Cutting Room Floor: To Boldly Go, Part III

Originally published on August 19, 2013

Last time we looked at the future history for my space exploration game. Now I want to talk about my last piece of work from my preparations for that potential campaign: solar system creation.

My intent for my space exploration game was to run a hard science fiction game that would look at the effects of realistic technology on society in a realistic universe. Rather than use the techno-babble and miraculous science of Star Trek (one of the clear inspirations for the game) we would use real science and take a close hard look at what it might mean for society.

So to start I needed to have worlds that are just as real. In most science fiction the universe seems littered with oxygen rich worlds with the right gravity, often ignoring any source for this life friendly environment. The Ice planet of Hoth comes to mind. Where are the plants to support the atmosphere of this world? And in a universe of force fields and artificial gravity where are the mining colonies on airless rocks?

With that in mind I turned to finding a good tool for creating realistic solar systems, at least to the limits of our current knowledge. Since the original conception of this game used the GURPS system, it is no surprise that I decided to use its comprehensive system for randomly creating a solar system. Making my work easier was a spreadsheet put together by a fan of the game to randomly create solar systems. Based on GURPS Space rules, it creates relatively realistic star systems swiftly.

Using it is pretty simple. The user enters two numbers: a seed for system generation and a second seed for the specific star system. It then does the hard work of generating planetary masses, orbital radii, and planetary types. It calculates orbital radius, temperatures, and more. You can zoom in on each world or moon that is created to learn more about it.

Other tools I decided to use in my Fate implementation of this game was the GURPS alien creation system, also from GURPS Space. I am less happy with this choice as I think the creatures derived from that system are more random than I would expect alien life to be. So I intend to use it as a jumping off point, using ideas from actual evolutionary theory to inform my creations. An interesting resources for that is the book After Man looks at what life might be like 50 million years in the future by using past evolution as a guide. Other inspirations are the TV-miniseries The Future is Wild and the docufiction Alien Planet. The first looks at possible future evolution while the other speculates what an alien world might be like.

In the next few weeks I plan to show you what I've done with these resources and how I've used it to create interesting settings and societies. I'll be including game material for using these in Fate as well.