Steve Higginbotham comments on the number of stereotyped worlds that have
been discussed for use in the Gamba subsector.
Let me take a moment to go over the origin of this thread: I have gotten
bored with waiting for TNE to come out, or for GDW to dribble out bits of
information on the project, and I wanted to see some discussion here on the
TML. Therefore, I started talking about the latest thing that I have been
working on, which is a single randomly rolled subsector, much like one
mihgt have started out with many years ago, when Traveller and I were both
much younger. Since the initial world rolls were not terribly inspiring,
I thought that we might have a little fun by talking over what could be
done with such an unpromising set of statistics.
So, I'd like to play this as what I think of as "the literary game", in
which we are stuck with a set of facts, however unlikely, and have to come
up with some web of description that will explain them. This means that
we will leave the worlds just as they were rolled, and try to come up with
some explanation, however unlikely. The real world is awfully unlikely
sometimes, too...
That's rule 1.
Rule 2 is that this is not a democracy. There is no real goal to all of this
discussion, although you are all welcome to incorporate anything we come up
with into your campaign. However, for purposes of keeping the discussion
going, I will eventually say "Officially this will be the way it is" and we'll
move on and discuss something else. There's nothing like a committee of a
few dozen people to ensure that nothing is ever accomplished...
So, if you don't like the world stereotypes that are being discussed, Steve,
please (!!) jump in and throw in something else. As I say, the only hard and
fast rule is that I don't want to change any of the rolled stats except as a
last resort.
Location: There is no good location for a subsector with these characteristics,
since anyplace in the main body of the Imperium (Earth-Core-Vland) has been
settled for far too long. I'd otherwise be inclined to put it somewhere on
the trailing side of the great rift, so that it was empty space (or nearly
so) out to the spinward. As a second possibility, we could put it just to
the spinward of the Five Sisters subsector, which would give you a good idea
of how isolated I'd like it to be.
Any other ideas? For purposes of discussion, I'd like to make it clear that
there is nothing interesting (like a TL15 industrial planet) just across the
boundaries in any direction, so that the players are obligated to stay within
the subsector. In games that I've played, I've really never used more than
one or two subsectors in a campaign, so the theoretical speed of travel
remained theoretical.
As to the type of adventurers: I'd like to see the subsector set up with
adventure possibilities of as many types as possible. _My_ usual course
of operations is to set up the background and then determine specific
adventures after the players become available. The one thing we know would
be difficult is Scout adventures, since (like everywhere else in the
Traveller Universe) most of the real exploration has already been done.
Oh yes. Rule 3--No major changes in Traveller technology may be postulated
for purposes of this discussion. We'll try to play this "by the book",
although the definition of "the book" may shift around a bit.
Steve objects to the use of plagues because he thinks that TLxx medicine will
be able to handle everything. Is there anyone out there who is extremely
familiar with the series of medical articles run in The Traveller's Digest?
How did they work out in practice? Any other comments on this subject? I'm
still flexible, really...
Rob Dean