space fantasy

Yora looks at Traveller (not a review)

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 you wish 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.

Have I had enough Star Wars?

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.

Planets of the Foross Sector: Halon and Ataris

Halon

Halon was the first planet in the Foross sector to gain a permanent settlement after the discovery of three meteor impact sites rich in rhodium, palladium, and iridium by prospectors from Turik. The Turikans began mining on Halon in 478, bringing in large numbers of chosa miners from the other side of enkai space to work in the planet’s harsh conditions. Most chosa in the Foross sector claim to be descendants of those first miners, but statistically most of their ancestry comes from later generations of chosa migrating to the sector.

Halon is a very old planet, orbiting an old star in the early phases of its red giant stage. It is also believed to be mostly dead.

The planet’s atmosphere covers the skies in an almost permanent brown haze that reflects a large portion of the star’s light and is the only reason it is still possible to walk on its surface without protective suits. The air’s oxygen content is high enough for all humanoid species to survive, but considerably lower than what most people would consider comfortable to breath. New arrivals to the planet often suffer from headaches and fatigue and typically wear oxygen masks until their bodies get used to it, which can take several weeks. Enkai born in the somewhat thin atmosphere of Turik or chosa were the only people able to perform hard physical labor under these conditions.

There is no animal or plant life on Halon, but it is quite possible that microbial life could still exist underground in some parts of the planet that keeps releasing oxygen into the air. Geologists from the mining companies reported finding some fossils in the debris from the mines that could indicate that Halon once had an abundance of small shrubs, but no paleontologic studies have ever been conducted on the planet.

After the discovery of new precious metal sources on Sarhat and the founding of the Tauros colony in 547, the mining companies started to move all personnel and movable equipment from Halon, and by 564 the last Turikan mine on the planet ceased operations. Today, there are less than 20,000 people believed to still be on Halon. Most of them pirates and smugglers using the abandoned mine shafts as hideouts, or scavengers looking for abandoned mining equipment that hasn’t been picked clean of valuable components a century ago.

Ataris

Ataris is a small rocky planet largely covered in ice that orbits close to a hot brown dwarf. The planet has a fairly dense atmosphere of nitrogen and carbon dioxide that traps enough heat from the brown dwarf’s dim glow to make it possible to go out on its surface without heated environment suits, but its complete lack of oxygen in the air makes it impossible to survive without breathing masks and oxygen tanks.

The planet is home to several science stations dug into the black rock of its jagged mountains by Takkusat Research from Usomi on Palan over the last 50 years. There are some 17,000 people mahir on Ataris at any given time, but it has no permanent residents and is considered by Takkusat Research to be part of Usomi territory.

Planets of the Foross Sector: Palan and Meruna

Palan

Palan is a mostly barren planet, but has sufficient microbial life in its numerous small seas to maintain an atmosphere dense enough and sufficiently high in oxygen to be fully breathable for most species. However, the radiation from its sun is dangerously high across most of the planet, and all settlements are located near the south pole, where due to the planet’s low axial tilt, the sun always stays low above the horizon all year. Creating the impression that each day consists of only a very long morning and equally long evening. The most striking feature of Palan’s sky are the planet’s large rings that are visible over the northern horizon during the day and most of the night. What plant life exist on the mostly barren rocks that make up most of the land surface consists mostly of lichens and a few simple shrubs. No animals are raised on Palan, and there are no native land animals larger than 1 cm in size.

Palan is home to two main settlements. Sarantal was founded in 497 by a the Askal Directorate from the neighboring Askal sector to serve as workers’ housing for the construction of a large fuel and repair station in orbit around Palan’s moon. As commerce in the Foross sector greatly increased in the mid-500s, both the station and the settlement were greatly expanded, and gained a large new population of genya workers. At 9 million people, Sarantal is now the single largest city in the entire sector.

A consortium of mahir corporations established the Usomi colony in 579, some 200 km from Sarantal. Over the following century, it gained a population of 4 million mahir and genya.

Meruna

Meruna was the last planet in the Foross Sector to be settled. Even though it is one of the most habitable planet in the entire sector, second only to Kion, its lack of valuable mineral resources had made it completely irrelevant to any of the mining companies that originally drove the development of the sector. The Keritika colony was founded by firax in 631, after most of the large colonial companies had already ceased operations in the sector and sold off most of their remaining assets. The purpose of Keritika had never been to become economically profitable, but to primarily to serve as a self-sustaining embassy of the firax states closer to the regions of space inhabited by the vhen, mahir, and tubaki. The only direct neighbors of firax space are the enkai and chosa, and they considered it in their collective best interest to have direct contact and establish relationships with other peoples as well.

Meruna is a largely oceanic planet, but home to several groups of large islands that cover about 8% of its surface. Most land is relatively flat and covered in a wide variety of grasses, though there are many types of native shrubs and scattered clusters of small trees as well. This makes the planet very suitable for raising introduced farm animals. While animal life in the sea is extremely abundant and diverse, land animals consists mostly of small birds and burrowing animals, with no large predators that could pose a threat even to firax children.

Though the planet’s 5 million population consists mostly of equal numbers of firax and genya, various enkai and vhen oligarchs from other planets in the sector have been trying to take control over the major private businesses on Meruna for years, and have recently been pressuring the government in Keritika to privatize several state-owned companies to take over.

OUTA TIME

As surely is evident from going through over 10 years of posts on this site, I have always had a challenging relationship with Sword & Sorcery campaigns and worldbuilding. I think the roots for what became the Ancient Lands and later Kaendor were already there when I first got seriously interested in making my own fantasy campaign setting all the way back in 2009. I had a very strong vision for the kind of world I wanted to make, inspired by the aesthetics of Conan the Barbarian and Return of the Jedi. But with all the (often short) campaigns I ran over 15 years, it never actually played out as adventures that evoke that style. What I managed to run always ended up being fairly generic D&D. In 2014 or so, I was dabbling with trying story writing again, set in a world of that style, but that never took off due to lack of any plot ideas. And more recently, over the last year, when I took up videogame design as a new hobby, it always was a big indecision and endless back and forth whether I wanted to make something in that fantasy style, or in my more recent concept for a Space Opera setting.

The one dominating problem has always been that I couldn’t come up with stories, because I couldn’t imagine what kind of actionable goals and motivations heroes could pursue that would make for a great adventure but also feel believable and make them sympathetic characters. One thing that I realized last winter was that my ideas for Kaendor and Sword & Sorcery have always been an idea for a strong aesthetic, but never a concept for themes or stories.

I really love the idea of Iron Age style societies living in a prehistoric wilderness. But what do I actually have to say about Iron age people and cultures? What ideas and concepts do I want to express through the conditions and actions of people living in Iron Age societies? I don’t really have, and never had, anything interesting interesting about Iron Age cultures that I find interesting to explore through fiction. I always just really liked the aesthetics of it.

There is, of course, always the option taken by lots of fantasy writers, to simply have the people of a fantasy world think like and have the concerns of contemporary audiences. The Witcher games are a prime example of a world that has medieval technology and magic, but is inhabited by people who intellectually and culturally think and behave like 21st century Europeans. D&D has persistently progressing into that direction for the last 40 years now. But to me, that idea has always been completely unappealing. What’s the point of having fantastic cultures that are based on ancient societies and use ancient technologies if they think and act, and deal with the same concerns as we do today? That would just be modern society dresses up in costumes, and missing everything that makes Iron Age cultures interesting to me in the first place.

Things are very different for me with Space Opera, though. While technology in Space Opera is often significantly advanced to ours, their motivations and concerns are generally seen as the same as ours. In the mid-20th century, modernist thought was that great advances in technology would drastically transform society, and that new technologies could solve the many issues society had been struggling with for generations since the start of industrializations. But we now know that this is not the case, and this has been the whole reasons of being for the entire cyberpunk genre since the early 80s. New technologies do not solve societal problems. Modern technologies have massively improved food production, energy generation, and medicine. But most of the newly generated wealth only ends up making the already rich even richer, without lifting the poor out of poverty. Throughout Europe and North America, the message by the ruling classes has been for decades now that the common people have to get used to becoming poorer, being able to afford less, and are going to have to work more. At the same time as the countries as a whole are getting ever more richer. It is of course foolish to assume that people will still live the same way and have the same culture as we have today. But we also really have no reason to assume that anything is going to change in meaningful ways either, or that the social problem of 2525 will be different from those in 2025. Or those in 1825. There are no trends that clearly point to significant social changes in the future. (Except significantly lower population numbers everywhere.) There’s still going to be rich elites that tell everyone else they will have to tighten their belts while they get ever richer, and distract from their own blame by agitating for hostility against some minority or another. Cool tech gadgets won’t change anything about that.

Which is why I always find it infinitely easier to come up with goals and motivations for characters, ideas for possible adventures and stories, factions, and large scale conflicts in Space Opera environments. In a Space Opera, I have no problems coning up with themes, or meaningful things that I want to express through worldbuilding. In contrast, Sword & Sorcery has always been only a very dear and appealing aesthetic to me. An aesthetic that ironically was inspired mostly by Return of the Jedi, the Dune game from 1994, Albion from 1995, and Knights of the Old Republic. Which are all Space Opera! So realizing that aesthetic that always dominates my imagination through a Space Opera setting rather than a Sword & Sorcery world is absolutely doable. (And the six planets of my new iteration of Iridium Moons satisfy that artistic urge very well so far.)

Every couple of weeks, I have a moment where that old familiar call to take another shot at making that vision for an Iron Age society in a prehistoric world work comes back very strongly. But each time, I still can’t think of any new ideas for themes or conflicts that speak to me. Having been at it for 16 years now, I often feel that my motivation to do so is probably mostly habit and familiarity at this point. It is an old dream, that is very dear to me. But I also feel that from the perspective of narrative creative expression, it probably is just a dead end to me. There just isn’t anything I want to express or explore through characters native to pre-modern societies. And for once, this isn’t a sudden burst of half thought through thoughts that I want to shout out to whoever might want to listen. This has been a fairly consistent experience I have had for probably at least 5 years now. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I absolutely feel that with Iridium Moons, I really do have something that has a lot of potential for true greatness and making an impact, and is just as exciting to me. When the excitement of wanting to work on Sword & Sorcery runs out and I get stuck, and I think about maybe making something new for Iridium Moons instead, the excitement always comes rushing back immediately.

I think perhaps this just will take more time to get used to.

Planets of the Foross Sector: Sarhat and Kion

The Foross Sector is located near the edge of Known Space, at the outermost point where the regions of vhen and enkai colonial influence meet, and give way to unexplored space, and only a bit more than a week from the genya homeworld Upara by cargo freighter. It saw some very extensive mining in the 5th and 6th century, but was abandoned by government-owned mining corporation in the early 600s.

Since then, the sector’s population has dropped from more than 100 million people to less than 60 million due to emigration. The local economies were fully privatized, and economic output declined down to 20% of its peak levels in the late 6th century. The greatly scaled down mining operations are used to fund the import of advanced electronics and medical supplies, but almost all the local infrastructure and industry relies on 200 year old heavy machinery parts salvaged from abandoned mines, and almost half the sector’s population is working in food production, often for mostly personal consumption.

Sarhat

Sarhat is an arid planet dominated by rocky deserts and a number of enclosed salty seas that are home to oxygen-producing bacteria, and whose continuous evaporation provides the scarce rain that fills the planets rivers. While the salt seas are highly alkaline and covered in thick layers of pink bacterial sludge, the seasonal rivers are regularly replenishing underground caverns in porous rocks, which create numerous oases that have become the main sites for settlements on the planet. Though vegetation on Sarhat is sparse, the planet is home to many species of native animals. Most are fairly small and of little threat to people, but some are large enough to be worthwhile to hunt for food. Agriculture of hardy crops in the soil of Sarhat is possible, but the import of fruit and vegetables from Kion is the main source of cargo traffic within the sector.

Sarhat was first settled in 523 by enkai from the Parakarit colony, who established a small survey station as an outpost of their settlement on Kion. Discoveries of numerous small, but still highly concentrated sources of Iridium and Palladium on Sarhat in 547, and decreasing outputs from the mines of the Turik colony on Halon, led to nearly all the Turik mining operations being moved to the much less hostile and inhospitable planet. The Turikan cities and settlements of the Tauros colony are now home to 15 million people ruled by eight oligarch families. The older Parakarian colony of Partenas is home to 5 million people, and are ruled by 4 oligarch families. Another estimated 2 million people live scattered throughout the hills or the ruins of settlements abandoned after the Turik and Parakarit governments cut all infrastructure funding on the planet.

Counted together, Turikan and Parakarian enkai make up the largest population on Sarhat, and all the oligarch families on the planet are enkai. But they are outnumbered by the large populations descended from alien migrant workers, mostly chosa and tubaki who deal well with the hot and dry climate of the planet. The Turikan and Parakarian oligarchs often prefer to have dealings among themselves, but at the end of the day, business interests go above cultural animosities.

Kion

Kion is one of the two most hospitable planets in the Foross Sector. Its surface is covered in several large continents, separated by a global network of winding narrow seas. Except for the polar regions and the higher mountain ranges, much of the planet’s land is covered in dense vegetation. As expected from a planet like this, Kion is home to millions of species of native animals, only a tiny fraction of which has ever been scientifically described or named over the past two centuries.

While the first settlers from Turik immediately went to full scale mining on Halon, the Parakarit government decided to first focus on setting up sustainable food production in the sector to greatly reduce the costs of supplying later mining operations. The Solanika was established in Kion in 503 and some mining was begun in Lerinas in 514, but it never reached the scale of the Turikan mining operations on Halon and later Sarhat.

The mines on Halon ended up buying large quantities of food from Kion, as even with the enormous prices paid to the rival Parakarians, this was still cheaper than relying entirely on shipping food in from Turik. Correspondingly, the vhen colony on Palan established the Arkon outpost on Kion in 558 to compete with Solanika, though this was exclusively a food production facility with no plans to do any mining on Kion.

Today, the Solanika colony numbers 12 million people ruled by five enkai oligarchs. Arkon is home to 5 million people, ruled over by three oligarchs. Two vhen, and one Turikan enkai.