Freelance Traveller

Architect of Worlds

by Jeff Zeitlin

Architect of Worlds. Jon Zeigler.
Ad Astra Games https://www.adastragames.com/
192pp., softcover or PDF
US$35.00(S)20.00(P)/UK£27.50(S)15.70(P)*
* Softcover only available from Ad Astra Games website; PDF from Ad Astra Games or DriveThruRPG.

Forty-odd years ago, when Traveller, and specifically Book 6: Scouts, was released, we had a sample size of exactly one to decide what a “typical” stellar system was like, and to build theories of how it formed. Within the past thirty years, however, thousands of exoplanetary systems have been found, few of which look like our previous sample space. As a result, new theories have been developed, and the results of the Book 6: Scouts process, while still perfectly acceptable for developing and detailing star systems for Traveller, now fails the “reasonable match to reality” test that many Traveller world-builders would prefer.

Enter Architect of Worlds. To quote from the Introduction (specifically, the section “Purpose of This Book”), “This book is intended as a resource for authors, game designers, game referees, readers, and fans of science fiction. It presents an overview of scientific concepts that might be applied to high-level design of a space-based fictional setting: the placement of stars, the arrangement of planetary systems, and the properties of individual worlds. It also presents a set of procedures for such design, allowing the reader to generate regions of space suitable for science fiction stories or games. The results should at least be plausible, given our present understanding of the universe.”

You’re specifically cautioned that math (nominally at the US high school level) is involved; a calculator that can do basic four-function math, plus the circular trigonometric functions, exponentials and logarithms, and simple roots, will be quite convenient to have around. Some values may be presented as generated randomly; you’re encouraged to have several standard fair six-sided dice handy, plus two fair 10-sided dice of different colors to roll the occasional value in [1..100]. You can bypass randomization if you have a preferential outcome and use any “random choice” tables as a list of options that you can deliberately select from. Either way, the results you’ll get from following the procedures outlined in this book aren’t going to be a neat list of UWPs; instead, you’ll end up with actual “measurements” of the various properties of the system – masses in kilograms or tonnes, densities in grams per cubic centimeter, temperatures in kelvins, and so on – and yes, it’s all in SI units. You can then manually generate a Traveller UWP where needed from that data, or use the material as-is in a game, or fiction, or whatever, of your choice.

Note that you get a world or a system, not a society. You can generate a world that meets the criteria for habitability, and perhaps even has life – but it’s going to be up to you to actually populate it with sophonts.

The process itself is unarguably more complex than Book 6. This is partly because the science says that there are many factors, some not obvious, that affect stellar and planetary formation. Fortunately, there are opportunities to just stop and fiat a result, and move on to the next step, or you can skip entire sections if you’re working with already extant stars or worlds. It’s also more complex partly because you’re starting from interstellar dust.

Referees doing background prep for a campaign are not the only target of this book – authors writing recreational fiction should make a place for this on their “research” shelves. Once you have a world, and you’ve populated it, there’s even information on how to determine what they see when they look up.

Even before you start to generate worlds and systems, there’s plenty – about 25 pages – of interesting material that can affect how you eventually use your results. Discussion of the structure of our Galaxy and substructures within it can influence where you might want to situate your world(s); methods of interstellar mapping can further influence system placement – or even the question of whether you should bother “placing” systems with any more detail than “You can get there from here and it takes this-long.”. You can skip this material if you want to, and get right to designing a single stellar system, but do take the time to read it at some point.

When you get down to “nuts and bolts”, you’ll find that each step is clearly explained, and two running examples are provided – the first, deliberate design of an Earthlike world, suggests deliberate choices where random rolls are proposed, and explains why a specific choice should be made. The second example makes no deliberate choices, allowing the dice to decide the results. In addition, Mr Ziegler provides notes and bibliographic references to explanations of relevant theories and research.

Assuming that you decide to start from scratch, and develop everything one step at a time, you’ll spend the first seven or eight steps defining the (single) star or the (multiple) stars and their relationships. The next nine steps define the number and types of planets that may exist in the system, and where they orbit. It also defines some of the natural satellites of the planets. Following this, there are fourteen steps that establish the conditions on the surface of the world, including (but not limited to) local calendar, atmospheric composition, temperature, and presence of life.

The basic sequence handles all reasonable variations on a system with a normal main-sequence star. There is also a section for handling cases beyond that – high-mass stars, neutron stars, black holes, brown dwarfs, giants, and so on. These will largely represent situations where you have to deviate from the basic sequence, and this section on exceptions will tell you how to deviate. This section also handles some of the “unusual” features of a stellar system, such as planets in trojan points, rogue planets, Oort clouds and Kuiper belts, planets in multiple-star systems, comets, asteroids, and so on.

If you want to start with real-world data, references to several “standard” stellar catalogs are provided, with brief explanations of how each catalog designates the stars listed therein, and what information is included. There are also notes on how to apply that information to the development process.

Additional interesting information on how exoplanets are discovered, and how multiple-star systems are identified and their parameters determined is included; this material is followed by some worked-out examples of applying the Architect of Worlds process to real-world data from a stellar catalog to “flesh out” an exosystem.

Finally, you’re given some worksheets in which you can fill out the various values that you’ve determined from the process; these allow you to see your results in an organized fashion.

This volume is not for everyone. If you’re into worldbuilding at the “gearhead” level, this should definitely be on your shelf; if you’re interested in the background information, you could do worse than picking this up. It’s quite information-dense, and if you try to digest it all at once, you’re likely to end up with a metaphorical tummy-ache. If you take the time to work through it – in several sittings! – you’ll find a lot of good information in here. Since I’m a “gearhead” worldbuilder, this rates a definite buy.