Preventing Complacency in TRAVELLER Gaming

by Roger E. Moore

TRAVELLER gamers have been known to believe that the strings of numbers
describing the various worlds tell them everything they need to
know. Starport class, world size, atmosphere, government type, ho
hum. Some players never look at the world codes at all unless figuring
out where they can unload the 40-ton shipment of farm machinery they
purchased on speculation.

This is unfortunate; TRAVELLER game referees may find it amusing to
unplug this complacency. Are all worlds alike?  Not a chance. There are
millions of little things the world code doesn't tell you and numerous
ways in which the code can be interpreted or (heh heh) be in error.

Each sector in the TRAVELLER game universe has hundreds of individual
worlds, most of which may never be visited by the adventurers. There is
an underlying assumption that every world is unique, but individualizing
each world is a tough task for the referee. Often it seems easier to let
the worlds blend into one another, especially if adventurers make only
brief landfalls before jumping to a new system. It takes time to make
Kerchov's Planet a different environment from Ramsiiland when both share
the same TRAVELLER game world codes. Slower-paced campaigns in which
adventurers only visit one world per game session at most are better for
allowing a campaign to be more fully developed.

Planning ahead is essential, though some people can invent whole solar
systems at the drop of a jump drive.  Before a gaming session starts,
the referee should make notes on all stellar systems within a six-parsec
radius of the point where the group will be starting.  Such notes should
emphasize particular aspects of each world that serve to make it
different from all the rest. For example, noting that the Mayhem system
has an asteroid belt, the referee could include a few giant meteorite
craters on the surface of the main world; the starport could be located
in the center of one of them on a mountain peak. Particular details like
these can be elaborated upon as the adventures on that world continue.

There are many ways to interpret the world codes themselves. A size 0
world is assumed to indicate an asteroid colony. However, it could also
be a colony based upon an asteroid-sized moon orbiting another
world. Perhaps no other bodies except the asteroid the colony rests on
exist in the system (most people assume there should be an entire
asteroid belt present with a size 0 world). Consider, too, a colony
aboard a large artificial space station or a modified starship (like the
Azhanti High Lightning) with no jump drives. Not large enough to qualify
even for asteroid status, the "space city" could orbit close to its
parent sun to gain enormous amounts of solar energy, or orbit far in the
outer system using nuclear or other power sources. Even asteroid
colonies need never look alike; one could rest in the hollowed-out
interior of a 20 km long asteroid, while another rests on the surface of
a 310 km diameter body with tunnels beneath it.

Planetary atmospheres seem to have a dreary sameness about them in most
campaigns. Tainted air is generally thought to come from industrial
pollution, but it might also indicate dust particies large enough to
produce allergies, choking, or respiratory problems. There could be a
mildly toxic gas in the air that produces drowsiness, nausea, euphoria,
or poor vision. Pollen grains could induce hallucinations by biochemical
interaction in the nervous system.  Erupting volcanoes, nuclear fallout,
plague viruses, and war-related chemical poisons could all be causes for
tainted atmospheres. The aftereffects of expo- sure may range from
innocuous to severe, with an equally variable time-delay before the
aftereffects appear.

Aside from normal saline oceans of water, hydrographic percentages could
refer to huge frozen seas across which iceships skate. The local
temperature could be so high that the oceans steam, resulting in almost
continual 100% humidity. Corrosive atmosphere worlds could have alkaline
or acidic seas, while other planets could have oceans with salt
concentrations a thousand times that of Earth's. Lakes of liquid ammonia
and methane might exist on frozen planets, and rivers of molten sulfur
could flow on hot ones. In either of the latter cases, the atmosphere
would almost certainly not be breathable.

World size, atmosphere, and hydrographic percentages need not remain
always unchanged, either. An asteroid colony moving to a regular planet
would result in a sudden increase in the world size listing for that
system. Collision with a large asteroid could shatter a small world. A
"clean" atmosphere could become tainted in a number of ways and may then
be "cleaned up" by artificial or natural means. A rise or fall in solar
output, changes in planetary orbit, or artificial tinkering could alter
the hydrographic proportion. It is fair to say, however, that once
established, these three statistics should generally remain constant.

This is not true of the "live" statistics, those that relate to the
world population. Population size, government type, law level and tech
level could all fluctuate widely over time, generally tending to rise
toward higher populations, more restrictive law levels, and more
advanced tech levels. Government types may tend to become more
inflexible over time as well. As always, of course, there are
exceptions.

Major changes could even be fairly rapid. A year after leaving a
primitive world with some hundreds of thousands of citizens, ruled by an
oligarchy that restricts ownership of all weapons, the travelers may
return to discover that a new sentient race has been discovered in the
world's jungles, that a revolution has taken place, and now the world
has millions of citizens, a charismatic dictator who doesn't care what
weapons her subjects own, and has imported hightechnology systems from a
megacorporation. Surprise! Culture shock strikes again.

Interpreting these statistics in different ways will also produce chaos.
Depending upon who did the counting, the population number might reflect
only one sex, one race, or one country on the world. Maybe the
government took its own census and purposefully altered the figures to
appear stronger or weaker than it really is. How often are these figures
updated, anyway? Frontier worlds in particular might be subject to
extraordinary population growth over short periods of time.

Where government types are listed, special problems come into play. It
IS entirely possible that a government could be called one thing and
function as something else entirely. A government managed by a
corporation might be set up as a dictatorship or a workers'
democracy. Captive governments might be free in all but name, or could
be complete puppets to another power.  Consider, too, that often a
government might be listed as how it wants to be seen, not how it
actually works. With an entire galaxy to map as well, perhaps those who
compile the data for the world listings make mistakes or make
superficial surveys of the worlds in question. This could produce
amusing incidents similar to those described in the Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams.

It is conceivable that one could have a law level 9 world where no one
owns weapons, but on which crime is rampant. It is also possible to have
a peaceful nation where even ownership of plasma weapons is allowed to
citizens. The die.  roll involved in determining whether or not
adventurers are spotted by police and arrested for some offense could be
made separate from the tech level number; this would add more
uncertainty to the plans that many adventurers develop to loot low-tech
worlds and escape scot-free. And what law level would one give a world
where only energy weapons may be owned?

The tech level value assigned to a world may not truly reflect the range
of items and materials available there. A planet can always import
high-technology equipment, though maintaining it may be
difficult. Shortages of material or manpower might restrict the variety
of goods that a world would be expected to offer; local circumstances
should also be taken into account. Given a high-tech culture based on a
planet covered by a vast ocean, one would find extensive air/raft and
boating industries but little or nothing of automotive or ATV technol-
ogy except for sea-bottom rovers. Cultures on desert worlds like Mars
would not produce boats. Exceptional radio interference caused by solar
storms or the like would prohibit development of radio technology except
under very specialized conditions.

Low-tech cultures might have surprises of their own in store. Aside from
the import of high-tech goods, local materials might do admirably well
as replacements for manufactured items.  Raupp's World, for instance,
has a plant that produces silvery and highly reflective leaves. When
woven together, they may be made into suits of reflec armor.  Granted,
the suits deteriorate over time, but they're cheap and easy to make.

In short, world codes are useful, but must be regarded with
caution. Taking them for granted can easily lead to a dreadful situation
such as the purely hypothetical one that follows:

"Okay," announces a player, "We're about to land on a
tainted-atmosphere, earth-sized planet with 70% water covering. The
few thousand people here have a participatory democracy for a
government, and they don't allow any weapons on their planet. They seem
to be at a World War I tech level. This sounds like a dull place to
visit."

"Well," says the referee with a grin, "You discover the sun is a flare
star, and radio communication is impossible.  When you land, you find
the world is populated by telepathic female clones who use high-tech
devices purchased from smugglers. Martial arts has replaced hand
weapons, and everyone has Brawling-4 skill. The oceans are full of
carnivorous monsters that can fly, and a mutant virus in the air turns
your skin purple but doesn't otherwise harm you. High-tech clone tanks
have produced almost two million people since the last census. Finally,
your ship lands during a special celebration in which all off-worlders
are captured, given a dagger apiece, and forced to swim a river full of
sea monsters. The survivors, if female, are allowed to clone themselves
and live on the planet. Furthermore —"

I doubt the players will let you live long enough to continue. But the
looks on their faces will make it all worthwhile.