TheDS
SOC-13
There is a certain playstyle that suits unmoderated (solo or GM-less) play, and that is the trader game. Basically, you create some star systems, pick a starship, and start hauling cargo from one place to another, making money to pay the thing off, maintain it, maybe upgrade it, perhaps deal with troublemakers along the way. MANY (computer) games use this (Pirates!, Elite, Star Traders, Space Rangers, Megatraveller, etc), and a subset of each edition of Traveller I've read through is well suited to it.
Over the years, new game systems have come around and given us stats for the iconic ships, and rules with which to use them. When you look at a given ship, what makes you accept or reject it as a "valid" interpretation of that ship? How do you know a Gazelle is a Gazelle? How do you know they respected the differences between free trader, far trader, fat trader, and subsidized merchant? Does the presence a spinal mount or a jump drive disqualify a Dragon from being a Dragon, or is it a brilliant reimagining?
I understand this can be tricky. Frex, under some sets of rules, Jump fuel takes up 10% of hull per parsec, but under others it takes up 5%, and under still others it might take up some other amount according to certain factors the player might be able to control. This affects how much payload you can have, so while in one rules system you might say the Fat Trader MUST have 75% payload, in another it might simply be impossible to exceed 50%. And then we get to something like the CCG, in which the stats are not at all represented in the way they usually are; how do we know how well/poorly they did interpreting the iconic ships?
Mostly I ask this from the point of view of a designer. If a designer wants to call their game some incarnation of "Traveller", it has to conform to certain expectations. "What IS Traveller" is certainly a valid question to ask in this context, but it's beyond the ken of THIS post. This post is a subset of that. If you're redesigning the iconic ships to fit your system, how do you know if you've succeeded? What are the "real stats" you have to conform to? This question can be further expanded to other ships that are less iconic, like those found in FSSI or BL/BR; was it valid to put parallel mounts on the Chrysanthemum destroyer? Was it translated fairly between the systems?
So, in summary: what makes you accept or reject the stat block of a ship as being a valid interpretation of that ship? What is its quintessence, the thing that makes it what it is that you always count on seeing?
Over the years, new game systems have come around and given us stats for the iconic ships, and rules with which to use them. When you look at a given ship, what makes you accept or reject it as a "valid" interpretation of that ship? How do you know a Gazelle is a Gazelle? How do you know they respected the differences between free trader, far trader, fat trader, and subsidized merchant? Does the presence a spinal mount or a jump drive disqualify a Dragon from being a Dragon, or is it a brilliant reimagining?
I understand this can be tricky. Frex, under some sets of rules, Jump fuel takes up 10% of hull per parsec, but under others it takes up 5%, and under still others it might take up some other amount according to certain factors the player might be able to control. This affects how much payload you can have, so while in one rules system you might say the Fat Trader MUST have 75% payload, in another it might simply be impossible to exceed 50%. And then we get to something like the CCG, in which the stats are not at all represented in the way they usually are; how do we know how well/poorly they did interpreting the iconic ships?
Mostly I ask this from the point of view of a designer. If a designer wants to call their game some incarnation of "Traveller", it has to conform to certain expectations. "What IS Traveller" is certainly a valid question to ask in this context, but it's beyond the ken of THIS post. This post is a subset of that. If you're redesigning the iconic ships to fit your system, how do you know if you've succeeded? What are the "real stats" you have to conform to? This question can be further expanded to other ships that are less iconic, like those found in FSSI or BL/BR; was it valid to put parallel mounts on the Chrysanthemum destroyer? Was it translated fairly between the systems?
So, in summary: what makes you accept or reject the stat block of a ship as being a valid interpretation of that ship? What is its quintessence, the thing that makes it what it is that you always count on seeing?
