Klaus, I understand your frustration.
I don't know that a one-line descriptive statement is really the answer - there is a lot of information in the UWP that's of immediate interest to the players and their characters: is the air breathable? what's the gravity like? can we refuel our free trader, the
Longshot at Respectability? can I carry my BFG without hassle from The Man? is Bribing the customs inspector to ignore twenty tons of nudie holos a realistic option? The UWP provides an elegant approach to answering these sorts of "need-to-know-NOW" questions for players and their characters.
It's from this player-oriented perspective that I tend to evaluate expanded UWP systems. Are the number of satellites around the mainworld something I need to know NOW, before I decide to jump into the system? Usually not so much.
From a referee's perspective, UWPs present an altogether different set of challenges. Most referees want those details, and many more besides - the UWP barely scratches the surface of what I'd like to know about these worlds. However,
if I have nothing else at all to go on, I can at least improvise something from the UWP on the fly that is reasonable and consistent should the need arise. So while it's not a perfect tool, it does what I need it to do most of the time. An expanded UWP offers more, of course, but I suspect there is a point of diminishing returns, where descriptive text does a better job than a longer string of numbers. (This is of course highly subjective and personal based on my dislike of
HG stats.
)
I know that many referees find the UWPs themselves troubling: low TLs and size/atmosphere relationships seem to come up quite often. With respect to the physical attributes, I tend to get less hung up than others over "obvious" inconsistencies, since I firmly believe that what we know of the universe is pretty limited, and many strange and wondrous worlds remain to be discovered that have not yet been dreamt of in our philosophies. That's not to say that I toss science out the window - it's one-half of the name of the genre after all! - but I don't usually struggle quite so much as some do with planets that are seemingly impossible at our present understanding of planetary science. (And if I'm really stumped I blame if on the Ancients!
)
With respect to the social elements of the UWP, as a professional social scientist I have no problem with reconciling strange and seemingly "illogical" manifestations of the human (or sophont) condition. In my experience many real-world cultural practices (both historical and contemporary) are far stranger than anything I could dream up on my own - explaining the latter half of the UWP is one of my favorite parts of refereeing.
In both cases it helps that the UWP values represent a flexible range rather than an absolute, though I concede this is a matter of taste - again, some people see this as a bug, others a feature. A "feudal technocracy" or a "self-perpetuating oligarchy" can mean different things on different worlds, and the difference between a size 3 and size 4 planet can be as little as a single mile of diameter (3999 to 4000). A very thin atmosphere (atm 3) can be near-vacuum or breathable by the very fit and appropriately acclimated if I choose. For some referees this is a weakness of the system, but to me it's a strength.
For a referee who's pressed for time and/or doesn't enjoy the process of adding muscle and sinew to the bare bones of the UWP, none of this matters - I do understand that perspective, and I agree that more expanded information is a huge help. More published resources like the Drexilthar subsector guidebook from Gamelords, or the "System Survey" articles in
TTD, are a blessing to overworked referees, no question.
