CT Only: The Asimov Cluster

[Enoff]

I've been enjoying a BBC radio drama recorded in 1973 of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. The sound effects remind me of an old Doctor Who episode. Its fun to enjoy some old classical Sci-Fi. With a bit of serendipity I stumbled on to a Traveller article while perusing an old Dragon magazine that gives the specs for the Foundation planets mentioned in the series.

I immediately thought oh wouldn't it be fun to run some sort of Traveller Foundation campaign, then I thought wow that would be a pain to map out the whole thing. Why would I want to map out a whole universe of stars when my campaign idea might take place on only a few of them? Then I thought of a hand wavemum idea to deal with the whole thing. I at first thought about translating the jump number into a warp like drive and then I thought the easiest thing would be to translate the jump number into time traveled between a jump.

The base time would be six weeks in jump space, to anywhere! Distance wouldn't mater, sort of like a Dune idea of folding space, all that would matter would be having the correct coordinates. The higher the jump number equals less time in jump space, J6 would mean a jump to anywhere takes one week. Perhaps to add some danger it could also be a factor of accuracy and safety. But again you have to have the coordinates and it would be easiest to figure out a jump to a closer star then a farther one and tie a player's navigation skill to figuring that out. But for well known planets there would be the purchase of a jump cassette, meaning that a jump from Terminus (the planet of the Foundation) to Trantor (the Imperial capital) would be easy. No need to map out a whole universe!

 

[kilemall]

If I was going to go this direction, on first blush I think I would say it takes 8 days to jump and each jump number takes a day off. Six weeks of life support and crew costs on the slim pay per trip will bankrupt Free Trader Beowulf on the first two jumps. Still gives a reason for the stateroom too even for the fast ones.

'Faster' ships and cargo fees getting a multiplier of value, J# times .5- so J-1 cargo goes for 500 Cr per ton, J-2 1000 Cr per ton, up to J-6 3000 Cr per ton. Faster turnaround too, but of course all limited by the fact most people don't need to ship at premium express 'speed', so a segment of the cargo business would be available for every price point/jump.

FT Beowulf would have a tough set of margins under those conditions, the standard design might emphasize passenger space more and tend to the larger worlds to make payments, which wouldn't be a problem since there would be no reason to go to intervening small worlds due to jump range. Going to a small world would involve a choice for adventure, charter or payoff on the speculation tables.

 

[whulorigan]

As an alternative, if I recall the way spacecraft functioned in the Foundation Universe, Hyperlight Jumps were actually instantaneous, but had an (unspecified) range, which seems to have been a limit imposed by the ability to make reasonable navigational calculations - i.e. the farther away, the more complex the astrogational calculations required. So some worlds would require several "hops" (with layover time for astrogation) in order to get navigational bearings for safety purposes.

The major amount of time in transit between worlds was based more upon the time it took to maneuver to a safe minimum-distance within a system (apparently jumps were affected by gravitational wells like in Traveller). Since thru most of the Foundation saga vessels still relied upon advanced (albeit conventional) reaction-drives, most ships would do a "burn-and-coast" in-system requiring days to a couple of weeks to reach a safe jump-distance (and the same in reverse when arriving in the destination system). In the last books, a prototype ship with a reactionless gravitational drive appears which is much faster in-system (I do not recall if the M-Drive was inertialess or simply continuous-thrust like in Traveller).

 

[Enoff]

Great thoughts guys!

Well my main purpose about being able to jump anywhere, even though this wouldn't be easy, would be to get away from the tradition map. I guess you could call this cinematic jump travel. The planetary system maps would be more important than making a hex map of every star in between Terminus and Trantor.

I would want to keep everything as simple as possible, play-ability over complexity, "less is more" concept.

 

[Enoff]

Plus in a Dumarist way, with the "Slow drug" and "Low passage" the long travel time could be overcome.

 

[Enoff]

Wow I wonder if this is legit? Did Asimov make a map of his galaxy? Don't see Terminus or Trantor on the map though.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Where did YOU get it from would be the question.

 

[Enoff]

Where did YOU get it from would be the question.

Oh good question! I back tracked where the image was from, a blog where the owner states he was at a book signing of Asimov's where he signed the owner's copy of the Foundation and these home-brew maps he had made. So the signature is legit but the map is made by a fan

http://servitorludi.blogspot.com/2011/08/maps-of-asimovs-foundation-trilogy.html

 

[HiverLord]

Great map.

Trantor is the closest habitable system to the galactic core, per the books.
I believe it would be the closest dot to the center, near the "1".

Terminus is, of course, at the edge of the galaxy.
I believe #"2" would be the proper location.

Of course, I can easily be wrong in these assumptions...

Interesting ideas for a campaign, and how to run the jumps within. I think I will have to 'borrow' them.

 

[Enoff]

Thanks for your insights about the locations on the map!

I guess there might be a key to the numbers somewhere.

 

[warwizard]

As to the hyper drive, the 4th book where the hyperdrive does thousands of jumps a second clearly shows the progression from dangerous and slow to ultra fast and safe as the robots worked on the safety aspect, yet there were still hazards that could kill a human like being too near to a supernova as it went off, the shields stopped everything except the neutrinos. I came to hate Daniel by the end of the book.