004c - Discussion of Shedezar Environment

[Ramona]

What I meant was reflecting uppn the drugged rumor could I lend any credence to that? Idle question is it even remotely plausable that you could spike the water supply for everyone? And yes the hot surferbod dive shop guys, Taylor.... it was Taylor, because it’s gender neutral. What’s it like down at sea level? Aside from opressive...

[ffilz]

What I meant was reflecting uppn the drugged rumor could I lend any credence to that? Idle question is it even remotely plausable that you could spike the water supply for everyone? And yes the hot surferbod dive shop guys, Taylor.... it was Taylor, because it’s gender neutral. What’s it like down at sea level? Aside from opressive...

Oh, sorry... The human population is 7 (10,000,000-90,000,000), with Law Level 9, there's clearly a lot of control. Might not be too hard to keep everyone drugged. Of course some folks will somehow avoid it or be resistant...

Now that you think about it, maybe Taylor's friendly and relaxed attitude is a bit too much, yea, maybe she was drugged...

Down at the surface, the pressure is about 4 atm and the temperature about 42°C (107°F). The composition and humidity of the atmosphere at the surface makes humans just feel like it's not that different from being submerged in water (Squee will probably find it pleasant if a bit warm).

[Ramona]

Oh, sorry... The human population is 7 (10,000,000-90,000,000), with Law Level 9, there's clearly a lot of control. Might not be too hard to keep everyone drugged. Of course some folks will somehow avoid it or be resistant...

Now that you think about it, maybe Taylor's friendly and relaxed attitude is a bit too much, yea, maybe she was drugged...

Down at the surface, the pressure is about 4 atm and the temperature about 42°C (107°F). The composition and humidity of the atmosphere at the surface makes humans just feel like it's not that different from being submerged in water (Squee will probably find it pleasant if a bit warm).

10-99 million people is a lot of people to keep on the kool-aid, the resources and money required would be astronomical and pretty easy to notice, “You need 20,000 tons of TriMethalHydroxide delivered to the starport on a weekly basis? Sure thing pally.” The footprint of this operation would be enormous and require a significant number of people to be on the inside. Wonder if the Baron has a quid pro quo with the natives to keep the humans pacified. Or it could be a “We Happy Few” situation where everyone “takes their vitamins” to help them cope with the atmo and temperatures. 42 degrees at 4 atmo with 100% humidity would probably be pretty lethal, heat stroke and exhaustion.

Also working in our favour is the fact that it is highly unlikely that everyone one of Cthulhu's children is an incredibly powerful psychic witch. The Zhodani weren’t all psychics.

[ffilz]

Oh, sorry... The human population is 7 (10,000,000-90,000,000), with Law Level 9, there's clearly a lot of control. Might not be too hard to keep everyone drugged. Of course some folks will somehow avoid it or be resistant...

Now that you think about it, maybe Taylor's friendly and relaxed attitude is a bit too much, yea, maybe she was drugged...

Down at the surface, the pressure is about 4 atm and the temperature about 42°C (107°F). The composition and humidity of the atmosphere at the surface makes humans just feel like it's not that different from being submerged in water (Squee will probably find it pleasant if a bit warm).

10-99 million people is a lot of people to keep on the kool-aid, the resources and money required would be astronomical and pretty easy to notice, “You need 20,000 tons of TriMethalHydroxide delivered to the starport on a weekly basis? Sure thing pally.” The footprint of this operation would be enormous and require a significant number of people to be on the inside. Wonder if the Baron has a quid pro quo with the natives to keep the humans pacified. Or it could be a “We Happy Few” situation where everyone “takes their vitamins” to help them cope with the atmo and temperatures. 42 degrees at 4 atmo with 100% humidity would probably be pretty lethal, heat stroke and exhaustion.

Also working in our favour is the fact that it is highly unlikely that everyone one of Cthulhu's children is an incredibly powerful psychic witch. The Zhodani weren’t all psychics.

Hey, it's pulpy SF, don't dig too deep into things You're right that if they had to import the drug it wouldn't work, so the drug must be locally produced. It might also really only be administered to "trouble makers." Most people tend to be sheep anyway. And yea, the Shedezar's psionics are probably involved...

Note that much of the human population lives are higher altitude so not quite so oppressive. Those forced to work at lower altitudes either use adaptive technology or don't last very long...

And yea, most of the Shedezar would have low level abilities. With PSI on 2D (and even Zhodani just get 2D PSI), there's a lot of low level psychics. The really nasty Telepathy powers are level 9 and 10 and a 5+ is needed for anything too exciting (Clairvoyance/audience, Teleport, Telekinesis of 1kg or more). Telepathy - Read Surface Thoughts at level 4 from the easiest specialty to get is the most significant, but they still need to have a reason to check you out.

[Ramona]

I can’t help dig in, it’s the way my brain functions, I have to make sense of everything not fantastical, cars fly, ships travel faster than light, cool, drug 50 million people, whoah... hold on a sec.
Ana is happier with this information. I’ll post more significantly after work.

[Tiglath]

Might just need the odd psychic nudge to get folk started on the free government supplied electrolytes.

Of course they keep you calm - its to stop you stroking out!
Of course they are mildly addictive - its to remind you to take them!

The government is your friend ...

[ffilz]

I can’t help dig in, it’s the way my brain functions, I have to make sense of everything not fantastical, cars fly, ships travel faster than light, cool, drug 50 million people, whoah... hold on a sec.
Ana is happier with this information. I’ll post more significantly after work.

Population is actually 55 million (guess I had determined that at some point...). And yea, I think it's safe to assume Shedezar PSI is 2D. Given that Zhodani only get 2D, I think it should be a pretty extreme case, and probably a one-off sort of thing for anything to have better than 2D PSI.

[ffilz]

Might just need the odd psychic nudge to get folk started on the free government supplied electrolytes.

Of course they keep you calm - its to stop you stroking out!
Of course they are mildly addictive - its to remind you to take them!

The government is your friend ...

Oh, surely not... Yea probably so...

[ffilz]

I started looking at diving info then I thought about 4 atm on top of that and things kind of spiralled out of control from there.

Actually things are pretty simple, here's a calculator for water pressure: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pflu.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_ ... _variation

To figure the pressure at any depth of water, you find the pressure difference using the formula and then add the air pressure at the surface.

The Gamelords supplement The Undersea Environment has some useful stuff for this.

Note that with a Size 5 world, Gravity is less than Earth, so the pressure gradient under water will be lower.

Your rebreather units will take care of delivering a safe gas mixture so you won't have to worry about harmful effects.

Here's a nice page on that stuff.

But yea, the need to use respirators at lower elevation to avoid harmful effects would make it easy to deliver the drug...

[ffilz]

The one hitch to the respirator thing though is the works is just listed as Dense Atmosphere which means a respirator isn’t necessary in general. That means most of the human population is at the higher altitudes.

[Ramona]

The one hitch to the respirator thing though is the works is just listed as Dense Atmosphere which means a respirator isn’t necessary in general. That means most of the human population is at the higher altitudes.

Just go with it, the altitude they’d have to live at to get down to 1atm is insane and it’s unlikely there’s enough real estate at that altitude to support even 1% of the population . It’s a whole can of science worms we don’t want to get into beyond the most cursory glossing over, the atmosphere is thick, people need to protect themselves, decompression is needed. The local mask probably have a filter to reduce harmful gasses (not toxic at 1bar) and a Pringles sized canister of mix to keep them good.

[ffilz]

The one hitch to the respirator thing though is the works is just listed as Dense Atmosphere which means a respirator isn’t necessary in general. That means most of the human population is at the higher altitudes.

Just go with it, the altitude they’d have to live at to get down to 1atm is insane and it’s unlikely there’s enough real estate at that altitude to support even 1% of the population . It’s a whole can of science worms we don’t want to get into beyond the most cursory glossing over, the atmosphere is thick, people need to protect themselves, decompression is needed. The local mask probably have a filter to reduce harmful gasses (not toxic at 1bar) and a Pringles sized canister of mix to keep them good.

Mechanically it's a Dense (but not tainted) atmosphere, so it can be up to 2 ATM. The population is probably really stuffed into several small areas, though I'm allowing more vertical relief than out Earth so a bunch of that 10% landmass is at the right altitude (or here's something that helps, maybe the 10% landmass is actually the percentage of the world's surface area at that 2 atm elevation...). I got the 4 atm surface pressure by calculating down from the elevation I put the starport at.

Does it all work properly? Probably not... But most SF eventually collapses if you extrapolate details out too far... And I go with the pulpiness of the original source material for Traveller, so I'm willing to accept more holes in the science than current "hard SF" might accept.

I.e. don't over think it...

Still, the population might be significantly employed at lower elevations and thus need the breathers. Then they just need to solve how to deliver the drugs to those who never go to those lower elevations yet are in a position to understand what's going on...

[Ramona]

4atm isn’t impossible, Venus is smaller than Earth and has 90atm on the ground, you’d need to be 50k up to drop the pressure to 1. It doesn’t need to be tainted, at 4atm the density of the atmosphere itself will make non-toxic gasses problematic. It’s not quite dense enough for Oxygen toxicity but it’s really boarderline and you’re also really close to the Nitrogen Narcosis range too. On Earth you’d have to be 9km up to have the atmospheric pressure drop 78%, which here is lethal but there would drop you to 1atm, the problem is there are only 14 peaks over 8,000m on Earth. Now a giant “Olympus Mons” style shield volcano 10,400m would work just fine.

What I’m getting at is 4 is fine, it givea you a means of drugging way over 90% of your population simply, you worry about the 1%.

[ffilz]

4atm isn’t impossible, Venus is smaller than Earth and has 90atm on the ground, you’d need to be 50k up to drop the pressure to 1. It doesn’t need to be tainted, at 4atm the density of the atmosphere itself will make non-toxic gasses problematic. It’s not quite dense enough for Oxygen toxicity but it’s really boarderline and you’re also really close to the Nitrogen Narcosis range too. On Earth you’d have to be 9km up to have the atmospheric pressure drop 78%, which here is lethal but there would drop you to 1atm, the problem is there are only 14 peaks over 8,000m on Earth. Now a giant “Olympus Mons” style shield volcano 10,400m would work just fine.

What I’m getting at is 4 is fine, it givea you a means of drugging way over 90% of your population simply, you worry about the 1%.

I thought I had posted this earlier:

There are some islands that have very tall steep mountains (hey, alien geography with some suspension of belief...). The starport is located on the largest island which has a dormant volcano with a decent plateau at 10,000 meters elevation. The atmospheric pressure there is about 2 atm.

Down at the surface, the pressure is about 4 atm and the temperature about 42°C (107°F). The composition and humidity of the atmosphere at the surface makes humans just feel like it's not that different from being submerged in water (Squee will probably find it pleasant if a bit warm).

I got the 4 atm by choosing the 10,000m elevation and then calculating what the surface pressure would be. I had sort of hoped for a higher surface pressure to match my original statement of it being hard to tell where the atmosphere ended and the ocean started, but that didn't quite work out, so the near 100% humidity.

Anyway, my main point is the UWP of D-589799-7 indicates no special breathing gear is necessary on the world, so in general that can't be the case. But we CAN make it the case to visit particular parts of the world...

[ffilz]

I give you an out and you don’t want it.

Oh, I'll use it, just not quite as easy as you suggest. But still, no reason much of the populace doesn't still need to work at lower altitudes and be at risk. Just not wanting to blow away the mechanics of the UWP (even if ultimately that's allowed...)

[Ramona]

UWP’s are all right, lets face it a lot of them are bat crap crazy, my theory is never let the mechanics of the game get in the way of the story. Story is always king.

[ffilz]

UWP’s are all right, lets face it a lot of them are bat crap crazy, my theory is never let the mechanics of the game get in the way of the story. Story is always king.

I lean more to the "mechanics are king" side of things, that isn't to say that mechanics should be allowed to ruin the story, but one of the things that interests me in running Classic Traveller is actually engaging the oddball UWPs and other bits like that rather than glossing over all the nonsensical things. So a bunch of random things came together (I also use tags from Stars Without Number to inform my world design, and just plain random rolls "1-3 this, 4-6 that") to inform Shedezar. Is it wild and crazy? Sure...

Frank

[Ramona]

For me the UWP is really more of a guide than anything important, I use it for the physical data, the water, the size, the atmosphere. But this sociological information I’m more iffy with, sometimes I use it and other times I’m like nope I got a way better idea for that and I just assumed that the UWP is wrong. Because we know from the third imperium that the UWP Is only updated every time there’s a grand survey, which could’ve been two weeks ago or it might’ve been 200 years ago.

[lenusmars]

The eternal schism!

In my experience if you have to negate mechanics in favor of story, you usually have the wrong mechanics. Mechanics should align with and help the story emerge.

No fruit throwing, please.

That being said, the method of play that favors rulings over rules (or rather that rulings are, in fact, the rules, and the text is composed of 'guidelines' or optional and/or inspirational systems, employed at the discretion of the ref.) fulfills this requirement, it just puts a lot of weight on the ref.

I'm with the camp that doesn't accept the UWP as an 'in fiction' thing in the universe. Unless you are in fact playing OTU. (And maybe to borrow from the Glorantha folks, Your Original Traveller Universe May Vary.) I think of it as an inspirational Ref tool, and enjoy the challenge of explaining the sometimes weird-ass numbers. And Frank has said that we aren't OTU, but his own setting, though some OTU features are bound to worm their way in in the usual improvisational manner.

[ffilz]

Yea, the UWP is not an in game thing per se. It IS a summary or abstraction of in game information that can be gleaned from the Library program.

So yea, I will play with the numbers, but if the atmosphere number doesn't require breathing apparatus no matter how that may not add up, then at least in the star port and nearby surroundings you don't need breathing apparatus. Now get too far away and things may change.

Now that doesn't mean I will never change a UWP (look at what happened with Fogbound, that partly came from my not getting my map updated when I changed the UWP, but I eventually made it all work...). And maybe the Library data has some real errors in it, allowing me to change a UWP to fit an idea I have better - especially if that idea happens to be a way to use an adventure module - yea, I do use those from time to time... Sharp eyes might puzzle out the adventure module I had in mind for Fogbound, and a close look at UWPs might find some others... Other times, I might take some bits from the adventure module and fit them into the world at hand.

Don't stress out too much over it and I won't either...