Eight digits and a name

The digits that state a world at a glance.

A world is one line of text. The basic planetary characteristics — size, atmosphere, hydrology, population, government, law level, technology level, starport and bases — are generated by two-dice throws with modifiers taken from the characteristics already rolled, and the result is a concise one-line coding that, with a little practice, can be quickly and easily read. That line is the universal world profile, and everything else in this chapter either produces a character of it or reads one.

These characteristics establish the basic identity of a world. Additional information can be generated, and should be, to more fully describe it — but the profile is the part that travels. It is what a subsector map prints in a hex, what a broker quotes at you, and what you read before deciding whether to land.

The eight characters between the hex number and the remarks are the profile proper, and their order is not the order they are rolled in. Starport is printed first and thrown sixth; technology level is printed last, after the hyphen, and thrown last as well. The hyphen carries no information — it is there so the eye finds the technology level without counting.

Each character is a pseudo-hexadecimal code, so a value above nine still fits in one column. Inside this chapter that never runs past F, because no digit the world tables produce exceeds fifteen — but the ladder itself keeps climbing well past F, and the letters I and O never appear on it at all. Read a profile character off the ladder rather than off a character code.

Two of the fields hold two-letter codes and they come from different vocabularies. The remarks field carries trade codes, derived from the profile; the last field carries an allegiance, which nothing in this chapter throws for. Position is the only thing that tells them apart, and a two-letter string is not enough to identify which kind you are looking at.

Some of those steps may be reordered and some may not, and the difference is worth knowing before you improvise. Starport and government both read population and neither reads the other, so swapping them changes nothing. The last four are not free: the pirate throw reads the naval result, so the bases have a fixed internal order, and belts, gas giants and bases all draw from the same run of dice — any permutation of them produces a different system from the same dice.

The hex map, and what a hex holds.

The presence of star systems is marked on hex maps, each hex representing one parsec. For each system, generate a universal world profile for the primary world. A hex is either occupied or empty, and which it is takes exactly one die.

The basic one-half chance is what makes a subsector feel like a place rather than a grid. Eighty hexes at even odds gives roughly forty systems and roughly forty gaps, and the gaps are what make a jump-1 ship’s route a real question. The Referee may alter the normal chances to correspond to specific regions of the galaxy, and the four options above are the printed ones.

A rift sector is the sharpest of them. At -2 a hex needs a 6 on one die to hold anything, so about one hex in six is occupied — and a rift is not merely emptier, it is a region a short-legged ship cannot cross at all.

The diameter digit, and what it implies.

The size characteristic for inhabitable worlds ranges from 0 to 10, and is determined by rolling 2D6-2. It is the first digit thrown and the one most of the others read: atmosphere adds it, hydrographics adds it, and population is modified by it.

World size

2D6 - 2

From size 1 onward the diameters climb in even steps of 1,600 km per digit — size 0 is the exception at 800 km — and the gravities do not climb evenly at all. Between size 5 and size 6 the diameter goes up by the usual 1,600 km while the gravity jumps from 0.45 to 0.7, a step of 0.25 matched only by the one from size 8 to size 9. Size 8 is the Earth-sized row at 12,800 km and 1.0 g, and everything about how a character functions on a world is read from the third column rather than the second.

The throw is flat 2D6, so size 5 is the commonest result at one world in six and sizes 0 and 10 are the rarest at one in thirty-six each. A size-0 world is 800 km across and typically an asteroid, and it is the row the rest of the chapter keeps making exceptions for: it forces atmosphere to 0, it forces hydrographics to 0, and it guarantees the system a planetoid belt.

Reference rule — not active yet

Surface gravity, by size.

Worlds where the gravity is 0.75 or less are low-gravity worlds, and worlds with a gravity 1.25 times or more that of Earth are high-gravity worlds. Both punish a visitor the same way and for the same reason: your body is calibrated for something else, and it takes weeks to recalibrate.

The penalty is not to movement or to lifting. It is to all skill checks, which is a much larger thing: for 1D6 weeks a low-gravity world makes you worse at gunnery, at talking to people and at fixing a drive, and it does so because your hands are landing in the wrong place. On a low-gravity world there is one way out of it — characters with the Zero-G skill at level 0 or better acclimatize instantly — and that exemption is printed for low gravity only, which makes a single level-0 skill worth more on the light worlds than anywhere else in the game.

There is one consequence that outlasts the visit, and it runs in one direction only. Those who spend too long on low-gravity worlds cannot tolerate higher gravities — so a character who settles somewhere light does not simply pay the modifier again on the way home; they stop being able to go. Nothing symmetrical is printed for a character who spends too long somewhere heavy.

What you can breathe, and what you need to.

A planet’s atmosphere is generated by rolling 2D6-7 and adding the planet’s size. If a world’s size equals 0, then its atmosphere equals 0. The atmosphere code should never be higher than 15(F).

Atmosphere

2D6 - 7 + size, and 0 outright if size is 0

The fourth column is the one that decides what a landing costs. Four rows want a vacc suit, three want a filter alone, one wants a respirator and filter together, one wants a respirator alone, one wants an air supply, one says the requirement varies, and five ask for nothing at all. Those five — 5, 6, 8, 13(D) and 14(E) — are the only atmospheres a character can simply walk out into, and the last two are on that list only because the gear column is empty rather than because the air is safe: both are described as unbreathable everywhere but a narrow band of altitude.

Insidious is the one that changes how a landing is played rather than what it costs. Corrosive kills you in rounds and you know it immediately; insidious lets you walk around for 2D6 hours in gear that is quietly being eaten, and the failure arrives when the seals go rather than when you step outside. Two of the type descriptions — Dense, High and Thin, Low — are not hazards at all but geography: they say where on the world people can live, which is a different question from what they have to wear.

How much of the surface is liquid.

Hydrographic percentage is obtained by rolling 2D6-7 and adding the world’s size, modified by the world’s atmosphere or size. It is how much of the surface is liquid, and it is the last of the three physical digits — everything after it is about the people.

Hydrographics

2D6 - 7 + size, plus the conditions below, held between 0 and 10 (A)

A world’s hydrographics value should never exceed 10 (A), nor may it be lower than 0. Both bounds are stated, which is worth noticing because the digit before it is given only one of them.

The -4 condition is doing most of the work and it is doing it in the right direction. It fires on atmospheres 0, 1, A, B and C — no air, trace air, exotic, corrosive and insidious — which are the atmospheres least able to hold surface liquid, and it drags the digit down by four. Atmosphere E takes -2. Every other atmosphere leaves the throw alone.

How many people, as an order of magnitude.

A world’s population is generated by rolling 2D6-2, modified by the world’s size, atmosphere and hydrographics. It should never exceed 10 (A). This is the digit the whole second half of the profile is built on — starport, government, law level and technology level all read it, and one of its results shuts three of them off entirely.

Population

2D6 - 2, plus the conditions below, capped at 10 (A)

Atmosphere 6 — standard, clean, no gear — is worth +3, and it is the largest modifier on this throw. Atmospheres 5 and 8 take +1 each, and anything from A upwards takes -2. So the population digit is mostly a statement about the air: a world people can breathe on gets three extra pips, and a world that is exotic or worse loses two.

If a world has a population of 0, it is uninhabited, and the world also has a government, a law level and a technology level of 0. That is a cascade rather than a modifier: three later throws are not made at all, and three digits of the profile are settled by this one.

Sometimes it is enough to know that a world has hundreds of millions of people on it. Other times a Referee or player wants a more specific number, and the population modifier is what turns an order of magnitude into a head count. It is 2D6-2; if the population is greater than 0 the minimum modifier value is 1, and if the population code is 0 then the modifier is 0 as well.

People on the world

population modifier x 10 raised to the power of the population code

So a population modifier of 6 on a world with a population code of 5 means six hundred thousand people live there. The modifier is the first of the three characters in the profile’s last numeric group, which is why a world’s real head count travels with it on the map: the code says the order of magnitude and the modifier says where in it.

The class of port, and what it can do for you.

Many worlds have starports, their presence being essential to interstellar trade and commerce. To determine a world’s primary starport, roll 2D6-7 and add the world’s population. Each class offers different levels of service, and the class is the single digit that most changes what you can actually do when you arrive.

Primary starport

2D6 - 7 + population

Read the Best Fuel column first, because it is the one that decides whether a jump from here is safe. Refined fuel exists at classes A and B and nowhere else; C and D sell unrefined; E and X sell nothing at all. So on more than half the classes your options are unrefined fuel or no fuel, and a class E frontier port is a patch of ground with a beacon on it.

Annual maintenance is available at A and B only, and shipyard capacity narrows faster still: A can construct starships and non-starships, B can construct non-starships, C can perform reasonable repairs, and D, E and X can do nothing. There is no class at which you can build a jump-capable hull except A, which is why an A-class port is a strategic object rather than a convenience.

Because the throw adds population and subtracts 7, the class is mostly a restatement of how many people live there. An uninhabited world cannot beat a 5 and so cannot better a class D. A population-10 world cannot do worse than a 5 and reaches A on a natural 8 or better. In between, each population pip moves the class about half a grade.

Who is in charge, and how.

The government characteristic is determined by rolling 2D6-7 and adding the world’s population. If a world’s population equals 0, then its government equals 0. The code should never be higher than 15(F), nor lower than 0.

Government

2D6 - 7 + population, held between 0 and 15 (F)

The table is a list of kinds, not a ladder of severity. Nothing gets worse as the number climbs: a company town at 1 and a religious autocracy at 14(E) are simply different arrangements, and the only ordering the number carries is the one the throw gives it. Two of the entries are not really governments at all — 0 is None and 7 is Balkanization, which is a world with several governments and no single one.

The number matters far more than the label does, because law level is thrown from it directly and technology level reads it as a modifier. A government of 13(D) or 14(E) costs the world two full pips of technology level; a government of 7 gives it two. Those are the only two entries the government column contributes above a single pip, and they pull in opposite directions from adjacent-looking numbers.

What is prohibited, and how hard it is enforced.

Law level is determined by rolling 2D6-7 and adding the government characteristic. If the world’s government is 0, then its law level is also 0. Law level should never be less than 0.

Law level

2D6 - 7 + government, never below 0

The third column reads as a running total rather than as a list of separate rules. Each row names what becomes prohibited at that level, and a world at law level 6 is understood to prohibit everything the rows below it name as well — poison gas at 1, portable energy weapons at 2, heavy weapons at 3, and so on up to the firearms named on its own row. That is why level 9 can say any weapons outside one’s residence: by then everything specific has already been listed.

What this digit decides is what a character may carry in the open. What a world then does to somebody it catches carrying it is a separate question, answered by the referee’s own rules on law and sentencing rather than here. This section owns the digit and the printed list beside it.

What the world can build.

The technology level of the world — also called tech level, or TL — is determined by rolling 1D6 and adding a modifier from every other digit of the profile. A world’s technology level may not be below 0. It is thrown last because it is the only digit that reads all the others.

Technology level

1D6 + the starport, size, atmosphere, hydrographics, population and government modifiers, never below 0

Read the grid down its columns rather than across its rows. Take your world’s starport and find its modifier in the Starport column; take your size and find its modifier in the Size column; and so on for all six. A blank cell is no modifier. Then add all six to one die.

One die is a very small amount of randomness against a modifier that routinely runs to eight or ten, which is the point: technology level is almost entirely determined by the rest of the profile. The single largest entry in the grid is the +6 an A-class starport gives, and the single largest penalty is the -4 for having no port at all. A high-population, well-ported world is going to be high tech whatever the die says.

Certain world conditions must meet a minimum technology level requirement. If the world possesses a lower technology level, then the Referee should increase the world’s tech level to the required minimum.

Every one of the four conditions is about keeping people alive somewhere difficult. A world with no free water or nothing but water needs technology 4 once it has a real population; a tainted or thin atmosphere needs 5; anything below very thin, or exotic through insidious, needs 7. They are floors rather than modifiers, so they apply after the throw and only when the throw came in under them.

The shorthand that says what a world is for.

Trade codes are assigned based on a world’s UWP values. They are derived rather than thrown: once the profile is finished, every code whose conditions the profile satisfies is written into the remarks field, and a world may carry several at once or none at all.

A blank cell is not a zero and not a wildcard — it is the absence of a condition. Water World requires only that hydrographics be 10 and asks nothing about size, atmosphere, population, government, law or technology; High Technology requires only a technology level of 12 or better. Read a row as a list of the tests it does impose, and ignore everything blank.

Several of the rows imply each other, and that is by design rather than by accident. Every Asteroid world satisfies Vacuum, because Asteroid requires atmosphere 0 and Vacuum requires nothing else. Every Industrial world satisfies High Population, because both want a population of 9 or more. And every uninhabited world satisfies Barren outright, since population 0 forces government and law level to 0 as well and Barren asks for exactly those three zeroes.

This section owns how a world earns a code. What a code is then worth — which goods a world wants, which it sells cheaply, and what a broker will pay — belongs to the trade rules, which read these two letters and nothing else from the profile.

Belts in a system, and what they are worth.

Planetoid belts exist in many systems, and are mined by belters for ice, ore and other interesting things. To determine whether a given star system has any, throw 4+ on 2D6; if belts are present, the number of them is 1D6-3, minimum of 1.

Number of belts, once present

1D6 - 3, minimum 1

The presence throw is generous and the count throw is not. A 4 or better on 2D6 fails only on a 2 or a 3, so eleven systems in twelve have belts at all — and then 1D6-3 with a floor of 1 gives exactly one belt on a die roll of 1, 2, 3 or 4, two on a 5 and three on a 6. Two thirds of belted systems therefore hold a single belt, and three is the most any system can have.

If the primary world of the system is size 0, then there is at least one planetoid belt in the system automatically. A size-0 primary is itself 800 km across and typically an asteroid, so the guarantee is really a statement that a system built out of rubble has rubble left over.

Gas giants, and skimming them for fuel.

A star system may have one or more gas giant planets. Gas giants are relatively common: for each system throw 5+ on 2D6 for at least one to be present, and if any are present the number of them is 1D6-2, minimum of 1.

Number of gas giants, once present

1D6 - 2, minimum 1

The presence of a gas giant allows starships equipped with fuel scoops to refuel by skimming. This eliminates fuel cost for the vessel and increases profit, and it also allows refuelling at systems that do not have starports. Refuelling in this fashion requires 1D6 hours per 40 tons of fuel.

That is the throw that decides whether a system can be operated in at all without paying somebody. A world with a class E port sells no fuel of any kind; if it has a gas giant, a ship with scoops can still leave, and if it has none, the ship arrived with the only fuel it will ever get there. Read the third character of the profile’s numeric group before you plot a route through a thin region.

The count is more generous than the belts count by exactly one pip: 1D6-2 with a floor of 1 gives one giant on a 1, 2 or 3, two on a 4, three on a 5 and four on a 6. So half of gas-giant systems have a single one and a third have three or more.

Naval, scout and other bases.

Stellar systems may have bases for military forces, the navy, the scouts, or for other arms of interstellar government. While other bases may exist, the two primary ones are the naval base and the scout base — and a third, the pirate base, is thrown for here as well.

Bases can help determine political boundaries within a given region of space. An interstellar government will place bases along its borders to guard against aggression from rival states, or to control local systems, so the presence of multiple bases within a few parsecs might indicate a contested border or a mighty stronghold. That is what makes the base row worth reading on a map: it is the only part of a profile that says something about the neighbours.

The three throws are not independent and their order is fixed by the third one. The pirate throw reads whether a naval base was placed, so the naval throw must be made first; the scout throw reads only the port class and could in principle go anywhere, and it is thrown second because that is the printed order. Throw them out of order and the pirate result is being decided against a naval base that has not been rolled yet.

The scout modifiers run the opposite way to intuition and it is worth reading them twice. A better port makes a scout base LESS likely: a class D port throws 7+ flat, a class C throws at -1, a class B at -2 and a class A at -3, so an A-class world needs a 10 or better. Scouts put their outposts where nobody else is, which is exactly what the modifiers say.

The presence of one or more bases is designated on the hex map with a base code in the upper-left of the world hex. Five codes cover every combination that can actually occur: three bases give eight possible combinations, one of which is no bases at all and carries no code, and two of the remaining seven — naval with pirate, and all three together — are exactly the two the pirate condition forbids, since a pirate base requires that there be no naval base. So the five printed codes are complete rather than partial.

Reference rule — not active yet

Amber and red, and who declares them.

Most worlds are assumed to be civilized, or at least amenable to adventurers and other visitors. Some, however, are caught in the throes of war, plagued by disease, or simply not ready for interstellar visitors, and those are classified by travel zone. Two zone types exist: amber and red.

An amber world has been deemed dangerous, and travellers are warned to be on their guard. Amber worlds are often undergoing upheaval or revolution, or else are naturally hazardous environments — the warning covers a civil war and a corrosive atmosphere equally, because the consequence for a visitor is the same.

Red worlds are interdicted and travel to them is forbidden, and interdictions are enforced by the Navy. A red zone can mean the world is too dangerous to allow visitors — and it can mean other things, because nothing printed constrains it.

Reference rule — not active yet

Which power a world answers to.

Worlds may be independent, or part of a larger polity that spans a system or more. Polities range from loose confederations of a few worlds with common trade or defence policies or cultural links, to vast star empires containing thousands of systems and trillions of citizens.

Polity borders should be drawn on the map, and larger polities will usually have sub-domains which should also be marked. That is the whole of the printed procedure: allegiance is drawn rather than thrown, and the map is where it lives.

The practical consequence for a crew is that allegiance is the one field of a world profile that can change without anything about the world changing. A border moves, a confederation dissolves, an empire annexes a cluster — and eight characters of profile stay exactly where they were while the last two are rewritten.

Reference rule — not active yet

The lanes between worlds, and what runs them.

Within the subsector, governments will have established communications and trade routes connecting some — but not all — worlds. Messages between businesses, governments and people generally follow these routes, and they are the one step of world creation that cannot be run on a single hex.

Communications routes are drawn as single lines connecting hexes on the subsector grid, and they should be drawn carefully so as to avoid making all parts of the subsector accessible. A subsector should have some areas left as backwaters for exploration and adventure — which is a design instruction rather than a procedure, and it is the only place in this chapter where the rules tell you to leave something out on purpose.

The two rows are the two halves of an economy. The first pairs a world that MAKES things with worlds that hold raw material — asteroid, desert, ice-capped, non-industrial. The second pairs a world that has money and mouths with worlds that grow food — agricultural, garden, water world. A route is a statement that one end needs what the other end has, which is why it is drawn between finished worlds rather than rolled on either of them.