rust

BTW, How smart are dolphins in this campaign? If they are fulling intelligent as opposed to fixed INT, they could be core members of the resarch team.

I think they will have INT 6 or 7, but centuries of using trained dolphins as

helpers for aquaculture farmers, underwater construction teams and other

divers have improved the training methods to a point where dolphins seem

to be more intelligent and versatile than that - think of a very well trained

border collie.

I had fully intelligent dolphins in a previous campaign, and this did not work

well at all. The players relied more on their "expendable" dolphin companions

than on their own skills, some players insisted on roleplaying dolphins - with

truly terrible results, and so on. And I am also not keen on roleplaying dol-

phin NPCs ...

Have to decided how this will affect plant life? Are the native plants edible to humans or to eath marine creatures? Or will the colonists need to raise plankton?

I think that some Earth species will be able to digest at least some of the lo-

cal life, while some others will be unable to do so.

This would give the marine biologists and geneticists among the characters

an opportunity for research projects, always a good way to "bridge" unevent-

ful campaign time while gaining some experience, and potentially also some

status.

For example, a new variant of whale sharks that are genetically modified to

become able to digest Varunian plankton could become a new and important

food source for the colony, and the geneticist who researched the necessary

modifications and carried them out could well become a "local hero".

It would also give me a kind of "escape hatch" whenever the players decide

that their characters will introduce a certain Terran species into the local

biosphere.

For example, they could want to introduce trained killer whales as guard ani-

mals to deal with some dangerous local creature. If this would ruin my plot,

there would always be the possibility that the killer whales and the local bio-

chemistry are incompatible ...

If a planet's got breathable air, drinkable water, and gravity humans are comfortable with, wouldn't the biology of its animals be similar enough to our own to be edible?

Not necessarily. In fact, as I understand it, even if the life forms would be

almost identical, little differences in the biochemistry (e.g. "left handed" in-

stead of "right handed" molecules, the wrong amount of certain trace ele-

ments, etc.) could make it impossible for humans to use these life forms as

food. Just think of our Earth, where we humans are unable to get any mea-

ningful nutrition from the most ubiquitous food plants of our world's animals,

the common grass and tree leaves.

And now that the financial problems have been solved, thanks to a friendly

interstellar neighbourhood bank with 750 million Credits to burn (*cough*),

it is time to decide what this money could be spent on.

Once the characters have explored the planet and their patrons have agreed

to choose Varun as their future home, an advance base will be established on

the planet. It will consist of prefabricated modules (power, life support, hou-

sing, workshops, etc.) for about 50 people, plus their equipment (vehicles,

machines, aquabots, etc.).

While the characters will continue to explore Varun, the other members of the

advance team will wait for a bulk transport starship to deliver the parts of a

floating landing platform, and will then assemble it.

This platform will be ca. 150 m long, 50 m wide and 8 m high and will rest on

two SWATH floaters. In the beginning there will be almost no interior furni-

shings, except the electronics needed to handle starship landings and starts

and the machines required to move the cargoes, but over time the platform

will become a regular swimming starport.

A very similar model will much later be used for the colony's mining platform,

from where the aquabots doing the actual mining will be remotely controlled,

and where the crystals brought up from the seafloor will be processed and

prepared for the export.

Back to the first floater. It will be used to import the material needed to build

the future colony's core, a dome with a diameter of ca. 80 m and a height of

ca. 30 m. It will have ca. 66,000 square meters of useable area on 8 levels.

Almost half of this will be used for housing up to 600 people, with 50 square

meters per person. The remaining ca. 36,000 square meters will contain all

the infrastructure: Power Plant, Life Support, Hydroponics, Administration,

Hospital, Research Center, Workshops, and so on and on.

Once the advance team has constructed the dome's hull, filled it with air and

established power and life support, the first of the colonists can come to Va-

run and, for example, start the aquaculture of the colony, go prospecting for

natural resources, or get eaten by some hideous monster in one of the deep

sea trenches ...

Speaking of trenches, the map of Varun has not yet changed much, it now

looks like this:

So it would be odd if such a habitable world didn't have some sort of native lifeform.

However, it would be surprising if this life would be too similar to that of our

Earth in its biochemistry.

Therefore humans and other animals from Earth will be able to eat Varunian

animals, but unable to digest them and gain any nutritional value from them,

and the Varunian predators might find creatures from Earth tasty, but useless

as food (although they are slow learners and will eat them anyway ...).

This is why the colonists will have to import the livestock for their aquacultu-

re in order to produce the food the colony needs.

Since I have already mentioned the finances of the colony, a few more words

on how I imagine this part of the setting.

In the Traveller universe it is easy for a small group of people to use their sa-

ved money, some ship shares and the skeleton of a business plan ("We will do

profitable interstellar trade and get rich") to get a bank loan of several dozen

million Credits to buy a spaceship and go gallivanting through the galaxy as

free traders.

If one accepts this as plausible, a much bigger group of people (about 560)

should be able to use their saved money, their colony shares and a detailed

business plan ("There is this water world in the Demidov Cluster ... crystals ...

mining ...") to get a bank loan of several hundred million Credits for a coloniza-

tion and mining project, I think.

Actually, just that in itself makes it extremely attractive. Building a realistic setting by extrapolating what we know about the universe, it turns out that 'habitable' planets are extremely rare. The fact that it has advanced indigenous life makes it even more unusual.

Indeed. The valuable crystals are mainly the resource that enables the colo-

nists (= player characters) to finance the very expensive colonization project,

as my "plot device" to keep them somewhat independent of governments or

corporations, who would otherwise "pay and therefore give orders".

There is also something for BRP that rust has acess to that hopefully will work for his spaceship designs.

Indeed, and I really hope that Atgxtg will put it up here to the forum when

he is satisfied with its results, it is a very interesting and useful - and easy -

way to design BRP spaceships - most probably easier and faster than Mon-

goose Traveller and similar systems once it is finished.

Thank you for your questions.

I have no idea whether the design system in Mongoose Traveller's Civilian

Vehicles is able to handle ground vehicles and aircraft well, but it fails mi-

serably when it comes to submarines - if designed according to the rules

as written, they are not heavy enough to dive (none of the 4 example sub-

marines in the supplement can dive ...), the nuclear fission reactors have

less power output than an old fashioned steam engine, and so on ...

So far, you've got your dark, cold oceans stocked with warm-blooded arthropods of various dimensions. Anything else? What do they eat (besides adventurers and each other)? Are they nibbling nutrients from those deep volcanic vents you mentioned?

The creature template mentioned above is the equivalent of Earth's "generic

fish concept", and one of the next steps will be to develop the template in-

to a number of unique species, as different from each other as a manta ray

and a herring are here on Earth.

Then I will have to complete the food chain with plankton and some drifting

plants at the surface of the sea, some bottom dwelling scavengers at the

opposite end, the "black smoker crew" and a few species that come from

other templates and therefore are completely different.

Aside from a breathable atmosphere and plenty of water to drink, what makes sloshy Varun/Pharos IV attractive to colonists?

The potential attraction, and the reason to develop Varun, will be naturally

occuring crystals with a comparatively high market value - provided the co-

lony can develop a "crystal mining industry", probably mainly using remotely

controlled machines and robots.

And if it's a month's travel to the nearest place where they can get help or supplies, how do they get started?

The player characters as the first explorers will hopefully discover the crys-

tals, and will then be asked to establish an advance base on Varun, for re-

search as well as for the preparation of a permanent settlement.

Bulk freighters will then deliver the building materials for a first base, and la-

ter the materials and equipment necessary to expand the base into a con-

struction site for the core of the future colony.

Once this core (energy, life support, etc.) and the quarters for several hun-

dred colonists have been established, a colonial transport spaceship will de-

liver the colonists and their equipment to their new home world.

Meanwhile Atgxtg demonstrated to me that the Mongoose Traveller vehicle

design system is ... problematic, to put it very politely. This saved me from

wasting even more time and effort on attempts to create my vehicles with a

faulty system - thank you again very much, Atgxtg. :thumb:

So now I am looking for something else to replace the Mongoose Traveller sy-

stem. EABA Stuff has been highly recommended by several people, but I do

not like it, and do not enjoy working with it. GURPS Vehicles is too complica-

ted for my taste, but there is a simplified modular aquatic vehicle design sys-

tem in GURPS Transhuman Space - Under Pressure, and this is the one I in-

tend to test now, while my Mongoose Traveller designs go to the scrapyard.

For the infrastructure of the advance base and the colony I will probably use

GURPS Traveller Starships and GURPS Spaceships, which both include modules

for entire habitats, farms, factories and thelike, giving me the data for size,

mass and costs I need to figure out how to transport all that stuff to Varun

on bulk transport spaceships and how to design the advance base and the

colony.

So, back to the drawing board once more ...

While the "bare bones" of the planet Varun and its background setting are

"stewing" in my mind and waiting for some inspiration to hit me and enable

me to create the details of that part of the setting, I have turned to the

technology of the setting: Spaceships, vehicles, robots and personal equip-

ment.

Since BRP does not yet offer the necessary design systems, I am using the

systems of Mongoose Traveller to design the spaceships (explorer / scout,

colonial transport, patrol ship, trader, etc.) and the water vehicles (e.g. sur-

face and submarine research vessels, transport vessels, underwater work

pods, seafloor crawlers, etc.) required by the campaign.

The robots and the various personal gear I will take from Mongoose Traveller

supplements, like the Central Supply Catalog, Scout or Beltstrike, at least for

the initial phase of the campaign.

A major problem is the infrastructure of first the advance base and then the

colony, because roleplaying games rarely mention that kind of stuff, like sea-

floor habitats, construction and industrial machines, aquaculture equipment

and thelike - a lot needs to be "invented" there to create a plausible setting.

And once the technology is covered, the next step will be the characters

themselves, their professions and the specific new or modified skills required

by an underwater environment, as well as the rules for the use of these skills.

Still a lot to be done before this becomes a playable setting ...

Besides, even if the movie were to be understood as depicting the US military

in the role of the evil guys with the black hats, I would not see this as any

kind of serious problem.

We Germans had the questionable pleasure to supply an entire generation of

movie makers from all over the world with the "evil ones" for their movies, and

the Chinese and Russians did likewise for the movie makers of the western na-

tions, including the German ones.

If our friends from the USA now share that "burden", too, and also are occa-

sionally depicted as the "bad ones" instead of "squeaking clean", I really see

no reason to get upset about it.

I would not attempt to read real world politics into the movie, and none of

the reviews I did read over here tried to do it.

It is just a "resistance fighter" plot with the same basic idea as, for exam-

ple, the legends about Robin Hood, and someone has to play the evil guys,

and from the logic of the plot and the technology available this can only

be humans - otherwise Cameron would have had to find aliens as actors

for the enemies of his computer generated race.

Merry Christmas !

(... or whatever you intend to celebrate)

But before I can travel anywhere else, I have to return to the drawing board

for a while: Right now my planet has a lot of data, but it still does not have a

geography - there is no map.

The first draft of the map gives only a basic idea of what the planet is like: A

lot of water, some shallows (a bit like "sunken continents"), a few sea mounts

and a "deep cauldron" to start with.

With this not yet final first picture it is time to think about all the geographi-

cal data, like "how deep is my ocean" or "where to put the volcanoes" - and,

of course, natural resources (the crystals that will one day be mined and ex-

ported), important ocean currents, and finally some potential sites for the fu-

ture colony (to give the player characters an opportunity to make a very

good or terribly bad choice).

And, on a "secret" copy of the map, "where there are dragons" - like alien ru-

ins, the habitats of especially nasty creatures, and so on.

Over time, this first map will probably be changed several times, both before

and during the campaign, so it does not have to be especially nice.

Here is my first draft of the Varun map:

They packaged an adventure with their box set called, "Terror at Warwick House" I believe, that was designed to teach the rules as it was run. The game master didn't even have to know how to play, he just sat the group at the table and started playing.

If I remember it right, the first Star Wars RPG also had a chapter of this kind,

in this case a solo adventure that introduced and explained all the important

rules during the adventure.

The "SharedUniverse" is still a bit too empty to use as a background, so I ha-

ve meanwhile figured out how to connect my Demidov Cluster with the Far

Avalon setting mentioned above.

In this setting there are both FTL drives and Conduits, natural "wormholes"

that can be used by accordingly outfitted starships for fast transfer between

a conduit's openings.

In my version of the setting, the average performance of a hyperdrive of a ci-

vilian starship is approcimately 2 Parsec per day, and a hex on my star chart

is about 10 Parsec wide and takes about 5 days to cross.

Therefore Varun is about 20 Pc or 10 days of travel time from the nearest in-

habited world Hem, about 30 Pc / 15 days from the developed colony Poselok

and 70 Pc / 35 days from the transfer world Demidov.

Yep, I prefer my space big and travel times long. A visit to Poselok, for exam-

ple to buy some urgently needed spare parts, takes a Varunian at least one

month - and much could have changed on Varun while he was away.

Demidov is one end of the Beacon Conduit, which is approximately 120 light

years / 37 Parsec long, takes about 5 days to travel through, and leads to

the Beacon system, controlled by the Nordica monarchy (from where the co-

lonists of Hem once came), in the Far Avalon region.

From Beacon it is about 15 Parsec to Dakota in the Trane League and about

25 Parsec each to Nordica and to the independent world Kirkwall, the nearest

worlds of interest to the Varunians.

This means that a diplomatic mission to Nordica takes 35 days to get to De-

midov, 5 days through the conduit to Beacon on a transfer ship able to use

the conduit, and another 13 days from Beacon to Nordica - 53 days to get

there and 53 days for the return trip.

As I said, I prefer my space big.

Exactly so. I shall do my best to "give us the tools"!

I like your draft, but it has a problem - it is a textbook example of what is

called a "Bleiwüste" ("lead desert") over here, a very long text without any

space (e.g. illustrations, etc.) for the eyes to recover from reading.

Was it this CoC QuickStart from Chaosium by any chance, or perhaps a translation?

Unfortunately all I remember is that it was a very slim, black and white book-

let, A5 sized, in German. Having all the CoC stuff already, I did not keep it.

How would you feel about contributing your world & sector to the "SharedUniverse" project?

No problem with that - except the language.

While I am working with English roleplaying material, like GURPS Space, I use

English and later on translate my design into German, so there are versions

in both languages.

However, once this part is done and I begin to add all the details, I use Ger-

man, and I am usually much too lazy to try to translate that, too.

So, whoever likes the "skeleton" material posted here is free to use it as he

likes, including of course "SharedUniverse", but there will be no English ver-

sion of the "flesh" on these "bones", I am afraid.

I am not sure whether this is on topic, but I just remembered an interesting

marketing action of the German publishers of Call of Cthulhu.

They produced and printed a quick start booklet with the basic rules and a

short introductory adventure and distributed it for free to all the major mail

order roleplaying games shops in Germany, asking them to put a copy of the

booklet into every order - Call of Cthulhu and otherwise - for free. So, for a

while all German roleplaying gamers who ordered any roleplaying material by

mail received the quick start booklet, too.

Now that I have some first impressions what the planet Varun is like, it is time

to put it somewhere the explorers and the colonists can find it.

I usually design a small region with few planets as the surrounding space of

a setting's planet, small enough to describe all the planets in some detail and

to enable the player characters to understand the situation and to "learn the

ropes" quickly.

In this case it is the Demidov Cluster, consisting of a "transfer" planet that

connects this frontier region with the "wider universe" (Demidov), an agricul-

tural planet (Trava), a resource and industrial planet (Zhelezo), an old colony

world (Poselok) and two young colony worlds (Hem and Misaki) - and Varun,

of course.

"Demidov" is the name of the scout who first entered the region, "Trava" (=

Green), "Zhelezo" (= Iron) and "Poselok" (= Settlement) are Russian words,

so you can imagine who settled these worlds. "Hem" is Swedish, "Misaki" is

Japanese, so the "second wave" of the colonization obviously was done by

colonists from different homeworlds and background cultures - the Cluster

begins to get the outline of a history.

I am still not certain what the "transfer world" Demidov will connect to, but I

think it will again be a somewhat modified version of Martin J. Dougherty's

Far Avalon setting.

But what else is out there now, or will be in the near future?

I think the material is there, just look at the forum's front page: The Green

for fantasy with a different "feel" than D&D, Aces High for Wild West, the

upcoming Pirates supplement, and ... and ... - in fact, far more and far bet-

ter stuff than I had dared to hope for a year ago.

I have been reviewing and "marketing" most of the monographs I bought over

on my German "home forum", and there was more interest in it than I had ex-

pected - although I do not know whether this interest turned into sales of

the monographs.

The problem seems to be, from my point of view at least, to get that material

into a form that is accepted by roleplaying games shops.

I must be one of the six people who are not going to go see this...

Seven - you can count me in.

The story is a remake of Ursula LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest, and I

am not interested in yet another version of this same story, no matter how

good the technology used.

Using Flynn's Guide to Alien Creation, a very useful supplement for Mongoose

Traveller, and determining the features of a typical Varunian creature mostly

by random die rolls and occasionally by choice, the template finally looks like

this:

A warm blooded, cold resistant aquatic creature, life bearing with two

genders and the ability to change gender during hibernation, usually of

medium size, with an armoured radially symmetric body with six limbs,

armed with claws, swimming at average speed, almost blind but able to

sense its environment through sound and vibrations. The flyers of the

family of species use lighter than air methods to fly.

This will be the dominant family of species of Varun, most Varunian animals

will have these basic features in common, whether they are herbivores, om-

nivores or carnivores, big or small.

Looks good to me. Nothing really spectacular, but such "specials" can be

added to specific species, and not too close to typical Terran creatures to

make a sense of wonder impossible.

Here is the entire GURPS Space data set for my water world, now renamed

"Varun" to avoid confusion with the earlier "Pharos IV model".

I have chosen an "Indian theme" for the names of the star and its planets,

partially because I intend to have the majority of the colonists come from a

planet with an "Indian" background culture, with Jainism the dominant religi-

on, "Indian" customs, and so on, in order to get a background culture that is

different enough from previous settings that it feels fresh and interesting.

While the authors of GURPS Space obviously expected me to design all the

system's planets in as much detail as the mainworld Varun, I will not do this

- all I will note are their general descriptions (e.g. "hot rock ball"), their dia-

meters, surface gravity and atmospheres. If the player characters should

decide to visit one of these planets, there will be sufficient time to calcula-

te all the other data that are needed.

The data set for the colony itself (population, government, per capita inco-

me, etc.) is just as long as the physical data set, but these informations

will be created during the campaign, heavily influenced by the decisions and

activities of the player characters - right now Varun is still unexplored and

uninhabited.

Star Chandalini

Type : F 7 V

Population: Intermediate Population I

Age : 3.1 billion years

Temperature: 6,300 K

Luminosity: 2.94

Radius: 0.0067 AU

Star Mass: 1.23

Chandalini System

Orbit 1 - 0.28AU : Aiman

Orbit 2 - 0.41 AU : Bimal

Orbit 3 - 0.82 AU : Charu

Orbit 4 - 1.46 AU : Varun

Orbit 5 - 3.21 AU : Etash

Orbit 6 - 5.77 AU : Farid

Orbit 7 - 10.40 AU : Gadin (Gas Giant)

Orbit 8 - 18.72 AU : Hari (Gas Giant)

Orbit 9 - 33.69 AU : Iham

Planet Varun

Orbital Radius: 1.46 AU

Orbital Eccentricity: 0.11

Orbital Period: 581 days

Axial Tilt: 11 degrees

Rotation Period: 25 hours 30 minutes

World Type : Standard (Garden)

Diameter: 14,928 km

Gravity: 0.97 G

Density: 4.58 g/cc

Atmospheric Pressure : 1.29 atm

Atmospheric Composition: Nitrogen-Oxygen, occasionally polluted by volcanism

Hydrographic Percentage: 100 %, kein Land

Climate Type : Warm

Temperature Range: 21° C – 42° C

Volcanic Activity: Moderate

Tectonic Activity: Light

Resource Value Modifier: Abundant (+1)

Habitability Score : + 5

With that done, the next step will be the planet's biosphere, beginning with

the "templates" (e.g. how many limbs, how many genders, etc.) of the pla-

net's dominant and most common families of species.