[TML] AWAD: Interzone

[Brad Murray]

On Feb 3, 2008 3:06 PM, Timothy Little <tim at little-possums.net> wrote:
> The escape energy is about half that of our Moon.  The existence of
> any atmosphere at all is nothing short of miraculous.  For purposes of
> a game you could ignore that, of course :-)

Well the purpose of the Maelstrom exercise is to make sense of what is
rather than determine what should be or, even more boringly, point out
scientific flaws in Traveller.  As I've said before, once we've agreed
to FTL the whole thing is in the air anyway.  So, to that end rather
than "that couldn't happen without a miracle", I'm more interested in,
"how did that happen?"  That is, given the description as *fact*, what
can we extrapolate?  Because solving mysteries is more fun than just
stomping away from the table in disgust.

> I also wonder about the strength of native inhabitants and long-term
> residents.  Will they be much weaker, with comparatively fragile
> bones?  Without having to constantly fight a 10 m/s^2 acceleration,
> atrophy would seem very likely - at least in unmodified humans.
> Perhaps the DNA of their distant ancestors was altered to suit their
> new home?

Mm, rich vein -- the existing inhabitants are all modified!  By who?
For what?  When?  Lovely stuff!  That's the kind of cool material for
a game that I like to see get derived out of simple stats taken as
facts rather than being pinned up for criticism.  "How come that's
true" is way more fun than "that's impossible".

-- 
Brad Murray (halfjack)