Monday, September 03, 2012

Savage Odyssey Prime: Dimension Notes Template...

Good Afternoon, All:

In order to capture the details of a world that I create for use in my Savage Odyssey Prime campaign, I needed a simple template that I could fairly easily remember. Traveller immediately came to the rescue. By looking at the elements of Traveller's Universal World Profile, I came up with the following basic template:

World Name (Coordinates): Local Gravity (none, low, standard, high, extreme); Local Atmosphere (none, trace, thin, standard, dense, corrosive); Local Hydrographics (desert, dry, wet, waterworld); Local Sentient Population (population, followed by major race(s)); Local Government (by type); Local Technology Level (primitive, classical, medieval, renaissance, industrial, pre-stellar, stellar, high stellar); World Tags.
The template is generally followed by a brief paragraph outlining the specifics of the location that should prove useful in resolving an Odyssey Team's mission.

Most of these will be fairly standard on the physical stats, because the government isn't going to want to move colonists to worlds that cannot easily support life, unless there's a considerable reason for doing so. What really makes worlds stand out from one another is going to be the social details, in many cases. The elements of the genre (or genres) that influence the world's flavor, the type of culture or society, and the special hooks and twists (noted as World Tags above) will really help PCs identify each world/location as a distinct experience.

This template may change as I try to put it to work over the next few days. Nothing really tests a template, though, like actual use. I'm going to try writing up a few sample dimensions using the template, and post them here for your thoughts.

With Regards,
Flynn

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't forget, unlike every TV show and Movie, a change in gravity will totally screw up shooting of any weapon with a physical round. Barring some sort of automatic grav-sensing aiming system.

Flynn said...

Savage Worlds should already have a few rules to take such into account. If not, I'll steal from Traveller and convert. :)

Thanks,
Flynn