Where to place a 'Forbidden Planet'?

[Heilemann]

Hi all!

I'm a neophyte in Traveller, and have played it only a smidge. However I love the system and I'm trying to get up to speed on it, hoping to launch a game of it in the not too distant future.

For that I've been toying with a Forbidden Planet-esque idea where the PCs would get entangled with a small settlement on an otherwise uninhabited world. All purely loose details floating around in my head still. But as I've started liking the idea, I'm now not sure how to best place such a world. A small settlement on a moon near some gas giant might be able to remain undiscovered I guess, especially if the world is somehow inhospitable, but at the same time it can't be right in the shipping lanes either.

I'm not necessarily looking for a specific place on travellermap.com or anything, more guidance on how to think about this sort of problem in Traveller?

 

[IanBruntlett]

In the 2016 Traveller Core Rulebook (CRB), the last chapter describes the Sindal Subsector. Does your copy of the CRB have that? Read the descriptions in that chapter. It only describes the "mainworld" of each solar system and, once you have found something that suits you, just create the planet/moon/world you want to play on.

 

[Yatima]

Hi all!
... For that I've been toying with a Forbidden Planet-esque idea where the PCs would get entangled with a small settlement on an otherwise uninhabited world. All purely loose details floating around in my head still. But as I've started liking the idea, I'm now not sure how to best place such a world. A small settlement on a moon near some gas giant might be able to remain undiscovered I guess, especially if the world is somehow inhospitable, but at the same time it can't be right in the shipping lanes either. ...

There are a ton of worlds that would fit the bill - for real isolation look for red zones, which are isolated by Imperial interdiction. But the thing is - Traveller only lists the main world in a system, there can be as many other worlds - inhabited worlds - in a system that you can just choose to place in any system you like.

 

[Heilemann]

I guess my question, which I understand I can sort of enforce however I want, at least to an extent, is whether it 'makes sense' to have a habitable world go largely untouched.

Thanks for the pointer to Sindal, I'll take a look. (Sindal happens to be the name of a village close to where I'm from in Northern Denmark!)

 

[Arkathan]

Numerous binary/trinary stellar systems. Most only have a developed presence in the "main" system.
Worlds deep in a stellar jump shadow are often ignored. An advanced planetary ECCM setup to make the planet appear worthless (or invisible) would be perfect for such a planet... especially if the nearest source of fuel is the Oort cloud.

Deneb Sector and Sword Worlds/Darriens probably not a good fit, but anywhere else on that end of charted space is great - and the further out you go, the better it gets.

 

[ColinD]

I guess my question, which I understand I can sort of enforce however I want, at least to an extent, is whether it 'makes sense' to have a habitable world go largely untouched.

Thanks for the pointer to Sindal, I'll take a look. (Sindal happens to be the name of a village close to where I'm from in Northern Denmark!)

I think it you could make some good reasons why a habitable world would go largely untouched. If you are making your own setting it could be like the movie, "Forbidden Planet" in that the world is far away from a more populated part of space. If you are in the 3rd Imperium it would be beyond Chartered Space. You could also have a mysterious reason that no one who has landed on the planet has ever returned. It sounds like a great adventure. Glad you are enjoying Traveller.

 

[Shardan13]

As others have said there may be more than one habitable planet in a system. A good explanation why one hasn't got a population is on it is that the world in question is a nature preserve. This especially true if the planet held unique life forms, oh such as mega-fauna the size and temperament of Terran dinosaurs.

 

[Jetrock]

Considering that the movie "Forbidden Planet" was a mission intended to determine the fate of a colony established 20 years earlier, anywhere outside the borders of the Imperium that isn't another stellar empire's territory is fair game; obviously people know about it (thus justification for the return trip) but it might be located in a zone of relatively low stellar density, necessitating a ship with a high Jump rating to reach it, which could be anywhere within the Lesser or Greater Rift, the Delphi Rift or the Empty Quarter. Even if a world in that star system is ideal for settlement climate wise, if it was 5 or 6 parsecs from the nearest star, it would be unreachable by most jump-capable ships, especially if getting there required multiple long jumps, making it hard to establish trade and communications with the rest of charted space. Getting there would require a particularly long-legged ship, like an Imperial courier ship, likely crewed by an Imperial Interstellar Scout Service team.

If you're new to Traveller, you may or may not be familiar with the Ancients; "Forbidden Planet" was definitely one of the films that established the well-worn sci-fi trope of precursor civilizations older than humanity, with far more advanced technology. The Krell artifacts could be Ancients technology, or remains from another long-lost civilization or species, human or otherwise.

If you wanted to get really wild with it, you could read Shakespeare's "The Tempest," of which "Forbidden Planet" is often considered a loose adaptation!

 

[Reynard]

Ever try Foreven Sector? Try starting at the Five Sisters subsector and look spinward (to the left) into the Urnian subsector. Five Sisters is fairly sparse and there are big gaps to reach the systems in Urnian. Remember also there are reasons the Imperium has no explored or colonized into that area so the Forbidden Planet could be a first attempt, not easily reached and not a priority.

 

[Galadrion]

Let's see, possible locations for a "Forbidden Planet"...

Well, any system with a mainworld which is either Low Population or Barren, but still habitable otherwise is a candidate. (You can justify using a Low Population world by decreeing that all the population is in one region, and your "Forbidden Planet" area is in another - separate continents will work admirably for this, especially if local technology will limit travel appreciably.)

If you want the Forbidden Planet to be truly unoccupied, then using a non-mainworld makes sense. You can choose any world in the star's habitable zone. You could also choose a moon in the same zone. Alternatively, you could even choose the moon of a gas giant in the star's cold zone, under certain circumstances - Io shows that a gas giant's moon in the stellar cold zone can still be warm enough for life if the gas giant can influence the moon sufficiently. (Not that Io is particularly compatible with human life, but it shows that it could be possible...)

As was stated earlier, any secondary or tertiary stellar system in a hex could also play host to such a planet, although since such a system is likely to have smaller orbits, the tidal effects could get... interesting. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, from an adventuring standpoint. At the least, life forms adapted to considerably harsher "normal" weather could provide some very tough encounters.