a 2E AD&D book to use something described in the newest rules-set.

Nope, I was just saying that T4 uses Infrastructure, Resources, Labor, and Resource units since one of my projects has been looking at that system. So far I haven't figured out how the system works.

I started out with D&D in the late 1970's and in the late 1980's I gave all my D&D material to a cousin who was into the game sine I was more into Traveller. I have not looked at D&D so I can't comment one way or another.

However, the reason why has been lost, I purchased d20Modern Core Rulebook published by WotC to go along with T20..

Have any of you tried to publish something like T5 which has four older relatives to try to bring their better parts together?

Again, in my opinion, every gaming system has issues that are being ironed out as long as it has devoted fans.

Here is another attempt strongly suggesting that we move this discussion to a different thread and get this one back to discussing
alien race generation in Traveller
 
Also useless. How RU should be used and what they mean should be described in T5, not T4. (also, as far as I can see an RU for a low pop world isn't even worth the same as one for a high pop world because they're based on the exponential pop UWP scale).
Yes, T5 got that horribly wrong (Unlike T4). Basing RUs on population level instead of on population means that it can't possibly work.

And, yes, I meant to state that as a fact, not an opinion.


Hans
 
I'm talking about Extensions (Infrastructure, Resources, Labour, Infrastructure, Efficiency, Resource Units, Homogeneity, Acceptance, Strangenes, Symbols), not Trade Codes.

Whups, my mistake. No, they're not used by the core rules, as well as RU. However, that doesn't make the game any less playable than, say, the absence of these rules in LBB1-8.
 
They ARE defined in T5. Not everything in a game needs mechanical resolution; the cultural extensions are useful in building more detailed world treatments.

They're not though (speaking as someone who's tried). They certainly don't help in the slightest if you have an existing UWP and are trying to convert it to T5 - in that case the Cultural and Economic Extensions may as well be random gibberish. None of them have any effect on anything else.

Resources is just a random number.
Labour is pop-1, which is daft because it's saying that only 10% of the population is working.
Infrastructure isn't influenced by Tech Level (nor does it influence it), and so on.
Efficiencies is a random number, completely uninfluenced by anything else.

Putting them all together, RU are a bad comparator because Labour is defined using a logarithmic scale, which means that an RU has a different value for each level of population. 1 RU from a pop A world is worth 10 RU from a pop 9 world is worth 100 RU from a pop 8 world, etc.

Homogeneity isn't influenced by Government (a balkanised gov 7 world or a gov 0 anarchy can have a high homogeneity score, for example).
Acceptance isn't influenced by Gov or Law (more dictatorial worlds might be expected to be more xenophobic than less dictatorial worlds).
Strangeness and Symbols are just random numbers that have no meaning at all.

Worst of all, they're also undefined, because nowhere does it say what the numbers that results from these rolls actually mean in practical terms. That makes trying to use them to define existing worlds impossible because there's no consistent, objective meaning to them. One person's "infrastructure 4" will be different to another's. It's just useless, subjective, wishy-washy, armwavy, meaningless randomness, and it makes trying to add them to the T5SS an exercise in frustration and futility.

Again, World Builder's Handbook did a much better job on this. It defined the terms in the text, and the results of the rolls actually influenced and were influenced by things like gov and law and tech level. In T5, they're not (with the sole exception of "Symbols", which is completely useless).
 
Whups, my mistake. No, they're not used by the core rules, as well as RU. However, that doesn't make the game any less playable than, say, the absence of these rules in LBB1-8.

It does make them a waste of space in T5 though, and a waste of effort in trying to use them to help define worlds for the T5SS. And while it doesn't make the game less playable, it does make it "incomplete". Which is all I've been saying here, but which people strangely seem to want to argue against.
 
It does make them a waste of space in T5 though, and a waste of effort in trying to use them to help define worlds for the T5SS. And while it doesn't make the game less playable, it does make it "incomplete". Which is all I've been saying here, but which people strangely seem to want to argue against.

Because you impeach your own argument by claiming CT was complete, when T5 is FAR more complete.
 
Hey gang this thread is not about T5 or what bits and pieces aren't useable as published. Can we get back to the originator's request on material that can be used for alien race generation in Traveller.

Sadly, it has now been off-track longer than it was on-track. It has also descended to "I have facts, you have opinions", which means it is time to shut this one down and move on.
 
Because you impeach your own argument by claiming CT was complete, when T5 is FAR more complete.

I don't think anyone else really cares, Aramis. All I did was point out that rules were missing from T5 (which they are). If you want to keep insisting that they're not and dragging this out further, that's up to you. I'm not going to waste any more of my time arguing over semantics with you.
 
Hello JimMarn,

With the 4 document downloads, I feel my quesiton has been answered. Thanks !

First my apologies for inadvertently getting your thread off track.

Next, I'm still digging through my collection of stuff, okay my hoarded gaming material;), to see if there might be other items of interest. If I do find something I'll try to remember to post here.

Finally, thank you for putting the question of alien race generation in Traveller on the forum.

Respectfully,
 
Adm. Lee Weighing In

I don't think anyone else really cares, Aramis. All I did was point out that rules were missing from T5 (which they are). If you want to keep insisting that they're not and dragging this out further, that's up to you. I'm not going to waste any more of my time arguing over semantics with you.

I stumbled on to this thread. I am stumped here -- you guys all sound so angry that any one edition of any game is imperfect. Oh, yes, I would agree that EVERY edition of Traveller I've refereed over the years has pluses and minuses.

As to T5 -- for $35.00 you can get it on CD-ROM and find SOME treatment of almost ANY topic with a word search. And you can do that with any edition, at least if you have a half-competent PDF reader, and maybe (just maybe) an OCR app. Nuance will let you do it for free.

You're all eating your own young by wasting time on this snarking at one another.

Now, on point: T5 has a useful alien generator. Failing that, I saw a notice of Jaquays' Central Casting, which I have and find interesting, but I rarely use. Back in The Day, when we had to invent 95% of Traveller for ourselves (and walked to school in 0-degree Kelvin weather with bare feet), we often simply...well, stole, adapted, what-have-you. MTU was populated with aliens from Empire of the Petal Throne and Phoenix Games' Spacefarer's Guide (and I recently bought a used but clean copy of same). You can do it with tables, borrowing, outright theft...just enjoy the game, and STOP EATING YOUR OWN YOUNG. :)

Unless, of course, your character is a species which in a Darwinish move eats the slow, weak offspring who hang around the nest too long after they hatch.
 
Noting first that the slow, weak offspring are sometimes the tenderest... mmmm.

I stumbled on to this thread. I am stumped here -- you guys all sound so angry that any one edition of any game is imperfect. Oh, yes, I would agree that EVERY edition of Traveller I've refereed over the years has pluses and minuses.

As to T5 -- for $35.00 you can get it on CD-ROM and find SOME treatment of almost ANY topic with a word search. And you can do that with any edition, at least if you have a half-competent PDF reader, and maybe (just maybe) an OCR app. Nuance will let you do it for free.

You're all eating your own young by wasting time on this snarking at one another.

Now, on point: T5 has a useful alien generator. Failing that, I saw a notice of Jaquays' Central Casting, which I have and find interesting, but I rarely use. Back in The Day, when we had to invent 95% of Traveller for ourselves (and walked to school in 0-degree Kelvin weather with bare feet), we often simply...well, stole, adapted, what-have-you. MTU was populated with aliens from Empire of the Petal Throne and Phoenix Games' Spacefarer's Guide (and I recently bought a used but clean copy of same). You can do it with tables, borrowing, outright theft...just enjoy the game, and STOP EATING YOUR OWN YOUNG. :)

Unless, of course, your character is a species which in a Darwinish move eats the slow, weak offspring who hang around the nest too long after they hatch.
 
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