Dan Corrin replies to R. Dired:
>>Anyone ever consider what kind of effort it would take to make Traveller
>>3D? I know that 2D is so damn much simpler, but space isn't supposed to be
>>simple. What's the excitement of it's just a bunch of small islands on a
>>real big sea?
>
>Without a good representation the players only get confused and
>discouraged by trying to visualize the 3-D map. If you had a computer
>or a 3-D model of the universe then this could be quite practical.
>Otherwise most players can't tell what planets are close to their current
>postion, and almost none could plot a shortest route course though the 3-D
>universe.
You can make Traveller 3D without too much trouble. I once made a 3D map
of a subsector by blowing up the standard format subsector map to double
size and assuming a depth of nine parsec (from +4 to -4). I used a chance
of 2/6th for a star to be in a cylinder (hex cylinder; does such a
figure have a special name?), so I needed the increased size of hex, as
I got 3 stars in each hex on the average. I then coloured each star
according to depth; I used the seven colours of rainbow plus brown and
white: red, brown, orange, yellow, white (that's level 0), green, light
blue, dark blue and violet. That helps me visualize it: the warmer the
colour, the 'closer' the star is to the viewer. Alternatively there's
plenty of room to put a small number next to each star to indicate depth.
What there isn't room for is all the other information that's usually
found on a Traveller map; you'll be hard pressed to get the starnames
fitted in; perhaps blowing the map up once more, glueing typed names
on and reducing it to A4 size again would work.
What you can't do is to make the _Imperium_ 3D, at least not easily. Just
imagine the number of new stars you'd have to generate. A 3D sector
would, I suppose, be 4x4x4 subsectors (I guess I'd introduce an inter-
mediate level of organization, 8 2x2x2 quadrants to a sector). I don't
know how many sectors deep the galaxy would be, but even if it were only
one, we're looking at a 36-doubling of the star list.
No, I for one is satisfied to stay with Traveller's flat galaxy, although
I'd propably make any new universe I started myself 3D. I'd just use a
correspondingly lesser part of the galaxy.
>>On the same topic, one thing that always bothered me was that population was
>>random, no matter how bad the conditions on the planet. 99 billion on a
>>size A with atmosphere F is kind of hard to believe (much less that many on
>>size 1, no water, no air)! Why not have modifiers to the population roll
>>based on the other rolls? Say, something like this:
>>
>>This way, you wouldn't have all those poor planets with billions next to
>>the perfect one that the GM can name every person on.
>
>Just think of analogies on earth, why is japan so overcrowded while
>Austrailia which is relatively close is almost empty? Usually there
>are socio-economic resaons why you see strange population figures, and
>what we need is a program/method to come up with novel reasons why
>there is a disparagy.
Yes, of course you can have special circumstances (and pretty fun they
are to explain, too), but that T-norm planets have the same AVERAGE
population as worlds with insiduous atmospheres is just plain stupid.
Last monday I sent off two articles to Challenge, one of which dealt
with just this subject. If they reject it, I'll post it here.
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
[email removed]
- ------------
"A subsector official pompously states that the
subsector armed forces have four Kinunir class
ships in service, each with enough troop strength
to put down any military operations that threathen
the peace of the Imperium."
---Adventure 1, The Kinunir