Black holes

[Daddicus]

I looked up black hole on the Traveller wiki. I found decent descriptions of what black holes are and do in the real world.

However, is there anything in the rules dealing with them? I searched for the term, but nothing came up.

If someone has something, please let me know. Otherwise, keep reading.

Assuming that there really is nothing, then I have an idea around the concept of a moving black hole.

When a ship is in jump space, if any object (in real space) with more mass than a ship which comes within 100D (of the object) causes the ship to fall out of jump space.

So, picture a scene where the object that causes the drop out of jumps space is a black hole (thus not visible to astrogation techniques).

Now, because of the nature of blackholes, they might affect jump space as well as normal space, at least for a short time.

Also, if 100 D is outside the event horizon, the ship won't automatically be sucked in. Plus, the ship would maintain its momentum from before it jumped.

This could mean that a slingshot effect might occur, causing the ship to be propelled literally anywhere in the galaxy.

Now, as a ref, I can only reasonably use this one time, I think. After all, how many black holes are there wandering around the galaxy? And, what are the odds ...?

Still, I think I'm going to use it once. My party is in the Spinward marches. After I exhaust the old CT adventures there, I think I'll use this.

What do you guys think? Too far-fetched? I'm not creative enough to "translate" module locations, so I'm thinking of doing this instead.

 

[jcrocker]

You're right about it being usable only once.

If it did force a ship out of jump space, yes a black hole could potentially slingshot a ship away. It still wouldn't be fast enough to get them anywhere in the next week or so, unless they were forced out of jump space right at the edge of a star system. So that would just be a fancy way of killing the party.

If you're looking to transplant a campaign then a referee fiat "bizzarre one-time black hole/jump space interaction that is at the boundary of current knowledge and impossible to replicate or test" would be about the only real option - they experience a wrenching shudder, the lights flicker, warning bells sound, and they roll the dice a few times before the ship exits jump space in whatever system you tell them.

Anything else as far as I can see would just be a version of 'rocks fall you die'.

 

[warwizard]

A nicer way of doing this would be to discuss this with your players, after all it's a shared story, too much referee fiat will cause a revolt. It only takes one player saying HELL NO! to destroy the adventure.
"I weld the hatches to engineering shut and lockout the controls from the bridge and set the power plant to destroy itself."

 

[SanDragon]

Black Holes!

[m;]Link Deleted[/m;]
Dragon Magazine #35
PDF pages 13 (magazine page 11)

 

[Daddicus]

Thanks for the tips, and that article! I forgot Dragon had articles about Traveller (and just about every other game under the sun). I'll have to go through my stash of old Dragons.

Thanks!

 

[Daddicus]

By the way, I do plan on discussing it with them. I really want the players to learn about the Ancients, and that four-adventure set seems like a good way to do it. But, I started them out way on the edge of the Spinward Marches, so getting them there would be a real treat.

I figure when I'm done with the material from around where they are (S/M), I can use this (once) to give them an unanticipated super-jump. But, it darned well won't be random. A random jump of that distance is likely to doom the ship, so it will "by chance" just happen to end up near a star with a world (one of the two early adventures in that set).

 

[Lycanorukke]

[m;]Link Deleted[/m;]

Ow ow ow. That article on BHs was painful in its wrongness.

Granted it is over 30 years old and before Dragon went mainstream, but I though we knew a bit more than that about BH's in the 80's.