Announcing: The Open Playtest!
- Thread starter Se Chris
- Start date
SableWyvern
Mongoose
I'm liking the look of that, Halfbat.
Keep in mind that in many ways, this game is trying to emulate Classic Traveller, and the original LBB's did not produce NCO's..that was added in the supplements. I think its ok to have all the PCs be former officers. An expanded character generation system for the careers (producing hopefully compatible number of skills unlike the old Book 4 etc. but allowing for greater detail on careers and such) could be in supplements.
Allen
Allen
Gruffty the Hiver
Banded Mongoose
I don't see why Enlisted/NCO characters can't be generated by "compressing" the LBB 4/5/6/7 rules somehow, without having to go down an "extended CharGen sequence for all" approach. MegaTraveller managed to do it...
SableWyvern
Mongoose
I think that the ideas Pete and Halfbat have presented here offer significant improvements over the current playtest rules, even if you drop the NCO parts.
Having said that, they have also both managed to incorporate an NCO stream that meshes pretty flawlessly with the rest of the generation process, and adds useful options and depth with very little extra bulk. There may ultimately be a number of good reasons to leave NCOs out of the core rules, but the fact that they weren't in core CT is not, IMO, one of them.
Having said that, they have also both managed to incorporate an NCO stream that meshes pretty flawlessly with the rest of the generation process, and adds useful options and depth with very little extra bulk. There may ultimately be a number of good reasons to leave NCOs out of the core rules, but the fact that they weren't in core CT is not, IMO, one of them.
Seventh Termer
Mongoose
Some nice touches here (particularly connections and event tables) and I do value the opportunity to comment at such an early stage.
On specifics I've been using a stat-7/3 rounded formula for attribute DM's for years in my own version of CT and find it works just fine.
I've also applied the same formula to other situational DMs (e.g. the tech level of equipment used , the impact of a worlds pop, govt or other UPP level) and doing so gives a nice unified dynamic compared to CT.
On the unskilled -3 DM I think this just adds an unnecessary level of complexity - its much simpler to just state that unskilled characters find tasks one or more levels more difficult than skilled characters (as IIRC did MT. TNE and T4).
This also gives more flexibility for different situations and backgrounds (e.g. are both a TL-1 barbarian and a TL-15 fighter pilot really going to face exactly the same problems in driving a TL-5 wheeled vehicle even though neither has drive wheeled vehicle-0+?).
On chargen:
Although I agree that rolling 3d6 and dropping lowest has too big an impact, just rolling 2d6 unmodified also creates way too many unplayable characters - or worse completely unbelievable ones (e.g. very high Str but low End or very high Edu but low Int).
My own house rule is to state that no physical stat can be lower than half the highest physical stat rolled (e.g. Str-2, Dex-7 and End-12 become Str-6, Dex-7 and End-12) and ditto for non-physical stats.
This does pull up the average but without increasing the probability of high stats.
While I like the simpler enlistment mechanic I'd be inclined to add minimum stats for some careers - currently having an Edu-2 is no bar to becoming a scholar for instance, and there is nothing to stop you joining the army and Marines with a Str-2.
The Draft should just be dropped as it makes no sense in any high or even medium tech setting (you really think the scouts or marines would accept random conscripts?)- and if you keep it certainly shouldn't be repeatable after term 1.
Promotion clearly seems broken and should in any case use a more than six point rank scale (as per CT Books4-6, MT, TNE, T4 all of which had 10 ranks).
I also really miss the NCO option - in my view every Traveller party needs a grizzled ex-Marine Gunnery Sergeant rather than the improbable collection of ex-generals, -admirals and -brigadiers cramped into a scoutship CT book 1 chargen tended to produce.
This could be handled relatively easily by having two rank tables, with commission and use of the officer rank table being governed by one single roll in term 1 (to cover academy and OTC graduates) or a commission event on the advancement table.
Also a serious rethink of Nobles and Social Standing is now about 30 years overdue and this is the perfect opportunity.
To start with in the OTU no PC should EVER have a Soc of more than 12 - as in the Imperium marquises and higher are fabulously powerful and rich individuals with the resources of whole worlds to draw upon and are no more free to potter around on a free trader getting into adventures than a current earth head of state would be.
In CT and MT thanks to the +2 Soc benefit there were just way too many Soc 15 naval officers (Soc 15 supposedly being dukes governing a whole subsector or sector with billions or even trillions of subjects) knocking around and it is silly to reproduce this yet again.
My solution would be to drop the automatic Soc=noble rank equivalency completely and make the stat a measure of charisma, social skills, creditworthiness, contacts etc.
However if this equivalency is hard coded then maybe initial PC Soc has to be rolled with a d6 or capped at 12 (in fact I think there is an argument for capping all attributes at 12 for standard humans).
Ship shares - good idea but needs to be consistently applied - i.e. give Scouts and Nobles shares as well.
TNE had a similar concept of ship DM's which was much more fully thought through and which you should consider stealing.
On specifics I've been using a stat-7/3 rounded formula for attribute DM's for years in my own version of CT and find it works just fine.
I've also applied the same formula to other situational DMs (e.g. the tech level of equipment used , the impact of a worlds pop, govt or other UPP level) and doing so gives a nice unified dynamic compared to CT.
On the unskilled -3 DM I think this just adds an unnecessary level of complexity - its much simpler to just state that unskilled characters find tasks one or more levels more difficult than skilled characters (as IIRC did MT. TNE and T4).
This also gives more flexibility for different situations and backgrounds (e.g. are both a TL-1 barbarian and a TL-15 fighter pilot really going to face exactly the same problems in driving a TL-5 wheeled vehicle even though neither has drive wheeled vehicle-0+?).
On chargen:
Although I agree that rolling 3d6 and dropping lowest has too big an impact, just rolling 2d6 unmodified also creates way too many unplayable characters - or worse completely unbelievable ones (e.g. very high Str but low End or very high Edu but low Int).
My own house rule is to state that no physical stat can be lower than half the highest physical stat rolled (e.g. Str-2, Dex-7 and End-12 become Str-6, Dex-7 and End-12) and ditto for non-physical stats.
This does pull up the average but without increasing the probability of high stats.
While I like the simpler enlistment mechanic I'd be inclined to add minimum stats for some careers - currently having an Edu-2 is no bar to becoming a scholar for instance, and there is nothing to stop you joining the army and Marines with a Str-2.
The Draft should just be dropped as it makes no sense in any high or even medium tech setting (you really think the scouts or marines would accept random conscripts?)- and if you keep it certainly shouldn't be repeatable after term 1.
Promotion clearly seems broken and should in any case use a more than six point rank scale (as per CT Books4-6, MT, TNE, T4 all of which had 10 ranks).
I also really miss the NCO option - in my view every Traveller party needs a grizzled ex-Marine Gunnery Sergeant rather than the improbable collection of ex-generals, -admirals and -brigadiers cramped into a scoutship CT book 1 chargen tended to produce.
This could be handled relatively easily by having two rank tables, with commission and use of the officer rank table being governed by one single roll in term 1 (to cover academy and OTC graduates) or a commission event on the advancement table.
Also a serious rethink of Nobles and Social Standing is now about 30 years overdue and this is the perfect opportunity.
To start with in the OTU no PC should EVER have a Soc of more than 12 - as in the Imperium marquises and higher are fabulously powerful and rich individuals with the resources of whole worlds to draw upon and are no more free to potter around on a free trader getting into adventures than a current earth head of state would be.
In CT and MT thanks to the +2 Soc benefit there were just way too many Soc 15 naval officers (Soc 15 supposedly being dukes governing a whole subsector or sector with billions or even trillions of subjects) knocking around and it is silly to reproduce this yet again.
My solution would be to drop the automatic Soc=noble rank equivalency completely and make the stat a measure of charisma, social skills, creditworthiness, contacts etc.
However if this equivalency is hard coded then maybe initial PC Soc has to be rolled with a d6 or capped at 12 (in fact I think there is an argument for capping all attributes at 12 for standard humans).
Ship shares - good idea but needs to be consistently applied - i.e. give Scouts and Nobles shares as well.
TNE had a similar concept of ship DM's which was much more fully thought through and which you should consider stealing.
Good comments re tasks and chargen.
I like that too. Granted, I'm assuming the odds of that Scout being packed with fleet admirals will be low
This seems to pertain to the rank issue as well. There should not be NO fleet admirals; just few and far between. How about boilerplate text stating that one's social standing can be a family status? So the PC who has SOC 12 is technically a Baroness, but she's fourth in line and really only has a title. Toffee-nosed and useless, but not very powerful and maybe even broke. Scandalous. Sounds like a backstory and even a plot hook.
Seventh Termer said:
I like that too. Granted, I'm assuming the odds of that Scout being packed with fleet admirals will be low
This seems to pertain to the rank issue as well. There should not be NO fleet admirals; just few and far between. How about boilerplate text stating that one's social standing can be a family status? So the PC who has SOC 12 is technically a Baroness, but she's fourth in line and really only has a title. Toffee-nosed and useless, but not very powerful and maybe even broke. Scandalous. Sounds like a backstory and even a plot hook.
Seventh Termer
Mongoose
On having separate enlisted and officer tracks I would be inclined to keep the same advancement rolls.
As suggested using Educ 8+ as the qualifying stat would eliminate the need for a separate commission roll.
So in effect characters with Educ 7- would advance using the enlisted rank table and Educ 8+ using the commissioned rank table - however chargen mechanically there would be no difference whatsoever.
In terms of the playtest doc you'd just add a sentence of text explaining the above and two extra columns to the existing rank/benefits table.
Agree that just 'because it was this way in CT LBB 1-3' is a very poor argument for inclusion or exclusion of any feature.
Including NCO ranks would not significantly increase page count or lengthen the time it takes to generate a character - so why not do it?
As suggested using Educ 8+ as the qualifying stat would eliminate the need for a separate commission roll.
So in effect characters with Educ 7- would advance using the enlisted rank table and Educ 8+ using the commissioned rank table - however chargen mechanically there would be no difference whatsoever.
In terms of the playtest doc you'd just add a sentence of text explaining the above and two extra columns to the existing rank/benefits table.
Agree that just 'because it was this way in CT LBB 1-3' is a very poor argument for inclusion or exclusion of any feature.
Including NCO ranks would not significantly increase page count or lengthen the time it takes to generate a character - so why not do it?
The CT presumption was that promotion was effectively automatic but not skill bearing for non-officers.
That is, second and later term Navy characters were presumed (often) to be Petty Officers, and Army 2nd termers corporals or sgts...
It was in the expanded system that they acquired skills for promotions... but since Bk4 provided about 2x as many skills overall...
Personally, I don't care for enlisted promotions being tracked.
I like the simplification of combining commission and promotion.
I don't mind at all rolling retention into promotion, either.
And while "Up or Out" is a current policy in many services, even where it isn't, long serving individuals of higher rank are more likely to be noticed than equally long serving individuals of lesser ranks, simply due to the Peter Principle... People are promoted to the level of their incompetence.
That is, second and later term Navy characters were presumed (often) to be Petty Officers, and Army 2nd termers corporals or sgts...
It was in the expanded system that they acquired skills for promotions... but since Bk4 provided about 2x as many skills overall...
Personally, I don't care for enlisted promotions being tracked.
I like the simplification of combining commission and promotion.
I don't mind at all rolling retention into promotion, either.
And while "Up or Out" is a current policy in many services, even where it isn't, long serving individuals of higher rank are more likely to be noticed than equally long serving individuals of lesser ranks, simply due to the Peter Principle... People are promoted to the level of their incompetence.
I agree with Aramis on this, at least for the core book.
I know that "CT did it that way" is not a good reason for keeping something. I just pointed it out because I think that may have been the designers thinking.
I will say this; my players love the character generation process and would not want to see it made any more complicated than it already is.
Allen
I know that "CT did it that way" is not a good reason for keeping something. I just pointed it out because I think that may have been the designers thinking.
I will say this; my players love the character generation process and would not want to see it made any more complicated than it already is.
Allen
Seventh Termer
Mongoose
I think there is also a basic question of scale and probability that no Traveller chargen to date has addressed.
The fullest canonical source on the imperial military is GURPS Traveller Ground Forces which states that in fact there is no more than one serving Marine brigadier per subsector, while various sources on the Navy suggest that there is just one admiral per subsector and that task forces and squadrons are commanded by commodores.
Now while I always thought the canonical command structure implausibly lean given the huge size and power of the forces involved it does imply that general and flag officers are far, far rarer in both absolute and relative terms than they are in current earth militaries (most of which are now insanely over-generalled and -admiralled compared to WW1 or WW2).
Given the canon ex-admirals should therefore be incredibly rare (these guys after all commanded fleets operating over entire subsectors of space) and will have many other retirement options other than captaining a free trader.
Even naval captains should be very rare given that there will only be a few dozen imperial capital ships in any subsector commanded by one.
Canonically there are a lot more army generals (Ground Forces and Fifth Frontier War suggesting that high population worlds are defended by hundreds of divisions which need commanders), so chargen-wise it should probably be easier to reach this rank than admiral or brigadier.
Similarly canon on trade suggests that there are vast numbers of merchant ships shuttling between high pop and hi-tech worlds(IIRC average trade volumes are calculated in GT Far Trader and Starports and are staggering), so it should be a LOT easier to qualify as a merchant captain.
While it can be argued that this is all OTU-specific and the rules should be generic, this picture is not that inconsistent with sources of inspiration like Star Trek, B5, BSG and Starship Troopers - all of which depict very lean militaries in which flag and general officers are literally very few and far between.
Sinclair is a mere commander but has responsibility for 250,000 lives, Sheridan and Picard are just captains and even Admiral Kirk gets busted back down to captain because you can't plausibly have admirals commanding single starships and heading away teams.
And in BSG the most senior marine in the whole fleet is apparently a sergeant, in B5 and DS9 major command staff positions are held by non-commissioned officers and (Shepherd Book perhaps apart) nobody aboard the Serenity ever held a rank higher than sergeant in their previous careers.
Just because CT book 1 tended to produce parties of implausibly elderly highly-ranked and under-skilled characters, is no reason Mongoose should follow suit.
The fullest canonical source on the imperial military is GURPS Traveller Ground Forces which states that in fact there is no more than one serving Marine brigadier per subsector, while various sources on the Navy suggest that there is just one admiral per subsector and that task forces and squadrons are commanded by commodores.
Now while I always thought the canonical command structure implausibly lean given the huge size and power of the forces involved it does imply that general and flag officers are far, far rarer in both absolute and relative terms than they are in current earth militaries (most of which are now insanely over-generalled and -admiralled compared to WW1 or WW2).
Given the canon ex-admirals should therefore be incredibly rare (these guys after all commanded fleets operating over entire subsectors of space) and will have many other retirement options other than captaining a free trader.
Even naval captains should be very rare given that there will only be a few dozen imperial capital ships in any subsector commanded by one.
Canonically there are a lot more army generals (Ground Forces and Fifth Frontier War suggesting that high population worlds are defended by hundreds of divisions which need commanders), so chargen-wise it should probably be easier to reach this rank than admiral or brigadier.
Similarly canon on trade suggests that there are vast numbers of merchant ships shuttling between high pop and hi-tech worlds(IIRC average trade volumes are calculated in GT Far Trader and Starports and are staggering), so it should be a LOT easier to qualify as a merchant captain.
While it can be argued that this is all OTU-specific and the rules should be generic, this picture is not that inconsistent with sources of inspiration like Star Trek, B5, BSG and Starship Troopers - all of which depict very lean militaries in which flag and general officers are literally very few and far between.
Sinclair is a mere commander but has responsibility for 250,000 lives, Sheridan and Picard are just captains and even Admiral Kirk gets busted back down to captain because you can't plausibly have admirals commanding single starships and heading away teams.
And in BSG the most senior marine in the whole fleet is apparently a sergeant, in B5 and DS9 major command staff positions are held by non-commissioned officers and (Shepherd Book perhaps apart) nobody aboard the Serenity ever held a rank higher than sergeant in their previous careers.
Just because CT book 1 tended to produce parties of implausibly elderly highly-ranked and under-skilled characters, is no reason Mongoose should follow suit.
Seventh Termer
Mongoose
Halfbat definitely is on the the right track with his tables.
However I'd point out that canonically there are no marine generals and according to GT Ground Forces marshal is a temporary rather than permanent rank.
The Navy table also needs lieutenant-commander.
Given that NATO with forces several orders of magnitude smaller can't get by with less than 10 officer and 9 enlisted ranks I can't see any way the Imperial Navy and Army would have less than 10.
However there is no reason why there has to be exactly 10 for every service - canonically there are no permanent marine ranks above O7 and the imperial army also apparently has marshals and vice-marshals above O10 (although like marine marshals these may actually be posts rather than ranks).
The Navy is also a problem in that canon sources mention vice- and rear-admirals as well as the ten ranks given in High Guard - all of which might imply that the real IN flag ranks are commodore, rear-admiral, vice-admiral and admiral and that fleet, sector and grand admirals are posts rather than ranks.
In any case in a generic game it probably makes more sense to use standard US/NATO ranks (which are also used in Star Trek, B5 and other well-known settings) rather than ones like marshal and sector admiral specific to the Third Imperium.
However I'd point out that canonically there are no marine generals and according to GT Ground Forces marshal is a temporary rather than permanent rank.
The Navy table also needs lieutenant-commander.
Given that NATO with forces several orders of magnitude smaller can't get by with less than 10 officer and 9 enlisted ranks I can't see any way the Imperial Navy and Army would have less than 10.
However there is no reason why there has to be exactly 10 for every service - canonically there are no permanent marine ranks above O7 and the imperial army also apparently has marshals and vice-marshals above O10 (although like marine marshals these may actually be posts rather than ranks).
The Navy is also a problem in that canon sources mention vice- and rear-admirals as well as the ten ranks given in High Guard - all of which might imply that the real IN flag ranks are commodore, rear-admiral, vice-admiral and admiral and that fleet, sector and grand admirals are posts rather than ranks.
In any case in a generic game it probably makes more sense to use standard US/NATO ranks (which are also used in Star Trek, B5 and other well-known settings) rather than ones like marshal and sector admiral specific to the Third Imperium.
Halfbat said:Kind of you to say. 'Cos I'm a mug and excited by this new Traveller, try this as well...SableWyvern said:
If anyone's interested, I've also done Army, Scouts, Merchant Marine, Free/Space Trader and am working on Brokers.
Wow. Very very nice. I hope Mongoose listens to this.
Seventh Termer said:
Calling GT suplements canonical is problematic... worse still is presuming that GF is.... outside of GURPS Traveller, that is. For the GTU, it's canon. But the GTU is not now, and never has been, the OTU.
Importing elements from GT, a derivative IP, for which Mongoose probably isn't licensed... well, it's not a good idea.
Especially since combining Bk 4 and Invasion Earth (a Traveller Board Game), we have Brigade level marine units, and IIRC, larger.
No offense to Mr. Berry, but Doug's take on the 3I has always been off the beaten path... not too far off, but off. Given the troop numbers in more authoritative materials, Doug's numbers are bogus.
And as for Halfbat's tables, ick. No thanks.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
I have to agree about the table. It was a lot of work, and a very nice presentation, but waaaaaay too fine grained; plus, it pretty much is conceptually pretty much Megatraveller ; this is not per se bad, but what I see in these rules is an attempt to extend CT by increasing description without overloading complexity; and that is NOT the direction that MegaTrav went.
Cap
Cap
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
I know that this isn't part of the current doc, but I'd like to take the liberty of presenting some conceptual ideas about an element that has been quite problematic to traveller: star systems.
Science advances. Those new torch orbit gas giants are weird, unexpected, and hard to model. Stellar type is always a contentuous issue in the details. Solar system dynamics are only somewhat known in depth in one case (us). Finally, given that our most up to date extrasolar system data is , by definition, based on extreme outliers, any attempt at modeling is doomed to obsolescence.
That said, I suggest that the problem lies in what the sector maps are intended for. Conceptually, a better approach to the problem is to view them as charts rather than maps. The difference is that a map is detail and accuracy oriented, and highly descriptive. A chart is only accuracy oriented when it is functional. A great example is the age of exploration portolan charts - they have very fiddly detail about coasts, the depths and hazards within a few miles of the coast, and where fresh water is available on the coast.....and nothing else, just white space, inland. They were for Navigators, not cartographers or scientists.
I think reframing the traveller system maps this way will help. The subsectors are already obvious functional abstractions, given the actual stellar density compared to the charted planets with starports. They are clearly a navigators reference: where are the ports the inhabited planets, the interesting stuff; and where are the shoals: red zones, and rifts.
From the viewpoint of a working navigator, It seems like you need a bare minimum of information other than the planet.
1. where is it (which orbit)
2. Are there other important ports insystem.
3. how big is the 100/10d limit for the star
(this actually should be priority 1, I imagine,)
4. since we may or may not be playing space opera, and optional consideration is where are the asteroid belts .
5. where are the gas giant(s), if any.
A trader may have one more question: are there useful resources off(main) planet.
So, the question is, I feel, NOT how can the generation system model real astrophysics, but rather quickly allow a GM to answer the above 5 questions.
So, for my campaign, the info is generated by
first rolling the jump shadow(JS) of the star: 1d6 orbits. Assumption: a BIG star has BIG orbits, so it scales.
second, rolling the number of significant orbits : 1d6+JS
Locally, significant = out to Neptune, say.
third, any gas giants ? 5+ 2d6 = yes. # =1d6 -1d6 + JS
fourth determine Habitable zone. Roll 2d6. The low dice is the number of the first habitable band; the high dice is the orbit number of the first orbit outside the habitable zone. tie means no hab zone .
The orbit defined by the high dice (or the tie) is also the last of the inner orbits. (see next item)
fifth, roll 2d6 for each orbit.
Boxcars indicates a significant (close) companion star;
Pairs suggest a gas giant, if any exist (from above)
in the inner system, only paired ones (snakeyes) places a GG; in the outer system any pair, or a total > half the orbit . (stop this step once you've allocated all the GG)
Then, use one of the individual dice to identify the non GG occupant of the orbit.
For inner orbits, look at the lower dice,
for outer, read the high one :
1= empty , 2=small rock, 3= large rock, 4= planetoid or belt 4= small ice, 5= large ice, 6 =planetoid or belt.
For orbits with GG , one can either read the high/low dice as above, placing it as a moon, or just ignore it.
Final step: the planet. The main planet goes in the hab zone if earthy, the closest other inner zone if hot, the closest outer zone if cold. If there is a GG in one of the orbits suggested, the planet is a moon. Vac worlds can go anywhere. Asteroids/planetoids are in the belt or planetoid orbit closest to the hab zone or last inner system orbit, or can be a moon of a planet in the appropriate orbit.
One can also use a GG to place an earthy type world in a system with no hab zone, a vac world, or an asteroid world in a beltless system: make it a moon of the first GG outside the hot zone; promote the GG to BIG GG. Otherwise, place it in the last inner orbit and improvise.
A stellar companion is always in the last orbit.
Done, all with d6, no more than 2d dice per fact. Note the use of the hedgeword "significant". There may be more planets, more moons, a farther companion, a system around the companion, etc. They just aren't interesting.
Cap.
Science advances. Those new torch orbit gas giants are weird, unexpected, and hard to model. Stellar type is always a contentuous issue in the details. Solar system dynamics are only somewhat known in depth in one case (us). Finally, given that our most up to date extrasolar system data is , by definition, based on extreme outliers, any attempt at modeling is doomed to obsolescence.
That said, I suggest that the problem lies in what the sector maps are intended for. Conceptually, a better approach to the problem is to view them as charts rather than maps. The difference is that a map is detail and accuracy oriented, and highly descriptive. A chart is only accuracy oriented when it is functional. A great example is the age of exploration portolan charts - they have very fiddly detail about coasts, the depths and hazards within a few miles of the coast, and where fresh water is available on the coast.....and nothing else, just white space, inland. They were for Navigators, not cartographers or scientists.
I think reframing the traveller system maps this way will help. The subsectors are already obvious functional abstractions, given the actual stellar density compared to the charted planets with starports. They are clearly a navigators reference: where are the ports the inhabited planets, the interesting stuff; and where are the shoals: red zones, and rifts.
From the viewpoint of a working navigator, It seems like you need a bare minimum of information other than the planet.
1. where is it (which orbit)
2. Are there other important ports insystem.
3. how big is the 100/10d limit for the star
(this actually should be priority 1, I imagine,)
4. since we may or may not be playing space opera, and optional consideration is where are the asteroid belts .
5. where are the gas giant(s), if any.
A trader may have one more question: are there useful resources off(main) planet.
So, the question is, I feel, NOT how can the generation system model real astrophysics, but rather quickly allow a GM to answer the above 5 questions.
So, for my campaign, the info is generated by
first rolling the jump shadow(JS) of the star: 1d6 orbits. Assumption: a BIG star has BIG orbits, so it scales.
second, rolling the number of significant orbits : 1d6+JS
Locally, significant = out to Neptune, say.
third, any gas giants ? 5+ 2d6 = yes. # =1d6 -1d6 + JS
fourth determine Habitable zone. Roll 2d6. The low dice is the number of the first habitable band; the high dice is the orbit number of the first orbit outside the habitable zone. tie means no hab zone .
The orbit defined by the high dice (or the tie) is also the last of the inner orbits. (see next item)
fifth, roll 2d6 for each orbit.
Boxcars indicates a significant (close) companion star;
Pairs suggest a gas giant, if any exist (from above)
in the inner system, only paired ones (snakeyes) places a GG; in the outer system any pair, or a total > half the orbit . (stop this step once you've allocated all the GG)
Then, use one of the individual dice to identify the non GG occupant of the orbit.
For inner orbits, look at the lower dice,
for outer, read the high one :
1= empty , 2=small rock, 3= large rock, 4= planetoid or belt 4= small ice, 5= large ice, 6 =planetoid or belt.
For orbits with GG , one can either read the high/low dice as above, placing it as a moon, or just ignore it.
Final step: the planet. The main planet goes in the hab zone if earthy, the closest other inner zone if hot, the closest outer zone if cold. If there is a GG in one of the orbits suggested, the planet is a moon. Vac worlds can go anywhere. Asteroids/planetoids are in the belt or planetoid orbit closest to the hab zone or last inner system orbit, or can be a moon of a planet in the appropriate orbit.
One can also use a GG to place an earthy type world in a system with no hab zone, a vac world, or an asteroid world in a beltless system: make it a moon of the first GG outside the hot zone; promote the GG to BIG GG. Otherwise, place it in the last inner orbit and improvise.
A stellar companion is always in the last orbit.
Done, all with d6, no more than 2d dice per fact. Note the use of the hedgeword "significant". There may be more planets, more moons, a farther companion, a system around the companion, etc. They just aren't interesting.
Cap.
SableWyvern
Mongoose
Halfbat said:
I would like to see NCO leadership shifted to Corporal, which is the rank with the largest number of direct subordinates), or, possibly Sergeant if you wish to assume it's only after completing the squad-commander stint that the character's leadership skills have properly developed.
