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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shades of Green" data-source="post: 4476776" data-attributes="member: 3297">More on Traveller.A basic concept of Traveller is that communications are limited to the speed of travel - there is no "hyperwave" or "subspace", so the fastest way you could communicate is by courier ships, and these at best could cross 6 parsecs (about 19 light-years) in a week-long Jump. Most ships are far slower - a week-long Jump for them cross less parsecs (a parsec is approximately 3.26 light-years). Due to this communication lag, large interstellar governments have to be fairly decentralized - as asking for specific orders would take week, months, or even years. This is a good thing for the game as it means that PCs in a frontier area are on their own, with the major authority figures tucked away a few weeks (at most) of jumps away.As I've mentioned in my previous post, Traveller has a comprehensive random system for generating worlds. Each world has eight characteristics - Starport (how good the port facilities are), Size (how large/heavy is the world), Atmosphere (what atmosphere it has - some kinds are breathable, others are not), Hydrographics (which percent of the world is covered with water or other fluids), Population (how many people are there), Government (general class of government - e.g. Representative Democracy, Impersonal Bureaucracy, Charismatic Dictatorship and so on), Law Level (how restrictive the world's law enforcement system is, especially in regard to guns) and Tech Level (how advanced is the local technology, ranging from "0" for stone-age to "15" or "16" for sci-fi high-tech). Generating worlds in Classic or Mongoose Traveller is fast once you're experienced with it - I've recently generated a whole subsector (see below) of around 30 worlds in about 2-3 hours.As an abstraction, Traveller uses 2D space maps (rather than realistic 3D). It isn't very realistic but its very comfortable to work with. The game divides space into hex-grid "subsectors" of 8 parsecs by 10 parsecs (neatly fitting unto an A4 page). Four subsectors are a quadrant; four quadrants (or sixteen subsectors) are a sector; and four sectors are a domain (in the official universe's Imperium, and Archduke rules a domain). Most campaigns could be played in a single subsector or quadrant, or, at most, a sector.</blockquote>

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