Auwvax.260
net.games.frp
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ihnss!wheps!zeppo!harpo!uwvax!orc
Thu Apr 1 07:48:50 1982
Re: space
Here are some possible answers for the what if's about traveller:
1&4: Larry Niven didn't say that people would *automatically* go nutzo,
but they would sortof not notice jump space, so if there was
nothing to focus on, your brain might close up for the weekend.
~v
(drat, I can't escape to vi. oh well...)
In game terms, the referee would be perfectly justified in saying
that when the player lost it, s/he went into convulsions and
came loose from the ship. If this happened, s/he would drift outside
the "hyperdrive radius" of the ship, and promptly drop into normal
space and be left far, far behind. If the player complains, say
that it is *mah
(oops!, ignore that line)
that it's *magic*.
If someone wants to try it despite the risk, give the
character some sort of saving throw vs IQ.
2: True, if the ship is moving at a respectable fraction of C. However,
in my travellering, most ships drop into hyperdrive if they want
to go anywhere fast. If ships didn't do that sort of thing, think
of the problems the poor GM would have dealing with it.
If the GM wants to torture himself, he can look at such
things as the distance from a primary(that's 'sun' in english),
how fast the ship is going relative to a 'absolute' reference
point, any what sort of debris it's running around in (asteroid
belts, gas giants, space battles, ad infinitem).
4: Black globes are monsterously high tech, and people still haven't figured
out a reasonable way of absorbing enery from them (read; they're
*magic*). Other things tend to burn up when pushed through a gas
giant at high speed, so, even as you pick up the energy, your ship
is dissolving out from under your feet.
Also, would you want to put *all* those refiners out of
work and onto the welfare rolls??? If our grandparents got energy
the old way, it's good enough for us, by Cthuthu!!
7: bulkheads are airtight in most cases, so you can assume that the hull
is made of the same sort of material, and have it take 1000-2000 hp
before it goes *boom*. armoured hull, on the other hand, probably
will take 10-20 times normal hp. It would be more, but space armour
will probably be more of a ablative thing than the proverbial
"3 ft of BRP".
5&6: god, I wish I knew!
Ahh, that felt good, being able to lecture on firping. For a
while there I though net.games.frp had croaked it.
Dave Parsons
orc@uwisc, or
uwvax!orc
-----------------------------------------------------------------
gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <
[email protected]>
of
http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/
This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:
1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.
2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:
The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996
Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.
