JTAS 21st February 2012

[AndreaVallance]

Another Mark Gellis issue, and definitely one of the better ones :)

Loren's editorial: Yes I know what a hostel is and a flophouse (and incidentally a dosshouse too), but I came out with the dinosaurs. One of his better one, with plenty of in game "usability" given how often characters end up needing flop space. Also should point at Loren's excellent (and extremely useful for gaming) small hotel module http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=LKW005

Whats in the system? (4500 words): Must say not my cup of tea, my playing style doesn't reach into space that often. But that's my personal tastes. However well written and useful for a naval campaign. Adding in the local system defense forces would have been a nice bonus, maybe another article for Mark sometime.

Go Die in the Desert (5000 words): Yet more about the Chamawa system from Mark. This I think marks the third one specifically about Chamawa and fifth about the county of Adryanne. Put them together and we must have around 30,000+ words on this. Yet again good solid material with plenty of adventure hooks.

[Mgellis]

Originally Posted by andrewv

Another Mark Gellis issue, and definitely one of the better ones :)

Whats in the system? (4500 words): Must say not my cup of tea, my playing style doesn't reach into space that often. But that's my personal tastes. However well written and useful for a naval campaign. Adding in the local system defense forces would have been a nice bonus, maybe another article for Mark sometime.

Go Die in the Desert (5000 words): Yet more about the Chamawa system from Mark. This I think marks the third one specifically about Chamawa and fifth about the county of Adryanne. Put them together and we must have around 30,000+ words on this. Yet again good solid material with plenty of adventure hooks.

Thank you for the kind words.

I left out the local system forces (aside from defense boats and emergency response vessels--there are rules for those) because there were just too many variables.

At a guess...medium-sized worlds (one million to one billion people) have four small starships (1,000 dtons or less) like patrol cruisers to protect merchant shipping. High population worlds have sixteen small ships (four flotillas) and one cruron (or a batron with older ships) for power projection. (In fact, I think I will use that as the basis for material I will add to a future article.)

Speaking of future material, one thing I've worked up for a future article is a list of reference works people can use to gather information...some of them basically Third Imperium versions of real reference works like Combat Fleets of the World. Now, along with rumors, there will be ways to find out the truth about some of them. :)

Also, there is a small error in the Chamawa article. The "Excuse of the Week" table is missing the first of the six entries:

"1. A distant cousin of one of the player characters lives in Nasu and asks him and his friends to visit (or asks him and his friends to visit and help solve some problem the community is facing)"

[Mgellis]

Okay, the bit about local interstellar forces has been worked into another article involving ships that I'm going to send in fairly soon. With any luck, it might be in the next JTAS.

Thanks again.

[AndreaVallance]

Originally Posted by Mgellis

Okay, the bit about local interstellar forces has been worked into another article involving ships that I'm going to send in fairly soon. With any luck, it might be in the next JTAS.

Thanks again.

Ohhhh will look forward to it, actually rather more useful for my own personal style (must reiterate, the lack of interest in space thing is just a matter of my own personal playing style, I can still recognise a good article when I see one :) )

And you are most welcome, though I am constantly amazed at your output.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

Originally Posted by Mgellis

At a guess...medium-sized worlds (one million to one billion people) have four small starships (1,000 dtons or less) like patrol cruisers to protect merchant shipping.

At a deduction, worlds with a population one thousand times bigger will not have the same number of ships. It will probably not be a linear function, so perhaps not a thousand times more (though IIRC that is what the only canon we have on the subject implies), but, say, five times more for ten times the population (OK, that part is a guess, but that the number will be bigger is, IMO, axiomatic). So the world with the billion people would have perhaps 125 times the investment (probably bigger ships on the average, so not 125 times as many ships).

Sure, it would be more helpful for designing adventures if fewer worlds had space infrastructures that dwarf the power and ability of a single PC-run starship, but four small ships for a world with 999 million people just won't fly, if you'll pardon the pun. Nor will sixteen small ships and a squadron of warships for a high-population world.

And for once I'm not going to add an 'IMO'. Not in this case.


Hans