Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post

Anaraxes · 07-25-2011, 08:56 AM

GURPS Space has a nice discussion of different sorts of FTL drives and their consequences.

I wouldn't start with Traveller rules to play a Star Trek game. The two are pretty different in most base assumptions and background.

Jump-1 is not very "slow", actually. 3.26 lightyears per week is about 170c, which is about Warp 5.5 on the TOS scale. If you remember Kirk ordering the ship out of orbit at the end of every episode, the Enterprise was usually cruising at warp factor 1 or 2. Anything over 6 was an emergency, and a risk.

The problem is that space is big, really really big, and the Traveller maps show that better than the TV show. One interesting thing about http://www.travellermap.com/ is that you can zoom out to galaxy scale. That enormous map you're used -- 11,000 worlds in the Imperium, a year from end to end if all you did was travel, all the surrounding states, more space than you know what to do with or could possibly detail -- is a tiny little patch on the galaxy. So Trav might feel slower because you have a better appreciation of just how far you could go. Federation space is pretty small. Memory Alpha lists 911 pages for "planets" -- and that's every place that ever got mentioned on any show from any season or movie, most of which I don't recognize. It's 1% the size of the Imperium; no wonder you can get around it faster.

In practice, Star Trek ships travel at the speed of plot. They show up at the next planet at the start of the adventure (one per week, just like Jump-1...) Time pressure to get to another planet a known distance away just isn't a common plot element for Trek. Plenty of "rushing" to help out with some emergency delivery or technical aid, yes, but not a lot of examination of a map and calculation of transit time, detailed calculations of how much fuel it takes, how much food / "replicator energy" the crew is going to consume, etc.

07-25-2011, 08:56 AM	#4
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Converting Jump to Warp. GURPS Space has a nice discussion of different sorts of FTL drives and their consequences. I wouldn't start with Traveller rules to play a Star Trek game. The two are pretty different in most base assumptions and background. Jump-1 is not very "slow", actually. 3.26 lightyears per week is about 170c, which is about Warp 5.5 on the TOS scale. If you remember Kirk ordering the ship out of orbit at the end of every episode, the Enterprise was usually cruising at warp factor 1 or 2. Anything over 6 was an emergency, and a risk. The problem is that space is big, really really big, and the Traveller maps show that better than the TV show. One interesting thing about http://www.travellermap.com/ is that you can zoom out to galaxy scale. That enormous map you're used -- 11,000 worlds in the Imperium, a year from end to end if all you did was travel, all the surrounding states, more space than you know what to do with or could possibly detail -- is a tiny little patch on the galaxy. So Trav might feel slower because you have a better appreciation of just how far you could go. Federation space is pretty small. Memory Alpha lists 911 pages for "planets" -- and that's every place that ever got mentioned on any show from any season or movie, most of which I don't recognize. It's 1% the size of the Imperium; no wonder you can get around it faster. In practice, Star Trek ships travel at the speed of plot. They show up at the next planet at the start of the adventure (one per week, just like Jump-1...) Time pressure to get to another planet a known distance away just isn't a common plot element for Trek. Plenty of "rushing" to help out with some emergency delivery or technical aid, yes, but not a lot of examination of a map and calculation of transit time, detailed calculations of how much fuel it takes, how much food / "replicator energy" the crew is going to consume, etc.