Has anybody done work on any kind of planet or solar system generation?
Say, like:
The Classification of planets and moons (Class M, Class L, Class K, Class Y, etc)
Are there any rules for solar system building that anybody uses? Bode's Law, and the like?
Or do you do what I've been doing, and wing it?
Also, I've been wondering what it would be like if the Moon were the size of, say, Mars. But I doubt we have any astrophysicists here who could tell me.
There is a pretty sweet system generation system that allows for Randomness (dice rolling) but goes into detail (Bode's Law, etc) including generating the gravity, local year/day vs Earth year/day and so on in the GURPS Space book. Aside from going out and buying the book, if you go to the Steve Jackson Games site there used to be a link to a program that randomly generated entire sectors of space and the systems therein that is pretty sweet. I don't know if it's still available but if so it could be a pretty handy tool.
On a side note, if you can track down a copy of GURPS Uplift, you will find the BEST EVER random generating system for alien creatures or alien races. (David Brin helped them make it.) This thing was killer and easily adapted into LUG Trek..it uses the actual enviromental conditions and etc to let you track a species through evolutionary issues such as diet, breeding strategy and place in the food chain to take a species to it's pre-sentient level. From there you would have to extropolate on the culture that would develop as it would apply to a spacefaring race but Damn it's good.
GURPS Traveller First In has a more detailed generation system.
------------------
The Trekkie Formerly Known As Surak, AKA The Coch, Humble Creator of the Bwuutut and Mensaeans, Aba and Zwickau, and the Perseus Federation, Guy Who Still Hasn't Actually Played The Game, And Who Finally Decided To Use A Signature.
Traveller: Heaven and Earth is an awesome world/system/sector generator. It has just about every feature you could want in a piece of software that generates planetary information. Check it out here.
Registered User
Building Worlds
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote