Asteroid Prospecting and Mining - rule book, supplement, whatever?

[thrash]

Originally Posted by terranstrider

Space Campaign Parameters: TL 10^, Wormhole Jump Drives, Artificial Gravity, no nano-technology. Players can access a mining ship 3,000 tons, 2g/c manouver drives, with mining module, ore & volatile processing modules and the ability to tow external cargo modules (if leased).

Some rules with tables for % chances, random events, hazards, bonanzas, etc. would be a big help.

Given your campaign parameters, this is probably a case where truly realistic rules would bore you to death.

At one point I was working on an asteroid mining supplement (or even just a JTAS article) for GURPS Traveller. I had to give it up. I couldn't find any process that would realistically pay a party of PC's enough to keep them in business as either prospectors or small-scale miners. Asteroids, to the limit of current knowledge (which is remarkably sparse, granted), are essentially commodities: you identify the interesting ones by telescope, pick the easiest to exploit, grind them up, and sort out the good stuff at the other end. I never found a reason to require visiting each one, or a mineral that would show up as simultaneously valuable, concentrated, easily exploitable once found, and not obvious from long-range spectroscopy.

If you're willing to fudge the realism, there are several rules sets with flowcharts for asteroid mining in the classic vein. In addition to the ones already mentioned, there was an article on belt mining in an early print Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society (#4, I believe). It's available on CD from Far Future Enterprises. GDW also produced a boardgame called Belter: Mining the Asteroids, 2076.

Tales of the Solar Patrol for GURPS has an asteroid miner template, and some discussion of tropes.

GURPS Traveller: First In has extensive rules for planetary surveys that could be adapted for prospecting.