When I first began work on Thousand Suns back in 2007 or thereabouts, there were a lot of specific things I wanted to include—or exclude—from the game in order to evoke a particular type of science fiction literature. One of those things was the idea that space is vast and that, even in a technologically advanced society, traveling from one region of space to another is slow.
I wasn’t interested in the typical space opera trope of being able to zip across the galaxy in a matter of minutes. That’s something that’s always bothered me about most cinematic science fiction. Consider Star Trek as an example. The USS Enterprise is supposed to be out on the frontier of explored space, going “where no man has gone before.” That implies, at least to me, that they’re far away and that traveling there should take significant time. I’m sure that’s what the show’s writers wanted to convey, but the needs of weekly episodic television more or less demand that the Enterprise and her crew are almost never far from a Federation outpost or colony, thereby limiting any sense of scale.
That’s something I very much wanted for Thousand Suns: a sense of scale. Obviously, the moment you introduce faster-than-light travel into a setting, you’re already diminishing that scale, at least a little. However, I think there’s a real difference between a sci-fi setting where you can traversing multiple star systems in minutes or hours and one where it takes days or weeks to do so. (I think it also matters whether or not FTL communications exist—another aspect of Star Trek that, in my opinion, weakens its original premise.)
This is precisely why, when creating Thousand Suns, I was adamant that interstellar travel would be slow and noticeably so. Just how slow, though, was something I didn’t have any strong opinions, especially since the literary science fiction to which I looked for inspiration offered a variety of options. Asimov’s Foundation series, whose stories encompass nearly the entire Milky Way galaxy, postulates FTL travel measured in days. Meanwhile, Niven’s Known Space series postulates slightly longer travel times, measured more in weeks. There’s also the Traveller RPG, which I dearly love, whose jump drive operates on an invariably one-week time frame.
Consequently, I had a lot of range from which to choose. In the 2008 and 2011 versions of the game, I went with a variable time frame, ranging from 1 to 12 weeks. The 1 to 12 range was based on the fact that the game uses 12-sided dice. Using weeks was intended to ensure the pace of movement was indeed slow, since the upper end of the range—12 weeks—was the equivalent of three months or one-quarter of a standard Terran year.
As I work on the second edition of the game and develop its setting a bit further, I’ve started to question my original decision. I remain committed to slow travel between worlds, but I wonder whether weeks is the proper interval. A three-month journey is a very long one within the context of a RPG, especially when a ship in transit is effectively cut off from the larger universe while doing so. Likewise, without even faster communications, the ability of an interstellar government—or even culture—to maintain any cohesion is severely curtailed at that level of distance.
That’s not what I want, hence my thought that maybe, in the second edition, I’ll make the interval days rather than weeks. Traveling 1 to 12 days between star systems is still slow by the standards of science fiction, even if it’s, of course, much faster than any proposed real-world means of traversing interstellar distances. The change, if I opt for it, would have ripple effects in other parts of both the setting and the rules, but none that I think would be detrimental to my goals. I’m still pondering the matter, though, so I may well change my mind.
What are your thoughts on this? I’m curious to know what others think about the matter, both more generally with regards to science fiction and specifically about Thousand Suns.
I've used days instead of weeks since the outset. In order to get a goodly number of sectors between the edge of the empire/federation and its capital, I use the arbitrary figure of one year travel time in one direction max. To me it feels roughly analogous to the Age of Sail in the 1700s-ish. Any farther than that and the span of control simply becomes too great.
If you look at Limzano Sector in the rule book and calculate travel times you'll find it takes months to years to cross it. As an example, Ulmo to Oshan, requiring only 8 jumps, takes 47 weeks to accomplish; Ulmo to Magha, the longest trip from South to North as it were, is 82 weeks, almost two years. And keep in mind that's doing nothing but travelling. I think logically what you'd find are clumps of polities strung along the jump routes. (Which is fun in its own way but it's not congruent with the intent of the game).
Just my opinion.
One thing to think about: travel time in "hyperspace/warp drive/whatever" vs. slower than light travel in-system, as that will impact how fast information can (out)race the voyagers.
Consider this example: it's a 3 day sublight journey outside a system's gravity well, followed by instantaneous warp, and a 3 day sublight journey to the destination. In this case, information could be beamed to/from the target planet and the travelers 15-20 hours ahead of their arrival.
On the other hand, if you only need to get out of orbit before entering hyperspace, but then take 6 days in hyperspace, the difference between information and the travelers arrival to the planet is significantly shortened.
Personally, I think (and it's well outside the scope of this game), something like Ursula LeGuin's Haimish series but without the Ansible, would be wild: a six month journey for the players, meanwhile 20+ years have passed on the target planet.