Perpetual Low-Tech Worlds

[Ran Targas]

Come on Mal, don't be a stick in the mud! I can see you on the deck of a Vargr corsair, bound for the Rim, cutlass at your side, spying for any luckless trader who unwittingly crosses your trajectory!

Where would Traveller be without a touch of espionage, smuggling, piracy, vigilanteism, and bravado! Unless your playing Diplomacy 2300, that is.

 

[Evo Plurion]

I imagine that a low-tech world's potential to become high-tech depends on what the Imperium's interest in that world might be. If it's full of valuable resources or is strategically located, the Imperium will deploy military forces, encourage settlement, economic integration, industrialization, etc. Before long, the world has emerged from technical and economic obscurity. Of course, it's wealth and technology will probably concentrate among political and economic leaders in urban centres, while the majority of heretofore poor rural primitives remain poor, rural, and primitive.

An interesting adventure idea would involve the PCs investigating uprisings and terrorist activities on such a world, discovering that an Imperial rival wants the world to remain a backwater. Why?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Ran Targas:
Come on Mal, don't be a stick in the mud! I can see you on the deck of a Vargr corsair, bound for the Rim, cutlass at your side, spying for any luckless trader who unwittingly crosses your trajectory!

I can't see that myself

. Hell, I'm playing EVE Online (which is similar to Trav is many ways) and all I'm doing is (a) blowing up pirates and (b) mining and hauling. If anything, I'd be the pissed-off cop or bounty hunter chasing you guys down and blasting you out of the stars

Where would Traveller be without a touch of espionage, smuggling, piracy, vigilanteism, and bravado! Unless your playing Diplomacy 2300, that is. [/qb]

Well, other sci-fi games seem to get by without it, so I hardly think it's a staple of the genre. Besides, I don't recall Foundation or other such books that inspired the game being rife with such things.

 

[lightsenshi]

I've always thought it would be in the best interests of the Imperium to education worlds to a higher level. A worker at a tech 8 world is several times more productive than a worker at tech 6 world.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by lightsenshi:
I've always thought it would be in the best interests of the Imperium to education worlds to a higher level. A worker at a tech 8 world is several times more productive than a worker at tech 6 world.

Yup. Taxes. The wealth of the Imperium, and most especially, the wealth of the Megacorporations, depends on ever-more consumers. No matter how many people live on the High-Pop worlds, the Megacorporations will want more customers. More. More! MORE! <evil villain laugh!>

 

[Ran Targas]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I can't see that myself

. Hell, I'm playing EVE Online (which is similar to Trav is many ways) and all I'm doing is (a) blowing up pirates and (b) mining and hauling. If anything, I'd be the pissed-off cop or bounty hunter chasing you guys down and blasting you out of the stars

^ I've played those games too! Space Rangers can be fun if you're the lawful good type. Me, I lean toward the chaotic neutral.

 

[Malenfant]

No offence, but Chaotic Neutral is the alignment that always struck me as being the most sociopathic of the bunch - that's the "I'll break the law and not give a toss about any kind of logic or morality" one isn't it?

 

[Ran Targas]

And I've always thought it was the most realistic ... particularly for pirates, spies, and smugglers.

Despite my rantings the characters I've always gravitated towards were those with strict moral codes and tight lacing.

But back to the subject ...

Every world should have its own flavor. Although the Imperium may wish to elevate all its subject worlds to a certain tech level or law level, IMHO it would make for a rather boring setting for adventuring.

 

[Hal]

Originally posted by Ran Targas:
Harsh conditions, whether imposed by man or nature, breed high adventures!

One campaign I thought about running was the food running campaign plus a small scale mercenary outfit campaign in conjunction with each other. If I recall correctly, it was set on Ruie (I could be mis-remembering) where the world was a dictatorship, and an ocean world. The mercs had to take a platform and hold it so that certain parts of the platform could be stolen. In addition, the world would permit for contraband shipment of food to bypass the dictator's monopoly on food production. Since the mercs were hired to start an insurrection and ultimately, a regime change, I had hopes of having things work out as a "future history" kind of scenario.

Speaking of which - there is NOTHING that keeps GM's from doing that kind of thing for their own Traveller Universes. Imagine the look of surprise on some captain's face as he finds himself on the sharp end of discovering that a world has NOW changed from Green or Amber to RED due to the ongoing insurrection. Imagine too the adventure players could have if they found that their ship has been comandeered (sp?) so that they can use the ship as an ortillary platform...

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Ran Targas:
Every world should have its own flavor. Although the Imperium may wish to elevate all its subject worlds to a certain tech level or law level, IMHO it would make for a rather boring setting for adventuring.

I don't agree... it would just mean that the adventuring is more likely to focus on things like external threats and frontier exploration instead. It would be like the difference between Firefly and Star Trek.

 

[Ran Targas]

^ And that's still the heart of MTU. My group operates on the frontier where there are very few high tech worlds and mostly lost colonies, alien enclaves, smuggler havens, and abandoned mining sites to explore. The worlds at the center of the Empire are rather homogenous but on the rim, it's a hodge-podge of tech levels.

 

[jwdh71]

The big problem with a frontier exploration campaign set in the OTU is that the Imperium has no such frontiers. It's almost completely surrounded by other, often hostile polities. This makes the external threat type campaign viable, but the frontier exploration campaign is difficult at best. One way to do it would be to set your campaign in another governments space, like the Zhodani or the Solomani Confederation. I played in a Solomani Confederation campaign that was set on the Rimward Frontier, it was a commercial exploration crew campaign, and it worked very well. The same campaign would be difficult to do in OTU Imperium space.

 

[Ran Targas]

^ Mine is set rimward of the Sol Confed (who are my bad guys) just to prevent any Imperial canon from being used against me.

 

[Flynn]

TNE 1248 will open up traditional Imperial space to the frontier exploration campaign model. I'm very excited about the possibilities.

Enjoy,
Flynn

 

[jatay3]

The Imperium is not all powerful, and does not necessarily intend to go to the trouble of raiseing the tech level of all 15000 worlds. It is not necessarily even capable of doing so. Some are on frontier routes, some are in a perpetual state of anarchy.
Also the low tech level may reflect only part of a world. It may have a starport on it that is valued primarily for it's ability to handle through traffic, rather than trade with the locals. Perhaps the planet has no product that is widely valued.
Perhaps the environment prevents the development of certain parts of the planet. Or the difficulty of moving manpower & equipment to the planet. There might be chains of low-level planets: the difficulty of developing one precludes developing the next, and so on.
It might be remembered that even fairly high-tech societies in the twentieth century can have very low tech societys living nearby(I.E Brazil and the Amazon indians).
Or a planet can be a new aquisition of the Imperiums.
Or the Zhodini might be hindering the Imperiums efforts
Or the Sector Duke can be a lazy good for nothing fool that can be ignored when things are going well , but is incapable of doing anything.
Or the planet may have a prejudice against off-world technology
or whatever...
just so long as it is reasonably belivable