Author’s note: This article contains minor spoilers for Curse of Strahd, and minor spoilers for Ghosts of Saltmarsh.
Barovia’s Universal World Profile is X8723B0-2. It has no Starport. It is roughly earth sized. Its atmosphere is tainted. It has a population in the thousands, it has a couple of small lakes and oceans, it is ruled by a hegemon (uncharismatic, ironically), it has very little enforcement of the law beyond the monarch’s whim, and its tech level indicates that is currently in the early Renaissance.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Barovia and Traveller these days, since Mongoose Press’s Traveller 2E and Curse of Strahd are my two main campaigns at the moment. Because of this, I have also been thinking a lot about how information is organized and presented. How can a single string of digits represent a concept more complex than the sum of its parts? When labeling a map, what is the order in which the dots should be placed? What is the logic behind chapter breaks? What goes in the appendix of an adventure, and why? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
I have also been enjoying my time in Barovia, although it has only been a few sessions at this point. I think it is a very compelling setting with a lot of dark secrets for players to explore, and I am genuinely excited whenever my next session is on the horizon! If there’s a motto I think Barovia embodies really well, it’s this: The lies of the land are comforting, and its truths is ugly. Strahd’s journal, in its own way, is a comforting lie, and has a fucking epic opening:
I am the Ancient. I am the Land.
Strahd embraces the image of himself as a tragic figure, noble in death. And of course it’s bullshit. The way he presents himself, and the way the people of Barovia view him, are only part of the story. There’s the myth, which he believes he believes, and there is what he actually knows himself to be. Strahd is an assaulter. Strahd is a groomer, and Strahd is a predator. I will probably write a review on this module in a few months, complimenting its tone, its story, and its writing. Man I just love how deeply insidious all of the small details make Strahd when you add them together.
And in that review I will probably also write: “Why is this adventure so poorly organized?”
Curse of Strahd contains a beautiful tale between its pages, but the truth of its organization is that it is an ugly beast that rests just beneath the mountain of stories GM’s have crafted since the adventure’s release. There’s a lot of heavy lifting that goes behind the screen. Navigating Strahd is much like navigating the crypts of Ravenloft: labyrinthine. This brings me back to this:
Barovia’s Universal World Profile is X8723B0-2.
The Universal World Profile (UWP) is how planets in Traveller are catalogued and identified for a quick bullet point summary if you are looking at a system map. Here is the map of my current Traveller game, to give you a better picture of how important these 8-digit strings of numbers are to the core gameplay:
The UWP touches heavily on the trading aspect of gameplay. In fact, you will need a world’s UWP if you want to use Traveller’s trade mechanics. Population matters, tech level matters, law level matters, and Starport quality matters. Sometimes other things matter, but these numbers matter the most. And although I haven’t spent more than a couple of months in the Traveller GM seat, I think I can pretty confidently say I could do the UWP, but a little better… or at least provide an argument as to why players and GM’s should reconsider how they format their UWP. I have three major points: my format is better for accessibility, my order makes more sense in the fiction of the game, and my order makes more sense from the perspective of game play. Here’s the new order, before I dive into things:
[Tech Level][Starport Quality]-[Population][Government type][Law Level]-[Planet size][Atmosphere type][Hydrographic Index].
Barovia’s UWP is 2X-3B0-872.
What I Would Want to Change, and Why I Couldn’t
I played around with several ideas in addition to the changes I made. Primarily, I thought that alternating between letters and numbers would allow people to identify the information more easily in the UWP. If you’re reading a column and see a letter, you would very quickly know that the digit could only belong to 1 of 4 categories. This did not work because then I would have to go in and change the game to accommodate for new scales in each category. This would be too much effort on the players’ part to remember, and on my part to implement.
I also considered diminishing the amount of tech levels. I am not sure how useful 15 distinct tech levels are, but since they are baked into the rules I decided against this change. Especially because I knew this was going to turn into an article, and therefore I wanted this to be usable by all of the readers.
Basically, anything I didn’t change was because it would require revisions to the rules to reflect changes of scale and nomenclature. So, because I did not want to make mechanical changes, I focused on what I could do to make the information as usable as possible.
Accessibility of the UWP
The first change a veteran Traveller GM or player might note, is that my format diverts from the classic UWP format. In particular, I include two dashes, instead of the traditional single dash at the end of a UWP code. The primary reason for this is accessibility and is influenced by my experiences at my day job.
In my day job I deal with long strings of numbers called Purchase Orders. Customers provide this to my employer when they want to buy something, and thus have a record of it in their system. This is not a problem, in theory, but it is a major pain in the ass when you get a number that looks like this:
SJK0000000000000000003890000000
This is very difficult for anyone, even with good vision, to read. For my job I would have to enter it manually (for reasons). God forbid I get lost on where I am in this string while entering it into the computer. The best solution to this issue of “unreadably long string” is something you probably see every day. Your credit card number probably looks something like this:
1234 5678 9101 1121
These spaces don’t actually exist when you process credit card payments. All they are there to do is make the number easier for you to read. Finding my inspiration here, I opted for something like that in my new format.
The logic of this change is, if the number is easier to read, it is easier to find the information you want quickly. There, improved format, and you don’t even have to change the order of the numbers if you want. Anyways, let’s move on to the diegesis of the UWP.
Narrative Function of UWP
The UWP is not just a part of the core gameplay of Traveller, it is a core part of the narrative as well. The players are (usually) traders running around the galaxy half-naked, broke, horny, and willing to do anything to find a good deal. This is how my players act, at least. The important detail is that the players are traders. The UWP should, therefore, exist in the fiction to aid traders in creating reasonable trade routes that don’t make breakdown catastrophic, make them a boatload of money, and help them to stay safe from political hazards.
So, this is (in-part) why I chose to change the order of the UWP. The first two digits of my revised UWP, Tech Level and Starport Quality, tend to be a pretty good indicator of a planet’s influence on the surrounding sector, and whether or not it’s a good idea to stop at that planet for repairs. These are things a Trader is likely to want to know immediately, before knowing the minutia of how what they’ll need to do to keep safe once at the planet.
The next set of three digits are, again, closely related to trade, but touch on the political and economic safety of a trade crew. These are also, not coincidentally, demographic data about the people of the planet. With a look at just these three digits, people now know what sort of government they might be dealing with, how safe it is to walk around outside of the startown, and how many people there are on this planet to potentially sell their goods to. If one of these numbers are not to a trader’s liking, a free trader’s crew is most likely not going to visit this planet unless the risk of arrest, assault, or civil unrest are worth the potential reward.
The last set of digits is to do with the natural state of the planet. These are things a trader would likely want to know after identifying the planet as a potential stop based on its tech level and demographic data. Reminding their crew that they may need to adjust to gravity levels, stocking up on chemical masks, and knowing how many lakes are in this world is information a captain is only going to need if they actually intend on going to the planet.
Essentially, the organization of information for my new UWP format prioritizes the needs and processes of a fictional crew of a Free Trader much more than the current format. This is a benefit to the fiction and immersion. More importantly, this also lines up with the needs of the players and the GM at the able.
The Actual Rules
From how players and GM’s actually interact with the rules and systems of Traveller, the digit order of the core UWP could be better. There are two times in the course play that your group will decide it is fun to discuss and use a planet’s UWP.
- You or your players are considering going on a trip there.
- You are on a planet and actively buying or selling goods.
Therefore, it simply makes sense that the information stored in a UWP that is used for trade and travel should be easily identifiable and usable.
Let’s take a look at the freight chart on page 240:
Here we see that the three most important pieces of information to know about a planet are Population, Starport Quality, and Tech Level.
Let’s look at finding a supplier of goods, if we want to do some speculative trading. Here’s the chart that modifies the Broker check:
Again, we see Population and Starport Class are relevant when purchasing. We have yet to see Planet Size, Atmosphere, or Hydrographic index matter for anything mechanical. These aspects only matter when players go to a planet where these things matter for combat, physical activity, and character health. Essentially, every bit of information in the UWP is used more frequently than planet size, atmosphere quality, and hydrographic index.
Hence, Barovia’s UWP is 2X-3B0-872.
Conclusion
Alright folks, that’s all for this article. I hope you found it interesting or insightful. This is a little different than my usual topic and style, but I also strongly believe that how we (adventure and RPG writers) organize and present information is a very important aspect of design. At the very least, I hope this article makes you think just a little bit more about how you might better present a small bit of information.
Next week: What’s In a Town, Anyways?
Parables of the Weeping Stag 
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