Current project: a dice-rolling system for rapid sci-fi sandbox generation!
Table of Contents:
[This is part of a series of rules I'm putting together to make generating a sub-sector in a sci-fi setting fast and easy, leaning heavily on Dice-Drops and One-Rolls. These will eventually be cleaned up and compiled into a PDF to make a wholistic system. For more along these lines, look here. Thanks!]
This is probably the simplest part of the process of generating a sector of space, from the user's perspective, but for me, it's been one of the weirder processes of coming up with the rules.
The first part is really simple. Get yourself some hex graph paper. I'm using a 5x7 grid because I think there's a lot to be said for a small map. And the whole point of developing a rapid system for stay system generation is to make it easy to add new sub-sectors to a campaign, so keeping star maps small seems appropriate to me.
Then drop a standard set of polyhedral dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and d10s. Personally, I got a better spread over the map by splitting the dice between both hands before dropping. Just a pro tip there, you're welcome.
Each hex is equal to 5 light years (the average distance between stars in the Milky Way). The dice represent the location of a star system somewhere within one of those hexes.
Then add jump-lanes between your stars (they should pass through no more than 2 empty hexes).
You'll get something like this:
Then I thought maybe it was indicative of some sort of spatial anomalies, but I have an idea of how to do that later.
So I decided that I would like a table that used the results to indicate what sort of space-faring population one might expect to encounter here.
At this tentative time, my operating assumptions are that this ruleset describes a universe like Star Trek or Star Wars, where there's an over-abundance of sapient, technologically advanced societies. So, while there's plenty of "frontier space," there's also little in the way of unclaimed space.
The first thing to get a handle on was how a single table interpreting the rolls of all seven polyhedral dice was going to work statistically. This is how I wound up visualizing it.
1. Faction 1 Explorers
2. Faction 1 Frontier Settlement (pop. 1d10*100)
3. Faction 1 Abandoned Colony
4. Faction 1 Service Station (pop. 1d6*10)
5. Unexplored
6. Frontier Colony (pop. 1d10*1000)
7. Abandoned Rival Colony
8. Ancient Ruins
9. Faction 2 Settlement (pop. 1d6*10)
10. Faction 2 Explorers
11. Alien Megastructure
12. Worm Hole
13. Nebula
14. Planetary Nebula
15. Supernova
16. Pulsar
17. Neutron Star
18. Magnetar
19. Black Hole
20. Faction 1 Tamed Planet (pop. 1d20*1,000,000)
30. Faction 2 Colony (pop. 1d10*1000)
40. Faction 2 Populous World (pop. 1d10*1,000,000,000)
50. Uncontacted Alien Homeworld
60. Independent Alien System
70. Faction 1 Megalopolis (pop. [1d10+10]*1,000,000,000)
80. Faction 2 Tamed Planet (pop. 1d20*1,000,000)
90. Faction 2 Megalopolis (pop. [1d10+10]*1,000,000,000)
00. Faction 1 Populous World (pop. 1d10*1,000,000,000)
Looking back at the map. The only thing this would change is the Magnetar. Suddenly, it's a Megalopolis planet associated with Faction 2. This changes the sub-sector a lot!
For one thing, it went from unpopulated to over-populated. Faction 2, while controlling fewer star systems vastly outnumbers Faction 1. But Faction 1 controls the jump-lanes for some reason. This is now going to result in much more populous regions.
There may be something to be said for having two different table arrangements. Pick one variant for frontier space, pick another for more "civilized" space. Something to consider.
I am shocked and appalled that Save Versus Death wasn't already taken as a name on Blogger. Really, genuinely surprised.
It never would have occurred to me that I, a random novitiate so late to the OSR scene as to be entering in the latter half of 2022, would be the first Blogger to use it as a blog name.
Wild.
So, welcome to the blog. It's about my attempts to get into a) refereeing, GM-ing, DM-ing, etc., in general and b) Old-School Renaissance games specifically. I was going to call it "ARMCHAIR" because I wanted the logo to be a chair made out of arms, but, for whatever reason, some defunct-since-2005 political philosophy blog has denied me that satisfaction. And that's probably for the best. ARMCHAIR, as a visual pun, may amuse me, but it's not exactly on-brand, as they say.
Save Versus Death is very on-brand. Suspiciously so.
There is a TTRPG podcast by the name of Saves Vs. Death. There's certainly room for market confusion, but, I'm not really sure what's going on the "s" at the end of "Saves". It seems stylistically questionable, but maybe the content is good, I don't know. At any rate, that errant "s" is serving a purpose and that purpose is to sufficiently differentiate their fledgling podcast from my completely unread blog. Good job, s.
In an effort to keep this introductory post short, because these things ought not to take up more space than necessary. But some sort of introduction is in order:
Hi, hello.
I have pretty much always liked the idea of table-top gaming, but have rarely found the time or consistent-enough companionship for it, so I have mostly spent my interest in it on a purely theoretical plane. That said, at some point in the past year--lying awake, wondering where all the time goes, as one does in their thirties-- I was fretting about how few books I've managed to read in the last few years when it suddenly dawned on me that, while I've only read a handful of novels and non-fiction titles, I had read a ridiculous number of gaming rulebooks and manuals.
I am absolutely one of those people who lurks on DriveThruRPG and HumbleBundle and Bundle of Holding and buy RPG rulebooks I don't need. But I do tend to read them. I find rulebooks and adventure modules and Bestiaries and Alien Archives relaxing to read in a way nothing else is.
With this vast weight of unutilized knowledge wedged between my ears, its small wonder that when I made a pseudo-bucket list for myself on my most recent birthday, running a TTRPG was on it.
But what system!?
My friends, I was lost in a sea of potential. So many possibilities whizzed through the dank, listless recesses of my psyche, wending through ooze-clung tributaries of ill-used gray matter. Warhammer 40,000: Deathwatch? Too crunchy! Tiny Dungeon 2e? Not crunchy enough! Just do 5e? Bah, everyone does 5e!
Then, like a beacon standing upon a rocky cliff, calling me to safe harbor, Old-School Essentials blinked ahead on the horizon.
Reading OSE books and adventure modules, and using them as an excuse to explore the original Gygaxian version of the Greatest Adventure Game has been very fun and oddly inspiring in a way few other systems have been.
So, that's what I'm running. And, since I didn't feel up to creating a whole setting for my first go-round, I decided to go whole-hog on the OSE thing and run Gavin Norman's still-in-development setting Dolmenwood.
I have a lot to say about all of this (thus the blog) and am weirdly excited about it (thus, again, the blog).
Anyway, musings forthcoming!
