Traveller talk:About
MOARN and the Swiss cheese[edit]
There is one part of the About page I'm not sure how to address correctly.
Make Only As Really Needed (MOARN) is a strong suggestion from the T5 rules. Ironic from a 900+ page book filled with tables and rules for making everything from pins to sectors.
Compare this with the statements of Traveller RPG Wiki policy like "[the] setting is swiss cheese, it has more holes than cheese" and "fill in as many of the holes in the swiss cheese as possible".
I'm trying to find a better statement of balancing these two statements. Something positive and encouraging.
I'm not enthusiastic about having the Wiki policy be we would like to fill in all the holes in the Canon. Those holes exist for a reason, like Foreven Sector as a referee's preserve.
I like to think of a published campaign setting, or the wiki, using the analogy of building a house. The existing texts fall somewhere on the continuum of: an open field, a basic foundation, a framed building, a completed house. And every Referee and their players has a preference on where on that line they prefer their background material to be.
One of the arguments for more fan information in the wiki would be that creating content is hard, it requires work that not everyone has the time or feels comfortable in creating ("Its not as good as the published stuff"). But we need to recognize editing, removing unwanted material, is also a great deal of work. And having too much information in the background can be, and for some groups, a source of conflict. In the discussions I've had on the subject the Referee's want to present their campaign, not someone else's.
The other problem is all the published material, canon and fan-created alike, is it can present material which is controversial or offensive. Marc has drawn lines that Traveller won't present some kinds of material: adult situations, some kinds of violence, and a few others. There are rules on the COTI boards to avoid discussions of politics and religion.
On the other hand several of the contributors like using the wiki as a way of publishing material without the overhead of the normal book publishing. It is a way of working on ideas, getting feedback, and just fulfilling the desire to write and create. And a big part of the reason for the wiki is to support these kind of efforts.