Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Reading Terminal Space...

If you (yes, you) haven't heard, there's this new (old) science fiction/science fantasy RPG called Terminal Space. Where X-plorers couldn't, Terminal Space has quite captured my imagination. It's neat, but not in a lego-bricks-glued-together sort of way.

It's not perfect, however. Consider the following table in the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures (yes, I know) section:

Roll d100 Amount of inhabitants
01 – 10 None – station abandoned
11 – 20 None – all inhabitants are dead
21 – 30 Dozens
31 – 45 Several hundred
46 – 65 Several thousands
66 – 70 Dozens of thousands
71 – 85 Tens of thousands
86 – 95 Hundreds of thousands
96 – 00 Several million

At a glance, I can see several things wrong with it. Several million people floating around space in a metal box? That's no moon, that's a choking and aspiration hazard. It's also a bit lacking in granularity in places. Here's what I think it should have read:

Roll d100 Amount of inhabitants
01 – 10 None – station abandoned
11 – 20 None – all inhabitants are dead (d6 – 1: plague 2: hull breach 3: executive decision 4: radiation 5: sanitary malfunction (it happens) 6: xenomorph)
21 – 25 One (propably insane)
26 – 35 A handful (definitely insane)
36 – 45 Dozens
46 – 65 Several hundred
66 – 80 Several thousands
81 – 90 Dozens of thousands (hot bunking)
91 – 95 Hundreds of thousands (at eachother's throats)
96 – 00 Several million (in cryostasis, waiting for terraforming to finish/forming a neural net for the TechnoCore)

There, all better now.

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