Jump Dimming

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I don't like flying. I'm not afraid of flying; I just don't enjoy almost anything about the experience of it. However, to get to Madison, Wisconsin for Gamehole Con, I needed to take two planes – there are no direct flights from Toronto – and then, to return home, I needed to take two more. All four flights were fairly short (less than an hour), so I didn't spend much time on any of the aircraft. However, during one of the flights, the lights were dimmed just before landing. This is apparently for safety reasons having to do with ensuring the passengers' eyes are acclimated to low light in the event of an emergency at nighttime, or so I recently read.

To show how thoroughly my brain has been colonized by roleplaying games, my immediate thought, upon seeing the lights dimmed, was of Traveller. In the Third Imperium setting, there's a practice known as jump dimming. What happens is that a pilot dims the interior and exterior lights of his starship for about two minutes before entering jumpspace. During the early days of jump travel, a starship needed every joule of energy to power its computers and jump drives in order to create a stable jump field. That's no longer the case – if it ever was, since it's considered a superstition within the setting – but the practice persists among Vilani pilots, even thousands of years later.

I always thought it was a cool bit of setting detail, the kind of thing that helps bring the Third Imperium alive and distinguishes it from other science fiction settings. I especially liked it because it's described as being a superstition and that's the kind of thing that should exist, even in a sci-fi setting, and yet I rarerly see such things. Instead, most science fiction settings are rather dull and antiseptic, completely ignoring the way that human beings (and, presumably, other intelligent species) attempt to make sense of the universe by imposing on it an order and rationality that isn't always in evidence (and may indeed not even exist). So, score another one for Traveller. 

Except that jump dimming is a contrivance created for an adventure. Back in 1986, in the waning days of classic Traveller, before the publication of MegaTraveller, there was a licensed Traveller fanzine called The Travellers' Digest – more on that later this week – that I started reading in high school. Issue #4 includes an adventure called "The Gold of Zurrian" that take place entirely aboard a starship. During the two-minute period when the ship's lights are dimmed in preparation for jump, one of the passengers aboard is murdered. Solving her murder while in jumpspace forms the bulk of the scenario and the superstition of jump dimming was invented solely to provide cover for the murderer to do his dirty work.

The fact that jump dimming didn't exist prior to the publication of issue #4 of The Travellers' Digest does nothing to lessen my appreciation for this bit of worldbuilding. Indeed, I actually think that knowing its origins increases my appreciation for it. The writers at Digest Group Publications succeeded in creating something that felt completely plausible within the context of the Third Imperium setting, even though its ultimate origin was utilitarian: how to have a murder take place aboard a starship without being seen. In the years since, jump dimming has become an accepted, if minor, part of the Third Imperium setting. I doubt many players even know its origins or care.

I won't go so far as to say that something like jump dimming could only have come about in a roleplaying game, but I do think that RPGs frequently punch well above their weight when it comes to good ideas like this. This is especially true in games that are played regularly. Referees need to create all sorts of things in response to player actions or to set things up for a particular kind of in-game situation. I know I've done it countless times and I doubt I'm alone in this regard. To that end, if you've come up with something through play that then "ascended" to become a fixture of a game setting, I'd love to know about it in the comments.