Missing Rules

I just looked at my copies of the reprint and there is an astrogation chart with travel times noted between all the named planets in the original trilogy, plus rules for determining travel times to other, unnamed planets.

It is a light game, however, and there are still many things not really covered in detail.
 

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Have you ever discovered, after some play, that a RPG was missing a rule or a class of rule?
I've played RPGs that have no clear rule for how a scene is to be opened, or closed. I think it's probably one of the most common gaps in RPG rules.

For example, you started with local adventures and when it is time to move farther a field you discover the game has no travel rules. Like that.
Classic Traveller is actually not too bad in respect of the scene issue, at least for many sorts of scenes. But it does have some gaps. The one that caught me by surprise was the absence of rules for actually exploring on-world. I discovered this in the third session of a campaign, when the PCs set off in in their ATV, in pursuit of some NPCs who had left the domed city to return to their military installation.

Up until that point the game had played tightly - very impressively for a 40-year old game (this was in 2017, playing the 1977 version of Traveller as slightly tweaked by me drawing on some ideas in later versions). But at this point it fell apart - there were rules for working out if the PCs' vehicle suffered a mechanical problem, but no rules for working out if/how they successfully track and/or catch the NPCs. The rules seem to assume that I will have already mapped the planet, and will be tracking everyone's movement on a map, classic D&D style, but (i) never actually say that, and (ii) don't address the fact that this is a ridiculous approach in a game which is premised on the PCs moving very regularly from world to world.

As to how I handled it: at the time I think I just fudged something, perhaps with a type of sheepish confession to the players. Once I narrated the PCs having arrived at the installation, the system worked tightly again (the vacc suit rules, the encounter distance rules, the vehicular evasion rule, etc - these were all great). After that, we basically ignored onworld travel: if the PCs needed to get from A to B onworld, they flew there in their starship or in a small craft. A bit of a pity, because some parts of the vehicle rules I think are quite good, but a necessary compromise.
 

I have not seen all three edition core rule books, but could it depend on whether the book the OP is using the original edition, Second Edition, or Second Edition Revised and Expanded?
That chart is in 1st ed. It was later revised to be hours instead of days. (In the 1e Star Wars Rules Companion, so, essentially, 1.5e. Page 17 thereof.) A similar chart is reprinted in 2E (2e p 112, 2R&E p 117), but labeled hours instead of days.
For reference, 2e lists Alderaan, Bespin, Celanon, Corellia, Coruscant, Dagobah, Dantooine, Endor, Gamorr, Lianna, Sullust, and Tatooine - giving travel times between each pairing. 1e lists Alderaan, Bespin, Correlian (sic), Dagoba, Dantooine, Endor, Tatooine, and Yaavin.

A couple supplements also included more localized tables for specific clusters.

Note that the movies imply hours, but the actual travel times were not discussed. I genuinely prefer a galaxy of days travel to the minutes to hours of Disney Star Wars, but that also makes Luke's dagoba to Bespin survivable in a fighter (1d 3h vs 27 days)...
 

Note that the movies imply hours, but the actual travel times were not discussed. I genuinely prefer a galaxy of days travel to the minutes to hours of Disney Star Wars, but that also makes Luke's dagoba to Bespin survivable in a fighter (1d 3h vs 27 days)...

I'm aware of the charts. A chart isn't a system unless it covers every option. I have my own chart for like 120 star systems within a single sector. But there are 1000 sectors and something like 400,000 chartered inhabited systems and tens of thousands more operated by smugglers and squatters and illegal corporate operations without a charter. Granted, I doubt a map existed at the time they made the charts so any means of systemizing things would have been nigh impossible because at the time no one would be able to say how far apart any two systems were.

I also agree that travel times in days make more sense than travel times in hours for true galaxy traversing jumps (as opposed to jumps within sectors where I think hours are fine). And I think you are correct, 27 days in hyperspace is beyond the range of an X-Wing in just about every respect to say nothing of pilot comfort.

My system rates that a 4 sector outer rim jump between a charted world and a developing world, normally requiring 12 days even in a ship as fast as an X-Wing - still beyond an X-Wing's range. But.... Luke almost certainly wouldn't have plotted a direct jump between those two points, and if you do it right, you can cover Dagobah to Bespin in a hurry. First, Dagobah while almost never visited is actually on the Rimma Trade Route. So you can plot a jump from Dagobah to Eriadu on one of the fastest routes in the Galaxy. That jump only takes 24 hours by my rules. From Eriadu you can now jump on the Lipsec Run to Gerrenthum in the Javin Sector. That jump takes less than 2 days. Finally, there are local trade routes in the Javin sector, and if you look at it Bespin is on one. So Gerrenthum to Bespin is actually pretty darn fast. That jump probably takes no more than 5 or 6 hours. In total, Luke can make the trip in around 3 days. That's within the range of an X-Wing (even round trip!) and while Luke wouldn't have been comfortable, it's theoretically doable. It's also possible that Luke knew of local cells in the Sluis or Javin Sector where he could stop for a few hours to get resupplied and stretch his legs. More on that in a bit.

The real issue in the Lore is that both Hoth and Dagobah are on trade routes! They aren't really even obscure systems (like Yavin actually is). They are actually not only charted Republic worlds, but are potential stop points along trade routes. This makes them anything but secure hiding places. Like, the Empire easily has the resources to investigate Hoth without straining the fleet in any way. Hoth is even by the lore in a rather important trade sector. These are systems that existing resources would be used to monitor. Maybe Yoda easily hides from sensors, but an arriving fleet in the Hoth system probably doesn't. Part of the problem here is the Legends lore diverges over the question of whether or not you have to plot jumps on hyperspace routes or not. Some of the lore indicates that the only jumps you can make are jump point to jump point along standardized routes and that you can't just jump willy nilly between any two points but have to traverse in real space to particular points and then follow the routes like roads. But lots of lore seems to dispute this as well. I've resolved this by saying normally, most jumps are plotted very routinely to minimize the chance of accidents, but that you are free to take out your nav computer and plot as inefficient of jump as you like through rarely used hyperspace.

Another issue is that if Luke did in fact use the hyperspace routes, his jumps into important systems like Gerrenthum and Eriadu probably weren't without incident. Contrary to Andor season 2, you can't just jump an armed snub fighter with its transponder off into a major civilized system without coming under notice. Note that in season 1, we get a much better take on this with Andor using a common civilian craft without its transponder on and evading local interception on a somewhat backwards corporate world, until they check the logs and notice it. If you try doing this on Coruscant, Gerrenthum, or Eriadu, you will get noticed in a hurry, especially if scans determine you are a military vessel. So I would expect that the best possible flight path I outlined above would get hot in a hurry, especially since in the case of the outbound flight from Hoth to Gerrenthum, he'd have been jumping in a sector where the Imperial fleet had just engaged the rebellion and local customs and other naval assets would have been on high alert. There might be entire undocumented adventures in trying to save fuel and life support consumables to make a jump to Dagobah, or from Dagobah back to Bespin.

But then again, maybe Luke was high enough ranked (as Commander of Rogue Squadron) to have information about local rebel cells in this part of the galaxy, and could have availed himself of local infastructure by jumping to systems other than Gerranthum and Eriadu but which were still well suited (probably with secret Rebel route mapping or purchased from sympathetic smugglers) to utilizing the existing galactic hyper-routes, got himself a hot meal and a shower and refueling at some small hidden base, before continuing on. This would avoid multiple combat engagements and made the whole thing a lot less stressful.

UPDATE: The point of this discussion is to draw a sharp contrast between whether rules define narrative or narrative defines rules. Because I have a system narrative is forced out of it by the choices the rules force on to characters - including Luke Skywalker. It's easy to see why Lucas, adapting the real adventures of Luke Skywalker into a movie chose to leave out lesser incidents for the purpose of pacing. He was making drama, not a historical documentary. The fact that it took two weeks for the Death Star to go to Yavin from Alderaan, or that Luke potentially had encounters with the Empire on the way from Hoth or back to Bespin doesn't have to be spelled out in the movies.
 
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One thing that bugs me about Fantasy AGE, is that Green Ronin decided on purpose, that they wouldn't give daily travel distances and any guidance for travel. It's not listed in the index. 'It's just not that kind of game' they answered to my question.

I came here to mention this same thing (though about Dragon Age), except I think I actively designed travel rules, but they were probably influenced by RuneQuest or some other game of similar period.
 

Have you ever discovered, after some play, that a RPG was missing a rule or a class of rule? For example, you started with local adventures and when it is time to move farther a field you discover the game has no travel rules. Like that.

The whole of Classic D&D is missing some pretty vital rules for pacing and pressure: campaign timekeeping, expenses and upkeep, and training to level up. Had to import them from Advanced D&D, albeit drastically streamlined.
 

The whole of Classic D&D is missing some pretty vital rules for pacing and pressure: campaign timekeeping, expenses and upkeep, and training to level up. Had to import them from Advanced D&D, albeit drastically streamlined.

I'd argue that none of that is actually missing from Classic (B/X, BECMI) D&D but, rather, that it's not present by design because Classic D&D deliberately doesn't concern itself with such things (I.e. it isn't that kind of game). I also think that's why AD&D exists as a separate and distinct game line (because it is that kind of game).
 

Yeah, I think there's a difference between rules that clearly should be in a game but are missing (like 'how to make a skill roll in the first place, and what happens if I'm not proficient but want to try') and things that a given person would like to see in a game but the game just doesn't cover or actively doesn't want.
 

I'd argue that none of that is actually missing from Classic (B/X, BECMI) D&D but, rather, that it's not present by design because Classic D&D deliberately doesn't concern itself with such things (I.e. it isn't that kind of game). I also think that's why AD&D exists as a separate and distinct game line (because it is that kind of game).

That's a possibility, but I hold that TSR D&D doesn't really function properly without them. We probably just have differing ideas for what it means to say that the game is functioning properly. I'm sure my notion of it is idiosyncratically narrow.
 
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Yeah, I think there's a difference between rules that clearly should be in a game but are missing (like 'how to make a skill roll in the first place, and what happens if I'm not proficient but want to try') and things that a given person would like to see in a game but the game just doesn't cover or actively doesn't want.

Fundamentally, "what happens if I'm not proficient but want to try a skill roll" is exactly the same as "what happens if I want to run a chase scene where round by round motion and initiative don't make sense" or "what happens if I want to run a mass combat scene with thousands of characters on each side". The sense that a rule is missing here comes from pretty much exactly the same place. Technically, the rules are complete in the sense that you could say someone not proficient just always fails, that chases really are simulated by someone stopping and letting another move for a whole round before taking their turn, and that you could always run a mass combat with 80,000 participants by just rolling several thousand d20's and handling each character by the rules.
 
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