[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I gather you aren't using GURPS Control Rating, Legality Class, and Corruption statistics?

Indeed not. The gadget that generated the physical stats of the planets is based on the advanced star-system generator in GURPS Space 4th ed, but it has significant, pervasive differences. And I'm not using any of the social stuff from GURPS Space. I'm not using GURPS-style "Habitability" ratings or resource value modifiers; I'm not using GURPS' society types (which in my view conflate society with government); I'm not using GURPS' tech levels; I'm not using the Special Justice Group. And I'm not using GURPS' Control Ratings.

There are several reasons.

• Although I will be using GURPS for the particular campaign that provoked my current flurry of creative activity, mostly I don't, and most of my players don't have and don't want to get copies of GURPS. If I used GURPS terms of art I'd have to re-define them in the key, and wouldn't be able to use them game-mechanically as intended.
• Even though I don't use these games myself, I would kind of like this material to be accessible and to people who are running The Thousand Suns, Stars Without Number, Starblazers Adventures, Ashen Stars, Universe, Traveller, the Star Wars RPG, and perhaps even Space Opera or the Star Trek RPG. Real-world terms (such as metres and kilograms) will be best where available, numerical comparisons to Earth, and at worst word scales.
• I'm not very happy with some of the GURPS constructions. Habitability ignores crucial factors for habitability, RVM has effects that are way too dramatic, Society Type confounds society with government, and CR conflates
  1. strict weapons control
  2. politically repressive restrictions on free speech and assembly,
  3. high tax rates, and
  4. conversion of government revenues to the use of the rulers.
  Those are factors that I would like to separate for science-fictional purposes, however much they might be correlated in historical example (though I can think of plenty of governments before 1914 that had tax rates low by modern standards but neverless extensively embezzled and misused). E.g. the Empire is incredibly controlling of IDJ, but charges no taxes and has almost none of its revenues spent for the advantage and pleasure of its rulers.
• I am trying to keep the option open for publishing some of this stuff some day. Steve Jackson Games have asked me not to publish unauthorised material useable with GURPS nor to include GURPS stats in generic material. So I'm not going to put in on the basement what I will have to hack out to build the observation deck.

EDIT: I like the green color much better!

Splendid!