Experiment 3: Hollis

"The referee has the responsibility for mapping the universe before actual game play begins. The entire universe is not necessary immediately, however, as only a small portion can be used at any one time. In unsupervised play, one of the players can generate worlds and perform mapping on a turn by turn or adventure by adventure basis." - Traveller, Book 3, 1977

In the next episode of the Arioniad, Arion will arrive at Hollis and we'll start using a new solo oracle. I picked Hollis because it was helpful to have a named world at the endpoint of his travel route, and to kickstart things once he arrived there.

But that's not the experiment. Something that has been itching in the back of my mind for years now is the idea of statting up a subsector for every SF game I might ever want to play. I don't know if it will work, but let's try it on Hollis and see if it's worth pursuing elsewhere. When I say every SF game I might ever want to play, that is actually quite a small set; 5150, Stars Without Number, SWADE, and Traveller. It might turn into a mashup where, for example, I layer SWN world tags on top of CT world profiles and call it a day; it might turn into glorious insanity with immense amounts of detail which I eventually discard as being overly complex. Meh, there's always another subsector.

So, what do we know about Hollis?

Traveller

Traveller first, as that statblock already exists: A370642-C NS De Ni GG CsIm. For those of you not familiar with Traveller, that translates as...

• Starport Class A; excellent facility, can build starships.
• Size 3. 4,800 km diameter, 0.38 G surface gravity. A bit light, but never mind, it's not often it comes into play.
• Atmosphere 7. Standard pressure, tainted. Hmm. That will need some thought; maybe the other systems will shed some light on it. For now, note that you need a filter mask to walk around outside.
• Hydrosphere 0. No freestanding surface water; desert world.
• Population 6 - millions. Specifically, three million, according to Traveller Map.
• Government Type 4. Representative democracy. This is the sort of politics most familiar to the players, so that's good.
• Law level 2. Portable energy weapons prohibited, but firearms and blades are fine. That's a sort of Wild West vibe, also good.
• Tech Level 12. Average Imperial. 10-12 is my favoured range for base worlds; high-tech enough to feel like SF, but low-tech enough to be understandable.
• NS: Imperial Navy and Scout bases.
• De Ni: Desert world, Non-Industrial world. Those are the Traveller equivalent of world tags, namely trade classes; Hollis has no free-standing surface water, and the lack of industry means it must import most of its finished goods. Ni worlds tend to be mining colonies, judging by the trade tables in Book 2.
• GG: Gas Giant. Traveller ships refuel either from the port, or by scooping hydrogen from oceans or gas giants. Traveller Map says there are three gas giants.
• CsIm: Imperial Client State. The only reason I can think of for the Imperium to have a presence so far out is to monitor Zhodani activity.

Checking the Traveller Wiki (because my players will), I learn that Hollis has a high temperature, that water has to be imported and extensively recycled, and the locals speak both Anglic and Vilani, the two Imperial languages. This data appears to come either from a fan project which I can ignore, or Imperial Lines magazine issue 1; not sure if that's canon or not. I'll roll with those for now.

5150

5150 is very easy to convert Traveller planets to, as the only real stats are Planet Class and Law Level.

Looking at the descriptions of p. 58 of 5150 New Beginnings, Hollis is Planet Class 2, Law Level 2.

Hollis is actually not a bad match for New Hope in the 5150 rulebook. A bit dry and lawless, but not a million miles out.

SWADE SF Companion

Here we turn to the World Maker, SFC pages 191-193. Working through the stats there in sequence, I look at the various descriptions and match them by eye.

• Planetary Gravity: Low. 0.38 G is about the same as Mars, too low to be Normal and too high to be Zero.
• Dominant Terrain: Desert. It is, after all, specified as a desert world; this gives it a base temperature of 85 F.
• Atmosphere: Hazardous. It says on the tin you need a filter mask, so "normal" (which would have the right pressure) doesn't feel right. We then roll separately for a temperature adjustment, and get +50 F; that leaves us at 135 F. That's 57 Celsius. Bit on the warm side, that; slightly above the record for Death Valley. Wear a hat.
• Population Density: Dense. This part of the World Maker makes very little sense to me; I've spent many frustrating hours trying to match it to other games and real-world statistics, and failed every time. The wording in the SFC suggests this is some form of "population weighted density",  i.e. the population density as perceived by an average inhabitant, in effect a measure of how urbanised a society is. Given the atmosphere and temperature, I expect people are living in some sort of climate-controlled habitat, maybe in orbit, so let's say Dense. (SFC 'Dense' is only 42 people per square kilometre, which isn't terribly dense in my book.)
• Dominant Government: Republic. That makes the most sense to me for a Representative Democracy.
• Authority: Lenient. This is the SFC equivalent to Law Level, and as long as you don't shoot up the starport with a plasma gun, Hollis is fine with you.
• Customs: Nothing obvious here, so I start by looking up "Hollis" on Wikipedia to find the word's origin and meaning, and I learn it was originally an English surname meaning "dweller at the holly trees", and is now a gender-neutral forename. Lots of towns are named Hollis as well. However, what I need to know is that it's culturally English, so whatever Custom I decide on needs to fit that culture. I roll d20 and get "specific ritual before meals"; something like saying grace, perhaps, probably related to water. I set that aside to stew on it for a while.
• Customs Groups: SFC p. 192 says "at your discretion, customs may apply only to a specific group". I think this one applies to everybody.
• Technology Level: Average for the setting, because it's "average Imperial".
• Spaceport: Extensive. The best you can get in either of the games that use this. A bit big for the population IMHO, but then we have all those bases to consider.
• Dilemma: Hollis is very close to the Zhodani border, so rather than roll dice, I select Diplomatic Dilemma, and add that to my notes to help explain Arion's passengers.

Stars Without Number

I'm expecting this one to be the hardest, so I saved it for last.

• World Tags: Desert World, Major Spaceyard. I read through all 100 tags and decided these were the best fit; a few others, Bubble Cities for example, would also have been plausible.
• Atmosphere: Breatheable Mix. It's the closest one. I decide that, as in Frank Herbert's Dune, people going outside wear a mask not just to keep contaminants out (although there is probably a lot of dust flying about), but also to keep water in. Flipping back to Traveller for a second, that means the taint could be an almost complete lack of water vapour. Without surface water, it could also be a low oxygen percentage.
• Temperature: Warm. That's the closest match if we compare descriptions, and this is definitely a "warm desert" world.
• Biosphere: Immiscible. The Traveller stats for Hollis could be made to work with any of the SWN biosphere types, but Immiscible would help explain the filter masks, and also lets me use Supplement 2: Animal Encounters if I feel like it later. (Remember, this is all about setting up a world so I can use it with multiple game systems.)
• Population: Several million. It says so on the tin.
• Tech Level: TL 4 is the standard for SWN sectors, so we'll go with that. It's also a fair match for Traveller TL 12.

GM Notes

Well, that wasn't too bad. Not as hard as I thought it would be, possibly because I had no preconceptions about the world. Maybe worth trying this for a few other worlds, but I'll generate them one at a time to avoid GM burnout.

Playing the various rules engines off against each other has given me a pretty good feel for Hollis, so let's introduce Arion to it and see what kind of adventure is up next for him.