[Space] example system stats

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Prime Evil

The social and cultural descriptions generated in this sample are superb. They give just enough information for the GM to develop an interesting local culture.

Thank you. I'm sorry to disappoint, but those were produced by hand, not randomly generated.

How much variety there is in the output from the spreadsheet when it comes to the social parameters? Can the GM tweak the inputs in order to generate particular types of societies?

Again I'm sorry to disappoint. It was because of the difficulty of handling tweaks-to-setting that I chose not to implement any society-generation. I made the social data in the third post by combining some of the data from the spreadsheet that generates my own setting, and using some parts of the 'Generating a [Planetary] Society' sequence out of an old SF game called ForeSight, and tweaking, rearranging, and amplifying the results by hand.

Also, does the spreadsheet generates any of the details of native lifeforms?

None.

From the sample, it definitely looks like the spreadsheet handles multiple stars very well.

That much is a very faithful instantiation of the sequence in GURPS Space. But as it happens that instance is not randomly generated, it consists of real data for the system CD -25°1169. However this was fed in as input to the workbook through its provisions for designing or partly-designing a world, not faked over the output afterwards.

Out of curiosity, how easy would it be to use the spreadsheet to input real astronomical data from the Hipparcos or Tycho-2 catalogs and use it to generate fictional details of the star systems in Earth's neighborhood?

In principle very easy, but with one huge snag. You would put your star-list in to an extra sheet in the workbook, and then use the system number as the index to LOOKUP statements in the input fields.

The huge snag is that catalogue data do not include the ages and masses of the stars, or at least not very many of them. And the GURPS Space starsystem generation sequence takes those figures as its starting-point. You can estimate mass from spectral class, though unfortunately the sequence doesn't treat masses corresponding to some spectral classes. Then you come across the point that led to my giving up on that project: when you try to estimate age from spectral class and luminosity you come across a great many stars that are either too bright or too dim for that to work. I don't know why. It could be the result of errors in measurement: stellar distances are not known with great precision, and neither are apparent magnitudes and colour indexes.

Then there is a lesser snag in that some of the tables in the GURPS Space starsystem generation sequence might need substantial tweaks to produce the kind of universe you have in mind for your campaign.