On 11/10/21 21:28, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
>
> On the bus this morning I was reading a recent issue of the _New
> Scientist_ and as ever found all sorts of bits and bobs to
> pinch/adapt/inspire for Traveller .
>
> Two highlights:
> - a woman born anosmic (without a sense of smell) who gained a sense
> of smell aged 24 (without the required brain structure which no one
> can explain).  But apparently she finds it disturbing and doesn't like
> new scents of any kind.  (It's suggested we 'learn' nice smells from
> bad ones as we grow up.)
>
> So it occurred to me that for PCs gaining psionic abilities later in
> life - e.g. as a result of testing at a Psionic Institute as per The
> Traveller Adventure - that perhaps they would find such abilities, or
> reading someone's mind for example, 'distasteful' - from a mild
> sensation through increasing anxiety or feeling faint (as the women
> did) right the way through to being physically sick or something.
>
> I don't know - I just offer it as a way of perhaps balancing what
> might otherwise be seen as overpowering, well, powers.
>
>
> On the same page was a report on mushballs (slushy hailstones) in the
> atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune which might give additional flavour
> or even adventure (mining them? being damaged by them?) in gas giant
> refuelling etc.
>
>
> Amongst lots more, two pages later there was an article on maps of
> planet-forming zones helping the hunt for alien life and two pages
> later still a thing on potential exomoons orbiting a rogue planet.
>
> If you're interested, this should give a bit more detail:
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1K5kJK4EGAkRqN9pbR5vKxK-XK3KdwqC8/view?usp=sharing
> shout if it doesn't work
>
> tc
>
Collision,

That one about the anosmic-until-24 case jibes with something I remember
from .. bloody hell ... Cyberpunk 2020 (thank you, Herr Sweep) -
still-growing kids that get certain types of cybernetics (eg reflex
enhancers) suffered less humanity loss (cut the snarking about huge
manatees) than adults did for the same kit, as they viewed the enhanced
abilities as normal - the inverse of the woman in the article. CP2020
went the Cybernetics Eat Your Soul route and used humanity loss as an
unabashed game-balance mechanic - which made full conversion cyborgs a
la Motoko Kusanagi somewhat dicey (I'll save the rant about full
conversion pricing).

It does give me some food for thought for a game centering around the
first (known) psi institute outside the Zhodani Consulate (still approx
350 years off contacting the Vilani according to GT: AR1, unless a
certain criminally-insane-by-Zhodani-standards MOUSTACHIOED GIT gets
involved).  About all I've got is the name, the goose running it, and a
sliver of its history.  "'E's not the messiah, 'e's a very naughty boy!"

As for mushballs... do you really need me to give me _more_ reasons to
make ice giant refuelling Chinese-curse interesting? Nah, not like
slamming into a kilogram chunk of vodka ice at Mach 5 will do anything
other than scratch paint.

Alex