Planet Generator??

>>52066533
GURPS Space has a couple of chapters on generation of star systems, planets, and the cultures and installations thereon. Traveller usually has a system for doing the same in the core book of whatever edition.

Stars Without Number is pretty good in that respect. It has random tables for just about everything. The system itself is kind of eh.

>>52066602
>>52066585
Thanks, I'll be checking these out. The system itself isn't so important. I just like random generation tables!

>>52066533
The Stargate SG-1 d20 rulebook was FANTASTIC for generating random planets and societies.

I've built what I hope is a fairly interesting planet generator combining Stars Without Number and the One Roll Engine. If this thread is around tomorrow morning I can post it (or if you provide an email I can send it to I can do that too). The system also includes how to randomly create different kinds of stars and deep sky objects like nebulae.

>>52066533

wait

people think they can't come up with solar systems of their own???

>>52070396
This is more for sandbox games where the GM and players are creating the space they're playing in as they go.

Traveller

File: RANDOM PLANETS (BETA).pdf (107KB, 1x1px) Image search: [Google]

107KB, 1x1px

Here's the random planets generator I cooked up. It hasn't been fully tested yet but it's based on existing One Roll Engine systems so it should work. I'd be interested to know what you think.

File: INTERSTELLAR SECTORS [BETA].pdf (2MB, 1x1px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 1x1px

And this write-up includes how to randomly assign stars (and other stellar objects) in a sector and plant nebulae, supernovas and star clusters.

File: Interstellar Operations Beta - Solar System Generation.pdf (6MB, 1x1px) Image search: [Google]

6MB, 1x1px

>>52066533
I can't remember for sure, but I think that this open beta PDF for battletech's Interstellar Ops book was free to download during a certain window of time, but there might be stuff that got tweaked before being published in the final product.

>>52073235
I'm impressed by the, uh, depth of this system's world generation but man I'd be hard pressed to actually trying to LEARN it. There's just a lot of stuff here that's interesting from an astrophystical perspecitve but I can't imagine most players would care at all about it.

>>52073300
It's not something you learn, really. It's something you as the GM reference to prepare a pretty believable star system prior to a game session.

...but if what you're going for is more space opera, there's probably other options.

BT is more in the spirit of stuff like Traveller than Star Wars.

>>52066783
If you like random generation tables, then SWN is best. I think 1/3 of the core rules is random generation tables of one kind or another.

>>52073300
I don't know battletech's specifically, but from a Traveller background (which describes the planet in astronomical detail as well, the idea is you look at the world, for answers to world building questions. There's still some assembly required.

>>52073665
I'm the guy who wrote the PDFs above and there's some overlap between what I put together and the battletech system (such as using Spectral Classifications for stars). The Battletech system also has some real nice ideas like the orbital slots that I might add into my system (right now I'm just having the GM roll 2d10; the larger is the total number of planets in the system, the smaller is the number of interesting, explorable planets, leaving the rest as uninterestign hunks or gas giants).

>>52073699
And that's what I've endeavored to do with this >>52073101 but with a few degrees less crunch and in a more streamlined fashion. A knowledgeable GM can divine all sorts of interesting details from raw astrophysics, but I wanted to limit the sheer amount of numbers being thrown at you and ultimately make it more qualitative than quantitative.

>>52073801
Understandable, we're playing a game after all.

I was justifying why _anyone_ would care about the surface albedo of a world (versus it being dry & hot).

>>52074421
Ultimately I guess there's two ways of looking at it. You can take a bottom-up approach of determining the actual astronomical characteristics of a planet, and then using those to work out what it's like to be on it; or you can take a top-down approach and determines its overall nature and then work out why it's like that.

If the end result is the same for the players, then all that really matters is GM preference. A GM who knows a little about how planets work (or a book that explains it well) can handle the bottom-up approach, whereas a GM whose less interested in that stuff can just make up those justifications.