UWP: Population

[phild]

First post here, so please be gentle. I'm in the middle of creating an Excel Utility that generates characters and worlds, and it's thrown up some real oddities in the World generation rules.

Is there an errata on World generation from MGT book? At present population is calculated on a straight 2d-2 roll, without any consideration given or world size or habitability. Also, clearly the maximum for this roll is 10, which means it's impossible to have a planet with a population of B or C.

In addition, the overall scale of population to planet size is looking a bit skewed. I've added a function in to calculate population density, and then run a look-up to give an Earth comparison. At present, a Size 0 world with Hydrographics 0 (i.e 100% surface area is land) achieves the following Population Densities:
Population 7 = density equal to Sweden
Population 8 = density of UK
Population 9 = density of New York
Population 10 = density of Monaco

Anyone know if there are any amended ways to do this? Or any house rules that people use instead?

Phil

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

You have hit on one of the fundemental issues with the UWP system that goes back to the original version published in 1977. Some people like the variety and some people hate it. BUT, it is what it is, use it or houserule it.

The book is NOT wrong, that is how it is supposed to be.

However, if you use the Hard Science or Space Opera variations, you can get positive and negative DMs to the Population roll so values above 10 are possible that way.

 

[Woas]

What Rikki Tikki said...

As for the B and C populations, I always saw them as a diceless option for a Ref to pick if it seemed necessary for the world. Sort of tantalizing/confusing having B and C as possible population role results, as if you could role it. Might have been nicer if B and C were just an extra sentence under population, "Although rare, some systems have populations higher than Class A such as Class B (hundreds of billions) and Class C (trillions) and can be selected by the referee if the circumstances are right." Sort of like all the other system characteristics have.

 

[phild]

The clarification makes some sense, and guess it just underlines what for me was a fairly badly proof-read product.

I'd be inclined to have a range of DMs for Orbital Zone, Planet Size, Atmosphere and Hydrographics. It just doesn't seem right to me that Earth's current population is about as big as it can get anywhere in the galaxy - and I'm always a little bit disappointed when a system relies on GM fiat to function properly. That's a given, a GM can *always* make a world what he wants to be!

I may also go back and have another look at Star Hero - a different game system, but probably the best overall sci-fi rpg sourcebook I've ever seen.

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

The clarification makes some sense, and guess it just underlines what for me was a fairly badly proof-read product.

I'd be inclined to have a range of DMs for Orbital Zone, Planet Size, Atmosphere and Hydrographics. It just doesn't seem right to me that Earth's current population is about as big as it can get anywhere in the galaxy - and I'm always a little bit disappointed when a system relies on GM fiat to function properly. That's a given, a GM can *always* make a world what he wants to be!

I may also go back and have another look at Star Hero - a different game system, but probably the best overall sci-fi rpg sourcebook I've ever seen.

I'm pretty sure that the hinted-at, stand-alone star and wordgen book will cover these issues more thoroughly than the TMB did. These issues have arisen with each version of Traveller - small, airless rockball worlds with populations of billions and really low TLs around a White Dwarf stars are frequent in the OTU.

Also I suspect that Mongoose were <cough> somewhat constrained <cough> when it came to putting together the wordgen rules i.e. they were only allowed so much wiggle room for new ideas. Those of us familiar with CT will recognise that worldgen in the TMB is only a slight step to the side of the system presented in CT LBB3 i.e. the two systems are very close relatives, DNA-wise