You probably already know about the Dungeon23 Challenge by Sean McCoy, co-creator of Mothership. If not, it is an activity that challenges participants to create an entire megadungeon in 2023 by adding one room per day. Various permutations and modifications exist, including genre adaptations. Things like Sector23 (make a Traveller sector), City23 (make a city), and Hex23 (make a hexmap) are common derivatives.
I decided to do not one, not two, but three genre adaptations of Dungeon23. What follows are the space-themed challenges (two of my three challenges), the tools I’m using for each, and my progress from January 1st through January 7th. I plan on posting the third challenge (which is Delta Green related) once I have something more substantial.
Common Rule
Because I’m doing three challenges, I’m making it easier on myself by requiring I only do one of the challenges each day, instead of all three. I still plan on doing at least two each day, but this gives me more wiggle room to focus on what’s interesting to me on that day.
Common Tool
For all three of these challenges, I’ll be recording them using Obsidian.md. The reasons are simple:
- It’s platform-agnostic and very portable without requiring internet (I can load it on a thumb drive and use it on my computer or phone),
- It offers basic markdown formatting (which will help with presentation),
- It allows for linking between entries (which will help with organization),
- It offers a graph view (which will be essential for some of these entries).
Challenge 1: Gate23
Something I’ve been passively interested in is the Gatecrashing campaign type for Eclipse Phase. Essentially: there are interstellar gates that link planets together. Despite me not liking FTL and effective FTL technology, the appeal of adventuring on exoplanets was cool enough to catch my attention. However, I prefer making my own worlds, so that’s what I’ll be doing.
Gate23 Rules
I must add one entry to my Gate network. This entry can be a new planet, details about that planet’s solar system, the planet’s biosphere, organisms on that planet, or intelligent settlements on this planet. Ideally, I will finish with one planet every two weeks, for a total of 26 planets (close to the 30 exoplanets in the Gatecrashing sourcebook).
Gate23 Tools
Because the Gatecrashing supplement focuses primarily on providing lore and advice for the existing 30 planets instead of tools for making new worlds, I need to source inspirations elsewhere. Luckily, planet generation tools are some of the most popular toolsets for RPGs, so I’m spoiled for choice.
To have a hard science-fiction feel, I’ll primarily use Mindjammer (specifically the Traveller version) for generating solar systems, exoplanets, their biospheres, and may of the organisms. The tools are fairly extensive, and I can present all the statistics in Traveller’s format, which I can convert to Eclipse Phase or Mothership as needed. I’ve also recently acquired First Contact Team, which might help me frame the worlds and organisms I generate.
Other tools I might use for inspiration include the Planet Builder by Spicy Tuna, Flynn’s Guide to Alien Creation, and the posthuman comic Humanity Lost by Callum Stephen Diggle. Reading The Left Hand of Darkness, the Xenogenesis series, and Children of Time will likely also be inspiring (based on their reputations). I may or may not also steal and mangle Solaris.
Anybody else attempting this challenge might want to organize things physically. For that, consider the Planet Design Book from Spicy Tuna, a companion to the aforementioned Planet Builder book. The physical version only has room for one planet, so I would recommend getting it digitally and putting printed pages into a binder.
Gate23 Week 1
This was the challenge I spent most of my time on, and I have a lot to cover.
First, our planet exists within the habitable zone of a M-class star, more commonly known as a red dwarf. Because the habitable zone is so close to the star, our planet is tidally-locked, with one side constantly facing the sun and the other constantly in darkness. While this isn’t the most ideal for terrestrial life, the red dwarf’s 10% luminosity (compared to Sol) still makes life viable on our first planet.
Zooming in on our first planet, we know that it is geologically terrestrial – it’s a rocky spheroid world. Due to its orbit and planetary maturity, we know that it has the capacity to harbor life. This is aided by the fact that the planet is almost entirely covered in water (or water-ice), which offsets the 3Gs of gravity and high atmospheric pressure (3 to 10 atm). The atmosphere and red dwarf star help create a yelloish-orange sky, which pairs beautifully with the planet’s four moons and planetary ring. Three of the four moons are mere planetismals (likely captured asteroids), but one is a large planetoid.
Moving on to the biosphere, I’m happy to report that this planet does indeed harbor life. Despite being a pressure cooker/icebox combo, the average global temperature of ~20 degrees is indicative of the divide between the “hot” side and the “cold” side. This world has two prominent ecosystems: one deep beneath the waves, and another on the surface of the “twilight zone,” the boundary between the “hot” and “cold” faces of the planet.
The ecosystems have completely different biological paradigms for their organisms. The twilight ecosystem has an “Alternative” paradigm, meaning that while life utilizes basic organic compounds, they use those basic compounds in completely different ways compared to Earth life, and even utilize different complex compounds for regular functions. The plant life, here utilizing dark red and purple leaves instead of green ones, spit out hydrogen sulfide instead of oxygen.
Meanwhile on the ocean floor, life uses a “Parallel” paradigm, utilizing an entirely different chemistry than our modern notion of organic chemistry. Carbon is replaced with silicon, one row down on the periodic table, and the primary metabolizers utilize chemosynthesis (energy conversion using inorganic chemical and thermal reactions) instead of photosynthesis. This likely means they live near thermal vents on the ocean floor, and they might utilize more exotic body designs like metal (exo)skeletons.
Hopefully, future study can provide better information about the specific organisms here. I’ve found large organisms with up to 128 limbs, so I’m curious to see how that works in practice.
Challenge 2: Saturn23
Anybody following my discussions on “technical sci-fi” might understand my motivations for this already. Essentially: I want to create a sci-fi sandbox focused on solving technical challenges and going on technical adventures, rather than conventional political or paramilitary ones. In addition, I want this sandbox to work for a “small ship” universe, a setting fit for the travel times and economies of orbital and smaller interplanetary vessels (in Traveller parlance, this would be under 400 dTons).
Obviously, the system of moons around a gas planet is perfect for this. However, it took me some time to figure out which gas planet I wanted to use: an existing gas giant (Jupiter or Saturn), a smaller gas planet (Uranus or Neptune) or my own gas planet (like Jaturn proposed by XKCD). In the end, I decided on using Saturn for the convenience of existing information, the plentiful moons, the beautiful rings, and the lowered radiation compared to Jupiter.
Saturn23 Rules and Template
I must add one additional detail to a habitat or station, or add a new habitat or station.
To help promote “technical sci-fi,” I plan on standardizing each habitat (or part of a habitat) by listing at least three characteristics: 1) what it does, 2) what it needs and 3) what can go wrong and how (essentially a Failure List).
Saturn23 Week 1
I didn’t record many entries this week because I was preoccupied with determining the energy capabilities of the Sol system. Ultimately, I decided that power beaming/power sats and fusion power existed, but usable fusion is newer than powersats.
With that in mind, I settled on my first two entries. Helios Relay α is beamed power relay station at the edge of Saturn’s orbit (within Phoebe). Power is beamed from Sol through other relays to α, which then beams power to settlements and orbital platforms around Saturn. To minimize human costs, up to five people crew the relay at any given time, which rotate every three months. Due to the high power throughputs and the multiple laser assemblies, the relay station requires replacement batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, and targeting motors. In addition to obstacles blocking incoming power, outgoing power can be blocked by debris, small moons, dust clouds, or unaware pilots. In addition, the wearing gears on the transmission and receiving antenna are likely to give within the next two months, sooner than the company is willing to replace them.
My second entry was the gas-skimming operation on Janus. hydrogen gas is incredibly useful, both in the inner system for fusion reactors and around Saturn as ship propellant and energy storage. The Janus Skimmers provides hydrogen by remotely operating spaceplanes into and out of Saturn’s atmosphere. Janus Skimmers then ships the hydrogen off to wherever it needs to go. Janus currently lacks the manufacturing capacity to build the spaceplanes itself, relying instead on aircraft factories on and around Titan. In addition, Janus relies heavily on imported food. There are three main points of failure on Janus: the erratic DOM AI that handles most drone operations in Saturn, the fragile hydrogen storage containers prone to leaking hydrogen, and the drone repair garage that is over-worked with too few supplies.
Looking to the future
So far, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve made. Gate23 has me incredibly excited and interested to discover “what’s next,” and Saturn23 lets me take a look at a planet that I’ve always wanted to dive deeper into. Hopefully I can keep this momentum going. I plan on continuing weekly updates for January, and switching to a less strict schedule later to prevent over-saturation and to allow for a more “natural” presentation of new setting material.
Trashed Tabletop 