Colonization Models

Just a quick thought on two ways to look at 
colonization, both from GDW (smart fellows 
there, once upon a time). One is what I will call 
the Traveller Model, and the other is the 2300 
AD Model. In fact, the former may be a much 
farther advanced version of the latter, but they 
are distinct enough to discuss separately. 

Traveller Model:

A darn lot of worlds (1 human empire, of which 
I know of 3 large ones) had 11,000 wordls. 
Varying tech/law/social throughout - not a lot of 
homogeneity. Even within a single monolithic 
empire, a barbarian world could be next to the 
high-tech sector wunderland. Tech levels from 
"me have rock" all the way up to personal 
fusion guns, personal anti-grav (I'd guess in 
GZGverse times, this might be about 2500-
3000 AD). 

How could this hash come to be? Well, if you 
look at it, there are a couple of factors at work: 
Some planetary seeding by some UberDoodz 
we'll call the Ancients (gone now - took 
themselves out). Lots of independent evolution 
of intelligence, though only 6(?) major races 
(major race = developed own jump drive tech, 
but one case is actually a big fake!). Also, lots 
of small empires (well, maybe even bigger than 
the whole human GZGverse, some of them) 
rose and fell. Traveller falls around 5700 AD on 
the Solomani (Terran) timeline. So the rise and 
fall, the genetic seeding, the diversity of life, and 
the cultural more which arose to not muck with 
low tech planets (a la prime directive - Red 
Zones and Amber Zones) help to explain this 
mosaic of society/tech/etc. Makes for a super 
place for an RPG and it must make for a hell of 
a place to govern. Also, there is no travel faster 
than Jump, nor comms. So pony-express over 
an 11,000 planet empire is quite a task. News 
can take years to propagate from one end of 
the empire to the other. Even with the 
government cheating! 

The other model, used in 2300 AD (originally 
Traveller 2300, which might hint at the 
connection), features a much more 
homogenous colonization. It is small (much like 
the proposed GZGverse - huge to us today, but 
small compared to 11,000 worlds). It has a few 
major colonial powers and some minor ones 
(England, France, US (ish), Russia, the PAU-
equivalent (Azania?), Germany, China, etc). 
Some places have only one colony (Canada) 
and a few outposts. Others have maybe half a 
dozen or a dozen with some outposts. 

The difference between this and the other 
model is homogeneity of culture and 
technology. Yes, the colonies are different than 
Terra and it takes a while for stuff to propagate, 
but in theory you could get anything shipped to 
anywhere and the colonies have high tech - it 
might be a couple or even ten years old, but it 
is pretty homogenous. You don't have sword 
wielding barbs on one planet and UberTech 
Cybernetic Entities on the next. This is because 
in a very real sense humanity is in its first 
outward expansion wave. This makes the model 
very similar to the GZGverse (and the weapons 
and their rough deployments would look about 
the same, and the 2300 date isn't that far from 
2185). 

I don't have any "breathtaking conclusions" to 
this line of thinking, but I might suggest 2300 
AD as good source material (things like the 
Colonial Atlas, CyberTech Earth, The Vehicle 
Guide, The Equipment Guide, etc) for examining 
how things might roughly be in the GZGverse (if 
you wanted an RPG for GZG, this game system 
would also be easily convertible since the tech is 
so similar). And another thing worth looking at 
is the game's treatment of institutes (such as 
the astromechenrecheninstiute (KH, don't flay 
me for this insult to German.... It's the ARI) for 
one example). Corporations and independent 
scientific bodies play a big role in space and in 
exploration and development of colonies. GDW 
used to have a "Challenge" magazine which had 
a lot of useful 2300 AD articles in it too. 

Tomb. 

---------------------------------------------
Thomas Barclay
Co-Creator of http://www.stargrunt.ca 
Stargrunt II and Dirtside II game site
"In God We Trust... on Cold Steel We Depend."