       TRAVELLER Digest 50

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) RICE Papers by jeff.zeitlin@execnet.com (JEFF ZEITLIN)
  2) Alternate Backgrounds to TNE by David Johnson <david@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
  3) Re: REAL high-tech societies. by ehenry@Newbridge.COM (Ethan Henry)
  4) Re: TRAVELLER digest 49 by djohnson@frame.com (Dane Johnson)
  5) Re: World Tamers Handbook is out! by Shalom Zaidfeld <cs911408@red.ariel.cs.yorku.ca>

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Date: Thu, 22 Sep 94 18:57:00 -0500
From: jeff.zeitlin@execnet.com (JEFF ZEITLIN)
To: TRAVELLER@MPGN.COM
Subject: RICE Papers
Message-ID: <89A5471.0100033B75.uuout@execnet.com>


S::>A religious profile for the Denebian "Wondfellow" religion would be
helpful
 ::>Jeff, perhaps you could add that to the specifications for Line 9 of the
in
 ::>section, along with legal and technological profiles?

 This was part of a message I received via private email recently, 
 in connection with the Deneb RICE Paper.

 The idea proposed seems reasonable, but for one thing:  It is 
 information that would not apply to all planets.

 It is partly because not all worlds need the same information that 
 the free-form area of a RICE Paper is included.  It is also partly 
 because some information cannot be reduced to a fixed format,  
 Lastly, it is because narratives are more interesting to read 
 than tables of dry facts.

 Let me emphasize to all submitters:  If you think that a 
 "formulaic" datastream should be included in the Basic Planetary 
 Data, add it yourself - just skip a line after the "standard" 
 data, add your stream (such as the religious specification, or a 
 Classic Traveller Universal Ship Profile for that multi-generation 
 ship that set off during the Vilani Imperium, and has just been 
 rediscovered, or...), with a short explanation (as long as you 
 feel it needs to be), then skip another line, and do the 
 narrative.  RICE Papers are flexible; they have to be - G-d 
 (or the Big Bang, or whatever creative force you choose to believe 
 in) breaks the mold after each one.
==========================================================================
Jeff Zeitlin                                      jeff.zeitlin@execnet.com
---
  QMPro 1.52  Chief Archivist, Regency Institute for Cultural Education

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Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 17:33:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Johnson <david@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Cc: david@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (David Johnson)
Subject: Alternate Backgrounds to TNE
Message-ID: <199409232133.RAA01110@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>

Gentlesophonts:

Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com> asks:

> Oh, sure, TNE is more generic - but where can you buy
> background for non-NE settings ?

Sounds like a cry for the Earth Colonies campaign!  It's a generic
sci-fi role-playing campaign that's easily adaptable to Traveller.
It's centered on Earth, has an "optimistic", role-playing based
orientation and is supported by the newsletter *Melbourne Times*.

Shamelessly opportunistic,

David Johnson
Editor and Publisher
*Melbourne Times*
Wheaton, Maryland, USA
<david@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>

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Date: Fri, 23 Sep 94 17:41:33 EDT
From: ehenry@Newbridge.COM (Ethan Henry)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: REAL high-tech societies.
Message-ID: <9409232141.AA22149@Newbridge.COM>

Just to toss in my $0.02...

Since most of the cyberpunk and other comments have been made, I'll add what
I haven't seen already said.

> This is a science-fiction trivia quiz, right?  :-)

And for the Trip To Venus, can you say tomato in Vargr, Aslan, Hiver AND
Klingon?
You have 5 seconds. 
 
> >     All - even the lowest classes - are bioengineered for high
intelligence
> >(say, 180 IQ and above), have biosculptured bodies, and have a regular age
> >span of 200 - 500 years.

How on earth are the lowest classes going to stay that way if they're highly 
intelligent? I think a lot of your ideas remind me of 'Brave New World'
by Aldous Huxley (sp?).  In a society where everyone is perfect, who digs
the ditches? (or does other undesirable tasks.) BNW wasn't very 'high tech',
as it was written before computers, sooo... using very crude technology,
could be as low as TL 8 or 9. It becomes much easier as medical tech
advances.

> >     While sex is as free as in the late 20th Century West, reproduction
> >is a carefully regulated activity, one of the two powers that the State
> >controls (the other being the military).  All children are designed, not
> >just 'sired' or 'begotten'.
> 
> Earth in Larry Niven's Known Space stories.  See the "Gil the ARM" stories,
> the "Beowulf Shaeffer" stories, and others.  Overcrowded Earth government
> (the U.N.) permits only one child per person -- and you can be denied a
> reproductive license if your genes are undesirable.  People with highly
> desired genes, like geniuses, are issued reproductive licenses for
unlimited
> reproduction.  Later, the Birthright Lotteries were introduced, where a
> limited number of reproductive licenses were issued based on random draw.
>  This eventually turned out to be a puppeteer scheme to breed a "lucky"
human
> being -- read "Ringworld" and "Ringworld Engineers".

I would have recommended the same thing. Darn. This rings of 'Brave New
World'
again - total state control of the biological aspects of life. One thing
Cynthia said that I think applies to all of these biological points is that
it's more attitude than technology. Reproductive control by the state and
selective breeding for 'bioengineered bodies' has been possible for decades.
Whether anyone would want to do it is a completely different question.

> >     Most live in perfectly controlled enviroments: many perfer to live in
a
> >Virtual enviroment, and can live out their lives with only a few forays
> >into The Real World (tm).

(I have, of course, selectively deleted items that I have no comment on, but)
Geez, more and more line BNW... which didn't leave a very plesant impression
of the ideas with me. Of course, I don't think it was intended to. You can do
this now if you want to. Just expect to have more walls at lower tech levels.

With the original request being:

>     I'm looking for SF books and any ideas on how a real high-tech society
>would operate, under these conditions:

I'd say that it sounds like totalitarianism with more toys. Maybe it's
personal
bias, but most of the advances you describe wouldn't (IMHO) make life any
more
pleasant, just a lot more complicated.

Ethan

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 23 Sep 94 15:04:37 PDT
From: djohnson@frame.com (Dane Johnson)
To: traveller@MPGN.COM
Subject: Re: TRAVELLER digest 49
Message-ID: <9409232204.AA01363@fmcuro.frame.com>

>
>    Miscellaneous notes:  I do not like to play T2K because the
>    Real World looks too much like it (Sarajevo, anyone?).  GDW's
>    best work, IMHO, has been in games that weren't trying to
>    follow a trend:  Classic Traveller, Space:1889, 2300AD.  A
>    pity none of those games or backgrounds are supported
>    anymore...  I still think the TNE ruleset married to the
>    Classic Traveller background would have made a heckuva game.
>
>
>                        -- Cynthia
>
>
>

<Ahem>
*YES!*

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to pick up a solid black rulebook with a red
line on it which had the heft of the TNE rulebook?

ObTND:  Doom & Gloom aside, does anybody have any news on GDW's rumored
opening up of the Regency?  All I've heard is ocassional rumors, and I
haven't been on the resurected list long enough to know if anybody here has
talked about it. 

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Digest

Dane
Dane
dane@halcyon.com      fmcuro.frame.com!djohnson@frame.com
  
TNS Stringer ------ Terra/Solomani Rim (1827 G867975-8)
"Any lapses in Omniscience are the price I pay for being implementable."


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Date: Fri, 23 Sep 1994 19:05:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Shalom Zaidfeld <cs911408@red.ariel.cs.yorku.ca>
To: TNE Mailing List <traveller@MPGN.COM>
Subject: Re: World Tamers Handbook is out!
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.90.940923190404.14767A-100000@blue>

Hi,

Does WTH contains design rules for water/underwater crafts and vehicles?

 -Shalom Zaidfeld
 -Toronto, Canada

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End of TRAVELLER Digest 50
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