[TML] AWAD: Interzone

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 2/3/08 6:12 PM, "Brad Murray" <bjmurray.halfjack at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
> 
>> <snip>
> 
> 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".

Personally, I don't find a bunch of random, mostly unconnected dice rolls to
be a great mystery.  I think good mysteries are crafted on purpose.  What
you describe is just a matter of rationalizing.  But that's me.

The biggest issue for your tiny planets with atmospheres & water is does the
escape velocity allow water to get away.  And equally important, is there a
"water trap" that freezes water out of the air before it gets up high enough
to be dissociated by UV (this kind of overrides the escape velocity).  If
either of those fail, you can't have water, or a lot of other hydrogen
compounds.

Then there is the escape velocity for O2.  If you can't hold that, you're
left with a CO2 atmosphere (Mars & Venus)...  not fun.

I also don't think that allowing FTL allows *anything*.  The basic laws of
physics are still observed, we just postulate that there is some specific
law of physics we don't know yet that allows our FTL.  That doesn't mean the
basic science governing orbits and atmospheres and all that other non-jump
stuff is abolished.