My mistake, The reference is:
Megatraveller Journal #1, Page 16, A Concise History of the Rebellion. Under the paragraph titles The Third Imperium.
"...11,000 solar systems. Roughly forty-five hundred high ranking nobles, and an elite group of dukes and duchesses, served as a manifestaion of the Imperium to their worlds. The Third Imperium included 429 distinct, intelligent races,but as a majority humans dominate the political power base...."
Thanks a lot. That's a very interesting reference. Not so much the number of distinct races as the number of high ranking nobles, which is a reference everyone who was involved with writing and playtesting
GT:Nobles (me included) had missed. Of course, there's a weasel clause in the term 'high-ranking'. Just what does that cover? High Nobles only? All nobles except barons? All peers? The last possibility would be awfully tight since it amounts to only half the number of inhabited worlds. Too tight IMO. But in any case it demonstrates that any Traveller author who uses the player character generation system to generate NPCs indiscriminately was/is making a silly mistake, since doing so results in one out of 36 NPCs being an Imperial noble baron or better.
My bad, it's 429 distinct intelligent races, in the Imperium.
Let's see, there are roughly 400 minor non-human races, 46 minor, and three major human races, for a total of 450. About 120-130 of those have homeworlds inside the Imperium. Other races would have immigrated to worlds inside the Imperium over the years, though it seems unlikely that it would amount to another 300 in all. But the 429 presumably include variant human races, the number of which we don't know, and surely humans are not the only race in Charted Space that has ever tinkered with its genome, so there'd be some variant non-human races too. Finally, the 'Concise History' is viewpoint writing and the author may have had a very liberal concept of what constitutes a race.
Now assuming that the 429 number is a "misquote" I'd still need a source for about 100.
I'm sorry if you really
need a quote, because I can't track it down right now, but I assure you that it's genuine. My memory is sometimes unreliable, but this particular one I'm sure of, having had similar discussions on a number of occasions.
And races seemed to get added in at random. For instance in Solomani and Aslan, under the Bootean section it says that "they gave citizenship/rights to the "Aliens from Labrys"" (my words), Now I know Labrys was listed at a TL6? Red Zone in the LBB Solomani Rim, but this is the first reference to an alien race. As well the Khethss pictured on MTJ 1 cover, Page one About the Cover gives the race name, "Khethss and "from Giranima" which is Deneb 1334. That's it, that's all we know, never mentioned in any other Deneb reference. They just Magically appear.
Indeed. It's particularily problematic when it comes to minor human races, as Traveller authors will add another one at the drop of a hat. The canonical figure averages out at roughly one per sector. Of course, that's an average, and there are sectors that don't have any, but places like Reaver's Deep and Trojan Reach are definitely over their quota with three each.
I've place races as follows:
[...]
Far Frontiers-4, Eshaar Ashah, Jessa, Raynirjik, Satha
Spinward Marches-5 Three occur in one subsector
Oh, there are more than five even if you ignore the six that BtC added. The three in Aramis subsector, the natives of Craw, the Larianz of Byret, the Shriekers , the unnamed natives of Tionale, and the unnamed[*] natives of 457-973. And that doesn't actually preclude more cropping up, since there has been no canonical statement that these are the only ones.
[*] Called the Pelouse in BtC.
Deneb-6 again three in one subsector sized area
Corridor-4
Vland-5 again with three in one subsector sized area
Lishun-3
Antares-1
Empty Quarter-1
Reavers Deep-6 five occur within a 16 parsec area
The canonical number comes to an average of three minor non-human races per sector, but there's really nothing implausible about random chance placing clusters of homeworlds. In fact, an even distribution would be much more implausible. I've forgotten most of the statistics I leared 30 years ago, but I believe one concentration like the eight in the Spinward Marches is not really unlikely. Even 14 (as keeping the six BtC added) wouldn't be wildly unlikely, although it would be pushing it. (I understand that TPTB are planning to retcon the BtC races away, but I would actually favor keeping the ones that got a decent writeup and only dropping the ones that were just a one-line reference. But that's by the way.)
Interesting oddity or grandfathers manipulation, you decide.
Perfectly plausible result of random distribution.
Hans
