Temporal Distances: Fudging It 4

ADVENTURES IN SPACE Space Travel Space: A Brief Introduction 1 Drive vs Thrust: How Much Faster? 2 Absolute Distances: The Hard Way 4 Temporal Distances: Fudging It 4 Velocity: How Fast Am I? 5 Absolute Velocity 5 Temporal Velocity: Easier/Less Accurate 6 Temporal Velocity: Accurate/Trickier 6 Engine Strain 7 How Big is a Star System? 8 How Big is a Galaxy? 9 Interstellar Travel: Workarounds 10 Shortcuts 10 Jaunting 10 Winging It 10 Hoofing It 10 Drive Limits 11 Ready-to-Play Drive Limits 11 Fuel Capacity 11 Fuel Rarity 12 Imprecise 12 Interstellar Only 12 Minimum Size 12 Non-Orbital 12 Specialized 12 Traceable 12 Uncomfortable 13 Volatile 13 Variable Drive Technology 13 ADVENTURES IN SPACE Space Travel Space: A Brief Introduction Throughout this first section, one does well to remember the sage advice of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.” As you might expect, figuring out a reasonable way to cope with the immensity of a solar system, a sector, a galaxy or an entire universe is a serious undertaking that a GM building his own setting needs to confront early on. There are a couple ways to do it, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, and each suited for a different kind of narrative. What these methods have in common is that they make use of two of a spacecraft's Systems: Thrust and Drive. Thrust is used for local travel. It represents a Craft's "conventional" propulsion system, the kind it uses to maneuver through space in a precise, controlled fashion. This could be traditional solid or liquid fuel rockets, some kind of fusion drive or even nuclear bombs detonated against a pressure plate. At best, Thrust can be used to navigate on an interplanetary scale, though doing so is, in most science fiction settings, glacially slow. More commonly, Thrust is useful for exiting a space station, navigating within a planetary orbit or outracing an enemy vessel in combat. Using Thrust to travel between stars is almost always prohibitive for time and resources, which is why spacefaring civilizations rely on more sophisticated technology. Drive is used for long-distance travel. This can be anything from traveling from one planet to another in hours rather than months or crossing the gulf between whole galaxies, depending upon the needs of the story. Drive allows a Craft to cover distances many magnitudes greater than it could with Thrust, but typically at some kind of cost-- rare fuel, dangerous navigation, the need to carry bulky equipment or countless others. Drive frequently represents Faster-Than-Light travel, but it can also be used simply as a faster, more powerful sub-light system, as in settings like Firefly and Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky. This is especially useful when dealing with settings localized to a single solar system, rather than an entire galaxy. Space Travel (continued) Drive vs Thrust: How Much Faster? Time Span Increments One basic question that a setting needs to address is "how Second/Round much faster is my Drive system than my Thrust system?" To Minute help work that out, we've provided this chart here showing the Hour various spans of time required by space travel. Day Month By default, the time it takes to travel between planets Year using Thrust is measured in Months, and between stars is Decade Millennia. This is based on somewhat optimistic projections of Century near future technology, but it's as good a place to start as any. Millennium The rule then is as follows: Interstellar travel takes 4-time span increments longer than Interplanetary travel. This makes a go at simulating a universe bound by the steely barrier that is the speed of light. If you shorten that 4-increment gap, you're suggesting that the laws of physics in your universe aren't exactly the same as ours, which is of course fine if that's your goal. Once you figure out how fast Thrust technology can go, you can do the same for Drive. In the interest of simplicity, it's usually best to keep these consistent even if your setting includes multiple space-faring cultures that use different Thrust and Drive equipment, so that everyone is on roughly equal footing when it comes to getting from A to B. When you switch on your Drive, you're shifting your position on the Time Span Increments chart upwards, so that the time it takes to travel between Planets or Stars shrinks drastically. How far upwards it shifts depends on the power and sophistication of the technology itself. This is called the Drive Level. Drive Level 1 means the time spans for interplanetary and interstellar travel each move up one increment. Drive Level 3 means they move up three increments. Drive Level also tells you how many Limits are placed on your Drive usage. These are discussed in detail on page [XX] of this section, but essentially the greater your Level, the more restrictive and situational your Drive is to use. All of this may seem a little complex, but the upside is that you only have to do it one time. Once you lock in how fast you can move through space in your setting, then you're able to judge distances and begin exploring the universe you've dreamt up. Space Travel (continued) To show how this method looks in action, take a look at the example below. It's using the default time spans for Thrust travel, and a Level 1 Drive. Thrust Time Span Increments Drive (Lv 1) Second/Round Minute Hour Day Interplanetary Interplanetary Month Year Decade Century Interstellar Interstellar Millennium Note that whenever a propulsion System, whether Thrust or Drive, can make Interstellar journeys in Years or sooner, it's considered Faster-Than-Light (FTL). In the above measurements, travel between planets using Drive is quite speedy, taking mere Days instead of Months, but going from one star to the next is still prohibitively long. A game in this setting would therefore likely be confined to a single solar system, like Firefly, Cowboy Bebop or Hannu Rajaneimi's Jean LeFlambeur novels. Here's another example, one using more speculative, advanced technology. Thrust Time Span Increments Drive (Lv 4) Second/Round Minute Hour Interplanetary Interplanetary Day Interstellar Month Year Decade Interstellar Century Millennium This is a configuration similar to Star Trek. Note that on the Drive side, the Interplanetary and Interstellar time spans are only one increment apart, not four like it's supposed to be. This is fine, since with a Level 4 Drive, the Interplanetary time span would be in the realm of Seconds, which doesn't make for very compelling stories. Instead, the hypothetical GM chose to make his Drive technology less efficient for Interplanetary travel than the rules world normally dictate. Space Travel (continued) One final note about these Time Span Increments is the affect that it has on your setting. The shorter the time it takes to travel between objects in space, the smaller your setting feels. If you can freely travel from one planet to another in a matter of minutes, then the galaxy loses some of its grandeur, but in exchange it means you can visit new worlds and encounter new cultures on a much more frequent basis. In other words you're trading gravitas for action and adventure. Now that you've figured out the speed limits of space, you can work out how to actually measure space between things. We've come up with two ways of doing that: Absolute Distance and Temporal Distance. Absolute Distances: The Hard Way First off, we don’t mean “Hard” as in difficult, we mean “Hard” as in “Hard Sci-Fi”, the domain of the old authors like Arthur C. Clarke and Joe Haldeman. In a sense it’s the simplest approach, because it tells you how far apart things are in space using actual astronomical measurements. Using Absolute Distances, the distance between objects in space is measured in two units—light-minutes (lm) which is used to describe the distance between relatively small objects, meaning anything the size of a planet or smaller; and light-years (ly) which describes the distance between stars, star-like objects like black holes, and massive objects such as nebulae. Temporal Distances: Fudging It This is the approach you want if you’re less interested in the exact distances between two things in space than you are how long it takes to get there. For some people, this is both easier and makes more sense. When you run out to the store, you say “I’ll be back in 10 minutes” not “I only have to go 2 miles both ways”. Temporal Distances give you a measure more freedom in how you build the universe versus Absolute Distances. You can say "This planet is 11 days away from you" and the players will know that that's a heck of a lot farther than a planet that's merely 2 days away. You just need to be consistent: how much time does it take to reach a nearby star? A distant star? The far end of known space? Work out these constants, and use them as the foundation for the rest of your world building. Space Travel (continued) Velocity: How Fast am I? When talking about how fast a Craft or another object in space is moving, we use Velocity.

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