rust

I think this will very much depend on the players' choice of their characters' careers and on the characters' goals. For example, while a Merchant may have to deal with the Interworld Trade Commission an Official is more likely to have to deal with the Interworld Council Development Agency. In the end it is up to the characters whether they will come in close contact with any of the organizations at all. It is far more likely that the characters will have to deal with one or more of the "native" organizations of Thalassa, like for example the Thalassa Seascouts, but at the moment I am still working on this element of the setting - more perhaps later.

A few more words about the Interworld Council … For the Thalassians the Interworld Council Development Agency (ICDA) is the most important organization within the Interworld Council framework. The official task of the ICDA is the support of the cultural exchange between the member worlds of the Interworld Council. However, in a kind of bureaucratic mission creep the ICDA expanded its portfolio con-siderably, and today its definition of „culture“ includes everything from entertainment holotapes through technical libraries to terraforming equipment and even animals – whatever a colony wants to import from Earth or other Interworld Council planets has to go through the ICDA. The ICDA has its headquarters in Geneva on Earth and representatives on all planets, for example in Port Rose on Thalassa, and operates a small fleet of courier starships which regularly visit the colony planets. Less important for Thalassa is the Interworld Trade Commission (ITC), which develops and monitors the rules for all interstellar trade. Its main importance for the Thalassians is that all free traders need an ITC license for a specific trade route. The idea behind this is to ensure that there is always at least some competition for the big shipping lines, but there is also the hidden agenda to keep the number of free traders on any specific trade route so low that their operations are profitable and they have no incentive to turn to smuggling or piracy. The Interworld Interstellar Service (IIS) is the Interworld Council's „space patrol“ and the only organization which is allowed to operate armed starships. The IIS is an interstellar police force, an interstellar rescue service and an interstellar exploration service. However, the jurisdiction of the IIS covers only interstellar space and ends at the far orbit of any inhabited planet, the IIS personnel has no legal enforcement powers on any planetary surface. Since there is very little crime in interstellar space, those IIS crews which do not serve on exploration missions usually suffer from severe boredom. Conflicts between the Interworld Council and a member world or between two member worlds of the Interworld Council are handled by the Interworld Court (IC). The rulings of the IC are legally binding for all parties of the conflict. If necessary the IC could enforce its rulings through commercial sanctions or even an IIS blockade of a planet, but this has never hap-pened. There are several more Interworld Council institutions and organizations, but these are of little or no importance for Thalassa.

You have this for example in the Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey, where the colonists intend to create a low-technology rural society on their new homeworld (although a natural desaster makes it even more low-tech than originally intended...).

In 1900 Germany's farmers produced 87% of the farm goods consumed in Germany. When one considers that the science of agriculture was not well developed, that the animals and plants of the time were less productive breeds, that the farming methods in many regions still were rather medieval and that probably a significant part of the imports consisted of luxury goods (wine from Italy, cheese from France, etc.), for the upper class, I think that about 35% of the workforce should be quite sufficient to feed the colonists.

In 1900 in Germany 38% of the workforce were farmers.

In the case of Thalassa it is a similar, but less easily visible, scheme. The Transworld Mining Corporation financed a major share of the colonization project and receives a major share of the rare earths and crystals mined in Thalassa's seabed mines in return. This seems fair enough, but TMC also controls almost all of Thalassa's trade, because the supplies imported by Thalassa are transported there on the TMC space freighters, which visit Thalassa approximately every 90 days. While this guarantees a regular freight (and passenger) service, it also gives TMC a strong influence on what arrives on Thalassa, and when it arrives there, plus an indirect influence on the prices of the imported goods through TMC's commercial connections with the suppliers on Earth and Bolivar. Moreover, TMC acts as the colony's friendly loan shark, constantly offering additional financial investment in Thalassian development projects ("We can give you five billions for that project, no problem" ...) in order to prolong the time Thalassa will need to repay the loans and therefore have to sell the products of the seabed mines to TMC at the low prices negotiated for the original colonization loan. Thalassa's potential way out would be to reduce the borrowing, which would significantly slow down the development of the colony, and to improve its relations with the free traders operating in the region in order to use them as TMC's competitors, which proves difficult because few free traders would be willing to risk a conflict with mighty TMC. Otherwise Thalassa will just have to pay a major part of its export income to TMC for a very, very long time ...

Hmmm... In my last Glorantha campaign, quite some time ago, the most important deities were the Twins, Aurelion and Caladra.

So, money. As mentioned in a previous post, I was not sure whether to use a Wealth Level as in BRP or a sum of money as in, for example, Runequest 6. In the end I took the money (ahem ...), named it "Interworld Credit (IC)" and decided that a character entering the campaign will own 3d6 x 500 IC in cash and earn a disposable income of between 1,500 IC and 2,500 IC per month, depending on his profession. The character will also have an apartment on a floater or in a domed habitat and own the usual personal stuff like clothes, a communicator and so on, plus the basic tools of the character's profession.

Memo to myself: No need to deal with the hit locations problem, Clarence has done that already.

Thank you again. I have and like Rivers of Heaven, but it is slightly too transhumanist for my purposes, although it doubtless contains a number of good ideas I might borrow sooner or later - as soon as I find out where Thalassa's problems are (probably only once the players begin to take it apart...). Well, there is always the risk that I am not happy with a setting until I have written its capital's complete phone book and named all of its streets ...

I have to admit that I have no actual experience with Mythras' combat system, but in my view it should not be difficult to use general hit points instead of hit locations. One would only have to decide how to calculate the general hit points, as CON + SIZ could perhaps feel a bit high for an average human when not distributed among the hit locations, and there may be some specials effects (like for example Choose Location) which would no longer make much sense, but otherwise I do not see any major problems.

From the Legend supplement "Legend Spirit Magic": Sickness and Curse Spirits Sickness and curse spirits are malevolent beings which attack and covertly possess mortals. Once in possession they emulate specific disease effects (see page 78 of the Legend Core Rulebook). Sickness spirits tend to gather (on the Spirit Plane) near the bodies of the recently dead, attracted by the eventual departure of its soul. From there they usually lay in wait for mortals to approach and follow them until they sleep or pass into an unconscious state. At this point they use their Discorporation skill to drag the target’s soul onto the Spirit Plane. If they succeed in defeating the victim in spirit combat then they covertly possess him and infl icting the effect of their disease. Curse spirits are similar in effect to sickness spirits but they are normally captured by shaman at sites of great disaster and misfortune. Once bound they are used as offensive weapons to overtly possess the spirit magician’s enemies. These are just the basic informations, the supplement contains more about the statistics and game rules for such spirits.

Thank you. Yes, seems so - but on the other hand it is now my "nth" attempt to design a water world setting, and I should be able to get at least some things right. Still, I am not yet satisfied with the overall result ...

One of the most important tasks of a setting's referee is to give the players an impression of the (preferably unique) everyday culture of the setting's people. In the case of Thalassa this includes for example the descriptions of the common food (mostly fish and algae or hydroponics products), the common clothing of both genders (a light shalwar kameez* as protection from the sun over a dark skinsuit for swimming or diving) and the ways the people spend their spare time (available media, various watersports and thelike). A few typical proverbs or idiomatic phrases would also be nice (for example the phrase „He cannot tell“ as a shortened insult meaning „He is so incredibly dumb that he cannot tell a manta ray from a whale shark“). *The Shalwar are loose pajama-like trousers, the Kameez is a long shirt or tunic.

Thank you very much indeed.

And here we have the Thalassa characters' careers in the Mythras system: Aquafarmer Standard Skills: Athletics, Boating, Brawn, Endurance, Locale, Perception, Swim Professional Skills: Commerce, Computers, Craft (Aquaculture), Electronics, Navigation, Science (Marine Biology), Seamanship Diplomat Standard Skills: Customs, Deceit, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Commerce, Courtesy, Culture (any), Language (any), Lore (Interworld Law), Oratory, Politics Dolphineer Standard Skills: Boating, Endurance, First Aid, Insight, Locale, Perception, Swim Professional Skills: Craft (Dolphineering), Craft (any), Language (Aquasign), Medicine (Dolphin), Navigation, Survival, Teach Engineer Standard Skills: Boating, Endurance, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Swim Professional Skills: Computers, Electronics, 2 x Engineering (any), Mechanics, Research, Science (Physics) Hardsuit Diver Standard Skills: Boating, Brawn, Endurance, Locale, Perception, Swim, Willpower Professional Skills: Craft (Hardsuit Diving), Electronics, Engineering (any), Language (Aquasign), Mechanics, Navigation, Survival Mariner Standard Skills: Boating, Customs, Locale, Influence, Insight, Perception, Swim Professional Skills: Commerce, Computers, Electronics, Engineering (Watercraft), Mechanics, Navigation, Seamanship Merchant Standard Skills: Boating, Customs, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Bureaucracy, Commerce, Courtesy, Computers, Lore (Trade), Oratory, Streetwise Official Standard Skills: Boating, Customs, Endurance, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception Professional Skills:Bureaucracy, Commerce, Computers, Lore (Law), Oratory, Politics, Streetwise Physician Standard Skills: Boating, Endurance, First Aid, Influence, Insight, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Bureaucracy, Computers, Language (Latin), Medicine (Human), Lore (Medical Field) Science (Pharmacy), Streetwise Ranger Standard Skills: Boating, Customs, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Swim Professional Skills: Bureaucracy, Computers, Lore (Law), Navigation, Research, Science (Psychology), Streetwise Scientist Standard Skills: Boating, Customs, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Computers, Electronics, Lore (any), Research, 2 x Science (any), Teach Seabed Miner Standard Skills: Boating, First Aid, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Computers, Craft (Seabed Mining), Demolitions, Electronics, Mechanics, Science (Geology), Science (Robotics) Teacher Standard Skills: Boating, Customs, Influence, Insight, Locale, Native Tongue, Perception Professional Skills: Computers, 2 x Lore (any), Oratory, Research, Science (any), Teach

This time I have some domed habitat construction mathematics for you. I know, I mentioned that I want to keep the technology in the background in this setting. My apology for the mathematics is that in order to describe the domed habitats I really needed some data about their size and interior design. The domes used on Thalassa have a relation between base diameter and height of 3 : 1, so a dome with a base diameter of 90 meters has a height of 30 meters. The volume of a dome is base radius x base radius x base radius x 3.6, so our previously mentioned dome with a base diameter of 90 meters has a total volume of 45 x 45 x 45 x 3.6 or approximately 328,000 cubic meters. The average height of a habitat level inside the dome is 3.5 meters, with 2.5 meters of useful height and 1 meter of deck thickness, including technical installations. When we divide the height of the dome by the height of one habitat level we see that the dome has 30 : 3,5 = 8.5 habitat levels, which we can round down to 8 habitat levels. To get the useful area of a dome we can divide the volume by the height, in our example 328,000 cubic meters by 3.5, resulting in a useful area of approximately 93,500 square meters. Half of that area is used for various purposes, like technical systems, hydroponics, restaurants, holography theatres, and so on. The other half, approximately 46,500 square meters, is used for the residents' apartments. We want to see happy colonists, so each person gets 50 square meters of living space, which means that a family has an apartment of at least 100 square meters – quite comfortable. With apartments of 50 square meters each our dome can house approximately 930 inhabitants. Port Rose was built for 15,000 inhabitants. Would they all inhabit a single dome with apartments of 50 square meters each, we would need a dome with a diameter of more than 200 meters. This would be technically possible, but Thalassa's habitat engineers decided to design Port Rose as a city of several smaller domes („city quarters“) of different sizes which are connected by tunnels. This enables the colonists to expand their settlement by adding more domes whenever required.

Here are the careers available to the characters after I converted them to the Mythras system. This is still a "beta" version, but I do not expect to have to change much: Artisan Standard Skills: Brawn, Drive, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Art (any), Commerce, 2 x Craft (any), Engineering, Mechanics, Streetwise Diplomat Standard Skills: Customs, Deceit, Influence, Insight, Locale, Native Tongue, Perception Professional Skills: Bureaucracy, Courtesy, Culture (any), Language (any), Lore (International Law), Oratory, Politics Engineer Standard Skills: Drive, Endurance, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Art (Drawing), Commerce, Electronics, Engineering, Language (Latin), Mechanics, Science (Physics) Farmer Standard Skills: Athletics, Brawn, Drive, Endurance, Locale, Perception, Ride Professional Skills: Commerce, Craft (Herding), Lore (Animal Species), Medicine (Veterinary), Navigation, Survival, Track Fisher Standard Skills: Athletics, Boating, Endurance, Locale, Perception, Stealth, Swim Professional Skills: Commerce, Craft (Fishing), Lore (Marine Species), Mechanics, Navigation, Seamanship, Survival Gendarm Standard Skills: Athletics, Customs, Drive, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception Professional Skills: Bureaucracy, Courtesy, Lore (Meridian Law), Navigation, Science (Forensics), Streetwise, Track Merchant Standard Skills: Drive, Deceit, Insight, Influence, Locale, Ride, Willpower Professional Skills: Commerce, Courtesy, Culture (any), Language (any), Lore (any), Navigation, Streetwise Official Standard Skills: Customs, Deceit, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Bureaucracy, Commerce, Courtesy, Language (any), Lore (Meridian Law), Oratory, Politics Physician Standard Skills: Customs, First Aid, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception,Willpower Professional Skills: Courtesy, Electronics, Medicine, Language (Latin), Research, Science (Biology), Science (Pharmacy) Pilot Standard Skills: Customs, Drive, Endurance, Evade, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Electronics, Language (English), Language (Spanish), Mechanics, Navigation, Pilot, Streetwise Priest Standard Skills: Customs, First Aid, Influence, Insight, Locale, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Acting, Bureaucracy, Courtesy, Customs, Language (Latin), Lore (Theology), Oratory Scientist Standard Skills: Customs, Influence, Insight, Locale, Native Tongue, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Electronics, Language (English), Language (Latin), Research, 2 x Science (any), Teach Teacher Standard Skills: Customs, Influence, Insight, Locale, Native Tongue, Perception, Willpower Professional Skills: Culture (any), Language (any), 2 x Lore (any), Oratory, Science (Psychology), Teach

The Call of Cthulhu 7th edition rulebook will do.

Looks very good – probably just the material I need for an adventure of my Asornok setting, where the characters are hired by the natives of Asornok (= real world Baffin Island) to travel to the Himalaya in order to purchase a breeding stock of yaks and hire some experienced yak handlers (well, as they say this is a very long story …).

Steamships were high technology even in the late 1800s, indeed rather difficult to build by a colony without an industrial base and skilled engineers, Moreover, steamships are limited in their range by the need for fuel, without a network of coaling stations they cannot go far from their base on the colony's settled island. In my view the colony would probably begin its seafaring technology with a sailing ship, which requires less industrial resources (like processed metals) and has at least theoretically an unlimited range.

Since this is a public forum where players can read the posts, too, there are some things I am unlikely to post here ...

A little bit of Thalassan native biology ... The deep sea of Thalassa has not really been explored, there have only been some rather short scouting missions near the Archipelago Region, down to a depth of approximately 1,000 meters, using remotely controlled scientific drones. Other regions and greater depths, for example the region of the Abyss with a depth of approximately 6,500 meters, have not yet been explored at all. Only two types of complex native creatures have been discovered near hydrothermal vents of the seafloor, named „filters“ and „crawlers“, and currently not much is known about them. Filters Filters are spongelike coldblooded sessile creatures of medium size. They have no body armour and no limbs, probably also no natural weapons (although some species could be poisonous). They may have a chemical and / or electric sense. Filters use chemosynthesis for their metabolism and reproduce asexually by external budding. Crawlers Crawlers are crablike coldblooded mobile creatures of small size. They have some body armour, their bodies have radial symmetry with five limbs with claws. They are carnivores and may have a chemical and / or electric sense enabling them to find their prey, sessile filters. Crawlers reproduce asexually by egglaying.

I seem to remember something of that kind from King of Dragon Pass, but I am not sure at all - it was such a long time ago ...

Looks like a good idea to me, because each of the characters would be unique, for example with unique skills, and so have his own "niche" in the campaign.