...or maybe before.
Just some remarks on the classic
Traveller encounter tables to get started. They had a basic encounter table which included all the ships listed in the lbb. It was fairly minimal, and provided one (or possibly two, if a small craft was encountered) encounters for any give system, and the highest quality starport within a system determined which column to roll on the encounter table, and naturally a type A starport had the highest probability of encounters. This was very much in the tradition of "Star Viking" space frontier, where only nobles and fuedal house leaders were wealthy enough to own even a single starship, so not many starships would be found in any system at all. Contrast this with more modern Sci-fi like
The Expanse, or
Battlestar Galactica where multiple fleets, starports, and space stations can be found around just one planet, for example.
What a Starship Captain could conceivably encounter will be very different if one jumped into say, the
Jewell subsector of the
Spinward Marches during the
Fifth Frontier War, The
Sword Worlds subsector after the war, The
Glimmerdrift Reaches on the southern periphery of the
Imperium at any time, near old Sol in the
Solomoni subsector near the heart of the
Imperium, or uncharted space completely outside of the colonized human segment of the Galaxy.
Starship encounters for
Traveller are very subjective. Quite a bit depends on the subsector or sector in question, and there are lot of additional variables present that would effect just what will be encountered in any given system. Just some of the factors for the referee to include while constructing their own tables:
Has the system or planet in question already been colonized or settled by any race?
Highest quality Starport in the system?
Total system population? Systems with a high population will likely have multiple Starports.
Is the system independent, part of a subsector alliance of worlds, part of a sector alliance of worlds, or part of a large Interstellar government spanning multiple sectors?
Whether or not there is a Scout or naval base, or both present in the system, or multiple bases including other military or commercial bases.
What type of World Government there is. For example, on Balkanized world with more than one local government, each planetary government would almost certainly have one or more Starports for guests.
How many major cities on the planet?
How many races? Does each race need or have its' own Major Starport?
How many ships total at a Starport anyway at any given time?
Are they docked in space at an orbital starport, or does the starport have shielded landing bays?
Are the ships on the ground, are they on landing pads? are they protected in shielded buildings, or concealed or covered, or located in subterranean docking areas?
Is there a Pirate Base in the system?
How many Starports are there in system anyway, and where are they located?
Are there private landing pads, or special ground locations where Starships are cleared to dock or land?
Is there a law enforcement or customs base in system? If so how many? What kind of vessels would use the facilities, dock, or land there?
Are there any asteroid bases in system?
Is the system in the middle of a war, or siege?
There are many more factors, which would affect the number of small craft and starships that could be found. Each referee has to decide, and factor all of this into creating custom encounter tables for their Traveller games.
That said, I’ll provide an example set of encounter tables for you today. I have five homebrew sectors and subsectors that I use to routinely run Traveller games, as well as four (non-canon) Judges Guild sectors located on the periphery of the Imperium that for games that are run rarely, from time-to-time.
These include
The Spinward Marches in the time of the
Fifth Frontier War,
The Sharmara Cluster, which is a colonized globular cluster of stars quite larger than a single sector,
The Genian Sector not part of any official Traveller universe but located in the
Sagittarius arm of the
Milky Way Galaxy,
Milky Way galaxy from the Atlas of the Universe. This is a drawing of the Milky Way looking down from above. The Sun is just one of two hundred billion stars in this barred spiral Galaxy that is 90,000 light years (about 60,000 jumps) across
www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/milkyway.htmlThe
Heaven’s Gate Subsector, created in early 2019 and includes a planetary maps of every settled system in that Subsector,
...and finally my personal favorite
The Fringe Sector, which is the oldest homebrew Traveller setting that I still have dating back to when it was first created 1985. In 1984 during my divorce, my ex-wife sold or threw away all of my RPG gaming stuff including my original homebrew Traveller campaign setting. In 1985 I was in the Army and stationed in
Seoul, Korea at
Yongsan. My unit the
74th Maintenance Battalion, was attached to the
United States Eighth Army Headquarters Company for meals and rations only, my unit didn’t do normal Army maintenance. We did repair and calibration of test equipment, as well as work on still classified sensitive advanced electronics and communications systems. My quarters were in the barracks of the Headquarters company, which we shared with the
U.S. 8th Army Honor Guard,
The Republic of Korea Honor Guard, and a battalion of
Ghurka warriors that were attached from the
King’s Regiment that was based out of in Hong Kong as the
SEATO Honor Guard. For the two years I was stationed there I got to try out all kinds of exotic Korean, and Nepalaese, and Bhurmese dishes because the cooks all came from the Honor Guard battalion that was part of the unit I was attached to during my stay in Seoul.
When we weren’t working, mostly during the evenings and on the weekends, a group of us brilliant and exotic cats, enlisted and officers alike, would all hang out in the HQ Barracks recreation room, which had a lot of large conference tables, and we would run RPG’s . The most popular were, of course,
Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, and uh,
Champions. Because I had my brand new (post-divorce) D&D boxed set, and
Classic Traveller boxed set, and had brought these to Korea with me in my duffel bag, I ended up running games in a round-robin rotation with other GM’s for the guys and gals there that wanted to play, or learn about role-playing games. Our gaming club averaged fifteen or so, but we had guests and visitors that would sometimes double that number to play, or observe game sessions that were in progress almost every weekend, and often one or two nights during the week as well.
It was here that the
Fringe Sector was born, designed as part of a series of
Traveller campaigns which spanned probably nine months, that featured three referees. I haven’t changed or added much to the setting, although I did scan all of the subsectors and created planetary maps for every planet, along with a player’s guide which I put up on my original gaming website back in 2000. The Sector consists of six subsectors which are located on the periphery of the First Imperium including an oversized
Imperial subsector consisting of 103 systema, the
Frontier subsector a recently captured Independent subsctor, an undersize demilitarized
Neutral Zone subsector only five parsecs wide containing just five inhabited solar systems
,the Arcada subsector an independent subsector immediately adjacent to the neutral zone,
the Lyrra subsector part of an independent Confederation of Worlds, and the
Fringe subsector located at the trailing edge of this spiral cluster of stars, composed of independent colonies, and belter worlds. Except for spinward, the periphery of these subsectors are empty rifts completely void of stars for tens and even hundreds of jumps. Travel to other parts of the Galaxy and Imperium is conducted either by traveling through the space of the Imperium Worlds, or through specially constructed (and secretly owned)
Stargates, which were point-to-point facilities that connected directly to other
Stargates (no jump drives and jumps needed!) constructed in the far reaches of the Galaxy and is a technology that the Imperium does not currently possess.
imgur.com/9UiDxAAThe Encounter tables today are provided from the Frontier Subsector, and include Imperium military warships, police and customs vessels which patrol this subsector, as well as commercial spacecraft and starships that are native to this subsector.
Number of Encounters (there are often more ships in a given system, just not possible to encounter them due to orbital incongruities or impossible to intercept flight paths, these are just the one that can intercept the players’ starship, that are on possible intersecting flight paths)
Starport Type A, roll 2d6 encounters
Starport Type B, roll 2d6 encounters
Type C Starport roll 1d6 encounters
Type D Starport 50/50 chance 2d6/2 (rounded down) encounters are present.
Type E Starport 50/50 chance there is 1d6/3 (rounded down) encounters are present
Type X Starport 1 in 6 chance a single encounter is present.
Starship Type (roll 2d6 or make up your own)
2 – Research or Science vessels
3 – Frontier Subsector Special Encounter
4 – Fuel or Refueling Tanker 50/50
5 – Liner or Passenger Ship
6 – Small Craft (roll on small craft table)
7 – Merchant Vessel
8 – Government Ship (Government Transport, Customs, Diplomatic Vessel, etc.)
9 – Merchant or Star Liner 50/50
10 – Military*
11 – Law Enforcement
12 – Scout Vessel
Starship Tonnage (roll 2d6 or make up your own)
2 – 2,500
3 – 200
4 – 800
5 – 100
6 – 600
7 – 400
8 – 600
9 – 1,000
10 – 800
11 – 200
12 – 1,000
* Military Vessel Encounter Table (roll 3d6)3 - 2,000 ton Dreadnought
4 - 400 ton Dropship 50/50 chance of being loaded with up to 24d6 combat troops or marines
5 - 800 ton Cruiser
6 – 2d6* 100 ton support or supply ship
7 – 1d6 system fighters (lance)
8 - 200 ton Frigate
9 - 400 ton Destroyer
10 – 400 ton Destroyer
11 – 600 ton Light Cruiser
12 - 800 ton Military Transport
13 - 800 ton Cruiser
14 – Military Small Craft – re-roll on small craft table
15 - 1,000 ton Heavy Cruiser
16 – 4d6 system fighters (squadron)
17 - 2,000 ton Battlecruiser
18 – 5,000 ton Spacecraft Carrier or battleship
** Frontier Subsector Special Encounters (roll 3d6)3 - Small craft distress signal (re-roll on Small Craft table)
4 - Pirate! She’s a pirate vessel, re-roll tonnage on the Starship Tonnage Table.
5 - Yacht – privately owned leisure vessel. Roll tonnage on the Starship Tonnage Table.
6 – Starship distress signal. Roll tonnage on the Starship Tonnage Table.
7 – Mining or Belter Vessel****
8 - 100 ton Scout Ship
9 - 400 ton Subsidized Merchant
10 – 200 ton Free Trader
11 – 600 ton Type M or R Merchant
12- 800 ton Merchant vessel
13 – Crashed Ship, or Ship Wreckage***
14 – 800 ton Mercenary Cruiser
15 - Imperial Fleet Anchorage (roll 6d6 Military Vessel Encounters)
16 – Planetary customs or law enforcement
17 - Planetary naval vessel, not Imperial! Roll tonnage on the Starship Tonnage Table
18 – Pirate! She’s a pirate vessel, re-roll tonnage on the Starship Tonnage Table
*** Crashed Ship or Ship Wreckage Table (roll 2d6 or make up your own)2 – Prisoners with guards onboard.
3 – Marooned survivors onboard.
4 – Indigenous lifeforms onboard (caution: May be hostile!)
5 – Wreckage converted to ad-hoc settlement.
6 – None (Wreckage empty or deserted)
7 – Pirates! In or near wreckage.
8 – Refugees, Colonists, or Settlers in or near wreckage.
9 – Religious Pilgrims in or near wreckage.
10 – Sentient aliens (Referees choice!) in or near wreckage.
11 – Hostile sentient aliens in or near wreckage.
12 – Environmental hazard. Biohazard or extreme radiation in vicinity of wreckage
Crashed or Wrecked Starship Condition (roll 2d6)2 – Total wreckage / crash landing site.
3 – Wreckage located in a settlement ruin.
4 – Wreckage located in space, 50/50 in orbit/slowly drifting
5 – Half buried & heavily damaged.
6 – Battle scarred however fully functional. Currently out of fuel though.
7 – Battle damaged, abandoned, but functional (barely).
8 – Battle damaged, poorly refitted, and out of fuel at the moment.
9 – Mysterious / powered down & empty
10 – Recently abandoned, former occupants can be located with some effort nearby.
11 – Hastily abandoned, no sign of former occupants.
12 – No sign of occupants. Pristine, in perfect condition. Caution: Auto-defense programs may be active.
**** Mining or Belter Starship (roll 2d6)2 -
Meginjarder Class 1000t Ore Processing Starship j1 pp1, man 1g
3 -
Kivutar Class 800t Mining Slowboat j1 pp2, man 2g
4 -
Angel Sphynx Class 1000t Mining Refinery/Tanker Starship
5 -
Mercura Class 600t long Range Mining Starship j2 pp2 man 2g
6 -
Tammatar Class 400t Light Mining Vessel j2 pp2 man 2g
7 -
Jewel Class 200t Prospector Mining Starship, j1 pp1 man 1g
8 -
Daniel Apshai Class 252t Mining Starship j2 pp2 man 2g
9 -
Solaris Class 700t Heavy Mining Starship, j1 pp2, man 2g
10 -
Mercura Class 700t heavy Mining Starship j2 pp2 man 2g
11 -
White Dove Class 1000t Mining Slowboat j1 pp2, man 2g
12 -
Nebula Class 400t Refueleing Tanker j2 pp2 man 2g
13 -
Anubis Class 600t Refueling Tanker j1 pp3 man 3g
14 –
Nova Class 800t Hospital Starship j3, pp3, man 3g
Note: add +2 dm if Starport Type A in system, add +1 dm if Starport Type B located in system
