Yesterday, I was trying to get a sense of scale for ships in Traveller, as they are not usually measured in length but by volume. The CR90 corvette from Star Wars is fairly easy to measure for a volume estimate, having the volume of 9,000 tons of liquid hydrogen. (Relevant xkcd joke here.) With the Patrol Corvette from Traveller being 400 tons, and the tables for ship design in Cepheus Engine only going up to 5000 tons, that had me wonder how small ships in Traveller are. And how big even the smaller ships in Star Wars actually are. So I made this scale comparison for the CR90 corvette, the smallest big ship in Star Wars.
Click to embiggen.
Those are big.
The A380 might not have been a good size comparison, as these planes are gigantic. It makes a Saturn V rocket look somewhat unimpressive. So today, I made this size comparison too.
Click to embiggen.
The Iowa class is one of the biggest warships ever build. Even slightly longer than the Yamato, though not nearly as thick in the hips. Even the flimsy looking Nebulon-B frigate that disappears in the background in battles between the big hitters in Star Wars is bigger than that.
The A320 is by far the most common plane for passenger flights inside Europe. It’s the only plane I’ve ever been on, and when you look out the window at an airport terminal, almost everything is either an A320 or equivalent size. It’s volume can be approximated as a cylinder 37 meters long and 4 meters wide, plus let’s say +20% for the wings. Which comes out as 40 tons of liquid hydrogen. That’s only 40% the minimum size for a ship to install even the smallest possible Jump Drive. The classic Free Trader is a 200 ton ship. Five times as a big as an A320.
I also calculated that the Millennium Falcon would be 160 tons. That’s 4 times the volume of an A320. Can that be right?
It indeed does check out. It’s a bit sad that we never got any wide shots of it with people crawling under and over it (probably because that would be much more expensive to film), but it is a pretty big ship.
I made these sector hex maps for Traveller, Cepheus Engine, and Stars Without Number in GIMP for everyone to use. Got them in white if you want to print them out, or in black if you want to fill them out in image software. The default size in is 8 by 10 hexes, but I also made one in double width at 16 hexes wide, and if anyone wants to use it also in 12 hexes wide.
I’m also sharing the original .xcf-files if you want to fill them out or change the colors in GIMP or some other program that can open them. The files are set up with a correctly scaled grid, so if you enable “Snap to Grid” in the “View” menu, you can always fit every star perfectly in the center of every hex.
I made the maps as big as they are because GIMP gets a bit fussy when trying to color along vertical lines. If this size is impractically big and the computer’s memory complains, you can just scale them down to 50% and they will still look just as crisp. Under “Image” > “Configure Grid”, you can change the spacing to 43.31 and 50 pixels to match the new hex size.
Aside from the elaborate character creation mini-game, one of the main thing Traveller is famous for is its setting creation system. From what I remember, the system for making a map and populating it with planets is almost identical in Stars Without Number, and that was what I used for the Esekar sector map for the first version of Iridium Moons.
I now made a map for the new Foross (Sub)sector using the system from Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition. In previous posts, I already described the six primary planets of the Foross Sector. The first thing that I did was to translate these into Traveller game terms. For each trait, like planet size, atmosphere type, population scale, and so on, there is a table listing the different possible options and each of them is identified by a single character. These can then be strung together in a fixed order to create the world’s UWP code. It’s a summary of a planet’s statistic in just one 8 to 10 digit code. The first character for the size of the spaceport facilities, the next three characters for the planet’s physical traits, and the last four for the society of its inhabitants. And if you’ve been using them for long enough, you’re supposedly able to read quite a lot of information from them before even looking up the respective tables. That’s exactly the kind of RPG nerdery I can absolutely get behind.
For those Traveller nerds who are interested (I assume there might be one or two), here’s the UWPs for the six planets:
Sarhat C862733A
Kion C765734A
Palan B763695B
Meruna C8686469
Halon E9703008-A
Ataris D6A0416B
And for those Traveller players who have not read my previous planet descriptions: Yes, Iridium Moons is a pretty low-tech and low population.
The default subsector map is an 8 by 10 hex map, but since I’m not working on photocopied sheets, I went with a 10 by 8 arrangement resulting in a square map. It doesn’t affect hexagonal movement.
Each hex has a 50% chance of having stars in them, and after four attempts, I settled on this arrangement, which I quite like, and hand selected six of the stars for my planets.
Click to embiggen.
Unlike Traveller’s default Third Imperium setting, there is no such thing as scooping up raw fuel from gas planets and ocean worlds in Iridium Moons. Instead, ships must refuel at starports. It is possible to take on additional fuel as cargo to make multiple jumps without refueling stops, but this does significantly reduce a ship’s capacity to carry goods, and commercial cargo ships avoid doing this whenever possible. For this reason, new trade routes require an infrastructure of dedicated fuel stations every two parsecs to be commercially viable for cargo ships. There are currently six such station in operation in the Foross subsector.
With these stations being literally centuries old, and the subsector being heavily shaped by industrial decay, I had the idea that most of these stations would not be refining their own fuel, but instead get it delivered by giant tankers carrying thousands of tons. And at the scale of a subsector, that still has considerable local industry going on, it really would make sense to have one central refinery that is supplying all the starports and fuel stations in the area. Station 54 would be perfect for that, resulting in the addition of the seventh main planet to the setting.
Station 54 (B3305179)
This small planet (size 3) has sufficiently strong gravity to run fractional distillation and a non-toxic atmosphere dense enough to breath with regular respirators (atm 3), making it perfect for refining ship fuel. The planet typically houses over 100,000 people (pop 5), who are almost exclusively employees of the refinery (gov 1) on six months assignments. The refinerie’s starport has the capacity to service several of its giant tankers simultaneously (starport B), but lacks the equipment and staff to make major repairs (TL 9). The refinery and the starport are owned by one of the Sarantal Oligarchs from Palan.
The ancient tankers being out of commission sometimes for months has been causing huge disruptions to trade in the Foross over the last decades. Many traders and cargo captains have grown extremely concerned about the reliance on a single refinery for the subsector, and the economic damage that would result from it going out of service for more than a week or two.
Having such an obvious weak point in the aging infrastructure of the decrepit sector is just too interesting to not use, so this remains the only fuel source in the whole Foross subsector.
I also had a plan for a space station near Sarhat, and hex 62 seems like a great place to put it.
Station 62 (C000412A-A)
This old station (C000) is one of the oldest in the sector, going back to the first mining operations on Halon. Back in the early days of the Foross subsector, it served as a central trade hub where smaller mining camps from the surrounding systems would sell their ores and buy new equipment or food coming from Kion. With the closure of the mines on Halon and the depletion of many smaller mines, large scale ore and food trade has ceased on the station over a century ago. The station is now home to some 20,000 people (pop 4), and while technically being run by one of the Tauros Oligarchs from Sarhat (gov 1), it is largely under the control of several gangs (law 2). Most ships coming through the systems only make a quick stop to take on new fuel and have their crew stay close to the ship (travel code A).
The other four stations are simply fuel stations with nothing of interest going on there.
For the rest of the systems, I decided to see what the random generation rules can produce. I generated another 35 worlds (which with the help of spreadsheets and random number generation sites was fairly painless), and oddly enough, it started with giving me 7 really awesome planets that basically wrote their own descriptions, followed by 27 really boring ones and just one quirky oddity.
E3113797
A large moon (size 3) with almost no atmosphere (atm 1) or water (hydro 1). This gives it the Ice-Capped trade code to determine resource availability, so I’m making it like one of the main moons of Jupiter. It’s home to a few thousand miners (pop 3) who have split into rival factions (gov 7), but lack of access to weapons (law 9) has kept things civil so far. Unfortunately, they don’t have the technology to maintain a space habitat (TL 7) and they will probably have to leave the planet. Getting passage for several thousand people might be difficult, which is probably the reason for the hostile factionalism.
B420575E-A
A small planet (size 4) with thin and toxic air (atm 2) below freezing and no water (hydro 0). It is home to over a hundred thousand people (pop 5) who have split into competing factions (gov 7). Military weapons are banned but there’s plenty of smaller stuff around (law 5). It gets interesting with this being a an very high-tech world (TL 14) for the subsector, with a small shipyard (starport B). Not sure what’s going on here, but this has potential.
D0(2)02527-R
A space station (size 0) occupied by a few hundred people (pop 2) living under Technocratic Feudalism (gov 5) with free possession of almost all weapons (law 2), and their technology is incapable of maintaining a space station (TL 7). It was immediately clear that this is a derelict space station where everyone is under the thumb of the last engineer who maintains and controls what is left of the life support systems. Being the third world I generated, I made a mistake and rolled for an atmosphere, even though size 0 and 1 worlds don’t have any and everyone has to live in artificial habitats. However, since the low tech level indicates the station can not be properly maintained, and the atmosphere I rolled (atm 2) is “thin and toxic”, this is just way too good not to use it! Not only is the station going to shit, it’s already so shit that you can’t leave the living quarters without respirators. Given the circumstances, I also gave the place Travel Code Red. This is all one big nightmare.
XA645374
A large planet (size 10) with a hot but normal atmosphere (atm 6) and some small seas (hydro 4). Home to several hundred thousand people (pop 5) ruled by an hereditary elite (gov 3), allowing no guns (law 7). It has no ship landing facilities at all (starport X) and the original Tech Level I rolled was stone age (TL 0). Though it’s hot and has little water, it does qualify for the Agricultural trade code, which means visitors can pick up wood, textiles, live animals, biochemicals, uncommon raw materials, and luxury consumables. I like the idea of crops being grown in underground caves where it’s cooler and moist.
Option A is to take this as it is, and make it a new alien species native to this planet. Option B is to raise their Tech Level up to 4 and make them something like Fremen, because this is already totally Dune! With the crazy plants being grown underground and the outside being a desert, nobody might know about them except the locals. And with the way space travel works, you can’t just follow the one trader that is selling these new exotic plants to learn where he gets them. Great potential.
E8432008
Earth-sized planet (size 8) with a thin, hot, and slightly toxic atmosphere (atm 3) and little water (hydro 4). It is home to a few hundred people with very basic starport facilities (starport E, TL 8). Since they are so few and the planet has no special resources, I default to them being a small independent mine. With the air being thin, hot, and slightly toxic, I had the idea that their settlement is high up in the mountains, where the temperature is not as deadly and the toxic gases are low enough to be okay with just a respirator. Not sure what interesting things might happen here, but the environment is neat.
E6601006
Mid-sized planet (size 6) with a standard atmosphere (atm 6), very hot temperatures, and no water (hydro 0). On it there are a dozen or so people (pop 1) with no government (gov 0) or weapon restrictions (law 0), and they have no digital technology (TL 6) or the means to survive for long, but a basic landing site (starport E). Must have crashed their ship here. Is this Pitch Black?
D7C156A7
Mid-sized planet (size 7) with highly corrosive atmosphere (atm C), a brutal heat (17 on a scale from 2 to 12+) and very little water (hydro 1). Under these conditions, we get large lakes of petrochemicals and precious metals. There are hundreds of thousands of people living on this planet (pop 5), but they are being controlled by a hostile outside power (gov 6). They have no weapons (law 10) and their Tech Level (TL 7) is three levels to low to survive in this environment. This is obviously some kind of brutal prison world like Chronicles of Riddick.
X7880000-A
A mid-sized planet (size 7) with a dense atmosphere (atm 8), temperate climate, and a lot of water (hydro 8). Other than Meruna, it’s the only planet in the subsector that qualifies for being a Garden World. And it is completely uninhabited. Why is that? Certainly should have Travel Code Amber.
The other worlds are all very nondescriptive and don’t bring up any inspirations. Since 16 worlds is way more than I would think I’d ever need, with the three largest being home to several colonies and stations each, I decided to just erase some of the stars from the map that were particularly densely packed. Maybe I leave the remaining 25 stars blank until I have need of them. There is already so much here to work with.
So I’ve been reading the Traveller rulebook these last few days…
I’ve been struggling for quite some time with getting the appeal of this classic game, as browsing through the pages doesn’t really bring up anything that looks special, and trying to just start on the first page and continue forward very quickly slams you into the wall that is character creation in Traveller. Which I believe is quite famously known as the most elaborate mini-game in the history of pen and paper games. It’s not quite as scary as it first looks, and once you have made your character you will never have to deal with it again for the rest of the campaign, unless your character dies. But for my ADHD brain, it’s a whole lot of information being thrown at me all at once, for which I don’t have any real context at this point. But there’s been a lot of chatter about Traveller over the past months, much of which did sound quite intriguing. And so this week I made the decision to just skip the whole part about character creation for now, since this is something I wouldn’t have to deal with anymore once a campaign starts, and instead read everything else in the book first instead.
And I can absolutely see the appeal of this game. Scum and Villainy is a great system, but as a GM, I actually have always enjoyed it a lot to have games be at least a little bit an attempt of simulating a world, with NPC and creature stats, equipment and loadout management, vehicle rules, and the like. The old Star Wars d6 game does that, and it’s by far the best of the many Star Wars RPG out there. But if I don’t want to explicitly run a Star Wars campaign, I don’t feel so sure that the generic d6 Space system would be the best choice. And then there’s of course also Stars Without Number, but something about that game just doesn’t feel quite right to me. I think it’s the OD&D framework on which it builds. Traveller is the fourth game dominating in this particular niche of games, and my first impression so far is that it actually could be the thing for me. Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition specifically. From what I’ve seen on the internet, almost everyone seems to be playing either Classic Traveller from 1977, or Mongoose Traveller 2e from 2016. I went with Mongoose over Classic. Don’t ask me why.
There is a lot about this game that makes me think “Hey, this reminds me of Stars Wars d6.”, “This reminds me of Scum and Villainy.”, and “This reminds me of Coriolis.” Because, of course, all these games are build on standard and conventions first established by Traveller.
I mentioned the issue with character creation being a rather elaborate process above. But that is indeed something that you do probably just once at the start of a campaign, and after that it won’t be part of actually playing the game. So that’s something that doesn’t bother me as much anymore than I thought it would. (Even though I still don’t have it fully figured out yet.)
Another thing that always sounded weird is that characters don’t get experience points to improve their abilities. But realistically speaking, what’s the time frame over which a Traveller campaign will take place? Maybe a year, or perhaps two? And probably a large majority of that will be spend idle in hyperspace waiting to arrive at your destination. Characters improving their skills to a clearly noticeable degree isn’t really part of the fiction with games like these. Yes, Luke Skywalker gained a lot of new abilities over three movies. But Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the two droids didn’t. And people probably don’t play Traveller to play a Jedi apprenticeship story. However, you do of course gain resources. Money, equipment, and allies. This can always be a source of significant growth in what characters can accomplish and how they engage with the obstacles of the world. And to be fair, not having to deal with deciding on new abilities when leveling up actually does sound refreshing.
The one main negative thing I noticed is the dubious editing quality of the rulebook. One of the very first things you read when starting with the character creation rules after the introduction is “assign the scores in any order youwish to the six characteristics, starting with Strength”. And there are so many cases of this. Sentences that have correct spelling and no grammar mistakes. But when you try to understand how the game works from reading the rules, there are constantly cases where the sentences are missing important information. It’s not too terrible, and most of the time I think I can assume what the writer was trying to say, based on 25 years of having learned many different RPG systems. But I always have to guess. My impression is that this was proofread by someone who already knew the game well and only checked for spelling and grammar. But when you write an RPG rulebook, you really should “playtest” it by having people try to learn the game from the text. In just a day, I could have easily filled a page with questions that would only have taken the addition of half a sentence to the respective sections.
It did awaken some vague memories from back in the day when I was very active on many RPG forums and people quite regularly making jokes about one publisher in particular for the really bad editing of their books. I am not completely sure, but I think that might actually have been Mongoose.
But overall, I really quite like what I’ve been seeing. Over the years, Traveller has been recommended to me many times, in particular in regards to discussions about my Iridium Moons setting. I’ll have to see what my ADHD brain is going to say in two weeks from now. But I think I might actually prefer this one over Scum and Villainy for running an Iridium Moons campaign.
As far as I recall, I saw Star Wars for the first time at about this time of the year, 30 years ago in 1995. Star Wars has been my favorite thing in fiction ever since.
But the last Star Wars work that I was invested in was the Knights of the Old Republic comic series that ran from 2006 to 2010. Which ended 15 years ago. Before that, the last two Star Wars works that engaged me were KotOR and Jedi Academy in 2003. That’s 22 years ago.
I have been a fan of old Star Wars stories almost three times longer than I was a fan of current Star Wars stories.
And I still am a huge fan of the three movies and many of the great works from the 90s and the early 2000s. But I also feel that the old setting might have been played out, and its potential for additional stories sufficiently explored and exhausted. As a gamemaster, I always felt like the classic Star Wars setting is a great world for endless adventures. You can always have more stories with new heroes, and new villains, and new planets. But in practice, it feels to me like mostly just more of the same. Things get renamed and reshuffled, but it’s mostly the same old pieces with the same old plots. And they are great and exciting pieces and plots. But they have already been done.
There is of course always the option to come up with new kinds of heroes and new kinds of villains who are dealing with different issues and conflicts. But in that case, why set those stories in Star Wars? For movie, TV, and videogame productions, the answer is simple. Brand recognition. Millions of people will throw a lot of money at almost everything because it is branded as Star Wars. But as a hobbyist who has no means to commercialize something with the Star Wars brand, that point is moot.
Star Wars does still endlessly inspire me to do and make new things. New ideas for new cultures, new factions, and new conflicts that can produce new stories. But in this creative space, tying everything to the framework of Star Wars does not support and enhance the new ideas, but rather restricts and limits them. With Iridium Moons, I do have the full freedom to just do my own things, and execute all my own new ideas as a coherent world that does not have to struggle against its foundations.
The Star Wars d6 RPG is such a great and exciting game, and even the d20 Saga Edition is very evocative in its own way. But I feel to me, as a GM, the setting has been played out. I still love the idea of running Star Wars campaigns, but when I sit down to sketch out a draft for adventures, I do find this world quite lacking in hooks for new stories to tell in it.
Star Wars has stopped expanding on its original form a long, long time ago. And all the new forms people have come up with to extend the profits that can be extracted from the brand have been doing nothing for me. And I don’t have any ideas for how to do more with that classic world either. So perhaps it has become time to reframe my relationship with Star Wars as a deep love for three movies and a few books and comics that I can take from the shelf every year to enjoy them for what they are, rather than as this endless playground that should be expanded into perpetuity. And I think I can keep that love going for another 50 years.
It indeed does check out. It’s a bit sad that we never got any wide shots of it with people crawling under and over it (probably because that would be much more expensive to film), but it is a pretty big ship.
