And by the way: I am braver than @martinl: I would definitely run adventures in Tau Ceti.
Ah. Apologies; I got the impression that that wasn’t consistent with your goals in Flat Black overall.
…Huh? Oh, I said up above it was boring. That was to posit the place as a good source of thrill seeking PC types, and not really strange to WIERD audiences.
I claim that a determined and skilled GM can run a ripping adventure where the PCs are hamsters, the only setting is a hamster cage, and the only objects of interest are a food bowl, a running wheel, and three badly gnawed on bogroll tubes. I don’t think you are going for that though.
As for the planned system specs above - isn’t that a bunch of information for space folks? Will PCs normally care about the moons of the third gas giant? Or the planetary diameter? Or any planetary value of rgavity, atmosphere, or whatever that doens’t have game mechanical or role playing effects on their PCs?
Its availability “adds an air of artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing tale”.
I probably wouldn’t give the system tables space in a printed product, but in a digital one space is not much of a consideration. Most of the stuff on the planet sheet either has mechanical effects or might be important to describing conditions and circumstances. Indeed, I’d like to add storminess, windiness, and relief. I could cut a lot of the duplicate values (for e.g. gravity, diameter…), but I think some readers find the trivial units helpful.
I’m parking a copy of some text from another thread here, for reference later:
I sometimes picture Tau Ceti as having continents arranged roughly like Earth, but covered in ice from the poles to about latitude ±45°, and with no land bridge at Panama, South America shifted about 40° to the west and rotated 45° clockwise, and Antarctica dragged 35° north along the meridian 90° E. Then (very approximately):
- Avalon consists of the 48 contiguous states of the USA, Mexico, the Caribbean, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela, with Canada under an ice-sheet. The River Celadon is ~the Mississippi, draining the proglacial lakes from southern Idaho to western New York.
- New Sunrise has the Mediterranean littoral, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula, and northern Africa, plus northern Europe under ice.
- Gogmagog is Oman and Iran to China and the Phillipines, with Central Asia and Siberia under ice.
- Ys is Japan, Hawai’i, and Micronesia, with Alaska and eastern Siberia under ice.
- San Pietro is consists of Peru, Brazil, the Guianas, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and north-western Argentina, but all out of position.
- Zinfandel consists of Africa south of the Equator, western Madagascar…
- Alcuin consist of the Seychelles, eastern Madagascar, Mauritius, western Australia, the southern Malay Archipelago, and a coastal fringe of Antarctica in about the location of Île Saint Paul.
- Hell consists of the eastern third of Australia and the eastern half of New Guinea, New Zealand, the south Pacific, and a seriously misplaced strip of Chile and “south-western” Argnetina.
That implies a major discrepancy of population and GDP between the octants of Tau Ceti.
I suppose I ought to make a map.
I think there’s probably a niche for it as a setting book - lots of games have those “Region X” supplements, after all. It could also be valuable if you had a set of pre-written adventures/hooks set around that region, where that kind of rich detail would help flesh out characters and allow sandbox play.
For some players it would also be an interesting exercise to flesh out their chosen homeworld, and therefore their character. So it could be a useful thing to offer as an example: here’s how you could turn the output into a gazetteer so you know more about that planet you came from.
Yes, that’s certainly something that I have though about from time to time, even drifted into. But I think that maybe a novella set on a world would be a more effective complement to the kind of thing that I am writing in Forty Exotic Worlds (which is to say, a column of tabbed data, 1,200 words of terse description, and (in my dreams) a map).
The door has been open for players to design their characters’ homeworlds since the first campaign. But in all those years only Phred Smith took full advantage.
One of the requirements for that is a system and planet generator that players can use in the confidence that its output will be canonical.
Yeah. We should take another look at that, shouldn’t we? [guilty look]
1 Like
For a decade and a half or so I have felt very uneasy about the things astronomers were discovering about Tau Ceti What with the huge ring of dust and crud surrounding the star and the crowd of chubby planets orbiting it in tight orbits there seemed to be no prospect for the inhabited world there that is such a landmark of Flat Black.
Then I read the following intriguing titbit in the abstract of a paper published last October: We also predict at least one more planet candidate with an orbital period between ∼ 270 − 470 days, in the habitable zone for τ Ceti. So I read the paper (An Integrated Analysis with Predictions on the Architecture of the τ Ceti Planetary System, Including a Habitable Zone Planet, by Jeremy Dietrich and Dániel Apai of the University of Arizona), and liked this bit:
If PxP–4 is close to the widest predicted orbits (i.e., has a period close to ∼470 days), we find that an additional planet may reside in the habitable zone. This second habitable zone planet would then have a period of ∼270 days.
It turns out that Dietrich and Apai used two different models and compared the results. Both predicted planets that seem likely to correspond to the unconfirmed candidates Tau Ceti b, Tau Ceti c, and Tau Ceti d, and both predicted a yet-undiscovered sub-Neptune or super-Earth in Tau Ceti’s habitable zone. But one model (the “period ratio” model) puts it in a 277–395-day orbit, and the other (the “clustered periods” model) puts it in a 406-468-day orbit.
The clustered periods prescription predictions after adding in all 4 predicted exoplanets. The gap between [Tau Ceti] e and the additional inserted planet PxP–4 is large enough for another planet to fit in between, with a period of ∼270 days, at the inner edge of the habitable zone.
It’s not a matter of betting on the extreme edge of a 95% confidence interval. It’s a matter of choosing one out of two plausible models. I can have my habitable planet in Tau Ceti without having to at least tacitly declare Flat Black to be a retrofuture for which I must ignore the last 15 years of progress in astronomy.
Now, Tau Ceti has a mass of 0.783 solar masses, so a planet in a 270-day orbit around Tau Ceti will have a semi-major-axis of 0.7535 AU. And Tau Ceti has a bolometric luminosity of 0.52 L☉(bolometric), so the settlement candidate will receive at least 0.916 times the insolation that Earth does. Its black-body temperature will be only 6.25 K cooler than Earth’s. The only significant changes that I would have to make to my draft write-up on Tau Ceti would be to change its year-length, reduces its solar illuminance to 79% of Earth’s, and to change its designation from τ Ceti III to τ Ceti VII.
2 Likes
Hurrah! Reality is living up to fiction.
2 Likes
It seems to me that just as, sixty years ago, science fiction writers had to face up to our knowing too much about the solar system to write about ancient dying thin-aired canaliferous Mars and swampy or flooded Venus (Roger Zelazny’s early “A Rose for Ecclesiastes” reads almost like an elegy for ancient Dying Mars), now we have to deal with knowing too much about nearby stars to just make up planetary systems for them. And soon the imagined planets of Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti will have the same retro charm that the Mars and Venus of Space 1889 have.
1 Like
I am far from immune to the retro charm of Indiana Jones-style cliffhangery and pike-and-shot swashbuckling, and I have a distinct soft spot for retrofuturistic SF such as the Burroughs-to-Heinlein habitable solar system. I’ve run a lot of RPG campaigns in it. Though I like them both, futuristic and retrofuturistic SF require different suspenders of disbelief, and there is a moment while you are changing suspenders that you have to be careful that your trousers don’t fall down. In 1987–88 Flat Black was RPG adventure in the far future. Now it is becoming ever more clearly the days of futures past. (Both its astrography and its technology are becoming dated.)
I think that’s inevitable in anything that actually gets written down. The alternative is to change the thing constantly to fit new ideas, and my own inclination is more to start a new setting if I want to do that.
1 Like
So: the Tau Ceti system turns out to consist of one really small gas giant, with a disk of debris ten times as thick as the Kuiper belt instead of an outer system, and and inner system that is crowded with super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. Spectacular night skies!
That being the case, I have decided on a naming scheme in which the sub-Neptunes and super-Earths are named for giants from myth, legend, and folklore (not literature) — Surt, Blunderbore, Cormoran, Gogmagog, Goliath, Humbaba, and Skrymir. And I’m going to name the small gas giant for Jack the Giant-Killer. The obvious thing to do would be to name the settlement candidate “David”, after the most famous giant-killer in Western literature. But that is such a common name that it might be thought confusing. Ought I to call it “Gilgamesh” instead? Quest for immortality and all that?
I could replace “Goliath” in the list of giants and call the gas giant “David”.
1 Like
Is there a predominant culture/mythology among the surveyors/first settlers? (I’m sure you know this but I don’t.)
Addendum to my comment above, of course, is that if you explicitly don’t use the real world then that doesn’t get overtaken. Traveller’s starmap is as valid as it ever was. (While Traveller 2300/2300 AD’s isn’t – indeed the new 2320 AD says it explicitly.)
2320AD still uses the old 1969 Gliese catalog, rather than the newer Gliese II, Hipparcos or RECONS catalogs. This was done to ensure compatibility with the background and history of the game.
Oh, certainly. I enjoyed Transhuman Space a lot, as an SF setting whose aspiration was to be (then) contemporary science fiction, and eschew the tropes of 1940s-1960s science fiction: no FTL, no aliens, no time travel, no parallel worlds, no mutants, no psionics, and instead of classic robots who were essentially humanoid, it had AIs inhabiting and running cybershells of diverse shapes. It looked nothing like such classic-form SF as Star Trek, and I kind of enjoyed that. But these days Transhuman Space is looking dated, too, and running it has aspects of nostalgia.
But I had fun running a campaign in Space 1889, back when I’d only gotten started in GURPS. I still enjoy thinking about the future solar system, ten times as old as ours, where Jupiter has cooled from a sort of brown dwarf (as some 19th century writers seemed to envision it) to an Earthlike planet orbiting a dim and dying sun.
Not really. They were recruited from all over the world in AD 2095, which probably means some degree of over-representation of EIRD, but not so much of W.
Right. But it gradually changes into zeerust and the future of an alternative history. You have to swap suspenders.
I have calculated that Tau Ceti (the colony) has six morning/evening stars that are 14, 37, 32, 12, 13, and nine times are bright as Venus appeared from Old Earth, and two superior planets that are 0.8 and 4.8 times as bright as Jupiter.
1 Like
Tau Ceti
| Star | τ Ceti | G8.5V | 11.9 LY from Sol in Cetus (Central Sector) |
| Planet | III | ||
| Diameter | 11 112 km | 0.87 D♁ | |
| Gravity | 7.8 m/s² | 0.79 g♁ | |
| Day | 42.6 hours | ||
| Year | 120.1 local days | 0.583 a♁ | |
| Atmosphere | 0.64 bar | Oxygen | 0.14 bar |
| Scale height | 10.4 km | ||
| Oceans | 84% water | Tidal range | 1.7 m |
| Climate | 9 °C (cool) |
Obliquity | 26° |
| Illuminance | 108 klx | 101% as bright as Earth | |
| Spaceport | scale 5 | non-rocket launch facilities | |
| Escape speed | 9.3 km/s | ||
| Low orbit | 178 km | Period | 93 minutes |
| Population | 5.91 billion | Density | 97 /km² |
| compact mid-rise cities | |||
| Economy | regulated market system with wage subsidies until retirement age | ||
| Development | 8.5 | (The Suite) | |
| Inequality | muted, with a few inconspicuous ultra-rich | Gini | 28% |
| Currency | écu | € 1 = | SVU 0.377 (PPP) |
| (100 cents) | ₢ 0.377 (exchange) |
| Households | monogamous nuclear |
| Social unit | neighbourhoods |
| Social quirks | • levelling mechanism • tacit dress code • secular rituals • repugnant gourmetry |
| Values | • moderation •accord with surroundings |
| Taboos | • excess • slackness • aloofness |
| Government | amphictyony of self-perpetuating technocratic bureaucracies |
| Head of state | none |
| Chief exec | Heads-of-Governments conference |
| Capital | none |
| Legal quirks | restrictions on private vehicles; mindwipe for violent felonies |
τ Ceti III is a smallish cool planet with frigid wastes above about 45° latitude, and extensive polar ice. A broad zone astride the equator is cool and largely oceanic; highly salubrious, it is studded with compact mid-rise cities set among vast plantations. Tau Cetians deal with their over-long day with a long siesta in the early afternoon, and socialise in the evening. Four local days make a “week”; the fourth is a for recreation and public participation.
Tau Ceti was the first of the colonies, and had the most cosmopolitan settlers. Now it is old, rich, and sophisticated, known for high culture, fine arts, stylish dress, and gourmet cuisine. In every Tau Cetian city each neighbourhood has some venerable cultural institution or public resort that is the centre of an ancient tradition and unique folkway. Gathering in local haunts and participating in neighbourhood and municipal activities is the basis of social life in Tau Ceti, while abstaining is resented as aloofness. When a person on Tau Ceti chooses where to live they choose a lifestyle and a social set.
Tau Cetians idealise doing everything “lagom”: just the right amount, appropriately, and in keeping with the surroundings. There are no formal codes of dress and behaviour, and no overt compulsion, but failure to act and dress, or to build and decorate, in keeping with the time, the place, and local traditions is derided as gaucherie; it draws snubs and put-downs. Persistent non-conformity is interpreted and resented as a criticism of the neighbours and their traditions. It is punished with mockery, boycotting, and other social retaliations. The same pressures are applied to strivers who try too hard, slackers who try too little, slovens, show-offs, and people seen as indulging too little or too much in food, drink, sex &c. for their age and by neighbourhood standards. Getting ahead of one’s neighbours is not a socially acceptable goal. Good fortune may be admired, but “excessive” hard work and enterprise are resented.
Among the cultural treasures of Tau Ceti are local culinary traditions, some with roots on Old Earth. Tau Cetians eat and relish “natural” foods including plants and the flesh of animals. Fishing and hunting for food are acceptable and even popular pastimes.
Most of the economy of Tau Ceti is in private ownership and control. The governments charge high taxes on rents, interest, and profits, but they pay a subsidy on wages and salaries. Workers between thirty and 140 local years receive income matching at a rate of two to one up to a generous cap. Half is paid into the citizen’s retirement fund, which is invested in bonds and shares, and may buy annuities or pay withdrawals from age 140. Health care, and education to age thirty are free. Governments pay child support to the parents of children under thirty. Furthermore, each citizen is entitled to seven years of bed, board, and professional or vocational training by the age of forty.
150 million Tau Cetian undergrads attend over 13 thousand universities, academies, institutes, etc. All have numerous student residences; each of those has an immemorial tradition and more or less libertine social norms. From forty to sixty it is appropriate for a Tau Cetian to move a few times and have a few or several lovers. By sixty it is appropriate to have settled down to cohabit with a single partner; few neighbourhoods approve of polyamory, celibacy, or sleeping around by mature adults. Tau Cetians retire at 140, and sometimes migrate when they do.
By a legal fiction there are eight independent colonies on Tau Ceti, with separate governments and no federal authority except for space traffic control. The Independency of Avalon, the Realm of Alcuin, and the Republic of New Sunrise are ostensibly unitary parliamentary republics. The Commonwealth of Hell and the Federated Liberties of Ys are ostensibly federal parliamentary republics. The Republic of Zinfandel is ostensibly a unitary presidential republic. The Commonwealth of Gogmagog is ostensibly a federal presidential republic. The Patriarchate of San Pietro is ostensibly a hierarchical theocracy. In practice policy and legisation are so enmeshed in co-operation treaties and harmonisation agreements that Tau Ceti is actually run by a single technocratic bureaucracy with unimportant idiosyncrasies in the octants.
Tau Cetians recognise stereotypes which suppose that people tend to a “national” character of their octant. Alcunians are supposedly imaginative and romantic, and often musicians; they play and sing in cozy bars, or gather to rehearse and jam. Avalonians are sophisticated and chic; they discuss literature, drama, and philosophy in salons, in cafés, and the lobbies of theatres. Gogmans are phlegmatic and reliable, but inclined to be sentimental or pugnacious when drunk; they play pub and parlour games, which often turn out to reward cunning and experience to an unexpected degree. Hellions are vigorous and straightforward; they play team sports and pursue athletic competition, and gather in league clubs and sports bars to watch and discuss tournament games. Newdawners are formal, even staid; they pursue artistic hobbies, gather at art galleries and art classes, and there display in their artworks the flair that they suppress in their social conduct. San Pietronians are ardent and mercurial; passionate lovers and keen dancers, they gather in dance clubs and dance in cafés and restaurants. Ythians are farouche : wild and shy. They congregate in boating and sailing clubs, in hunting and fishing lodges, where they sit in inarticulate silence or sing ancient ballads and refrains. Zinfandelians are practical and persistent, affable but liable to be selfish; they cultivate arts of conversation and comic discourse, gathering in cocktail bars and at cocktail parties. Adherence to these stereotypes is slight at most; the supposed differences of national character are imperceptible to people from other worlds.
Attractions
The University of Eridu , is the oldest, most famous, and most prestigious university in the universe. It attracts famous researchers to its faculty, and has notoriously Byzantine academic politics. But it is much too big to be good, amounting now to a middle-sized city. Universities on a dozen worlds doubt that it is the best university in the universe. The Erasmus Institute in Alcuin doubts that it is the best university on Tau Ceti III. The Avalon Institute of Technology denies it is the best in Avalon. The Municipal Selective College of Eridu says it isn’t even the best in Eridu.
Wildlife: Tau Ceti was terraformed early and at a comparatively low biological tech level, and presented small challenges. Unmodified or little-modified natural species from Earth were used in the work; more were imported for ecoscaping after the gross terraforming was done. So Tau Ceti has a uniquely rich wildlife of natural species from Earth, including whales, migratory birds, and forest trees mentioned in old literature and poetry. Visitors treat these as natural wonders, and are appalled at the Tau Cetians who kill and eat the wildlife.
The River Celadon, which drains half a continent in Avalon, falls into a zig-zag gorge at Thundering Veil National Park , the oldest national park in the universe. The soaring parkways built to let visitors view the falls from passing vehicles are a marvel of engineering.
The monument and museum at Landfall mark the spot where for the first time humans set foot on a habitable extrasolar planet. There has been a succession of monuments there, from a simple obelisk to a monstrous 6-metre statue group in stainless steel. The current marker is a life-sized statue group of Gwen Missahan and Willem van Zaanen hand in hand, which was carved from a block of chert from the Fig Tree Formation 1 in Africa, Old Earth, imported specially by the Missahan family. The group is over 650 years old, but was moved twice before taking up its current position on the fifth centenary of the Landing, in 254 ATD. The original landing stairs from Red Earth , and other relics, are in a museum nearby, which includes the graves of Gwen Missahan, Willem van Zaanen, and their son Adam v.Z. Missahan.
The Genealogical Society of Eridu is a curious institution that collects genealogical records. It has a gigantic digital archive of birth and marriage records from Old Earth, and occasionally makes obscure announcements about the modern successions to historical titles from Earth.
New Bayreuth in Alcuin stages a Wagner Festival every other Tau Cetian year, alternating the Ring cycle with a program of other operas.
A Tau Cetian situation comedy
Adhem Soter Neumann (a handsome, single, middle-aged billionaire from Zinfandel) buys a stately mansion in swanky Pemberley Park, and tries to settle in. Several neighbours need a spouse (or want a new one), including the cash-strapped heiress who sold him the estate; they vie for his affections and vacillate about his manners as he deals naively or shrewdly with successive shibboleths and faux pas. But Neumann has a dark secret: he did not get his billions from a lottery at all; he built up a trillion-écu tech firm from scratch, by fifty years of intense hard work. Can he hide that? Can he live it down?
Imperial presence
In deference to the fiction that Tau Ceti is eight colonies, the Empire has a Residence and resident commissioner in each octant, plus a resident-general whose seat is in Portsmouth, a very large Imperial orbital habitat. The Empire has no aid programs on Tau Ceti, but its main naval dockyards are in orbit there, and it runs vast procurement operations for naval and commercial spacecraft-building. Tau Ceti is the Imperial navy’s main source of sensors and laser weapons