Organic vs Random System Generation in Traveller

[Hal]

Hello Folks,
tjoneslo made a comment in the T5SS thread that got me thinking about issues I've identified for my own Traveller Universe, that I suspect Marc Miller is going to have to address sooner or later. Specifically this post:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=558085&postcount=509

In any event, here are some thoughts to consider, and maybe bring to Marc's attention. Failing that, then perhaps this is something that people may want to consider for their own "IMTU" creations...

tjoneslo rightly questions why certain worlds, colonized since the Intersteller War period prior to the creation of the Third Imperium, have low population levels. He also raises indirectly, the issue of the history of the Third Imperium's expansion. In what years were any given world colonized within say, the Spinward Marches? Why are there Garden Worlds (prime real-estate for colonization) with low populations, when there are barely habitable asteroid belts with BILLIONS (or is it TENS OF BILLIONS) populations? Historically, governments that tax its populace heavily, end up with decreasing levels of population expansion, and can even experience population contraction. When the birth rate drops below 2.1 children per woman in her lifetime, the population tends to contract. The 2 children are required to replace the father and mother, and the .1 child is necessary to offset the accidents, the genetic maladies, or even the decision to not have children at all - where people don't even reach an age for reproduction etc. There are other factors such as food availability, genetics, diseases, etc - that can affect long term growth (for example, England from the time period of about 800 AD until 1500 AD, experienced roughly only three tenths of one percent population growth.

Does Marc Miller have any guidelines on the organic changes involved with the Traveller Universe? If not, then everything has to be done by fiat - whether by GM Fiat, or by Writer Fiat, which is fine to some extent. But for others, who want to have some sort of "historical guideline" or "timeline" for events, would do well to have SOMETHING.

Something as simple as "Founding" or "Colonization" dates would have a major impact on the organic feel to any sector. Something as simple as "When did a given world become a member of the Imperial Moot?" would have an impact as well. The newest incarnation of Marc's system rules for determining what nobility, if any, are present on a given world, HINTS that some worlds without a Noble at Social 12+ aren't really represented at the Imperial Moot. This in turn implies to me, that many of the non-moot member worlds are protectorates or even the responsibility of bureaucratic organizations within the Imperial Government that rules the space between worlds. It has to have some domain over uninhabited star system inside its galatic borders, otherwise said worlds can be colonized by entities not of Imperial Origin.

Human Nature - that is what tends to define how solutions are arrived at over time. Would you expect that a given world in 1105 would have the same government type as it had in the year zero? Probably not. Would you expect any given world whose government is what it is in 1103, to be the same government in the year, say, 1105? Seems like there are terrorist organizations trying to bring down governments in the Official Traveller Universe. Surely they can't all fail, and the original government remains as is, unchanged!

What about worlds that were originally colonies of a nearby "Major World", but have since grown to become members of the Moot? Wouldn't there be some sort of "cultural" affinity or shared cultural foundations akin to a Mother Nation and its colonies (French colonies, English colonies, Dutch colonies etc) even a few hundred years after the colony achieved Moot status?

There doesn't seem to be that "organic growth" aspect to the Traveller Universe. What happens when a Member world undergoes a peaceful transistion from one government type to another? What happens when a member world undergoes a transition violently, to a new government type? Can a Moot world lose its membership with the change of government?

<shrug>

That's all dependent upon the GM in the construction of "In My Traveller Universe". Why doesn't the OTU have that? This - particularly, is what I'm questioning. Where are the details for the OTU that have bearing on any "Changes" for T5's universe?

Maybe someone who is a fan of TRAVELLER can suggest concepts to Marc, or write them FOR Marc or what have you. Maybe this is a futile crazy dream, and will never be realized. No biggie.

 

[flykiller]

Why are there Garden Worlds (prime real-estate for colonization) with low populations, when there are barely habitable asteroid belts with BILLIONS (or is it TENS OF BILLIONS) populations?

probably because the garden worlds were put off-limits right from the start, giving the nobles a place to build their chateaus/dachas/villas, and the rockballs were devoted to industry right from the start, allowing maximum industrial output with minimal environmental impact.

 

[Hal]

probably because the garden worlds were put off-limits right from the start, giving the nobles a place to build their chateaus/dachas/villas, and the rockballs were devoted to industry right from the start, allowing maximum industrial output with minimal environmental impact.

While I won't argue the merits of that statement - not because I think it needs arguing(!!!), but because of the Implications of your statement there...

1) It implies that the Third Imperium has the power and authorization to make that ruling to begin with, and the power to enforce it.

2) it also implies that member worlds are unable to access a nearby system in order to colonize it for their own needs at a time where the planet was discovered, and NOT part of the Third Imperium.

My point is, that these "Garden worlds" in the Third Imperium region of the SPINWARD MARCHES would have had a high priority for colonization almost at the start. When did the Scout Survey discover the Garden World? Who discovered it before then? Was it discovered AFTER the region was colonized to the extent that the Third Imperium held sway over it?

At what point was the border of the Third Imperium recognized by the Zhodani Consolate? All of these "non-organic" random system generation rules, cause issues in the believability of "human nature" forces.

In the end, Marc Miller can simply leave this issue alone and say it belongs in the domain of "IMTU" creativity for the people who run a Traveller Campaign universe - or he can say "This needs to be addressed" - which is what seems to be the prevailing idea behind the semi-official T5SS thread.

Have you ever played Civ 4 (I stopped buying the Civilization series of programs once it went to STEAM). You place a colony somewhere where it will thrive, and it grows VERY quickly. Place it somewhere where it won't, and you watch it remain at a pop level 3 or 4 if that. But because colonization takes time to create and costs money to maintain in the game, players rarely ever plunk a city down in the Sahara Desert region unless it is useful.

Same with the history of man. The good real-estate gets taken first. Wars are FOUGHT over prime real-estate being more valuable than sub-prime real-estate. I can easily see how a garden world would have a balkanized government if four planetary governments attempted to settle the world at nearly the same time. I could also see where some garden planets might have bacteria, fauna, flora etc - that make the world less than desirable to colonize. Until you take into consideration that some governments might simply say "Bulldoze the land, seed it with less dangerous flora, and hunt the fauna into extinction."

So - Organic versus random. If you have to use something that is contrary to human nature to explain the "Random" aspect, might that be a bad sign?

Again, I'm not in campaign mode to impose MY vision of what should or should not be. I'm simply saying that if Marc is going to make "adjustments" because things should make more sense, fixing a gargoyle on the roof of a building that doesn't have siding put in, sort of looks odd (so to speak).

MILLIEU ZERO and its accompanying POCKET EMPIRES lists the rate at which the borders of the Third Imperium expanded outwards. FIFTH FRONTEIR WAR background information indicates when worlds were colonized, without - unfortunately, telling us WHO colonized them. All of the rest of the worlds don't even have approximate colonization dates, but their current low populations seem to imply that they were relatively recent in origin, or have a really SLOW Population growth for some reason as yet unexplained. Yes, it requires the gm to do that rationalization, and causes one to become creative. But when those rationalizations cause more problems than they solve, something needs to be done.

Final comment? Maybe you're right. Maybe a bunch of powerful individuals did just what you described in your post. But that kind of "action" would have had repercussions. What would those have been?

 

[flykiller]

1) It implies that the Third Imperium has the power and authorization to make that ruling to begin with, and the power to enforce it ... My point is, that these "Garden worlds" in the Third Imperium region of the SPINWARD MARCHES would have had a high priority for colonization almost at the start.

and who pays for that colonization? who is most able to move anyone in? who authorizes land for settlement? who has legal standing to say, "yes" or "no" and "go" or "no-go"?

less the "Third Imperium" and more the knight or baron on the scene. (picked a vilani word to describe this. "irkhuar" - a low-level official whose immediate presence gives him more authority and influence than his rank supports. a useful concept in a jump-transited interstellar society.)

But that kind of "action" would have had repercussions. What would those have been?

vacant garden worlds and jam-packed rockballs.

I see what you're saying about desiring a more organic process. I just think that would be part of the organic process.

 

[kilemall]

RTT WorldGen has a major element in it, how long has the system been open to interstellar colonization, terraforming tech pop effects (and a side effect of how long in Long Night for those collapsed civs) that may address your concerns.

https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/RTT_Worldgen

As to whether MWM has to address this, I don't see why he should be compelled to submit to sim ideas of world generation. It's intended to create weird, use imagination to explain instead of crutching on some standard model of how things happen.

 

[flykiller]

It's intended to create weird, use imagination to explain

yeah, explanations for the weird 1% outliers can be fun. but when you're doing it for the 20th time it gets a little draining.

 

[Garnfellow]

I have "gamed" through the development of some of the sectors spinward of the Solomani Rim, and I think it's been illustrative. Initially, human settlement patterns would reflect the habitability of available worlds. Unless your colony ship suffered a catastrophic misjump, all things being equal you'd pick the garden world over the hellworld every single time. More habitable worlds require less resources to develop.

So you start with pockets of disconnected seed colonies sprinkled through the sector. Centuries pass as these colonies take root and the population begins to grow. Eventually these seed worlds start to expand into neighboring space, "filling in" the map. Up to this point development probably tends toward a logical progression, prioritizing habitability, proximity, and resources. A marginally habitable world 1 parsec away from a seed colony is more likely to be settled before an airless rockball orbiting a white dwarf 4 parsecs away. Worlds connecting seed words are going to get starports before worlds at the end of a spur or on the edge of a rift.

Eventually human populations start to have planetary impacts on the original colony worlds. Worlds become overpopulated, atmospheres become polluted, climates change, genetically manipulated species run amok, whatever. You start to get interstellar interaction and even conflict: cultural, economic, military. This can have dramatic effect on development patterns.

And here's the thing: over centuries, this sophont interaction basically acts as one huge randomizer for population distribution, and you end up with something looking very much like the product of Traveller world gen. High TL and interstellar trade dissolves the importance of habitability on settlement patterns, so people go where the jobs are. The time and physical scales of the OTU are so large that you could have worlds that have been settled, boomed, crashed, and resettled multiple times over.

To put it another way, look at the population distribution of Earth. We have plenty of empty places in regions that have been settled for millennia, and we have very dense populations in areas that have nothing to do with habitability. Montreal in February is a good illustration of combining a Class A starport, a bustling, vibrant population population, and a frozen hellworld.

This disconnect between population and habitability is fundamental to the OTU. It makes worlds highly interdependent and interstellar trade necessary. It also makes the interstellar societies surprisingly fragile: disrupt trade and everything comes crashing down quickly.

tl;dr Traveller worldgen reflects a mature interstellar society where social concerns trump planetary characteristics for determining population distribution.

 

[GypsyComet]

A few scattered thoughts:

Settled since the 1st Imperium is not the same as settled continuously. Economies and business plans fail, populations crash, or the neighborhood contributes to retreat toward safer havens.

The Long Night was likely a hard reset for a lot of worlds (as was Virus millennia later). Some small worlds would stick it out, turning into weird Star Trek OS style cliches with high frequency, but the Vilani cultural and commercial mindset would have closed a lot of branch offices, and thus entire worlds, during the Twilight.

Complex biologies have more opportunities to be poisonous in relation to humaniti, whether subtle or aggressive. Vacc worlds are very predictable and controllable by comparison.

Some of the races subjugated by the Vilani could have taken the Long Night as their opportunity to clean house and make their own space, causing population shifts, grand plans, and collapses per Thought #1. Prime example is the Aslan, though they didn't start under the Vilani thumb, but the Geonee, Suerrat, and likely a few others would have had the same thoughts.

 

[mike wightman]

My preferred method for my homegrown subsectors is to roll the physical stats, then the population stuff.

Match the two as I think makes most sense and then determine starport and TL.

Works for me.

 

[flykiller]

More habitable worlds require less resources to develop.

yeah, if you're aiming for a bucolic lifestyle. would a space culture, heavy on tech and work and machinery, aim for that? heh, many modern people get freaked out over roaches - imagine them seeing roaches for the first time. more likely colonists would follow their traditional habitat environments and go where the jobs are, meaning go where the work is. and this might be steered to those "rock balls", because 1) that's where the accessible resources are?, and 2) that leaves the garden worlds free to be the industrial owners' and nobility's undisturbed playground.

 

[whartung]

I think it was atpollard that suggest rolling up a sector, then rolling back the planets to TL 9 -- the arrival of jump drive. That is, roll back every planet 1 TL at a time until the highest TL is TL 9. Similarly, you reduce the population.

At this point, any planet that can not sustain itself at its TL is wiped of population, TL, star port, etc. Odds are that TL8 with 999 population didn't get there on their own, or there was some devastation that created the population (and then, are they really TL 8 any more?). So, yea, I think you just flat wipe out any planet with < 1M or 1B people. The premise being that you're searching for worlds that could have organically grown in place.

You can set a limit, such as you can have Tainted atmospheres at TL 7+, say, but you need to make that an industrial taint, not a natural one. (Or you can evolve the population to breath that air unassisted.) But there are certainly worlds that are not sustainable without high technology, and these just get wiped.

Now, you have a starting point of indigenous worlds and a "space race" can begin. You can lightly game out the expansion of the TL 9 worlds as they expand out to nearby systems, and perhaps the rise of the lower TL worlds who achieve jump independently.

My biggest issue with this is trying to determine how fast a society can colonize and expand. Because once you hit Jump, any reasonable industrial capacity can have a fleet of ships out exploring quite quickly. Think how many systems can be visited within a year.

Colonization happens after that, but you'll certainly have to deal with population growth issues. Historically, we've only grown 2-3% a year here. Long term, that add up. At 3%, 10,000 people only grow to about 200K over 100 years. 3.7M over 200 years.

The point being you need to play with the numbers, and the question becomes how to curtail a very rapid expansion, at least at the colony level. Perhaps digging in to the T2300 story where nation states separately did colonization rather than the world united as a whole.

 

[flykiller]

The premise being that you're searching for worlds that could have organically grown in place.

why? they didn't start organically, they all started as transplants and presumably would have had and still have had some kind of reason to exist and thus some kind of support.

 

[Chris Barlow]

Why garden worlds may have low poulations

The nature of world generation in most versions of Traveller, where population levels are determined without any reference to the habitability of the world is basic cause of this. However over the years's I have come up with a few potential explanations:

1. Is your garden world in a system near an interstellar border? This is not uncommon in the Spinward Marches/Solomani Rim sectors. Corporations are very unwilling to invest in, and people to settle a system that could very quickly become a war zone or be conquered by another state leading to existing inhabitants being expelled/killed. This effect is pervasive even on Earth, where geographers call it the "border effect". Basically if a place is near an international border, it has far fewer inhabitants, businesses and lower economic growth that would be expected all other factors being equal.

2. The planet may have enough similarities to Earth to be a garden world but still not be inhabitable by humans. Possibly it is impossible to grow vital human grain crops such as wheat/rice due to local parasites, lack of earthworms in the soil etc. No locally grow-able food leads to few/no settlers.

3. Yes it is a garden world - unfortunately due to fairly frequent solar flares or meteor strikes few people want to take the risk of living there.

4. Its a garden world with a large number ( tens to hundreds of millions) of local predators who would have to be killed to allow it to be settled by a large number of people or other sophonts.

5. Its a garden world NOW thanks to hundreds or thousand of years of Terraforming. The current population are those who are carrying out the terraforming, the next few decades will see a massive increase in population. If the planet is in the Third Imperium the Imperial Ministry of Colonization will be deciding who gets to inhabit the place.

6. The planet is a garden world but any humans/Aslan/Vargr living there for long are rendered sterile and unable to have off-spring. Cause of this as yet unknown so few people wanting to take the risk of living there.

 

[kilemall]

yeah, if you're aiming for a bucolic lifestyle. would a space culture, heavy on tech and work and machinery, aim for that? heh, many modern people get freaked out over roaches - imagine them seeing roaches for the first time. more likely colonists would follow their traditional habitat environments and go where the jobs are, meaning go where the work is. and this might be steered to those "rock balls", because 1) that's where the accessible resources are?, and 2) that leaves the garden worlds free to be the industrial owners' and nobility's undisturbed playground.

I like the combo of Blade Runner's Offworld Colonies and Outland. Basically the equivalent of rundown cities and all the jobs 'out there' like the US Old West.

 

[aramis]

What are the odds of native life?
What are the odds of that life being intelligent?
What are the odds that a world in the Hab Zone was terraformed by the Ancients?
What are the odds that a world has transplanted species thanks to the Ancients?

These are VERY important questions to ask oneself when looking at the world gen, IMO.

Given that we KNOW the Children of Yaskodray were all over the map in their experimental approaches... another question to ask:

Given the quasi-Schizophrenia of the Ancients as a culture, do their works have to make sense to us?

 

[kilemall]

The MgT Worldgen process actually answers your first two questions, largely a matter of chance predicated on the life of the star, but doesn't touch the latter two at least directly, other then native full biomes with sophonts that occasionally pop up and one could declare is Ancient placed.

 

[whartung]

why? they didn't start organically, they all started as transplants and presumably would have had and still have had some kind of reason to exist and thus some kind of support.

But were they seeded with the high tech support to keep them alive in the inhospitable environment, yet not with the high tech knowledge of jump?

The idea is to work backwards to find the world(s) that were seeded, then grew, then developed the TL necessary for Jump, and then reached out to inhabit the stars.

I'm no historian or lore keeper, but pretty sure a lot of the inhabited planets were colonized rather than seeded.

 

[Hal]

The nature of world generation in most versions of Traveller, where population levels are determined without any reference to the habitability of the world is basic cause of this. However over the years's I have come up with a few potential explanations:

1. Is your garden world in a system near an interstellar border? This is not uncommon in the Spinward Marches/Solomani Rim sectors. Corporations are very unwilling to invest in, and people to settle a system that could very quickly become a war zone or be conquered by another state leading to existing inhabitants being expelled/killed. This effect is pervasive even on Earth, where geographers call it the "border effect". Basically if a place is near an international border, it has far fewer inhabitants, businesses and lower economic growth that would be expected all other factors being equal.

2. The planet may have enough similarities to Earth to be a garden world but still not be inhabitable by humans. Possibly it is impossible to grow vital human grain crops such as wheat/rice due to local parasites, lack of earthworms in the soil etc. No locally grow-able food leads to few/no settlers.

3. Yes it is a garden world - unfortunately due to fairly frequent solar flares or meteor strikes few people want to take the risk of living there.

4. Its a garden world with a large number ( tens to hundreds of millions) of local predators who would have to be killed to allow it to be settled by a large number of people or other sophonts.

5. Its a garden world NOW thanks to hundreds or thousand of years of Terraforming. The current population are those who are carrying out the terraforming, the next few decades will see a massive increase in population. If the planet is in the Third Imperium the Imperial Ministry of Colonization will be deciding who gets to inhabit the place.

6. The planet is a garden world but any humans/Aslan/Vargr living there for long are rendered sterile and unable to have off-spring. Cause of this as yet unknown so few people wanting to take the risk of living there.

Many of the things being pointed out above, end up being grounds for a Red or Amber zone classification. As for the rest - Terra-forming as a concept says essentially, that you take a region and wipe out what is already there and replace it with what is required to survive. Even something as simple as right handed sugars and left handed sugars may make certain plants inedible where it comes to human consumption - but once the proper crops are introduced, the proper bacteria, etc - the growth of human habitable farmlands become less of an impediment to colonization. Then there is the issue of the technology that permits one to grow food in hostile environments. Which would YOU rather live on...

A barren world where the slightest mistake by your children places them in a cemetery (or be recycled to their constituent parts?) or on a garden world where you don't have to be as vigilant in not having pressurization habits drilled in, or protective clothing habits instilled, etc? Human nature being what it is, and the process that leads to maturity from childhood to young adult status - would seem to indicate that high risk low survivability environments are going to be difficult overall.

That doesn't mean mankind won't advance to the stars per se because they can't find garden worlds, but it does suggest that mankind would prefer to be able to live in an environment that does't require strict attention to surviving in one's environment. Even the desert born humans have it tougher than those living in coastal areas, but they don't have to wear protective suits just to be able to breathe! Water can be reasonably found etc. Contrast living on a lunar surface with mining required to procure water, having to worry about depressurization on a constant basis where one person's mistake could wipe out an entire community, etc. Yes, such Lunar colonies will develop people who are by nature, ultra conservative in their behavior (ie, constantly careful and trying to avoid mistakes), but by the same token, it will take a special breed of humanity to give up living in a garden world environment to raise a family. Just because a world can export colonists doesn't necessarily mean that the people will flock to the new world - especially if it is several orders of magnitude more difficult to survive within than their original garden world environment.

I never had issues with the low population resource mining communities. I never had an issue with people, once they perfect the means for living in artificially maintained environments, spreading out to systems with marginal or hostile environments - I just don't think that the garden worlds would be left untouched unless there were REAL issues, and said real issues should be red zone issues.

Why? What do you think would happen if say, Great Britain (I just used England as an example, pick any nation if you'd rather!) had said "We have discovered a region totally unpopulated by people, is ideal for farming and has abundant resources - some suitable for export even, but you can't settle here because we claim it"?

If the real-estate was worth it, and the land in question required Great Britain to expend considerable resources to make their proclamation stick, how long would it be before squatters made the effort to land there and set up their own colony in defiance of England's policies? How long before war would break out as other nations geared up to say "Hey, you have no right!"?

In the end? It largely won't matter what route people go with this largely because every GM will likely customize the OTU into their very own "IMTU". Customizing the Rim worlds because of the background history for the Julian Protectorate implies that there was sufficient economic production to make a further war with a young Third Imperium back down, implies two things to me.

One: make the facts back the narrative. If the facts make the narrative become less believable, then tweak it until it can support the narrative

Two: If the Julian Protectorate was able to cause the Imperium to back off in the early years of the Third Imperium, would not the Julian Protectorate have had the same time to mature as the Third Imperium had? Would not the Julian Protectorate have the same level of advancement for its mature worlds as the Third Imperium had with its?

These are "organic" versus "Random" type questions. GURPS SPACE has mathematical formula for determining maximum sustainable population. Anything in excess of this results in the world's per capita income being lowered. I would imagine that any world that has a cost involved for life support in a hostile environment (such as air purification costs, water purification or reclaimation costs etc) will also lower the general overall per capita income available for discretionary spending. Those who do not have to pay this cost, in competition with those who do have to pay such a cost, would likely have a relatively richer lifestyle.

Just musings.

 

[BwapTED]

Let's say we get a vacuum world with low TL but high pop. Why would humans live there in such numbers?
Maybe they don't.

Who says it has to be humans?

The inhabitants might be ''prindigs'' (Solomani term I picked up), in this case evolved for airless conditions.
Scads of primitive little aliens tunneling under the surface with simple tools. They have some exotic physiology which doesn't require breathable air. Ice-eaters? Mineral eaters? Chemical furnaces inside their guts?

 

[whartung]

Collapsed High TL society with "inaccessible", but self-maintaining life support.

The inhabitants live in a techno cult worshipping the maintenance system.

All they know about the outside is these "gates to hell" with two doors, that have been reduced to altars for sacrifice and execution when the air lock opens and vent to vacuum.

The maintenance system refuses to let them open both doors at once, since they simply don't know the override sequence. Even the priests don't know it.