D&DG Worshippers 3: Celts

Celtic Worshippers

This week we have the Celtic pantheon from D&DG and, like the Babylonian one, there is a distinct lack of thieves in the results (and paladins, but you  have to get used to that). There are a couple of assassins and of course lots of options for bards, both of which could subsume thievery functions.

Encounter	Cleric	Druid	Fighter	Ranger	Magic-user	Illusionist	Thief	Assassin	Monk	Bard
Arawn	1-16	1-9		1-30	1-15					1-9
Brigit		10-18	1-8		16-42					10-19
Dagda	17-27	19-27	9-20		43-54	1-24				20-31
Diancecht	28-47	28-36	21-30		55-63					32-37
Dunatis	48-58		31-42							38-48
Goibhnie		37-45	43-54							49-57
Lugh		46-65	55-67							58-68
Manannan Mac Lir	59-78		68-78
Math		66-68	79-81		64-86	25-40
Morrigan		69-75		31-65				1-56		69-74
Nuada		76-81		66-100				57-100		75-80
Ogham	79-89	82-91	82-91		87-100	41-69				81-91
Silvanus	90-100	92-100	92-100			70-100				92-100

However, the solution I used with the Babylonians of going with a general alignment table doesn't work as most of the deities are neutral and for "worshippers' alignment" they generally have something of the style "all beings interested in <deity's sphere of control>". So Brigit is worshipped by "Beings worshipping fire and poetry", for example. Once could almost say that the Celtic deities are rather catholic in their acceptance :)

Anyway, there's no easy conversion to alignment for quickly generating NPCs.

As an alternative, I thought I'd look at the probabilities from Zac's original method and here is what we get:

Encounter	Cleric
Dagda	1-40
Arawn	41-45
Brigit	46-50
Diancecht	51-55
Dunatis	56-60
Goibhnie	61-65
Lugh	66-71
Manannan Mac Lir	72-77
Math	78
Morrigan	79-84
Nuada	85-90
Ogham	91-95
Silvanus	96-100

Just liked the image, TBH

Although I was initially enthusiastic about the system Zac presented - who would turn down the chance to get something useful from Deities and Demigods, after all? - his approach did not in fact give much nuance. The head of the pantheon gets a base 40% of results and all the rest are weighted according to their hit points. Hit points are taken as a proxy for the amount of worship the deity enjoys which, ignoring the issue of it being a dubious theological concept, seems reasonable for game purposes.

The problem is that most pantheons don't have that much of a range, with 2:1 between top and bottom being rare.

Part of the problem is that D&DG doesn't contain that much information on each pantheon. The Greek pantheon has 19 deities listed out of hundreds - the Norse one is a similarly small selection. Another part is that the cap of 400hp isn't that much higher than the top levels for PCs and dipping much below 200hp makes a deity vulnerable to a high-level party which could possibly muster more hp between them. So the design is constrained and consequently there's not really room for obscure deities with small cults.

But, still, the idea of getting some value out of D&DG is very appealing. It is, after all, nearly a dead loss. The research is patchy, for a start, and it has basically no grasp or representation of religion at all. Compared to Cults of Prax for RuneQuest it's something of a joke in roleplaying terms.

Even today, most people who play D&D have relatively little grasp of polytheism (apologies to Hindu and Japanese readers) and D&DG doesn't really illuminate the subject much. It certainly doesn't get into the differences between types of polytheism.

"The DM must also make sure that the cleric is aware of his or her place in the community and the church hierarchy." (D&DG p9).

The church what, now?

Greek worship seems to have had no such thing. Each city seems to have had a particular favourite deity, and almost everyone agreed that Zeus was usually in charge of everyone, but there was no "church" in which to have a place. Individual clerics would "work" - usually part-time, often voluntarily - at a temple or shrine and the more important the temple the more important the post was, politically. But the priests worshipping the same deity in a temple three miles up the road had no need to obey or even much care about any statements made by the high priest of a city even as regards the proper worship of the god in question. And since every city was fiercely independent, there was even less power for the would-be church leader once s/he got to the neighbouring city limits.

The Sumerian experience seems to have been very similar, and even in Egypt there was real power vested in the priests near to the throne, but that power was not especially doctrinal in form and had no reach up- or down-stream unless the current pharaoh put his or (occasionally) her weight behind it.

With the Celts, and many others, the picture is very similar but with "tribe" swapped in for "city". Indeed, this tribal favouritism for one god is probably the seed from which city cults grew.

Old Time Religion

With no church to issue edicts, personal worship was very much an individual's choice. Relatively little writing has survived which expresses the feelings of normal people, or even members of the elite classes. But what does survive is often reminiscent, I find, of the sort of stuff one might find on a Reddit forum devoted to a boy-band. Passionate, but often rather arbitrary. Outside of special occasions like childbirth or illness, people generally worshipped the deities that they just liked.

Things do often change, however, as states become more intrusive (read: more militaristic) and we start to see State Religions.

To my eye, D&DG was written with Empire of the Petal Throne in mind. The strict hierarchies, nation-wide temples, and relatively small numbers of adventuring clerics who are semi-detached from the main clerical body fits with EPT's half-way house between the Christian Churches which clearly underpinned the original game, and the reality of most polytheistic "religions". Individuals, especially clerics, are expected to follow a specific deity through most of their lives - in EPT this is generally a Clan thing, or sometimes an occupational requirement.

What's odd about the D&D version of this is that it throws out the main functions of the Church: the determination of what is appropriate behaviour for the deity and punishments for transgressing the rules (unwritten or otherwise). In the Church's place the deity itself makes these calls, and tells the clerics either via dreams, messengers, or literally to their face.

In AD&D there are no doctrinal disagreements - a cleric who is transgressive has no spells and if they're high enough level to cast 6th or 7th level spells they will be told by GOD that they are wrong!

So we have this weird mix of an assumed Church within the cleric must "be aware of their place", and at the same time no temporal authority for any officials in that Church especially if they are not spellcasters.

D&DG tells us that 'Cleric "adventurers"...rarely have any important place in their religion's hierarchy'. This only makes sense if all the important clerics are spellcasters, otherwise we get scenarios like this:

Pope (0-level political genius): It is wrong to eat fish on the first Tuesday of the month.

Fred Bangashagga (cleric, 5th level): Actually, an angel told me that's not true. It came up when I was asking for create food and water.

Pope: Arse.

Now, it's possible to invent reasons for deities to subvert some of these observations, but the deity in question would need to be really into secrets and concealment (and of course there are always mystery cults in any pantheon) but even that is a level of sophistication which one will not find in D&DG.

So, really, all D&DG is, is a list of gods divided into cultures and with a bunch of very variable quality notes attached. The reference chart is at once very handy and at the same time complete baloney in terms of accurate historical observations.

But. It is lovely. 

It has that great Erol Ottis cover, lots of good illustrations inside, and lots of numbers which gamers usually like to see. I'm talking nostalgia here: the desire to see something the way you saw it when you were younger. And when I was younger I thought D&DG would be really great and really useful.

Which brings us back to the current series of posts as an attempt to at least get a bunch of tables that answer some useful question about the game world. Specifically, the question "this bloke the players have just walked up to in the street - what deity does he worship?"

It's not much but it's about the most a 57 year-old can get out of a book that his 15 year-old-self really loved.

D&DG Worshippers 2: Babylonians

Babylonian Worshippers

So, following on from the previous post, here's the table for Babylonian worshippers:

Encounter	Cleric	Druid	Fighter	Ranger	Magic-user	Illusionist	Thief	Assassin	Monk	Bard
Anu	1-25		1-16
Anshar	26-50		17-31
Druaga			32-44		1-11			1-100
Girru			45-58		12-42
Istar	51-69			1-100	43-61
Marduk			59-75		62-73					1-100
Nergal	70-100		76-85		74-89
Ramman			86-100		90-100	1-100

This brings a problem with the system to the fore: there are no Babylonian deities listed with thieving skills (other than Druaga who presumably inherits the thieving abilities based on his assassin level).

In fact, this problem was there last week because none of the listed American deities have levels in the Paladin class and, in fact, neither do the Babylonian ones. That's not such a big deal - most campaigns can trundle along without paladin NPCs - but no thieves seems an unlikely social setup.

Looking at this I tried doing the table based on alignment, with the weights being the deity's hit points - a direct link back to Zak's original idea, albeit with a different methology. Here's the result:

Encounter	LG	NG	CG	LN	N	CN	LE	NE	CE
Anu	1-43	1-32	1-62	1-30	1-41	1-41	1-34	1-25	1-32
Anshar								26-44	33-56
Druaga							35-53
Girru	44-73	33-54
Istar	74-100	55-74	63-100	31-49	42-67	42-67	54-75	45-60	57-76
Marduk				50-75
Nergal							76-100	61-79	77-100
Ramman		75-100		76-100	68-100	68-100		80-100

It's okay and is another way to slice the data but in this case I'm using the "worshippers' alignment" entry for each deity and, looking ahead at the Celts, that might pose a problem too. Looking slightly further ahead to the Cthulhu Mythos, it isn't going to make for a particularly interesting  range of options (spoiler: Chaotic Evil is what I'm talking about).

But for now it's okay.

D&DG Worshippers 1: North Americans

American Worshippers

Wider blog for better tables!

I decided to try to get some use out of D&DG and following an idea from Zak I used the relative levels in each class listed for the deities to come up with tables showing which one an NPC of a given class followed as their favourite. Zak originally suggested running down each deity until you hit a success but I felt a single table would be more useful.

Here's the first one for the American Pantheon as listed in D&DG.

Encounter	Cleric	Druid	Fighter	Ranger	Magic-user	Illusionist	Thief	Assassin	Monk	Bard
Raven	1-12	1-17		1-11	1-11	1-16	1-35
Cyote	13-27	18-37	1-60		12-21	17-33	36-80
Hastseltsi	28-37			12-29	22-29	34-45		1-55
Hastsezini	38-49	38-54		30-43	30-50
Heng	50-59			44-54	51-59	46-56
Hotoru			61-100		60-66	57-66
Shakak				55-68	67-76
Snake-Man	60-69	55-68			77-87	67-81	81-100		1-38	1-100
Tobadzistsini	70-80	69-82		69-89	88-94	82-91		56-100	39-100
Yanauluha	81-100	83-100		90-100	95-100	92-100

More soon.

Fred T. Jane and The Deep Roots of D&D

There comes a point in any genealogical backtrace when you realise that everyone in the world is now an ancestor of whoever you are studying. Generally, the researcher, politician, or random nutjob on YouTube then slides the window forward a few generations so that they can continue to make arbitrary claims like being of African descent (like everyone else), from native-born English stock (except for all those Anglo-Saxon immigrants that were born in Denmark and Germany), or that their opponent is from genetic background that prevents them from being president of the United States of America (unlike, for example, all those people who actually lived there before the speaker’s closer ancestors arrived on boats to steal it).

So it is with games. By the time we get back to the 1800’s, it’s almost tautological that any given game can be found to have some influence on D&D, perhaps because it used dice, perhaps because it required players to speak, and possibly because it had a referee. And the latter is the link I’m looking at here, combined with the implied corollary that the rules are known to be, perhaps intentionally, incomplete.

Fred Thomas Jane was a geek (or nerd, if you prefer). He was just a typical example of the type: into science-fiction, fascinated by modern technology, and with a mathematical mind that appreciated applied physics and engineering, who read a lot. He also was a talented artist and a game designer.

Here’s one of his more expressionistic, even slightly futurist, images of the London Underground in 1893.

And another of an imagined Moonbase (in the year 2000) from 1894.

He also wrote a few science-fiction novels, including an alien abduction yarn where the spaceship is disguised as a “summer house” - could this have been a gazebo?! - and the excellently-titled The Incubated Girl.

He even illustrated some Sherlock Holmes stories.

But, of course, Jane’s claim to fame was built on his fascination with warships, in particular battleships and then dreadnoughts. Like many of us, he found himself pondering how to simulate the operation of these floating fortresses for the same reason that so many games continue to be designed on any number of real-world topics: to see which ships were best, all else being equal.

He first released his classic work Fighting Ships to the public in 1898 when he was 33 years old, and were an immediate hit in an imperial age where battleships were the pinups favoured by boys and young men. The ships’ vital statistics were included in a new and compact form, rating armour and arms with a letter code.

To modern eyes Jane picked the wrong method for these and in a foreshadowing of Arneson’s choice of Armour Class decades later, set the best armour as class “A” instead of that being the worst armour and E the best. As the imperial arms race continued, Jane was forced to add AA, then AAA, and so on until resorting to notation of the form A5 as shorthand for AAAAA and even higher. Clearly, ascending armour classes would have suited his purpose better.

At this distance in history it’s been hard to precisely order events but it seems that the rules needed to turn Fighting Ships into a game - the simply-titled “The Jane Naval War Game” - were released either at the same time or immediately afterwards and these sparked interest in Official Circles™.

These were quite wide circles - the rules were apparently playtested, or at least carefully-enough read for corrections to be suggested by Grand Duke Alexander Mihailovitch Of Russia, Prince (later Lord) Louis Mountbatten (the one murdered by the IRA), Captain H. J. May of the Royal Navy, and Lieutenant R. Kawashima of the Imperial Japanese Navy. There was some input from Australia too.

The rules went through a familiar pattern of a simple initial edition, a series of releases with more complexity, and then a “reset” in 1905 with an edition which threw much of this extra complexity back overboard and put the emphasis on the game referee to decide using their presumed knowledge of real-life naval combat; by now the game was solidly established as a teaching/training tool for the navies of the world.

I’m not suggesting that The Naval Wargame was a direct ancestor of D&D. When Jane died in 1916 at the age of just 50 and the game almost immediately went out of print, never to return. With the first world war in almost full swing (America would not join for another year and a half), the ability for tourists to wander around the naval dockyards of the world, even onto the docked warships, became a quaint notion never to be seriously entertained again. With the characteristics of the ships now much more secret than before it was hard to update the rules accurately, not to mention the rate at which ships were being deployed and, in some cases, sunk.

So the chances that Gygax had even heard of it in 1973 are slim. Arneson, with his life-long interest in sea-battles probably had heard of it but I doubt that he had seen a copy; I think the nearest publicly available copy was in Michigan, and no complete set (with all the markers, ship “character sheets”, and strikers used for the combat system intact) survives today.

Take 3000d6 damage

But the game’s heavy reliance on a referee is another example of the type of game that was common for many decades, and everyone involved with CHAINMAIL and hence D&D would have taken the idea of loosely-defined rules which are interpreted by a trusted game-master not just in their stride but as the normal format of a game which was simulating some reality.

Hex and counter games which did away with the referee were certainly around but they paid for that freedom with deeply detailed rules. CHAINMAIL was by no means unusual in being what appears, to an Advance Squad Leader player, to be a pamphlet which might be advertising a game rather than the thing itself. Such games had no influence of any note on D&D and, like Jane’s game, this would lead to problems when a wider audience held the rules in their hands, an increase in complexity followed by something of an Old School Reformation.

Jane was, to a large degree, a typical gamer who one could encounter at a convention today. Interested in science-fiction, even writing some of his own, and wanting to try recreating old battle or imagine “what-if’s” and “maybe one day” scenarios with a set of rules he’s put together under one arm and a source-book of stats he’s illustrated himself under the other. Rather like a certain Mister Arneson, in fact.

Jane’s ships floated on the primordial soup from whence D&D emerged.

A Bit More Traveller

The Old School of Marc Miller

As a minor follow-up to the previous post, I’ve been meaning to post this definition of what is generally thought of as “Old School play” from Marc Miller. You can read the full text of the original post on James the Geek’s blog. That is a recounting of a chat James had with the man in 2018, following a game Miller ran for James and some others, but the following sections were particularly interesting:

While playing Traveller, Marc role-plays. Very little rules. Traveller is truly a rules-light game system once you start playing. For our scenario, we generated characters by only rolling up stats. No skills. Just stats and pick your service. All rolls were made against those stats, but you couldn’t roll against the same stat again, until you had used them all. Oh, and you had to support your decision on which stat to use. After that, it was all role playing. Creating a communal story. He made it up as he went along, allowed us to build the story, and acted as “referee” just as intended. After we were through, he said “There. Now you know how I play Traveller.”

The following very much reminded me of how random generation of monsters and treasures work for me:

“Think of a world. Now think of another one. And another. After a while you run out of imagination or things get a little boring.” That’s where the world generation system steps in and helps you by creating worlds that you now have to creatively explain. Why would millions of people choose to live on a desert world with a tainted atmosphere, for example? The more I learned about his play style, and his original ideas for the game, the more it became apparent that the systems, while there to aid us, could be completely ignored (and should be) in order to simply play the game

Miller was in, if not on the ground floor then at least on the mezzanine level in the lobby and had a background in wargaming so it’s no coincidence that he shares many of the same perceptions as Gary, Dave, and various early stars of the D&D world.

Next time, I’m going to look back a bit further at another gaming referee who started a global phenomenon which is still with us: Fred T. Jane, of “Jane’s Defence Weekly” fame.

Vancian Space Travel

Introduction

Vance generally gets invoked in the OSR in relation to D&D where the magic system was inspired by some of the stories in his Dying Earth series. Vance also had an obvious influence on the science-fiction side of the fence, with his Demon Princes and Planet of Adventure series joining Asimov’s Galactic Empire and Foundation stories as major influences on the tone of Traveller, the first SF role-playing game.

The original release of Traveller was in the form of three little books, mimicking the format of D&D and included rules for generating a setting from scratch - planets, populations, encounter tables, and alien monsters. There was no implied political setting.

All that would change fairly quickly with the release of Supplement 3 - The Spinward Marches in 1979. Now there was an empire, covering many sectors of space, and each sector had a name and enough planets to support a hundred PC parties without them ever encountering each other.

It was a huge success and the idea of playing one’s own Traveller setting became more or less extinct. Certainly moreso than that of running one’s own D&D gameworld.

But Traveller has seen some reformation in the last decade too, and there are people running non-imperium games of their own devising.

This post is inspired by (but not based on) Vance’s Demon Princes books. There is no Empire, but there is a sort of civilised centre of worlds where life is generally good and mostly comfortable for the vast majority of the tens of billions of inhabitants. Of course, at that scale even 0.001% of people having problems they need someone’s help with, or someone to manipulate into helping them, is a quarter of a million potential patrons and/or plot hooks.

Beyond these settled worlds are the barons and their estates. There is no empire partly because there is so much space. Why take orders from some egotist on a throne when you can take a ship, go 300 light years and find a world to run exactly as you want it run? Out there, beyond the core worlds, is where these men and women live and they deal, sometimes by necessity, sometimes for fun, with the inner worlds. Hopefully the player characters can get caught in the middle from time to time and find adventures that take them out of their comfort zone.

The Home Worlds Sector (801631670)

Introduction

The sector of space containing Earth is referred to by astronomers as the Home Worlds Sector. The use of the term “sector” is fairly nominal; only one subsector is heavily populated and there is little agreement on which systems are worth mapping beyond the subsectors adjacent to that one.

Non-astronomers tend not to even think in terms of sectors and subsectors, talking only of “core” and “outer” worlds. In colloquial terms, the direction of travel which moves towards the galactic core is “inwards” and “coreward” is used to mean travel from the outer worlds towards the settled inner planets. All of which tends to annoy astronomers and ships’ navigators who are forever complaining about “loose terminology”.

99% of people, of course, never really deal with any of this. They are born on a world, live work and breed on that world, and then die on it without ever needing to think about directions and terminology for interstellar travel.

The Traveller, however, rarely meets that 99% when dealing with the high-population planets of the core. Their view of the different worlds is for the most part a distorted one which inhabitants would not recognise. A peaceful world of 9 billion might to a Traveller evoke memories of a violent mercenary mission to a deserted region of desert; a world riven by civil strife might be where he or she once spent a month of luxury living in a 5-star resort spending some huge payday from a wealthy patron.

Hardened Travellers are not the people to ask for tourism advice.

The total population of the world which make up humanity is around 26 billion. The age of empires is, everyone hopes, behind us, and no world of more than a million population is currently ruled by any other with the exception of Disco and Ocean; the smaller settlements are generally economically dependant on some other world which also sets the rules.

As this guide is intended partly as a historical outline as well as a travel guide, the systems are presented in order of their colonisation. Only the most politically or historically significant ones are treated here; the UPP list at the end must suffice for most.

The dates given after each system name are the year of their founding in the New Sun calendar wherein the arrival of the first human colonists at New Sun is year 1. The current year is 903.

Sector 1 - Core Worlds

0810 Sol

The old system of Sol has multiple settlements but all of these are really vestiges of a by-gone era. With the collapse of the Earth ecosystem in the 21st/22nd century and the disaster of the attempted evacuations, the whole system went into decline.

• Mars
  

  Mars dominates Sol today but even so, that domination is mostly in the hands of a research and education establishment - the Institute for Human History (IHH). They maintain an underground facility for about 1000 staff and students on Mars itself as well as two orbital ports around Earth, another one around Titan, and a base on Luna. Mars itself is equipped with a class-B start port with both orbital and ground components. The old ports on Phobos and Demos are abandoned, as are the ports on or around Venus, Triton, and Mercury.

  The IHH do not welcome visitors, which is why the system is classed as Amber by the TAS - if you come here, come prepared for emergencies or come with a well-equipped cruise ship. If you run into trouble and need help, the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, they say.

  The IHH itself is supported in grand style by various wealthy patrons who have an interest in history so there is rarely any question of trade as such, so Mars can be a very insular place to spend time on. A hundred years ago there was some scandal about Director Strikland’s quasi-fascist control of the planet which led to a withdrawal of funding and the whole affair was squashed more or less instantly as the planet has no real means of support, at least in the style to which the inhabitants have become accustomed.

  • UPP
    

    B420389-8

• Earth
  

  

  
  Earth is a dead world. The IHH historically had a scientific mission to find a way to re-terraform the planet but with the evaporation of the last liquid water on the surface almost four-hundred years ago the institute has really only used it as a testbed for ideas applicable to less drastic cases of “hothouse” conditions. Earth is now more than ever the twin of Venus. Two ports are maintained and are bases for various scientific and historical missions.

  Despite being officially dead, Earth is the subject of an almost unlimited number of legends, myths, and just plain wild stories. Underground bunkers of art treasures, mutant creatures and even humanoids genetically engineered in the last desperate days of the planet’s life, shipwrecks laying on the now dry seabeds full of gold, towers created by scientists indistinguishable from wizards who remain - immortal but trapped - trying to find a way to fix a broken world. etc. Nothing is too weird when it comes to Mother Earth.

  The Moon (Luna) has a class-C port on it which houses a department of the IHH which specialises in the early history of space travel. It also has a sizeable transient population of tourists interested in seeing Earth with their own eyes. The various sites of 20th and 21st century landings can actually be quite busy at times but there is no disguising the fact that the barren Earth has, for most people, a much more depressing psychological impact than they anticipate, and there is little signs of the amusement and even wonder that one finds on Rome or Athena, for example.

  • UPP
    

    B8B0000-0

0609 New Sun (Year 1)

As the situation on Earth deteriorated a massive push to find a viable “lifeboat” led to the decision to colonise “New Sun”, whose world had been scouted some decades before.

The simple fact was that New Sun’s primary world (i.e, the world judged easiest to colonise) was not ideal, and neither was Snowball which had also been explored in those early days of jump technology. But needs must when the Devil drives, as they say, and a project was put together, ships commissioned and volunteers sought. When the number of volunteers was found to be far more than could be handled, the project fragmented into two groups: the lottery group, and the so-called elite group with the latter buying places for themselves and their families at auction. New Sun society was cursed by this class-based division for centuries after, of course.

The world is very dry and as a result prone to dust storms. At the best of times, it is possible to work outdoors without any equipment but most of the time a filter and eye-protection will be needed and when the storms come the outdoors is a dangerous place for a person on foot.

Nevertheless, colonisation began and was reasonably well organised with different people being dispatched in waves based on the skills needed at that point. In the space of 60 years an estimated 930,000 settlers went to New Sun even as the technology base which was sending them began to falter as Earth’s ecosystem started to come apart.

The hard life lead to a strange type of feudalism building up on New Sun, with service and protection at the core. This has continued into the modern age with the aristocratic families monopolising technology and capital.

0913 Snowball (73)

Snowball’s name is not quite accurate. The planet’s equatorial region is actually a fairly wide belt of generally fertile land. The planet’s inclination to its sun is so small that what passes for seasonal change is mostly caused by the elliptical orbit rather than a change in the angle of insolation.

As the writing on the wall on Earth became ever clearer, some rich people refused to believe it. These people became known to later generations as the “Generous Fools”.

Thinking that they saw an opportunity to exploit the growing panic, these individuals started to build spacecraft and sell tickets to Snowball (New Sun’s colonies having exclusive rights agreed with the UN). Many hundreds of ships were built even though the ticket prices were often rather low - any profit being taken when high profit was unavailable.

In the end, of course, the money and other goods taken for the tickets was worthless and many of the Generous Fools ended up as farmers on Snowball where they were viewed with a range of attitudes from gratitude to contempt.

1310 Nirvana (98)

At last! A world actually suited to human life. Sort of. The main problem with Nirvana was that it already had life at the microscopic level and many of those microbes had a liking for human tissue.

The problems with Nirvana would eventually be ironed out and today it is a populous planet which compares well with Earth as it was but it took nearly 300 years to get to that stage and in the meantime humanity’s search for a decent new world went on.

In a case of nominative determinism, over the centuries Nirvana has attracted people of a certain philosophical bent and today the world is a direct-democracy which has elected to abandon almost all laws as other worlds know them. All weapons are legal and the weapon shops of Nirvana are famed, as are the protective systems of Nirvana. Beyond those, the world’s cooperative scientific model of completely open publication has lead to, well, a Nirvana of high-technology deployed for the benefit of all the citizens.

Most legal punishments consist of variations on banishment or exile.

0607 Dust (100)

A couple of gas giants and uncounted millions of asteroids - the “dust” the system is named for.

Dust was settled as jump-2 technology became economical and the demand for rare elements spiked just as things got messy in Sol’s asteroid belt and supplies from there were disrupted.

Today, Dust is the standard destination for the would-be anarchic individualist who wants only to deal with his (it’s almost always a ’his’) neighbours to defend their right to not have anything to do with his neighbours. Pirates and other outlaws who think Dust is a golden opportunity generally discover quite quickly that the low-recharge rate of a mining laser is made up for if there’s a dozen of them pointing at you.

Everyone else will usually find Dusters to be friendly and helpful to a stranger in need who doesn’t want to stay long.

1113 Surtur (Amber) (120)

Nirvana was a bust, at least initially, so the search went on. Surtur was and is a decent world for various types of crop but the high levels of volcanic activity make it hard work for humans and mammals generally. Those without respiratory troubles can usually only work outdoors for a day or two before taking a break in one of the air-conditioned domes. Geological sources of energy are cheap and life in the domes is generally good.

Near the poles the air is cleaner but with no land masses or ice caps there, the locals have resorted to giant artificial floating holiday destinations for open-air breaks.

0909 Sirius (134)

Settled initially as a research project, Sirius became a fashionable destination in the 650’s when a story swept the inhabited worlds that its blue light had unexplained (and, in fact, entirely fictional) health effects. In the hundred years after that spa resorts grew into proper colonies and the demand for living space has made Sirius a popular destination which is cheap now that the health-claims have not only been debunked but reversed to some degree.

0912 Glorious (180)

By 180, Earth was no longer classed as inhabitable outdoors except at the south pole. The average daytime summer temperature in Ecuador had passed 65°C and food production was falling despite the best efforts of hydroponics and “vertical farms”. Water was becoming too scarce to support these technologies at the levels needed.

So when a world with an ocean almost the size of Earths was discovered, the claimants celebrated with a name that expressed the contrast they saw between a wet but lifeless world and the ancient homeworld teeming with life dying of thirst. Only thirty years of terraforming was needed before the “seed domes” of the pioneers could be taken down (“Dome #1” was retained as a tourist destination by a far-seeing colonial council).

The air is slightly chemically tainted, however. Long term exposure leads to adaption and the locals do not need or use any filtering or other respiratory equipment but visitors will need to bring some as the only supplies locally are for asthmatics and the very old; they are not sold commercially.

0511 Big (222)

A huge (10600 mile diameter) “rocky” world with a surprisingly low density (4.6) which partly balances out its large size so that surface gravity is 1.15g.

The hydrographic value of 40% is a double-edged sword. Combined with the world’s size it means there is many times more land on Big than on Earth, but much of it is desert and probably always will be no matter how much effort is put into terraforming.

0205 Santos (222)

A small, non-descript world notable today for its ruins and Joni’s Pub.

Joni’s mock-Tudor inn (known as “The Star King” by its sign) is the haunt of bounty hunters and patrons from across the core worlds, a neutral ground for negotiations and exchanges, and a safe place to stay. One reason it’s a safe place is that Joni’s pub is frequented by Hamish - a 7’ tall Tech-F battle robot with the means to enforce Joni’s peace.

If asked, Joni says Hamish was here when she arrived, while Hamish will volunteer nothing about himself beyond the fact that he is waiting for “Mister Rogers”. A journalist once investigated and was unable to find any details about Hamish but was able to show that he has been waiting for at least 150 years.

Hamish’s senses extend into orbit and around the world via a network of devices. Whoever Mister Rogers is, it is clear that Hamish does not want to miss him. A side effect of this is that it would be very hard to mount a surprise attack on the cafe, if such a thing was desired.

Joni claims ownership of a single square mile of Santos and as far as she is concerned people can do what they like elsewhere. However, the world is a miserable ball of mud with a very high level of rainfall. People tend not to stay long unless they are archaeologists looking at the ruins of the original colonisation attempt, which was abandoned to the rain some five centuries ago.

As far as Hamish is concerned, people can do what they like so long as they stay away from his scanner network. They will be warned by automatic systems on the equipment - once.

1210 Petir’s World (261)

Petir the Bold’s world (history does not record his real name) was the first sign of things to come. A group led by the self-styled Bold man somehow put together an expedition from Earth in secret, using data probably stolen during the sacking of the United Nations. Echoing the New Sun settlement from two centuries before, Petir’s expedition was split into two social classes. What was different was that the lower class was termed “serfs” and had come on the expedition on the strict understanding that they and their children would be servile for seven generations.

Whether the signatories believed the “contract” could or would be enforced is a matter of academic debate still, but the alternative was a slow death on Earth and many simply said what they needed to say in order to get a foot on the last ladder off-world.

Petir took a huge number with him in a fleet of ships, many taken by force or mutiny. It is estimated that the first colony consisted of half a million people - by far the largest attempted.

Probably half of them died before the 50 years of terraforming was completed - many, it is claimed, worked to death. No matter what they had thought they had signed up for the reality was actually worse than the “contract” had suggested. Hundreds of rebel leaders were executed or simply assassinated until eventually the serfs gave up and peace reigned on Petir’s World for about a hundred years when the Anti-Colonial Alliance swept its regime away along with that of Rome. The world remains a harsh one, the vast areas of desert broken only around the relatively small seas in the equatorial regions.

1003 Ocean (285)

A water world now stocked with fish and whales from Earth’s DNA archives. A surprisingly large number of inhabitants, who use the few larger islands as manufacturing bases to supply the nomadic clan-ships that ply the ocean.

1505 Rome (300)

The 2nd century was a period when power became more and more concentrated in the hands of a few technocrats and military leaders. In the first place, people like Petir the Bold who could take people off Earth were able to write their own terms. Later, those who knew the secrets of mechanised agriculture and high-technology in general could control huge populations simply by controlling the machines that fed them.

Several of these demagogues were apparently fascinated by what they saw as Earth society’s Golden Age where people like themselves ruled without the need to listen to the Demos. One of these, a Zachary Parks, was particularly fascinated by the Roman Empire and led a colonising expedition to a world newly detected by the Vast Telescope Array newly inaugurated by the Surtur Institute of Science.

The speed of the expedition caught everyone by surprise - Parks must have been preparing in anticipation of the VTA being as successful as it proved to be - and his fleet of cutting-edge J-3 ships moved in for a claim before the SIS had even got as far as suggesting a name for the new worlds it had discovered.

True to its inspiration, Rome would grow to be the first interstellar empire in human society, eventually sparking an alliance which smashed it into individual pieces.

Today, Rome is something of a backwater, its glorious recreations and imaginings of its imperial past and inspiration are somewhat shunned and the world is littered with “New This” and “New That”, towns and cities built in modern styles away from the reminders of what was. Time has not erased the memory of the things done and even tourism is fairly non-existent and travelling facilities are poor.

While the population is devoted to its democratic present, there are some both from off-world and locals who are hypnotized by the glamour of the past and some of the most unsavoury people to be found anywhere can be found in the ruins of Rome.

1305 Athena (303)

In the wake of Park’s “snatching” (as the Surtur Institution of Science put it) of Rome, almost exactly the same thing happened with Athena. In this case, however, this snatch was organised (by Mari Kenkyusha) in order to set up a democratic light to face the fascistic world of Park’s imagining. This is why the capital city of Athena is called Pharos and not Athens despite the fact that the ancient Parthenon of Earth was brought there piece by piece and set up along with a huge statue of the goddess in memory of that once-great city (definitely worth a visit, by the way).

In the event, Athena was able to hold off Rome but nothing more. The reach of the empire simply went around the highly-motivated and skilled military power of Athena and left it as a self-sufficient bubble of democracy in a volume of might-makes-right.

Modern-day Athena is a fanatically democratic society but what is more likely to immediately strike visitors is the robots. In the last three centuries robotics on Athena have advanced further than the world’s general tech-level would indicate and positronic robots instilled with the Three Laws of Robotics are everywhere. Very few are androids, and the body styling can date an individual robot in the same way that clothing can date a photograph, but there are some “humaniform” robots. Almost all robots encountered outside of agriculture or industry are fully autonomous in that they can generally respond to situations without needing instruction and it can be a shock to the visitor to discover that the official functionary asking for passes or showing them in to meet a VIP is treated by someone as property. Various rumours exist around the sector that these synthetic slaves are not enough of a power trip for the riches and most corrupt Athenians, and that missing children may be traced here. The Athenian police deny these allegations and no such case has ever been found, let alone brought to trial.

1315 Sanctuary AKA Beck’s World (Amber) (402)

Near the end of Rome’ reign, a charismatic leader called Beck led a colonisation of this system. It is fairly nondescript system except for an extensive asteroid belt.

Beck wanted this world to be a place free from the attentions of Rome and so hid its existence. He put together a team which infiltrated the VTA at Surtur and programmed in subroutines which prevented the telescope from ever showing the location of Beck’s World (which the VTA actually discovered while his team were looking for a candidate world).

Colonists were recruited by cells operating in great secrecy and the initial settlement was quite small.

The tradition that Beck’s world is beyond the reach of the law is one that still informs the system today, hence the common name, and this, not Dust, is where the forward-thinking outlaw should build themselves a base.

Of course, the other worlds know this and the place is crawling with agents and double-agents operating with no-holds-barred to protect the interests of governments or to enact revenge on behalf of rich patrons who have been offended by some one or other of Sanctuary’s denizens.

Not quite an anarchy, there is a council of sorts who’s main purpose is to prevent any increase of the law level among the scattered asteroid settlements, and to mediate disputes. Each asteroid gets one representative and any votes for action must be passed by a majority of all representatives, not just those present at a meeting (which may be remote).

Almost any Sanctuarian will, if challenged, wrap themselves in the glory which was the storming of the Roman Senate by a platoon of men led by quite an elderly Beck himself in what was the final act of the Anti-Colonial War.

0613 Metalio (Red) (538)

A disastrous experiment in completely mechanised colony preparation. Don’t go here unless you like fighting robots.

The inability of robot brains to survive hyper-jump while active has generally kept the danger to humanity subdued but the system is monitored very carefully. But don’t let that lead you to assume that someone will see you’re in trouble and come pull you out. They won’t.

The “naval base” marked on the map is a small monitoring force, watching for any signs of the robots trying to escape and, if such are seen, will send a message ship to 0612 Intenon to alert much larger forces, while the remainder here will try to engage.

The robots know the naval force is there and have probed it several times electronically, but so far they have not succeeded in disabling the fleet, assuming that was their intention.

The monitoring force keeps a lot of its records on paper.

0612 Itenon (Amber) (544)

Itenon is part of the monitoring system for Metalio. Travel to this system is restricted to official business. There are some ground facilities but these are really just for emergency uses, such as vessels with compromised hulls during some possible conflict which makes it difficult to dock with the three (heavily armed) orbital stations. Should these facilities be destroyed, there is a gas giant where it may be possible to refuel.

Funding is provided for all of this by Athena, New Sun, and several corporations.

The Scouts maintain a fast ship here who’s main purpose is to take the news of a disaster to HQ on Sirius in a single jump.

The research station carefully analyses data returned from Metalio. There is a small nuclear device in the basement which can be triggered in various ways, none of which can be rescinded by anyone in the station.

0604 Disco (791)

More than 250 years after the last previous colonisation, Disco was claimed by a group from the now rather over-populated Ocean.

The world had been explored by various scientific and mercantile bodies over the centuries but nothing of any real value was found on either count so the potential of a world with a decent hydrgraphic rating and temperature range was untapped, partly because of the high (32°) axial tilt and consequently somewhat extreme seasonal changes.

A hundred and twelve years on, Disco has a population of almost a billion and a thriving technological tradition which has given humanity the class-U jump drive.

Sentiment is growing for independence from Ocean and there have been some protests about taxation levels, despite them being low compared to those paid by citizens of Ocean. The Colonial Office on Ocean is maintaining a watch over events and there are agents on the ground, with potential for hiring off-worlders for infiltration and other work.

0704 Beesve (900)

A remarkable system of what appear to be generation ships, but which do not travel anywhere other than their orbits. The world of Beesve itself is a very mineral rich ball of rock with no water and almost no atmosphere. The population actually living there is almost zero; about 12,000 miners spend periods of up to a year on the surface before taking breaks.

Broadly speaking, each world-ship is linked to a claim on the surface, which supplies the maintenance needs while solar and fusion supply the power needs. Within a claim, the ship council’s word is law and the law level given is the norm for ship-board; weapons are not restricted on the claim itself.

There are about 4,000 ships (with an average population of about 2.5 million inhabitants) and about 3,000 claims - some amalgamation of claims has taken place over the years.

It is not an especially welcoming place, but it does engage enthusiastically in trade with anyone else who turns up, but only Disco can really say to have a general trade agreement via the Miner’s Union.

Abandoned Worlds

The last century of Earth saw everyone who could get away. The terraforming technology of the time was not advanced and many of the projects failed quickly as the chosen world proved recalcitrant towards the great machines. Other worlds died more slowly from internal social issues, sometimes personality-based, sometimes from clashes of culture or class due to the frantic “selection process” used to pick the colonists. And of course dumb luck played its part too.

Many of the abandoned worlds failed because they were economically dependant on some resource which failed before the colony was self-sufficient in food, water, or air. Because the majority of abandoned worlds were settled for only a few decades centuries ago, there is little known about them other than perhaps a name or some legend about what might have been left behind - smaller versions of the many stories about Earth.

There are abandoned casino worlds and orbital stations, safari worlds, workers' paradises and free market experiments, and strange building projects like Jane’s Folly. A tropical world, thought to have been terraformed around 780, the only structure on this world is a two-mile high building which is a three-dimensional maze of rooms and corridors. The location of Jane’s Folly and its purpose are lost, but occasionally Travellers go off looking for it and come back empty-handed or not at all. A person who has not been seen for a long time is sometimes described as “looking for Jane”.

The Scouts know more than anyone else about these worlds, the TAS is next. Beyond that almost no information is available and both of these organisations do not share much with non-members.

Class F spaceports

Starport facilities do not last long after abandonment, but some unpopulated worlds do have class “E” ratings where a ground landing area is still intact enough to have some functionality despite a lack of staff. For example on 1206 Itilte, there is a fresh-air facility on a high plateau where filter masks are not needed.

These worlds have been given the special classification of “F” to indicate abandoned “E-level” facilities.

The Scouts

The Scout Service is a private multi-system organisation which explores space, obtaining and collating information. Their ships and pilots can be hired to survey planets and the fees they charge governments and companies for this covers the salaries and maintenance costs of the scouts.

The Outer Worlds

Beyond the map shown are the Outer Worlds. Even before the expedition to New Sun was underway, a few private individuals who had access to Jump drives were exploring space. As the centuries passed there were more and more of these explorers and more and more of them did not come back but stayed away from the core worlds on a permanent basis.

Terraforming technology became portable around the year 220 and from about 300 there are rumours and reports of worlds “out there” being turned into private estates by hyper-rich beings. Evidence from Travellers suggests that perhaps one in twelve of these stories is true. Which still leaves a lot of planets, all of them apparently ten parsecs or more from the nearest Core World.

Economically these Outer Barons (or just “Barons”) seem to be completely independent, so money is never an issue when dealing with one. If a Traveller interacts with a Baron the reasons for that interaction are invariably about honour or the ownership of something which is not for sale (whether stolen from them or in the possession of someone else).

Many of the Barons have agents in the Core Worlds who are on the lookout for those things which interest their masters, perhaps the majority of which are obtained by completely legal means.

The Barons themselves, of course, do sometimes argue amongst themselves but this is rare and Travellers who find themselves caught up in such a “misunderstanding” should look at themselves and assume that there is at least two other freelance (i.e., mercenary) groups involved which are at least as well equipped. Prices should be negotiated accordingly!

Normal life on the Outer Worlds tends to have a feudal feel to it. Even where the Baron in question is not actually trying to be a petty tyrant, the bottom line is that s/he has the money and technological power. On the other hand, many of the “peasants” are out there because they don’t fit in anywhere else and anyone trying to free them might get a surprise.

Some places are truely bad, however, and tales of slavery and worse do surface from time to time.

World	Hex	UPP
Abbeus	0101	X79A000-0 G
Alsece	0104	X545000-0 G
Ouarri	0108	X400000-0 G
Orussoer	0109	X578000-0
Nuesan	0110	X636000-0 G
Leququ	0111	X201000-0 G
Onmala	0112	X200000-0 G
Onetst	0113	X320000-0
Ladireth	0114	C555668-4 G Ag Ni
Arerus	0116	E10079A-7 G T Na
Tereit	0201	X335000-0 G
Santos	0205	E353100-4 G Ni Po
Enrienal	0214	B101300-9 G Ni A
Errima	0216	X433000-0 G
Ceabceso	0218	X000000-0 G
Bionin	0302	X100000-0 G
Tiabab	0303	X222000-0 G
Alveus	0306	X000000-0 G
Thnuqu	0312	X77A000-0 G
Zaaloned	0315	X586000-0
Isxeitst	0403	X544000-0
Legees	0404	X668000-0 G
Nuusat	0409	X62A000-0 G
Diesit	0410	E7A5686-2 Ni
Isnulo	0412	X426000-0 G
Thinil	0415	F837000-0 G
Anerat	0416	X9A1000-0 G
Edraab	0505	C482540-7 G S Ni A
Qugeanon	0507	X669000-0 G
Raorst	0510	X400000-0
Big	0511	BB64532-A S Ni
Tionve	0602	X332000-0 G
Disco	0604	A686869-E G R Ag Ri
Itquar	0605	X73A000-0
Dust	0607	C000410-A G Ni A
New Sun	0609	A541651-A De Ni Po
Oronnu	0610	E665568-2 G T Ga Ni
Itenon	0612	B343000-0 N A S R G
Metalio	0613	X402000-0 N G R
Zaoute	0615	D759000-0 G
Tionma	0616	X262000-0 G
Arxethal	0617	X320000-0 G
Isxeor	0702	E64A334-3 Ni Wa
Legeal	0703	X768000-0 G
Beesve	0704	B110A76-C G In Na
Quanso	0716	X510000-0 G
Leabit	0717	A697778-8 Ag
Usqula	0801	B131564-9 N De Ni Po
Sol/Mars	0810	B420389-8 R G A Ni R
Nuonveal	0812	B250621-8 G De Ni Po
Thteat	0813	D3108BA-4 G Na
Ararbe	0815	B000336-C G T As Ni
Stouti	0818	X9B7000-0 G
New Tionma	0901	X332000-0 G
Onraal	0902	XAB1000-0 G
Isseor	0904	X637000-0
Beilbe	0906	C97A596-A G S Ni Wa
Etleus	0907	BAF4652-B G N Ni
Sirius	0909	B776723-6 G S N Ag
Glorious	0912	E577323-4 G Ga Ni
Snowball	0913	C688556-6 G Ni
Etledi	0915	X9E3000-0 G
Soesqu	0917	X432000-0 G
Qurear	0918	X550000-0 G
Regema	1001	X538000-0 G
Lexese	1002	X6B2000-0 G
Ocean	1003	B88A788-A G S Ni Ri Wa
Edbive	1006	E575221-7 G Ga Ni
Eronab	1008	B8B4465-9 G N Ni
Esditi	1013	X9A2000-0 G
Atabes	1015	X410000-0 G
Eratit	1016	X585000-0 G
Isgece	1018	F8D4000-0 G
Inracein	1105	E7C0562-3 G De Ni
Xeveno	1107	E345523-6 G Ni
Ratibe	1108	D563645-3 G T Ni Ri
Instlo	1110	A746238-D Ga Ni
Surtur	1113	C5A3523-5 G De Ni A
Storou	1116	B231697-8 G De Na Ni Po
Maseab	1118	X524000-0 G
Inablois	1202	X510000-0
Itilte	1206	F593000-0 G
Nuonlo	1209	D223A62-5 G S In Na Po
Petir’s World	1210	C453523-9 G De Ni Po
Erbein	1217	X667000-0
Noenqu	1302	X224000-0 G
Athena	1305	A685623-B N Ag Ni
Nubion	1306	F140000-0 G
Riusor	1308	D426698-4 G Ni
Noarxe	1309	X54A000-0 G
Nirvana	1310	A668820-C Ga Ni A
Etmaet	1311	X100000-0 G
Sanctuary	1315	D000541-8 G S As Ni
Alxeed	1316	X100000-0 G
Anleet	1401	X360000-0 G
Loatse	1404	A110613-A G Na Ni
Betius	1407	X579000-0 G
Lousar	1411	B987599-8 G Ga Ni
Serati	1413	X664000-0
Zaries	1414	C728832-8 G S T
Stabgeit	1416	XA6A000-0 G
Arouve	1417	X583000-0 G
Nuleon	1418	X647000-0 G
Leoued	1503	X85A000-0 G
Besenoce	1504	CA89853-6 G Ri
Rome	1505	D567824-9 G T Ag
Oretma	1507	X88A000-0 G
Reonce	1509	C946751-9 G Ag Ga
Genuno	1511	X638000-0 G
Bexese	1512	X7A2000-0
Ininxe	1514	X433000-0 G
Bitire	1516	X665000-0
Atgeor	1517	X835000-0 G
Ouzaal	1518	X9B4000-0 G
Enxeou	1601	X889000-0 G
Lestor	1604	X624000-0
Reesla	1607	X310000-0 G
Geesse	1608	X539210-1 G Ni A
Raarus	1609	X657000-0 G
Xerile	1611	X899000-0 G
Lolodi	1613	B576657-B G N Ag Ni
Erlenu	1614	F634000-0 G
Vebete	1617	X435000-0 G
Geveve	1618	X559000-0 G