Have you ever been to Startown?

[Uren]

I guess the nearest thing I could mention are the cheap or run down towns which hang off of military bases like the chunks of excrement found hanging from a sheep's behind. Crappy bars, run down motels, shady characters, drunk idiots, pawn shops, used luggage stores, disgusting restaurants, and a miasma of despair.

Of course the startown (yes phone, startown is a real word) is a fixture in dumarest, and so it is in traveller.

What does a startown need to exist?

A steady population of men with money to spend but not that much, who also have a powerful desire for entertainment and no easy way to get around.

The no way to get around part is key, because the bars have a captive customer base.

A startown should be within walking distance, be cheap, and be visible, since strangers won't know where better venues are. The collection of businesses catering to starship crews and probably starport workers would need enough business to survive, so traffic would have to be at least moderate. With higher tech transportation systems the role of a startown would probably be usurped by a nearby city's entertainment district.

Airports don't seem to have startown areas but seaports seem to. I wonder if starports would be more like seaports or airports.

 

[Timerover51]

I guess the nearest thing I could mention are the cheap or run down towns which hang off of military bases like the chunks of excrement found hanging from a sheep's behind. Crappy bars, run down motels, shady characters, drunk idiots, pawn shops, used luggage stores, disgusting restaurants, and a miasma of despair.

Just wondering if this description is based on personal experience or not.

 

[Quint]

Airports don't seem to have startown areas but seaports seem to. I wonder if starports would be more like seaports or airports.

You clearly haven't driven around O'Hare International much...

;-)

D.

 

[GypsyComet]

You clearly haven't driven around O'Hare International much...

While not always obviously seedy, many airports have a layer of convenience stores and hotels/motels around them, as well as the often integrated (but likely separate for a extrality-equipped starport) car rental lots, Taxi lines, and bus or light rail co-located stations. These districts can be easy to miss if you hit a freeway right away, but three of the four* local International airports have such areas, while the local seaports are more specialized toward cargo and are less likely to have apparent service districts. Oakland, CA's "Port Town" district for the cargo port is essentially all of downtown, with the small vessel area of Jack London Square feeling more like a distinct trans-extrality SeaTown.
The equivalent for the airport is a line of hotels, bars and restaurants along the quickest path to the freeway embedded in a much larger district of light industry, trans-shipping companies, and companies that make use of the small plane field.

--
* the fourth being Sacramento, which exiled the main airport way out north of the city years ago. The city is only now growing out to the airport, but even thirty years ago the most direct freeway into Sacramento from the airport would drag you through a hotel and bar zone; you just had to drive through five miles of open fields and into the City Limits first...

 

[Meteoric Assault]

Kandahar, Orgun-E, Baghran, Ghazni, etc... I don't know if the are startowns, but they shared some of the tension and seediness.

 

[MThompson016]

Bremerton, WA would be a good choice for a Naval Startown ideas.

The base is surrounded by low rent homes, a low level crime problem (shots fired near one of the gates, a sailor's relative attacked in broad daylight), and seedy places that exist to separate a service man from his money, like predatory used car lots.

There's a minor civil presence around it, but all the "A" port is Navy.

 

[Uren]

You clearly haven't driven around O'Hare International much...

;-)

D.

Question about the O'Hare (living crap, phone, O'Hare is a word!) startown/airtown: do those businesses serve travellers from the airport or is it just a generally crappy area?

What I've noticed, and I admit i haven't really paid attention, is that around the airports I've been to the local area is dominated by the rental car lots, parking structures, warehouses, and maintenance/support facilities. The nearby hotels and restaurants are pricey (airport row and suchlike). The crap bars and hotels are part of the city in general.

But this reflects a tech 8 industrialized high law level areas.

Traveller worlds will vary infinitely.

IMO traveller starports are more cargo oriented than passenger oriented, so:

Startown would cater to port workers, crews, and the shady characters who prey on them. Thing is, I think that starport workers might not be so rough as contemporary notion of port workers. They'll be much more technical, better paid fir their technical skills, and of course they'll be culturally different. Port worker might be an honored trade, vital to the survival of the world, rather than a rough seedy bar inhabiting type. Same with starship crews. The least educated crewman will be the steward, a customer service specialist. As a GM I pay special attention to make sure my contemporary ideas don't leak into my game settings. Many times players don't like that because they expect those familiar tropes and 2d characters, but these are people who burn down bars for no reason and then get beers at brubeks and guffaw over Anton Winston Peale videos. Brubeks is where the Anti-Player Character tactical team looks first, there or astroburger.

 

[JimMarn]

Some US Navy bases I was stationed at had seedy places just outside the gates. Expenisive but shoddy merchandise. For Traveller I can see such places carrying suit radios, ship gear, air scrubbers, etc. that works for a month or so after liftoff, but then fail either by stop working or catching on fire.

 

[Quint]

Question about the O'Hare (living crap, phone, O'Hare is a word!) startown/airtown: do those businesses serve travellers from the airport or is it just a generally crappy area?

Hmmm... Yes?

I mean, some things are clearly for travellers, some are for locals, and some are definitively mixed use. Amusingly I wouldn't even say that it is that crappy an area (alternately, how big of an area do we want to talk about) it's just that are/have been the usual string of bars, strip clubs, massage parlors, and diners or fast food plus storage units, car rental, etc.

Now I'm actually interested in driving up and down the couple of strips that are there with a critical eye. I've just been driving past it on-and-off for a 20+ years now, some of it while working in the trades, and I don't look super close anymore.

Currently, I'm thinking of the "stripmall of sin" that we joke about on our way to the climbing gym - it's right outside any city limits near the expressway and has a strip club, a smoke shop, and a tattoo parlor in it. It's not near O'Hare, but has that same "extra-territoriality" because of where it sits near to 355.

D.

 

[Timerover51]

My experience with the areas outside of military bases is based on the following.

Fort Lee-Virginia, Fort Sheridan-Illinois (now closed), Great Lakes Naval Training Center-Illinois, Fort Richardson/Elmendorf AFB-Alaska, Travis AFB-California, Washington Navy Yard-Washington D.C., Walter Reed AMC-D.C. (now closed).

Of those, about the only one that could be said to have somewhat of a "startown" is Great Lakes, and that is along one street, running west from the base. Fort Sheridan was located in an area with some very pricey towns in the northern Chicago suburbs, so nothing there. Washington Navy Yard, vaguely, but for a real startown in D.C. north and slightly east of the White House and Capitol complex, nowhere near any military base or airport. As for the rest, I would not say that there is anything that could be called a "Startown".

I have been around O'Hare quite a bit, and at one time, Little Wars Game Convention was held at the Ramada Inn nearby, also used by several air lines as a crew hotel. Calling the area around O'Hare a "startown" is quite a stretch. Midway, in south Chicago, would be more accurate. At Mitchell in Milwaukee, not really, with a large residential district abutting the airport on the north.

The problem that I have with the whole "startown" concept is the limited number of persons you have operating the standard Traveller starships.

Scout/Courier=1, Free Trader=4, Subsided Merchant-5, Subsidized Liner-9-12

Forty Free Traders in port at the same time adds up to all of 160 persons, at least two of which, Pilot/Captain/Owner and Engineer, are not apt to be in the 18-25 year age bracket, and someone has to be out there looking for cargo.

Now, if you are outside of a major military base, you might get something, but again, I have more than a few doubts about that. Too much of your military, especially Navy, is going to have a lot of technical skills and training, so is apt to be older and less liking to be sowing their wild oats.

 

[Uren]

Camp Garryowen, korea. One street, 2 bars, 7 lounge hostesses, 400 troops.
Camp I Forgot, korea. 1st tank was there, and so was Tong Du Chon. Several streets of bars, souvenir shops, stolen equipment shops, and more dejected lounge hostesses, one of which was so ugly that troops literally ran away.
Yong San garrison, itaeweon Special Tourism Zone. Bars, restaurants some pretty good, hotels some decent, custom tailor shops, knockoff designer gear shops, marauding drunk idiots.
Ft knox, Radcliffe ky. Run down motel, mangy strip mall, one sufferable restaurant, the worst Korean bbq imaginable, no hope.
Ft leonard wood, don't make me remember.
Others, must board plane.

 

[Timerover51]

Camp Garryowen, korea. One street, 2 bars, 7 lounge hostesses, 400 troops.
Camp I Forgot, korea. 1st tank was there, and so was Tong Du Chon. Several streets of bars, souvenir shops, stolen equipment shops, and more dejected lounge hostesses, one of which was so ugly that troops literally ran away.
Yong San garrison, itaeweon Special Tourism Zone. Bars, restaurants some pretty good, hotels some decent, custom tailor shops, knockoff designer gear shops, marauding drunk idiots.
Ft knox, Radcliffe ky. Run down motel, mangy strip mall, one sufferable restaurant, the worst Korean bbq imaginable, no hope.
Ft leonard wood, don't make me remember.
Others, must board plane.

I see that some of them are overseas. As for your description for Fort Knox, you call that a "startown"? That sounds more like an area that can be found in and around just about any U.S. city. And does not come close to your previous description.

I guess the nearest thing I could mention are the cheap or run down towns which hang off of military bases like the chunks of excrement found hanging from a sheep's behind. Crappy bars, run down motels, shady characters, drunk idiots, pawn shops, used luggage stores, disgusting restaurants, and a miasma of despair.

That sounds more like a description of some areas of south Chicago.

 

[Hovtej]

Some of the more "remote" AF bases I've been at were fairly wild, if you knew where to look. The bases and the local communities tried to minimize the bad environment, but it was (is?) there.

 

[Timerover51]

Some of the more "remote" AF bases I've been at were fairly wild, if you knew where to look. The bases and the local communities tried to minimize the bad environment, but it was (is?) there.

Again, you are talking military bases, not airports, which is what a starport is. You have a large concentration of young single males, for the most part, at a military base.

 

[GypsyComet]

The problem that I have with the whole "startown" concept is the limited number of persons you have operating the standard Traveller starships.

"Startown" is a handy label which covers a lot of variation. That variation will be driven by port class, proximity to higher traffic corridors, on-world population, and on-world law level. Anything from the Portmaster's back porch up to and including Hong Kong.

 

[Timerover51]

"Startown" is a handy label which covers a lot of variation. That variation will be driven by port class, proximity to higher traffic corridors, on-world population, and on-world law level. Anything from the Portmaster's back porch up to and including Hong Kong.

So, basically, "Startown" can mean anything.

 

[aramis]

My experience with the areas outside of military bases is based on the following.

Fort Lee-Virginia, Fort Sheridan-Illinois (now closed), Great Lakes Naval Training Center-Illinois, Fort Richardson/Elmendorf AFB-Alaska, Travis AFB-California, Washington Navy Yard-Washington D.C., Walter Reed AMC-D.C. (now closed).

Of those, about the only one that could be said to have somewhat of a "startown" is Great Lakes,

You're ignoring that Elmendorf's main (Boniface) gate has, for at least the last 35 years, lead right out into a series of strip malls, and to one of the three worst neighborhoods in the city, Mountain View (formerly the City of Mountain View)... Within 1 mile of the gate, 2 strip clubs, one chop-shop, half a dozen casual dining restaurants, 2 gun stores, 2 tobacco stores, a motel, at at least 2 suspected brothels. And 3 or 4 elementary schools.

 

[GypsyComet]

So, basically, "Startown" can mean anything.

Colloquially, the label is reserved for whatever "wretched hive" has sprung up under the aegis of the starport's extrality zone. Even that can be relative, though.

Unabated commerce? Gender and species mixing in public? Inappropriate clothing? No dietary controls? Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms? Narcotics? Fertility controls and/or assistance? Unregulated medical access? Unsegregated living spaces?

Some of those are going to be perceived in the same light as prostitution, slavery and recreational murder by certain types of societies. If Startown allows them it will be seen as a blight on the land.

 

[kilemall]

Colloquially, the label is reserved for whatever "wretched hive" has sprung up under the aegis of the starport's extrality zone. Even that can be relative, though.

Unabated commerce? Gender and species mixing in public? Inappropriate clothing? No dietary controls? Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms? Narcotics? Fertility controls and/or assistance? Unregulated medical access? Unsegregated living spaces?

Some of those are going to be perceived in the same light as prostitution, slavery and recreational murder by certain types of societies. If Startown allows them it will be seen as a blight on the land.

My take is Startown likely is supporting the 'bad habits' of the locals as much as those of interstellar travellers.

Heh, dirty little secret of the Imperium/Your Favorite Polity?

All the sins of the empire right across the line, and the world government can't stop it.

Perhaps we focus on all that trade this and that and how many angels on the head of a pin want to ship x1000 dtons and the tax revenue thereof, when actually the empire is funded from sin taxes and trade in startown and possibly higher end establishments with respectable facades.

Think British Opium trade to make sure the balance of payments was 'right' with China.

 

[GypsyComet]

All the sins of the empire right across the line, and the world government can't stop it.

IMTU, I approach port rating and ownership as a tipping point that some worlds embrace and some do everything to avoid. An E Port might technically be "Imperial", but it could just as easily be whatever the locals have prepared, or allowed, on local land. Local Imperial decision makers and mercantile operations choose to either embrace what a world can offer or ignore it, letting the locals use another world as a broker if they want to trade. A quiet world will be allowed to make this decision much of the time, but a world that proves to have something the community wants will soon draw enough trade, and thus attention, that the port will spontaneously grow to a D and maybe a C. Once traffic reaches a tipping point, the Imperial SPA arrives in force and a true Imperial Port appears.

Some worlds resist longer than others, leading to some odd combinations. That's the spice a Ref works with, though.