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OTU Only: OTU Setting, Defined

Which Published Works Best Delineate Charted Space?

  • T4 Marc Miller's Traveller auxiliary material

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    41
How many people have access to the MT Alien modules to make a decision?

I don't know, but would those be the rarest supplements mentioned here (I frankly don't know)?

And this aside, he mentions them, even if as oposition to CT:AMs
 
The poll options given include some campaigns and setting modules. Even though T5 hasn't added much yet, I think Cirque did a great job of fleshing out lots of worlds.
 
Just one question: one of the options talks about "CT Alien Modules (versus MT or JTAS profiles)".

I was thinking of the entries in the Imperial Encyclopedia when I wrote that. They're really very good distillations (and even corrections) of the text from the Alien Modules.

Really, the MegaTraveller Imperial Encyclopedia and Referee's Companion are just fantastic summations of Traveller's Charted Space setting. They drop a few entries on purpose, and of course they don't gather the bestiary entries together, but they bring a LOT together that was scattered about in CT.

They are SO GOOD in fact that it almost doesn't make sense to restate them.
 
They're actually subsumed and superseded by later material -- especially MegaTraveller's Imperial Encyclopedia, which is very nearly a corrected verbatim of the Library Data LBBs.

You are assuming that the readers use MegaTraveller material. I do not. I go with the Library Data in the LBB supplements. Again, look at the break in the poll when it comes to MegaTraveller.
 
You are assuming that the readers use MegaTraveller material. I do not. I go with the Library Data in the LBB supplements. Again, look at the break in the poll when it comes to MegaTraveller.

The MT Imperial Encyclopedia is a better presentation of the material from Subs 8 & 11. It's worth considering even for CT players.
 
The MT Imperial Encyclopedia is a better presentation of the material from Subs 8 & 11. It's worth considering even for CT players.

I have it, in hard copy. It is somewhere in my basement. I have Supplements 6 and 11 in hard copy and in digital format. I use those.
 
I had "borrowed" a Library Data webpage, back in the day. I suspect it was copied in from MTIE but I'm not sure...
 
Going by the current poll results there are a lot of people unaware or in denial of the importance of T5 to the OTU.

By the way why didn't you include Agent of the Imperium as a poll option for defining the OTU?
 
Going by the current poll results there are a lot of people unaware or in denial of the importance of T5 to the OTU.

By the way why didn't you include Agent of the Imperium as a poll option for defining the OTU?

LOL! Deniers! :rofl: Actually it's pretty easy to not write well, and then to misunderstand. After all, it's not at all clear what my intentions and goals would be for the poll results. Also, T5 doesn't really have a lot of setting data, and I would like to think that what is there is in line with CT/MT/TNE/T4, barring some very specific retcons (e.g. Collectors, sub-100t jump).

re Agent. Because I forgot. I'll lump it with T5. Hope that's not too off the mark.
 
My latest poll attempt is for getting a bead on what published works are the most useful for defining the Charted Space setting.

I'm looking for a minimal but complete set. Actually I'm looking for opinions about which printed sources are most valuable for determining this minimal but complete set.

So, what publications help draw the best boundaries?

I've only got 20 options(!) so I may group things together. Ha.

I'm open to more sources. For example, I'm SUPER WEAK on TNE and Lorenverse material.

I go with what Mark Miller says. I think the earliest materials best define the OTU.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
 
There are multiple OTUs, depending on what rules edition you are playing. Given the rules proliferation, that cannot be, and never will be, a single OTU.

You have a small ship OTU. You have a large ship OTU. You have the Imperium in rebellion OTU. You have the Virus OTU. You have the beginning of the Imperium OTU. You have the beginnings of a T5 OTU, which in theory needs to hold all of the earlier OTU, but the small ship and the large ship are mutually contradictory, so pose a bit of an insolvable problem.
 
There are multiple OTUs, depending on what rules edition you are playing. Given the rules proliferation, that cannot be, and never will be, a single OTU.

You have a small ship OTU. You have a large ship OTU. You have the Imperium in rebellion OTU. You have the Virus OTU. You have the beginning of the Imperium OTU. You have the beginnings of a T5 OTU, which in theory needs to hold all of the earlier OTU, but the small ship and the large ship are mutually contradictory, so pose a bit of an insolvable problem.

There never was a "small ship OTU"... The OTU itself really takes form with the 1980 High Guard and the Sup 3 combined.
 
A1 and S3 are both 1979, the Kinunir class cruiser was capable of holding up an entire Zhodani advance - that's the small ship OTU right there. Alas it was not to last thanks to the influence of Star Wars...

1979 also brought us HG1e which was rushed out the door to cash in on the Star Wars big ship paradigm, so fast in fact it had to be replaced a few month later.

So from 1977 to 1979 you could have a small ship OTU, but once HG hit the shelves the new paradigm kicked in and essentially made A1 ridiculous from a setting point of view.
 
There never was a "small ship OTU"... The OTU itself really takes form with the 1980 High Guard and the Sup 3 combined.

The 1977 rules do have provisions for only small ships, so if there was not an official written OTU, the Traveller Universe for the 1977 rules was a small ship one. It was just not fully official, although Adventure 1 clearly has only a small ship universe in mind.
 
The 1977 rules do have provisions for only small ships, so if there was not an official written OTU, the Traveller Universe for the 1977 rules was a small ship one. It was just not fully official, although Adventure 1 clearly has only a small ship universe in mind.

Marc has said that the concept of the OTU didn't exist until after Sup 3 was published. Sup 3 was supposed to be an exemplar, not a canon. Same with A1-A4, and S1 & S2. Tools for a busy ref, not the beginning of a larger setting work.

Apparently, things changed when the fans asked for more. Calling the proto-setting an OTU is a stretch at best.
 
Despite what MWM says, what GDW did is another matter.

The introductions to LBB4 and LBB5 both mention an Imperium, A1 library data details this setting and S3 fills more gaps. The OTU is there, even if in a form that will be overwritten by subsequent supplements.

In point of fact A1 provides enough plot hooks, rumours and actual adventures that you could run a game in this setting for years.
 
Marc has said that the concept of the OTU didn't exist until after Sup 3 was published. Sup 3 was supposed to be an exemplar, not a canon. Same with A1-A4, and S1 & S2. Tools for a busy ref, not the beginning of a larger setting work.

Apparently, things changed when the fans asked for more. Calling the proto-setting an OTU is a stretch at best.

So, basically, for the 1977 edition of the rules, there is no OTU, and therefore, a person can do what they want, and not have to worry about canonicity. That sounds like a nice place to play.
 
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