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Your Favorite Colonial World

Rangers are neat people. I had lunch with two of them today. Since I got the new job, I get to see our Ranger about 2-3 times a week. Loved the Ranger module, it was a great adventure. I had to get our Ranger to help me with a search warrant I was writing. Sharp dressers as well.

Originally posted by David Freakin' Nilsen:
Colin--

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Wasn't a bad thing at all. I rather liked the Ranger adventure, aside from the Rangers referring to the Ebers as Injuns. Just didn't quite fit, at least for me.
Not a problem. I don't remember doing that, and the fact that I don't means that it must not have meant that much to me. Probably just an attempt to replicate the Old West feel that was present in the adventure. I did a lot of studying the historical Texas Rangers to prep for that, and it probably kept bubbling up.

Dave
</font>[/QUOTE]
 
Colin--

While driving home I realized where I probably had my old Ranger notes, and there they were, 8 manila folders. I'll look through them in the next few days and see if I can't find my clever ideas. Hope they still seem clever.

Dave
 
Erik--

Yes, I have seen Etranger, and was really thrilled to see the ships. Amazing how far the ability to visualize these things has come in the past 17 years since I was working on the game.

By the way, check in your private messages ("my profile"), as I sent you a PM back in February or March which my system says you never read.

Dave
 
Murph--

One of the real high points in writing Ranger was doing the research on Texas Rangers, and the Texas DPS was very friendly and very helpful. I think I tried to get GDW to send copies to the folks that helped, but don't really recall how that turned out.

Dave
 
Colin,
I got to change Canada's first colony's name from Doris to Kanata. I mean, the US gets worlds like King and Avalon, the UK gets Beowulf and Crater, and Canada gets Doris? Now the system's star is named Doris (Doris Day..?)
Yes, I know this is a small thing. But I, as a resident of Ottawa area and a frequent visitor to Kanata, do a dance of joy. I know you probably named it after the aboriginal word for Town, which is what Kanata was if I recall, but that's still about 27 light-years better than DORIS. I mean, come on... you start a Colony, it should reflect your national character. Kanata, MacDonald, Mackenzie, Trudeau, Stanley (as in Lord), something Innu or Aboriginal, something Quebecois or from Cape Breton, etc. Any of these were a big improvement on DORIS.

I'm anxiously awaiting the new 2300. Though I would like to say thanks to Dave for any work he did on the 2300 stuff too. This is *another* great game from GDW that fascinated our group (and still fascinates me).

And I look forward to 2320!
 
Yes, that's where I got Kanata from, the Native word for town, and the word that Canada is derived from. Yeah, I know its a city right smack-dab beside Ottawa, but it seemed appropriate. In particular given the rapprochement between Canada's Native and non-Native populations in 2320.

Ericsson (Canada's new joint colony with the Scandinavian Union and the Sung) has a large Innu population, along with Lapps, and the place names reflect this. The colony's name reflects both the SU and Canada, by honoring one of the first Europeans to reach North America. (St. Brendan may have beaten him, though.)

Colin
 
Originally posted by Colin:
Yes, that's where I got Kanata from, the Native word for town, and the word that Canada is derived from. Yeah, I know its a city right smack-dab beside Ottawa, but it seemed appropriate. In particular given the rapprochement between Canada's Native and non-Native populations in 2320.

Ericsson (Canada's new joint colony with the Scandinavian Union and the Sung) has a large Innu population, along with Lapps, and the place names reflect this. The colony's name reflects both the SU and Canada, by honoring one of the first Europeans to reach North America. (St. Brendan may have beaten him, though.)

Colin
Just an FYI, Ottawa has mega-citied its way into gobbling up Nepean, Kanata, Stittsville, and some of the eastern burbs (maybe Vanier but not Gloucester I think). So Kanata is now just a map region like Tunney's Pasture, Crystal Beach, etc.


I look forward to the new game. I recalled with fondness the depiction of Canada as being policed by the RCMP (with whom I worked for 4 years while we were deploying their first nation-wide wireless policing solution) and as a place where education is prized. 2300 gave many places a voice that other games had not (Azania comes to mind as well). That's the nice thing about science fiction - we can envision settings where each minority can claim some place as their own and build a distinct society within a larger pan-systemic uberculture.

If I wasn't so aware that it would suck the little time I have into nothing, I'd join the Moot and try to get in on some playtesting for this and for some 1248 stuff. I'm already on a playtest list for Ground Zero Games and have a hard time finding a lot of time for that... but boy do I enjoy the direction some of this new Trav and T2300 (2320 now) are going!

Keep up the good work. And try not to fall victim to the crush of deadlines... I know it is a business reality, but in the long term quality is at least as important. Especially in the core work of a line - less critical in the modules, etc, but rather key in the central work.

I await with readied wallet
 
Well, 2300 was a game I only paid sporadic attention to, but...

My favourite world was Joi, largely because of the situation in Elysia. There's a whole campaign in there, if you wanted to run one.

On the other hand, my favourite nation, that is, "where my PC would come from, given a free choice" was Papua, back on Earth. That was mainly a result of the work I put in trying to come up with a reasonable story about how Cairns and a whole lot of sparsely populated near-wilderness became part of PNG.

So my ideal game presumably involves somebody from Papua who gets involved in the crisis in Elysia.


Alan
 
Ericsson? The phone corp?

For the explorer, I'd guess Eriksson, or Eiriksson...

My favorite colonial world is Stalo. ,-)
 
Gah. That should be Eriksson. Somewhere one of my ancestors is spinning in his/her grave. I'm half Icelandic, afer all, and should spell these things right.

Stalo?

Colin
 
Non-canon ultra-seasonal SU frontier world in the distant reaches of the Chinese Arm, complete with odd terrain, rather incompatible biosphere and bad weather*. Featured in a colony-building PBEM some years back.

*I truly dislike the abundance of Second Earth's in 2300AD. It seems as almost every rotten star (regardless of age) with a color different than blue or deep red has a human-tolerable and generally fairly cozy planet waiting for ranchers to set down on. But I know, it is an established fact of the setting.
 
Stalo was the world Ben Levys Pi3 Orionis PBEM game was set on. I was player the the Scandanavian System Defence Navy, a mighty force of 1 frigate and 2 corvettes, plus 2 Yorks bought from the UK and the only connection to the outside world....

The game was great, except it made a couple of society elements (which was what we played) into united entities, so the lunatic fringe came to dominate the colony.

To backstory it in, you could have it as a failed colony world.
 
Earth like worlds? That's only really Tirane and BCV-4. Conditions on some colonies Nibelungen, Beowulf, Crater, Aurore) are very different and quite hostile.
 
Hardly. There are some marginals or alien ones, but a lot of the planets are almost like Earth - like say, Adlerhorst, Botany Bay, Montana, Kwantung*, Doris, Chengdu* or Syuhlahm.

*These are even described in the Colonial Atlas as "almost Earthlike" or "very much like Earth".

The slightly less Earth-like ones are sometimes just Earth with one significant parameter changed, like native life, rotation period, more flares, colder or warmer, more or less oceans etc.

But overall, I'd say the chances of a nearby star in 2300AD having a perfectly habitable world with human-tolerable gravity, and between 18 and 23% O2 breathable air are remarkable. Even if tidally locked, without advanced native life, extremely cold etc.

My big problem with this is: So, a lot of stars have neat colonial territory orbiting them. Shouldn't even more stars, say five times as many, just have marginal or alien worlds - places like Crater, Aurore or Heidelsheimat? Where are those stars? Where are the stars too young or too old?

As for Beowulf, well. It has almost the same mass, almost the same density (although one might be a bit suspicious when one read the entry, as 6.4 g/cc is more than Earth, and the listing also says 0.9 Earth...), almost exactly the same atmosphere, almost the same hydrosphere, almost the same ecology. What it does have is a different rotational period which oddly enough doesn't seem to have _that_ much effect on climate, and rather unbelievable moons in fairly unbelievable orbits. And the orbital period is calculated wrong. Quite a lot wrong. (Not the only place where the Colonial Atlas could use some proofreading)

But essentially, there's the day length difference. Earth, one thing changed.
 
Beowulf, with a ~22 day long day night cycle, devastated by a rogue planetoid every 90 years (next pass due 2305). Tropical Monsoons and Snowstorms every local day (~11 Earth days apart), a heat range of -10 to + 40 celcius in a local day and an extreme level of vulcanism and extreme tides (at least a 100m difference between high and low tide) (Hruntings excentric orbit to blame here)*

Still, it's better than Nibelungen or Cold Mountain.

A lot of these worlds just have a biosphere, and oxygen atmospheres, rather than being terrestrial.

* All from the extended Beowulf writeup published in Far and Away 2, the full version of the article submitted to the Colonial Atlas
 
I forgot Joi in the Almost Earth Planets list. Sorry. That's ten. Maybe I missed some. .-)

What do you mean "rather than being terrestrial"? Mercury is a terrestrial planet.

The Beowulf writeup, the one in the Colonial Atlas, is - in my opinion - flawed.

And the info you provide is in slight contradiction with the Atlas, where it explicity states "the climate is somewhat harsher" (than Earth norms) and "quake activity along fault lines somewhat more frequent than the Terran norm". Doesn't seem that extreme, huh?

Furthermore, the temperature range you give is also in contradiction with the Atlas, where temperatures do not span from -10 to + 40 but from +10 to +38. So it appears as the "extreme" conditions were a bit scaled down when Beowulf went into print as part of the Colonial Atlas.

And the numbers are _obviously_ wrong. There are two different density figures. No matter which you choose, gravity is wrong. The orbital period is seriously wrong, but that is _not_ unique in the Colonial Atlas. (Crater comes to mind as a potentially evem worse example)

My opinion on Beowulf? Remake it and take on the spirit of how it was originally presented. Now, it is one of the weakest pieces of the Colonial Atlas. Or dump it altogether, there are other worlds with long days, rugged terrain, six legged animals etc.
 
+++++I truly dislike the abundance of Second Earth's in 2300AD. It seems as almost every rotten star (regardless of age) with a color different than blue or deep red has a human-tolerable and generally fairly cozy planet waiting for ranchers to set down on. But I know, it is an established fact of the setting.+++++

In 2099 Mankind went to the stars...

And found nothing useful, so it came home again.

:)
 
Aw, mankind hardly need _ten_ almost-Earths within spitting distance. Apparently 2300AD's people do colonize more marginal but still human-habitable places instead of just filling up Joi and Kwantung.

Besides, it sort of takes the interest and the value out of the almost-Earth's if there are so bleeding many. "Beta Canum is special, it is almost like Earth." Yeah, right, get in line.
 
I disagree. Almost earths can be just that Almost. After all they can be hotter, cooler, wetter, dryer and still be within tolerances and be called almost earths.

In my 2300 universe, I have a planet that is habitable, but only in the canyons because the air is so thin otherwise. The canyons are very liveable, and have diverse ecosystems. Temperature, rainfall, etc are near earth, its just that above 3,000 feet, you can no longer breath the air. Old Traveller atmosphere class "F".


Originally posted by Pompe:
Aw, mankind hardly need _ten_ almost-Earths within spitting distance. Apparently 2300AD's people do colonize more marginal but still human-habitable places instead of just filling up Joi and Kwantung.

Besides, it sort of takes the interest and the value out of the almost-Earth's if there are so bleeding many. "Beta Canum is special, it is almost like Earth." Yeah, right, get in line.
 
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