Re: Tons, tons and more tons - Was: Are Attached files ok?

From: "Paul Westermeyer" <westermeyer@???????.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 8:43 AM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Tons, tons and more tons - Was: Are Attached 
files ok?


>I generally feel such arguments are a dead end but...

All arguments are dead ends. But as long as people argue against a bit of 
information they think *might* be wrong, and not make personal attacks, I 
think that debates can help people to test their logic. There is a law of 
diminishing returns, where you gain less and less, but if people are seeking 
the truth (rather than trying to defeat others) I think they would enjoy a 
civilised debate, even if they loose it.

> We have 'SJ' tons, a measurement of ship size, always defined as a 
> measurement of volume.  It also represents a measurement of how much air a 
> ship of that volume drags along with it.  But the volume measurement is of 
> the ship itself, not of its air envelope.

Hmm. Well, page 28 of CoAS specifically states that "spacial tons" *are* 
"100 cubic yards of atmosphere".

Page 25 says: "A ship's size is defined in *tonnage* (T) - literally the 
amount of displacement the ship takes up. Since this displacement also 
influences the amount of breathable air surrounding the ship in space, a 
tonnage is also a reflection of both its crew capacity and requirements." 
And then also states that a ton is "100 cubic yards".

This seems to be two different bits of information. I suppose that your case 
could be supported by arguing that the "displacement of a spelljamming ship" 
is measured by "the air that the ship displaces" (in the same way that the 
displacement of a sailing ship is measured by the water that the ship 
displaces).

That isn't actually the way that I've always read this, but I've tried to 
look at this from the other direction and you can't bend the words of page 
25 to get them to fit in with the words of page 28.

So, I'll change my point of view on air envelopes and make them an area that 
is greater than the displaced air in the middle of the air envelope. I'm not 
sure if that is going to make the total volume equal to 27 times the ship 
volume, or something less than that. But I don't think that it really 
matters*. I've got a number and I can use that number to work out the 
duration of the air supply. I also know that if I can somehow increase the 
displacement of the ship by an entire (spacial) ton, I can add to the air 
supply of the ship.

* = At least I can't see any in game need to know the "true" volume of an 
air envelope at this time.

> There are also 'nautical tons' which are really 'tons displacement' and 
> represents how much water a ship 'displaces'.  If you hear someone 
> describe a battleship, for example, as 32,000 tons, that is how many tons 
> of water the ship displaces as it sits in the ocean.  Not the same as SJ 
> tons.

Yep. That is exactly what paragraph 2 of the "Ship Hulls" section on page 
27-28 of CoAS says. I was trying to get that across. I might have had some 
faulty logic along the way, but I'm glad I did, because you have opened my 
eyes to something else.

I still think that it would be useful to go through ships that land at sea 
and try to calculate "nautical displacement" alongside "spacial 
displacement". (Note that I don't think we need to do this for ships that 
only land on the ground.) When a spelljamming ship lands in water, it ceases 
to be a spelljamming ship and converts to a nautical craft. At that point 
any rules involving tonnage, would be expecting a groundling craft (so SJ 
tons would give you a false result).

I think that we could look at the nautical tonnage of the groundling ships 
in SJ (caravel, coaster, cog, drakkar, dromond, galleon, great galley and 
longship) and check to see if there is a direct relationship between the two 
types of displacement. Maybe we can plot a graph and use that to see that SJ 
tons = 2 x groundling tons (or whatever).

> And, of course, we have 'tons' as a measurement of weight, and the form 
> most folks here are familair with.

I actually feel that "tons of weight" would be more likely to relate to the 
hull points of a spelljamming ship than the displacement.

> The reason I think these discussions are a dead end, is that none of us 
> our nautical engineers, and even if if we were, we are not _Rennaissance_ 
> nautical engineers.
>
> Simply put, we just don't know enough about what we are talking about to 
> not avoid constant, massive error.

I'd agree with that. The same also could be said of many other things 
included in SJ or D&D in general. How many of us are really experts in the 
way that druids or bards work. How many of us know much about the real god 
Ptah?

But I think that if people are actually willing to look things up, rather 
than to just throw in their unqualified opinion, *and* if they are willing 
to consider that they *might* be wrong, rather than to insist that SJ can 
only work their way, then *something* can be gained by *someone* when one of 
these conversations happens.

> I know enough, through my work in nautical history, to see some of the 
> more glaring errors but that's about it.

Hmm. Was it you that made HackJammer tons different to Spelljammer tons? Was 
your logic based on your knowledge of nautical history, a desire to "not 
duplicate SJ rules word for word", or a desire to make HJ tons fit in with 
other HackMaster products?

> And that' not even considering the wonky physics Spelljammer, and magic.

Reading this sentence has made me think that spellcasters could *try* to use 
magic to alter the displacement of a ship. (I'm thinking of a spell, that 
makes a 1 ton ship have the displacement, and therefore an air envelope, of 
ship with 2 or more tons. A spell that wouldn't increase the actual tonnage, 
so would not have any effect on hull points. The spell would be of limited 
use, because when it expired, the extra air would drift off into wildspace 
instantly.)

> Best to just take the stats as you are given them and explain 
> inconsistencies as SJ physics and magic.
>
> IMO, of course.

If you look closely at the gold coins minted on The Rock of Bral you will 
see the words: "In Grubb We Trust"!

;-)

I prefer to accept the original decisions of The Grubbmeister and co as 
gospel, but I would love to be able to ask him a bunch of questions to deal 
with the things where some level of ambiguity is present.

(Actually, I'd have to go further than that and say that I wish that WotC 
would contact Jeff Grubb and ask "him" to oversee a 4th edition version of 
Spelljammer. I think that you, Adam, Rian and Static would make very good 
contributions to a 4th edition Spelljammer [so would love to see you have a 
say in any future version], but I also am convinced that Jeff Grubb has 
pictures of SJ in his head that he has never taken the time to put onto a 
page.)

"Pay no attention to the arcane behind the curtain."
David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/