(A) Traveller Worldbuilding Inspires and Confuses
This is archival material from previous blog
Okay, I almost missed this months RPG Blog Carnival. I thought I couldn’t make it on time. And then… I recalled the solo experiment I did with Traveller thanks to https://andyrpg.bearblog.dev/ inspiration.
Traveller is a sci-fi setting which action takes places in space. There are myriads of worlds people can live in, various planets, moons and asteroids. Civilization is spread out, there are probably stable and rich worlds out there with superb technology but you are here. And here is where?
Each iteration of Traveller from T5 to Mongoose to Cepheus Engine allows GM to create a subsector with a bunch of dice rolls. Subsector is a cosmic space mapped with hexes. Each hex is a parsec, so around 3 lightyears ‘diameter’. subsector is 8 hexes wide and 10 hexes long? high? space is weird.
Due to rolling and interpreting results you get a new emergent world and you may understand what flavour of sci-fi Traveller serves you. Let me show you.
The main characteristics of a given world are summarised by a short set of letters and numbers. For example C99A231-7. What does it mean? First letter is the type of a starport of this world, A, B, C, D, E or X. A is for the best, orbital ones with refueling stations, able to repair your space vessel, often with multiple bases for space hotels, navy presence or research facilities. The further letters means it is worse type, E is usually just a landing site on the surface and X is absence of any starport. C starport generally offers unrefined fuel, repairs of only small spacecraft and decent chance for pirates present.
Next are physical characteristics. Size (and gravity), Atmosphere and Hydrographics. Sizes range from asteroids or space stations to huge planets with 1.4 Earth’s gravity. Atmosphere’s can be absent, thin, regular, dense, tainted, dangerous, incompatible with human biology. Hydrographics determines water content, from deser to waterworld. It is not totally random – size affects atmosphere modifier and atmosphere affects hydrographics modifier. In my example we have 99A – size 9 which is planet a little bit larger than Earth, with atmosphere 9 which is dense for human standards and hydrographics A – which means 10, which indicates water world. So it is high gravity planet with dense atmosphere covered totally in water. I guess water helps when you have to struggle with gravity.
Then we have another three numbers. Population, Government type (modified by population) and Law Level (modified by Government). What is interesting here is that physical attributes of the world doesn’t affect it. So you may have Earth-like world with population of a few inhabitants and an asteroid with tens of millions. Population gets from 0 to tens of billions of people. Government is varied. From corporate rule to feudal states, democracies, split governments fighting for control up to revolutionary and religious regimes. Law Level is how strict is law, from lawless to banned everything. Our example is 231 – which is a few hundred people, ruled by self-perpetuating oligarchy (which in that case probably means just a ruling family) and not getting too much banned besides nuclear weapons and highly addictive drugs probably.
Here we have mostly Inspiring part of the title. It can be real fun interpreting the results. Like an asteroid with millions of citizens – is it deliberate space city or is there something so valuable many companies and workers started working here? Or Earth-like garden world with just a handful of people – why aren’t there more settlers? Is there dangerous fauna or something in local life makes it toxic to humans? Or is it some rich folks who own it and restrict access for anyone else? Why does this other planet have solid population and functional government yet is lawless?
And here we get to the Confusion (for me). Tech Level. It describes level of technology most common in the world. Of course people dealing with space traders can have space tech but they cannot repair it or manufacture it. I have real trouble wrapping my head around it because you often get weird results. Like space-station world with Renaissance technology. Why? How? Do these people built space station and are know fighting with rapiers because guns are gone? Or colony on a world with oceans made of ammonia and technology of medieval people?
There is a passage (at least in Mongoose 1e version) that in certain atmospheres this communities will die out once current life support systems fail. But how does it happen? Do corporations and space governments just set colonies on some worlds and then let them die out? How does it happen that places directly reliant on space tech lose it and divert so hard it makes them look more like medieval people? It’s not like they can reproduce without space tech. Aside of Garden Worlds (Earth-like size, breathable atmosphere, sufficient water) there is no way these colonies can naturally produce new generations. Pregnancy and development in too high or too low gravity just won’t make it.
So then I assume the universe in Traveller is very harsh and brutal place. Most colonies are strangled by their sponsors – corporations, neighbouring governments or Imperium itself. These people struggle to survive, they try to reinvent tech to not be so reliant on their space masters. And are probably too poor to leave considering high cost of interstellar passage. The only – in my mind of course – “independent” worlds are Garden Worlds – where you can just land and probably live as if you were on Earth, maybe even as a ‘barbarian’ with Tech Level 0 – and High Tech worlds where technology better than in our times is common enough to live comfortably. Others are just capitalist dystopias even worse than we ever encountered in reality.
This is what emerges from procedural generated sectors in Traveller. I don’t get as much dystopian and grim feel from the book(s) but this is how I feel in order to keep my verisimilitude at peace. And even that creates some crazy situations you need to interpret yourself. Let me show you.
poorly drawn hexes with numbers and letters on them, pencil on paper
This is the first thing I rolled for Traveller. As you can see most of these worlds are barely livable and there are not many people living there. But we have perfect storm – (hex 22) very populous asteroid/space station (0008) right after revolution (BC) and next to it a garden planet (hex 32, 667567) with Tech Level 5 (so a natural barbarian world). So I ruled that on 22 previously independent nation of various space travellers who made the space station currently is overtaken by violent nationalists who want to conquer another worlds. And that pretty garden is right there. And that research world with very high tech next to it (hex 31, 5374) currently in total anarchy (00).
better (but still poorly) drawn hexes with numbers and letters on them, pencil on paper
Or here we have another situation. There are various worlds, you can from trade codes – Ga means Garden, Na is Non-Agricultural, De is Desert and so on. The case here is that I underlined Tech Levels. And the only world with spacefaring Tech Level is this low population (a few thousand) almost garden (B497256-D). For me then the rest are various colonies and this one is just a bunch of rich people who took this low gravity marvel as their own. It is vacation world for rich bastards and the rest worlds around it are working to keep the rich richer.
There is another example, actually built in the game and not emergent. Usually worlds with Tainted type of atmosphere (4, 7 or 9) are regular world with atmosphere slightly inconvenient for humans. But if you have very high population it has trade code Industrial – which implies it is tainted because of humans, because of industry! Isn’t it cool?
There are a lot more situations like this. And in the end it is up to me, and you, and anyone who builds it and GMs it to decide what these things mean. And I love it. But I’d also change it so less worlds would have tech level so low. Besides gardens. Gardens can be as barbaric as they want to.