On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Alaconius <[email protected]> wrote:
> The problem here is that with the exception of Anthony's pre-worked out > planetary location table, and that from TRANSHUMAN SPACE, there aren't many > options for GM's who want that sort of thing for their campaigns. And while > in the scope of game play, travel times that are months at a time using > "rules of thumb" that tend to be generic and also tend to require the GM to > estimate just how far away the planet is/will be when the player character > captain points their ship and says "Onwards navigator", there isn't anything > to actually GUIDE the GM. Sure, the max distance from a planet and the > minimum distance from a planet to another planet is better than nothing, but > it doesn't exist for use of GM's in made up star systems or for planets > actual locations to where the GM doesn't have to say "Today, the planet is > about 75% of the max distance, but next game session, I might decide that it > is 50% of the max distance - without any real notion of where exactly the > planet is for real. > A map of orbits that are broken into time intervals like the one in Transhuman Space is your best bet, I'd say. As such, a more useful tool would be one that generates such a map. But again: look at the map in Transhuman Space. The orbits in the outer system are segmented by years and decades; so unless you're running a Transhuman Space campaign that spans years or decades, those planets are effectively stationary. Once more, it comes down to the inner system, where weeks or months might matter. For _that_ purpose, it might be useful to segment an orbit based on where a given planet will be on a weekly or monthly basis. Try to find a reasonable time unit (days, weeks, or months) for a given planet's orbit that's in the ballpark of, say, 5% of its orbital period; that will result in the orbit being divided up into roughly 20 segments (a small enough number that you won't need a magnifying glass to tell them apart, but a large enough number that each segment won't represent a wildly different position from its neighbor). Sketch out each orbit on the map (there's a technique involving a length of string and a second focal point that can help with this) and randomly pick starting positions for each planet along their respective orbits. At that point, a version of your triangle technique can be used to figure out roughly where the next segment will begin, in a "good enough for government work" sense of "roughly". If the planet's orbital period is significantly longer than you expect the campaign to last, don't bother segmenting the entire orbit; only go a segment or two beyond your projected end-date for the campaign. If a single segment would take you beyond your projected end-date, treat the planet as a stationary body. You can always extend it later if the campaign runs long. Conversely, a planet with an orbital period significantly shorter than the expected length of the campaign should be given a time unit that divides its orbit into a whole number of segments; after dividing it up, place multiple dates by each segment indicating when it will have arrived at that point in its orbit each time around. -- Jonathan "Dataweaver" Lang _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
