Let's Read: Traveller, 1977 Edition, Worlds & Adventures, page 2

Okay, we're continuing with jump routes today. As previously mentioned, the jump routes that are generated at this stage will be the charted routes that commercial ships use. Scouts and such can go off to find new routes, but if you're flying commercial, you're going to be stuck with the existing routes. So, it's like if you're flying Southwest Airlines, you can't go from Detroit to Salt Lake City directly; you have to go to Denver first, because they don't do direct flights. Or, at least they didn't when I last flew that way. Which was a long time ago, and let's not get into my age. Moving along.

The Jump Route table is here, and it's pretty straightforward. You determine the distance between two worlds, and check which starports they each have. Find the starport pairing on the chart, and roll 1D. If you throw equal or higher than the number on the chart (based on the jump distance between the two worlds), there's an existing route. Any world next to an 'A' port (1 hex away) is going to have a charted route, although if it's an 'E' port at the other end, you have to roll 2 or more on the die to have the route. If the two worlds are 4 hexes apart, then the only way you might have a route is if both have an 'A' or 'B' port, and even then the odds are long at best.

When checking for routes, only check each pair of worlds once; no re-rolling to get a different result, even if you're checking for routes from the second world of the pair. And if you have worlds 'G' and 'H' connected by a 1-hex jump, and worlds 'H' and 'J' are also connected by a 1-hex jump, you don't need to check 'G' and 'J' for a 2-hex jump, since the route already exists via the connections with 'H'. It saves lines on the page, and makes it more readable.

So, once that's done, you have your basic subsector map finished. Great! Of course, all you have are a bunch of circles with a starport letter and some lines joining them; so far, we don't know what's actually in any of those places.

Thankfully, we now get to the World Creation section of the rules. Now that you know where they are, you can start figuring out what they are. Here, we learn that each world is classified by seven basic characteristics and the tech index (first mentioned in Book 2 when dealing with pharmaceuticals). These do go from 0 to 9, as I anticipated, but they can also have letters, A-Z but skipping 'I' and 'O' since they are too close to the numbers 0 and 1. Most worlds will be done with numbers; the letters are for special and extraordinary situations.

We are also told that there is only one inhabited world per star system. Well, that sucks; it seems to be an arbitrary decision to me. Why couldn't there be two inhabitable worlds orbiting the same star? Just because we were disappointed that we're surrounded by a bunch of dead and empty rocks doesn't mean all start are going to be like that. But, that's what we've got, so that's what we'll stick with for now.

The seven basic planetary characteristics are determined using 2D rolls, with DMs based on previously-generated characteristics. So, if a world has a breathable atmosphere, that might affect its water content, or something else. Small worlds might not be able to hold a breathable atmosphere in the first place due to their low gravity. In addition to the eight generated characteristics, though, the referee can use any other descriptive terms and characteristics he wants to, and he is encouraged to do so to flesh out the individual worlds.

Sounds good to me. Of course, that's the end of the page, so we'll be left in suspense as to what those characteristics are for the moment. But, I think I'm going to start creating a subsector of my own. Since I know the next page is just a hexmap, I'm going to use it to start creating the region that I hope to use in a game some day. And I'll keep building it as I go through the book, just because.

Yeah, that's something to look forward to. I'm going to go piece-by-piece on this over the next little while. I hope it's of interest to people. But I won't just roll dice and announce the results; I'll be creating as I go, so who knows what sorts of things will turn up with the random rolls?

And since you were kind enough to stop by, I would like to recommend my science fiction debut, Bard Conley's Adventures Across the Solar System, available on Amazon in ebook or paperback. You'll even get to see the starship I created at the end of Book 2, the Scheherazade, in action. Check it out; you won't be disappointed.