Universal World Profiles

[RainOfSteel]

So why can't worlds be presented in a 'starship paragraph' format?

As noted, I am in the minority on this issue (which I can accept) and yet, I am also not alone in my opinion.

The UWP line is on one line, not many lines as the USP. They aren't really comparable.

You can fit huge numbers of UWPs into a limited amount of printed space and it worked very well for 1977 data storage formats (which is almost certainly what it was based on, given the 80 column format).

Please feel free to show me into how compact a space you can fit one UWP's worth of information while using full words for labels and data.

 

[BytePro]

ACtually, it pretty much is hex... the methodology was explicitly stated to have been inspired by Hexidecimal.
Tho it's properly some other base... what's the greek for 34?

The UWP is not a number. It has no 'base' and likewise is not hexadecimal.

Yes, the 'coding' was 'inspired' by the hex equating of letters to numbers, but they are really table encoded symbols - i.e., each independent concatenated 'digit' generally representing a table entry. Starport, the very first 'digit', uses an X and no 0-9. Even Book 3 described TL as ranging from 0 to 20, IIRC (maybe not first printing?).

The relevant point being that knowing or not knowing hexadecimal has no real bearing on using UWPs as the OP made reference to 'efficiency of Hexadecimal strings over easy to read paragraphs'.

For computers - a hexadecimal string would have been preferred in terms of efficiency of storage and manipulations - the UWPs could be stored in half the space (1/4 using modern unicode) and searching would be easier and faster too.

BTW: IIRC, never heard a name for base 34, but base 36 is sexatrigesimal(sp?). Note, in the latin, base 16 would be 'sexadecimal' instead of the greek plus latin 'hexadecimal', but then us geeks would shorten it to 'sex' (<insert puns about bytes and nibbles here>)

 

[DonM]

While I find UWPs useful for quickly scanning sectors and subsectors, I like the world layouts in the old Gamelords' Pilot Guides for worlds.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

I like them fine, but I wish for more substance as well.

Same here.

A paragraph that elaborates on the environmental factors, followed by another that gives some history, and another that gives a few highlights of customs and culture.

Surely, a world with a UWP of "A-867A69-F" deserves more of a description than "Mostly Harmless"...

 

[RainOfSteel]

Same here.

A paragraph that elaborates on the environmental factors, followed by another that gives some history, and another that gives a few highlights of customs and culture.

Surely, a world with a UWP of "A-867A69-F" deserves more of a description than "Mostly Harmless"...

All worlds deserve more than that.

The UWP format was invented in 1977 for the Little Black Books. It was great for that. It was also easy to generate, which made it easy to come up with lots of them. It was compact and you could include an entire sector in one LBB (provided the subsectors didn't have too high a world density).

Of course we all want much more information on all of the worlds, and their solar systems, too. This requires a lot of manual work on someone's part. If someone has the time, inclination, and skill to do a publication worthy job, then go ahead and do it, and post it up to Google Docs or some such place and post a link. I'll be happy to use your work. Yes I will.

 

[far-trader]

...Of course we all want much more information on all of the worlds, and their solar systems, too.

No, not all of us

Oh, once upon a time I might have. Players being players soon abused me of that. A few times of working out a nice richly detailed star system, and starting to provide said in depth travellog as the characters drop out of jump, only to be asked the same routine questions that didn't even need a complete UWP soon drummed in the lesson.

With the right players, and the right game, a few detailed systems might be good. I can't ever see needing as much as a subsector let alone a sector detailed though. They just won't see enough usage. Either the players will be travelling far enough that they'll soon skip over and through several of those detailed systems while visiting only a couple long enough to matter, or they'll be sticking to the same few worlds on their short legs and those are the only ones you'll need.

As for good old "A-867A69-F" that conjures a picture for me, almost certainly different from one anyone else will see. And while I agree it deserves more than the expanded entry of "Mostly harmless." in a writeup, even that imposes it's own stamp and evokes much more than one would think two simple words could. I for one would rather have just the raw UWP (preferably rolled myself and vetted to fit) to make my own mark upon it

...that said, I still gen up and detail the odd system just for the exercise and mental amusement. Traveller is great for such idle imaginary doodling whether it be worlds, characters, or ships. I find anyway

 

[Dragoner]

Same here.

A paragraph that elaborates on the environmental factors, followed by another that gives some history, and another that gives a few highlights of customs and culture.

Surely, a world with a UWP of "A-867A69-F" deserves more of a description than "Mostly Harmless"...

In time I have seen a lot more, like the TML landgrab stuff, which a lot of is very cool. I understand, why a lot of stuff, like the Spinward marches didn't go so deep in one supplement, not enough room. However, I wish it would have been fleshed out a little more, as well as filling in sectors around the Marches. Oh well, I guess that's what a nice creative GM is for.

 

[RainOfSteel]

No, not all of us

Oh, once upon a time I might have. Players being players soon abused me of that. A few times of working out a nice richly detailed star system, and starting to provide said in depth travellog as the characters drop out of jump, only to be asked the same routine questions that didn't even need a complete UWP soon drummed in the lesson.

I know you are stating you don't want to expend the effort to create massive detail when it is going to be dismissed. I don't want to do that, either.

That is why I would be happy if someone else did it for me. The details would be there if I needed them, but I wouldn't have personally slaved away at them, so if they weren't used, it wouldn't matter so much.

When it comes to developing my own campaign elements, those details can be very helpful to me.

I can't tell you the number of times I have started work on an NPC, and the first thing I want to know is what the homeworld was, and how that likely influenced the NPC's upbringing. The only issue? Most worlds have no information like that. If I want to pick that an NPC is from a world in the Antares sector, I'm toast as far as available backgroud. Then the career begins, and travel amongst the stars, and the situation grows worse if I want to to pick a few key worlds where significant events occurred. I then immediately bog down on NPC history and wind up skipping it in favor of another dull cardboard cut-out. If a homeworld is mentioned, it's just a planet-name/sector-name/hex-reference and it's as meaningless as if I had never bothered.

...that said, I still gen up and detail the odd system just for the exercise and mental amusement. Traveller is great for such idle imaginary doodling whether it be worlds, characters, or ships. I find anyway

It's been a long time for me since I have done that. I have generated perhaps only two solar systems using Book 6, and it was a lot of work and puzzling over the tables. I have never done the detailed Book 6 generation for a world, albedo, temperatures, and suchlike. I have Grand Survey, Grand Census, and The World Tamer's Handbook, but have never actually rolled a world up with them. It is just too much work for too little return.

Back in the 1980s when I actually had a group willing to play Traveller on occasion, it was pretty much a matter of glancing down the UWP line...

Craw 0309 C573645 3 Non-industrial

...and stating:

"Ok, the gravity here is lower than average, you need filters to breath the standard pressure air, there are a few million inhabitants, the government is a representative democracy, and personal concealable weapons are prohibited. The starport is C and the local technology level is 3, so anything high-tech is imported and expensive." I would have assumed they knew about C type starport capabilities and mentioning the non-industrial part would have been redundant.

If I actually had thought up anything unique about the world, it would have gotten a very short note in a notebook that has long since been lost to time.

 

[Fovean]

I rather like the UWP, it's short and sweet and when expanding it a bit such as in MT, can be quite descriptive. If more is needed, I do the "ship-style" paragraph to flesh it out slightly, then more prose if and when necessary.

I'm actually really liking raw UWPs right now as I've been building a spreadsheet that allows me to determine a "Resource Value" and then a "Trade Value" for each world, which determines it's starport rating and whether it is "valuable" enough to warrant an X-boat way station... it also allows me to calculate TCS-style money flow to help determine defenses and so forth in the region. I merely type in the basic UWP (sans starport) and add in a few mods due to trade class and it does the rest.

Pretty cool - making me re-think some previous assumptions in my ATU

 

[HG_B]

UWP's are perfect for what they were intended. A shorthand method of listing key planetary info so you can scan it quickly. It is a starting point for the GM. NOT the ending point.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Do you mean that Traveller is not all about generating hexadecimal number sequences for the sheer joy of it?

 

[Dagrill]

Hi,

I find the UWP helpful and efficient when looking at maps, if you wrote a paragraph describing the palce in each hex it would make for rather large maps.

Regards

david

Am I the only one who [strongly dislikes] those UWP string of numbers?
Would it kill them to write the world description out using real words?

[EDIT: remove word 'hate']

 

[Jame]

I don't mind them but I'd prefer if each world had at least a capsule of interesting sites and such; lately I've had not just writer's block but writer's failure - where I go to think up an adventure and the idea flies away.

 

[bubbacleese]

My opinion counts

I find the codes to be less than useful. Both myself and my players are constantly having to look up what is position 2 or 7 or 5. This could be simply due to the fact that we are just getting started with our campaign and have not used them very much.