 November 17, 2012 - 12:26am | The old AD advanced rulebook have notes about lifespan and method of procreation, but dose not list things like average age of sexual development (puberty), age of adulthood (where one is considered an independent person, rational enough to make one's own life-chooses), length (and stages) of gestation or equivalent (e.g. How long dose it takes for a Vrusk to hatch from it's egg?), and so on. This post is about figuring these things out, and figuring out additional, easily overlooked info about it (e.g. Dose the changes of gender in a Dralasite change them behaviorally, or even their appearance?). A thing to note about the Humans in SF, is that they are not like us. They live longer (180 of our years*, on average), grow taller (6'3" on average) and are canonically unrelated to us. It can be argued that if they do develop like us, then they would reach puberty at around 14 GST (13-13 Earth years*), but it should be noted that our age of sexual development is not constant. That is, a hundred years ago, that age was about 15-16 years, on average (it is believed that this is do to dietary changes). There are a number of things to consider and debate with this topic, but no less important. *If you go by the book, a Galactic Standard Year is shorter that an Earth year (by about a month!). Our year is equal to x1.1 of their standard year, and their year is equal to x0.9 of our year. So a SF character who is 20 years GST, would be 18 years old on Earth. |
 November 17, 2012 - 3:41am | We did do some of this in the core 4 project, iggy even proposed some names for different age stages in the yarizirian. I particularly liked the "hanger" and his rationelle for it. Not time to look it up got to hit the grind stone todat for 15 hours. but the threads are there. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 17, 2012 - 9:15pm | We have done a tone of this in the core four. Likely most is there but not consolidated. I have also noted the difference in galactic standard years and Earth years. Let's comb the core four project and consolidate things. I really like this subject and get into imagining what it would be like to be a dralasite, vrusk, or yazirian. -iggy |
 November 21, 2012 - 5:59am | The way I have always interpreted the note regarding human age is that medical technology keeps improving the human lifespan. For example, "60 is the new 40" - that sort of thing. Lots of people live beyong 100 today. People mature at the same rate, they just stick around longer, and in better health. |
November 21, 2012 - 10:24am | Yes, I have also assumed the increased lifespan is due to medicine. The people mature at the same rate, look young longer, and die older. Now for Galactic Standard Time (GST) to Earth Time (ET), 1 year GST is 0.9126 years ET, 100 years GST is 91.26 years ET, and 200 years GST is 182.5 years ET. So in ET humans actually are 17.5 years shy of 200. Now if you are saying that a human graduates high school and enters the world or higher education at 18 years ET then that is 19.72 years in GST. So, likely common laws in the frontier for humans to gain adult rights are likely rounded to 20 years GST which is 18.25 years ET. It makes for fun playing with the ages to cause the players to think about the social aspects of frontier society. It can get even more fun if you play with planetary years too. -iggy |
November 23, 2012 - 1:37pm | Yeah, each planet would have its own natural calendar, based on its actual year. I've delved into that in my game. Gets a bit complicated for most players, though. You have to keep track of a different calendar for each planet! For the players' sakes, I tend to stick with GST for the most part. |
 November 23, 2012 - 5:41pm | In one of the Battletech paperbacks about the Grey Death Legion the unit commander has to straighten out the supply orders since the "new LT supply officer" ordered everything based on the calendar from their home world and not the world they were on assignment to. Something like this can really throw a group of PCs off their game if they spend extended time on a planet with even a slight difference in calendar. Take Lossend for example. The PCs spend a week there. Did they spend 150 credits each on upkeep or did they spend 450 credits? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
November 23, 2012 - 6:29pm | Consider that before standard time zones where established, times varied greatly from town to town. So much so, train conductors had to use overly elaborate charts and tables to keep their schedules. Unfortunately human error resulted in a lot of tragic and unnecessary train accidents. When the real-road companies created standard time zones, there was much protest among the many small communities, but in the end, uniformed system became the established norm. In SF, Pan-Galactic established their time system to help establish uniformity with trading and scheduling. Although each planet have their own yearly length, a GST year is used to keep everything up to date. Naturally, all clocks note local and standard years (day-to-day timekeeping is quite uniformed), and all spacers use GST years do their travels. |
November 24, 2012 - 12:21am | My PCs collect pay and pay bills in GST. However I also track time in the local day for the system they are in. This makes it easier to describe morning, noon, afternoon, night, midnight, etc. as the day light is right. The campaign clock is in GST and all records follow it. I have not ever put down a set of clocks for all the documented frontiers worlds. I'd like to do this in a table for all of them against GST. -iggy |
November 26, 2012 - 10:49am | Star Law offices, news outlets, and government agencies would have multiple clocks and calendars, just like the old news outlets used to have several clocks on the wall in real life. |
November 26, 2012 - 1:11pm | Star Law offices, news outlets, and government agencies would have multiple clocks and calendars, just like the old news outlets used to have several clocks on the wall in real life. you mean holographic chrono displays and not anything as provincial as a clock? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 26, 2012 - 5:02pm | Star Law offices, news outlets, and government agencies would have multiple clocks and calendars, just like the old news outlets used to have several clocks on the wall in real life. you mean holographic chrono displays and not anything as provincial as a clock? You mean something like this:  |
November 26, 2012 - 6:25pm | No actual holographic projections of a clock or digital displace I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 26, 2012 - 6:37pm | Oops, I overlooked the "holographic" part. Although, you have to admit that those displays also look futuristic, and looks like they monitor something really important to those who cant read them. (Am I the only one here who can read them?) |
 November 26, 2012 - 7:00pm | I can read them. The bottom one says 10:48:36 and the top one says 12:26:16. Some day I'm going to get me one of those. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
November 26, 2012 - 9:14pm | Some day I'm going to get me one of those. Google "Binary Clock Screensaver".  |
November 27, 2012 - 1:29pm | I can read the binary clocks. What would be fun for the game would be to see vrusk clocks using the vrusk base numbering and time system. What should the base numbering system be for vrusk? What would be their method of counting time? -iggy |
November 27, 2012 - 2:05pm | I would guess that Vrusks probably have a native base 10 system as they have five "fingers" on each hand for ten digits plus they have ten limbs (2 arms and 8 legs). Same for Yazirians (although not the 10 limbs  ). Drals on the other hand are a completely different story. They have no natural "number" based on their anatomy so they could have invented any sort of mathematics system. I'd almost go with a base 4 system since a dral with "average" stats has a DEX of 40 and so can have 4 limbs. The sathar are base 8.Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 November 28, 2012 - 12:24am | There is a Dragon article called "Old Yazirians Never Die", Issue#108 april 1986, that addresses the issue on aging. It gives a starting age, age modifiers, and maturity levels based on the descriptions from AD. I have included it herre if you do not have a copy. It is short and to the point. Age and aging in One question unanswered by the STAR FRONTIERS® rules is this: What happens when a character gets old?
I hope this helps. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
November 28, 2012 - 12:20pm | Yes! Vary much so! Good work! My thinking about the starting age of adolescence is about 2/3 or 3/4 of the age at one matures. And aging (if one is inclined to play little brats or hormonally-driven teenagers) should look more like this:
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November 28, 2012 - 5:31pm | Here's a little thing we should maybe keep in mind when doing the ages. We have (or at least I have) compared the humans of the Frontier to the humans of Earth straight away. But there is one plainly stated difference between the two: One year in Galactic Standard Time is 8,000 hours long. A standard year is divided into 400 20-hour days. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
November 28, 2012 - 6:46pm | Yes, I'll well aware of the difference between the calender systems.* *(see footnote, on the first post) |
