Originally posted by rancke:
This is not true. Not all referees are unlucky enough to be saddled with that kind of players.
Some are, some aren't. Not all referees are fortunate enough to NOT be saddled with this kind of player.
None of my current players, for instance, knows anything about the Traveller canon except as filtered through me. And previous players who did buy Traveller material were perfectly happy to allow me to change whatever I wanted (They did feel entitled to a hint whenever I changed something they would otherwise have based their actions upon. I agree completely with that view).
I guess you must have hewed pretty close to canon. To give a hint to my players every time I changed canon would have been... interesting... and time consuming. I can't know what they think they know and are basing their decisions on. Since canon has been at times inconsistent, unavailable, forbidden, etc, the net result is different people have different levels of access and different understandings of it. This can lead to... pain. Someone make a decision based on their perception of it, and finds out later that, IMTU, it ain't so. And they get, perhaps a bit justifiably, annoyed.
And IMO any player who did require his referee to stick religiously to canon would be wrong.
They don't require it. The problem is, they don't know where you're going to deviate from it and you don't know what they know or do not know. That's where the years of differing canons has left us.
The solution is simple. Don't base your campaign on the Official Traveller Universe (or the GTU either).
Another simple solution would be to play in a time for which little canon exists. Or to play after the end of official canon... oh wait, they keep moving that. Or to play in somewhere not officially detailed... oh wait, they keep adding new stuff. Or to play somewhere that everyone knows the relevant canon. Oh wait, they keep changing it and retconning and revising and papering over!
Ah yes, a lovely state of affairs. I can see why you like it.
Indeed, if you really think that the presence of canon is a bad thing, I can't understand why you concern yourself with any Traveller discussion other than those purely concerned with rules.
The minute something exists in a game, is put on print in a manual or official source, it gets 'gravitas'. It obtains a significance by publication. There will always be a subtle pressure to use it or to explain why one differs from it. You can disagree with me, but my experience has shown this to be the case not just for myself. Maybe you have been fortunate enough not to experience it, but that doesn't invalidate the experiences I and others I know have had.
I'm not trying to be snide here. If canon is a bad thing, what do you use instead? Your very own campaign universe entirely made up by you alone, supplemented, perhaps, by generic adventures adapted to your universe?
It's existence gives it some weight. Why play "Traveller" at all if you don't use some form of OTU? But, OTOH, if the OTU had 'ended' at a particular point, you'd have a commonly understood framework to work from and a free hand to write with. But they've written over bits of their past. They've re-written galactography. They've written past places that should have been endpoints. They've taken sectors that they claimed they'd never do a thing in, and put in systems and even maps. Yes, one could just use the rules and nothing else, but even then, some of the rules are tied into the OTU (the rules on jump, fuel usage, weapons, etc). Oh wait, I can change them too, but then what am I doing playing Traveller at all?
I'm not being snarky here, I'm just pointing out that there would be benefits to having canon actually adhere to claims it has made about areas it won't touch and time frames it won't write through. Similarly, it would be advantageous not to have had so much retcon, decanonization, etc.
You might find this has never affected anyone's gaming experience. I have seen it do so, and ultimately, right or wrong, that is the criteria by which people will remember a thing - whether they enjoyed it or it caused them some annoyance.
Witness the number of canon arguments on TML and here. That's all the evidence I really require... /QUOTE]Evidence of what, pray?
Exactly my point, that's what. Of the fact that canon is a source of argument, conflict, and from time to time, a serious amount of acrimony. Additionally, it hurts some folks heads to try to make sense of it (even when that is night impossible).
Yes, you could throw it all away. It would have been much nicer to have not had this set of problems in the first place.
On another front:
I don't know what inhalants the TNE folks were taking, but everyone I've ever played with (okay, that's only about 20 traveller players, all told) has thought SOM was an awesome book and most didn't like TNE. So, I'm dubious on their judgements in this particular. They may have listened to some small but vocal feedback. Remember, usually people annoyed with produce feedback. A lot of happy people will just take their product and go enjoy it. And so, taking feedback as the general opinion can be frought with issues.
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