Luck Gibson

[robject]

After thinking about what I've done wrong as a referee in the past, I dwelt on detailing a starport, and how useful that can be as an aid to the players' imaginations, a spur to the referee's creativity, and a way of informing players without having to tell them something (Hypothesis One: the less you have to say, the funner the game is).

For example, take Luck Gibson Down. Generate a simple but nice sketch, with straight lines (it could look like an architect's render, a mall guide, or a deckplan) and labelled locations. See how The Traveller Adventure details Leedor Down on Aramis. You've got regions, and each region can have a block or two of detail, with place names, a sentence description, and a couple of sketched-out NPCs.

I say again, take Luck Gibson Down. Then, take Hypothesis Two: Many Adventures Start and End at a Starport. Next, take Hypothesis Three: An Entire Campaign can Take Place on a Single Planet. Given enough detail, a world is bigger than any group of players can possibly comprehend. There's enough potential to keep a game going forever -- just look at games like Twilight: 2000, D&D, and Conan; they're generally bound to one world, and they have inexhaustible reserves.

Now go one step further, to Corollary One: An Entire Campaign can Take Place on a Single Starport. If you want an extreme example of this, I direct you to Paranoia. But even in the relatively sane world of Traveller, a big starport is like a big city: there's enough room for action, intrigue, violence, chases, travel, and a big bag of patrons, thugs, civilians, and criminal masterminds to keep a game going forever.

So then, if a starport like Glisten, or Luck Gibson, or Strouden were fleshed out, entire adventures could play themselves out there, without the players having to leave.

 

[coliver988]

I've never played GT* but the GT:Starports covers that in a fair amount of depth, and the Glisten planetary survey, while covering the entire system, does have some notes on the starport, along with some diagrams.

Most of the time we were playing the starport was unfortunately just a place to get to & get stuff from. 20+ years later I can finally see a lot more opportunity to do interesting things there that could be an entire adventure or three.

*never played but I've picked up a few things simply for the chrome and detailing they give.

[Edit: and of course there is that interesting thread on concessions in the starport, which have the potential for lots of small scale adventures in of themselves!]

 

[Major B]

Robject, are you suggesting a collaborative project?

 

[Icosahedron]

I bought Gurps Starports for chrome too. I made a spreadsheet from parts of it (but it was houseruled to MTU). I think there may be a full spreadsheet of it somewhere on the web - ask its creator, he's a Citizen.
I'll remember his handle in a while.

Glad you liked the Concessions thread, unfortunately not many folk added to it.

I thought there WAS a collaborative project - closed for development, whatever that means. Weren't you part of that, Rob?

 

[Perseus]

That is an excellent idea. It is amazing how even a few sketches and plans as you say can provide a springboard to the imagination. I've been a bit more inspired to write/draw/create some stuff recently, but all the materials I've seen. (Also saving up for the CT CD - kids going back to school this week for new year) I must try and put a few more things together and post them here.

 

[ravells]

It's a pity the starports 101 project (and son of starports 101) died. I agree starports would be a great adventure source but rather than pre-built ones, I would prefer a manual which gave directions as to how to quickly 'build' a starport detailing the systems within it, with perhaps only a few pre-generated ones for the sake of illustration. The superb Gurps Starports has already covered a lot of the ground, but then who would expect less from John M. Ford (rest his soul) who wrote 'The Final Reflection')

 

[atpollard]

It's a pity the starports 101 project (and son of starports 101) died.

A small point, but I would say that "the starports 101 project" withered and died, but the "son of starports 101" was killed by the 'powers that be'.

 

[ravells]

LOL! But it was fun while it lasted!

 

[DaveChase]

I think that both ideas of starports can be done.

Referencing the game of HARN. Loved playing it but only bought the cities and castles supplement books (besides the player book).

These cities and castles have been used in many games both fantsy and Sci Fi because of the great detail and yet very generic game desciptions.

I would be happy to work with or add to a Starport lay out.

In my dream world
Starports
1. Space based
2. Ground based
General use and care of Starports
1. Types of merchants
2. Types of services (in Traveller these are already mentioned, just more detail could be listed here)
3. Cost of running/funding
4. Location, location, location (where or where is that starport to be put)

General layouts
1. Don't put the fuel tanks on the landing pad and other important details
2. General sizes and needs of landing pads, runways, storage bays (ships and warehousee), staff and equipment
3. A Very Generic drawing of each of the Traveller Spaceports (ground)
4. A very generic drawing of 1 Starport (space)

A seperate book/aid
showing 5 each of type A, B, C, D ports located in the OTU world
showing 5 generic type E ports

Dave Chase

 

[Icosahedron]

I could add some ideas too, if it would help, but I'm just wondering why (if it's not a dangerous question) the 'powers that be' killed the last exercise in this direction? And will the same happen here? I must have missed this.

If people are going to the trouble of designing starports, I'd go with the suggestion of doing it in a modular style - Design a landing pad, a fuel store, etc, then add as many of each as are required to build your starport. A few overviews of ports to give examples of layouts at each grade would be useful.

 

[coliver988]

Here's a link (I think from a COTI member) about designing starports (see the Starport link) in a fairly modular method:
http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/

But is also sounds as if we could use a universal starport profile. I've kept trying to play with various idea on that theme, but they either get too tangled up due to too many details, or don't have enough and simply add complexity without much value.

And as previously mentioned, G:Starports actually gets into the design of starports, but it is spread out over several pages so not really useful in a "let's go through the sequence to design what this starport has" sort of method (either that or I'm far too stuck in CT's tables!). Combine that with G:Trader (and no, I've never played G:Traveller but I like the books!) or that link above, you can calculate the amount of cargo/people going through a system based on starport type, tech level & population, which is a good springboard for the types of services also necessary to support said cargo capacity.

 

[atpollard]

I could add some ideas too, if it would help, but I'm just wondering why (if it's not a dangerous question) the 'powers that be' killed the last exercise in this direction? And will the same happen here? I must have missed this.

It happened off the boards, via e-mail, but it was nothing sinister.

The short answer is 'GURPS Starports already covers that'.
There is no interest in publishing another version of an existing product.

Hunter was (is?) interested in something closer to 101 Starport Encounters. [You will need to ask him about his current interests.]

 

[robject]

Here's a link (I think from a COTI member) about designing starports (see the Starport link) in a fairly modular method:
http://eaglestone.pocketempires.com/StarportModuleCatalog.html

That's something I cobbled together ten years ago from helpful posts from the TML, Marc Miller, a WD article called "Happy Landings", plus a few of my own ideas.

While I think some modules are widely helpful (landing facilities, control towers, barracks, maintenance facilities, fuel stations, and all kinds of civilian shop floorplans), and while I really really liked the tables that came out of the defunct Starports 101 thread, what I'm thinking about is more like the "5 Example Starports" mentioned several posts back; in particular, sketching out MTU version of Luck Gibson Down and Orbital starports.

I'm thinking of something like a "Mall Directory" for Luck Gibson: color-coded, split out by levels. Much less detail and more abstract than a deckplan, but gives the shape of the port and the distances involved, and has a directory of services located there. Startown, of course, would have much less organized and perhaps out-of-date directories.



P.S. My "starport module catalog" also postulated an abstract starport profile... which I've never used.

B-356-45 Sa To Co

(OV) - overall ABCDEFGHYX

The following 5 elements have values 0-F. Capacity represents dtons as an exponent of ten.
The original version used a logarithmic scale based on 10, 30, 100, 300...

(DS) - dock size
(SF) - ship repair facilities ( > 9 = shipyard )
(FA) - fuel available
(dash)
(LA) - living area
(CH) - cargo handling

(FC) - facility classifications:

Or - orbital facility
Sa - orbital satellite
Be - surface beacon instead of downport
To - tourist facilities
Li - living cargo facilities
Co - commercial facilities

 

[Merxiless]

Ah, this is why I have three copies of 50 Starbases by JG.

I might have used 17 pages, for places where they stayed more than twice, over the years.

 

[robject]

Ah, this is why I have three copies of 50 Starbases by JG.

I might have used 17 pages, for places where they stayed more than twice, over the years.

Ha! You have three copies, also because of the quality of the paper

 

[ravells]

Robject: A starport 'yellow pages' of services would be a great idea. Maybe a thread where people just write in (when they feel like it) an entry for a 'service' and then when there are enough, someone copies and pastes the entries into a suitably formatted .pdf.

This actually sounds like a communal project that could go somewhere.

 

[Captain Midnight]

And as previously mentioned, G:Starports actually gets into the design of starports, but it is spread out over several pages so not really useful in a "let's go through the sequence to design what this starport has" sort of method (either that or I'm far too stuck in CT's tables!). Combine that with G:Trader (and no, I've never played G:Traveller but I like the books!) or that link above, you can calculate the amount of cargo/people going through a system based on starport type, tech level & population, which is a good springboard for the types of services also necessary to support said cargo capacity.

Actually, GT Starports does have a design sequence, but it also contains a lot of examples and explanatory text. When coupled with the sidebars and the art, it runs to 29 pages if you're wanting to design a port all the way down to the level of "there are this many people assigned to Starport Security, and the port has this many shuttles, and...". It's not really intended for generating a quick-and-dirty "port profile", although you can generate some rough estimate of passenger and freight volumes in pretty short order; I've generated data for the Spinward Marches in a couple of hours for my own game. From those numbers, a lot of the other things sort of fall out; however, for game purposes, does it really matter if a port has 80 800-ton berths or 120?

Note that there are a fair number of "GM makes the call" decisions in the process, which will be influenced by whatever directions you want to push your game in. That said, there will still be some rough similarities between ports that have the same World Trade Number. I try to preserve some independence in different worlds, adapting the port to local conditions, but that's not always easy to do. It's important to avoid the trap of overly-generic settings to keep your players from getting bored, though.

 

[coliver988]

Ravells[FONT=arial,helvetica]: A starport 'yellow pages' of services would be a great idea. Maybe a thread where people just write in (when they feel like it) an entry for a 'service' and then when there are enough, someone copies and pastes the entries into a suitably formatted .pdf.

This actually sounds like a communal project that could go somewhere.[/FONT]

I found some stuff on a few Serenity pages that did just that sort of thing (I've copied those PDFs with the intent of using them as models for my own stuff), as well as a few Traveller specific ones. A flyer w/ads for various services and coupons (now there are some scenario hints possible there).

Also, if the starport concessions thread continues, there's a resource for 101 Starport concessions. And I keep looking at http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/points.htm which seems would be a great resource as well if I bought it (and if I ever get another game up and running I may).

The classic adventures often had local papers (or BBS or whatever the local equivalent is) which often would liven up a world. Give you an idea of what's there beyond what the scenario calls for. Rooms for rent, temp jobs, local attractions...

So yep - some generic services a la the BITS 101 series would be great. Now I just need to actually contribute something rather than just reading what everyone else keeps coming up with! ...COTI 101 series...