Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Pondering World Design

I've been pondering on world design for OSR compatible sci-fi games (among other things). Scientific plausibility is the key but only to some extent can't just leave it to happenstance to get a Hoth or Dune, or can we?

Traveller has had world generation it it's rules for since it's inception (as gar as I'm aware) and I have a fondness for those strings of hexadecimal data but they are limited and lacking. There is also the case where worlds get dreadfully dull when they are expressed as little more than said string of hexadecimal codes. 

I've been toying with an expanded Traveller compatible system for years always feeling the original just didn't go far enough.  Atmosphere as density and composition in one code...how limiting, where was the surface temperature, ambient radiation, and more? All the seas of our solar system are not water surely there would be a difference in the rest of the universe.

My last posted start at expanded world generation included world classes, AtmosphereiDensity, Atmosphere Composition, Types of asteroids, asteroid use, Hydrology Class (not just seas of water), the cloud decks of gas giants and  radiation levels. I didn't get it all wrapped up. I havn't played traveller in years and traveller does have one or more expanded world and system generation systems out there. Time to set my sites further afield.

What would you find necessary and evocative in the descriptions of worlds for sci-fi gaming?  Is it safe to have a world be one descriptive biome, or should things get pickier? How picky er uh, detail oriented should it be?

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