World Cards

[Tom Kalbfus]

I created these:

These are the first in a set of cards. Basically instead of mapping these out in a subsector, I'll just keep a deck of pregenerated worlds handy to throw in front of the players whenever they decide to investigate a particular star. Instead of generating UWPs for every star system in the map, I can just leave it unknown until the PCs investigate and I draw a card out of the deck to determine what is there. The cards contain the basic World information. Any comments? I added a UWP code, S instead of standing for small moon stands for Space Station/Space Colony, the size of the space station or colony is determined by the population. Only the social data is included on the card as it is assumed the station maintains an environment to support the population. 0 is a colony on a natural object such as an asteroid or a comet.

 

[GypsyComet]

An interesting idea, though I'm not sold on re-assigning size S.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Size S is already covered by size 0, which in this case stands for a single small body, not an entire asteroid belt. The number of asteroid belts is covered in the expanded UWP

Name Hex# UWP Bases Trade_Classification Zone PBG Allegiances Stellar Data
Speer 0108 C432430-8 S Poor, Non-industrial R 404 1 K8 V

the 0 in the above line under PBG (Population, Belts, Gas Giants) is the number of planetoid belts.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

You know how I generated the numbers of the UWPs? I used another deck of cards. Take two decks of playing cards and remove all cards that are not Aces, 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 6s, and put the remaining cards together in one deck. To simulate 2d6 draw two cards from the shuffled deck, place them on the table and add them together where Aces count as 1s. Once you've used the number generated put the two cards you've drawn back into the deck. This is roughly the same probability as rolling two six-sided dice, and you don't have to worry about those dice rolling off the table. Now I often use excel to generate random numbers, but during game play it is more interesting and dramatic to draw two cards or roll two dice.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here's another set of those cards:

As you can see, I forgot to add the unsidedown stats for the bottom part of the last card. copy and past it to paint and you can fix this your self before you print it out and cut out the cards.

 

[GypsyComet]

Size S is already covered by size 0, which in this case stands for a single small body, not an entire asteroid belt. The number of asteroid belts is covered in the expanded UWP

Your method leaves asteroid belts off the table as main worlds, then? No thanks.

Given the current definition of Dwarf Planet and the fact that Mongoose has already redefined Populations 0 and 1, I might consider using Size 1 to represent all Dwarf Planets and keep 0 expressly for belts (and bring "R" forward for gas giant rings), but there is no compelling reason to change the nomenclature from its historical form, which is S for worldlets, 1 through F (or so) for (solid) worlds, and 0 and R for belts and rings. Gas, Hot, and Ice Giants are outside the nomenclature for the most part.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Size S is already covered by size 0, which in this case stands for a single small body, not an entire asteroid belt. The number of asteroid belts is covered in the expanded UWP

Generally the Belters live in a single asteroid, the GM gets to decide whether this is part of a belt or not. The cards only include UWP, no system data, that is the GM maps out the stars on the map, decides what stellar type and whether single binary or triple, and that is all the information. The players then see a map with different star types in each hex, this represents the data the ships can gather from light years away, they decide to jump there to see what is there, that is when the referee draws one of his cards from the deck. Saves the referee a lot of time detailing each star system the players might or might not visit. The referee can put other information on the card giving a clue as to what sort of adventure is involved, and once a card is used, it is not placed back in the deck, what is on the card is then placed in that entry for that hex on the map.

Your method leaves asteroid belts off the table as main worlds, then? No thanks.

Given the current definition of Dwarf Planet and the fact that Mongoose has already redefined Populations 0 and 1, I might consider using Size 1 to represent all Dwarf Planets and keep 0 expressly for belts (and bring "R" forward for gas giant rings), but there is no compelling reason to change the nomenclature from its historical form, which is S for worldlets, 1 through F (or so) for (solid) worlds, and 0 and R for belts and rings. Gas, Hot, and Ice Giants are outside the nomenclature for the most part.

My point is an asteroid belt is not a World, it is a huge area with a lot of rocks and no clearly defined borders, it would be extremely hard for that to be governed by a single World Government. Also asteroids wander in an out of an asteroid belt all the time, and there are some asteroids that orbit completely outside of an asteroid belt. The majority of asteroids are in an asteroid belt, but not all of them. Chiron for instance orbits outside of the asteroid belt. I think asteroid belts are covered by PBG, and a worldlet could be part of an asteroid belt. Anyway the way size S is generated it can only be orbiting a planet not a star, even though their are similar sized objects orbiting stars. Also I noticed that the world codes are planet centric and tend to be natural bodies, and if its an asteroid they tend to have surface installation on them with gravity generators where needed, not a free floating space station. A lot of space stations aren't spherical and don't have diameter sizes the war Worlds do. Space Stations range in size from the ISS to a Bishop ring, depending on its population.

This is a useful place to put a space station, a gas giant is right there for refueling.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Earth, a size 8 world with clearly defined bounderies, has no central world government (the UN does not count, it cannot enforce its resolutions). Why not leave the asteroid belt as size 0 and government as 7 (balkanized). How does your classification make more distinction or enhancement over the current system?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

To distiguish governments, simply roll for the government factions as found in the Mongoose Core Rulebook

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Earth, a size 8 world with clearly defined bounderies, has no central world government (the UN does not count, it cannot enforce its resolutions). Why not leave the asteroid belt as size 0 and government as 7 (balkanized). How does your classification make more distinction or enhancement over the current system?

It is triply redundant, 0 stands for an asteroid belt, S stands for a large asteroid, and the second digit in PBG describes how many asteroid belts their are in the system, now it seems to me that if PBG already describes how many asteroid belts their are and 0 is just an asteroid, then that ateroid could easily be in one of those belts accounted for in the PBG statistic, and why do we need an S that is only rolled when determining the moons of a planet. Honestly the main reason I included S was because I had 12 cards and wanted to use each of them. I also have a set of blank cards that only determine size, by drawing a card from a deck with an even distribution of sizes, I stand an equal chance of drawing any size from the deck, which is different from rolling 2d6-2 to determine planet size. I see no reason their needs to be a pyramidal size distribution for worlds other than 2d6 is needed for the range of possible values, which are 0 to 10 with size 5 being most likely. Upon looking at our own solar system, I see no size 5 planets, or 6. 7. 9. or A sized planets. If I draw from a deck of cards to determine size, I make Earth-sized worlds more likely while flattening out the hump centered on size 5 worlds. Since my sheet of cards had room for 12 sizes, I included S and decided that stood for space station, as we already have enough representing asteroids, the 0 for a single asteroid, and the PBG for determining the population multiplier, the number of asteroid belts and finally the number of gas giants within system.

The most persuasive case is the fact that in the Traveller system world populations range from 0 to 99 billion, but averages between 100,000 to 999,999 for a 5 population, that is a small population for an entire belt, when you consider that the amount of surface area of a typical asteroid belt is 1000 times the surface area of the Earth, to have a population of 500,000 spread over the surface area equivalent of 1000 Earths sounds pretty ridiculous if you ask me. Why not have 0 represent a single asteroid, as 500,000 people sounds more like the population of a single body rather than one of an entire asteroid belt. it would be hard to count the population of an entire belt anyway, because one would not know when to stop counting or where the borders of the belt is precisely, and it wouldn't be under a single government or any government at all. An asteroid of less than 100 people might not have any government at all!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

To distiguish governments, simply roll for the government factions as found in the Mongoose Core Rulebook

Anyway the Mongoose Core Rulebook mentions size zero as a body of 800 km or less, a single body, asteroid belt is not mentioned, and 800 km or less also covers size S from classic Traveller. A Size S moon would also be a Size 0 world.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is another sheet of my World Cards feel free to print them out.