Good Sci-Fi generators

[rs2excelsior]

Hello folks!

I'm running a sandboxy sci-fi game (and possibly starting another soon), so I thought I'd see if the playground has any good resources for randomly generating star systems, planets, stations, etc. Ideally I'm looking for something that can populate a star system with planets, moons, maybe some odd anomalous features, and then flesh out some details on those planets and such. I'd be happy with either an online tool or a set of tables that I roll on myself.

To get things started, my current main resource in this vein:

Donjon has (in addition to my go-to name generator) a pretty decent star system generator, as well as specific generators using the tables from the Star Wars D6 system and the Traveller system. I know the Star Wars D6 tables can be found online as well, if you prefer them in that format.

I'm good with anything from fairly realistic to more space-opera like, with planets capable of supporting human life (even extreme ones, like Tatooine or Hoth) being fairly common compared to how it seems in real life.

[Sparky McDibben]

Two OSR games: Stars Without Number and Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells.

[Democratus]

I believe Traveller has a whole system dedicated to this.

[The Glyphstone]

The Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader supplement Stars of Iniquity has an entire chapter dedicated to randomly generating star systems and planets, which can be very fun if time intensive. The setting specific quirks are very few and can be smoothed over easily.

[Jason]

I believe Traveller has a whole system dedicated to this.

Yep. The best version was probably the World Builder's Handbook from Digest Group. It's long out of print, however. GURPS Traveller:First In was also very good. Also mostly out of print (you can still get it on CD-ROM from Far Future Enterprises). The current Mongoose 2 version of Traveller is much less detailed but serviceable.
2300 AD had a nice system too. It is available in .pdf.
The current version of GURPS Space is good and highly detailed, and available.
These are all more "hard science" versions than Star Wars or 40K.

[SunsetWaraxe]

Stars Without Number has a really good system for generating sectors of space, complete with star systems, planets, moons, stations, etc. I used to roll everything by hand but it would take a long while to do. Then I discovered Sectors Without Number, which automatically generates a sector for you and gives you the tools to edit and customize everything in the sector.

[Khedrac]

I believe Traveller has a whole system dedicated to this.

Original Traveler had a large section of the Scouts rulebook dedicated to this - there was a reprint a few years ago so it should be available.
It goes right down to which orbits the various planets are in.

[Jason]

Original Traveler had a large section of the Scouts rulebook dedicated to this - there was a reprint a few years ago so it should be available.
It goes right down to which orbits the various planets are in.

Scouts is not bad, and it's available, but it's not as detailed as some of the others.

[TyGuy]

I saw that there's a book for FATE that has star system and planet generation. Mindjammer

[Telok]

I use online stuff, try...

https://randroll.com/archive/science...erators-guide/

http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/

http://peterstribe.com/crystal_sphere_generator2.html

http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...alculators.php

http://www.projectrho.com/public_htm...ldbuilding.php

https://www.freelancetraveller.com/f...ptaccrete.html

https://travellermap.com

https://zhodani.space/

http://www.random-generator.com/inde...ial:Categories

Hope that helps.

[rs2excelsior]

Some good suggestions here, I think. Definitely should have thought to check Traveller for this kind of thing, haha.

Stars Without Number has a really good system for generating sectors of space, complete with star systems, planets, moons, stations, etc. I used to roll everything by hand but it would take a long while to do. Then I discovered Sectors Without Number, which automatically generates a sector for you and gives you the tools to edit and customize everything in the sector.

This one in particular looks very intriguing. I'll be playing around with this, see how it works and what it can do.

Thanks for the suggestions, all!

EDIT: Didn't see this one before I replied:

I use online stuff, try...

-snip-

Hope that helps.

Also some stuff I will definitely be looking into. I'm familiar with Donjon, Zhodani Base and Project Rho (though I don't think I realized the latter had online generator tools). Will definitely be taking a look at these also!

[Eldan]

Stars Without Number has a really good system for generating sectors of space, complete with star systems, planets, moons, stations, etc. I used to roll everything by hand but it would take a long while to do. Then I discovered Sectors Without Number, which automatically generates a sector for you and gives you the tools to edit and customize everything in the sector.

Oooh. Just quickly looking through this one, that looks like I can use it without too much modification in my Rogue Trader game. Very nice find, that one. Thank you.