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On Wed, 11/18/15, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:
Subject: Re: [TML] Absurdities of the Official Traveller Universe
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 1:09 PM
On 11/18/2015 11:36 AM,
Jeffrey Schwartz wrote:
> I dunno, a lot of that just doesn't
completely add up.
> I saw someone write
up a "review" of WWII as if it were a novel,
and
> they pointed out the places the
author had unbelievable stuff. Ah,
>
found it: http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html?page=1
> GivenAll of those things /have/
been analyzed. In considerable detail, over
and over through the decades (unsurprising,
given that that's how
academic
reputations and careers are made and toppled), dwarfing even
the amateur musings of this list and
others.
As noted by at
least one other poster, real history has the advantage
that - while it had even more actors, and some
parts of what we "know"
are
likely to be extrapolated/interpolated/guessed at/made up -
it
mostly actually happened, unlike the
OTU, which is *entirely* made up,
by a
succession of writers with widely varying levels of
knowledge of
history, biology, physics, etc
etc - most of whom were much much more
concerned with meeting deadlines and/or
producing enjoyable,
understandable and
easy-to-use game material over maintaining absolute
accuracy and consistency.
tl;dr: reality rarely condenses down into a
neat 2d6 table, but guess
which makes a
better game?
things like that, I figure that the Traveller books we have
are
> just "incomplete" and
"summary" for what actually happened/is
> happening/will happen.
Fair enough. The problem, IMO, comes with
some rules literalists /
fundamentalists
I've run into, who claim that if it's in the books
("/which set?/", I sometimes ask;
they can't ALL be correct and Holy
Truth), it must be exactly so, and if it's
not in the books, it must not
exist.
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So much for 'canon', eh?
My experience is that it comes down to "My TU is better than yours", esp when it concerns published materials & esp when the authors of such material are concerned. (remember the little tiff a while back concerning SJG's "Ground Forces" supplement?)
Everyone has their, including me, has their 'Golden Calves' but that's what the GM is there for, right?
Still, I've seen some sessions go 'belly up' almost from the get-go due to an argument 'tween the GM & PC/s.
My position if that it's all equally 'canon' & the inconsistencies, etc, are just the same same as the we see today in differing viewpoints on 'real-life' history.
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