Wormholes in Traveller

[DoctorRomulus]

Wormholes in Traveller

I’m working on a Traveller campaign.
The basic premise of it is that the players will be members of the Scout service (I haven’t decided if it’ll be the Imperial or Solomani as of yet). A wormhole leading to another part of the galaxy has been discovered and there's evidence suggesting that there may be other wormholes on the other side of that one that can be traversed as well. The PC’s will be leading or be part of an expedition which will go through the wormhole. My question to you guys is have any of you done wormholes in Traveller before and can you provide any suggestions on how to work them into the OTU.
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I'd posted this elsewhere but wanted to see what you guys had to say as well.

Cheers!!

 

[Whipsnade]

Doc,

As for previous uses of wormholes and off the top of my pointy head:

- There either is or was material posted in the net with a name something like "The Magellenic Cloud Campaign". It supposed a wormhole between somewhere in Imperial Space and one of the Magellenic clouds. Wide scale colonization took place before the wormhole couldn't be used for some reason. If memory serves, the campaign was more of a high level, yearly turn, HG2/TCS sort of thing that produced a lengthy history.

- There's a very bad published campaign for T4 called The Long Way Home. While I've heard the published version is/was much different from the original version, the premise itself is canon breaking on several levels. It involves a M:0 IISS crew stumbling into a system of artificial wormholes set-up by the Ancients (who else?) and being thrown hundreds of parsecs beyond the Imperium's border. The crew then has to bumble around identifying potential wormhole "stations" and collecting the "keys" needed to make the system send them home.

If I were using wormholes IMTU, and using them could make for many fascinating campaigns, I'd have to answer several questions about the certain aspects of the situation to my satisfaction before starting:

• What's the wormhole's nature? Does it seem to be natural? Is it created? What does it's "mouth" look like? Is the other end fixed? Or does it move? Is it stable? Why do they think it's stable?
  
• Is the wormhole a secret or is it public knowledge? How was the wormhole found? How long has it been studied? Who has been studying it? Why are the players involved? Are they the first to go through? Why are they the first to go through? Why isn't a huge military/scientific expedition going through instead?
  
• How is the wormhole transited? Can you just fly your Suleiman through it? Does a ship need to be heavily armored? Configured in a certain way? Does a ship need to emit certain signals? Or no signals? Be slathered in peanut butter? Are there vector/velocity limits?
  
• What are the effects of transit? Is`it instantaneous? Or does an appreciable amount of time pass? Are nervous systems effected? Cybernetic systems? Neither? Both? How are they effected if they are?

As you can see there are dozens of questions that need answering about the wormhole before you even being using it. You need to have it's nature, it's uses, and it's effect nailed down before your players even get near the thing. While they don't need to know everything and most likely won't ever know everything, you as the GM most certainly need to know everything so you can present the wormhole in a wholly consistent manner throughout the campaign.

Don't worry. You don't need to know the whys of the wormhole. All you need to know is the whats of the wormhole. Think of it as a black box: You input A and get B. Why A becomes B is irrelevant, but the fact that A becomes B must be decided upon before you begin.

Good luck and please let us know what you come up with.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Icosahedron]

The only wormholes I've used IMTU are a rare form of misjump - which allows me to sidestep quite neatly most of Bill's questions. By the time the hapless traveller has asked the questions, he's been transported 'elsewhere' and the hole is gone. :devil:

And before you ask, yes, it is deadly - so is 'ship vaporized'.

Doesn't really help much, but otherwise I can only support Bill's stance that you need to answer a number of questions about the purpose you, the GM, want the wormhole to serve IYTU - what you want it to do, and what you don't want it to do. Once you have that tied down, you (and we) will be better able to come up with helpful chrome.

 

[Gray Lensman]

Doc,

As for previous uses of wormholes and off the top of my pointy head:

- There either is or was material posted in the net with a name something like "The Magellenic Cloud Campaign".
Regards,
Bill

Greater Magellenic Cloud Campaign can be found here - http://www.downport.com/amv/GMC/GMCP.htm

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Wormholes ... stargates ... misjumps requiring handfulls of dice to measure distance ... all the same plot devices to transport the characters long distances to new locations and put them out of touch for long periods of time with their most familiar resources.

They're great ways to restart a campaign, or introduce a who new set of encounters, without disturbing canonical settings.

Think "Voyager" after "Next Generation".

 

[Whipsnade]

Wormholes ... stargates ... misjumps requiring handfulls of dice to measure distance ... all the same plot devices to transport the characters long distances to new locations and put them out of touch for long periods of time with their most familiar resources.

Doc,

Keklas' observation is spot on. If your players are not studying the wormhole itself, the wormhole is only a plot device. As Keklas wisely points out, it's nothing more than a way to transport the players from one point to another.

However, even if the wormhole is only a plot device, you will still need to make certain decisions about it before the game starts so that you can present the wormhole to the players in a consistent manner.


Regards,
Bill

 

[stealth]

Doc, I can tell you two hard science facts about wormholes that will help your game.

1. Regardless of the distance travelled, traversing a wormhole takes two weeks.

2. touch the edges and it's over. The sides of the wormhole are highly contorted space/time.

That should help. As to what it looks like, I suggest blazing with energy on all frequencies, or possibly that the inner walls are like an event horizon and only radiate thermal photons (its hot). The radiation is equal to the amount of energy required to keep it open, either way (it is a closed system).

 

[Whipsnade]

Regardless of the distance travelled, traversing a wormhole takes two weeks.

Stealth,

Hard science? For something that hasn't been observed directly or indirectly?

Anyway, I'd like a cite for that.

2. touch the edges and it's over. The sides of the wormhole are highly contorted space/time.

That's something Doc can use to answer a few of the pre-game questions. Constrain the wormhole's interior diameter enough and suddenly that thousand man expedition aboard a Tigress or carrier won't work. Instead, the players' party is being dispatched down the wormhole because only a Sulieman will fit.


Regards,
Bill

 

[stealth]

Stealth,

Hard science? For something that hasn't been observed directly or indirectly?

Anyway, I'd like a cite for that.

It was in this book:
http://homepages.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~visser/book.shtml

Anyway, you have to carry exotic matter (according to Visser) to keep it open.

Also, wikipedia has some good stuff that a GM should know while sending a party to its doom. I once ran a get-the-science-bonus game where the players had to take readings on a black hole up close....

 

[Malinor]

Constrain the wormhole's interior diameter enough and suddenly that thousand man expedition aboard a Tigress or carrier won't work. Instead, the players' party is being dispatched down the wormhole because only a Sulieman will fit.

That's what I did when I used a wormhole in MTU. It gives a nice solid reason why a small character-crewed ship is sent to do what would normally be a big ship's job.

 

[Brian Smaller]

My traveller ships are protected by technobabblium shields. Transitting a worm hole should be child's play.

 

[beowulf2044]

We use the Bloater Drive.

 

[far-trader]

We use the Bloater Drive.

What? Nobody uses the good old Infinite Improbability Drive anymore? Sure it's got a few bugs to work out, like just what the proper tip for the waiter is if the service is bad but the food is great and you have to get to Cygnus tonight for the latest Disaster Area concert...



(EDIT: Dratted conflation, Bistromathics is the replacement upgrade for the IID! Hmm, Conflation Drive... )

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Imho, the diameter of the wormhole should be somewhat proportional to the amount of energy used to open it, and somewhat inversely proportional to the realspace distance being traversed.

This, you could have all the elements of an invasion task-force traverse the wormhole side-by-side, but only if the distance was (let's say) one light-second, or roughly 300,000 kilometers.

Or you could have the aforementioned Suleiman-Class vessel transit a wormhole 1d6 parsecs, using the same amount of energy to initialize and sustain it.

Or, you could send a torpedo-probe 6d6 parsecs, and still use the same amount of energy.

Accuracy of the destination of the wormhole should be somewhat inversely proportional to the distance travelled, regardless of the amount of energy used. Thus, the aforementioned task-force might be off by a few hundred kilometers, the Suleiman would be off-target by 1d6 parsecs (laterally), and the torp would be off by 6d6 parsecs (laterally).

Have a large-enough stellar object (with its gravity) in the way, and who knows where they'll end up ... or when?

It's all a matter of proportion.

 

[Solomani666]

Yes.

In my campaign players used the exotic particles created by jump engines to open it.

When closed it was not detectable except with special sensors.

It was stable at both ends and took a week to traverse.