Reality Patches for Science Fiction RPGs

By Matt Geisler

Intro: Science fiction can be broken up into two categories, the so called “Hard” science fiction,which is based on the extrapolation of facts, and “Soft” SciFi, which concentrates on the story at the expense of detail. While some science fiction RPGs like Star Frontiers, or Star Wars have remained in the area of soft-science fantasy, others like Traveller has attempted to fall into the hard SciFi category (especially the spinoff Traveller 2300AD). The obvious flaw of having humanoid races scattered throughout the galaxy is explained by the presence of the ancients, a tech level 22+ society which experimented with terran organisms, and scattered them. Star travel is explained with “Jump”technology. Even social issues such as the structure of multi-star governments has been carefully analyzed, along with concepts of currency, travel time, and basic economics. There are sadly, a few obvious flaws that still need to be patched however, some of which are addressed here.
 

Space is not two-dimensional

 Every combat system I have seen for starships has treated space as a 2d field, and modeled their game on modern Wet Navies. Space has 3 dimensions. If there are only three objects in play (ships or planets), then a 2d field is allowable (3 bodies will always lie on a common plane). For every object beyond 3, the 2d simulation becomes less and less realistic. Large fleet engagements will be seriously affected, tactics in 3 dimensions are muchmore complex 2d concepts such as encirclements, blockades, and lines of battle are impossiblein space, while new tactics such as envelopment arise. In three dimensions, it is much harder to protect flanks, and requires many more ships to secure positional defenses.

 Patch: Three dimensional play is possible, but adds a layer of complexity. In spaceship combat add-on rules like Knight Hawks, or Brilliant Lances, this is accomplished by having a Z coordinate represented by “altitude” counters (make up a range from -10 to +10 hexes) placed on the starship (or bogy) counter.  Thrust and velocity in the Z coordinate is tracked separately. To calculate distances, use Pythagoras (Final distance2 = Linear distance2+ altitude2).  The sector maps also present a two-dimensional galaxy. The real galaxy is over 300 parsecs thick. In addition to creating a new dimension, this also increases the number of availablestars in the imperium to 3.3 million. Patch: Suppose that jump drives can only move ships in two dimensions, as the wormholes they operate on only exist in thin disconnected disks, radiating from the galactic core. Each disk is about 1 parsec thick, and allows movement in 2 vectors. This does not prevent large scale expeditions to stars in upper and lower disks, but such ships would have to rely on sublight relativistic drives (fusion rocket, etc), and would take years to centuriesto reach their destination.
 

Oxygen is a rare and exotic atmosphere

 Most of the mainworlds in the imperium have a standard oxygen or perhaps tainted oxygen atmosphere. In reality, an oxygen atmosphere is extremely rare, in fact modern exogeologists use the presence of oxygen as an indicator for life, as no geological process can create and maintain an oxygen atmosphere. The few planets we have seen have liquid methane oceans (Titan), sulphuric acid winds (Venus), and thin CO2 atmospheres (Mars) or are totally airless (Mercury, Europa, Io). Even Earth, for over 90% of it’s history had either a hydrogen reducing atmosphere or a CO2  atmosphere devoid of all but trace amounts of oxygen. One cannot use the argument that oxygen-using life forms have evolved on every mainworld. Not only is this highly unlikely, but most organisms would not use oxygen anyway. For 3 billion years Earth was a happy stable living community which did not use oxygen, in fact many organisms today do not use, and cannot tolerate oxygen (strict anaerobic). To say that evolution had occurred in exactly the same way on every mainworld would be the ultimate cheek. In summary, it is not at all likely that another planet has a pre-existing oxygen atmosphere.

Patch: Sentient beings have been star-traveling for many thousand years, and some huge infrastructures have been built. It is possible for an interstellar empire to scrape together theresources to terraform some suitable planets. This would be a huge multi-century project, but is possible. One can simply assume that all the mainworlds have been terraformed, either by one of the starspaning empires (Vland, Imperium, Hivers), or maybe by the ancients (after all, they didcreate the Vargr, K’kree, and Aslan didn’t they).
 
 

Older technologies have to be developed too

 In the New Era, the principle assumption is made that when people become dislocated and robbed of all their technology, that they will begin to build it back the same way it wasdeveloped originally. Thus you can have formerly star-spanning societies now operating sailing ships. This is seriously flawed, and stems from the assumption that all technology is progressive. For example, today (1996) we (The USA) could not operate a line of ships (a la 18th century) ifour lives depended on it, the skills simply do not exist. Likewise, nobody today could chip out a neolithic stone axe, those skills were lost when we discovered metal. People suddenly reverted toa primitive state are much worse off than people which have been living in that primitive state for generations. The presence of technophobia, TED’s, and oppressive religions only serve to make things even worse.

 Patch: The technological status of societies should be based on a combination of the original tech level, and the current indicated one. That is, a TL15 culture reduced to TL1 mightuse spears made from ultradense steel fragments, but could not mine and smelt copper. Gunpowder bombs and cannons could be quickly fabricated, but not the complex workings of a wheel-lock musket in a newly established TL3 society. This will require a certain amount of thinking on the part of the GM, but it creates a feel of a fallen culture, not a primitive one.
 

There are more neat things in our solar system than in most traveller sectors

 Crack open an astronomy book, or visit the NASA web pages. You’re bound to find more spectacular pictures, more horrifying dangers, and more exploitable resources than any adventure party could handle. For example, take the plasma torus around Jupiter. This is a 10,000km diameter belt around the planet which is full of highly charged ionized particles and plasma. Kind of like a plasma cannon set on continuous fire. Any ship entering or nearing the belt, wouldbe vaporized, or at least severely damaged. What’s even neater, is that the planet-moon Io has an orbit entirely within the torus (which accounts for it’s molten rock surface). This would certainly become a navigational hazard to any ship refueling on Jupiter. While I can’t offer a coveringpatch, I urge traveller referees to get ahold of a modern astronomy text and do some detailing of their systems.