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Question about the nature of Worlds

Captain

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Though I've been roleplaying off and on for over 30 years, I am quite new to Traveller. I know of it, but never GM'd it, and I think I've been a player less than half a dozen times.

How are worlds described, what is the nature of the habitat and inhabitants? For example, I get the impression that, if the players touched down on a water planet or a desert planet, then the whole world would be entirely made up of water or desert (or at least 90%), with pockets of civilisations dotted around the globe. This makes it a lot easier to game.

I'm sure there are some worlds that would have a make-up as diverse as planet earth's, but am I generally correct?
 
Though I've been roleplaying off and on for over 30 years, I am quite new to Traveller. I know of it, but never GM'd it, and I think I've been a player less than half a dozen times.

How are worlds described, what is the nature of the habitat and inhabitants? For example, I get the impression that, if the players touched down on a water planet or a desert planet, then the whole world would be entirely made up of water or desert (or at least 90%), with pockets of civilisations dotted around the globe. This makes it a lot easier to game.

I'm sure there are some worlds that would have a make-up as diverse as planet earth's, but am I generally correct?

Each world has a list of attributes that will tell the GM what it is like. Look at the size, hydro, atmosphere, population and TL. That will give you a rough idea of what it is like. Government and law level will tell you how the society is run. Earth with 7 billion people size 8 and 70% water is sparsely populated with ~85% of the population living within 150 miles of an ocean or sea.
 
@Captain, It all depends on you and your players' expectations.

The game system doesn't prescribe anything other than the gross statistics - size, % covered by water, atmosphere type etc. How those get interpreted in your game is up to you.

A one biome planet is a very common trope in SciFi (think Arrakis and Tatooine as "the desert planet", Hoth as "the ice planet", etc.) Personally I don't think there is anything wrong with that when we are gaming.

Realistically, a habitable-zone planet with water and an atmosphere is likely to be just as diverse as earth. If you want to, you can use some of the tools in different versions of Traveller to help flesh out worlds in more detail.

IMHO, it is too much work to work up every world in such detail unless it is going to be the center of my campaign and the players are going to be there a lot. So I tend to split the baby and have the location of the adventure figured, and I like to make plot of the world using one of the fractal map makers on the web (it is fun for me, so I do it) and I leave it at that. If the players end up staying or travelling along, I make it up as needed.
 
There's probably enough material out there to jigsaw puzzle different localities together, not necessarily from the same franchise.

Because of the possible speed of travel in science fiction, it's tempting just to set up a single environment per planet.

As I recall, Dark Sun was set on a dying desert world, due to mana depletion.
 
The worlds you typically 'roll up' are the major world per system of human interest, activity and mostly population. As such they skew towards some level of breathable oxygen atmosphere and a few vacuum, exotic/dangerous atmospheres or asteroid belts.


It's probably best that you at least figure out the temperature of the place, derived in large measure by the distance from it's star plus the atmosphere. That will also drive the biosphere, or at least one functional for Travllers to interact with.


For all intents and purposes then, these are civilization or outposts of civilization, most of which will be at some level of inhabitable.


However, consider fleshing out minor worlds, the OTHER worlds in a system. Those will be methane/ammonia or worse atmospheres, iceballs, moons around gas giants etc. They won't be your trade or outfitting entrepots, but they may hold secrets and undiscovered treasures and hazards. May be no known humans, but that doesn't mean no one is at home....


I like RTT Worldgen for that purpose. Historically the Scouts supplements have had system builders. I recent got hold of a World Tamer's Handbook, am kind of ignoring the RC/low TL colonist bits and warming up to the planetary definition portion. There are other supplements I haven't seen that get into this arena, specifically using the planetary profile to help flesh it out.



Now then, as others have already noted it's a function of what content you want to provide your table. You can adventure quite a bit at one planet, however it IS Traveller and ships and going to new planets is part of the scene.


I would recommend pregenning a few region types (mountain/desert/plain/river/ocean/exotica) and just plunking them down on planets as needed, adjusting for temp/weather/atmosphere etc. You can do a planet's worth of definition but use the regions across a subsector.


Best of both worlds, as referee you should be striving for giving them that 'not in Kansas anymore' feeling, and the little details like 'perfectly breathable atmosphere but the star lillies release pollen that causes cancer, wear that respirator' really helps the suspension/immersion.


Just as importantly, a place is also people, so you want to give some thought as to what sort of culture is there, what their values are, and unique setting bits like what do they eat/drink, ignore/care about deeply, how badly they want to work with or kill each other and why, and most of all what can you sell to or buy from them.
 
One other bit to note, I recall there is a world descriptor software package that will take your UWP and translate it into a blurb, including what it is like to step off the ship onto the planet and first impressions.


Can someone post that link for the OP?
 
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