tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67162445557797257302024-03-13T09:18:42.360+02:00Fjords of AfricaAll the nice things science gives us, plus a wee bit of angry shouting.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.comBlogger185125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-30456755831409077632020-01-24T02:24:00.001+02:002020-01-24T02:33:59.719+02:00Vague thoughts on school dress codes<div>The following is a first draft of a brief position statement I wanted to write regarding the problem of overbearing high school dress codes. It's something that's been bugging me for years, and I finally wanted to congeal my thoughts.</div><div><br></div><div>___</div><div><br></div>I have two perspectives on the question of [our] dress code, one academic and one personal.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">My personal perspective is simple. [It is] asserted (with no attempt at supporting this belief with evidence) that a looser dress code will inevitably lead the students into chaos and lawlessness, ruining their ability to learn. My personal experience says the exact opposite of this. What set off my teenage rebellious phase (starting around age 15) was not wanting to greedily expand my personal freedom, but rather anger and resentment at the school's frequent uniform-based harassment, despite my high academic achievements. It gave me the impression that my capacity to learn was not valued by the school, and that I was just seen as their marketing tool to draw in the next round of paying customers. Consequently, when I did begin to rebel, I also began to abandon my own learning, and my marks dropped considerably. What turned me around in the end and saved my academic career was not rules and punishment, but the efforts of the better teachers who showed that they valued my mind more than my looks. Now I would like to fill that supporting role for each of my own students.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">From a more technical and objective perspective, dress codes have historically been rooted in classism, sexism, and other forms of unacceptable discrimination.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The notion that it is wrong to look "scruffy" is a direct attack on those who cannot afford to always dress "correctly", a trap for filtering out the poor. [This] may be a private school and a business, but we have taught many students whose parents could not always pay the full official fees, and we are a better school for this, functionally and ethically. Every student we lose to petty financial concerns is a deep loss, to the missing student, to the teachers, and to their fellow students. And every educational loss is of course an injury to society as a whole.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Distinctions between girls' and boys' dress codes similarly existed solely to mark and enforce outdated and harmful gender stereotypes. Our education is not aimed separately at boys vs. girls, young men vs. young women. It is aimed universally at students, those who wish to learn. No part of our dress code should pretend otherwise.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">And most broadly of all, dress codes tend to be culturally exclusionary. The 'formal' and 'business casual' looks that most South African (and many international) businesses take for granted today are simply slightly modern forms of 19th century European upper class dress (particularly the obligatory but very impractical buttoned shirt, tie, and inflexible, non-gripping office shoes). This arbitrary fashion standard was imposed on the rest of the world during colonial times, and we should feel no obligation to maintain it anymore in the 21st century.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Lastly, I worry that we are doing a disservice to our students if we over-emphasize their looks and unimportant standards of outer appearance. We run the risk of encouraging them to become shallow and obsessed with a trivial facade of style over substance. If we want to teach them good standards of self-discipline and academic ambition, then we should teach these standards directly and honestly, and not couch them in a confusing and distracting mess of unrelated superficiality. Even more valuably, we can use this as an opportunity to teach them to enjoy and accept all the diversity of human culture, old and new, from all over the world. I have no doubt that most parents, presented with this perspective, will appreciate and accept our goals.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Consequently, I feel our senior dress code should tend to aim for maximum inclusion and acceptance. Only when clothing or adornment demonstrably hinders learning should it be addressed (but not punished).</div>Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-26594097193060215292019-05-12T21:45:00.000+02:002019-05-18T08:07:35.953+02:00ST:DISCO season 2: I really can't stand Kurtzman<div dir="ltr">
I was thinking a few months ago about how silly and premature <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.com/2012/04/star-trek-autopsy.html" target="_blank">something I wrote</a> a decade ago was. It was just a big listicle of everything I found offensive about Star Trek 2009. I still find it offensive, but what seemed out of date was just the title I gave it, referring to the death of Star Trek. That was meant as hyperbole at the time, but it seemed less valid over time. Clearly, I thought as Disco season 2 got rolling, that no longer applies, and we've seen much better stuff since then.<br />
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(Naturally, ST:Discovery <b>spoilers </b>below.) </div>
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And then they fucked it up yet again, in such a similar way. It's so similar, I'm inclined to put the blame on the one guy who wrote both, Alex Kurtzman. I could be wrong, but as big boss in charge of Disco, the buck must surely stop with him anyway.</div>
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<u>Context and general impressions</u></div>
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I must first clarify that I am not and have never been a compulsive Disco hater, but nor am I an apologist for it. I don't think TOS was all that great, most episodes, and '90s Trek is my idea of the optimal balance of story elements (peaking with "Darmok", I'd say). But I was open to new approaches, and after struggling to accept the grim start to Disco season 1, I was very pleased to see that they'd had a decent plot in mind all along, and it all worked out well, with only some weird details like the spore drive left to be resolved (which I see as a technicality, not a fundamental scary problem). It may not have been the greatest thing ever, but it was good, sometimes even great, and nowhere near as bad as some rabid haters try to pretend. The grim dark style parted way to something brighter and more hopeful, which worked well. And I enjoyed every moment of Burnham; Martin-Green may not always have had perfect scripts to work from, but always acted the hell out of them all anyway. Almost the whole cast did an excellent job, though some were clearly not given time to do much of anything.</div>
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Season 2 should have been more of the same. It looked like it was starting great. Episode 1 was very cheesy, copying Star Wars pod racers, with a dumb launch system needlessly copied from BSG, and power ranger costumes. A lot of the dialogue was lame and the setup seemed terribly underwhelming. What's a red burst? Why do Starfleet care about them? Why should the audience? Why pretend there's any urgency to this? I was worried after that, but prepared to accept that they felt they needed a flashy special effects episode, just to get a wider audience hooked. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This would have looked cheesey even in an '80s kids cartoon made to sell action figures.</td></tr>
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But then the second episode felt great. It was a real mystery to solve, it hinted that the red bursts might actually be worth investigating (though still not necessarily <i>urgently</i>). The pacing was good, the characters felt deep, it was nice. It was almost like TNG again, but with some nice new touches. I felt confident season 2 was only going to get better after the wobbly start of episode 1.<br />
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And then it sort of didn't. There were some episodes with great ideas. The handling of Pike's past and future links to TOS episodes was good, with some subtlety and delicacy in not fucking up the canon, while still adding some new detail that enriched the character. The episode "An Obol For Charon" felt like the broad, challenging stories TOS tried to tell, but with the budget and special effects to make it look adequately epic. "Saints of Imperfection" felt totally new and different, but seemed interesting and exciting. They were doing some real exploring again! No more Klingon War!</div>
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And then the second half of season 2 just slumped, mostly. Exploration and discovery were sidelined for timetravellers exposition. If <i>Doctor Who</i> and <i>Back to the Future</i> teach us anything about telling time travel stories, it's that you explain the setup quickly, early, and simply. If you're spending half your dialogue just spelling out what may or may not happen, and then most of that turns out to be irrelevant anyway, then you've maybe wasted my time. I can enjoy long discussions of made-up physics, but I have my limits.<br />
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I'm not going to repeat my mistake from a decade ago and write everything off from this point onwards. I'm sure we'll still get decent episodes in future. Disco may thrive in the far future, especially if they keep their better writers on, and leave them to do their jobs unimpeded. And I'm at least happy we'll get to see more Picard later too. But I won't feel fully comfortable until I know Kurtzman has dropped the reins and isn't going to fuck up more things.<br />
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<u>Root causes</u><br />
The explanation for why season 2 went the way it did probably won't be made clear until insiders start giving their perspectives, probably years or even decades from now. But it seems to me that the main cause was likely the change of showrunners a third of the way through the season. That's when the focus of the stories seems to shift towards time travel, but also when they seem to change course on some already established facts. In hindsight, it looks like a lot of ideas were summarily chucked and replaced by the new management, without too much consideration for overall narrative integrity. I'm <a href="https://youtu.be/HWt0AQWjhPg?t=187" target="_blank">told</a> this is pretty common with management changes.<br />
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My initial impression is that Kurtzman may have been a little obsessed with "fixing" canon issues, in the sense of pleasing older fans who didn't like changes to the way things used to be. On the one hand, I don't think Kurtzman succeeded at that. On the other, I think it was mostly a mistake to try, and I'm compelled to digress a little to explain that:<br />
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<u>Don't fix canon that ain't broke</u> <br />
Disco season 1 didn't break the canon. Fans who said otherwise were, at best, premature. The single biggest canon concern, to me, was how they'd handle the spore drive, which was just so extremely advanced compared with everything else until around Voyager, and so conspicuously absent in everything else. Its existence should make a huge practical, narrative difference. Voyager would have been home in minutes with such a drive, the Bajoran wormhole would have been irrelevant, and all the TOS/TAS conflicts over dilithium would have been moot. But I still didn't consider that a dealbreaker; it was just an interesting opportunity to write in the explanation for why the technology was ultimately a failure. If it was so bad that a century later, nobody would even consider using it, then there's got to be an exciting story about why that is, right?<br />
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What others have instead chosen to focus on doesn't usually make much sense to me. Bernd Schneider, of Ex Astris Scientia, has seemingly become <a href="http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/continuities.htm" target="_blank">obsessed with looks</a>, more than anything else. This is silly. His explicit argument is that visual continuity is important, but that's a very 20th century anomaly. Before film, that was never true in storytelling, going back millennia to the first oral traditions. Images always changed, whether because the storyteller said that they did, or because a different artist drew them differently, or because the production design on stage naturally varies from performance to performance. And in reality, this is true of TV series too; entire actors get replaced in roles, sometimes, on the assumption that the audience can suspend disbelief and play along. The fact that things do still look exactly the same when you go back to reruns (which they couldn't if you watched a repeat performance of a play, for example) only helps to reinforce the illusion of visual continuity. Schneider pretends a little too hard, and so can't accept an inevitable change when it comes. The Klingons have never been visually consistent, just as elves and giants in fantasy have always had varying appearances over the centuries. It doesn't change their narrative function. And ships and technology look different too. That's inevitable. I remember laughing, years ago, when I first saw the ship's computer giving paper printouts in The Cage. Things change, visually, because they were never, ever real to begin with. This doesn't alter the story being told.<br />
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(I'm not certain, but it's possible the 21st century will change visual storytelling in a different way, because you'll now always be able to pull up an endless archive of images from the past, while watching the latest stuff, and compare them in real time. We'll have to learn how to navigate this option, making it something constructive and fun, rather than limiting and dogmatic. I feel Schneider's approach is more like the latter.)<br />
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So I wasn't bugged by canon concerns after seeing season 1, and I struggle to take seriously those who were concerned to extreme, panicked levels. I don't think Disco season 1's complications were necessarily all good, worthwhile ideas, but there was still plenty of room to steer back on course, and it looked like things were being set up that way. Discovery was the only ship fitted with a spore drive, and had already encountered serious medical, psychological, and reality-altering side effects from its use. The harm done to the miniature giant space tardigrade seemed a very clear indicator that they were going to say the technology was more harmful than helpful, and when season 2's "Saints of Imperfection" showed us an entire extra-dimensional ecosystem at risk from it, I thought that was precisely where they were taking this story arc. Given our modern need to urgently end the use of fossil fuels, that felt like an excellent analogy to draw, very much in line with the old TNG style of scifi parable.<br />
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But then Disco season 2 didn't end up satisfactorily addressing the spore drive problem after all.</div>
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<u>List of issues</u><br />
The following is just a list, in no especially clear order, of all the things I object to in Disco season 2. Some have already been pointed out by others. It turns out, the majority of my complaints center on the final two-parter, "Such Sweet Sorrow", though a few problems have earlier roots than that.</div>
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* What were any of the plans anyone had? I spent most of the last half of season 2 struggling to work out why anyone was doing anything. Everything felt rushed and improvised by the characters, but it also felt like the writers, actors, and directors also didn't have a clear sense of where the show was going, with constant changes of direction. Things hop madly from plot point to unrelated plot point, and I found that tiring and boring after a while. I don't watch Star Trek for an adrenaline fix.<br />
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* Dr Gabrielle Burnham's body was found by Leland, and Michael heard her die. So how can she also have survived to become a time traveller? It's possible Leland was lying and Michael mistaken, but the show makes no effort to clarify this. It just looks like a plot hole.</div>
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* Why make Disco's time travel secret? If nobody can get that far into the future, as they had initially planned, it doesn't matter who knows they've gone. And if anyone <i>can</i> get that far into the future (which Disco shows they can) then there's no point in running, because anyone <i>can</i> chase them. The entire premise of "hiding" in the distant future seems nonsensical. Hiding means going where you can't be detected. By the end of season 2, Control already knew their plan, so that hiding spot (and perhaps the entire concept of hiding) was rendered invalid.</div>
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Related to this, we know Georgieu is expected back for her own Section 31 spinoff series. That would seem to imply that returning from the future is possible, further invalidating it as a place to hide. But we'll have to see what becomes of that.</div>
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* Why can't Control also just jump 1000 years into the future on its own, one way or another? Section 31 ran the Red Angel design process, so why don't they have copies (partial or complete) of the designs that Control can easily copy and use at it likes? There may be a rationale for this, but even so, several other <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Time_travel#Methods" target="_blank">time travel technologies</a> are already known to exist at this point, and several more will be discovered not too long after Discovery jumps to the future, so what's keeping Control from patiently using any of those to jump ahead too? Even if Control had forgotten the details of these methods from its future self, it's future self should have access to these, or could at least advise its past self to look out for them. It's planned ahead for so many things, and it knows for certain that time travel is part of the scheme, but it doesn't have any better method than to hitch along with the Red Angel?<br />
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* What were Control's motives anyway? It appears on screen, via Leland, to monologue its evil plan directly to us, and I'm still not sure. Kill all life, yes, but why? I don't like a vague villain, I want motive and depth. </div>
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* Why does nobody ever work further on spore drive? It was staggeringly advanced and useful, but they'll just pretend to ignore it? Why can't anyone else ever independently discover the same tech, within or without the Federation? Simply ending the season with, "Shh, nobody ever mention this again," felt deeply unsatisfying. There were plenty of non-Starfleet witnesses to the technology, including the uncontrollable Harry Mudd. How do we now pretend that nobody's even going to try to re-invent it?<br />
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* Why set up that spore drive is bad for mycellial network natives, then ignore that huge threat? It seems that after the change of show runners, not only does the Discovery keep harming the <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/JahSepp" target="_blank">jahSepp</a>'s ecosystem with more jumps, never once showing concern for the mycellial plane, but they also waste the story potential to show voluntary abandonment of dodgy tech for environmental reasons.</div>
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* Discovery & Enterprise were outnumbered 15 to 1, by Starfleet vessels of roughly equal technology, but still can't be destroyed? Why not? Sure, some of them were smaller vessels, but it was already established that Section 31 vessels are state of the art. Perhaps the battle was actually slowed down by Control using nanobot drones, instead of just shooting lots? The drones certainly seemed to have no real use.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOCMVFd9MdMcZqsZhZwlNBegFGeEHg3bRyqMY1F4fK_0zMlrzzn4TbF9AcY_dZAv-0zyemuWPbRGJcxgWRg-Dv7kzFLgN-d93RxuH57s8WeJR64Kp7t7rHGkT_DNz51NDr5FGmbdvftIc/s1600/Enterprise_and_Discovery_Battle_Section_31.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1600" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOCMVFd9MdMcZqsZhZwlNBegFGeEHg3bRyqMY1F4fK_0zMlrzzn4TbF9AcY_dZAv-0zyemuWPbRGJcxgWRg-Dv7kzFLgN-d93RxuH57s8WeJR64Kp7t7rHGkT_DNz51NDr5FGmbdvftIc/s640/Enterprise_and_Discovery_Battle_Section_31.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maybe they lasted so well becuse the Section 31 ships were all aiming 100 meters too far forward. That's not simply Enterprise & Discovery blowing things up before they hit, defensively, or we'd see explosions behind them too, from all those ships surrounding them. So the only logical interpretation of this image is that everyone is eager to blow up empty space 100 meters forward of the two Starfleet vessels.</td></tr>
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This is very important for the plot, because the only reason Discovery is being sent into the far future, to hide, is because they're convinced that they can't win a direct confrontation against Control. And then they do that in this battle anyway. Two starships, plus later reinforcements, take on all 30 of Control's starships, and win. They even kill the Leland zombie itself. Hiding doesn't make sense, and fighting does work, so why still insist on carrying out a plan that assumes the opposite?<br />
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* Similarly, whose dumb idea was it to have Discovery & Enterprise disgorge literally hundreds of shuttles to act as fighters? Star Trek shuttles are just space buses, usually unarmed, and it's long been established that even the huge Galaxy class doesn't carry hundreds and hundreds of them. Now, if there had been a good narrative or artistic purpose for it, I might have accepted it. But instead, they just mention it, very briefly illustrated with an unreasonably large swarm of them, and then the rest of the episode proceeds with their vast numbers being totally irrelevant to anything.<br />
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If anything, I feel it would have been more dramatic if only a dozen or so had been available, few enough that we could have shown the pilot of each as a real character, not a distant video game icon, with tensions rising as each unlucky one is killed in the battle. My first instinct was to dismiss the whole shuttle-fighter concept as lazily stealing from the fighter scenes of Star Wars and BSG, but I now realise that the more character-driven scene I've just suggested is actually closer to watching Luke or Starbuck struggle through in their lonely little cockpit. So I guess "Such Sweet Sorrow, part 2" didn't really plagiarise, it was originally stupid. People used to mock Voyager for <i>maybe</i> having one or two shuttlecraft more than it ought to be able to fit inside. I would love to go back in time and show them this new thing, to put their complaints about Voyager into perspective.</div>
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* On a related note, there's a throwaway line about "7000 ships" in Starfleet. That's a tricky little factoid, considering the registry numbers have not yet exceed NCC-1800 by this point, and we can be pretty sure that most of the vessels with registries lower than NCC-500 are out of service already. So the 7000 can't be refering to the core number of major Starfleet starships. Perhaps it's a grand total that includes the Federation <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Merchant_Marine" target="_blank">Merchant Marine</a>'s vessels and probably also little dinky shuttlecraft. It seems some of the Disco writers don't distinguish between big starships and little shuttlecraft, so if the average starship carries half a dozen shuttles, then that roughly adds up correctly (~1000 starships + (~1000 × 6) shuttles). If you want to be more conservative on the starship numbers, then swap things around and say it's half as many starships carrying an average of a dozen shuttles, and it still comes out close to the same (~500 starships + (~500 × 12) shuttles). Assume many shuttles would actually be based on planets and space stations, and you can easily make the numbers work however you need them to. I have no idea why the writers actually made up this weird 7000 number, but it can be excused away easily enough.<br />
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But never mind that. Let's take it as given that there are these 7000 vessels of one sort or another, and yet none can help Discovery in any way at all? Sure, they make the excuse that communications are limited for security reasons, but they work around that limit fine when they want Enterprise and Sarek and Amanda to pop by. So is there a limit or not? Is there a workaround to the limit or not? Maybe some of the 7000 starships are too far to get there in time, but none of them can make it at all? No major starships are faster than a little Vulcan diplomatic shuttle? And only Enterprise can help? It seems a silly gaff by the writers, and I think fixing this might have saved them the trouble of feeling they needed to cram hundreds of anonymous extra shuttles into the end boss battle. Just two or three additional starships, rushing to be the cavalry, could have added some decent extra tension, evening out the battle numbers to something slightly more realistic, and they could even have shown us quick glimpses of their non-human captains, for a little bonus variety.<br />
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* The idea that the season had to be resolved with a big battle seems terrible to me. It's just too video gamey. Even season 1, the "war" season, cleverly wrote itself out of that mess with some internal Klingon diplomacy, sidestepping a big, dumb battle to the death. It wasn't a flawless ending, but it shouldn't have been that, or Kirk wouldn't still face trouble from the Klingons a decade later. So given that, it was a damn clever path out that the season 1 writers found. But the season 2 ending was just "shoot everything until we can magically escape"; I feel this was uninspired, and a bit un-Trek.<br />
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* Forcing in guest cameos as fighter pilots was weird. Saru's sister, Siranna, was a rural, pacifist priest, and then suddenly she's recast as a generic Star Wars fighter pilot character, pew pew pew. It made more sense for Queen Po to be present already, as she was engineering shit, her established major talent; making her then also have to be yet another fighter pilot was weird. It made good enough sense for the Klingons to arrive as the cavalry in the end, with full-size starships, and it probably would have been much cleaner, clearer writing if it was just a way to show the two recent war-enemies suddenly working together towards a common goal. Trying to make the Xaheans and Kelpiens fit in there too muddies that nice, simple demonstration of cooperation, not least because they were then forgotten for the rest of the final episode anyway. There was no advantage to including them, it was just weird.<br />
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(Although, why did Control stay neatly inside Starfleet computers only? If there was free communications with Klingon and other alien receivers, why didn't it copy itself onto their computers?)</div>
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* Ruining Kelpiens. This one is a matter of opinion, but I'm not the only one who felt a bit annoyed by how Saru was rewritten. It was great to have a character succeeding in the face of constant, almost crippling anxiety, sort of like a different take on TNG's Barclay character. Simply washing that away didn't feel great. I guess it's nice for the Kelpiens that they don't have to feel shit and be eaten anymore, but it's unfortunate that they weren't allowed to keep their own shared personality and culture in the process. They were just turned into default Americans, against their will. I think it also would have been far more interesting to keep the Kelpiens more alien and less human, not to other them, but to explore modern human meat-eating habits through their opposite position. Instead, it feels like the writing in "The Sound of Thunder" and subsequent episodes was suggesting that herbivores/vegetarians are just not trying hard enough, and if they can just be "corrected", they'll start getting properly aggressive and confrontational, the way they "ought" to be. It's a bit insulting, really.<br />
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(I also think it would be nice to see who the Ba'ul really are. There was a <i>Wizard of Oz </i>analogy waiting to be grabbed there, once we saw a little of the Ba'ul behind the curtain, but the show never progresses them much beyond mysterious semi-magic demons.)</div>
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* Is Kaminar supposed to be insanely close to Xahea? We know the Ba'ul first achieved warp 1 only 20 years ago, and the Kelpiens seem to have simply taken over the Ba'ul fleet (surely a story worth telling properly, not just rushing by us). For comparison, it took Earth something like 40 years, with advanced Vulcan help, to achieve warp 2, and around 80 years to reach warp 3. So either the Ba'ul/Kelpiens progressed their technology incredibly fast without outside help, or still have very primitive technology that would have taken literally years to get them to even a fairly close neighbouring system (for a sense of scale, at warp 2, that's still a month and a half's travel for every lightyear the Kelpiens have to cross). I don't mind fudging the warp travel times a bit for narrative convenience, but this just looks like nobody thought it through at all, and it was such a useless mistake to make, considering how little the Kelpiens contribute to the plot.</div>
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* Pike's time crystal doomed him to a certain doomy doom, locking him into a predestined horrible accident, as seen in his vision. Burnham's time crystal doomed her to nothing. Nothing she foresaw in her vision came to pass in reality. So was Pike lied to? Was Burnham merely given a serving suggestion? Or are time crystals kind of badly written, inconsistent plot devices?</div>
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* Pike safely watched the whole front chunk of the saucer section blown clean away, implying a blast radius of at least several dozen meters, through a little window in a door maybe 5 meters from the exploding torpedo. Tough little window; no wonder it was so crucial that this door be closed before the bomb detonated.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90mLt-lzRVjtQ1CgPItV7WQkNTa9amAAynR3v97fua-mEcu1U7V_FPTmNasT1HVtxqqaGLopN-aVZb8j-y8DHXWKxq8S_IgvBjqE04IKUXrKzXTX6RaoY28JoO6gypYX-MvvvOfUHmz4/s1600/saucer+damage.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1600" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg90mLt-lzRVjtQ1CgPItV7WQkNTa9amAAynR3v97fua-mEcu1U7V_FPTmNasT1HVtxqqaGLopN-aVZb8j-y8DHXWKxq8S_IgvBjqE04IKUXrKzXTX6RaoY28JoO6gypYX-MvvvOfUHmz4/s640/saucer+damage.png" width="640" /></a></div>
How come they had drones for repairing the outside of the hull under extreme conditions, but none to just pull down the door-closing lever for Cornwall? How come all those clever Starfleet brains, who built a new time-jumping suit in record time, couldn't improvise a lever-pulling gizmo to close the door without needing to kill anyone? I mean, I could have rigged that for them with just a length of sturdy string...<br />
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* The Red Angel suit was ridiculous, once revealed. It wasn't super-science, of the sort we just have to accept in Trek (like transporters and warp drive, and even spore drive). It was just magic. It can fly better than a full starship, it's ridiculously survivable, it never runs out of power, once started up, and its computer memory is far more vast than Discovery's. And it can do all sorts of plot-convenient combat and medical things too, literally raising the dead! And this is early 23rd century Federation technology? Nonsense. It is level 9 magic.<br />
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* What were the first seven red signals that the season started with? They definitely were not the seven that Burnham later retroactively creates at the scene of each episode, because those episodes all happened <i>after </i>the season had begun. And the original seven signals all appeared <i>before </i>Pike arrives to take control of Discovery. The first one they visit is described as having lingered when the other 6 vanished, so there's 1 that's possibly justified, unless Burnham's signal there was just appended to the lingering 7th. But then there are 6 signals Starfleet definitely received weeks or months before Discovery spots 4 further signals that lead them places, adds 1 more shortly after, and 1 that is somehow sent back in time to signal to Spock, many months later. So in fact, there were 13 or 14 signals, and we still have no idea at all where the first 6 or 7 came from or why. Is it even worth asking for a rational explanation? Clearly, if one was written, we're not being given it.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-81987133410570282482019-04-27T14:50:00.007+02:002021-08-14T21:43:08.312+02:00Central Collection: All my Star Trek Adventures stuffWith the death of Google Plus, most of my public contributions to <a href="https://www.modiphius.net/collections/star-trek-adventures" target="_blank">Star Trek Adventures</a> ain't public no more. And even my own players may not have kept track of all the links they ought to be able to check. I know one or two of my items were linked on the <a href="https://stadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Adventures_Resources_Wiki" target="_blank">Resources Wiki</a>, but I thought it might be helpful to someone (even if it's only me) to make a post here, linking everything I've made for this rules system. I'll update this post as I come up with new stuff.<br />
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I've divided it mainly between general rules stuff, and stuff that is specifically for my personal campaign groups (collectively titled <i>Star Trek: Explorations</i>). My own players should treat the latter as potentially spoilery. Other GMs may steal whatever ideas they like from it, and if you as a player know your own GM might use some of this material, then perhaps you'd like to follow the guidance I give my players too.<br />
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<u>*<i><b>My own players</b></i>: Assume everything below is GM-only content, unless marked with an Asterix. Open un-Asterixed links with caution, if you must open them at all. </u></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<u>General Resources</u></div><p>
Stuff that could have some use in anyone's Star Trek Adventures campaign, regardless of setting or era.<br />
</p><p><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PHbtrXu7QIgMlQ4cwFa98ALz2b4qk_uiPcb0JO1Fsz0/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">List of all known Star Trek adventures</a> - Definitely GM Only! My spreadsheet listing every Star Trek adventure I could find, from all official systems and a few unofficial ones. Contains many Spoilers!</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/5yovclpq1zt8kes/STA%20Maps%20and%20Legends%20v3.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Maps & Legends</a> - My unofficial, but pretty extensive setting expansion to include Star Trek: Picard, and anything else that falls within the period from 2380 to 2400. Currently on version 3, including bits from season 1 of Star Trek: Lower Decks.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jGFY47KztcN2LAANXoik7H8G3mY2CX6d/view" target="_blank">Adventure: Flora & Fauna</a> - A medical/exploration away mission to a planet with some unusual biology. Includes an appendix on how it can be adapted for my <i>Explorations</i> campaign setting. (And for comparison, I dug out the old <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/et5anzgorl671z0/Flora%20%26%20Fauna%20v2.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">LUGTrek version</a> from 2005.)<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/d5nif5b8m5lhrb1/STA%20Ghost%20in%20the%20Shuttlebay.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Adventure: Ghost in the Shuttlebay</a> - A crewmember keeps seeing someone in the shuttlebay. Someone who died years ago.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ychwi3xrq49quko/STA%20The%20Sorcerer%E2%80%99s%20Apprentice.zip?dl=0" target="_blank">Adventure: The Sorceror's Apprentice</a> - Introductory adventure written specifically to introduce the PIC setting and rules from Maps & Legends.<br />
</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/fdixfu8b1c2ew7z/STA%20Twisting%20with%20Shadows%20%28C.%20Sham%29.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Adventure: Twisting With Shadows</a> - Written for an aborted adventure-writing contest run jointly by Star Trek Adventures and Star Trek Online, I suspect mine may have been the only submission. Anyway, here it is, a sort of seedy underworld thing to do with pirates and weapon smugglers, in the STO setting.<br /><br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SvCmgbOP4NeWxwORGsHf6S0DdsWsRZ1bj6wbTOOBso0/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Adventure supplement: 'World With a Bluer Sun' calculator</a> - A spreadsheet for imperfectly estimating how much a thing might affect the player characters, in the published adventure 'World with a Bluer Sun'. Saying any more would spoil the plot. If you're running that adventure, you'll figure it out. If not, it's no concern of yours anyway.<br />
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<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QaG6Ey4-7vE7nckPBLh5Mld14Vjxhbed2HPZ2hvjFIM/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Campaign Ideas list</a> - A bunch of hooks I have for different styles of campaign that could be played in future. Some of these could possibly also be shrunk down to single-session adventures, instead of full campaigns.<br />
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</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GwC7aTEBqBHcnoaRVPSkLjaOM6mbEz4S2P4WHMwFInQ/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Character Creation Guide (general version)</a> - A walkthrough of all the major steps of character generation, including some fluff, and including Species added in the Beta Quadrant book, and one or two smaller sources.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UfDkR_JiSFIP8eWFGZpcUDwBQsJVZWhe" target="_blank">Critter: Tribble (NPC)</a> - The very first thing I ever created with the STA rules, just to get a feel for them. Coo coo coo.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/19q2id0rxjiin7q/Gormagander.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Critter: Gormagander (NPC/ship)</a> - House rules for the species of space whales (who look more squiddy to me). As space-dwelling creatures, their stats use the starship format.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/hbikgejq3ggda8n/Star%20Trek%20Adventures%20-%20Alternate%20House%20Rules%20for%20Dice-Free%20Reputation%20and%20Promotion.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Dice-free Rules for Promotion & Reputation</a> - House rules to replace those in the core rule book for handling rank promotions and reputation changes without having to rely on the randomness of dice.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MqeHu82ZMh1mWW6K6QTes_iu3syzHngxbnrH5CKFRC0/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Equipment Guide</a> - A combined list of all the items of gear listed in the official rule books, sorted by type, with their available era, costs, and reference page.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-kxwXHyQSV07I53PrwCeLK6yxwSbL0qioKe2Kr9_nLg/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Expanded Transporter Rules</a> - Extra house rules for using the transporter. I still consider this an experimental work in progress.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/9n22pcpfr3f330f/NCC%20Registry%20Number%20Picker.xlsx?dl=0" target="_blank">NCC Registry Number Picker</a> - For years, it bugged me that I could never be sure if I was picking appropriate registry numbers for my invented Starfleet vessels, and I've <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.com/2018/12/progression-of-ncc-registry-numbers-in.html" target="_blank">previously blogged</a> about exactly that. This spreadsheet condenses everything I've researched on that infuriating, illogical system, and offers simply an indication of what NCC numbers most likely first appeared in a given year. It still needs some improvement and updating, but this should be fine for most uses.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><p><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EciWwk3n72lVBezyQMyJNbj6OP8ZFNL24kx_nW6_yvs/edit?usp=sharing">Power Effects table</a> - Summary of all rules effects that add or subtract from the ship's Power.<br />
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Okr5O3ZIsDVLappmB9UEs1bUKJToHsCn" target="_blank">Random Encounter Tables</a> - Rough guidelines for random starship encounters. More of a quick hook generator than a full encounter builder.</p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13nOg3CWtEoqsVsHPmZOI2PqWswVDAt5Iqwt58mkqzlY/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Random Starfleet Starships</a> - A random generator that I've put WAAAAAY too much time into. It's always bugged me that so many Starfleet starship names are obviously named by 20th century Americans, with none of the ample variety we should see from the interstellar collection of cultures and languages across the Federation. In my own games, I like to dig for more varied and interesting sources of names for ships, but I still didn't feel like I was getting it right with just ad hoc last-minute searches. I thought an easy solution would be to pre-generate a list of good names, and while I was at it, also put in a random picker. It wasn't too much harder to incorporate my random registry number picker (above) to add more detail to each random starship name. Most recently, I've adjusted it further so that only names relevant to existing Federation members are used, based on the year chosen to work out an appropriate registry number. I've drawn on both Alpha and Beta canon to populate the name's list, but the GM of each game should have final say in what names are appropriate enough. Most of the Earth names were drawn from Wikipedia, often from topical lists. So far, I've gathered over 4000 names. And all of this, just to name one single ship at a time.<br />
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</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/l2i1xsrfqyv8e37/Sham%27s%20Solar%20System%20Maker%20version%202.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Solar System Maker</a> - Random generation tables for creating astronomically realistic(ish) stars and their planets.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/home/Star%20Trek%20Explorations?preview=Starship+-+Gagarin.pdf" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/3bjo0vsjq8eyv93/Asia.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Spaceframe: Asia class</a> - House rules for making starships of the ENT/TOS-era Asia class, as borrowed from <a href="http://starfleet-museum.org/asia.htm" target="_blank">Starfleet Museum</a>. Created as a spare for the <i>Explorations </i>campaign, but not yet used at all.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/home/Star%20Trek%20Explorations?preview=Starship+-+Gagarin.pdf" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/5uxkt3px0o8a5vz/Starship%20-%20Gagarin.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Spaceframe: Gagarin class</a> - House rules for making starships of the ENT/TOS-era Gagarin class, as borrowed from <a href="http://starfleet-museum.org/gagarin.htm" target="_blank">Starfleet Museum</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/awtihha1p0tnjgz/Starship%20-%20Moskva.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Spaceframe: Moskva class</a> - House rules for making starships of the ENT/TOS-era Moskva class, as borrowed from <a href="http://starfleet-museum.org/moskva.htm" target="_blank">Starfleet Museum</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/mfdpv0p2sb840uk/Starship%20-%20Paris.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Spaceframe: Paris class</a> - House rules for making starships of the ENT/TOS-era Paris class, as borrowed from <a href="http://starfleet-museum.org/paris.htm" target="_blank">Starfleet Museum</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/lfvtx5acq19fp56/Suurok.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Spaceframe: Suurok class</a> - House rules for making starships of the Vulcan ENT-era Suurok class.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/rfgionjz607gkeh/Phoenix.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Starship: The Phoenix</a> - House rules for the first Earth warp vessel, as seen in <i><a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Phoenix" target="_blank">First Contact</a></i>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/2r4qygskr6rouyk/Kaplan%20F17%20Speed%20Freighter.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Spaceframe: Kaplan F17 Speed Freighter class</a> - House rules for the type of light cargo ship seen in <i>Picard</i>, as La Sirena. (Insert mention of Talent for multiple holo-crew here.) <br />
<br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/163FRZwAI_wg8VvQpPftX6wM1mSBuqPOsYlsRL7CFv0c/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Species Stats Table</a> - A thing that's going to be turned into something more complete, similar to the Starship Stats Table. For now, it's a list of all official and fan-made Species rules stuff, together with my attempt at working out when everyone joined the Federation and Starfleet, and when they first started appearing at all.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/9tg7dyfsgy0h2l0/Species%20-%20Rigellian.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Species: Rigellian</a>
- House rules for making player characters of the Rigellian species.
Cobbles together bits and pieces from the many confused possible
versions of this species (or group of species, depending who you ask),
into something I felt was at least fun to play as. This has since become supplanted by the official Rigellian species in the Beta Quadrant book.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjc0oe9yxvpo202/Departments%20by%20Mission%20Profile.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Starship Crew Breakdown Table</a> - House rule, linking Modiphius starship Mission Profiles with the crew departmental percentage splits from the Last Unicorn Spacedock rules. For a ship of a given Mission Profile, divide its total number of crew into departments per the given percentage. Each department can then be further divided by the rank category of its crewmembers. Assumes a total crew of close to 100, so some manual adjustment may be needed for very small and very large crews.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IpKILATxSECK_7BybHUV8dUF-QLZV7OAe7_aeuvCAVY/edit?usp=sharing">Starship Random Names Tables</a> - Guidelines for coming up with a healthy variety of Federation starship names.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/9h8kgxmxt97qule/Sham%20Scale%20Table.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Starship Scale Table</a> - House rule, expanding on the Scale table on page 215 of the core rule book. I was pretty sure Modiphius had made theirs by adapting the old Last Unicorn Size table, especially the version given in the Spacedock rules, so I decided to see if I could work out the logic behind it, and present it in a more precise way, to help classify new spaceframes I was making.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uU42fMxCehSWiNCPFVpid9Fp7-9IgKZCZOV4JlJO83k/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Starship Stats Table</a> - Summary list of all starship spaceframes and specific named vessels from all of the official rulebooks (including some minor spoilers for published adventures), plus many of the unofficial fan ones. Also includes a tool (the copypasta shipyard) for quickly throwing stats together per the ship design rules. I've also included known canon warp speed limits, and my own version of the Scale table.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/17M_-hGDmGybwftMioX7wNYxvt7GqZmdzJffjEr3dJs4/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Valuematic 3000</a> - A walkthrough for creating a Value that will hopefully be more fun and useful to play, and to GM.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eC081yWXiPKtpU-t5mDTbkoL0T8YWxe3VUEuQVq1Lx0" target="_blank">Warp Tables (public version)</a> - Includes a more detailed version of the warp speed table on page 205 of the core rule book, as well as a speed-distance-time calculator, and a list of known canon starship warp speeds (all Alpha canon, with one or two Beta canon examples, in grey, thrown in where I felt they were helpful for getting the big picture). All three of these tables include three different measures of speed: the ENT/TOS "Cochrane" scale of warp speed, the TNG "Eugene" scale of warp speed, and simple multiples of c (speed of light), made equivalent using semi-canon formulae. If anyone can figure out how to fully reverse the TNG formula, to solve for W from a known c in all cases, I'd appreciate it.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<u>Campaign Resources (<i>Star Trek: Explorations</i>)</u></div>
<i>Explorations </i>is a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGAC-gBoX9k" target="_blank">multi-group shared sandbox-style</a> campaign setting, set in the early 2200s, halfway between the ENT and TOS eras. It is centered on one region, Sector 21, which is frontier space at that time, though by TNG it would be pretty central within Federation space. Most of our content from actual play is hidden in our Roll20 game for now, but below are the basic starting elements we began from at the start of 2018, plus a selection of useful house rules and other components. (I'd also like to point out that I don't much like the bland blue-on-black computer UI seen in ENT, DISCO, and on the USS Kelvin. LCARS is much more interesting and fun to me, but I've stuck with the older blue-black look for a lot of my campaign handouts.)<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9NZRDrS7wtsUKuB4crQ1gPGYV-o1cDSY3g2PUd1AUQufrVkbQMpBZw5q3gBGcJIb7Nzbpsaofet8Uslt88mEWH3NUrhi9CJCAaVhqLRsOY22XCuARRW6Apy7uqDH7PIChX101foGGaxw/s1600/Sector+21+in+Disco+map.png" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="1600" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9NZRDrS7wtsUKuB4crQ1gPGYV-o1cDSY3g2PUd1AUQufrVkbQMpBZw5q3gBGcJIb7Nzbpsaofet8Uslt88mEWH3NUrhi9CJCAaVhqLRsOY22XCuARRW6Apy7uqDH7PIChX101foGGaxw/s640/Sector+21+in+Disco+map.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I was very amused at how easily I could find my completely non-canon Sector 21 stars in a map from 50 years later.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1erft-YZlG7bTEyKsRlQ64PR2PXAhS348" target="_blank">GM's Starter Pack</a> - All the stuff I'd created for myself at the time that the campaign began, packaged for other GMs to borrow from. Includes setting info and maps, extra Species rules for Aenar (by David Gibson) and Rigellians, extra Spaceframe rules for the Asia, Gagarin, Moskva and Paris classes, and premade starship stats for the USS Delhi, USS Jemison and USS Johannesburg (our three player starships).<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/v2cq7ygalz84ai8/United%20Federation%20of%20Planets%2C%202208.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Map of Sector 21 in the Federation, circa 2208</a> - My best estimate of how my Sector 21 fits into the galactic map (red box), and what the extent of the UFP is during this period (space marked in blue). It's intentionally much more spindly than the vast UFP that the 24th century map presents.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/lwkuwgfvte9y282/Panda%20Span%20map.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Panda Span map</a> - The full extent of the nebula, beyond the part that's within Sector 21.<br />
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<a href="https://www.deviantart.com/spatulix/art/Starship-Wehikore-Intrepid-class-deck-plans-738011668" target="_blank">Handout: Interior layout of Starship Wehikore</a> - I wanted to replace the Atlantis from the published adventure "A World with a Bluer Sun", as Earth's smaller Intrepid class felt more interesting to me, and also closer in scale and purpose to the USS Jemison, so there was a better narrative link. But then I had no good sense of the interior layout of the ship, so I made up my own.<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ggj04hxw1jfvu1/Toorn%27s%20comparison.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Handout: 400 years of astronomy records of the Panda Span nebula</a> - Images of this region of space, as recorded from Tellar Prime since 1800.<br />
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<a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AJuG7CoPJEf7sc-HeXkjeM8enpRG5cIZv3FpDGPBZFU/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Handout: Observed subspace flux</a> and <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/n694uxvs72ug3t1/Sector%2021%20Observed%20subspace%20flux%205%20-%20map%20numbers.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Handout: Map of subspace observations</a>
- Final versions of the list of all subspace field measurements taken
by the Starfleet vessels in the sector, over the course of about a year,
and the map that marks their positions. Also includes separate list of
equivalent measurements taken at Kontunel. My players spent a year
analysing this to try and figure out the hidden pattern behind it, and
got pretty close, so I'll be interested to see if other GMs or anyone
else can work it out, without the benefit of me explaining any of it.
Ask if you really want to know.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/9m6ulzkswieiy6l/Sector%2021%20key%20worlds%20v1.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Sector 21 major worlds images</a> - Portrait set of most of the major planets the players visited during 2018/2208. I've got various other maps and images of these planets, and others, but it would take a long time to gather them all. (Still missing: Brissid, Duboz and Silik 6.)<br />
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<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/a78jioizutzg9kp/Suliban%20faction%20chart.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Suliban faction chart</a> - Showing how the Suliban factions from canon and of my own invention are related to each other. We got very, very little canon background on them in ENT, and even the subsequent novels have barely mentioned them, so I haven't had that much to build on.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=18nGr5ygeU6iRVz6tBMOWeghMDLSSw1X9" target="_blank">Player Intro</a> - Brief introductory booklet for players starting this campaign.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><p><a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NWrHXPkjmM5XxqL_w5SZ7rFC4nvhh9sF" target="_blank">Player Map</a> - The starting version of the player's map of Sector 21, as it stood at the beginning of 2208.<br />
</p><p><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/0kmhrbfnt401xwg/Sector%2021.txt?dl=0" target="_blank">3D starmap coordinates</a> - Simple text file, intended for use with <a href="https://www.jahm.com/free_software.html#P3D" target="_blank">Plot3DValues v1.15</a>. Unlabelled and without neblua, but I still find it nifty.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a></div>
<a href="https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Eg5O8KmNcW1CKRdKYhSzGMZJkJgyc3VSd_Bg1ArqKMk" target="_blank">Character Creation Guide (<i>Explorations </i>version)</a> - Same as the general purpose public version, but streamlined and repainted to be specific to my era and setting.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/7f2k2xr53uzj8cb/Class%20C%20shuttlepod.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Class C shuttlepod</a> - The little sublight crew shuttle my players mainly rely on. The image is taken from a John Eaves preliminary design that wasn't used, but I liked how it implies a shared design lineage from the earlier ENT shuttlepods. (It wasn't until over a year later that DISCO finally named its own shuttles as Class C too, which is an unfortunate coincidence. I had assumed they'd go with Class E, a generation before the Class F of TOS, but oh well.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4l6elk13tstswr/Class%20D%20shuttle.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Class D shuttle</a> - The larger, rarer warp shuttles that our campaign seldom uses. The image is from an unused Matt Jefferies preliminary design for the Class F.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/htw2xdvwzq9o4au/TS%20Kruh.docx?dl=0" target="_blank">Starship: Trade Station Kruh</a> - The starship stats for the Tellarite merchants' space station in orbit above Starbase 21. Its image is copied from a Tellarite trade station seen in ENT, which was itself a reuse of a model of Cardassian station from DS9.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/c5lgtbsp6roqw06/missing%20ships.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Handout: Missing Starships</a> - Silly little thing I made to frame some story elements together with similar canon stuff.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/vs75vg7hxrvrvhn/Federation%20News%20Service%20-%20Suessor.png?dl=0" target="_blank">Handout: News: Suessor elected president</a> - A random factoid I borrowed from the FASA roleplaying, just because it fit our timeline and added some more detail to things.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1__IwRUb1bEH204euneBhsS48ywEfE5R1PnWyu5XdxfA/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Probe Design Rules</a> - House rules for a complicated ad hoc build of a long-distance warp probe. Borrows ideas from the Last Unicorn Spacedock rules. Never used, because the Jemison players felt they had left it too late to begin, for the specific purpose they had at the time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/qeq76wgxsds1sce/Species%20-%20Zenian%20survivor.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">Species: Zenian survivor</a> - House rules for making player characters of the Zenian species. I threw this together after the crew of the Jemison found their group of survivors on Thuln. It seemed like a fun option to make available for any future character creation.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="30" data-original-width="17" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraBKhsRr_kKmW6gtsiRWNO9yrWpi_Gb6mVnVq_vob2fIWRocw4uqhVxq6OrP6WKgyBIq8pwuPB_N1h-Q9Hoo_huULm3jA-ctks5f_OQ-dm7FehxM2i1bhvTFul0ViGGL1xq8kXbB7OOI/s1600/Asterix.png" /></a><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Be6lXAVkk86NLUu-Uqs4xezkDJxCM0VMATz859ywtmc/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Warp Tables (<i>Explorations </i>version)</a> - Same as the public version, but with our campaign-specific starships included (in red).Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-24343582620374552672018-12-27T10:51:00.000+02:002018-12-27T10:56:22.208+02:00Progression of NCC registry numbers in Canon vs. Starfleet Museum<div dir="ltr">
If you want to show you're a truly pedantic Trekkie, there's no better way than obsessing over starship registry numbers. Because even a fairly short study of just the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/NCC" target="_blank">NCC</a> range of registries, used by the main Starfleet vessels, reveals two things:<br />
1. There is a logic to the numbering, with later ships tending to have higher registry numbers, as if they were sequential, or something similar.<br />
2. There is complete madness to the numbering, with all sorts of exceptions, anomalies, and persistent typos that mess the whole scheme up beyond useful recognition. I am far from the first to <a href="http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/registries.htm" target="_blank">point this out</a>.<br />
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Reconciling thing 1 with thing 2 is frustrating, at best. So I've decided to make it more fun for myself by also trying to reconcile the canon NCCs with those used by Starfleet Museum's non-canon designs, as promised in <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.com/2018/12/progression-of-warp-drive-limits-in.html" target="_blank">my last post</a>. This actually turns out to be the simpler, quicker thing to resolve, as this graph will illustrate:<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO3XfZUPdrm3LMk7u-36gHk3CmatZy7UX31N6aSp2jdwq-0_y0OyhXM8G6_HeEN-QUjjNLktPL36zAW3Y5yiyv7uxsRqiuQoweeveGSWV2YCTgP_78DztolbocGyQclGt2z_vkrOaf9v8/s1600/NCC+per+year+200.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO3XfZUPdrm3LMk7u-36gHk3CmatZy7UX31N6aSp2jdwq-0_y0OyhXM8G6_HeEN-QUjjNLktPL36zAW3Y5yiyv7uxsRqiuQoweeveGSWV2YCTgP_78DztolbocGyQclGt2z_vkrOaf9v8/s640/NCC+per+year+200.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to embiggen)<br />
Graph of earliest known appearances of Starfleet registry numbers (2160 to 2300)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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It initially seemed pretty obvious to me that Okazaki had simply drawn a straight line from an origin in 2161, to the established launch of the Constitution class in 2245, and then used that line as a rough guide for picking when each of his new classes should launch. What he couldn't have known then, nor even known during the run of Star Trek: Enterprise that messed up most of Starfleet Museum's chronology, was the 2009 appearance of the USS Kelvin, with it's <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Kelvin#Background_information" target="_blank">obscure dedication plaque</a>. This hints (though I'll admit, doesn't definitely prove) that NCCs were still only in the 500s in the 2220s, and that there was likely a big, sudden growth in Starfleet during the 2230s and 2240s, jumping up the registry by over a thousand new starships in a couple of decades. This gives the S-curves of my rough estimated blue and green lines on that graph.<br />
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I did notice, at the last minute, that Okazaki's numbers might also fit an S-curve too, though subtler and starting much earlier. That curve would also seem to fit the right side of the graph better than the straight line too. <br />
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We know the early UFP Starfleet didn't start from zero ships, because pre-Federation ships belonging to the Andorians, Earthicans, Tellarites, and Vulcans were folded into the initial formation of Starfleet. We don't know for sure how many of them there were, but we can estimate. On the lowest guess, if we just count the ships seen during ENT, and take it that these represent the exact same size of the fleets at the end of 2160, then it's about 10 ships per fleet, adding to about 30 to 50 to start Starfleet with. On the higher end, we have the evidence of the USS Franklin NX-326, known to be a pre-Federation Earth starship, folded into Starfleet in 2161. And that would seem to imply over 300 starships at the foundation of Starfleet.<br />
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That higher estimate would seem to suggest that maybe early Starfleet might have had way too many ships for its initial needs, presumably with many repurposed warships left over from the Earth-Romulus War, and so they wouldn't have felt in a rush to build up their shipyards further for a long while. With hardly any colonies, and all fairly close together, the early Federation wouldn't have needed to push most of its Starfleet too hard, most of the time. We know at least the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Daedalus_class" target="_blank">Daedalus class</a> explorers kept going for a good 35 years, so Starfleet could have put off increasing starship production until around 2200. And that's why the S-curve makes sense. It just seems to have curved up later in history than Starfleet Museum guessed. After 2245, Starfleet Museum's NCCs seem mostly fine again, as the curve settles down.<br />
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Related to this, I'd also be willing to take a guess at when the Walker and Crossfield classes might have launched, based on my S-curve, and on the warp limit graphs from my last post. If we assume USS Shenzhou, USS Glenn, and USS Discovery all have low NCCs for their classes (and there's no evidence to say they must), then USS Crossfield (approx. NCC-1000ish) would fit well around the mid-2230s, perhaps as early as the late 2220s, making the class a decade or more older than the Constitution class. The warp limits from the previous post would even support a much earlier launch of the Crossfield class, sometime around 2220, but today's graphs and the launch of the Kelvin suggest that would be too early. (This also hints to me that perhaps there should be a stepped or S-curved line for the warp limits graph too.) I would be comfortable saying the Crossfield class (and thus also USS Discovery, most likely) could have launched between 2230 and 2235.<br />
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If the USS Walker (approx. NCC-1200ish) can't be placed on the timeline by its low top warp speed (as discussed last time), then registry number is our only big (if vague) clue for it. We've seen it on screen as far back as 2239, and you can see that's already close to my S-curve. If 1200 comes after 1000, chronologically, then I would guess the Walker class probably launched around 2235, with the USS Shenzhou launching within a few years of that. This would imply that Starfleet grows by 700 ships in the decade from 2225 to 2235, and then grows by a slower 500 new ships in the decade from 2235 to 2245. That makes sense, for an S-curving trend on its way down.<br />
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(As a digression, I was wondering if those growth rates are realistic or not. <a href="https://www.marineinsight.com/naval-architecture/top-10-shipbuilding-companies-in-the-world-in-2012/" target="_blank">Apparently</a>, modern day Earth's production of new ocean-going vessels is in the thousands to tens of thousands of new vessels per year. And starships are perhaps bigger and more complex to build, but spread it over more than just one planet's factories, and suddenly a thousand in a decade actually seems pretty slow, though this isn't counting civilian starship construction. As more planets join the UFP, the rate can increase even more, perhaps helping to explain the S-curve further.)<br />
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But now I have to mess everything up by reminding you of thing 2: NCCs often make no sense. There are plenty of registry numbers that appear to be illogical and badly out of chronological order, and that's because they are. Writers make shit up, artists make shit up, and even people outside of the official production of any series or movie sometimes have enough influence to get involved, and they make shit up too. But the good news is, after studying this for a while, it's not as bad as I thought. I re-drew my graph for each class, separately, one at a time. And that's slow and boring and I won't waste your time with all of it here. The bottom line is, the outliers are relatively rare for most classes, and can mostly be ignored. And for most of the 24th century outliers, there's often already conflicting information about their registry numbers from other sources. I've stuck with the strictest onscreen Alpha canon to make these graphs, but I'm very happy to retcon silly mistakes away.<br />
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The only huge exception is the Constitution class. It's full of anomalous registry numbers:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zE7Iove_AFR4_9lKhg69AYJ6ZNtK3VB83OPc4RTM-D8YUWeb7L1cwZ9iRz7T80UsELg8OpUw-gbENjcvfTj-m0DGchrPyNao8E392vVAv1JlA_lPu0jvmidN_8Y6XWxUayDQVG2jvTY/s1600/NCC+years+Connie.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="1600" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8zE7Iove_AFR4_9lKhg69AYJ6ZNtK3VB83OPc4RTM-D8YUWeb7L1cwZ9iRz7T80UsELg8OpUw-gbENjcvfTj-m0DGchrPyNao8E392vVAv1JlA_lPu0jvmidN_8Y6XWxUayDQVG2jvTY/s640/NCC+years+Connie.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to embiggen)<br />
Green: Known launch dates of Constitution class vessels.<br />
Red: Known service periods of Constitution class vessels (ignoring time travel).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
You'll note that easily a third of the Connies have registry numbers lower than NCC-1700, which is widely agreed to be the USS Constitution, even though that's never strictly confirmed on screen. This is probably the single biggest, hardest to ignore piece of evidence that NCC numbers are not strictly and simply chronological, in order of launch/commissioning.<br />
<br />
There are two broad conclusions to choose between here: Either NCC is not useful for estimating chronology (and we throw all the work above out the window), or it is useful for that (and we just have to rationalise the Constitution class being full of weird anomalies). I favour the latter. Consider the bigger graph of all known registry numbers with their first appearances:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV9kA9VrV5HGF-uB3qSYsR3-KgKG87bR4GT7OwxxYrSbt0CmPFozI3XbumPobII30kLIf3T8a5p3s9FeTZ_CPV8vgCS0u2NGPqodm5i6y434Bm5aH_EULbFXvLIwrtzbTV-qZXDFFLZtg/s1600/NCC+per+year.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhV9kA9VrV5HGF-uB3qSYsR3-KgKG87bR4GT7OwxxYrSbt0CmPFozI3XbumPobII30kLIf3T8a5p3s9FeTZ_CPV8vgCS0u2NGPqodm5i6y434Bm5aH_EULbFXvLIwrtzbTV-qZXDFFLZtg/s640/NCC+per+year.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to embiggen)<br />
Graph of earliest known appearances of Starfleet registry numbers (2160 to 2380)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Just adding another 80 years, the known years of the 24th century, seriously changes the graph, with another big S-curve apparent, jumping the Starfleet registry up by seventy thousand ships in about 50 years (averaging around only 1400 new ships per year, which, as discussed above, is actually still pretty low by modern Earth shipbuilding standards). It's a big jump, but an entirely believable one. And the blue diamonds (first appearance of any sort) seem to scatter all over the place, but the red squares and green triangles still paint a nice, clear pattern: When new ships and new classes are launched, their very first appearance, then NCC number is a good predictor of what chronological order they came in. For that reason, I'm inclined to excuse away the contradicting blue diamond anomalies.<br />
<br />
So how do we deal with the Constitution class? We could just ignore it. Maybe (in universe) Starfleet went crazy for a couple decades. Maybe (real world) it's a just real-world production-side mess that spoils an otherwise neat, logical pattern. Maybe (in universe) they're re-uses of older ship's registries, in the same way that the Enterprises shared NCC-1701, with -A, -B, -C, -D, and bloody -E tacked on; maybe these are Constitutions named and numbered after earlier vessels, but they're just not showing us the -A or -B on the end, for whatever reason (and after the Federation-Klingon War, there would certainly be plenty of lost vessels to commemorate). Maybe (real world) TOS production values were shit, and everyone just assumed all "starships" were Connies, but retroactively a lot of those should be re-interpreted as vessels of other, older classes.<br />
<br />
Or maybe any combination of the above. I'm not sure, and there's no good reason to pick one over the other. But I do tend to favour just ignoring the Constitution anomalies. Pretty graphs are better.<br />
<br />
The last thing I'd point out is how the 24th century S-curve flattens out towards the end of the century. The pattern this seems to suggest is that roughly every mid-century (real-world: at the time that each new series is set), Starfleet goes on a big shipbuilding spree, bumping its numbers up by roughly one order of magnitude. If that happens again in the mid-25th century, and the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Untitled_Star_Trek_series" target="_blank">new Picard series</a> is expected to be set in about 2400, then that next big surge shouldn't have been completed yet, and might not really have even begun yet. So, given these assumptions, I'd consider it a mistake if ships in the new Picard series have registries greater than -100000. The -80000 to -90000 range will probably be sufficiently realistic. Of course, it'd be fascinating if there are good reasons to justify higher numbers than that. Perhaps a concerted effort to rebuild and get exploring again, following the Dominion War. Perhaps introducing advanced new technology (via Voyager and other sources) makes the old fleet suddenly very outdated and in need of a large number of replacements (which new construction techniques can spit out way faster than before).<br />
<br />
I guess we'll have to wait a couple of years and see.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-64152355679238181522018-12-25T18:19:00.000+02:002019-03-09T08:15:28.571+02:00Progression of Warp Drive limits in Canon vs. Starfleet Museum<a href="http://starfleet-museum.org/" target="_blank">Starfleet Museum</a> is a wonderful creation, and I make great use of it as a source of ideas and images for roleplaying games. Masao Okazaki and company have put a lot of effort into it for years, and I'm glad they did. But they were among the first to acknowledge that <i>Star Trek: Enterprise</i> immediately rendered most of their work moot, as the two contradicted each other heavily. For today, I'd like to restrict myself to looking only at how they differed in terms of maximum warp speeds achieved at various times, by different classes of vessel. I think this will be of future use to me for roleplaying purposes, and I wish I'd done this a year ago, when I was setting up my current campaign. But by luck, I think I've accidentally got things right anyway. I think it may also be useful for making a bit more sense of <i>Star Trek: Discovery</i>'s very interesting but sparsely detailed (in the first season) new starship classes.<br />
<br />
But mainly, I wanted to kill time making graphs, and these warp speed graphs proved to be much more enlightening and entertaining to me than the ones I've been using to try to make sense of Starfleet's registry number system. I guess that'll be a <a href="https://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.com/2018/12/progression-of-ncc-registry-numbers-in.html" target="_blank">future post</a>.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiNcG_ulFP59EKlcKXE1Z524ChP4Zyp-EqeDYOxuafcw2k1xmS-UNSTKQ1R6uMBV8HKlLzNSAjNtR9l6bI1DLpjHDnFffGSO6JgBu9R90UuasBk26co_Wehztu82LxXIugu2jgLUkLujM/s1600/Warp+per+year+200.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="694" data-original-width="1600" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiNcG_ulFP59EKlcKXE1Z524ChP4Zyp-EqeDYOxuafcw2k1xmS-UNSTKQ1R6uMBV8HKlLzNSAjNtR9l6bI1DLpjHDnFffGSO6JgBu9R90UuasBk26co_Wehztu82LxXIugu2jgLUkLujM/s640/Warp+per+year+200.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to embiggen)<br />
Graph of maximum speeds of starship classes vs. earliest known year for that starship class (2060 to 2260)<br />
(warp speeds in old TOS scale)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It seems to me that Starfleet Museum made one silly mistake when making up the warp speeds for their starships, and it should have been an avoidable mistake (though hindsight helps a lot in this case). In the graph above, it's very clear that Okazaki used an exponential progression in warp maxima, and I'm pretty sure it must have been set between warp 1 in 2063 (the Pheonix) and warp 9ish in 2245 (Constitution class). The orange dots fit that curve very neatly, even with the sudden denser packing in the late 2150s (the Earth-Romulus War).<br />
<br />
And the known canon Earth starships before 2145 seem to start off following a pretty similar line. But from 2145, the dark blue line veers up sharply, through the early <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/NX_Project" target="_blank">NX prototypes</a>, the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Freedom_class_(22nd_century)" target="_blank">Freedom class</a>, the actual <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/NX_class" target="_blank">NX class</a> itself, and Beta canon's <a href="http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Columbia_class" target="_blank">Columbia/NX-refit class</a> (just to show that a warp 6 example fits the same pattern) These all make a surprisingly straight line right up to the warp 7 <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Daedalus_class" target="_blank">Daedalus class</a> of 2161, the first UFP starship. It's so neat that I have to assume it was mostly intentional, with the ENT writers having at least some sort of plan about this in mind, and which the writers of the 13th movie could easily slot their own addition into.<br />
<br />
But why is it so different from the Starfleet Museum gentle exponential curve, and why does it make sense? Well, look at the pale blue line, the Vulcan ships. ENT made it clear that the Vulcans were well ahead of the Humans, and had been for centuries. But they didn't invent that; TOS's writers established this technological headstart decades earlier. Okazaki couldn't have guessed that ENT's writers would pick warp 5 and warp 7 as the exact figures for Earth and Vulcan maxima in 2151, but he probably shouldn't have assumed Human engineers would be at the cutting edge of starship design once the Federation was formed. Andorian, Tellarite and Vulcan engineers all had to have had roughly a quarter of the whole pool of Federation astronautics skill, and it's long been established that Vulcans started off with greater than just a quarter share.<br />
<br />
We also know that Vulcan progression was described by humans in ENT as "slow", since they'd been developing warp drive since some vague time in the 19th century (<a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Vulcan_history#Return_to_space" target="_blank">probably</a>) and compared with Human progress in the 2140s, that Vulcan development rate must have looked painfully slow. But considering the Human rate before the 2140s didn't look much faster, and the sudden Human jump was definitely helped by Vulcan and other species' assistance, it's probably fair to say that Archer and co. were being unrealistic and damn ungrateful. Earth, left solely to its own devices, probably wouldn't have reached warp 7 any faster than Vulcan did.<br />
<br />
Of course, Vulcans do seem to have stagnated a little, with no recorded improvement in their top warp speed in the couple of decades preceding the events of ENT. I'm sure it's fair to say that all parties, including the Vulcans, gained a lot from the combined efforts of the post-2161 UFP engineering pool, sharing knowledge and different specialisations in the way that a monoculture inherently can't. Technological acceleration due to the founding of the Federation seems to have been inevitable. If that's not all intentionally in keeping with Star Trek's inclusive, mutually supportive ideals, then it's a great coincidence to uncover. Once everyone starts working together for the common good, things get great fast.<br />
<br />
So, Starfleet Museum forgot to account for Andorian, Tellarite, and especially Vulcan contributions to Earth's starship designs, and that's why the gentle orange curve makes less sense than the sharp blue jags that ENT gave us. But what next, what about the time from TOS to VOY?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxdPYNvrPQVPETuN3A0FC_81LqeecGOfbq6XTCWR_YHZwByJBeaqfgVtCCfqELyV0uYxz_C45OtHpao8w0IjKL_AaQxiA-JzkgjgZlvFSb8bJGZm1d02gg5HKjKTwaPO5BXSK83E4KeZU/s1600/Warp+per+year.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="1600" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxdPYNvrPQVPETuN3A0FC_81LqeecGOfbq6XTCWR_YHZwByJBeaqfgVtCCfqELyV0uYxz_C45OtHpao8w0IjKL_AaQxiA-JzkgjgZlvFSb8bJGZm1d02gg5HKjKTwaPO5BXSK83E4KeZU/s640/Warp+per+year.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(click to embiggen)<br />
Graph of maximum speeds of starship classes vs. earliest known year for that starship class (2060 to 2380)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The same graph, extended 120 years further, shows the massive warp speed increases from TNG onwards. The orange curve for Starfleet Museum is roughly headed that way, though it's apparent that MS Excel and Okazaki disagree on the just how steep the curve should be at the right end.<br />
<br />
Canon information about starship performance between TOS and TNG gets sparse, as the TOS movies were generally pretty vague about technical details. There's a whole lost century to fill in there. The same is true between 2160 and 2240, by the way, if you exclude all the orange dots. These are the two big empty periods in Star Trek history generally, and not just for starship stats.<br />
<br />
It looks like warp 9 on the new TNG scale (a little more than double warp 9 on the old TOS scale, which would be nearly warp 11.5, not warp 18) should have been achieved around the mid-2300s, but I don't think there's any clear evidence for exactly when this would have happened. To give at least a rough sense of how things might have changed over time, I connected the dark red line between only known canon classes with exact first launch dates, and which are known to have been the fastest of their time. That doesn't give a lot of data points to connect, but at least it looks roughly like a neat curve of some sort.<br />
<br />
Are the last two Starfleet Museum classes (the Furious and Spectre classes) feasibly positioned on this graph? Yeah, sure. I don't have clear data to argue with them, as I do with the earlier ENT stuff. It looks to me like Okazaki has in that case simply drawn a straight line between the Constitution and Galaxy classes, and I can't reasonably call that a mistake. My dark red curve is just as much a guess.<br />
<br />
One other possibility, which makes reasonable sense, but still doesn't have much supporting data, is that we do know that warp power requirements jump up fiercely at each higher warp factor (and that's why the warp factor numbers are set at those specific integers), and this could be reflected in warp drive development timelines too. Perhaps it's easy to get from a warp 7 design to a warp 7.1 design and a 7.2 design and a 7.3 design, and then 7.5 is trickier, and 7.8 is a pain, and 8 is a huge extra effort, but then the first 8.1 design is (comparatively) piss easy again, etc. With recurring challenges like that, I'd expect to see a stepped graph, mirroring the steps of the warp power graph. This could explain the slow progress of pre-Federation Vulcan warp development. It would also imply that the neat straight line of Human warp drives between factors 2 and 7 was definitely artificially boosted.<br />
<br />
I'll also note the only two DISCO designs with known (although not mentioned on screen yet) warp maxima. The little green triangle below and left of the Constitution class square represents the earliest known date for the warp 6 <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Walker_class" target="_blank">Walker class</a> (specifically, the USS Shenzhou), and the green triangle just to the right of that is the warp 8 <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Crossfield_class" target="_blank">Crossfield class</a> (specifically, the USS Glenn and USS Discovery).<br />
<br />
It's been pretty common in all Trek series for the main hero ship to be the fastest in the fleet (at least at first), with most other ships running a fair bit slower. So it doesn't seem unreasonable that the Walker class is below where the fastest Vulcan ships were a century earlier; it's just not designed for missions that require maximum possible warp speed, even when it was brand new. And so it can't easily fit in just about anywhere on my graph. I have thoughts about its registry number and what that implies about when it was built, but that's another post.<br />
<br />
The Crossfield class is more complicated in a few messy ways, but warp 8 is basically about right for a fastest ship preceding the Constitution. The very low registry number (lower even than the Shenzhou's registry) of the two known Crossfields has thrown a lot of people off, and it does complicate trying to work out how all these things fit together. I'm sure the show will provide more evidence about this eventually, but for now, my personal headcanon is this:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The initial preview trailers for DISCO showed an earlier version of the Crossfield class, with a solid saucer section, much shorter nacelles, and a few other differences. We know, in the real world, that the redesign to the Discovery that's actually seen in the series is a simple artistic style change, plus a way to show some moving parts for the magic mushroom drive that are distinct from the traditional warp drive components. But, in universe, I reckon for now that the earlier design represents what the actual Crossfield class was originally built as (probably in the 2230s, perhaps before the Walker class was launched). Only the two experimental magic mushroom drive ships (Glenn and Discovery) were refitted to the 2256 design, with elongated nacelles and a rebuilt, divided-up, rotating saucer section, cut from the natural hull divisions of the original design. The reason USS Discovery is described as "new" in 2256 is because of the major rebuild.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>So I would guess that the USS Crossfield probably didn't originally launch with a maximum warp of 8, it was probably closer to warp 7.5ish, and it may never have been upgraded to match the Glenn refit that gave Discovery its top warp 8.</i></div>
<br />
Of course, a lot of this is also dependent on finding a logical system underneath the mess of NCC numbers, which I said I'd leave til another day. But just looking at the warp factor, I think we can take it as pretty damn certain that USS Discovery probably isn't totally brand new as late as 2256.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-71029710806476482182018-10-11T20:01:00.000+02:002018-10-11T20:12:38.485+02:00Rough calculations: Should Virgin have stuck with SpaceShipOne?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYIybItlmFPkDcVR8aSyJi41grZPoosmiNvfzTT837bU9WBFfOkvIlumebiAw8_U8za4aXR9q2EQfxr8aBOaBaO98nqPjRC69KpSDqGLf9dpsPnedGqIbpEGShUBunoJQSLJlqOiT5NFg/s1600/Plan-View-Comparison-WHITE-772249.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1260" data-original-width="1437" height="561" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYIybItlmFPkDcVR8aSyJi41grZPoosmiNvfzTT837bU9WBFfOkvIlumebiAw8_U8za4aXR9q2EQfxr8aBOaBaO98nqPjRC69KpSDqGLf9dpsPnedGqIbpEGShUBunoJQSLJlqOiT5NFg/s640/Plan-View-Comparison-WHITE-772249.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
I found the design of SpaceShipOne wonderfully clever, far more so than its name. And when it successfully won the X-Prize, and Virgin Galactic and the Spaceship Company were formed and announced they'd expand it into a bigger vehicle (SpaceShipTwo) for commercial use, I took it for granted that the bigger SpaceShipTwo would be a worthwhile investment for them. And it may still be eventually, despite over a decade of delays, including the terrible, fatal crash of its first vehicle, VSS Enterprise.<br />
<br />
But I got thinking. What if they'd not rushed to develop a whole new vehicle? What if they'd just frozen the design of SpaceShipOne at the end of 2004, and built a handful of them to launch paying customers?<br />
<br />
I'm sure someone at Scaled Composites, Virgin, or the Spaceship Company has already considered this in much more detail than I'm able to, and hindsight is pretty 20/20ish, but I'm curious. So, here are some rough, rough, back-of-envelope estimates, not correcting for inflation. I'm aiming to keep as many variables the same, just to compare apples and apples, though that may not be perfectly realistic. If anyone knows better, then say. <br />
<br />
<u>Scenario 1: Switching to development of SpaceShipTwo (what's actually happened)</u><br />
<br />
Development costs: $400 million (an out of date figure from 7 years ago; they're likely over half a billion by now; this seems to include 3 vehicles, including the lost one)<br />
Number of paid-up passengers: 575 (as of 5 years ago)<br />
Cost per ticket: $200 000 (original, to compare with Scenario 2) or $250 000 (as of 5 years ago)<br />
<br />
So, income from all paid-up tickets: $115 000 000 or $143 750 000<br />
<br />
At best, this seems to leave a shortfall of over $256 million from the first paid-up passengers. At the older ticket price, it would take around 2 000 passengers for SpaceShipTwo to cover the published $400 million development cost, or 1 600 passengers at the newer ticket price.<br />
<br />
How long would this take?<br />
<br />
Passengers per flight: 6 (as designed)<br />
Flight rate: 1 per month (a wild guess, just for a simple number)<br />
Operations starting: 2020 (roughly what Virgin have suggested)<br />
<br />
So, minimum number of flights needed to break even: 334 or 267<br />
Time to make those flights: 27 years, 10 months, or 22 years, 3 months<br />
First year of fully profitable operations: 2048 or 2042<br />
<br />
That seems crazy, even at the higher ticket price, and so I'm sure I must have something wrong. The alternative is that the people building this thing are crazy.<br />
<br />
<u>Scenario 2: Sticking with SpaceShipOne (a what-if)</u><br />
<br />
Development costs: $25 million, for the single test vehicle. Let's assume they still retired that to a museum, and built three new ones, each for exactly the same amount (so, $75 million for the new ones). In reality, there'd be much less development cost after the first, but probably other costs related to crew training, infrastructure development, and ongoing maintenance. Something unexpected might have come up, but by definition, I can't know about that.<br />
<br />
Point is, add the sunk cost of the original, plus the three new ones, and call it $100 million total.<br />
<br />
Number of paid-up passengers: 575 (assumes the same as scenario 1)<br />
Cost per ticket: $200 000 (assumes the same as Scenario 1's original)<br />
<br />
So, income from all paid-up tickets: $115 000 000 (still)<br />
<br />
That seems to give a $15 million profit, and suggests SpaceShipOne would start turning a profit after its 500th passenger.<br />
<br />
How long would this take?<br />
<br />
Passengers per flight: 2 (as designed)<br />
Flight rate: 1 per month (same wild guess, just for a simple number)<br />
Operations starting: 2008 (most commercial airliners take about a year between first test flight and first commercial flight; applying the Scott factor, I've increased that to 4 years for commercial SpaceShipOne operations.)<br />
<br />
So, minimum number of flights needed to break even: 250<br />
Time to make those flights: 20 years, 10 months<br />
First year of fully profitable operations: 2029ish<br />
<br />
I'm also not sure if that's right. Do most things take 20 years to become profitable? Perhaps flying once a week would be financially preferable, dropping that time to only 5 years or so. Building more vehicles (of either design) would help with that, but also raises costs. Pushing a smaller number of vehicles to launch more often would be cheaper, but raises the risks of disastrous maintenance failures.<br />
<br />
The expanded seating of SpaceShipTwo speeds up its catch-up to SpaceShipOne's lost potential a bit, but I think no matter how I slice it, they've already used up that advantage. If SpaceShipOne had been rushed into service faster that my guess of 4 years after 2004, and if it had managed to fly at a faster rate than once a month, it might already have paid itself off. Meanwhile, in the real world, SpaceShipTwo hasn't even yet earned that "space" part of its name, and is definitely still years from making any money.<br />
<br />
So, I'm not at all certain, but I do get the impression that it might have been smarter to start mass-producing the design they already knew worked well enough.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-22274889998226277152018-04-22T22:30:00.000+02:002018-04-22T22:30:03.754+02:00What Is It Good For? GMing a Star Trek war campaign<div dir="ltr">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've been trying to remember every single roleplaying game I've been involved in that featured actual, literal war. It hasn't come up that often.</span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's been <i>Star Wars</i>. That's maybe a bit obvious. Although even then, we've still played a fair bit in Old Republic-era campaigns, focused on (comparatively) peaceful adventuring between war periods.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Technically, all <i>Warhammer Fantasy</i> and <i>40K</i> campaigns must occur during ongoing warfare, because that's how those settings are designed. But I can only name one Fantasy scenario we've yet played where people being at war (off stage, in their character backgrounds) was even mentioned. In 40K, it's debatable what legally, technically counts as actual warfare vs. what counts as private spats between rogue traders. But we did have one session focused on an entire planetwide war against orks.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Stargate</i> also technically mainly occurs during the relatively vague and mostly low-intensity human/Goa'uld war, but I think we mostly ignored that in favour of exploration missions.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I wrote and ran a <i>Fallout</i> prequel adventure, set right at the start of World War III, though the focus of that was on what follows within the rural USA. The opposing side in the war are never seen at all.</span></li>
</ul>
<div dir="ltr">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There was a brief anti-Zhentarim uprising we helped in a <i>Dungeons & Dragons</i> campaign, and we've started the war-driven <i>Silver Key</i> adventure a couple times without finishing it. Technically the Blood War is all-pervasive in <i>Planescape</i>, but we only ever had one subplot directly tied to it.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">And of course, I was the first and probably only GM ever to actually try to run Johnny Nexus's satirical WWI trench warfare scenario, <a href="http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue5/bigpush1.html" target="_blank">The Big Push</a>.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That's 9 or so minor examples in my 21 years of roleplaying. My point is that while war has occasionally been mentioned in my roleplaying experience, it's seldom been the main focus, the central plot-driver. It's usually peripheral, a background context thing. It seldom dominates whole campaigns.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So it's perhaps surprising that the most clearly war-oriented campaigns I've ever run have been set in Star Trek.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh06pFnGdqlcyUtRn8yriIRidu-NBuBf5zGh4xi2Yg9aenMU9ae_6mMbRU9HFBgNiTQKoLfUsP20dM9kTjGw69nIyfyvfvE5snXoI2q-dK4iSbCrzfh5n36n-OS9XScI7fGzEb63eS97zU/s1600/deathtoll.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1600" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh06pFnGdqlcyUtRn8yriIRidu-NBuBf5zGh4xi2Yg9aenMU9ae_6mMbRU9HFBgNiTQKoLfUsP20dM9kTjGw69nIyfyvfvE5snXoI2q-dK4iSbCrzfh5n36n-OS9XScI7fGzEb63eS97zU/s640/deathtoll.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small selection from the close to a billion (with a B) killed in the Dominion War. (Click to embiggen.)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The first time was sort of accidental, or at least not what I'd intially planned. It was the second season that followed my early science ship campaign's first, purely sciencey season. For reasons I can't fully remember, I decided to turn it into a Federation/Cardassian War campaign. Perhaps I thought that context would add drama. Perhaps I was low on sciencey ideas. Perhaps I just realised that we were technically playing during that war and felt compelled to insert any canon reference I could link my campaign to at all. But a dinky little science ship doesn't belong in a war zone, and Star Trek in general doesn't belong there. There just wasn't much my players could believably be expected to achieve. And I'm pretty sure that whole game subsequently fell apart because it wasn't what the players wanted, or had learned to enjoy in season 1.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That's not to say there weren't dramatic moments of creative shock. I thought I had my players beaten for certain, when their maguffin objective was on a planet the Cardassians were guarding with an entire heavily armed moon. It was the Andorian chief engineer who suggested grabbing the largest possible asteroid with a tractor beam, accelerating it over the longest possible distance, in a straight line to intercept the moon. I couldn't justify anything less than cracking the moon to pieces, sending its inhabitant-crew rushing to evacuate. A plain warship crew likely couldn't have planned that, let alone executed it. But their Tellarite science officer was an orbital mechanics specialist, he was guaranteed to hit. And the chief engineer could make it a reality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But that was an exception. Most of the rest of the campaign was dull, repetitive fetch quests and minor skirmishes. There was far less room for real excitement and discovery than there had been with the science missions. And the hard grip of canon meant there was little room for diplomacy with the Cardassians, which ought to be another Trek staple. But perhaps the problem there was that I was still an inexperienced GM. Maybe I had run out of ideas in general for the time being.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Skip ahead 7 or 8 years, when I've played in and run all sorts of different things, including the <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2018/03/gming-maquis-roleplaying-campaign.html" target="_blank">Maquis campaign I wrote about</a> before. The inflexible grip of canon now wanted to push us into an even worse war campaign, the Dominion War. A lot more had already been written about this, with unofficial supplements to the Last Unicorn rules, and quite a lot of official content in the Decipher rules, relevant to the Dominion, if not explicitly their war with the Federation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But hells, it's all dull, especially for any characters who are not built, rules-wise or story-wise, for combat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's plenty dull for the GM too. I should specify that I'm not much of a GM for hack and slash dungeon crawls either. I started with D&D and played in more than a few hack and slash games. But they tend to bore me. I get that others might enjoy it more, but it's not for me. So already that's one major aspect of war campaigns I object to. But it's not the only part, even if you like tactical combat games.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A more fundamental reason to dislike war campaigns is what separates roleplaying games from miniatures games and board games: Playing a role, not merely pushing pawns about, watching them hit each other. D&D may have been born out of simple wargaming in the '70s, but the reason the hobby has evolved into its own thing since then is that roleplayers do simply want more. More complexity, more variety, more options, more depth. A pure combat campaign reverses that. If the game only offers violence, with no motive other than violence for its own sake, and no hope of tricking or debating or convincing opponents out of their opposition, then the game just is less in every way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It's not just a disadvantage to players either. It's a big strain on the GM, trying to think up creative new ways to say "go there, kill those people," week after week. My initial thinkng had been that a special operations setup might provide inherently more interesting missions, but in fact they still mostly just amount to "go, kill". Even "fetch/steal/rescue" or "investigate/spy" inevitably just reduces down to "kill", when there's no option of a peaceful solution to the obstacles the players face. The reason for going there becomes trivial when most of every session <i><b>has </b><b>to be </b></i>resolving unavoidable combat. War is pretty stupid.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There's also the philosophical concern, central to Star Trek, that violence is a rubbish way to solve problems, at best something to leave til a last resort. Typically, when people fight in Star Trek, it's to set up a lesson about why fighting is bad. If you're in a whole war, and next session you're definitely going to be fighting again, it's hard to make that moral lesson seem honest and meaningful. Just repeatedly learning, over and over, that war is hell, without being able to stop it, turns what's supposed to be a fun, friendly game into something far too similar to a collection of First World War survivors' poetry. I don't think most GMs or players are technically able to do justice to something that serious. And quite a few won't be emotionally mature enough either, which increases the odds that the game will just miss the point and ask players to celebrate war, rather than condemning it. If that's what you want, you should probably watch waaaaay more Star Trek.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv4p1CDOQPkIdbn2HWqokux9n6FgXDEL2z79Yjn0hZyiFVLBiBPITMZoyXEYKdI3dxB2kPKuE_KIrpUNpvh5lop6WcbvIRABJJolEBdkVESwteNrGedKAkbDc0_FEkyF1HbhBL-8jISLg/s1600/Sisko%252C+What+You+Leave+Behind.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1073" data-original-width="1435" height="478" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv4p1CDOQPkIdbn2HWqokux9n6FgXDEL2z79Yjn0hZyiFVLBiBPITMZoyXEYKdI3dxB2kPKuE_KIrpUNpvh5lop6WcbvIRABJJolEBdkVESwteNrGedKAkbDc0_FEkyF1HbhBL-8jISLg/s640/Sisko%252C+What+You+Leave+Behind.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And take extra careful note of what this short but crucial scene from "What You Leave Behind" signifies about the entire preceding Dominion War story arc, and war in general.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">"But DS9 did it!", I hear you say. "They did a great job of it!", I hear you add. "Maybe you're just a shit GM!", I hear you once more. Well, fuck you, you're shit too. But yeah, I probably was shit at it, especially in my earlier campaigns. "Earlier" is the key word in there; I've made all the big mistakes that can be made in my over 17 years of playing and running specifically Star Trek roleplaying games. Feel free to learn from my extensive collection of fuckups. And the relevant one here is failing to notice that DS9 didn't actually make its Dominion War arc about combat. They had really good writers, who understood what a terribly boring series that would make, far better than I did as a younger GM. Most of their War arc was actually spent looking at the people involved: The political actors pushing the war; The cultural implications for the Starfleet officers asked to do something antithetical to what they originally signed up for; The cultural contrasts with the Klingon, Dominion and other militaries that the Starfleet people have to uncomfortably interact with; the interaction between Starfleet people and the relatively powerless civilians around them; And of course the normal random personal affairs that happen in anyone's life, thrown into contrast against the abnormality of the war. They wrote about virtually everything except for the fighting, most of the time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(Notice also, for comparison, that the more right-wing and blatantly militarist <i>Stargate</i> franchise avoided leaning on war stories most of the time too. Even though the plot of <i>SG-1</i>'s pilot episode was, "Goa'uld declare war on Earth, US military decides to fight this war without letting anyone else know or try smarter ways to resolve it", the majority of subsequent episodes were actually completely unrelated to that war, and were instead just general science fiction stories.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(I might even point to <i>Blackadder Goes Forth</i> as a competent example of how to tell a war story with hardly any actual fighting in it.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My main point there is that these are not light, easy stories to tell. It's easy to tell them badly, in ways that aren't sensitive to the reality of people getting killed. And it's easy for them to get repetitive and dull, in ways that exploration and science stories won't.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So I'm not saying it's impossible to run a decent Star Trek roleplaying war campaign. I'm just saying you're almost certainly not qualified to, so don't get cocky and rush into it. But if you really must, here is a list of alternatives to "go there, kill them" stories, which might help you steer away from the most dull, repetitive stuff:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Aid delivery and relief services for wartorn planets, including interacting with local victims about their losses.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Similarly, figuring out how to cope with refugees, both as large-scale logistics, and as individual-scale personal interaction. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Strategic planning, behind the lines, including only getting to receive (delayed, incomplete, or unreliable) remote reports of what's happened, without participating directly.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Getting to know the crew of a starship on a personal level (possibly in much greater depth than a TV production in the '90s could normally accommodate, using only one-off extras and guest stars), only to have to cope with their subsequent loss.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Being responsible, for an extended period, for the well-being of prisoners of war. (My great-grandfather ran a POW prison in Scotland, so I have a few uncommon insights into what this might entail.)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Conducting the specifics of negotiating, and then putting into practice, a peace treaty, including treaty requirements that might be uncomfortable for the player characters. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Post-war resettlement, reconstruction, and emotional readjustment.</span></li>
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Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-33476673009156070742018-03-24T18:17:00.002+02:002018-03-24T18:44:56.203+02:00GMing a Maquis roleplaying campaign<div dir="ltr">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1CNNDEuf7Z9GHYF8H7HpF4XpTZBa_z2AgcE9dG6ARhjeqlFPNBGRkwkn-X7RGhh9LeuEXSqWk3g7NLNE-etrq3nTMQwk1NYHT5k40y9bbpwRN-aa8d2uaxQL0HbxnvV2YWO2_RtTujXU/s1600/1024_Maquis.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="984" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1CNNDEuf7Z9GHYF8H7HpF4XpTZBa_z2AgcE9dG6ARhjeqlFPNBGRkwkn-X7RGhh9LeuEXSqWk3g7NLNE-etrq3nTMQwk1NYHT5k40y9bbpwRN-aa8d2uaxQL0HbxnvV2YWO2_RtTujXU/s200/1024_Maquis.jpg" width="191" /></a></span>A few years ago, I ran a Star Trek roleplaying campaign centered on a Maquis ship taking part in the anti-Cardassian uprising of the early 2370s. The game had its ups and downs, and I think there are lessons to learn from it, if you're also planning to run a Maquis game, or a Starfleet/Cardassian campaign with a major Maquis presence, but also some general lessons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I must warn in advance, this is mostly a long ramble about my personal GMing experiences and observations. I don't pretend that what I'm suggesting is the absolute only and best way to run such a campaign.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Lesson 1</b>: Are you really sure you want to run a Maquis campaign? They're not really very Star Trek, in most respects; it's not at all a given that they're the good guys, even if the Cardassians were mean to them first. Voyager glosses over this, most of the time, so that we don't find half their main cast too unlikeable, but DS9 felt more free to paint the Maquis as morally dubious. So what exactly do you have in mind for your Maquis? Do your players have the same in mind, or something much different? And does the stuff seen in the series about the Maquis really match what you were looking to do? How will you meld all of these different perspectives into something coherent and enjoyable? It helps to give yourself a clear focus of the tone, genre, and style of play you want to focus on. One of my big mistakes was letting my campaign wobble around fairly out of control for most of its dozen episodes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I had a pretty vague sense of what I wanted, to begin with. I had come up with a pretty desperate impending invasion scenario, inspired by <i>Star Wars: Dark Times</i>, a real no win scenario. But I'm not generally interested in Star Wars, and somehow I got it in my head that the Maquis of Star Trek are analogous to the Rebel Alliance of Star Wars (bonus lesson: they're really not very similar). So I switched settings. And then I never ran that scenario.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">An opportunity arose to start a new campaign for a brand new group, and that happened to be the campaign I had on my mind at the time. But it needed a setup and it needed some exploration of the characters and the space they were supposed to care about, and an expansion into a wider campaign landscape (spacescape?), and I may have gone a little nuts on showing my players everything remotely related to the canon Maquis. We had a lot of episodes far away from their home planet. This meant there were a lot of specifics we didn't get to cover, which I'll detail below. But one specific thing we lost was a good place to insert my original no-win adventure idea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And that may have been acceptable, or not, but the point is that I had a very vague campaign plan from the start. We didn't focus on what the player characters thought they were protecting, nor on why the Cardassians wanted it, nor much on how the Maquis organisation worked. It turned into a lot of rushing from episode to episode, seldom linked, running errands for strangers at random. It lacked a unifying theme, because I as GM didn't have one in mind. And so it never built up into much of anything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Episodic Star Trek works - it's the original form of the show - but I don't think it works as well for the Maquis. They deserve something more serialised and deeply thought through, because their existence is so brief, specialised, and narrowly focused. I know I don't like planning out a whole campaign ahead of time, when it feels like it might all be thrown out anyway, but this is one story worth digging deep into the preparation for.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Lesson 2</b>, don't be afraid to be rough on them. The Maquis was perhaps a hopeless cause, and it was definitely under-equipped. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Although TNG, DS9 and VOY tended to
focus on Starfleet officers who are swayed to join the Maquis, bear in
mind that the majority of Maquis will be non-Starfleet civilians,
probably poorly trained for what they're trying to do. There is no rule
that says they ought to be competent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The challenge for players ought to be figuring out how to get by despite the overwhelming odds, not to simply mitigate them. Any time they find a solution to one of their major obstacles, think about how the big-brained, well-resourced people of Starfleet or the Cardassian Central Command might act to counter that solution. The players should be helped to feel they've accomplished something when they survive at all, even if they fail at everything else. And if they die trying, that shouldn't be a surprise nor a major failure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I gave my players a stolen Oberth class science ship for their Maquis vessel. I mainly did that because it let me (sentimentally) bring back the same old Oberth my previous group had used and then retired in our earlier, very conventional Starfleet exploration campaign, a decade earlier. But while an Oberth is puny and insignificant by the standards of most 24th century Starfleet starships, it turned out to be a massive battleship by the standards of the even tinier Maquis raiding vessels. Even a small, specialised science ship like that made my players a bit overpowered for their context. This skewed how tough they felt and how they approached their missions. It meant they weren't motivated to be cautious and subtle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then they wanted to upgrade it more, which I admit I hadn't expected or planned for. Starfleet crews tend to accept whatever ship they've got, and keep it more or less the same. But a Maquis crew somehow felt much more attached to their vessel and were strongly motivated to wring out every last bit of potential from it. I think that's great roleplaying, realistic for their context. But if I'd thought of that ahead of time, I would have intentionally started them out with something far weaker, so that their upgrades would still only raise them to a fairly weak level. As it was, and using the <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2018/03/a-partial-comparison-of-star-trek.html" target="_blank">possibly dubious <i>Decipher</i> rules</a>, their upgrades eventually made their little Oberth a reasonable match for much larger Cardassian warships. The players liked that, but it undermined the purpose of playing a grim Maquis game. And it required some convoluted setup for me to de-undermine it later.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Similarly, I should have put a lot more effort into NPC planning, to make that the focus for how players could get things done. They should have been relying on sketchy contacts and delicate negotiations, not simply blasting their way through every obstacle by force. I introduced some concepts from espionage-oriented games like <i>Delta Green </i>and <i>Spycraft</i>, but I probably should have leaned on those ideas a lot more heavily.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For example, we introduced the idea that the Maquis operates in a cell structure, with each cell fronted by only one individual, who only knows the identities of other cell representatives, so that the majority of all cell members remain anonymous within the Maquis, and cannot betray each other as easily. It's fairly typical resistance movement stuff. But in our game, each cell appeared only as the crew of a different Maquis vessel, so that there was nothing covert or anonymous about them, as far as the players were concerned. We never got to see a station- or planet-based cell in action, or one that was mobile but only hitching rides on someone else's ships. There was also never any situation where anyone was captured, and the integrity of the movement depended on the correct use of the cell structure. In other words, we wasted the cell concept. Things like that are worth building more properly into the story of the campaign. Use them, don't just mention them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Once you've got the social conflict of your campaign set up better, then you can also afford to be more brutal on the players in this way too. And I don't simply mean make all the NPCs assholes. They can be decent, upstanding UFP citizens, but that's precisely why they'd be less likely to help out a violent, criminal uprising who are technically across the border in a foreign state now. Or they can be dodgy criminals and smugglers, but why would they risk their lives and businesses by drawing the wrath of both Starfleet and the Cardassians on themselves? And if the players try to engage any Cardassians non-violently, then you need to know how to make that feasible but realistic for them too. Definitely plan out your major NPCs in good and varied detail.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Lesson 3</b>, related to lesson 2, is to be aware that the Maquis <b>will </b>end. If you're sticking strictly to canon, they end in disaster when the Dominion just rolls right over them in a few days, where the Cardassians and Starfleet had struggled to reign them in for years. Most Maquis will be killed, and survivors will be imprisoned for probably the remainder of the Dominion War. In short, they fail. Even if your player characters manage to handle themselves exceptionally well, and they can get more done than expected, there's still little to no hope that they can survive the Dominion. So that puts a pretty nasty deadline on the campaign.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(My Maquis campaign was transformed into a Dominion War campaign at that point, which I regret wasting time on. But I'll come back to that in another post. For now, my main advice is to simply end your campaign, no later than the Dominion takeover, and start something totally fresh to replace it.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you want to break from canon, that's your call as GM. But it'll take a fair bit of planning to figure out how to play that out. Will you give them a chance to resist the Dominion, even when the whole of Starfleet can't? Or write the entire Dominion War out of your timeline somehow? That's a pretty huge change, and while you might relish exploring that, it will take much work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But personally, I appreciate that the whole campaign should reasonably lead to failure and death. It's all a tragedy, and it's not typical Star Trek*, but arguably that's the nature of the Maquis. They represent a failure of reasoned diplomacy. The terms of the Federation/Cardassian peace treaty were not good or sensible, they were rushed through unreasonably; their attempt at making peace at any and all costs wasn't a real, lasting peace, and the diplomats ought to have known better. And the response of the affected (former) Federation worlds and their inhabitants wasn't too sensible either; armed resistance was a stupid idea, bound to fail, and they should have known better too. It was all a case of trying to have two wrongs make anything other than just two wrongs. But none of that makes the characters' motives unbelievable or uninteresting, so it still makes for good storytelling.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(*Actually, arguably, on a grander scale it is typical Star Trek, to illustrate that those whose main, best idea is to resort to violence will be doomed in the end. But what I meant above is that it isn't typical Trek to keep focusing on these doomed characters and their doomy doom.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Lesson 5 </b>is to pick a scale of action. If the player characters are supposed to care about a single shared colony planet that they all came from together, then try to limit your focus to just that planet and its nearest neighbours. It's a tiny focus by Star Trek standards, but makes good sense for a Maquis game. If I were to run such a game again, I would definitely run one whole cheery, fun episode based on that focal colony, as a flashback to the time before the Cardassians take over, early in the campaign, to give players a taste of what the good old days were like and what their characters are trying to reclaim.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Alternatively, if you're planning to let your players have a hand in leading the entire Maquis movement, across the entire DMZ and the Badlands, then it's likely worthwhile introducing a formal strategic sub-game element, a way for the players to know objectively (if unreliably) what sort of a difference they (and their NPC colleagues) are making to the success or failure of their goals. I have no such strategy rules handy, but I'm sure there are boardgames they can be borrowed from, and the new Command supplement for Star Trek Adventures includes a "Fleet Engagements" chapter that might make a useful part of that too. At the very least, the GM could arbitrarily update a campaign map or type up field reports that spell out the broader consequences of player actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Either way, it's important to give the players a sense of the consequences of their actions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And finally, <b>lesson 6</b>, find some non-French historical references to model things on. While the Star Trek Maquis are named for the historical French group, they aren't really all that similar, except maybe in intent. And perhaps coincidentally, perhaps intentionally, DS9 then latched onto </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="st"><i>Les Misérables</i></span> as its literary go-to reference for the Maquis to model themselves on, and kind of milked that dry. And there's nothing wrong with throwing in yet more French associations, but it might start to come across as cheesey if it's always only that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Besides, there are so many other historical rolemodels for your characters to pick from, some successful, some failed, any of which might be considered appropriate inspiration: The Viet Cong, the Yellow Turbans, uMkhonto we Sizwe, the Chetniks, the Free Papua Movement, or the Shining Path, to name just a handful from Earth's history alone. Whatever you and your players think of such organisations, it's worth bearing in mind that the typical Maquis member likely would see some common ground with them, maybe even venerate them, and understanding why is useful for unpacking your characters' motivations, fears, and limitations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And if you're running a straight Starfleet campaign, but want to insert the Maquis into it as a source of conflict, then that's probably the main advice I'd give for making them interesting opponents for your players: They may be immoral, they may have a bad plan, they may be doomed, but they really must have some complex motivations driving them, or they're just generic space baddies, and that's a huge waste of their story potential.</span></div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-34777125187331821882018-03-14T22:36:00.001+02:002018-07-04T10:26:33.079+02:00A partial comparison of Star Trek roleplaying systemsI got into Star Trek roleplaying unexpectedly in 2000, when a school friend called to say that, at a recent convention, he'd foolishly agreed to join some weird older fanboy stranger's campaign, and would I and our other friend Jamie like to take his place instead. Jamie and I went, Jamie quit pretty soon after, but I kept going back for more, for over a year. It was exactly what I wanted at the time. I was a new roleplayer, having started with AD&D in 1997, and I had grown pretty sick of the only two choices I knew at the time: AD&D dungeon crawls, or Vampire teen angst. I loved Star Trek, and I was glad for the chance to immerse myself in it, solving technical problems, rather than killing things or having compulsory emotions. I played our ship's chief engineer, so it fell on me, more often than not, to come up with practical solutions to the puzzles the GM liked to set us. In hindsight, there was probably more to it than that, but that's what I was focused on at the time.<br />
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A couple years later, I got a rulebook of my own, and decided to try running Star Trek roleplaying games myself. I didn't realise at the time that this would lead to much more varied experiences and plots, or that I'd always be the GM and never the player in any Star Trek game for over 15 years. For whatever reason, nobody else around here ever wants to run it.<br />
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Now we've started playing the latest incarnation of the game, Star Trek Adventures, and this has had me comparing all the different systems I've used over the years. I thought it might be useful to someone, somehow, to read my comparisons, so here they are, below. The two main aspects of each system I'd like to focus on are their crunch and fluff: How well their rules worked for my needs, and how well they managed to capture the feel of the series for me. My approach is subjective, but luckily, my subjective opinions are objectively the correct ones.<br />
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The rules systems are presented here in the order in which I first used them, rather than publication order, to show how my opinions were altered over time.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Role-playing_Game" target="_blank">Star Trek: The Next Generation Roleplaying Game</a> (Last Unicorn Games, first released 1998, first played 2000)<br />
Rules:<br />
The "Icon" system. The core mechanism is to roll a variable number of d6's, and hope their total sums to greater than a target number the GM sets. It's simple and it works, but it doesn't do much more than that. When I first tried it, the first thing it reminded me of was the old West End Games Star Wars roleplaying game, which I had first used about a year or two earlier, but actually they're fairly different. The rules are well explained and logically laid out; a simple three-colour coding of the pages of each chapter worked surprisingly well. There are two other incarnations of these rules - the Star Trek Roleplaying Game (for TOS), and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Roleplaying Game - but they function identically, and even though the TOS book rearranged the order of the chapters from the TNG book, they kept the same chapter colour-coding, so I still knew exactly where to look for whatever I needed.<br />
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Character creation used a lifepath system, which I tend to enjoy, though this one didn't feel that flexible or creative after I'd created a dozen or so characters with it (as GM, helping players get started), and it demanded a lot of fleshing out that it didn't help the player with very well. The experience system wasn't too smooth. I get the impression that the point-buy costs for character improvements were chosen on the basis of making a clean and simple looking table, rather than trusting strict mathematical guidance. Characters jumped from hopeless to superhuman (supersentient?) a little too easily. I remember longer-running player characters eventually becoming a little bit godlike, at least within their specific fields. In hindsight, this probably wasn't nearly as bad as the problems we later had with the Decipher rules producing actual, literal gods. But it was my first inkling that a Star Trek-like game doesn't really need or want traditional D&D-style levelling.<br />
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The starship rules were initially very flimsy and barely worth using, though I still knew them backwards, once upon a time. Large parts of them (like the tractor beam rules) never made complete sense. I guess they were pretty good for simulating onscreen TOS and early TNG levels of battle detail, and just barely alright for supporting more interesting science and engineering missions. Eventually, after Last Unicorn packed it in, some of their writers put out a whole series of big, fat PDF-only books, including <i>Spacedock</i>, which focused on a ridiculously over-complicated rebuild of the starship rules. This had waaaaaaay too much detail for a roleplaying group to use. We tried playing one session using the Spacedock rules, and we got almost nothing done, with so many new rolls to make. It was the worst kind of endless dice-rolling battle grind. But they hadn't merely made it into a set of wargamers' combat rules either; Spacedock includes insane levels of detail on things wargamers would never touch, like precise details of the life support system (clearly not an essential system...), the recreation facilities, the science labs, and engineering checks for installing incompatible alien devices on the ship.<br />
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Spacedock as a whole was unplayable... BUT! It wasn't bad as a behind-the-scenes GM's reference guide, to get a rough sense of what a given ship of a given size and type could feasibly contain or achieve, and what kind of dice rolls could simulate all that. For example, my current campaign, using the new Modiphius rules, has already borrowed from Spacedock to determine the departmental structure of the ship's crew. Nobody's (successfully) attempted to replace Spacedock for any of the newer rules systems, and it might just be a crazy idea to try it. But there's definitely a core of usefulness to it, considering how much time the player characters will spend with their main starship.<br />
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Feel:<br />
The core Last Unicorn books each inhabited their chosen series really well. The writing was generally clear and concise for rules, but also clearly emphasised the themes and tones of the series. Small vignettes at the start of each chapter showed how characters other than those seen on TV could fit into the same sort of roles (to help new roleplayers get away from copying the series too closely). Slightly mediocre art wasn't amazing (it occured around the same era that White Wolf was doing very elaborate stuff, and D&D had progressed beyond the simple doodles of the '80s to things like DiTerlizzi's Planescape art), but did make a good effort to complement the writing, showing Trek-like characters and places, while still drawing the reader's imagination away from the limited confines of mimicking the TV show directly.<br />
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The supplement books went further adrift, and I didn't enjoy them as much. They didn't add much to the rules, but they also went with a weird mashing of their own made up non-canon fluff, and bits of non-canon borrowed from other sources (like FASA). A lot of it was uninteresting, unhelpful lore that I imagine most GMs (certainly I) glossed over and replaced with something closer to either strict TV canon, or custom homebrew fanfic.<br />
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The main disappointment I had with these rules, though it took me a long time to notice it had been tricking me for years, was the relative emphasis the rules place on different kinds of activities. Combat rules mass over more than one whole chapter, while science and diplomacy are barely given rules at all, and are relegated to the darkest hidden corners of a chapter. This gives an uncomfortable disconnect between what the fluff is telling you Trek should feel like, and what the rules are spelling out that you ought to be focused on. As a result, for the first major campaign I ran with the Last Unicorn rules, I started out running a pure science and exploration campaign, but once I got more familiar with the rulebook, it suddenly transformed into a war campaign. My players enjoyed it less, I enjoyed it less, and the rules were less useful for that job anyway.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Roleplaying_Game" target="_blank">Star Trek Roleplaying Game</a> (Decipher, first released 2002, first played 2002)<br />
Rules:<br />
The "CODA" system. Basically, a cheap knock-off of the then-new d20 system, made to look a bit like the previous Icon system it replaced. I gather Decipher was a company staffed by quite a few former Last Unicorn employees, so they got away with a handful of blatant cut&paste duplications. But it's still surprising just how different they made a lot of things; maybe they thought it was a mistake to emulate a model that had just failed?<br />
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Anyway, the core mechanic is to roll an exploding 2d6, adding a skill+attribute modifier, and hope their total sums to greater than a target number the GM sets. This hemmed in the larger dice piles of Last Unicorn's rules. Instead of a lifepath method for character creation, you just pick a species (race) and profession (class), and select the traits (feats) to make you more developed. It took the structure of D&D 3rd Ed fairly blatantly. This was odd, considering Wizards had then instituted their Open Game Licence policy, so Decipher could have just used the actual d20 system; realising this, I and others later tried houseruling exactly that kind of game, which I'll describe later.<br />
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Either way, the CODA rules were functional, but a bit meh. They failed particularly badly at very low and very high experience levels, where characters were useless and ridiculously overpowered, respectively. Gail, one of my players, recently reminded me that I once asked her to roll 60-something to fly a runabout at full impulse (i.e. hypersonic) between the buildings of a narrow city street. Target of 60-something. On 2d6. And she made it. (And then another character made a similarly insane Engineering check to transport someone aboard during the split second they passed by that point.) The end of that campaign just got silly, as I found it increasingly close to impossible to challenge the players in any way. I tried reigning in the experience gains, a lot, but the damage was already stuck by then. This cemented the idea in my mind that Star Trek don't need no stinkin' XP rules.<br />
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Where I can't fault the rules is their organisation and layout. Mimmicking the D&D3e rules led them to also copy the D&D3e layout, and that was an expertly-developed foundation to start from. Decipher did go a little nuts on expansion books, and some were more worthwhile than others. But the two core books (their PHB and DMG analogues, further reflecting their D&D emulation) were a good starting structure that later rules expansions could plug into with relatively little hassle.<br />
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Feel:<br />
Decipher was not very Trekkie, in feel, which is odd, considering how many Last Unicorn staff had migrated across to it. It wasn't jarringly un-Trekkie, it didn't miss horribly, it just didn't work hard to represent the feel of Star Trek, so it ended up with a more neutral feel. In part, this was because of a greater emphasis in the writing on rules and crunch, rather than on tone, feel, themes, fluff, etc. But where they did put fluff into it, they didn't feel like they were trying very hard. Original art was replaced with screen captures from the series and movies, which in many cases actually managed to be less clear or evocative than the mediocre quality art of the Last Unicorn books. It didn't inspire you to go out and adventure, so much as it seemed to point at itself and say, "Hey! Hey! Remember this [insert your subculture] reference!? This was a thing, right?" That's not so bad if you're a more experienced Star Trek GM or player, and you already know how to ignore the rulebook and have your own fun. But I don't think it's the smartest way to hook new players' imaginations. It also just didn't look very nice aesthetically.<br />
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The terrible experience creep of this rules system also infected the subjective feel of it. We see Star Trek characters on screen acting competently and expertly in their fields, but they do have a capacity to fuck up, and that is a source of both drama and realism. Characters in this game who lose that capacity also lose part of their personality, their response to failure and tragedy, because nothing ever goes wrong for them. It gets kind of dull.<br />
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The Decipher books are even worse than the Last Unicorn books when it comes to relative emphasis on violence vs. anything else, with combat rules incorporated into nearly every chapter. Being overly trusting of the rules-as-written lured me very badly into a lot of time-wasting war stories that proved to be as boring as any campaign I have ever written or run. There's a similar pattern to how my Last Unicorn campaign went: Things started out as a political campaign (a Maquis campaign, just for something unusual), but as I got more and more accustomed to the combat rules, it turned more and more into a combat campaign, very quickly. It's not that I didn't want to write exploration and diplomacy adventures, but that I got into the habit of writing what the rules easily allowed me to write. And if you're not consciously aware of that trap, it's hard to keep yourself out of it.<br />
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<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Role_Playing_Game" target="_blank">Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game</a> (FASA, first released 1982, first played 2004)<br />
Rules:<br />
An early roleplaying game, and thus relatively simple by later standards, FASA's game was expanded greatly over the years. But it was also designed from the start to fit together with their ship battle game, which sways both its rules and fluff towards a more combat-driven feel, which is the same thing I've just noted in both the Last Unicorn and Decipher games.<br />
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I wouldn't say I know these rules well enough to comment on them a lot, but they've added something to my opinions, at least. I believe I only ever ran about 3 or 4 sessions using these rules, and they were fine. It uses a d100 roll based on a set of attributes and skills, which reminds me very much of the BASIC system (as used by Call of Cthulhu, which came out a year before FASA's Star Trek), though officially they're unrelated. And that's a fine system for all sorts of uses; they're lightweight, fun rules that get the job done. Every few years, it occurs to me that I could just homebrew a BASIC-based Star Trek adaptation, but I've never quite gotten around to it.<br />
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Note that FASA had its rough predecessor to Last Unicorn's later Spacedock expansion, in the form of the Ship Construction Manual, a much simpler book that really only deals with making custom combat stats for their ship battle subgame. But I will give them credit for at least pointing out that starships must have some sort of laundry aboard, even if they failed to provide extensive tables of laundry variants to pick between.<br />
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Feel:<br />
<a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2017/07/there-are-no-starfleet-marines-its-very.html" target="_blank">Space marines are dumb</a>. And FASA bears a lot of responsibility for insinuating that dumb concept into the public perception of Star Trek, especially in gaming circles, where the shows never have. Similarly, FASA is responsible for promulgating a lot of the most clearly militaristic interpretations of how Starfleet and its vessels might operate. In the '80s, when hardly anything had ever been on screen, they sort of had the excuse that they needed to make shit up to fill the vast blanks in canon that existed before TNG came along. But of course, this still implies some very active rejection of the anti-war idealism that Roddenberry had already filled TOS with.<br />
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That said, it should be noted that the core roleplaying rulebooks FASA started with didn't go that way, and it was mainly later supplements and expansions (and other FASA games) that sought to militarise things. Either way, the damage is now done, and decades of roleplayers sharing FASA ships and fluff around (for use with whichever setting) has contaminated lots of useful sites with things that only ever existed in FASA, and which TNG and later series explicitly rejected.<br />
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I think it's relevant that FASA's internally developed version of the Star Trek universe had drifted so far during the '80s, that it wound up badly incompatible with what was eventually shown to be the nature of the Federation and Starfleet on TNG. You can't really blame them for making things up on their own, but I can't see what appeal it would have for anyone who had the glory of '90s Trek to enjoy.<br />
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<u>My own d20 homebrew rules</u> (played 2011)<br />
Rules:<br />
While I never quite got around to making anything like decent BASIC rules for Star Trek, I did somehow make a few different iterations of homebrew rules using the d20 system as a foundation, borrowing bits over the years from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_SG-1_(roleplaying_game)" target="_blank">SG-1</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spycraft" target="_blank">Spycraft</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_(Wizards_of_the_Coast)" target="_blank">Star Wars</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Directive_(role-playing_game)" target="_blank">Prime Directive</a>. When D&D5e came out, I even started converting my earlier attemps into what became <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2014/07/wip-house-rules-star-trek-next.html" target="_blank">Star Trek Next</a>. I am aware that there a few other homebrew d20 Trek systems floating around out there.<br />
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I won't waste your time spelling out all the rules adjustments I made, back and forth, and I believe we only ever actually ran 2 test adventures using any version of these rules. Mostly, it was fun for me to experiment with concepts, trying to learn how to make the experience I knew well from the screen fit with what the dice could represent. I also went through a (possibly unhealthy) phase of obsessing over starships and starship stats, and it was something that could definitely be gamified in a few different ways. I probably used the Spacedock rules more to explore these other systems, than I used it for Last Unicorn's own system.<br />
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Overall, I don't think any of this was a big success. D&D just isn't a good foundation for the kinds of stories Star Trek tells.<br />
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Feel:<br />
Since I was making it up myself, the feel was pretty much what I made it, which is I suppose what we should ideally always have in roleplaying games. Perhaps there's some lesson here about feeling a sense of ownership over the rules, in order to make them work for the game, instead of letting the game work to suit the rules, or something.<br />
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<u>My own <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2016/12/star-trek-conception-narrative-puzzle.html" target="_blank">Star Trek Conception</a> homebrew rules</u> (played 2016)<br />
Rules:<br />
My last attempt at a homebrew system adaptation borrows from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(role-playing_game)" target="_blank">Fiasco</a>. I'm a big Fiasco fan, it's a surprisingly genius rules system, and so it feels a little surprising to say that I've still only ever <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2016/01/bloodwaddle-brief-fiasco-game-summary.html" target="_blank">played it once</a>. Once I gave up on a reasonable d20 adaptation, I got it into my head that the story-driven rules of Fiasco would be an ideal basis for a much better, much Trekkier system. And I'm not awfully disappointed with what I put out, though I definitely have to admit that what I wrote leaves a huge amount vague and unspecified and up to the GM. I guess it's more like the skeleton of a system, than a full rules system.<br />
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Feel:<br />
As with my earlier homebrew stuff, this felt exactly like my own style of game, because that's very much all it was. It would have to be run by someone else to see if I infused it with any partlicular feeling to its fluff. I think I left it a bit barebones for that. <br />
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<a href="https://www.modiphius.net/collections/star-trek-adventures" target="_blank"><u>Star Trek Adventures</u></a> (Modiphius, first released 2017, first played 2018, apparently no wikipedia page yet)<br />
Rules:<br />
The core mechanism of the 2d20 system is simple and smart. You roll at least 2d20, aiming to roll below a number representing your skill at the task, and for each die that makes this, you score one success. The GM sets a target number of successes, and sufficient successes means you do the thing. That's not that tricky, and it conceals some pretty convoluted roll probabilities, allowing the GM to fine tune the challenge over a very wide range. It's excellent protection against the PCs becoming godlike, and it also encourages PC cooperation to make high target numbers surmountable.<br />
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There are a number of lesser rules to expand that, and mostly they're fine. But the core rulebook buries all of these in endless rambling prose, never concise and to the point. Reading one rule, it will end in an apparently simple statement. What you're expected to know is that this statement contains one or more crucial rules key words, adding further depth to the rule. Then you're expected to get lucky finding the place or places in the book that defines that key word. There, you'll face many paragraphs, perhaps many pages, of waffle about their proprietary key word, and you'll need to dig out the little bit of it that is relevant to the rule you were originally reading about.<br />
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The rules aren't the problem, they work well. The layout and writing style are the problem. I like to think that if rule A can't possibly be understood without rule B, then rules A and B should at the very least be on adjacent pages, under a shared heading, and definitely in the same damn chapter. The rules organisers at Modiphius and I disagree on this. They've also divided the book into a player front half and GM back half, though without a particularly clear boundary between the two, and I certainly wouldn't mind if some rules had to be split up to accommodate that player/GM division. But they mostly haven't sliced things up that way: The GM section is pretty full of unnecessary duplications of rules exactly cut&paste from the player section.</div>
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Once you've penetrated that, it's a good system. I find it easily supports my improvisations, and I like how much it rewards character roleplaying, rather than munchkin rollplaying. With no experience points to worry about, players can focus on who the character is, not what their stats are. I initially <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2018/03/clarifying-values-directives-and.html" target="_blank">mistook their Milestone system</a> for an experience point analogue, but it really isn't. It's more a mechanism for letting characters develop their personalities, and it ties together with just about everything else in the rules. It provides exactly the character/story-driven kind of game I was hoping a Fiasco adaptation could achieve, but by a mechanically very different route.</div>
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In short, Star Trek Adventures seems to address a lot of my past concerns about other Trek roleplaying games. I will definitely buy their second edition, if they hire someone to organise its contents more sensibly.</div>
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Feel:<br />
I am also very pleased with the tone Modiphius is striking so far. Their prose is rich and deep, compared with the relatively bland Decipher text, and it reflects the tone of '90s Trek (especially TNG) really well. And unlike FASA and Last Unicorn, they so far seem to be fairly cautious of trampling over canon, with their own little sandbox piece of the Galaxy set aside for messing around with their own ideas, away from the main canon.<br />
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Modiphius's rules are also the first I've seen to incorporate a serious, detailed science mechanism, based on the actual scientific method, and even if it isn't perfect, I deeply appreciate the attempt. At the same time, they don't go too deeply into combat rules, and even set them as equal to what they call their social conflict rules (for non-violent but not necessarily friendly character interaction). This balance is a huge step ahead of the previous official games. Their expansion books so far have pretty much upheld all of this.<br />
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The Modiphius books also earn points for some amazing art. Like the Last Unicorn book art, they give us glimpses at Starfleet officers and ships that we don't recognise from the series, doing all sorts of exciting things in exotic places that a '90s TV production (and most movies) could never incorporate. This really helps to fire the imagination for roleplaying purposes. And the quality of art is well above what Last Unicorn used.<br />
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What remains to be seen is how well they can grow Star Trek Adventures to incorporate ENT, DISCO, and perhaps even the Abramsverse. I'm not overly fond of most of ENT, but there's definitely some interesting stuff in it that better writers could explore in more interesting ways. I love DISCO, based on its first season, and it seems like its characters would snap perfectly into the Values rules mechanism. But Modiphius have so far avoided touching this still-in-progress production.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-14772707515769581052018-03-10T15:24:00.000+02:002018-03-10T23:23:29.948+02:00Clarifying Values, Directives and Milestones in Star Trek Adventures<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We've been playing the new Star Trek Adventures roleplaying game, and it's off to a good start. The rules are becoming intuitive quickly enough. But we bumped into one particular barrier last session, with the rules about Milestones, which led me to research those rules more, and I found that a lot of people online have reported similar confusion about this. So, I thought it might be a useful public service to comment on what I've found so far.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Very broadly, this rules system makes some very different assumptions than traditional D&D-style roleplaying games (including some past iterations of Star Trek roleplaying rules). Everything in the rulebook ultimately links back to the characters' Values, the characters' deepest-held beliefs and opinions; this means that rules effects and storytelling are inextricably linked. I happen to think this is pretty brilliant, and perfect for a more intellectual and questioning setting like Star Trek (and I'd like to steal this for a Planescape campaign house rule too). Sadly, these rules aren't always laid out and explained as clearly as I'd like.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My first mistake was to compare milestones with experience
points. That's a poor comparison. I saw that milestones lead to character stat changes, and jumped to the wrong conclusion about them.<br /><br />Instead, think of milestones as
game mechanisms for when a main (player) character's fundamental beliefs are
altered. It's actually closer to a sanity point mechanism (such as those used in Call of
Cthulhu, Warhammer, Unknown Armies, etc.), than to an experience point
system. But unlike sanity checks, changing a character's Values in Star Trek isn't necessarily
traumatic or involuntary. They're just learning from their qualitative personal life
experiences, whatever those are, rather than piling up abstract, arbitrary, quantitative experience points.<br /><br />And what changes about the character must also be related to what actually happened to them, not just bought off a general purpose menu. Because sometimes a change in
attitude/perspective/priorities leads to changes in practical behaviour,
the milestones allow for re-prioritising Attributes & Disciplines (and other character details)
instead of taking on a whole new Value, either because you simply choose to
start putting more effort into one area of work over another, or because an
actual physiological change (like a major injury) forces the shift.<br /><br />But it's usually going to be a sideways change, a mental mutation, and not a linear advancement up to a higher level. You also aren't always going to see these changes happening every single session, because real people and believable fictional characters don't flip their personalities that quickly. It's
assumed in this system that Starfleet officers are already at the top
of their game, the main characters are "born" high level, and so there's no
real need for constant advancement all the time. You're not level 1
Bilbo leaving the Shire for the first time, you're Lieutenant Commander Gandalf, and it takes
something pretty major and uncommon (like not letting the Balrog pass)
to significantly alter you. And when you are altered, it's most likely an inner
psychological/behavioural change.<br /><br />Not all mental changes are the same. Some are fairly minor, resulting from lesser experiences. Some are transformative, resulting from huge epiphanies, discoveries or shocks. Below is my explanation of the sorts of things
considered major enough to trigger a milestone:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><i>Normal milestones</i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Gain one of these for any one of:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Challenging a Value/Directive: Outright rejecting one of the character's beliefs or orders, in practice, because it gets too awkward to stick to it in the face of an encounter where the character could solve a problem by doing the opposite of what their </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Value/Directive suggests they should do</span></span>.<br /> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The positive & negative Value/Directive thing:
[EDIT: It's just been pointed out to me that the player section of the book, pg.139, uses the word "or" for this rule, while the GM section, pg.293, uses "and". I have edited my explanation here to "either/or", pending official clarification from on high.</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">] The part of the rule we weren't sure of last session. It requires one of two things to happen in an
episode:<br />EITHER The player must inform the GM (and the GM must be able to concur) that one of that player's character's Values/Directives is relevant to a test, so they get to spend a
Determination point on it (the positive use),<br />OR the GM must inform that player (and
the player must be able to concur) that one of </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">that player's character's </span></span>Values/Directives will cause them to
face a Complication in a scene (the negative use). If the player tries to dodge
that negative Complication by abandoning their character's Value/Directive, then that
triggers the Challenging a Value/Directive option instead.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Serious traumatic injury, of the sort that makes people reconsider their lives.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Spotlight milestones</i><br />Players gain these when they qualify for a normal milestone AND it's decided that their main character carried the episode far more than
anyone else did. The rule book says players ought to vote on who this is. What I'm thinking of trying instead is to start writing occasional episodes (maybe even solo adventures, for those players who
feel like a non-group session) that are custom built to focus on one main character at a time. The player can still cock it up by failing to participate well in
their own episode, but I think this is fairer than arbitrary voting. (Though I think it's also fair to remain open to post hoc decisions that a character turned out to be the focus of an episode, even if this wasn't the GM's original plan.)<br /><br /><i>Arc milestones</i><br />Players gain these from collecting a series of spotlight milestones. They're meant to be a big deal, so it's a slow crawl to reach one.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />One
last thing to clarify: Directives. I've sort of informally been
throwing these into my games, but not emphasizing them very much, and not really getting my players to treat them as rules mechanisms. Now that I've revised this section of the rules in more detail, I begin to see why it's better from a rules
perspective to be more explicit about Directives.<br /><br />Directives are
short-term, shared Values that come from your mission orders. (I think the rule might have been clearer if they were named Mission Values or Context Values instead.) A
Directive could apply to just one character, but usually they apply to
the whole crew together, for some given period of time. And the rules
purpose for this is that it allows the GM to run adventures that don't
always have to be tuned exactly to their players' own personal Values, without cheating them of the potential benefits of getting to spend Determination points (or, for that
matter, earning milestones). Players may as well simply add the currently active
Directives to their characters' lists of Values, and treat them as the
same thing, for rules purposes. The only difference is that Directives
are changed from outside, from up the chain of command. If a character ever refuses to follow an order, that's basically Challenging a
Directive.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">GMs can encourage and reward players for paying attention to the mission at hand, like responsible Starfleet officers, by using the Directives for the mission as opportunities to get into character, and to gain rules benefits when attempting tasks. But, because of the Challenging a Directive option, it doesn't have to be boring railroading, and characters can stick to their own beliefs at the expense of the mission (or vice versa). It all helps to keep the story interesting, and the characters growing.</span></span>Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-28135614927732720782018-01-13T11:42:00.000+02:002018-01-13T11:56:16.652+02:00Dungeons & Dragons for VegansBefore I spread any disinformation, let me clarify the title: Obviously no decent, neutral good vegan would go around killing and/or eating treants and myconids and other intelligent creatures, just because they happen to be more plant matter than animal. You simply don't eat anything with a mind. But it did strike me as funny that I, as a vegan, would happen to get a little obsessed with the vegetable portions of the Monster Manual, and the title came from that.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisYQTOrNCvURBSJ7QGtDHcghuhxmnks4n9FipTVem-RKELOsiYQU49XUBMqy4R_ir6rcaHhy23rnZ72JDwMl34y47NSqFpgjGZ7GTD2fHLwa6Fw496NvFcFUAc6IY10M2uiat44hqnhQQ/s1600/Treant+evolution.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="387" data-original-width="1600" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisYQTOrNCvURBSJ7QGtDHcghuhxmnks4n9FipTVem-RKELOsiYQU49XUBMqy4R_ir6rcaHhy23rnZ72JDwMl34y47NSqFpgjGZ7GTD2fHLwa6Fw496NvFcFUAc6IY10M2uiat44hqnhQQ/s640/Treant+evolution.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">40 years of treants. Click to embiggen.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But this is an interest that predates my vegetarianism and later veganism by a couple of years. I had had been roleplaying as a player for years, when in 2002 I bought the Planescape setting, my first roleplaying book purchase other than core rules. I set about writing up my very first attempt at a serious campaign of my own, based out of Sigil. The campaign didn't last more than 2 or 3 sessions, and most of my prose-heavy, illustrated notes were never put to much use, directly. What's relevant to this post is that I'd borrowed someone's Monstrous Manual to help me plan my campaign, and it was the first time I'd ever sat down to read the whole book. And what grabbed my attention the most were the plant and fungus creatures.<br />
<br />
Why had we never played with these before, I wondered. Why did we always fight the same orcs and goblins, when there were these crazy, weird, interesting things instead? They're all so different from each other, and from anything else, with the clever, detailed ecologies and cultures that 2nd Edition monsters were written with (and which, sadly, later editions tended to neglect). Better still, many of the plant and fungus creatures worked logically together as a whole symbiotic ecosystem of different things that could kill (or at least challenge) the player characters. I thought these fit in especially well with the natural weirdness of Planescape, so it was a perfect idea for me to start exploring, though I've since found that interesting plant creatures can work well in just about any sort of genre or setting. I'll occasionally steal one of these for non-D&D roleplaying, especially science fiction games, when I need something weird and surprising.<br />
<br />
Perhaps what I liked most about the more humanoid plant/fungus creatures was that they often weren't automatically Evil combat monsters (which are always just a little boring to me), but could be interacted with more civilly - BUT it would necessarily be weird, alien interaction. I felt, and still feel, that this is a great way to make challenging NPCs for players to talk to, especially in tense, urgent situations. (When Rhys-Davies portrayed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treebeard" target="_blank">Treebeard</a> on screen not long after I'd written that first campaign, it went some way to illustrating to me how effectively that sort of alien plant-mind storytelling could be done, so clearly I was far from being the first person to think of it.)<br />
<br />
I had been thinking about all of this again recently, and somehow I got curious about how 5th Edition had affected my old favourites. That got me wondering how they compared across all other editions. And that, inevitably, led me to spend a week researching a spreadsheet of every plant, fungus or algae creature that's been officially published by TSR and Wizards of the Coast. I threw in Pathfinder too, partly because it's an unusually popular D&D variant, and partly because Paizo have made it so easy to find all their monster stats and descriptions online, so it was minimal extra effort for me. It turns out that some of Pathfinder's original additions to this collection are pretty nifty.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YewkxlS2gjuU8EgsXHUP2mOYohoexVCi/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank"><b>The spreadsheet is here.</b></a></div>
<br />
My rule of thumb for deciding what to include on my list was whether the real world equivalent of a creature would mindlessly stay fixed in place (plant-like), or whether it would intelligently wiggle itself around (animal-like), or perhaps neither. In short, I was playing animal-vegetable-mineral with the Monster Manuals. Anything explicitly described as a form of plant, fungus or algae, I included (and I'll collectively call those 'vegemonsters' here, for simplicity). Excluding anything from the animal kingdom was easy. I also excluded constructs, mineral-based creatures, energy beings, and entities of pure magic (including elementals). Slimes and oozes made me stop and think. The clearest descriptions of these all compare them with real world <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snottite" target="_blank">bacterial colonies</a>, which might look vaguely plant-like at a macroscopic level, but are made up of wiggling things on the microscopic level, so I excluded them. The other notable anomaly is the dryad, which has been in the game since the very start, but which only 4th Edition describes as being an actual plant; all other editions call them plant-adjacent fey spirit things.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Vf4JBSy6UmwDUjP-HFbczUk02_lkwzPTmJKpMNkDMwvv7XWooOy5SItBynmuarb2AmYxL_-2AG1ygpg3yH7H5uyuk9Z4IgXHftclxqXj-LvC4RCugDgfbn8vN2KJY9K2W1zrwc_yHgg/s1600/Myconids+5e.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1164" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8Vf4JBSy6UmwDUjP-HFbczUk02_lkwzPTmJKpMNkDMwvv7XWooOy5SItBynmuarb2AmYxL_-2AG1ygpg3yH7H5uyuk9Z4IgXHftclxqXj-LvC4RCugDgfbn8vN2KJY9K2W1zrwc_yHgg/s640/Myconids+5e.png" width="464" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Myconids, in glorious 5th Ed quality illustration</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Comparing the editions has been interesting. The main reason my spreadsheet has the 'Shape' column is that I was concerned that different editions were renaming practically the same species multiple times, with only small stat changes. Lumping them together by approximate body shape helped me to narrow that problem down, and highlight, for example, all of the tree-man things that seem a lot like treants, but which aren't named as treants. Creative GMs can decide for themselves what to do with this sort of duplication, but I can see why some were a little unnecessary and were eventually abandoned by TSR/WotC.<br />
<br />
Treants were the first plant creatures in the game, originally named ents (until Tolkien sued) way back in the pre-D&D Chainmail rules (1971). Yellow mold joined treants in the earliest D&D core rules (1974). But it was the Greyhawk supplement (1975) that first pointed out creative ways to use all manner of plants as traps, though it offers basically no real rules or detailed explanations of these. The 1977 Basic D&D rules did very little with this idea, while the parallel 1977 Advanced D&D 1st Edition rules expanded on the early Greyhawk suggestions greatly. AD&D 1st Ed codified a number of plant and fungus creatures that could do what the earlier edition had hinted at, and more, especially in its Monster Manual 2.<br />
<br />
AD&D 2nd Edition (1989) picked up everything from 1st edition, and then went nuts, pushing its total statted vegemonsters to over 100, many in the core Monstrous Manual (and its Monstrous Compendia predecessors), but also in the setting-specific expansions that followed over the course of the 1990s. I note that the Planescape setting (1994) that first nudged me into exploring this only added two new types of its own to the pile, though its razorvine is unusually distinctive and iconic to the setting. I'm not aware of any other setting that has its own defining species of plant like that, and it's not even an intelligent plant! The Dark Sun setting (1991) necessarily needed a variety of much more unusual desert plants, with more complicated justifications, to replace the default temperate species of traditional D&D settings. And the horror theme of the Ravenloft setting (1990) allowed for a few more dangerous and nasty vegemonsters.<br />
<br />
3rd Edition (2000) trimmed back the vegemonsters a lot. Its first Monster Manual only had half a dozen different kinds, though the Monster Manual 2 caught up with quite a lot more. 3rd Ed is also notable as the first edition to officially drop the venerable yellow mold (which still hasn't returned in later editions), leaving the treant as the only one in my spreadsheet to be found in every single edition of D&D. The new Eberron setting (2004) added some nice new stuff to the game (no new vegemonsters, since they focused so much on constructs), but neglecting most other published settings in this and subsequent editions led to a much greater net loss of official content of all sorts.<br />
<br />
4th Edition (2008) hated creative and interesting monsters in general, cutting back on all sorts of creatures, especially ones that didn't have obvious combat roles. Note that the 4th Ed Monster Manual had a lazy habit of giving a pair of alternate stat blocks for many monsters, with very little decent justification for why they would exist in different forms with different abilities. The bottom line is that the 4th Ed Monster Manual only really has around half as many different species as it pretends to, and this is reflected in my spreadsheet too. Though my spreadsheet counts each stat block separately, I only count 4 real distinct species of vegemonsters from that book, 5 if you count their peculiar (and possible mistaken) change to the dryad. This edition was clearly a regression, in several senses.<br />
<br />
5th Edition (2014) is still relatively new, with only two main monster books out so far (including the very interesting <a href="http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/volos-guide-to-monsters" target="_blank">Volo's Guide</a>, which would make an excellent birthday present for me), but I'm pleased to see that there's been at least some recovery of previously abandoned vegemonsters, with especially detailed write-ups for the myconids and vegepygmies. I don't expect future expansions will include every single vegemonster from past editions, but I do hope they'll bring back some of the better ones, as well as introducing some creative original types. Even if they don't, I'm glad to see that they're at least getting comfortable with fluff and lore again.<br />
<br />
Roleplaying isn't about rules and stats, those are just a handy framework. What first grabbed my attention about gas spores and shriekers and russet mold and obliviax, over 15 years ago, was not their number of hit dice nor their XP value. What made them interesting was the weirdness of plants with their own agency, and the deep and unusual descriptions that someone had written for each. And from that I, as a new GM, could begin to see how to use them in interesting, unexpected ways. Obviously I adapted them to suit my own needs, as a good GM should, because lore is not dogma. But I would always much rather start from a fully fleshed out and contextualised idea, than from a dry pile of stats and special abilities. Making up stats is the easy part; if I want to make up my own totally original creatures, the rules crunch is not what'll slow me down. But when I don't want to have to make up my own creatures from scratch (which is the point of having a Monster Manual), then I want them to be fully pre-cooked for me, not half-baked. 2nd Ed got this right, more often than not. 3rd and 4th didn't understand it. I hope that 5th and beyond will get it better and better.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-16044119964018696632017-11-11T23:01:00.002+02:002017-11-11T23:01:46.865+02:00The least worst thing about TrumpThere are plenty of bad things to say about Trump, and he keeps working* hard to produce more. He may not end up being the worst US president of all time (Jackson set a very low bar, for one easy example), but he's easily got to be the least qualified, least suitable they've ever had. I want to be clear that I'm no Trump supporter, and that this post is not at all a defence of the man. There's just so much to hold against him; I won't bore you by listing it all here, when so many other sources have been doing that for years already. But there's one thing that (mainly American) commenters regularly bring up, when they want to illustrate how awful he is, which I have a little trouble with: Bone spurs.<br />
<br />
It's a matter of public record that Trump evaded the US military's draft during the Vietnam War, first through educational deferments, and then through a medical deferment for bone spurs in his foot. That diagnosis doesn't seem like a very compelling excuse, and it's easy to use that to say that he's a coward. And he almost certainly is. I don't think that's bad. This isn't the neolithic, we don't need a big strong manly man to be village chief and protect us from fearsome monsters we don't understand. Today we understand there are no unknown monsters left in the wilderness, it's just us
against ourselves now, and the remaining violent manly men are the
monsters among us. In 2017, leaders who fear violence are the most sensible, sane, useful choice, <i><b>provided </b></i>they extend their caution over all of us, and not just selfishly over themselves. We want more of that sort in office, and pushing in the exact opposite direction seems like overkill.<br />
<br />
So our instinct to mock and reject cowardice of violence is outdated, and can even be harmfully counterproductive.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg__fhgU3RQmEn_82Cw6tedFTONVNqdZW-B0R28IvEuarATsDH_U-OUiIsfeGxDxsZnJ467vcxmG4UiCnD0-s83L4H-EkrIFrNk6sGaKoU0seC_H14IROajHFUw6StBeTWzQfzb3CwDYAk/s1600/1146977.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg__fhgU3RQmEn_82Cw6tedFTONVNqdZW-B0R28IvEuarATsDH_U-OUiIsfeGxDxsZnJ467vcxmG4UiCnD0-s83L4H-EkrIFrNk6sGaKoU0seC_H14IROajHFUw6StBeTWzQfzb3CwDYAk/s320/1146977.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Many people far better than Trump have proudly been cowards.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The issue is complicated, I'm aware, because Trump's draft dodge represents additional things, beyond simple, sensible aversion to violence. The fact that he got away with it, when thousands of others without his wealth couldn't, highlights the unfair class and race exploitation of the draft. Plenty of far more deeply convicted pacifists were forced into war (or jail) because they couldn't afford the legal and medical experts needed to fend off the system they lived in. And since then, Trump has shown that he's not at all opposed to <i>other people </i>having to live with violence and death, so long as it's far away from him. He may be a coward, but that doesn't make him a man of peace. He's clearly something of a hypocrite in this area.<br />
<br />
What's maybe a little weirder is that the US right wing is nominally the pro-war side of US politics (though there are plenty of pro-war Democrats, to muddy that divide), and it ought to be incongruous that Republicans would select a draft dodger as their chief. Perhaps that's why critics keep throwing this criticism at him, hoping it'll turn his supporters against him? If so, it clearly hasn't worked, and instead it will almost certainly make life a little harder for genuinely anti-violence US politicians for years to come.<br />
<br />
It's a weird situation. His draft dodge attempt may not be praiseworthy, as it was for most others. But it still doesn't seem entirely as awful as it's been portrayed over the last couple years. Would we really be happier if history had gone differently, and a young Trump had been handed a gun and told to shoot people? (Army duty certainly didn't make Hitler into a better person...)<br />
<br />
I'm inclined to say this particular criticism works out somewhere close to neutral, in the end. I think it was a perfectly acceptable, rational personal choice at the time, but he's not used his privilege since then to pass that sane option on to others. I wouldn't say avoiding the draft necessarily makes him good, but I also can't easily say that it makes him awful. It's the 965 other far more valid criticisms of him that make him awful (including his subsequent hypocrisy), and this one specific bone spur criticism is kind of unnecessary. It's one of many things I will be glad to be rid of when he finally goes.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-42608173447352847202017-11-08T22:22:00.000+02:002017-11-08T22:22:30.171+02:00Teacher's Bits: RoboRally for teaching transformations<div dir="ltr">
I've been thinking for a year or so that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboRally" target="_blank">RoboRally</a> ought to be an excellent tool for teaching the mathematics of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformation_(function)" target="_blank">transformations</a>. I've already drawn a connection in class between the motion of computer animation (in games and movies) and the geometric transformations we've been learning, and many of my grade 9s get that link quite clear in their minds. But for other students, computer animation is a form of change they're not too used to, or haven't looked at closely enough.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
RoboRally's step by step motion gives a good look at similar transformations, and at a slower, more deliberate pace. Players need to think through each move, one at a time. The direction a piece is facing is also relevant (which makes rotations important), which isn't so in many other boardgames. In chess, for example, non-pawn pieces seldom care what direction their previous move came from, they can just go off in whatever new direction they like, instantly changing facing. And pawns, at the other extreme, are too directionally limited, with no chance to rotate at all. But the robots in RoboRally must be intentionally rotated, if they want to change direction. There's also the hope that exploring transformations will help to solidify students' grasp of Cartesian planes in general.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZoQvHvJ-OypFkr_OCcrITADrRvRY9Ad1L74VgDfsjI7R9b2FrvmZe4ubBgFzwAhV0dh1mZbaqeUGS5e2LH2e_b5IBHx9pk_u8DXhxTNpudagNOtOCQMLE8TXT_sh7ZU0GnNKEih0ZEu8/s1600/rrt1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1586" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZoQvHvJ-OypFkr_OCcrITADrRvRY9Ad1L74VgDfsjI7R9b2FrvmZe4ubBgFzwAhV0dh1mZbaqeUGS5e2LH2e_b5IBHx9pk_u8DXhxTNpudagNOtOCQMLE8TXT_sh7ZU0GnNKEih0ZEu8/s640/rrt1.png" width="633" /></a></div>
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And better still, RoboRally is fun. The time pressure, the competition, the risk of blowing up or crashing off the edge, the lasers (pew pew pew), all make the simple act of moving a lump of plastic from A to B more exciting and compelling.</div>
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To make it most useful for my grade 9 maths class, I modified the rules and made it a team exercise. I stripped out any optional extra rules, to keep it as simple as possible, and I also replaced all of the cards and tokens with pen & paper, to reduce the chances of my game components getting damaged or lost. But the biggest rule change was replacing the random draw of order cards, with a free choice of translations and rotations, so long as they are accurately written in the correct format, as used in normal exercises.</div>
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This retains the two major sources of conflict in the game: Unpredictable, unexpected clashes between different robots' preset plans, and accidental errors in one's own planning.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwCyaGAjRUK96zfyZTFWwSIg_y-8__pfkv77-yR2dNjWyIzoCE8iS0IBGDC8SIl5NhU8At_Qvf9KgqJWeFXr0vc0V1Ovsc3MOUhCSzq7-L1MrOkzPBieaWgWkgwTaUsubWSr6cwXxIK6o/s1600/rrt.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="949" data-original-width="698" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwCyaGAjRUK96zfyZTFWwSIg_y-8__pfkv77-yR2dNjWyIzoCE8iS0IBGDC8SIl5NhU8At_Qvf9KgqJWeFXr0vc0V1Ovsc3MOUhCSzq7-L1MrOkzPBieaWgWkgwTaUsubWSr6cwXxIK6o/s640/rrt.png" width="470" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first draft version of the rules summary and worksheet. (Click to embiggen)</td></tr>
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I found time today for one test game, and while some of the kids were initially uncertain about a lot of it, one or two practice rounds cleared that up, to the point that they were almost all really into it by the end. The winning team were some of the kids who started the game complaining the loudest that they didn't get it. In the final round, they were laser-focused and knew exactly what they were doing. Some of the others, who were very confident early on, learned a series of lessons about how easy it is to accidentally write down the wrong sign when there's time pressure, and they rolled confidently off the edge of the map into the oblivion beyond.</div>
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I've seen plenty written about the gamification of learning, and I think a lot of it isn't really suited to older students (who are nominally my main focus), so I haven't explored that much. But as I seem to have a long future of teaching juniors ahead of me, I'm starting to think that I'll have to give gamification some more thought.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-4819328501200613052017-10-07T10:14:00.001+02:002017-10-07T10:14:41.352+02:00Response: Space for Women at the Gaming TableDroke-Dickinson's short post at Women at Warp, titled <a href="http://www.womenatwarp.com/women-rpgs/" target="_blank"><i>Space for Women at the Gaming Table</i></a> got my interest up a little, enough that I left a comment on it. And while someone there may eventually reply to that, I wanted to pick at my own questions a bit.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHtCq113CvQ0RFoDt9CC96ZvBrmacXGp9P_XrShz4YoW1yqwdyCD121tA7H5EpFACpy3HGAcxa1Zh6NZGb9HA6tXRwkG1sFnzgqtHlqvt0tvn1LdZjd5ydG8nxB05hALnLlJ6F0Qoy_cc/s1600/TNGRPGnight.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="696" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHtCq113CvQ0RFoDt9CC96ZvBrmacXGp9P_XrShz4YoW1yqwdyCD121tA7H5EpFACpy3HGAcxa1Zh6NZGb9HA6tXRwkG1sFnzgqtHlqvt0tvn1LdZjd5ydG8nxB05hALnLlJ6F0Qoy_cc/s1600/TNGRPGnight.png" /></a></div>
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1. <u>How does RPG Trek differ from TV Trek</u>?<br />
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Droke-Dickinson's post doesn't really focus specifically on either Star Trek or roleplaying games. Rather, it's a post pointing out how many possible entries to the hobby there are today, and how those entry options compare. And I can't fault this, as an introductory post.<br />
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But I'd want to go beyond that, to focus on what new players can expect from these games. If you're at Women at Warp, you're presumably already a serious Trekkie, so you'll want a game that gives you an appropriately Trekkie experience? If so, proceed with a teensy grain of caution.<br />
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I'd say there are two major differences to be aware of: Imagination and rules.<br />
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The rules thing is probably easier to anticipate and explain, though I will waffle about it for a greater number of paragraphs. Games have rules and structure, in order to function. TV shows and movies do too, but they don't work the same way or have the same goals. The structure of a show exists to tell a good story, for the narrative (we know the whole cast won't die within 5 minutes of the start, no matter how realistic that might appear to be), but also to fit within production and budget limits (few series can afford to actually film in weightlessness, for example).<br />
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Roleplaying games can have rules and structure for all sorts of reasons, but the three most widely discussed are probably narrative, simulation, and gaming. Narrative is not unlike the story-telling of a novel or series or comic or opera; it's about reigning in the chaos to form random events into a coherent plot. Simulation is about making the gaming universe realistic, or at least internally consistent and adequately predictable (so that the narrative and gaming goals become feasible). And gaming is about giving the events of the story some achievable, discernible target for the players to succeed or fail at reaching; this is normally presented as part of the challenge to be overcome in the narrative aspect.<br />
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We know the TV series can get more than a little sloppy with realism/simulation, and in-universe technology and physics is bent and retconned whenever the writers need it to be something else; that's actually a long-accepted tradition in all human story-telling. A roleplaying GM could do the same, for the sake of the narrative, but this then bumps up against the simulation aspect of the game, making the game universe less consistent, and this may in turn affect the possible options for the gaming aspect. For example, it might be dramatically exciting, this episode, when the chief engineer manages to transport the detonator out of that one torpedo roaring towards a vulnerable target, tense seconds before impact. But what does this imply for next time? Can't all torpedoes just be neutralised this way? Can't the crew program their computer to do this automatically in future, with superhuman speed and minimal shield adjustments?<br />
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But that's actually not an awful problem to have. It can be dealt with, and it implies that the GM is setting interesting challenges, and the players are getting creative at solving them in smart, unexpected ways.<br />
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Worse, I find, is when a game leans too heavily towards the gaming or simulation aspects, and forgets that it's supposed to be Star Trek. There have been a number of different official Star Trek roleplaying game rules published over the decades, plus plenty of unofficial ones, and the official ones tend to focus mostly on the things that can be most easily quantified. And gamers have spent decades quantifying violence. So, in most iterations, the rule books have several whole chapters devoted to combat (weapon stats, ship stats, ground combat rules, space combat rules, etc.), and maybe a couple pages on how to use science and diplomacy. The rules may allow for a compelling Picard speech, but they don't exactly encourage that. It's like they've never seen Star Trek.<br />
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The rules may also simply not be very good, as with any sort of game. I have yet to try the new Star Trek Adventures rules that came out this year, but I can say that all of the previous versions I've tried were mediocre, at best. The old (1980s) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Role_Playing_Game" target="_blank">FASA</a> rules were alright, though seem dated now. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation_Role-playing_Game" target="_blank">Last Unicorn</a> rules (late '90s) were dumb, but very easy to gloss over and ignore. And the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Roleplaying_Game" target="_blank">Decipher</a> rules (early '00s) were a crappy, cumbersome rip-off of the d20 system used for D&D 3rd edition, which makes little sense, as it was legal and encouraged to simply adapt the d20 rules to whatever game you liked. This was done very successfully for roleplaying games based on more violence-oriented scifi, such as Stargate, Star Wars and Babylon 5.<br />
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In particular, I've found two specific things that make Star Trek roleplaying rules tricky. First, hand phasers. When any moderately equipped civilian (and certainly 9 out of 10 hostile opponents) has the ability to casually reduce a whole blue whale to a glowing cloud of loose ions, then the traditional roleplaying game designers' obsession with the minutiae of a wide selection of different weapons and armour becomes pointless. Second, many games like to reward good play with increasing levels and increasing skills. But this is a poor representation of what's seen on screen. After 7 seasons, Picard gained the ability to play the flute, and to tolerate children, not unerring technical skills and immunity against disruptors. Improvements in professional skills are slow and realistic on screen, while some games want to make them sudden, major and obvious. That works fine for D&D, but in Star Trek I have not found that to be a fun or useful change, and it has even ruined the story-telling, once it gets out of hand and the players notice their characters are becoming godlike.<br />
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Luckily, all of this can be contained and resolved by the other big difference, imagination.<br />
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Imagining is the heart of roleplaying, and that can be both good and bad (mostly good, I think). Series and movies are easier, in that their writers have done all the hard work of preparing the story, and the cast and crew have brought it to life. But in a roleplaying game, that's all on the players. A good game will help the imagination to flow easily and naturally, and once you get used to it, it's far from difficult. But still always remember that it'll take some thought on your part, every time.<br />
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And in return for that minor effort, roleplaying offers something that TV series and movies can't: Choice, freedom, options, the ability to vary the story and its outcome. Roleplayers aren't a passive audience, they are participants in and directors of their own story. That alone is the main appeal, for most players.<br />
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And beyond that, relying solely on imagination opens up an infinite selection of story options. With no budget limits, no casting limits, no special effects limits, and no physical limits (other than needing to get to work in the morning), you can include or exclude whatever you like. Star Trek has been very creative and expansive, it has shaped the public perception of scifi enormously. And yet there is still plenty a TV show can never do. But within a roleplaying game, go nuts! Literally anything to the limits of your imagination.<br />
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The ability to imagine the rough edges of a game away, to smooth out awkwardness from unrealistic or boring rules, also depends on imagination. We can suspend disbelief, if we can imagine how things are supposed to be. We can even figure out which rules to completely disregard, if we can pre-imagine them getting in the way, and re-imagine how things can instead work more smoothly. Of course, this distracts from the more fun sort of imagination, and it becomes hard work if you have to spend the whole game mentally adjusting what the dice keep insisting you should be seeing. It's something games designers should rely on sparingly.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRTpnAIXu1UI3Luw28tZx20Hy3nrXb9cmiYSvxX9GFQMsFhiB8refHRLtQj9LSyQP8KrlOAUNBIMDgkv3fBVStQdMXjB0VFccpM6PmM9KV5TP-r9psGvQiGCS1HTbqzElUnQ87o3npv4Y/s1600/Trek+games+graph.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="800" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRTpnAIXu1UI3Luw28tZx20Hy3nrXb9cmiYSvxX9GFQMsFhiB8refHRLtQj9LSyQP8KrlOAUNBIMDgkv3fBVStQdMXjB0VFccpM6PmM9KV5TP-r9psGvQiGCS1HTbqzElUnQ87o3npv4Y/s640/Trek+games+graph.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My approximate, subjective graph of Trekkiness vs. Fun of various
existing Star Trek games. The same can be used as a guide for figuring
out what you want from your roleplaying games. What ranges along each axis do you want to aim for?</td></tr>
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2. <u>How does this affect player inclusion</u>?<br />
Bad rules will keep anyone away, unfortunately. Nobody likes grappling with obscure, messy, confusing rule systems as part of their fun recreation.<br />
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And for new players, that's an even more important consideration, because a tedious, annoying or cumbersome first impression won't get a lot of new people to come back for more. This is especially true for new players with no other gaming background, and thus no established sense of what a tabletop game can/should entail. Tabletop and mobile gaming may be becoming more popular, but I've got a hunch there's a socio-economic pattern behind that. If any industry expert has the international stats, I'd be interested to see them, but I can say that the pattern is still pretty damn obvious here in South Africa: Roleplayers are, for the most part, still white people with money. It's not an absolute divide, but it's definitely not a negligible one either.<br />
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Roleplaying games ought to be the easiest sort of game for just about anyone to get into. The physical infrastructure can be reduced down to any sort of random number generator (though dice aren't that hard to come by, or even make), and some paper and pencil. It can even be reduced to no physical tools at all, with sufficient imagination and a decent memory; at this point, it is reduced to the games of pretend that children everywhere play. But the formal rules and written records are supposed to elevate it to something more enduring and grown-up. And that shouldn't be so damn hard to spread far and wide, across cultural, age, and gender divides. But shitty, hard-to-follow rulebooks don't help.<br />
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The balance between narrative, simulation, and game, and how imagination moderates and enhances these three, is a pretty complicated set of considerations to discuss. It's easy to say that greater imagination is very useful, but it's not so easy to turn that into the instruction "have a better imagination"; it doesn't work that way. But I can at least point out ways it can go wrong.<br />
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To me, the biggest trap is sticking too rigidly to what's seen on the show, or what's written in the rule books. It's certainly good and useful to be able to borrow, adapt or outright plagiarise canon content, to turn it into something of your own. But you don't have to stick to what others have created, at the expense of your own creativity. If you were making a new official canon production, I'd urge more caution here, but within the far more casual confines of you and a few friends, you only need to justify your changes to each other, not an audience of millions of strangers.<br />
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There are all sorts of ways worrying too much about sticking to canon can hem in your creativity, but I think the major self-imposed limit is the urge to stick to times and places the series have already shown. I've done this myself with roleplaying games, and we see the same pattern with nearly all of the many fan-made movies and series. Even the canon series and movies have started falling into this trap, rewinding back to known periods, rather than jumping ahead into the uncharted future. I do understand it; it's comforting to stick with what's already known. Mapping out the vast unknown can feel intimidating. But having tried both, I can say that I find it a lot more fun and satisfying, in the end, to make the extra effort to map out somewhere/somewhen fresh.<br />
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Similarly, don't stick to the rules too rigidly. As I said, the earlier versions of Star Trek roleplaying games tended to heavily over-emphasize violence, and I once made the mistake of following the rules' authors too deeply down that rabbit hole. It wasn't a conscious choice, I just kept turning to the rule book for new ideas, and my players kept turning to the rules to guide their own options too. This resulted in a game that was eventually no longer recognisable as Star Trek at all, but rather some war game more similar to the boring Rebels-vs.-Empire battle bits of Star Wars.<br />
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That's not to say that war has no place in Star Trek; the series are full of examples of it. But note that their war stories are seldom about the actual fighting, so much as they are about the people, causes, consequences, and attempts to find peaceful alternatives. My mistake was that I would have enjoyed telling those sorts of stories, but I let the limitations of the formal rules funnel me towards the scenes of violence only, and I didn't use my imagination enough to look beyond that. Similar traps wait in all roleplaying games, if you're not aware of the possibility of the rules limiting how you see the game.<br />
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The broadest rule, I suppose, is that you can do whatever you like, except when you forget that you can.<br />
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Once you've accepted that, I believe you can make a game that any players, of any backgrounds and preferences, will find enjoyable and welcoming. You don't need to make your players fit uncomfortably into a game that alienates them, when you can instead make the game fit around them and their entertainment needs. Just keep this in mind, and remember that including real people is more important than strict deference to fictional characters and their fictional world. Exactly what that'll entail will depend on the individuals you're playing with, so I can't give a universal prescription. But I'm sure you can work it out yourself.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-8459509713276240522017-09-12T00:01:00.000+02:002017-09-12T16:59:26.542+02:00Unpacking the Starship BikoIn late 1992, the <i>Star Trek: The Next Generation</i> episode "<a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Datas_(episode)" target="_blank">A Fistful of Datas</a>" first aired. It was a fun, silly, low-stakes family episode (if you ignore that the plot revolves around a series of murders...). It did not deeply alter the Star Trek franchise, nor did it carry any especially deep message. It was fine.<br />
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But it was the first episode by then-new writer <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Robert_Hewitt_Wolfe" target="_blank">Robert Hewitt Wolfe</a>, and it was probably he who wrote in dialogue references and a short appearance by a small starship named the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Biko" target="_blank">USS Biko</a>. The ship was named after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko" target="_blank">Steve Biko</a>, who was killed 40 years ago today. And that is significant, if nothing else, as the most direct reference in all of Star Trek to South African apartheid. Just one little ship's name.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLlXqscwOtKkB1xpvrVVOUTEN35il5_aQ9sxyDSXScP55y-_QIA6Fi2099XywGVcHdgejv4UsngN0TWVQvk6aiA3zzrQPQnli43LIDZOdMxatV6rmZj0rZlJ_uTR4e0hiEbwNpeidh2Wk/s1600/USS_Biko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1436" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLlXqscwOtKkB1xpvrVVOUTEN35il5_aQ9sxyDSXScP55y-_QIA6Fi2099XywGVcHdgejv4UsngN0TWVQvk6aiA3zzrQPQnli43LIDZOdMxatV6rmZj0rZlJ_uTR4e0hiEbwNpeidh2Wk/s640/USS_Biko.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">USS Biko approaches USS Enterprise, in orbit of Velociraptor VII</td></tr>
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The Star Trek franchise has a long-established reputation for being against racism and oppression. So it may be a little surprising that they never tackled as ripe a target as the apartheid system directly. But not completely surprising. On the one hand, the US had its own civil rights progress to make, and American audiences might have needed a lot of catching up on the specifics of the South African situation. (Although, counter-argument to that: Is it really easier to flesh out sufficient details of an entire interstellar alien culture from scratch, in the same amount of time?)<br />
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On the other hand, there's the (more convincing, I think) point that Star Trek has always made moral arguments about the real world through analogy. Getting along with lumpy-headed aliens isn't really about aliens, it's a way of saying we should get along with each other here on Earth, regardless of superficial differences. That gives writers more room for creativity, but it also lets the audience be less defensive and more open to new ways of looking at the world. You might feel you already know the politics of Realcountrystan, and it would be difficult to shift your opinions on that in direct debate. But when you're unwinding at home, ready to enjoy the tale of the three-nosed inhabitants of Analogy World 3B, you might be surprised to learn how the other side sees the same politics, without even realising you've been led into considering this.<br />
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So it's fair to say that Star Trek addressed apartheid and similarly oppressive systems in indirect ways (for better or worse). The Biko was only allowed to slip through the cracks because it was such a minor, indirect reference.<br />
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Why that name? I can't say for sure; almost nothing is known about this ship or the thinking behind it. The rest of this paragraph is speculation only. It's possible that another writer or member of the production staff suggested the name, but for now, the most likely source of it is Wolfe himself. He was a UCLA student in the 1980s, the decade after Steve Biko's murder, so I guess it's conceivable that he was exposed to some student-level anti-apartheid activism there. Perhaps the simpler explanation is that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cry_Freedom" target="_blank"><i>Cry Freedom</i></a> (1987) had come out a few years before this episode was made; it's quite likely that Wolfe saw that and learned about Biko then. Maybe it was a bit of both, or neither.<br />
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Regardless of who chose the name or how they came to hear of Biko, it's fairly clear that Star Trek and Steve Biko fit well together, with common messages of equality, peaceful coexistence, and mutual support and development. Both embraced admittedly vague alternative forms of socialism, and rejected Soviet-style communism. Biko is also especially well known for his particular emphasis on self-improvement through education, which suits me very well, and also fits well with the Starfleet ideal of constantly learning and striving to improve and expand. It's worth reading his writing in more detail, to go beyond this very vague introductory comparison I've drawn here. But I think it's really no stretch at all to see why he might stick in the mind of a Star Trek writer.<br />
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I think it's appropriate (though most likely a matter of dumb luck, due to available stock footage) that the Biko is an Oberth-class science ship, making a routine supply run. A science ship fits better with Steve Biko's pro-education stance, and is immediately far more appropriate than anything overtly dumb and violent like a warship.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-23271037902395937202017-08-18T19:19:00.000+02:002017-08-18T19:19:44.286+02:00How to deal with neo-nazis without becoming a violent fool<div dir="ltr">
It looks like the American news cycle is going to give us another 3 and a half years that will include regular infusions of nazi-like people poking themselves into public life. It's obviously bad that they want to be racist and fascist, and it may or may not be useful that they're now exposed to the light of day, rather than festering away in secret. But one thing that's going to keep bugging me a lot, every time, are the well-meaning but badly misguided opponents of nazism who keep going on about punching them. This response is dumb, at best.</div>
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I am not the world's supreme authority on deconversion techniques, nor on conflict resolution, but I have had more than the average amount of undergraduate and postgraduate training in this sort of thing. It was one of the main things that got me interested enough in politics to get a degree in it, though I subsequently went in other directions. But I do definitely know just enough to recognise that the total amateurs calling for violent rage don't know what they're talking about at all. To highlight this point, note that by far the most common reference they are relying on is the Indiana Jones series of movies. I haven't counted yet, but I'm pretty sure that the fictional pedophile colonialist thief main character in those movies actually kills a lot more non-nazis than nazis. In fact, brutal violence is that fictional character's solution to most problems. So let's start by agreeing that this and all similar works of fiction are dumb role models for real 21st century behaviour. People who believe otherwise need to grow up, quickly.</div>
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Another popular gambit people seem to be relying on lately is saying that anyone who fought against Germany in World War 2 (or at least the British and Americans, in some perspectives I've been given) somehow proves that violence against nazis is good, great, wonderful. This argument is a smidge superior to the totally fictional Indiana Jones, I will concede, but it still lacks an astounding comprehension of how history actually happened. Even if you think soldiers are fighting for a good cause, they're still functionally only there to kill other people. Arguing that they were doing a good thing is tantamount to arguing that war is a good thing. And you know who argues that war is good? Nazis. They fucking loved war, and many of their current neo-nazi followers have a similar veneration of all things violent and military. You know who hated war? The average non-nazi. This is a massive topic we could digress into for years, but give Spike Milligan's war autobiographies a read sometime, or any of the hundreds of similar accounts, and see how a typical person in the middle of that mess felt about it all. War is entirely shit, there is no good side in it, no true good guys, and World War II in particular was an unusually brutal and wide-ranging slaughter on the largest scale humans have ever seen. It's not a period in history we should be aspiring to, because it is beneath us, not above us. Saying you want to beat people is the first step in the cycle of escalation to war that humans have witnessed a million times and never fully learned our lesson from.</div>
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There may, I will very cautiously concede, be scenarios in which an innocent person must be rescued and ad hoc violence (by that person or third parties) may be needed to improvise their rescue. But that is a world away from sitting in your underwear at home, cold-bloodedly typing into Facebook that you think we should all plan ahead for beating groups of other people, as a routine and default action, to make them do what we want. That kind of statement is the statement of a bad guy. Don't do that.</div>
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Now an interlude: This, experience tells me, is the point where I am accused of being a secret nazi sympathiser, or of not caring about their victims, or of being the unrealistic one for thinking anything short of total violence can work. I've even been accused, for the first time in my life, of being a "moderate". (I have burned a thousand bridges, with friends and strangers alike, over my strong political convictions. Accusing me of excessive moderacy is just an indication that one doesn't actually understand the words one is using and/or doesn't know me at all.)</div>
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So let me address these concerns, before spelling out a more constructive path.</div>
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I do not support nazis, racists, fascists, sexists, homophobes, or meat eaters, among others. These are all examples of deeply immoral choices, which all share the trait of personal enrichment as part of a privileged group at the expense of another, more vulnerable exploited group. Choosing to be one or more of those is a terrible mistake. But making that choice does not void a person's most basic human rights (which EVERYONE gets, even if they're a dick), it does not absolve the rest of us from our full set of moral duties, and it does not turn any human being into a mindless automaton who cannot or should not be reasoned with. Talking people out of their bigotry is hard. But beating it out of them is close to impossible AND it drags us down to their level. The reason we don't like bigots is that they try to force others to their will, often violently. There must be some pretty major cognitive dissonance to want to use the same method to make them stop that.</div>
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And of course, obviously, priority one should not be the comfort of nazis, but the wellbeing of their (intended or actual) victims. It's inaccurate and a little insulting to suggest that I don't have the well-being of these people at the front of my mind. So far, everyone who's accused me of this has been lily white English, with a bit of Afrikaans thrown in. These are not cultural heritages that are squeaky clean of abusing others, and they're not known for having been routinely badly abused themselves (except by each other, by coincidence). I've got my British ancestry. But I also have half my ancestors who were oppressed by the Ottoman Empire for centuries, and when they came to South Africa, were also oppressed by the early apartheid laws, for about a generation. I have not personally been oppressed (I've been privileged my whole life, without question), but it's ridiculous to say that I'd willingly be on the side of the oppressors, knowing how my ancestors (and just as much, the much greater number of my non-relatives) starved and trudged and bled and suffered. My entire academic and professional career has been centered around making people's lives better, not worse. I definitely don't always get it right, but I'm still far ahead of literally supporting bigots (and possibly also ahead of the typical, neutral jobsworth who makes a fair living but isn't really in the helping others business, professionally). I'm very lucky to have paying work that is so constructive to society in general. (I've got a vague hunch that people in the arts & entertainment field are more prone to getting thin-skinned over this; I like artists, I don't think they're wasting their time, generally, but I can see that they might doubt their self-worth in unfair ways, and twist that into doubt of others.)</div>
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And finally, perhaps most crucially, we need to pick apart the idea that hitting people will change their minds more than anything else, especially rational discussion. Correction: That previous sentence should read "the really fucking dumb idea that hitting people will change their minds". And this is a big obstacle right there: How to convey to someone that they've embraced a very dumb idea, without alienating them, and pushing them into embracing it even tighter, rather than admit that they've made a mistake? Obviously, I should make clear, it doesn't help at all to tell them that they're dumb stupid idiot fools. Nobody responds well to that, and it usually isn't true anyway. Smart people make dumb choices; I've made plenty and I'm at least moderately intelligent. The more important thing is the ability to move beyond these mistakes.</div>
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At the same time, we mustn't lose sight of the fact that this is a really dumb idea. It used to be widely held, in some parts of the world, that pain and physical violence helped to encourage learning and good behaviour. But this was definitely totally wrong, and there's a good century or more of research pointing in exactly the opposite direction. Pain is bad for learning. Physical violence begets more physical violence and other forms of anti-social behaviour. Operant conditioning (like the electric shock training forced on the Project Mercury chimpanzees) gets some basic, coerced behaviour through the application of pain in the short-term (which is why it was sufficient for Project Mercury's very limited needs), but it's shit for actually teaching anyone anything on an intellectual level. Hitting people just doesn't work.</div>
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Interlude over. What does work? How do you teach people things they don't want to hear? As a teacher, I can summarise it for you this way: It takes a decade or more of stressful struggle and argument and pushing and discomfort, and it requires the application of many different techniques to achieve many separate parts of the whole desired result. If it were easy, I'd be out of a job, and this post would be totally unnecessary.</div>
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So I totally understand the desire for an easy quick fix. It's frustrating enough for me when I have to push algebra into a bored grade 9's head when they'd rather be playing games. And nobody's life is in immediate, urgent danger in my classroom, usually. But wanting a quick fix is not the same as actually having one available. Beating people is definitely not it. Pretending otherwise helps nothing.</div>
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So here's what you can actually do that'll be useful: Talk to people.</div>
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To be clear, this doesn't mean any of the following:</div>
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<li>"<i>Love them</i>." Fuck that, don't abuse the concept of love in such a silly way, whether you mean it seriously or mockingly. You don't have to be full of flowers and little bunny toes to convince someone of the simple idea that it is wrong to oppress others. Arguably, you should naturally feel angry that you have to explain this at all. But one thing I've learned thoroughly from teaching is that losing your temper is a completely useless way of convincing anyone of anything, and nobody will buy fake expressions of "love" or other forms of sucking up either. Instead, do your best to be calm, neutral, but devoted to your better principles. You don't have to hate or love someone to explain something to them; you have to play a role that will get them to listen. If you can't do that, step away.</li>
<li>"<i>Let them get away with their intolerance</i>." I struggle to understand how people get stuck on this misunderstanding. We don't accept, for comparison, robbery, but we sane, normal people also don't accept that the police or private citizens should mow down suspected robbers with machine guns and chainsaws and no legal due process. There are options in between "nothing" and "murder", and it's my contention that people need to get more familiar with these more sane alternatives. If you're unwilling to accept that premeditated violence is not an ethical choice, then I say you should step away, and leave this to better people.</li>
<li>"<i>It will be easy</i>." As I've already spelled out above, changing people's convictions is far from easy. If you want quick, easy-feeling solutions, then this isn't something you should get involved in; step away.</li>
<li>"<i>Let's sink hundreds of hours into angry, pointless online rants and arguments with faceless strangers</i>." Not all talk is equally worthwhile. Focus on people you can engage with best, the precariously balanced fence-sitters, and don't try to rush the hardest challenges just to satisfy your own ego. Direct confrontation with hardcore true-believer neo-nazis is something best left to expert professionals (psychologists, psychiatrists, diplomats, and other conflict resolution experts). The best most of us can do for people that deeply twisted is to help channel them towards professional help. Otherwise, it's reasonable to step away.</li>
<li>"<i>Nazis don't deserve to suffer</i>." Choices come with consequences, sure. And depending how you do the moral maths, you might even conclude that physical pain is a morally justified punishment for really shit choices, like nazism. My position is that I don't care much what they deserve, I care what the rest of us deserve. And I say that we all deserve to be the better people, who do not have to sink to their shitty level. And I say that we all deserve a solution that will actually work and make the world better; whether you like it or not, the evidence says that beating people in the street will not work. So I don't care if you're robbed of the (somewhat sadistic) chance to cause pain; its not important that you get that chance.</li>
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How much talking you can do, who you can talk to, and how useful you will be, are all difficult things for me to predict. Everyone is different, and there's some element of luck to this, because it's hard to know exactly when is best to confront someone. But remember this: Being bad at convincing people of things is not a moral failing, it does not make you a bad person. Just do your best, encourage your friends to do their best, and hopefully our combined efforts will add up to enough. On the other hand, I think it is a moral failing to want to harm others, as a first choice of default reaction to what we all agree is unacceptable behaviour. Telling everyone to rush out to beat people in the street probably does make you a bad person. And grabbing at the violent option, just to feel like you're doing anything at all, may be natural and understandable, but try to accept that it may actually make things worse.</div>
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People calling us to beat nazis worry me, but I am still pretty optimistic. They're asking for something stupid, but I don't think they're generally stupid people. They're calling for something bad, but I don't think most of them are bad people. We're all opposed to nazis because we all agree that what nazism wants to do to people is wrong; having a bad idea of how to counter nazism probably makes you a decent person with a bad idea, rather than a bad person. And ultimately, luckily, I don't think most people calling for this violence will ever actually do it. The ones I know best are nerdy, lazy cowards, shouting at social media because they feel powerless; they're very unlikely to form vigilante gangs and go roaming the streets, looking for fights. I don't think many of them would even really know where to look for their local neo-nazi group. But I do worry that their message will provoke others, elsewhere, to do stupid things. And I know they can all actually do the talking and convincing thing better than I can, if they put their minds to it.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-67132991667629467742017-07-07T21:14:00.000+02:002017-07-07T21:14:15.628+02:00There are no Starfleet marines, it's a very dumb idea<div dir="ltr">
It's not too hard to see how the concept of a Starfleet Marine Corps might have been dreamed up by several fans over the decades. Star Trek's central exploration organisation, <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet" target="_blank">Starfleet</a>, was originally presented with several superficial parallels with the real US Navy, because it was a convenient common reference point for American audiences and writers, steeped as they are in their militaristic culture. And from there, it's not a massively imaginative leap to propose other parallels, never seen on screen, like assuming that there'd also be Starfleet marines to match the US marines (who are officially a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps#Department_of_the_Navy_and_the_U.S._Marine_Corps" target="_blank">branch within the US Navy</a>).</div>
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But this is a silly assumption. Those superficial similarities between Starfleet and the US Navy (little more than their rank structure and some basic procedural terminology) were never meant to imply that Starfleet was a military organisation, let alone an exact mirror of an older Earth military organisation. They're conceptually closer to NASA with phasers, not to a military force with warp drives.</div>
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But more importantly, there shouldn't even be any Starfleet Marine Corps, whether related to any historical military parallel or not. It would be such a massive misinterpretation of what Starfleet is for, and of what Star Trek is all about. I will now rant in a semi-structured way for several paragraphs to explain why.</div>
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First, at the broadest scale, Star Trek is about humanity being better than we used to be. War, violence, and organisations devoted purely to spreading these (a.k.a. militaries) are exactly the sorts of things the show has always presented as the horrible side of modern humans, which have been largely done away with in the future. In that sense, marines don't fit the tone or message of the franchise. If you like the optimism and hope and sense of mutual respect that most Star Trek tries to convey (i.e. if you're a real Trekkie who's actually watched the shows), then you shouldn't want it to be about people whose sole job is to kill.</div>
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Second, Starfleet isn't a military organisation. It has a partial, sporadic defence role, compared by Gene Roddenberry to the US Coast Guard's role, but that's secondary to its real goals of exploration and peaceful contact with the galaxy. In canon, there is a Starfleet Diplomatic Corps, as well as numerous science, engineering and medicine divisions. These aren't little side growths of the main thing, they are the main thing, and it's their personnel who populate starships and do the primary work of Starfleet. Similarly, the character of the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/United_Federation_of_Planets" target="_blank">United Federation of Planets</a>, the state that operates Starfleet, is a peaceful, engaging and supportive one. The Federation wouldn't burden itself with a division (either under Starfleet or autonomous) who do nothing but kill.</div>
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It's true that there is a Security division within Starfleet, and they do often go lightly armed (by 23rd/24th century standards). But security officers are not soldiers, they're more like police. Their emphasis is on preventative measures and criminal investigations, with phasers set to stun. (They also have a <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedShirt" target="_blank">long history</a> of perishing first on away missions, mostly from things no space marine, nor anyone else without a full name, could survive either.)</div>
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We do see Starfleet Security growing larger and more dominant in the period leading up to the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Dominion_War" target="_blank">Dominion War</a>, but this is presented as a dangerous aberration, not business as normal. DS9 was quite clear that we should fear and reject the militarisation of what ought to be simply a policing service, and reject the militarisation of society in general. The Federation suffers until it re-learns this lesson.</div>
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The Dominion War in general was <b>not </b>written and presented as an argument for staying heavily armed and aggressive. It was clearly an anti-war story, about how the Federation's failure to fully understand and engage with the new unknown (the Founders), and its resulting descent into fear of this unknown, could lead to runaway escalation, out of anyone's real control. It was a beautifully crafted mess, entirely believable, and ultimately still reinforcing the core principles of Star Trek idealism. Unfortunately, I notice a lot of fans didn't seem to take away much more from it than "Woo! Lots of ships! Pew pew pew!" This may be related to why some of them want there to be Starfleet marines too.</div>
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This is broadly true of any portrayal of war in Star Trek, but the Dominion War is easily the biggest and most compelling example. These wars are not failures of the concept of diplomacy, they are failures to enact diplomacy intelligently and with earnest vigour.</div>
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(And while I'm on that, but digressing, I'm baffled by people who think that <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Section_31" target="_blank">Section 31</a> should be accepted as a functional, normal component of the Federation. DS9 explicitly and overtly shows them to be a malfunctioning cancer within the Federation, a hangover from more paranoid and irrational times. Their methods are unacceptable, and their self-selected goals are questionable at best. I can see how they make for exciting story-conflict, shaking up the stability and happiness of main characters. But so does a murderer; doesn't mean we should give them an official salary and a fancy uniform to do their murders in. Section 31 ought to be reviled and rejected by any competent Starfleet Academy graduate, and fans ought to be led to view the concept that way too. Partly, it bugs me that people misunderstand the character of the Federation badly enough to want to keep Section 31 in it, and partly it annoys me that people can't see that this would ruin Section 31's story potential anyway. They only work as interesting antagonists because they're not supposed to be there.)</div>
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Some have pointed me towards the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/MACO" target="_blank">MACO</a> organisation, to suggest some sort of support for the concept of Starfleet Marines. But this is a terrible argument, in a few ways. First, the one thing the whole series of Enterprise managed to show quite consistently was how terrible things were in the bad old days before the Federation. 22nd century Earth is better off than we are now, but they still lack a lot of what eventually makes the Federation close to a proper utopia. United Earth was bad at working in space, and they made a lot of dumb mistakes, leading to some pretty big disasters, the <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Romulan_war" target="_blank">Earth-Romulan War</a> being their biggest. That series never got around to showing us exactly how that war unfolded; we just know it shook them up badly for over a century after, and pushed United Earth and its neighbours to enter into the United Federation of Planets. Avoiding another such war was a founding goal of the Federation. The smaller <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Xindi_weapon" target="_blank">Earth-Xindi conflict</a> that saw the introduction of MACOs to the series was a (somewhat badly written) analogy for the post-9/11 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_War_on_Terror" target="_blank">War on Terror</a>, which younger readers may not realise was mostly a load of crap. It was a knee jerk reaction of mindless, unfocused violence, and the MACOs symbolise that exactly (though it's unclear if the writers consciously intended this).</div>
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Second, it is now explicit canon that MACO was fully disbanded with the foundation of the Federation, and viewed as unwanted and out of date. The failure of certain former MACOs to integrate into the new Federation Starfleet illustrates just how bad a fit they were for the new Federation era, even in the earliest years. The later centuries of the Federation would be far more alien to the MACO concept. I agree that MACO is a good analogue for a marine-type force, and this only serves to further show how poor a fit such marines are for the Federation.</div>
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I have a hypothesis that many of the fans who want there to be a Starfleet Marine Corps are less influenced by the series (except perhaps parts of Enterprise and the shooty pew pew scenes from later seasons of DS9), and are instead re-imagining Starfleet in their <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fanon" target="_blank">own heads</a>, through the combined filter of random bits of Earth history, possibly some unrelated scifi series and movies (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_science_fiction_works_and_authors#Television.2C_film.2C_and_video_games" target="_blank">many of which</a> feature fully militaristic space navies and some form of space soldiers or marines), and (most crucial of all, I would guess) the many Star Trek games.</div>
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Violence is generally more easily gamified than diplomacy or science, and a great many of the more recent Star Trek video and tabletop games have focused on ship combat or infantry combat. I might write up a full survey of this in future, but it shouldn't be too controversial to point out how many Star Trek games have nothing to do with the core activities of the series. And while I think these can still be fun enough games, and I play most of them myself, I think this confuses some fans about what Star Trek is actually trying to be about. I get the feeling that some people are a lot like <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Trelane" target="_blank">General Trelane (retired)</a>; they like the shiny buttons and ceremonies of militaries, and they think the violence is just good fun. They don't want to acknowledge the harm of it all, and a few even get seriously hostile towards anyone trying to spoil their fun.</div>
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I'm especially annoyed at the existence of a marine division in the Trekkie organisation I belong to, <a href="http://sfi.org/" target="_blank">STARFLEET International</a> (SFI), which has its STARFLEET Marine Corps (SFMC). STARFLEET is a great fan organisation, I enjoy them, but SFMC is a very strange sort of parasite organisation. Since they have no canon basis for existing, they seem to attract a very separate membership set from the core SFI membership. I've been in multiple SFI chapters since 2012, both badly run and well run ones, and I've seen all sorts of people as members. And my informal assessment so far is that the kind of people who take SFMC seriously and want to participate in it are not interested in the nerdy, geeky science and politics sorts (like me) who participate in regular SFI. It might be some sort of left wing, right wing divide, now that I think of it, but I won't commit to that guess yet. But I digress. There seems to be no logical or canon reason for SFMC to exist, and no love for it from any regular SFI members I've spoken with. Yet it persists, and I think this is more about money than anything else. I suspect SFI would risk losing a huge chunk of membership fees if it cut off SFMC. And presumably SFMC gets a convenient facade of legitimacy and community from wearing the Star Trek and SFI labels. But it bugs the fuck out of me, and I wish they'd leave, or better still, "repent" and join the nicer side of Trek.</div>
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Star Trek is idealistic and optimistic and consciously non-violent, by design. The existence of phasers and photon torpedoes <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Starfleet#Military" target="_blank">raise interesting questions</a> about this ideal future, but they do not invalidate it, and neither do they validate the worst human impulses to band together to kill. The notion of a Starfleet Marine Corps is dumb, because it ignores all of the narrative, aspirational and inspirational conventions of Star Trek. Including marines would fundamentally spoil the stories being told, and they would spoil the social purpose of telling these stories. If you want to get together as a group and kill people, you clearly need to watch a lot more Star Trek.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-45339496104949496062017-05-16T21:09:00.000+02:002017-05-16T21:31:06.021+02:00Teacher's bits: Overview of the Space Race<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My grade 9 history class is covering the Cold War this term, and one lesson needed to focus on the Space Race. This was a problem for me, because I simply have way too much of that inside my head. I love this stuff. I kept trying to think of ways to focus on only the key essentials, but I always slip into massive digressions that would easily fill a whole lesson on their own. Left unchecked, I'd happily discuss nothing else all year. And my grade 9s are especially chatty and unfocused, so they'd normally have a million questions, digressing totally off topic.<br />
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So, I needed to script an unusually tight lesson plan, forcing myself to stay on topic, with a set of pre-planned slides to illustrate what I was talking about, and specially asking the kids to write down any questions they had to ask me afterwards, rather than interrupting my flow. That's not my usual style at all, my normal teaching is very similar to my game mastering style (intentionally; it was the public speaking foundation I began with), with a very improvisation-friendly skeleton of key points to hit, however seems most appropriate to the audience of the moment. I've tried scripted, rehearsed lecturing <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2014/06/sham-when-talk-was-given.html" target="_blank">before</a>, and it didn't suit me very well. But for this topic, I felt I had no choice.<br />
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In practice, I felt it went fine. It wasn't nearly as deep as I would have enjoyed, but we weren't doing this for me. <br />
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So, for anyone else needing a lesson plan on the Space Race, here is my approx. 30 minute overview lesson, emphasizing the technological roots it had in World War II (the topic we covered in term 1), and mostly covering achievements in human spaceflight. I was especially glad I happen to have read <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Chains-Gravity-Spaceflight-before/dp/1511365439" target="_blank">Breaking the Chains of Gravity</a> last year.<br />
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I've also freely thrown in a lot of technical names, especially of different rocket types, but that's not something the students need to worry about. Much more import is the general flow of broad trends and national goals.<br />
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Images are mostly taken from Wikipedia, though I've combined a few into collages. <br />
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(The format is slide image [click to embiggen], slide title as caption, and then the discussion points that go with that slide.) <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyBfLcAt7rxq4EXLsBzYkBNaTAfIcKlbMclG8BfJaTn8uMuEUZeiAWeOA78HyQMcydXka3YRZgaIenp-mL4185OZ0Ea0b9mSRPly0c9uU8oVnWttC_Lt-wKIqlofHetpEgMpfxoGBVugo/s1600/1+10d01a61125b616fc35e0c69bd3c396f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyBfLcAt7rxq4EXLsBzYkBNaTAfIcKlbMclG8BfJaTn8uMuEUZeiAWeOA78HyQMcydXka3YRZgaIenp-mL4185OZ0Ea0b9mSRPly0c9uU8oVnWttC_Lt-wKIqlofHetpEgMpfxoGBVugo/s400/1+10d01a61125b616fc35e0c69bd3c396f.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Origin of rockets</td></tr>
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<br />
<ul>
<li>Gunpowder rockets invented in 13th century China.</li>
<li>Used for centuries as entertainment and as a simple weapons.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd65s2KkHy1num5XQYl7rLk8Vd4eo5o3mnw2a6IwDVvQQgV0ilMq2QUtDiQ0krei0yg9li_xDd4N9VZjI1Ruo-7ug9uiwFJUc7oH4vKbm5nIh9NfW-WAgHnjmiFv5ooIOjrKKy5cIjjuQ/s1600/2+155fire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd65s2KkHy1num5XQYl7rLk8Vd4eo5o3mnw2a6IwDVvQQgV0ilMq2QUtDiQ0krei0yg9li_xDd4N9VZjI1Ruo-7ug9uiwFJUc7oH4vKbm5nIh9NfW-WAgHnjmiFv5ooIOjrKKy5cIjjuQ/s400/2+155fire.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artillery example</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After WW1, Treaty of Versailles included a specific rule against Germany owning any artillery guns.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Artillery was one of the most important types of weapons for killing at long distances (10+ kilometers; bombing Cresta from Concord).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But the Treaty of Versailles didn’t mention rockets at all, so the Nazi government hired a group of amateur rocket scientists to develop rocket artillery.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggvMfLaBq72TCQJsBQCzjlDi7eWGU2AvVQsP222R7vjHYmJkFsaNVXn3Ndp-7vcHMcBHtxAq9h_Dk0aLz0JJ-2Ep-2gK_LhRoqdk5H4UgWc4tpvXNzMQNaxptawbobdXTrRjln6ArhH40/s1600/3+peenemunde.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggvMfLaBq72TCQJsBQCzjlDi7eWGU2AvVQsP222R7vjHYmJkFsaNVXn3Ndp-7vcHMcBHtxAq9h_Dk0aLz0JJ-2Ep-2gK_LhRoqdk5H4UgWc4tpvXNzMQNaxptawbobdXTrRjln6ArhH40/s400/3+peenemunde.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">von Braun (suit)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Leader of the German rocket scientists was Wernher von Braun.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">They were mostly interested in exploring space, but were happy to take the army’s money to build weapons instead.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AUpdcuuLQ-8ep3XTXemrsxpAVQliROe-z4cX3kax7EBksqYyhgXrczbGtEIXjWP7NcgoTmJaki-uDU7gv3UYw9Y4XSCEtzmswB73DeBGdpdu53-71S8m5D6toA-FL0zi2zxIkQbZr10/s1600/4+CrixoGVWcAAfo1v.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AUpdcuuLQ-8ep3XTXemrsxpAVQliROe-z4cX3kax7EBksqYyhgXrczbGtEIXjWP7NcgoTmJaki-uDU7gv3UYw9Y4XSCEtzmswB73DeBGdpdu53-71S8m5D6toA-FL0zi2zxIkQbZr10/s400/4+CrixoGVWcAAfo1v.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">V-2</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In 1942, they finally had the V-2 rocket ready.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It could carry a bomb 300km away (more than halfway from Joburg to Durban).</span></li>
</ul>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEham0wrpeqbzLX37gs9dI2TyZgcpDSF01AeS59Os2FCGLWLFVF0FehfRjsVo7b3ZXGvvEDmwxvgnKeDuOoi0Rsf5Y6xJ2FncoINElj2SqxG4XpWH95RTjGQwS4Iyc8h2hbLoosEBYzUldk/s1600/5+Mittelwerk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEham0wrpeqbzLX37gs9dI2TyZgcpDSF01AeS59Os2FCGLWLFVF0FehfRjsVo7b3ZXGvvEDmwxvgnKeDuOoi0Rsf5Y6xJ2FncoINElj2SqxG4XpWH95RTjGQwS4Iyc8h2hbLoosEBYzUldk/s400/5+Mittelwerk.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mittelwerk</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li>Small number of scientists couldn’t make thousands of weapons needed for war, so concentration camp prisoners were used as slave labour to build V-2s.</li>
<li>Up 60 000 slaves worked in a hidden underground factory, called the Mittelwerk.</li>
<li>Around 9000 people were killed by V-2 attacks. 20 000 people died working at Mittelwerk.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi-f1_1_fYPnBbrxdPYn-geMQN6RIWxaOx3Eyqc_o7pdPyVzxwrEOTRaKCAxdEegHxXW_2ppiqZOQJC28HP6yO6RwV-cJT85feQkPsztOq-Ea0hmjFgDL4EinDdNKgTqE0377jMNY_9H4/s1600/6+o-10-900.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhi-f1_1_fYPnBbrxdPYn-geMQN6RIWxaOx3Eyqc_o7pdPyVzxwrEOTRaKCAxdEegHxXW_2ppiqZOQJC28HP6yO6RwV-cJT85feQkPsztOq-Ea0hmjFgDL4EinDdNKgTqE0377jMNY_9H4/s400/6+o-10-900.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">first photo of Earth from space, 1946</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">V-2 was also the first human machine to go into space. A test launch in 1944 reached 176km above sea level.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZS_vmnJeWqgwlc1gBtIItRsSNfIbevTmOFDRCg_EzD7IfhShgwIm3R1kYZ46jEfr2yG1gFzVnS2jPxhGYI6hsNYzPTpHqHVf1bWE4VjTTy_eloL2i5EL_AprZAm2pXjGzvU6gsOlDoxE/s1600/8+von+Braun%252C+Korolev%252C+Bumper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZS_vmnJeWqgwlc1gBtIItRsSNfIbevTmOFDRCg_EzD7IfhShgwIm3R1kYZ46jEfr2yG1gFzVnS2jPxhGYI6hsNYzPTpHqHVf1bWE4VjTTy_eloL2i5EL_AprZAm2pXjGzvU6gsOlDoxE/s400/8+von+Braun%252C+Korolev%252C+Bumper.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Captured von Braun, Korolev, Bumper</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">During last months of WW2, Allies rushed to grab Nazi technological secrets, including von Braun’s scientists and rockets.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Von Braun chose to surrender most scientists to USA, moved there.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">USSR only caught a few scientists, but got most of the rocket test facilities. Moved these to USSR.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">USSR research headed by former political prisoner, Sergei Korolev</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Both started trying to improve on German designs.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxoiXIQh3hIsJST1587VzL5ElpGw1hMzv878vMzOhjgj91qPJJoD2YpnWYRekW_eQ_XhM9pCnlKehG9FXzzU2W8IXPv5oIHKrF4TSS26RPyeV6MJCx-rS1jpG3PHv3jz1GrMA-lRmxq1M/s1600/7+orbit+%2526+suborbit.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxoiXIQh3hIsJST1587VzL5ElpGw1hMzv878vMzOhjgj91qPJJoD2YpnWYRekW_eQ_XhM9pCnlKehG9FXzzU2W8IXPv5oIHKrF4TSS26RPyeV6MJCx-rS1jpG3PHv3jz1GrMA-lRmxq1M/s400/7+orbit+%2526+suborbit.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Basic rocket science jargon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[A technical interlude to clarify some very basic rocket science terms, without which, a lot of this discussion doesn't make much sense.]</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Suborbital flight: Up, into space, and then down again. Relatively easy for smaller rockets.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Orbit: Go up, move sideways fast enough that you don’t come back down again. Much harder, needs much more powerful rockets.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">V-2 could only do suborbital.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Rockets have at least two main parts to them: Launcher and payload.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Launcher is the flamey bit that moves the payload off the ground and into space.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Payload is the thing on top that will do the job you want it to do (could be bomb, communication satellite, observing (spy or science) satellite, crew capsule)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A human isn’t that heavy, but air, water, food, temperature control, radiation protection, control panels, seats, windows, etc., all add mass.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">[Sub-interlude to explain why 1957 was an especially crucial year for spaceflight]</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1957 was declared the International Geophysical Year, when scientists from around the world would cooperate on major studies of the whole Earth. Leaders of the USA and USSR both saw this year as an important opportunity to get research satellites into orbit.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If the international community considered research satellites normal and legal, then it would be far easier to sneak some military spy satellites into orbit too.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8hjKMe2lZ8NUDV5M1cy5zCbBdniqyLMJ9US1tgNFUIHY4gMoZ7hZiVm-m-f-AwW0QUotVdeKaURncchP2C2fRbukvdSTIDcgpJBD9Z_Kh6OSY7TIOv6vMB-YHVZWJr1FVWw4Osr4v2m0/s1600/9+R-7+payloads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8hjKMe2lZ8NUDV5M1cy5zCbBdniqyLMJ9US1tgNFUIHY4gMoZ7hZiVm-m-f-AwW0QUotVdeKaURncchP2C2fRbukvdSTIDcgpJBD9Z_Kh6OSY7TIOv6vMB-YHVZWJr1FVWw4Osr4v2m0/s400/9+R-7+payloads.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soviet headstart, Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2, Luna 1, Luna 2, Vostok 1</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Korolev developed V-2 technology into very powerful rocket called the R-7, much bigger than any Western rocket of the time.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">R-7 could carry nuclear bombs hundreds of kilometers away.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Also powerful enough to put satellites in orbit. Science satellites could study the Earth and space, but could also be spy satellites to watch other countries’ militaries and find their secrets.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">R-7 launched:</span><ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Oct 1957: Sputnik 1, first ever artificial satellite.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Nov 1957: Sputnik 2, first satellite to carry an animal, the dog Laika. Laika died within hours due to overheating.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1959: Luna 1 and Luna 2, first successful probes to the Moon. Luna 1 flew past the Moon, Luna 2 was intentionally crashed into the surface of the Moon.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">12 April 1961: First human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on Vostok 1.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Several other “firsts”.</span></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">R-7s are still used today.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEQ6B5PMEOT75cxoHZVYBvh_ZSk145VCeTr74EjGAo63iLEJ74K79OKtO-ZRDavVTwyznOjfKrGdRttihFxq7fxgxYOBkd0lMwkDOYtvz_mNcSxTryz98-0iMbneZsO0pyKrFNekJvsW8/s1600/10+US+reporting.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEQ6B5PMEOT75cxoHZVYBvh_ZSk145VCeTr74EjGAo63iLEJ74K79OKtO-ZRDavVTwyznOjfKrGdRttihFxq7fxgxYOBkd0lMwkDOYtvz_mNcSxTryz98-0iMbneZsO0pyKrFNekJvsW8/s400/10+US+reporting.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">US headlines</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Western reporting on Soviet launches was often ‘alarmist’ – very fearful, emphasizing lack of US ability to keep up, and implying huge risk of unstoppable Soviet nuclear attack, falling from the sky at any time.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Soviet media published less about their own setbacks.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBzRVw0VgCbqxmfATQ4pVm4wVlp_X5Wr7HBgaUZ_HueEKLiD2wutjmOpcEKyixl0_JBIprFvl9ZtpW3Z8fLkD9GFIxRYb7gmRtrFEWvDQllL3OsLKcf1kCnr7ZlFe_LgBiPYiAQrCj9E/s1600/11+Mercury.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBzRVw0VgCbqxmfATQ4pVm4wVlp_X5Wr7HBgaUZ_HueEKLiD2wutjmOpcEKyixl0_JBIprFvl9ZtpW3Z8fLkD9GFIxRYb7gmRtrFEWvDQllL3OsLKcf1kCnr7ZlFe_LgBiPYiAQrCj9E/s400/11+Mercury.jpg" width="323" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">US response, X-15, Mercury</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">US companies had already been working on spacecraft since von Braun and the V-2 were brought across, but American public and politicians suddenly demanded much faster results.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Research on the complicated X-15 rocket plane was largely ignored, in favour of the simpler, smaller, quicker to build Mercury capsule.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But early on, the US didn’t have a rocket powerful enough to put the Mercury capsule into orbit, so they just launched suborbitally on the weaker Redstone nuclear launcher, basically an enlarged V-2. The first US astronaut launched a month after Gagarin.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Even when they put Mercury capsules on bigger Atlas rockets the next year, and got Americans into orbit, it still wasn’t as much or as high as the Soviet R-7 could manage. Vostoks kept doing more than Mercuries could.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Americans remained fearful. President Kennedy declared the US would win the Space Race by putting humans on the Moon before 1970.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MjsyhbTrK0rVsQ3HRC47uyhIF-tziWT3iX-2j4mlB_tfk7g5ZJKsWeCpKNxEjutJQNlgmdydOYSETKLW2qV2WxVKPi72bNpJMkLezqnNChBtOMrhAr2U6Xrt8yYx845KeyhXZVqkBIY/s1600/12+Gemini+Apollo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9MjsyhbTrK0rVsQ3HRC47uyhIF-tziWT3iX-2j4mlB_tfk7g5ZJKsWeCpKNxEjutJQNlgmdydOYSETKLW2qV2WxVKPi72bNpJMkLezqnNChBtOMrhAr2U6Xrt8yYx845KeyhXZVqkBIY/s400/12+Gemini+Apollo.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">US progress, Gemini, Apollo-Saturn IB, Apollo-Saturn V</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">With the Moon target, US rockets and spacecraft kept getting bigger.</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Mercury was upgraded to Gemini, and then the two-piece Apollo set.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Redstone and Atlas were replaced with the larger Titan II nuclear missile, and then the much larger Saturn IB. In the late 1960s, US launchers were finally bigger than the Soviet R-7.</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For the Moon missions, Apollo needed the biggest launcher ever, the Saturn V.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon on 20 July 1969. 12 Americans on 6 Apollo missions until 1972, got to walk on the Moon.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">...and then US pretty much decided they had won the Space Race, and there was no longer any money to return humans to the Moon, let alone any deeper to Mars, Venus, or other planets.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4r8GNlwxG_FicPhYO7eMhR5SmlseEsmBA6G-0GN6cTnxkIxOVfhVFDa4r9a9MBgbQeYfgX-qH2JHSFZ1moLs_ROHYE9KKHa78r9pn_g8sK_BT7Eni61kG12tGY2aDszV3yOMPfmQIkL0/s1600/13+N1%252C+Soyuz%252C+Salyut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4r8GNlwxG_FicPhYO7eMhR5SmlseEsmBA6G-0GN6cTnxkIxOVfhVFDa4r9a9MBgbQeYfgX-qH2JHSFZ1moLs_ROHYE9KKHa78r9pn_g8sK_BT7Eni61kG12tGY2aDszV3yOMPfmQIkL0/s400/13+N1%252C+Soyuz%252C+Salyut.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soviet N1, Salyut 6 station and a Soyuz</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Soviet Moon launcher, the N1, equivalent to the American Saturn V, was a failure. It crashed and exploded on every test launch. With no huge launcher, the Soviets couldn’t send any people to the Moon.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The new Soviet Soyuz spacecraft was also too unreliable for the first few years to be sent to the Moon (though it was later fixed and is still in use <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2017/04/happy-50th-soyuz.html" target="_blank">today</a>).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Without the technology to reach the Moon, the USSR changed its goal from Moon landings to long-term space stations in Earth orbit. The first space station, Salyut 1, was occupied for 2 weeks in 1967. More space stations followed, and today’s International Space Station still uses some of the same components as the original Salyut stations.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Arguably, the sustained Soviet/Russian station operations have achieved more in the long run than the quicker US burst to reach the Moon and then stop.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvTQPqA9R0yqdOwrX5m2NVR9gBnZrpLp2XOokA40_eWIPY_e89Prtq82ZuDSueXe0-3eX93nFeLowMaq7pzOY6TGGi8gB5GKkv2EWqTOMNHfEAjY3e3n-TMAwgRuMywrPr82ItagCOqlE/s1600/14+international+meetups.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvTQPqA9R0yqdOwrX5m2NVR9gBnZrpLp2XOokA40_eWIPY_e89Prtq82ZuDSueXe0-3eX93nFeLowMaq7pzOY6TGGi8gB5GKkv2EWqTOMNHfEAjY3e3n-TMAwgRuMywrPr82ItagCOqlE/s400/14+international+meetups.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ASTP, Mir, ISS</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After the Moon Race ended, both sides felt less sense of competition, and were finally able cooperate. First ever international docking, in 1975, between Soyuz 19 and Apollo 18.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After the Cold War ended, cooperation increased, with US space shuttles visiting the Russian Mir station during the 1990s.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">US, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada cooperated in assembling the enormous structure of the International Space Station, starting in 1998.</span></li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildof5X_M5mIdprx8mpAPkrd9gHN7sCgJVjJvKxp_zwBvGmRIE5raaJU-2MSpez7y-1-ORLjtxe_MUdjLWkWsSfaM34KC3RUyKrHnSsmfRdBjdLE4dZTmwvwD1SloS6CEXsV_LAIN8bio/s1600/14a+dims.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildof5X_M5mIdprx8mpAPkrd9gHN7sCgJVjJvKxp_zwBvGmRIE5raaJU-2MSpez7y-1-ORLjtxe_MUdjLWkWsSfaM34KC3RUyKrHnSsmfRdBjdLE4dZTmwvwD1SloS6CEXsV_LAIN8bio/s400/14a+dims.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Proposed Deep Space Gateway lunar station</td></tr>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Plans
for international Moon station, Mars missions?</span> </span></li>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5meY2jI5DNumkkS8G6g09cDBgoQE81q13z88WJbZbIqlEJdptQ_uwasGveNcuI-sB-UXzaDJDpl8wiJO7PRM-OC7lYWChban2W_inVQ8UaD7wx3do58PdyO5xsy7dFgba6m8RPM7R2mU/s1600/15+tiangong2+shenzhou+OV.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5meY2jI5DNumkkS8G6g09cDBgoQE81q13z88WJbZbIqlEJdptQ_uwasGveNcuI-sB-UXzaDJDpl8wiJO7PRM-OC7lYWChban2W_inVQ8UaD7wx3do58PdyO5xsy7dFgba6m8RPM7R2mU/s400/15+tiangong2+shenzhou+OV.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chinese, Indian 21st century spacecraft</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Several other countries have developed launch capabilities (SA sub-orbital launches in 1989/1990), but the only other launches of humans so far are by China, starting with Shenzhou 5, in 2003.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">USA refuses to do space missions with China, so China built its own stations.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;">India also has partly developed crew capsule that could carry people a few years from now.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-80432807239833719682017-04-23T02:35:00.000+02:002017-04-23T02:35:00.844+02:00Happy 50th, Soyuz!23 April 1967, 50 years ago today, the first crewed <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_(spacecraft)" target="_blank">Soyuz</a> spacecraft launched. Three days ago, the latest crewed Soyuz spacecraft launched and docked with the ISS. We've been flying to space in this same design for a full 50 years now, and more of them have been built than any other type of spacecraft by a huge margin - it's the VW Beetle of human spaceflight. Uncrewed test launches of Soyuzes had begun in November 1966, so by that measure, Soyuz already passed its 50th anniversary last year. But I'm more inclined to measure crewed spacecraft by when they're actually inhabited in space.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTDGrKSvcawOg_FuSzL4ORNwZjE-uWopiPhnqc8N71WAoLsfYQAQoyo2KkkFRWpDMz4jZMygNhMEDnFIQa51DR3Xu2sZLMdz1SW4HMK5OKfm_KWl3ckwHUKTDt16A7GWyrGfH4Y_Ytr8I/s1600/fjordsoyuz.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTDGrKSvcawOg_FuSzL4ORNwZjE-uWopiPhnqc8N71WAoLsfYQAQoyo2KkkFRWpDMz4jZMygNhMEDnFIQa51DR3Xu2sZLMdz1SW4HMK5OKfm_KWl3ckwHUKTDt16A7GWyrGfH4Y_Ytr8I/s400/fjordsoyuz.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
The closest any other crewed spacecraft comes to that longevity is the DOS space station core module (reaching its 46th crew-carrying anniversary this June), which featured in most of the Salyut space stations and the Mir space station, and is currently part of the ISS. Soyuz and DOS were designed to work together, so it's appropriate but remarkable that they're still doing so today. You'll see in the visual history below how much the two vessel types have been connected.<br />
<br />
By coincidence, today is also the 46th anniversary of Soyuz 10's unsuccessful docking attempt with Salyut 1, the first Soyuz-DOS meetup in orbit. Later this year we'll see the 60th anniversary of the R-7 family of rockets, the oldest orbital launcher there is, variants of which have launched all crewed Soyuzes and most uncrewed Soyuzes, plus all sorts of other things.<br />
<br />
The longest serving US spacecraft, the Space Shuttle Orbiter, lasted 30 years, and the 5 of those that were built got into space 134 times, accruing a total spaceflight time of just under 1 331 days. Flying only once each, 132 Soyuzes have gotten their crews into space 132 times so far, adding up to 14 956 days of human spaceflight time, and counting. Nine more Soyuzes are scheduled to launch, keeping them in use until 2020. Adding in all the uncrewed Soyuz and Soyuz-variant launches more than doubles the number of times the Soyuz family has flown; there were no uncrewed Space Shuttle flights. So, it's not the simplest comparison.<br />
<br />
The second most numerous spacecraft design was the Apollo CSM, of which a mere 15 were launched into space with humans on board.<br />
<br />
And while the latest version of Soyuz is definitely modernised and digital, it's also still clearly very close to its original 1960s form; consider below the full evolution of the Soyuz:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6XtMAeFoiCVcFlisaTpe2UIcVHyzUo94lKAaiFS22o1S16Q3k_db_yvda7Pws3fmcXV2Xp1PKJCM2N3Cpmk_OVPcgZoS5DztAIVbDtZh8_6M43dgxssUTCHbDizZjqnoh9qX1B-vjl-M/s1600/Soy+Summ.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6XtMAeFoiCVcFlisaTpe2UIcVHyzUo94lKAaiFS22o1S16Q3k_db_yvda7Pws3fmcXV2Xp1PKJCM2N3Cpmk_OVPcgZoS5DztAIVbDtZh8_6M43dgxssUTCHbDizZjqnoh9qX1B-vjl-M/s640/Soy+Summ.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Click to embiggen.)<br />
Top row: Crewed variants of Soyuz.<br />
Bottom row, left group: Major uncrewed variants of Soyuz.<br />
Bottom row, right group: Crewed variants of Tiangong.<br />
(Image credit mostly goes to <a href="http://historicspacecraft.com/">historicspacecraft.com</a>, with a couple bits from elsewhere and/or modified by me.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Note that I've included more than just the crewed versions. Soyuz has been around so long, it's been mutated into a few different forms - most import of all is undeniably the Progress cargo vessel. I've also included China's larger Tiangong spacecraft, which was intentionally based on the Soyuz layout, and operates in a very similar way. It is arguably part of the Soyuz family.<br />
<br />
One weird thing going through all of the Soyuz missions brings up is how openly sexist the Soviet and Russian space programs have been. Hundreds of people have travelled on Soyuzes, but only 3 of them were Russian women (less than 1 per decade!), and no Soyuz has ever had a woman commander. There are plenty of stories floating about of nasty sexism in Soviet/Russian spaceflight, and they even chose to put it in some of their public relations videos. One case leapt out at me from the Soyuz TMA-11 near-disaster, discussed towards the end of this post. The Roscosmos general director at the time publicly blamed the fact that the vessel concerned had too many women onboard (one American, one South Korean), and said he'd work to prevent this from happening again. You don't joke about crap like that, but I suspect he wasn't kidding.<br />
<br />
Because Soyuz has been around for so long, it's hard to discuss absolutely every flight and every crew. At the same time, one of its virtues has been how uneventful and routine most of its operations have become. I think the best way to celebrate this 50th anniversary is a simple visual history of some of the major Soyuz moments. Even condensed this way, it's still a lot.<br />
<br />
1966-11-26 (no image available): Kosmos 133, the first uncrewed Soyuz test vehicle, launches.
It malfunctioned in orbit and was intentionally destroyed before it could crash. Two further uncrewed test
launches followed, both with serious systems failures.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBkceAPrKKft-6uvAYrBRoTIyoNEB71mi3wZOW2FdPq05eSQpXgU8A-ZbervMHiWKUWX-asd9wDGjcKz0GnpIfaKVsBgBzDCARB3wmnAnJQwJjYwMObMwd6MwnZY6WD7SPWSRfnmgybY/s1600/soyuz-1_pad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBkceAPrKKft-6uvAYrBRoTIyoNEB71mi3wZOW2FdPq05eSQpXgU8A-ZbervMHiWKUWX-asd9wDGjcKz0GnpIfaKVsBgBzDCARB3wmnAnJQwJjYwMObMwd6MwnZY6WD7SPWSRfnmgybY/s320/soyuz-1_pad.jpg" width="223" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1967-04-23: Soyuz 1 launches, with a single pilot, Vladimir Komarov. Space Race pressure had rushed a premature launch, and the flight was a complete disaster, with several technical failures forcing an early landing. But the parachute failed too, and Komarov simply fell straight from orbit to the ground, the first fatal spaceflight.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCDN66EHttBVWzm2j2HXDoDIU3bf94EtG3FX04okY12ZeDjLauBmg8P6A6eq3Ll7bTGe2fNNCBw-zuLqROEFtyXWbVsfhtJ9bposCJh4Sxc56TQ-f4oOFDbmJS36qd0FsLPBePFJD6Mis/s1600/soyuz-3_landing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCDN66EHttBVWzm2j2HXDoDIU3bf94EtG3FX04okY12ZeDjLauBmg8P6A6eq3Ll7bTGe2fNNCBw-zuLqROEFtyXWbVsfhtJ9bposCJh4Sxc56TQ-f4oOFDbmJS36qd0FsLPBePFJD6Mis/s320/soyuz-3_landing.jpg" width="191" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1968-10-30: Soyuz 3 lands safely, the first successful crewed Soyuz landing. Soyuz 3 had met up with the uncrewed Soyuz 2 in orbit, but failed to dock with it. Soyuz was the first Soviet spacecraft designed for orbital docking, so many of its early flights were focused around docking experiments.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwnaWtjnAQB2BXDUVSZ3tFr9kKHA4T9IwCmzs7EqoGHZtJgNhDbHJHJfXgL2NJD_qzcr320-T07uC27DYDh6-hLqIKkF0pvTjZhUUtP-iJYwBarg66eMZ8bSR1ncsSJgUktpSo6aExsYI/s1600/soyuz-5_onboard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwnaWtjnAQB2BXDUVSZ3tFr9kKHA4T9IwCmzs7EqoGHZtJgNhDbHJHJfXgL2NJD_qzcr320-T07uC27DYDh6-hLqIKkF0pvTjZhUUtP-iJYwBarg66eMZ8bSR1ncsSJgUktpSo6aExsYI/s320/soyuz-5_onboard.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1969-01-16: Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 dock in orbit, allowing the first crew transfer from one spacecraft to another, and therefore also the first time that cosmonauts had landed in a different vessel from the one they launched in. They had to spacewalk along the outside of the spacecraft to get from one to the other, as there was no internal hatch between the two yet.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU_ib7WRZxgUkPWhRsG4njstVuTuKAc__WsHyb0J9pAXuufm4L21tNZr7ALoPVryU1G1r5yr8LFmimNsH7JJPPh-Si4OqYqmw_2NJDGPNPkylkBFUD5oI6C4BvLfHq6cwm8D76JgTB2Ic/s1600/Salyut1_with_docked_Soyuz_spacecraft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU_ib7WRZxgUkPWhRsG4njstVuTuKAc__WsHyb0J9pAXuufm4L21tNZr7ALoPVryU1G1r5yr8LFmimNsH7JJPPh-Si4OqYqmw_2NJDGPNPkylkBFUD5oI6C4BvLfHq6cwm8D76JgTB2Ic/s320/Salyut1_with_docked_Soyuz_spacecraft.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1971-04-23: Soyuz 10 attempts to dock with Salyut 1, the first ever
space station, but fails to completely do so. Then they had trouble
getting completely loose from the station's docking equipment again, but eventually got home.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwoMchSFR4AhiyKpVki7762rizfzvooO2hZeJO-McVlq04JLjAxNFuvRv7fNP4GN5Jhx7iMRJoYpeZ3ecrKFBvnRSlbDXk8CtK40bBbyzOb4RFP3YhP01nnwZJ-eis5sv_0SbVhq5o7fQ/s1600/soyuz-11_recovery_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwoMchSFR4AhiyKpVki7762rizfzvooO2hZeJO-McVlq04JLjAxNFuvRv7fNP4GN5Jhx7iMRJoYpeZ3ecrKFBvnRSlbDXk8CtK40bBbyzOb4RFP3YhP01nnwZJ-eis5sv_0SbVhq5o7fQ/s320/soyuz-11_recovery_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1971-06-30: Ground crews perform CPR on the already dead crew of Soyuz 11, shortly after it landed. Soyuz 11 successfully docked with Salyut 1, making it the first occupied space station in history. The crew of Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev spent 22 successful days working on the station, but after they undocked Soyuz 11 to go home again, their spacecraft began to rapidly depressurize, asphyxiating the crew in seconds. They are the only humans to have died in space, and while there have been further Soyuz accidents, this was the last fatal one.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs4V3WSD0ySiORPzuO5AaDIf4OWNbsSYzmEZ4FKHk-i_jtTWJudU06UaHVARuxSCMSPN8sM-lyuGmLbI-h8sIlNJAWEkgymQyyLKzmUFPK4fc6IRNVQCUantpqG2Me9VWvYf2sTd3HR0c/s1600/soyuz-14_launch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs4V3WSD0ySiORPzuO5AaDIf4OWNbsSYzmEZ4FKHk-i_jtTWJudU06UaHVARuxSCMSPN8sM-lyuGmLbI-h8sIlNJAWEkgymQyyLKzmUFPK4fc6IRNVQCUantpqG2Me9VWvYf2sTd3HR0c/s320/soyuz-14_launch.jpg" width="236" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1974-07-03: Soyuz 14 launches, docking with the Salyut 3 space station, probably the only crewed spacecraft to be armed.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2TPmZL9ODDxwE1b7nh21S4XlgyuAWdNAbS2c84COZfhDokmzqdQbWuvd1cd7kpOLn6q8dkZC9At9ZBkjGAkpvvYAI2GmhQJYyPrEm3Zk0NuX9lDt7B18SnAEmefXdhxNbZy_yFHjJv5s/s1600/soyuz-18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2TPmZL9ODDxwE1b7nh21S4XlgyuAWdNAbS2c84COZfhDokmzqdQbWuvd1cd7kpOLn6q8dkZC9At9ZBkjGAkpvvYAI2GmhQJYyPrEm3Zk0NuX9lDt7B18SnAEmefXdhxNbZy_yFHjJv5s/s320/soyuz-18.jpg" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1975-01-12: Soyuz 17 docks with the Salyut 4 space station for a month. A
little over 3 months later, Soyuz 18 docks with Salyut 4 (pictured), making it the
first Salyut to receive more than one crew. They were followed in
November that year by Soyuz 20, which I believe was the only conventional* Soyuz ever with a
fully non-human crew: Tortoises and fruit flies were kept inside as
part of a biology research project, while the Soyuz was given a
long-duration (90 day) engineering test by remote control. Since the
non-human animals never entered Salyut 4, it's a matter of precise definition whether they were its 3rd group of visitors or not.<br />
<br />
(*By conventional, I mean the Earth-orbit crew ferry sort of Soyuz, normally used by human crews. In 1968 there were two variant Soyuzes of the Zond lunar program that also carried non-human animals. Zond 5 successfully carried tortoises, wine flies and meal worms around the Moon and safely landed back on Earth. Zond 6 also flew around the Moon with similar passengers, but on return to Earth, it suddenly depressurized, killing everything inside, and then also suffered a prachute failure. If Zond 6 hadn't failed, and if Apollo 8 hadn't beaten them to it, the next Soyuz 7K-L1 might have been allowed to launch humans around the Moon. There may have been animals on one or more Progresses too, but I haven't dug that up yet.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhARHKWQ7XRDkwktfv2LR-ei8Ii65DiQMxKmxQIF4JVrcYVWgKBoc3qsum_ABNPN-c1o74hfrmkc3syEMSXZhHe75c4Of8OEUPJPanQq5vt_q2ofj0l4Ylr29XQZi1uIVpMLLdZjRaz-U8/s1600/eb13kJy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhARHKWQ7XRDkwktfv2LR-ei8Ii65DiQMxKmxQIF4JVrcYVWgKBoc3qsum_ABNPN-c1o74hfrmkc3syEMSXZhHe75c4Of8OEUPJPanQq5vt_q2ofj0l4Ylr29XQZi1uIVpMLLdZjRaz-U8/s320/eb13kJy.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1975-04-05: The crew of what is now officially only called Soyuz 7K-T #39, but also variously known as Soyuz 18a, Soyuz 18-1, or the 5 April Anomaly, and what had orginally been launched as Soyuz 18 (for a few minutes, anyway). Due to a mechanical failure and subsequent launch abort, just after it reached space, this accidentally became the only crewed suborbital Soyuz launch. The re-entry module landed on a snowy slope and rolled down it for a while, but the crew survived.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBePiJItJRqnEjPcC-2z0P2Mur0UNDD9fdav34EzvheyhdM_P-cCcti0pxX2mSReKUhyuzi5MLQ2mbmXvU4U8GGEvFXiG9BkYtWh_wsfATfE403yEBl_HhLNlVT-TQPq9SAbgVGmnMiSs/s1600/s75-29432.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBePiJItJRqnEjPcC-2z0P2Mur0UNDD9fdav34EzvheyhdM_P-cCcti0pxX2mSReKUhyuzi5MLQ2mbmXvU4U8GGEvFXiG9BkYtWh_wsfATfE403yEBl_HhLNlVT-TQPq9SAbgVGmnMiSs/s320/s75-29432.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1975-07-17: Soyuz 19 and Apollo 18 dock in orbit, the first international spacecraft docking. They didn't do much up there, but their long-term influence has been enormous.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUgMNg6LFf3avrrXxepY5ebaTXeMtk8wFHrjGKklu8ZlmzIj0x0GQQMO4Scj08iRfb8xlE4kPofmCgavFbdtsrZcZ800iNx5bnS0f3C-JfoQZgtUsYWThcqhqyExdEctwv_E2ec1JXuNk/s1600/soyuz-21_launch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUgMNg6LFf3avrrXxepY5ebaTXeMtk8wFHrjGKklu8ZlmzIj0x0GQQMO4Scj08iRfb8xlE4kPofmCgavFbdtsrZcZ800iNx5bnS0f3C-JfoQZgtUsYWThcqhqyExdEctwv_E2ec1JXuNk/s320/soyuz-21_launch.jpg" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1976-07-07: Soyuz 21 becomes first spacecraft to dock with the Salyut 5 space station. Soyuz 23 failed to become second to dock there, and on landing accidentally became trapped under the ice of Lake Tengiz, the only crewed Soyuz water landing. It took 9 cold hours to safely get the crew out. Soyuz 24 later made the actual second (and final) successful docking with Salyut 5.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5hcfXKgHIVIh-9Sa0PgLY9RRpwAzjs9Vxkh19S3ykt0zhKO8CvTqA4fU57W1mzQLRgo-kKcv6aoy1HXJADMksOUohSRxxKUpxRYhojzlKp4E7Eu-L9L36ZQK8-gR6-LypyICD6l6J0g/s1600/soyuz-t-4_salyut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl5hcfXKgHIVIh-9Sa0PgLY9RRpwAzjs9Vxkh19S3ykt0zhKO8CvTqA4fU57W1mzQLRgo-kKcv6aoy1HXJADMksOUohSRxxKUpxRYhojzlKp4E7Eu-L9L36ZQK8-gR6-LypyICD6l6J0g/s320/soyuz-t-4_salyut.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1977-12-11: Following the failure of Soyuz 25 to dock with Salyut 6, Soyuz 26 becomes first to dock with the new space station. In total, 17 Soyuzes successfully docked with Salyut 6, as well as one more failed docking by Soyuz 33. Soyuz T-4 (pictured) was the last to undock from the station, on 1981-05-26. Salyut 6 was the first space station to allow multiple simultaneous dockings, so that Progress supply ships could make deliveries to crews, and multiple crews could board the station at the same time, without having to leave the station unoccupied. This was first demonstrated when Soyuz 27 arrived a week before Soyuz 26 departed. Salyut 6 was also notable for beginning the Interkosmos program of various international guest cosmonauts joining the Soyuz/Salyut crews on a regular basis.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikbqtZ7YwSLgcBFpe1iYiaQ0W2HFKayAyNtzUUQGf-DYIWWSnkCUvikCxaxnSWLLs8NKaTRcVq3pHi0ukZC_QWFZaTS3TcHN-pp7LdYfY728CR5rXAZbWOE2_6h0Nc46_1947UqZbZ9po/s1600/soyuz-t-14_salyut-7_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikbqtZ7YwSLgcBFpe1iYiaQ0W2HFKayAyNtzUUQGf-DYIWWSnkCUvikCxaxnSWLLs8NKaTRcVq3pHi0ukZC_QWFZaTS3TcHN-pp7LdYfY728CR5rXAZbWOE2_6h0Nc46_1947UqZbZ9po/s320/soyuz-t-14_salyut-7_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1982-05-15: Soyuz T-5 is first to dock with the Salyut 7 space station. In total, 10 Soyuz spacecraft successfully docked with Salyut 7, with only Soyuz T-8 failing to. Salyut 7 had fewer Soyuzes visit it than Salyut 6, but longer visits meant that Salyut 7 lasted for longer than its predecessor. Soyuz T-14 is pictured docked to it here.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxt_4vHirrSyO-lUsku8bUmeMwW8OZVjgcSkf4uuXa_QXvlI4ALTGBezENwXujyhTEPXNggwhD9uBOwYzJ4oO7zrUqvAGRjjru6xY53E7GCTgnHDvVharFaEEeETzvmSF5HXOgBssumUI/s1600/Soyuz_T-10-1_abort.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxt_4vHirrSyO-lUsku8bUmeMwW8OZVjgcSkf4uuXa_QXvlI4ALTGBezENwXujyhTEPXNggwhD9uBOwYzJ4oO7zrUqvAGRjjru6xY53E7GCTgnHDvVharFaEEeETzvmSF5HXOgBssumUI/s320/Soyuz_T-10-1_abort.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1983-09-26: People watch the critical escape of what is now officially only called Soyuz 7K-ST #16L, but also variously known as Soyuz
T-10a or Soyuz T-10-1, and what had been 90 seconds short of launching as the original Soyuz T-10. This Soyuz was the only case of its launch escape system saving a crew, when the launch rocket exploded underneath it. The crew were flung away and landed unharmed, and their spacecraft's orbital module was even recycled for use on Soyuz T-15.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ZBO_rKc4NdI6zPXD9N8x7mLGIeQklIQ4G1ocd04rNQx6UYydTXDpIaeqQAGwODFrVLhdeYO_LekZQDUjvhoHhTChCqIwxiAdatwEW9KwIu3pqHqDsNsHslvghnGhuxary61b7nZiGoo/s1600/soyuz-t-15_launch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2ZBO_rKc4NdI6zPXD9N8x7mLGIeQklIQ4G1ocd04rNQx6UYydTXDpIaeqQAGwODFrVLhdeYO_LekZQDUjvhoHhTChCqIwxiAdatwEW9KwIu3pqHqDsNsHslvghnGhuxary61b7nZiGoo/s320/soyuz-t-15_launch.jpg" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1986-03-13: Soyuz T-15 launches (with its recycled orbital module) and becomes first to dock with the Mir space station. They then left Mir's lights on, flew the Soyuz to Salyut 7 to dock with it for the final time, stole a bunch of useful equipment for Mir, and then flew their Soyuz back to dock with Mir again. This makes Soyuz T-15 the only spacecraft so far to fly back and forth between different space stations.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKwLZKKMoBe7ttiynk_WSzgZ95GctPGyEpOiASvpL1n5x-qHprk_-gMOuv4GYygrzsiNwvUJwzHaXEQYzXIKahZ6uS-1FV34JI1swCcqdMoGuH1PU1YqOyX1yMeXKcy1iu0bvS3_DOg48/s1600/sts-81_mir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKwLZKKMoBe7ttiynk_WSzgZ95GctPGyEpOiASvpL1n5x-qHprk_-gMOuv4GYygrzsiNwvUJwzHaXEQYzXIKahZ6uS-1FV34JI1swCcqdMoGuH1PU1YqOyX1yMeXKcy1iu0bvS3_DOg48/s320/sts-81_mir.jpg" width="302" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Following Soyuz T-15, another 29 Soyuzes visited Mir. During the same period, three of the US shuttles made 9 dockings with Mir, the first international dockings since 1975's Soyuz-Apollo meeting. Soyuz TM-30 was the last to undock from Mir, on 2000-06-15. Lots of interesting things happened on Mir, but the fact that there's not much more to add about Soyuz specifically is an indication of how reliable and routine Soyuz operations had become by this point.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0QSYUBhthgb41hN3tILJPDlQQYayXqRO1G_SS5j1HGbTwd7RBLJp3UUx85A46nZP_Sgi6oVqlrv591_2rCi1dNGF0TkYJbbtfcZUNjHRrAWsuNBeou0GvxawRbHJdaRWDZoPmtiJL6ew/s1600/sts-97_iss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0QSYUBhthgb41hN3tILJPDlQQYayXqRO1G_SS5j1HGbTwd7RBLJp3UUx85A46nZP_Sgi6oVqlrv591_2rCi1dNGF0TkYJbbtfcZUNjHRrAWsuNBeou0GvxawRbHJdaRWDZoPmtiJL6ew/s320/sts-97_iss.jpg" width="317" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2000-11-02: Soyuz TM-31 is the first Soyuz to dock with the International Space Station, carrying the crew known as Expedition 1. Three US shuttles had preceded it since December 1998, making 5 dockings before Soyuz TM-31 arrived. However, that Soyuz visit marks the start of the station's continuous occupation (over 16 years without being empty once), as shuttle visits could only be a couple weeks long before returning to Earth, while Soyuz had been made suitable over the Salyut/Mir years to remain docked at the station for 6 or 7 months at a time.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxCMR_RCPWfRa1M6uzxvvm_V-5yDlfIe4yCze-Kej0k5xYBIIVhHlPcudPufWAugpQPowdSvGJOSeoWLN2nHWbsxU0wJ1KPX5G4btqYb7Gh9_trYIJ8EM_Bytopumwg6zoHnzlM7zB9wc/s1600/STS-135_final_flyaround_of_ISS_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxCMR_RCPWfRa1M6uzxvvm_V-5yDlfIe4yCze-Kej0k5xYBIIVhHlPcudPufWAugpQPowdSvGJOSeoWLN2nHWbsxU0wJ1KPX5G4btqYb7Gh9_trYIJ8EM_Bytopumwg6zoHnzlM7zB9wc/s320/STS-135_final_flyaround_of_ISS_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Today, 2017-04-23, there are two Soyuzes docked at the ISS (Soyuz MS-03 and Soyuz MS-04), and their combined crews are its Expedition 51. The three US shuttles visited the ISS 37 times altogether,
while 50 Soyuzes have so far docked there, along with a whole lot of
different uncrewed cargo vessels. Since the shuttles retired in 2011, Soyuz has been the only way to get people to and from the ISS (apart from making a deal with China to use Tiangongs, maybe). In the next few years, Crew Dragons and Starliners are due to
start bringing crews there too, and possibly also Federatsias. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAAlotkHf1zeKwBpi7L38lY1VQxo3tyZ1qwVFRk4CCnxagYZC9Z_5NS49IZQ1RFZAx-d2NyO289o35g5VWbqvWtiI0gIC3CsW4SGfQuhkXE9TFLqrfSXx5WE2psCb1BhqYkiWruWAklug/s1600/Soyuz+re-entry+steps+clean.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAAlotkHf1zeKwBpi7L38lY1VQxo3tyZ1qwVFRk4CCnxagYZC9Z_5NS49IZQ1RFZAx-d2NyO289o35g5VWbqvWtiI0gIC3CsW4SGfQuhkXE9TFLqrfSXx5WE2psCb1BhqYkiWruWAklug/s320/Soyuz+re-entry+steps+clean.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One worrying but luckily never disastrous malfunction struck both early and late Soyuzes in similar ways during their re-entries. Soyuz 5, back in 1969, and then both Soyuz TMA-10 and Soyuz TMA-11 in 2007/2008, all had their service modules fail to separate from their re-entry modules (step 3 in the diagram), causing them to fall uncontrolled, with their heat shields facing the wrong way. Happily, in all three cases, the heat of re-entry was enough to melt through the last connections to the service module, breaking it free in time for the re-entry module to swing back around to face the correct direction, before the weaker top end of the re-entry module also melted through. Crews suffered injuries and landed well off target, but survived.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkpoT54R5zAixVzbAyyWOjyfaLPrImEelhy2iFyJJE9Q1hpj4fKeCDN_kcul4ZOGhaFaDVKA6y9wEtRI_sHlV5O4X33v1-nrG-H61SRMbKAJy_cUtd70JYKjxHUq64fC0yoEpDgBpNogk/s1600/05-ptk-np-fh11.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkpoT54R5zAixVzbAyyWOjyfaLPrImEelhy2iFyJJE9Q1hpj4fKeCDN_kcul4ZOGhaFaDVKA6y9wEtRI_sHlV5O4X33v1-nrG-H61SRMbKAJy_cUtd70JYKjxHUq64fC0yoEpDgBpNogk/s320/05-ptk-np-fh11.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Several Soyuz replacements have been proposed over the years, but it looks like Russia is finally really going to switch to a new spacecraft. The larger Federatsia spacecraft is not expected to carry humans until 2024, at the earliest, leaving a four year gap after the last Soyuz lands. Federatsia won't launch on a Soyuz rocket (nor any member of the R-7 rocket family), and it will launch from the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in eastern Russia, rather than the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan that every crewed Soviet/Russian launch to date has started from, so it'll see a lot of changes beyond the spacecraft itself.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
What strikes me in all of this is that Soyuz is almost never the hero of the story, especially when it's working properly. Early on, it's not really doing too much very groundbreaking, compared with the drama of the first few years of the Space Race, or the ostentatious Apollo Moon missions. Soyuz was originally conceived for Moon missions too, and then had that taken away. And later on, when Soyuz starts servicing space stations, the stations are most often the center of attention, not their little support craft. The little bit of limelight Soyuz has had since 2011 often comes from (or draws in) angry Americans, raging that they're now forced to hitch rides. They don't seem grateful that old Soyuz is still keeping things moving forwards. But that's the main accomplishment of Soyuz: In a series of tortoise-vs.-hare contests, it's been the sure and steady tortoise.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-51217102892791634432017-04-14T14:20:00.002+02:002017-04-14T14:20:29.398+02:00The unclear meaning of WMD<div dir="ltr">
I wrote an essay back in varsity that led to me co-authoring my one and only published <a href="http://journals.co.za/docserver/fulltext/militaria/35/1/127.pdf?expires=1492170899&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=1E58C3F5AB61DB0AF89838E1CD4FF62A" target="_blank">journal article</a>. The essay and article weren't that similar, with the article focused on socially constructed meanings given to nuclear weapons, while my essay had been about weapons of mass destruction in general, and had taken a more elementary look at what these weapons physically do and what this meant they had in common (or not).</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
A quick look at the standard legal definitions of WMD explicitly holds them to the level of destruction of a nuclear bomb, and yet biological and chemical weapons employed in reality just don't get that destructive. No single device built so far gets as destructive as a nuke (causing somewhere close to hundreds of thousands of casualties from one explosion in a population center, possibly more; the definition will vary with location and situation). That's why they're so scary. In comparison, individual chemical weapons have never caused comparable harm, and even sets of them used together have still fallen orders of magnitude short of nukes. Biological weapons remain mostly useless (compared with both nukes or chemical weapons), a dangerous concept to prepare for in future, rather than a practical reality today.</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
This doesn't diminish the destruction caused by smaller devices. It also doesn't diminish the cumulative destructive potential of large numbers of small devices (if we're not strictly talking about the effects of a single device, then <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzungar_genocide" target="_blank">any army</a>, collectively, is automatically a WMD too). It just means the legal definition is very fuzzy or very stretched.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
One possibility this fuzziness opens up is that some very large conventional explosives might legally be classed as WMD. They still won't reach the level of even very small nukes, but they can easily exceed the damage done by the chemical weapons that are already classed as WMD. That, to my non-lawyer mind, would seem to imply that large non-nuclear bombs ought to be considered WMD too (or that the definition needs a major rebuild).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr">
These thoughts came back to me this week, as Syria appears to have made <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_chemical_weapons_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War" target="_blank">another chemical weapon attack</a>, and the US has dropped its very largest <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2017_Nangarhar_airstrike" target="_blank">non-nuclear bomb</a>. I can already see the media (and thus the wider public too) getting mixed up about the nature of WMD, and what to do about them. This sort of confusion only makes it harder to discuss intelligent de-escalation or the hypocrisy of violent "peacekeeping". Whether the formal legal definition of weapons of mass destruction changes or not, it may be wise to push the term out of widespread use. It doesn't seem to serve a useful conversational function, and it invites a lot of misleading double meaning.</div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-5821588144206113602017-04-12T21:46:00.000+02:002017-04-12T21:46:16.225+02:00A quick gender analysis of TableTopI've been slowly catching up on season 4 of <a href="http://geekandsundry.com/shows/tabletop/" target="_blank">TableTop</a>, now that I have a little free time, and I got as far as the episode on Dragon Farkle. What leapt out at me about it was the all-male cast, and this got me thinking that I'd been seeing very few women in season 4. That would be disappointingly unrepresentative, especially for a show that's so far done a great job of showing varied men and women enjoying boardgames together. And among the guys in early season 4 are Tim Schafer and Andy Weir, which was an absolutely fantastic surprise combo for me. But I also wouldn't want to ignore a problematic change in the show, if it was a real change. But how to be sure? Maths!<br />
<br />
It was 5 minutes' work to scan through the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TableTop_(web_series)" target="_blank">episode list</a> on Wikipedia, which conveniently lists each episode's guest players. I made a little spreadsheet, sorting the players per episode by apparent gender (which at this distance looks like simply Boys and Girls; a more thorough analysis might split those numbers up further). And that very rushed spreadsheet yielded this graph of gender representation per episode:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NmD3YL6JoK2udSV-8eb7qa_Vbc4NeUTnhYrFS49LhDiGIEAfX1vhlzFi3RJrPgk6zf6a3cv6LtyiCKauTYwvBNTjvD7EIVXQ6nin8tnCkpv_5ebRScQblphwmDi4N3BYS7-uCv9XAJM/s1600/TTGen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4NmD3YL6JoK2udSV-8eb7qa_Vbc4NeUTnhYrFS49LhDiGIEAfX1vhlzFi3RJrPgk6zf6a3cv6LtyiCKauTYwvBNTjvD7EIVXQ6nin8tnCkpv_5ebRScQblphwmDi4N3BYS7-uCv9XAJM/s640/TTGen.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to embiggen.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Note that the host, <a href="http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Wil_Wheaton" target="_blank">Wil Wheaton</a>, is counted as a player in all of these episodes, giving an automatic +1 to the boys (hence the solid blue bottom of the graph); more on this below. Note also that series co-creator <a href="http://buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Felicia_Day" target="_blank">Felicia Day</a> also steps in as a guest player occasionally, and I've marked all of her appearances with the symbol F. The standard show format features Wil plus three guest players, and exceptions to this are rare (about once per season). Two-parter episodes come up once or twice per season, but I've counted each of these as two separate episodes here. If the point is to test representation, then getting twice as many appearances as in a single episode should be counted as such.<br />
<br />
<br />
So, what does it mean? To draw some useful conclusions from the constantly shifting graph, I've drawn out three things:<br />
1. The average number of boys and girls per season. (Includes Wil Wheaton.)<br />
2. The average number of non-Wil Wheaton boys per season. <br />
3. The number of episodes per season that have an exact 50/50 gender split. (Includes Wil Wheaton.)<br />
<br />
<br />
It would be fruitless to look for the 50/50 gender split without including Wil Wheaton, because of the standard four-player format.<br />
<br />
I definitely wasn't crazy to notice a shift away from women guests in the early part of season 4. Episode 4-3 is a brief exception, and then there's a string of mostly-men episodes for a while. But the good news is, season 4 over all is much better.<br />
<br />
The Wil-inclusive average gender split for each season is:<br />
S1: 2,9 boys, 1,2 girls<br />
S2: 2,6 boys, 1,5 girls<br />
S3: 2,5 boys, 1,5 girls<br />
S4: 2,5 boys, 1,6 girls<br />
Which looks like it's tending towards equality.<br />
<br />
It's even clearer with the Wil-exclusive average gender split per season:<br />
S1: 1,9 boys, 1,2 girls<br />
S2: 1,6 boys, 1,5 girls<br />
S3: 1,5 boys, 1,5 girls<br />
S4: 1,5 boys, 1,6 girls<br />
Unsurprisingly, the boys lose their +1, and viewed this way, only season 1 is particularly unequal.<br />
<br />
There are arguments in favour of either including or excluding Wil Wheaton from our count. But either way, the trend is headed in the same direction.<br />
<br />
And finally, the number of perfectly equal episodes per season are also tending upwards:<br />
S1: 5 episodes<br />
S2: 7 episodes<br />
S3: 9 episodes<br />
S4: 11 episodes<br />
<br />
I have no idea if this is intentional on their part or not, but at least it satisfies my initial concern. Things look sane and reasonable.<br />
<br />
One final observation: Appearances by Felica Day seem to be less common over time. That's a pity, because I always enjoy her participation, but I suppose this means they're finding it easier to find new people to fill out their casts.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-67141455091688622802016-12-23T14:03:00.002+02:002016-12-23T14:03:46.793+02:00Star Trek Conception: A Narrative & Puzzle-driven Roleplaying GameI've been kicking around ideas for an alternative Star Trek roleplaying game system for years now, with little solid progress. Work keeps getting in the way of my train of thought. But this time, I think I've really got something solid. Find below version 1 of the rules booklet, standard blank character sheet, and introductory adventure (for GM's eyes only):<br />
<br />
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxpnxjMaMC_iYUVPUXkyMjY2WUk/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Star Trek Conception</a> (The rules, 15 pages)<br />
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxpnxjMaMC_iY2tpbWNQR0NKYlU/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Standard Character Sheet</a> (1 page)<br />
<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxpnxjMaMC_iVVk1WlRJdG5fTkU/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Sample Episode, titled "Keep It Down"</a> (2 pages, <b>Spoilers</b>, do not read if you're not the GM)<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpVVbbNIPLF22CNLNI5KsvjaP5MFVcuQ5M7vS7U8O413_kwqC1hm3o9SDpRATVVy9z5oqhd6L5CPWTkEGuc6TcnBGLzSbt_VFnKsn3CUnaSZnhLU37QsKEfCQ5YiY8Fus1vnZ-rlu9I8w/s1600/Sovereign_observation_lounge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpVVbbNIPLF22CNLNI5KsvjaP5MFVcuQ5M7vS7U8O413_kwqC1hm3o9SDpRATVVy9z5oqhd6L5CPWTkEGuc6TcnBGLzSbt_VFnKsn3CUnaSZnhLU37QsKEfCQ5YiY8Fus1vnZ-rlu9I8w/s640/Sovereign_observation_lounge.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"I cast Magic Missile!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The rules might make more sense if you know the background process of how they came to me. <br />
<br />
Step 1 is that I've stolen some ideas from <a href="https://www.blogger.com/I%20think%20it's%20done:%20https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxpnxjMaMC_iYUVPUXkyMjY2WUk/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">Fiasco</a>. Specifically, the bit where the game is divided into scenes, and that's about as low as the game's resolution goes. No rolls for individual actions, no splitting hairs about exactly how awesome your stats are. Just the story, unpredictable and organic, yet still clearly made from the players' choices.<br />
<br />
You could run a totally GMless Star Trek game with little more than this loose structure, but I think an important part of any Star Trek episode is the central mystery or puzzle to solve in each episode, and it's useful to have an impartial GM who can prepare these ahead of time. I tried coming up with an automated mystery generator, but it didn't seem like a satisfying solution. I may add that in future updates, if I ever find a good way to handle it.<br />
<br />
So instead, step 2 is acknowledging that this is a GM-led game, though hopefully it leaves fairly little for a decent GM to do, beyond initial setup and verbal description. <br />
<br />
There are some dice rolls to be made, and I'll admit that they aren't as elegant as the plot-generating rolls of Fiasco. They're just simpler plot-resolving rolls, pretty similar to the Warhammer speed combat house rules I proposed <a href="http://fjordsofafrica.blogspot.co.za/2016/06/wfrp2e-speed-combat-house-rules-wip.html" target="_blank">back in June</a>. In the case of Conception, I think I've gone even further, with just a single roll representing the whole scene, rather than a condensed number of rolls per character, as in the Warhammer.<br />
<br />
And then the other big thing I noticed (let's call this step 3) is that Star Trek is always about ideas, concepts, beliefs, points of view. Sure they've got piles of technology, but that's not what the show was ever really about. We mock the episodes that use easy technological solutions to deus ex machina a major problem away, and we venerate the episodes that dig deeply into human emotions, ambitions and principles.<br />
<br />
To reflect this, I've made personal ideology a major part of the rules. How things turn out is directly affected by what your characters believe. This was something we originally played around with in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape" target="_blank">Planescape</a> game, years ago, where each player was required to formally define with their character's core beliefs, and these served as both roleplaying guidelines and a way to add dice modifiers. I have something similar in mind for Star Trek, except that where belief literally reshapes the universe in Planescape, in Star Trek it should be viewed more as shaping personal intention and action in a more abstract way. On the other hand, where personal beliefs were just modifiers to normal gaming statistics in our Planescape rules, for the Conception rules, personal ideology effectively is your major set of gaming attributes. It's much more qualitative than quantitative, which is something new for me.<br />
<br />
We've tested the rules out once, using that sample episode I prepared, and it seemed to work well enough. Character depth was lacking, but this is not surprising whenever a new game starts up. Of course, I know this wasn't a perfectly fair test, since I already knew both the outcome I wanted and how to play that to my very familiar group of players. Blinded testing would probably reveal some useful flaws I could correct, so if anyone does have feedback after trying these rules, please do let me know.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-37100070505822404082016-12-15T18:20:00.000+02:002017-02-26T15:45:07.379+02:00How Many People Did Neil Armstrong Kill?To answer the title question: I don't know. It's not clear to me if anyone knows the answer to that question for certain. It's quite likely that Armstrong (yes, first human on the Moon Armstrong) did kill people, and yet there's no clear (public) record of it. Very few sources even seem to want to report it, only noting slightly euphemistically that he flew combat missions in Korea, and then they rush off to his later, cleaner exploits.<br />
<br />
That's kind of weird. The actual violence tells us something about Armstrong, but the whitewashing of his background arguably tells us more about ourselves.<br />
<br />
To spell it out clearly, he was mostly involved in ground attack flights, <a href="http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/08/27/hollywood-captured-armstrongs-korean-war-missions.html" target="_blank">for example</a> bombing anti-aircraft guns (which would likely have killed the people firing those guns), so that later bombers could pass by unimpeded (and possibly kill more people with their own bombs). This is what Neil Armstrong did before he became an astronaut.<br />
<br />
I don't think this is the defining activity of his life, if such a thing even really exists. We all mainly know him as the Moon guy, but we also get that this wasn't his whole life. Most people would think of him also as a scientist or pilot, and those who've done their homework would be more specific and call him a naval aviator, test pilot, engineer, and academic. Some might focus on his family life, or his religion, or his media presence. But it doesn't take that much thought to go beyond purely "Moon guy". So why the resistance to also giving him the title of "someone who has probably killed people"?<br />
<br />
This is something that's bugged me about many astronauts. Quite a lot of them have military backgrounds, and more than a few have shot people. In most sane professions, that's something that keeps you from getting even the first interview, and yet NASA considers it a virtue instead? We put these people up on pedestals and expect kids to regard them as rolemodels. (Are we hoping the kids will never find out about the violence? Or that they will?) When the first astronauts were hired, it was widely considered damning that most of the early ones were having a lot of sex with a lot of people (oh noes!), and yet not damning in the least that they might have ended someone's life on purpose. That's a pretty fucked up set of priorities.<br />
<br />
I've responded to this by doing what any sane, well-adjusted individual would do, and spent several days scanning through <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronauts_by_first_flight" target="_blank">every single astronaut/cosmonaut/taikonaut</a> profile page on wikipedia (plus other sources, notably <a href="http://spacefacts.de/">spacefacts.de</a>, where greater clarity was needed) to build up a spreadsheet that categorises all of them by the level of violence they're known to have embraced. Below is the google docs version of that.<br />
<br />
The first column with the H's denotes whether they're known to have killed non-human animals, mostly through hunting/fishing. I had a hunch early on that there might be a link between that behaviour and violence against human animals.<br />
<br />
The second column gives the person's violence level, on a scale from 0 to 3. 0 indicates no known violence; 1 indicates military employment, with no known actual violence; 2 indicates participation in violent activities, but uncertainty about whether this actually killed anyone or not; 3 indicates definitely actually killing someone.<br />
<br />
The fourth column supplies a couple additional notes, clarifying context.<br />
<br />
This analysis is mostly only good for spotting major incidents of publicly documented violence. Statistically, it is probably missing all manner of bar brawls and sexual assaults, and it's not inconceivable that someone on this list could have covered up actual murders. But I just don't have evidence for most of that, so I only go with what I can confirm with reasonable certainty.<br />
<br />
A separate sheet, in the same format, records space tourists separately from the working spacecraft crews.<br />
<br />
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1atQbfd_xttE0UggSSy8R5WwkTdDNigm2jkPjC0AdnHY/pubhtml?widget=true&headers=false"></iframe><br />
<br />
There's a lot to process there, even summarised down to this table, so I also put columns 2 and 3 in graph form:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAu1xHiGAzdhrJBOjCJQOTYNisVTTKIRf8URKkGCQgr19dse_aZfwz1a_gfdv0AgSTaqLnN9fx3KLhnZDJkA3fGXZL4mgJkkxMD8j2v4QkmmaZXpMMac8BW6dcxqEY6IePfmT2S4dUnD4/s1600/astrokill+periods.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAu1xHiGAzdhrJBOjCJQOTYNisVTTKIRf8URKkGCQgr19dse_aZfwz1a_gfdv0AgSTaqLnN9fx3KLhnZDJkA3fGXZL4mgJkkxMD8j2v4QkmmaZXpMMac8BW6dcxqEY6IePfmT2S4dUnD4/s640/astrokill+periods.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Violence level 1 deserves quite a bit of explaining. It makes the most consistent line in the graph, especially in the early years. The military origins of human spaceflight (and spaceflight in general) are no secret. Very few nuclear-armed missiles can't trace their origins somehow back to the V-2, and most human-carrying rockets were either originally weapons, or were designed by the same people who also designed weapons. The governments that funded putting things (human or otherwise) in orbit knew very well that they were mainly doing it to cover up development of military satellites and nuclear bomb launchers. This intention was naturally kept secret at the time, which is why the cultural narrative about spaceflight is so distorted, but it's well-established historical fact today, if you take the time to learn about such things. (I'm enjoying Teitel's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Chains-Gravity-Spaceflight-before/dp/1511365439" target="_blank"><i>Breaking the Chains of Gravity</i></a>, if you're looking for an introduction to the topic.)<br />
<br />
This was also the only real reason that military pilots were chosen to be the first astro/cosmonauts. The same essential skills could be found among civilians, especially during the earliest spam-in-a-can phase, when the spacecraft required no pilot, and the human inside was really just a big guinea pig. So why insist on military crews? Because they'd be working with classified military technology all day long, and Dwight Eisenhower personally decided it would be simpler for NASA to only recruit crews who already had established clearance to work with military secrets. The Soviet government made a similar choice, and it seems China has more recently done the same, all for pretty much the same reason: Military space travellers aren't extra-skilled, they're just less likely to sell your secret weapon designs.<br />
<br />
It is true that military pilots are more likely to have fast jet experience, but it turns out that this experience doesn't necessarily translate to spacecraft flying skill any better than other types of piloting experience. And as spacecraft got bigger over time, and crews expanded beyond just the pilot, they started needing people with completely different skill sets, and that's where we start to see the military test pilot fall slightly out of favour. The Soviets were the first to embrace civilian crew, and today many of the most experienced Russian cosmonauts have no military background at all. The US followed along later, mostly during the shuttle years. Yet despite a growing list of purely civilian spacefarers, that line of military ones remains pretty solid too. And it's still because rocketry is considered, first and foremost, a military area of interest, with secrets that need to be kept from "tha baddies".<br />
<br />
Violence level 1 is also complicated, because I certainly wouldn't say that everyone at that level is definitely equally violent. It encompasses everyone from those who are trained and willing to use some awful weapons, but simply never got the opportunity to use them, all the way to those who are technically military employees, but whose work is clearly non-violent and may never even contribute to violence, such as medical professionals. It's tricky to find a neat dividing line between the two extremes, though. A test pilot or weapons manufacturer may never actually use their weapon on anyone, but they are clearly developing it so that someone else can use it to kill people later on. So are they morally suspect or not? Senior commanders of military units may never go anywhere near the combat area, but it's hard to argue that ordering people's deaths at a distance is an ethically positive thing. And even logistics support people are indirectly responsible for deaths, when the food they deliver gets eaten by the guy who will go off to kill people. Delivering food clearly isn't violent, and yet if that food wasn't there, the guy doing the killing couldn't have hung around long enough to kill anyone, and the logistics people know that, which is why they deliver the food. It wasn't a coincidence that they fed the guy, it was part of a plan to kill people. So it's hard to draw a very clear, solid line between "good" and "bad" military employees. I think it's much simpler to view the whole military as a killing tool, and to be at least suspicious of anyone who works as part of that tool.<br />
<br />
But that doesn't make my astronaut list that much clearer, which is a slight annoyance to me.<br />
<br />
Violence level 2 is something I'd really rather not have, because it's ambiguous and imprecise, but unfortunately that's the best level of detail currently available to me. I'd much rather know for certain who is definitely level 3, and who can drop back to level 1. Unfortunately, around the time of the Apollo program, astronaut biographies started getting sanitised. Where fighter pilots had previously been very eager to boast about the people they'd killed, competing as if it were a sport, that publicly went out of fashion, and so it was no longer reported as clearly. We know for certain that John Glenn shot down 3 planes, possibly representing 3 dead pilots, in addition to the unrecorded number of people he killed in ground attacks. (That distinction in how much they valued - and thus recorded - air kills versus ground kills is noteworthy.)<br />
<br />
At some point, the US military public relations people realised that a lot of the public didn't want to hear the gory details of war, didn't want to know how the sausage was made, and perhaps there was also a counter-intelligence argument for not boasting your war successes too openly. And so every published combat record from the Vietnam War onwards merely reads that the person took part in "combat operations" or "flew combat missions". That euphemism could mean anything from blowing people up, to helping others blow people up, to flying in circles aimlessly for hours, just so long as it's done within an area where fighting is happening. So, for my purposes, I'm stuck with level 2; some people put at that level may never have done any direct harm at all, but at the very least, we can say with some certainty that they made an effort to try to kill people. That willingness to be violent, I think, counts for something.<br />
<br />
(I also wonder if there's something similar with column 1, the hunting thing. Has hunting become less popular than half a century ago? That would fit increasing urbanisation trends. Are animal-killing astronauts as common as ever, and the PR people just keep that off their official profiles now? Or describe it with euphemisms that I'm not spotting, like "hiking" or something? Maybe. I still think there's a general inclination to kill, whether humans or non-humans, that should produce a correlation, but the unexpected big void in column 1 makes that hard to check. Good news if it's a realistic void, at least.) <br />
<br />
With that all clarified (I hope?), I'd like to point out a national distinction: Almost all the level 2's and 3's are American. It's possible that the Soviets/Russians simply never admitted that some of their cosmonauts had combat records beyond the few from the Second World War, but I think that's unlikely. The far more obvious explanation is that the Soviet Union didn't go to war nearly as often as the United States. From 1945 to 1990, the Soviet Union may have supported or encouraged or sponsored conflicts, but very seldom participated directly in any major way. The decade-long Soviet-Afghan War was the one big exception, and it is a little surprising to me that no cosmonauts seem to have emerged from that. Post-Soviet Russian conflicts have been much more numerous, but generally less intense and less persistent, mostly related to resolving post-Soviet borders by force. The Americans, on the other hand, have been incredibly violent for most of the last 60+ years, with heavy involvement in some of the biggest contemporary wars. Korea. Vietnam. The Gulf War. The US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And always lots of smaller conflicts in between as well, with the possible exception of the Carter years. The Syrian civil war is probably the first time since the 1940s that the Americans and Russians have had comparable participation in the same conflict. Beyond the three main spacefaring countries, the most violent source of astronauts is France, with some noteworthy anomalies from Belgium and Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Analysing and explaining all of this is a huge, textbookworthy topic of its own. My sole point for now is that it shouldn't be surprising if few Soviet/Russian military pilots had ever actually seen combat. This is even more true for Chinese taikonauts, as China has been remarkably peaceful for decades.<br />
<br />
I think it's also important to avoid excessively monolithic thinking.
Not all Americans (or Russians or Chinese) are the same, not all NASA administrators are the
same, there has to be some room to consider individual and local quirks.
One interesting example is that it was NASA that convinced the Russians
not to take any guns to the International Space Station, and not the
other way round.<br />
<br />
The implications of this are worth debating. Does it mean that Americans are the Klingons? That soldiers are or are not responsible for their wars? I don't think this small data set is enough to be sure of too much, but it does get you thinking, I hope. The main reason I bring it all up here is to illustrate one point: Combat experience is not needed for good astronauts. Killing people doesn't make you handle spaceflight any better.<br />
<br />
<br />
And so it's weird that NASA has evidently chosen to hire so many astronauts on the basis that they've killed before. It means that someone once sat down and wrote that in as a job requirement, a positive trait for potential recruits to have. I doubt they worded it exactly that way, but they didn't do it that many times in a row, hiring several dozen candidates with combat experience, purely by coincidence. If nothing else, they haven't viewed it as a negative trait.<br />
<br />
To be clear, I'm not saying all of the non-military spacefarers are uniformly and perfectly good people. Some, I'm sure, are dicks. But they're dicks who haven't killed anyone, which is a better starting point. As an example, Schmitt's position as first purely civilian American astronaut is
spoiled a little by his current deeply unscientific views on global
warming, which he insists on publicly espousing. That's not really a
violence-related thing, but it does definitely dent his reputation - but less than if he'd shot someone, I think. Of course, some really are great; it's hard to criticise my two favourites, Ride and Jemison, for example. They weren't just non-violent, they actively worked to make the world a better, safer place. Jemison is still at it today, and Ride's legacy will hopefully continue on. Even some of the level 1's seem to have a lot of genuinely positive traits going for them; I'm fond of Hadfield and Cristoforetti, for instance, to the point that I strongly hope they wouldn't ever have pulled a trigger, if they'd been told to. But realistically, I have to concede that they probably would have. And I think that's one of my big conclusions here: If you join an armed organisation that deals primarily in violence, then your choices are automatically suspect to me. Either it means you accept violence, which is bad, or that you're so blind to violence and its consequences that you really shouldn't be trusted with anything more dangerous than a plastic spoon. If you actively oppose violence, your alternative solutions may not work, but at least you've chosen not to kill anyone.<br />
<br />
I'm not certain I can draw anything else much more conclusive from this relatively surface-level analysis. I think there's enough unsettled about all of this to warrant a full PhD thesis, if anyone is looking for a topic.<br />
<br />
Since I don't like ending on a hanging thread, I do have a couple little notes on smaller things I picked up on while writing this:<br />
<br />
My recording of Joe Walker versus James Halsell is worth explaining a little. Both were involved in fatal vehicle accidents, but I've marked Walker as level 1 and Halsell as level 3. Walker's collision appears to have been a genuine accident, certainly not something Walker wanted or could have predicted or controlled. Halsell, on the other hand, intentionally drove drunk, knowing full well what that entails. That's not anyone's fault but his own, and if that caused him to speed, or if he would normally speed while sober too, then the blame still lies with him.<br />
<br />
Linnehan's involvement in the Marine Mammal System is as laughable as it is tragic. What these veterinary quacks do to dolphins and sea lions is simply cruel (whether you accept war or not), and if we're supposed to value fighting in wars (which I clearly don't) then surely this should be viewed as a cowardly technique anyway.<br />
<br />
There's a fairly unsurprising gender split, with relatively more women in level 0 than men, and none confirmed in level 3.<br />
<br />
<br />
The space tourists, even less surprisingly, are all level 0. I did briefly wonder whether Shuttleworth might have been conscripted into the South African army (I wasn't sure whether he was young enough to have missed the conscription years), but it's apparently fairly widely known that he skipped the country to avoid that. Elon Musk did the same, which is part of the reason it disappoints me that he now wants to feed rockets to the US military. That's kind of hypocritical.<br />
<br />
<br />
Mark Kelly is an idiot. After an assassination attempt on his wife, former member of Congress Gabrielle Giffords, the two of them <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/gabrielle-giffords-mark-kelly-guns-089793" target="_blank">remained pro-gun</a>. Kelly himself has dropped bombs on people (I have him at level 2 above), but it's not unheard of for the physical distance between pilots and their targets to lend them some very unrealistic emotional distance. They don't often actually watch their victims die, from way up in the sky. But you'd think that when 6 people die, including a poor fucking little 9 year old girl, and his own wife is horribly injured, along with a dozen others, <i>then </i>surely he'd get it? Surely he must, however briefly, have drawn the connection between what he did and what Loughner did? If he did, then it was a very weird connection he drew, simply calling for the mythical "bad guys" to have their gun access restricted, while he and the "good guys" kept theirs. (I'm pretty sure there's a fair bit of psychology or cultural anthropology research that could be done on these people.)<br />
<br />
This has been a pretty grim, disheartening post to research and write, so let me end on Leland Melville's official astronaut portrait. It's hard not to be happy about this.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/NASA-astronaut-Leland-D-Melvin-with-his-dogs-Jake-and-Scout-thumb-560x448.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/NASA-astronaut-Leland-D-Melvin-with-his-dogs-Jake-and-Scout-thumb-560x448.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-31139523801143701162016-11-12T18:18:00.002+02:002016-11-12T18:37:19.160+02:00Lessons from a Lebanese Family History<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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It was my grandfather’s funeral yesterday. I’m typing this
at the desk he made for me. I’ve had a few family history-related thoughts
swimming through my brain for a while, and seeing so many relatives (some for
the first time in decades) has brought these all to the front of my mind.<br />
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My dad’s side of the family have clear roots in Lebanon,
with migration to South Africa a little over a century ago. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Lebanon_under_Ottoman_rule" target="_blank">history of Lebanon under Ottoman</a> rule is well-documented elsewhere, and I’m far
from an expert on that. But the short summary for now is that the Ottoman Empire
was divided into lots of population zones with differing religious and ethnic
identities, and most of these were run feudally, with peasant farmers taxed by
local authorities, who passed on wealth to regional authorities, who in turn
competed to send the most wealth to Istanbul. The competitive nature of this
system meant that the peasantry were generally treated pretty poorly, coerced
into paying up as much as possible, sometimes through violent means. One story
goes that people started building their homes with the smallest possible
doorways, because Ottoman cavalry were less likely to dismount to advance
indoors and cause trouble on foot.</div>
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There were also local conflicts between religious and ethnic
groups, sometimes intentionally stoked by the Ottomans to break apart any unity
against their rule. One particularly violent internal conflict in 1860 had my ancestors
very much on edge, and not long after that, the opening of the Suez canal
completely upended the economy, smashing trade routes that had been stable for
centuries. This economic shift led to more pressure from tax collectors,
unwilling to set their goals lower. By the end of the nineteenth century,
Lebanon was not the best place to live, so many families uprooted and travelled
halfway around the world to make new lives. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_diaspora" target="_blank">Lebanese Diaspora</a> is pretty
varied, with most settlement in the Americas, Australia, mostly Central Europe, and all over Africa (taking
advantage of the Europeans’ Scramble for Africa that was going on at around the
same time), but I’ll focus solely on my own ancestors moving to South Africa.</div>
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The Shams set out in the 1890s, apparently spent a short
while living in Bermuda (no idea why there), and then several years in Australia,
before settling in the southern African European colonies in the late 1890s
(which then became South Africa in 1910). My grandmother’s side, the Leichers,
came a few years later, and this family had planned on only a temporary
migration, saving up enough to re-capitalise their old farm. But the group of
them who returned got there just in time for World War 1, and the Turkish
rulers were especially brutal in this period. The starkest examples of this
were the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide" target="_blank">Armenian</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_genocide" target="_blank">Assyrian</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide" target="_blank">Greek</a> genocides, but my relatives caught <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_Mount_Lebanon" target="_blank">part of it</a> too. Crops were simpy confiscated, farming became unsustainable, and
starvation was widespread. Trudging on foot, begging for meals, they set off
back to Beirut to try to sail back to South Africa. Of the Leichers who
returned to Lebanon, only one boy (Joe, around 11 or 12 years old) survived to
rejoin the South African family.</div>
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I am the product of refugee immigrants. When I see people
today moaning about refugees and other foreigners, all it makes me think is that, a century ago,
they would have been refusing to help my family, and it was probably the same
sort of moaning, a century ago, that left poor little Joe Leicher to fend for
himself in an unfamiliar city, in a state that more or less wanted to kill him.</div>
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Of course, in South Africa, things weren’t all rosy either.
My grandfather was born in 1925, and he was legally classed as ‘White’. This
was still a new advantage to have, as his parents and older siblings had been
classified as ‘Asian’ until a 1923 court case “upgraded” them – and ultimately
also me. (If nothing else, the flimsy flexibility of this racial definition
shows how subjective and nonsensical it all was.) If you know anything at all
of South African history, it should be pretty obvious that re-classification as
white was a huge advantage. Prior to that, British colonial authorities were
just as shitty to non-whites as the later apartheid authorities were. They were
barred from a number of jobs, barred from owning property, barred from decent
schools, barred from political processes, and subject to harassment by police
and paramilitary forces. Many Lebs had been in the habit of lying and
pretending to be Greek, as it gave a slightly better chance of being hired.
(Apparently many Chinese immigrants similarly pretended to be Japanese to gain
their “honorary white” status, at least temporarily). My definitely-undoubtedly-white British mother wouldn't have been
legally able to marry my dad if that 1923 decision had never been made,
which would have made my subsequent existence pretty unlikely.</div>
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The big book of Leb family history that I got this from
presents the 1923 case as an early blow against apartheid, but I have trouble
reading it that way. It looks to me more like my ancestors were climbing over
other oppressed groups, foot on face, to lift themselves to a higher status. If
there was a plan to help share this status change with other groups, it never
went anywhere, but I don’t think that ever was the plan. In the generations
before mine, for every relative I can name who opposed apartheid, however
passively, it’s not hard to name two or three others who were (and still are)
hugely and unapologetically racist, especially against black South Africans. I don’t know if the Lebs very quickly
forgot what life had been like before 1923 (I get the impression that few Lebs
in my dad’s generation are even aware that many of their own grandparents and
parents weren’t officially born the same race as them), or if white schools
trained that hatred into them, or if anti-black racism had already been common
among them (somehow) before that, or if it was some sort of disguise mechanism
that went too far, trying to fit in better among “real” whites by making a noisy
show of putting down non-whites. Perhaps it was a combination of several of
these factors. At least in my generation, that prejudice seems far less common.</div>
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To be clear, there’s never been any doubt that I’m white.
Legally, I’ve never had even a flicker of a question about it. And socially,
school bullies were apparently never well-informed enough to question whether
Lebs should count as real whites, they just knew it made me something different
from them, their default target group. But I’ve probably had just as much
bullying over my Scottish origins as my Lebanese origins. More people have
worried (worried!) that I might look somewhat Jewish than that I actually do look
Lebanese. I have always had all the privileges our society affords an English-speaking
white male, enough that I could write an entire post on that topic alone.</div>
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One final bit of family history worth sharing also concerns
my grandfather. I didn’t know this story at all until about 3 years ago, when
he felt I needed to focus better on sorting out my teaching qualifications. In
the late 1940s he had gained entrance to study mining engineering at the
University of the Witwatersrand. He did well in his first year there, but the
family still wasn’t wealthy, and funds ran out. Attempts to find a bursary
failed, because at the time most of these were reserved for war veterans. And
so his studies just had to end. He always regretted that, and consequently
always placed great emphasis on education, ensuring that my dad would get his
engineering degree (and later an MBA), as well as supporting both of my aunts’ tertiary studies;
today they’re both PhD’s, one specialising in education. A strong emphasis on
education carried on into my generation, and I think that the 7 Sham cousins
have between us 10 or 11 degrees so far, plus who knows how many other qualifications. I have little doubt that all of this
shaped my own interest in becoming a teacher.</div>
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So it’s been disappointing to see a couple Lebs opposed to
the pro-education goals of the Fees Must Fall movement; unsurprisingly, there is overlap
between those opposing it and those who are openly racist. Imagine what my
grandfather might have achieved in the ‘40s if he’d had the benefit of fully
state-subsidised tertiary education to allow him to finish his degree. Imagine how many other Lebs (not to
mention literally everyone else) have been held back in life because they
couldn’t afford to study. I still have cousins today who’ve been stopped from
studying for purely financial reasons. (Now imagine your entire racial group of
millions of people has that same problem, with no wealthy cousins to help them
out; sympathy ought to be your natural response.)</div>
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Family history is an interesting thing. I think it’s often
abused to try and force unity for unity’s sake, a way to increase exclusivity,
while I’d rather use it as a way to learn from past mistakes and make the world
better, more inclusive. I don’t really care if anyone identifies as Lebanese or
not; most of us haven't ever been near the place anyway. And I don’t miss my Jidoo because he was Lebanese, I miss him because he
was my Jidoo, and now nobody will cook for us the way he did.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghVFd62lMkBju-EaSgN8acZdhYSL8WbNiy_-RAeuAsR38DjISWwlpfM6dVIRHz5CVTdYeN3A_A5FbR-JUGaavd1VUKbdI9r9hzfNvn6zK7A7Zgm7-mPnv-ZG5iiWyxhQIpHaPn-GjPVeQ/s1600/DSC03486.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghVFd62lMkBju-EaSgN8acZdhYSL8WbNiy_-RAeuAsR38DjISWwlpfM6dVIRHz5CVTdYeN3A_A5FbR-JUGaavd1VUKbdI9r9hzfNvn6zK7A7Zgm7-mPnv-ZG5iiWyxhQIpHaPn-GjPVeQ/s1600/DSC03486.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Billy Sham<br />
1925-03-08 to 2016-11-05</td></tr>
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Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6716244555779725730.post-32526002670481239532016-10-06T17:12:00.000+02:002016-10-06T18:12:27.516+02:00Teacher's Bits: 14-body solar system diagramWhile looking to plagiarise other people's diagrams of the solar system (using nothing more complicated than a googly image search), I realised how many old and outdated diagrams are still out there, showing 9 planets. The internet never forgets, so that's not too surprising. But what actually bugged me is that all of the newer diagrams now only show the 8 full planets. This, to me, seems to have missed the point. We added more stuff, we didn't take things away. And I couldn't find a nice, simple diagram of the orbits of the 5 confirmed dwarf planets either. (There are also plenty of astrology-woo versions floating out there, all with at least one major error on them.)<br />
<br />
So, I made my own, now available for public use and plagiarism:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhutY9BLRfN_i_0k6JNwokEVN2oYRetQpc353gyehjJOMe3i2vprhvl_9CIL0W-wx4Bkm3aIpXX-0LOSdr9GImgQVb_UE5vOOnPE7B9r14GhQYS15q4_CPfsKp65LaU_sBL9yEBvZ3P1wY/s1600/Solar+System+blank+-+planets+%2526+dwarf+planets.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhutY9BLRfN_i_0k6JNwokEVN2oYRetQpc353gyehjJOMe3i2vprhvl_9CIL0W-wx4Bkm3aIpXX-0LOSdr9GImgQVb_UE5vOOnPE7B9r14GhQYS15q4_CPfsKp65LaU_sBL9yEBvZ3P1wY/s320/Solar+System+blank+-+planets+%2526+dwarf+planets.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Click to embiggen, save to save.</td></tr>
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This is a very rough, rushed version, with as few details as possible. Consider this a template for anyone to borrow and improve on however they need to. For my grade 8s, for example, I plan to add label blocks for them to fill in as we discuss them all. Future versions might have proper colour images pasted over the simple circles (printer access permitting) - though there's also something to be said for letting the kids colour them in themselves. And I'd really like to make (or copy) a version that shows the more interesting eccentric orbit shapes of the outer dwarf planets. You could also add asteroid groups, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, whatever suits you.<br />
<br />
The main thing I've learned by drawing my own version: It's not difficult to do a simple version, but doing it neatly is the real challenge. I used paint.NET's standard circle-drawing tool, and it's a pain.Chris Shamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07066111751307656927noreply@blogger.com0Johannesburg, South Africa-26.2041028 28.047305100000017-26.432114300000002 27.724581600000018 -25.9760913 28.370028600000015