Let's Read: Traveller, 1977 Edition, Worlds & Adventures, page 9

I know, I'm doing a lot of these posts lately. I'm trying to get this book done by the end of next month, and I've been working on this for a long time as it is, on and off. So, I'm going to be posting these roughly two every three days to get it done.

So, we continue with Alternate World Forms. Now, we get a few examples. First, there are Rosettes, which are multiple worlds that orbit each other in a stable configuration (three of more worlds). They don't even need a central star. Needless to say, these aren't going to happen naturally, but it's a really cool idea. I might put one of these worlds in my subsector.

Next up are Ringworlds, which are basically just as Larry Niven wrote about; it's a huge orbiting ring around a star, 93 million miles in radius and a million miles wide. That's a lot of living space; three million Earths worth of living space, in fact. Columbus would have given up that around-the-world trip in a hurry.

Finally, there are Sphereworlds, better known as Dyson Spheres. It's just a massive shell around a star, completely enclosing it and trapping all the star's energy for usage on the internal surface. Again, using a radius of 93,000,000 miles around the star, the internal surface area would equal, according to the book, about a billion Earths. Frankly, with that kind of space to work with, you wouldn't need space travel; you'd never run out of things to do there.

Next up, we have a paragraph on population density. I'm not sure why this is there, but it does give some numbers for comparison. However, these numbers are woefully out of date today; the population of earth is over seven billion now, not three billion. On the other hand, the population densities are related to population levels for the Traveller world; Hong Kong, for example, is insanely dense, at 10,000 people per square mile, which would be the equivalent of population level 12 (C) for a whole world.

The bottom half of the page is talking about the Technological Index. Oh, goody. To generate the Tech Level, simply throw a single die and modify it based on the planet's characteristics. Good starports are worth a bonus (an X is a -4 to the roll), smaller worlds have good tech; water worlds, odd-atmosphere worlds, and heavily populated worlds get bonuses as well (as do low-pop worlds, since they're more likely to be outposts of advanced civilizations). There are even modifiers for government type. The highest possible rating is an 18, but the bell curve is going to be between Tech Levels 4 and 10. The higher the number, the better the tech, obviously.

So, that's it for this page; I'm going to use the information on the last two pages to finish rolling up the worlds in my subsector, and I'll have a link to the Google Docs file for people's amusement. It should be interesting. Until then, grab a book and read. It's good for you.