It would be the case if Marc hadn't on several occasions said things which don't align (and T5 is a bit different again with a new explanation of handwavium). And things from the original others (Marc not having done Traveller altogether alone) also were not quite aligned.

So, even if we ignored the greater divergences of later versions (or the attempts to follow what was previously stated as best as they could discern), there would still be inconsistency and unanswered questions that weren't super hard to come up with....

I think the reality is there were a lot of things in the minds of the creators. Not all of that made it to the table. And some items were never thought through all the way. It's a big enterprise to write a game and back then, the detail and the sophistication of some modern mechanics and layouts just weren't there. I suspect battling with layout, worrying about editing, worrying about production, etc. must have consumed a fair bit of attention.

When I say that, I mean no offense to Marc, Loren, etc. but the inevitable happens when one is busy - some key things don't get the attention they kind of need in the long run and then sometimes those questions were still not answered or were answered by later contributors which meant ... we ended up here.

But there was incomplete and contradictory stuff coming out from the stuff that Marc and the early team brought to the table. The fact there appear to be three LBB 2 versions that have some notable differences caused by small changes or omissions is just one example.

But as I said in my prior post, if we explain the key parts that players and GMs care about in a way that is sufficient, that's all I'm really looking for.


On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 9:32 PM David Johnson <xxxxxx@zarthani.net> wrote:
Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:

> The essential issue, IMO, is always consistency - whether in terms of science/engineering or gameplay.  "If X can solve this problem, why can't it also solve this other problem that, logically, it should be able to?"
>
> "Because" is almost never a satisfying answer.

Agreed, though when this happens I imagine the reason is often similar to the reason why the pathogen can't get to the ~Enterprise~ via the transporter one week but you can't rid your body of the pathogen the next week simply by making a quick transport.

One week, the writer needed the pathogen not to get to the ship and the next week a different writer needed it to be difficult to get the pathogen out of the patient. Both writers were trying to tell an interesting story for their week, not trying to build a consistent fictional universe for fans to unpack for half a lifetime. . . .

Given all the writers contributing to Traveller over the past four-and-more decades we should be surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen more often.

Cheers,

David
--
Victoria, British Columbia
48° 29' N, 123° 20' W

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