CT Only: TRAVELLER: Out of the Box

[creativehum]

It looks like I might have some players for a Traveller game coming up. So all my noodling on this site might have a chance to pay off.

I'm going to start a thread detailing how i'm approaching the game and the creation of the setting.


The Basic Assumptions
I'll only using LBBs 1-3
No Third imperium or any official setting material
I'll have Supplements 1, 2, and 4 on hand to make my life easier

The idea is to see what I build from the original Traveller box, which I picked up at the Compleat Strategist in my youth, read the text on the cover, and instantly fell in love with it. I bought it, brought it home, rolled up subsections, made up worlds, rolled up characters. It pulled me in like no other game did. I tried to set it up a few times over the years, never got a handle on it.

Now I think I do. In part because of all the people on this site, so thanks all! I'm very grateful for all the input, ideas, answers, and bouncing around ideas.


Out of the Box
When I bought Traveller, there was no official setting. That would eventually come in the form of GDW's house setting, The Third Imperium.

The Third Imperium an amazing creative effort, and I'm in no way knocking it with the following comments. Moreover, it's clearly brought a lot of pleasure to many people. I would say that talking about the Third Imperium, reminding it, making it real, sanding down the questions of logic has become a hobby unto itself.

But I never made the immediate connection between the rules of Traveller and the Official Traveller Universe. When I first read the rules after buying them, the text sparked certain images and ideas and made me think of certain books. And they didn't look such like what became the Third Imperium or the Spinward Marches.

I'll be covering this in more detail later. But quickly, if one reads the text of the books, there's nothing to suggest you'll end up with the Third Imperium. It is possible, of course. But it one possibility.

Instead, I'll be working from three premises:

First, to grow my setting out of the images, ideas, and rules sewn into the implied setting of the rules. This includes all the ideas that for setting and feel the rules inspired in my youth even if they are not explicitly spelled out in the text. For example, when I read these opening words in Book 1...

Traveller deals with a common theme of science-fiction: the concept that an
expanding technology will enable us to reach the stars and to populate the worlds
which orbit them. The major problem, however, will be that communication, be it
political, diplomatic, commercial, or private, will be reduced to the level of the 18th
century, reduced to the speed of transportation. The result is a large (bordering on
the infinite) universe ripe for the adventurer's bold travels.

I immediately thought of Europe's colonial era of both North America, Asia, and Africa. The Third Imperium has the feel of the Roman Empire in its sensibilities. But those few words made my brain spring to a different model. And that's the model I want to work from.

Second, extrapolating at my whim to fill in the fictional details left blank by the rules. For example, Starships can only be built at A-class Starworts. Why is that? What are the implications? The rules don't say. But I have some ideas about that that I'm excited about for the setting. These ideas won't be the "right" ideas. There are countless reasons for and implications about having only A-class starports being capable of building starships. The ideas I want to put forth are simply notions that strike me as making sense and exciting. (Exciting in the sense they lead to more strife and conflict politically, which allows the players more chances to have adventures with their characters.)

Third, I'll be growing my game from the rules, but not bound by them. The text of LBBs 1-3 makes it clear that the game is a frame work for play. That the Referee should make adjustments and make it his or her game as he or she sees fit. So, as an example, I'm going to tweak the System Content Table to reduce the odds for an A-class starports and increase the odds for for D-class starports. I want a more frontier feel for the setting, and I want keep the Tech level of the subsector maxed out at 12. Reducing the number of A-class starports helps with that. (There will be higher tech available. But it is not native to the subsector and will be all the more extraordinary when it shows up.) I might tweak some of the other World Generation rolls as well. But that is an example.


A Favor to Ask
I'm posting here because i like posting here. And because writing is how I sort out ideas. And if you want to join in, please do.

But a favor: Please don't tell me how it's all wrong, or how it won't work, or whatever. First, bluntly, because I haven't laid out everything yet. It will take time to get everything written up. And in detailing the setting, you might find I have thought through things, or provided rationals, and more. And second, because, let's face it, a lot of people are invested in a Traveller setting being a certain thing -- and I'm not building that thing. So let's see what else someone might make from the basic rules.

 

[Shonner]

I look at Traveller as a generic mechanic for all kinds of settings and role-play possibilities. The 3rd Imperium is just a sourcebook to me of a pre-made setting with all the work already done for me. I don't try to make Traveller do 3rd Imperium-only mechanics.

 

[rnadams2]

I, for one, think Traveller as a game could benefit from some separation between the game and the Third Imperium. I'm all for unique and creative settings.

 

[Fovean]

I think the reason many people say the setting is implied by the rules - and that the setting would always be the Third Imperium - is because of the careers. Read, character creation.

For instance how can you have a Scout career track available to all the planets in your original, built-from-ground-up setting? Well, of course each world or empire has a Scout service! But the devil is in the details - why do they all use the same char gen template? This suggests the Scout service reaches out and affects all the planets/empires/clusters in your campaign area in the same way... thus implying an over-arching civilization, ie, the Third Imperium. So now you have to adjust the Scout service tables for each and every civilization in your campaign...

Me, I like to think the careers are based on the most basic duties and goals, which are solving the same problems regardless of which society you come from. True, different societies will have different ways of solving problems but it's a lot easier to say 'Greens get Robotics and Greys get Psionics instead of Mechanic' than to create service tables for every empire/race. But in the end they're all still trying to quell the same problems in every empire.

YMMV

As far as starport class, that too implies an overarching 'something' that defines the classes and defines each world's port classification. Is it the TAS? The Imperial Navy? The Emperor's Sycophants? You'll have to define it for YTU but again everyone could do it differently - Class A in Human space might be Class D in Xeno Space - or vice versa.

Don't stop - many of us would love to see the universe implied by the original LBB. But we also want to see all the cool stuff that came after incorporated in it too (ship designs, advanced char gen, new gear, etc etc...) Hence the propensity of 'Book 2+' ship threads...

 

[creativehum]

Setting Basics

Inspiration from the Text

Introduction
Traveller deals with a common theme of science-fiction: the concept that an expanding technology will enable us to reach the stars and to populate the worlds which orbit them. The major problem, however, will be that communication, be it political, diplomatic, commercial, or private, will be reduced to the level of the 18th century, reduced to the speed of transportation. The result is a large (bordering on the infinite) universe ripe for the adventurer's bold travels.
-- Traveller Book 1

A Final Word
Traveller is necessarily a framework describing the barest of essentials for an infinite universe; obviously rules which could cover every aspect of every possible action would be far larger than these three booklets. A group involved in playing a scenario or campaign can make their adventures more elaborate, more detailed, more interesting, with the input of a great deal of imagination.

The greatest burden, of course, falls on the referee, who must create entire worlds and societies through which the players will roam. One very interesting
source of assistance for this task is the existing science-fiction literature. Virtually anything mentioned in a story or article can be transferred to the Traveller environment. Orbital cities, nuclear war, alien societies, puzzles, enigmas, absolutely anything can occur, with imagination being the only limit.

The players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals. The typical methods used in life by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the acquisition of wealth and power. As for the referee, modern science-fiction tradition provides many ideas and concepts to be imitated.
-- Traveller Book 3

Introduction
Traveller assumes a remote centralized government (referred to in this volume as the Imperium) possessed of great industrial and technological might; but due to the sheer distances and travel times involved within its star-spanning realm, the lmperium is unable to be everywhere at once. As a result, the lmperium allows a large degree of autonomy to its subject worlds, calling only for some respect for its overall policies, and for a united front against outside pressures.
-- Traveller Book 5

These quotes form the basic spine of inspiration for the feel of the game I want. Something at the edges of civilization, without uniform in law or culture, allowing the adventurers to make daring plans, be bold in action, become the crowbar or kingmaker in the political and industrial intrigue occurring around them.


Focus on a Single Subsector
I'll be rolling up one subsector and... well, that's it. That's all I'm going to roll up. There will be history and culture and politics that extend beyond the edges of the subsector. But for now, one subsector will be what I roll. Here are some quotes explaining why:

Generally, the universe is mapped in convenient segments, called subsectors. A convenient size for subsectors is that of the hex grid sheet printed in this booklet on page 3. Each hex in a subsector represents the distance that may be covered by an interstellar jump of distance 1 (1 hex = 1 parsec, or 3.26 light years). In mapping, each hex is examined to determine if a world (and its attendant star system) is present; the quality of the local starport is then determined. Finally, jump routes or space lanes connecting worlds are determined.

Initially, one or two sub-sectors should be quite enough for years of adventure (each sub-sector has, on the average, 40 worlds), but ultimately, travellers will venture into unknown areas and additional subsectors will have to be charted.
-- Traveller Book 3, 1977

32. In retrospect, do you think the DGP products might have covered the OTU in a bit too much detail - leaving less for the imagination?
===============================================
Yes.

I think less detail probably would have been better. I think it would have been better to focus on a few star systems per adventure and detail them, and leave the Imperium star system positions, etc, somewhat more vague for the most part.

Provide a detailed sector once in a blue moon.

Personally, I think Traveller is designed backwards in this regard, a topic we often discussed at DGP.

Wargames are by nature, map oriented, and tend to be more sweaping in scale. Rarely do you see wargames that get down to hand-to-hand combat level. It's most often battalions or divisions, sometimes down to companies and platoons.

But role playing games are about individual characters and what matters to them. Thats one big reason why fantasy gaming is so popular. Fantasy gaming doesn't focus on detailing half of the known universe. Just what matters to a few characters.

So Traveller was designed with this star-spanning map mentality, not character-centric. But that's all backwards. As a role-playing game, it should be designed from the character out. The farther you get from the character, the less detail you should be concerned with.

It's not surprising that Traveller would have this orientation, since GDW was first a wargamming design company, and a huge-scale wargamming design company at that. Look at their Europa game series. Massive in scale and scope.

While the wargammer in me really identifies with this orientation in Traveller, I don't think it is condusive to popular opinion in the RPG market and has somewhat "doomed" Traveller to remain a niche game.

And I'm not sure there's much you can do about this perception now. What's done is done. For a science-fiction role playing game to be more popular, it needs to be character-centric through and through, with rich world detail and an motivation that keeps you there for a while so you get to know it and it's people. The galaxy spanning star charts and constant system hopping part should remain very much in the background, because that's not role-playing, that's wargamming.
-- A Q&A with Joe Fugate, Sr.

I can't wait to build a cool setting to share with my players. But here's the thing: The setting simply won't matter as much as the Player Characters and the cool trouble the PCs get themselves into.

Because of my background and career (writer dude), when I'm creating something, my focus is always this question: "What is the camera pointed at?" And if I'm doing my job well as a GM, the camera is pointed at the PCs.

While the Traveller rules imply a star-spanning government somewhere, it is mostly off-screen. I don't need all the details of the offscreen material to make hours upon hours of compelling adventure in a consistent setting work. I need just enough to make sure the PCs and the Players feel it's "real." And that can be done by making the worlds and NPCs of the subsector focused and unique and driven and willing to take action about the things they care about.

I think one subsector will be enough to certainly get things going. The discipline this forces, of course, is interesting stuff has to be happening in that subsector right now. The cool stuff isn't the politics back at the Imperial core or whatever. I have to stare down at the 8x10 grid of hexes and think:

"Right now, looking down at those worlds, what is happening? What matters? What are the conflicts? Between world, on worlds? Who is mad at whom, who is making a play for whom?"

There can be be agent provocateurs or starships or weapons or missionaries or whatever pouring into the subsector from beyond its borders. But they're doing so because something is happening in that subsector that is so compelling they have to show up. And by showing up they're only making things more interesting and providing more tension and adventure potential for the PCs.

 

[creativehum]

The Fiction and the Feel of the Adventures

Traveller is a game I fell for when I bought my first copy from the Compleat Strategist in New York City as a teenager. The Little Black Books of the boxed set (reprinted almost completely in both The Traveller Book and Starter Traveller) promised an aggressive, hard SF that would span the stars. I would read the rules and feel my adrenaline race. I wanted to get going into adventures using the rules set.

The game also boggled my adolescent brain because I couldn’t map it to the Science Fiction shows and movies I grew up watching. It wasn’t Star Wars. It wasn’t Dune. It wasn’t Star Trek. It wasn’t Asimov’s Foundation. Which was strange because in the basic rules no setting is provided. And yet, it certainly seemed to be one thing and not another thing. I just couldn’t figure out The Thing.

The game is a toolkit, in the sense that the Original Dungeons & Dragons digest sized booklets were a toolkit: an inspiration for the GM and the Players to create whatever sort of fictional environment and play style they wanted. (The Traveller box and three booklets were a direct mirror of the Original D&D format.) Though setting elements were inferred within the rules (much like setting elements are inferred in The Burning Wheel’s rules), one was not provided. One could really take the rules and tweak them and make anything from a Dune-like setting to something more akin to Warhammer 40K. Seriously. It would take work and tweaking, but there was a framework for building a system that would create characters and keep things moving forward.

But, as I’ve said above, there seemed to be a default setting implied in the lifepaths of character creation; the weapons selected for the books (assault rifles, shotguns, and laser rifles, but no laser pistols); the fact that travel between the stars was slow and communication could go no faster than travel; an interstellar civilization of some kind (or more than one) that depended on military forces to keep it in order; Patrons that hired the Player Characters to go do work on contract; men and women who, after getting drummed out of the service, did not settle down or get jobs but where driven to go to the frontiers on tramp freighters and often get involved in criminal activity to stay financially afloat.

It wasn’t until, one night at a revival house movie theater, that I watched “The Man Who Would Be King” for the first time. And I thought, “Good lord, that’s a Traveller adventure!” The movie is about two soldiers of the British army in colonial India, drummed out of the service, which buy arms and head into the mountains of Afghanistan to become rich kings of their own domain.

You get the military background. The grifter/criminal element. The abrupt violence. The amoral plotting of the protagonists. The tension of the men and women from civilization who don’t have the knack for being civilized. It all fell into place.

Later I came across a blog entry about the literary antecedents for Traveller. It goes in pretty deep, but here’s the pertinent part for me

“The look and feel of CT is internally consistent and somewhat generic, yet still rather difficult to match with a precursor. One would expect a science fiction role-playing game set in a galactic empire to look like Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (1942-50), the granddaddy of all galactic empires, yet CT does not—eschewing Asimov’s atomic ashtrays, blasters, the full-metal planet Trantor, and a stardrive of such speed that a trip from the galactic rim to the core can be done in a honeymoon jaunt. Likewise CT does not look or feel like Frank Herbert’s Dune (1960s ecology SF), or Larry Niven’s ‘Known Space’ (1960s hard SF), or E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s ‘Lensman’(1930s space opera). It might seem strange that an SFRPG based on SF texts would somehow miss all the so-called classics, but the problem is that these classics are mutually exclusive—they cannot blend well together.

“What the creators of CT were after was science fiction adventure, featuring freelance “adventurers” (with all the connotations of gold hunters, mercenaries, and trail blazers that this term implies) who could live or die in the course of pick-up games. They seem inspired by adventure movies like ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,’ ‘The Wages of Fear,’ and ‘The Man Who Would Be King;’ noir movies like ‘Yojimbo’ and ‘Kiss Me Deadly;’ ‘heist’ movies like ‘Rififi’ and ‘Le Cercle Rouge.’ All of which amounts to the polar opposite of Star Trek (where everyone works together for the government, the government is good, there is a moral code in the ‘Prime Directive,’ and nobody important dies).”

Add in “The Wild Bunch,” “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” “Heat,” “The Seven Samurai,” and you start getting a lovely set of compass points for what I think Traveller in its purest form is about.

But notice that none of these references are SF movies or novels. Thematically they resonate with the Classic Traveller setting, but they’re not the color. Because, for the most part, no one had ever done this before. Mark Miller and the gang at GDW were making something new. (The closest SF movies I can come to in terms of tone and story would be “Blade Runner” (our protagonist is a contract assassin, let’s remember), “Outland” (though the protagonist is stalwart Sheriff), and “Aliens” (where, if you rip away the SF trappings, is a story about greed, betrayal, and loyalties within a species.)

The reason I couldn’t figure out what to do with the game was because I was trying to map it the color and stories of SF movies and novels. But those SF movies and novels really didn’t exist. This was hard-boiled fiction at the edge of an interstellar empire!

“Tough Men. Bad Odds. The Edge of an Interstellar Empire.”

That's what I'm looking for.

 

[creativehum]

Motivation and Drive of the PCs

There was one place that always bumped for me in the Traveller rules:

Here’s the passage introducing Patrons as a vital component of Traveller play:

Patrons
“The key to adventure in Traveller is the patron. When a band of adventurers meets an appropriate patron, they have a person who can give them direction in their activities, and who can reward them for success. The patron is the single most important NPC there can be.

“A patron will, if he decides to hire a band of adventurers, specify a task or deed to be performed, and then finance reasonable expenses for the pursuit of that task. Some tasks may be ordinary in nature, such as hired guards or escorts; other tasks may be for the location and procurement of items of great value. Generally, a patron’s agreement with a band of adventurers will specify that the patron will receive the item he is seeking while all other goods or items acquired will belong to the adventurers.”

Essentially, the Player Characters wait around to be hired. They do the jobs, get paid (or not) and then wait around to get hired again. This is great for pick up play and the kind of “competency ⌧” of a lot of militaristic driven fiction. You use your character to succeed (or not) at the mission, the only metric being “Did you do it and survive, or not.”

And now here is Marc Miller, on the last page of the game, addressing the reader at the end of Book 3:

A Final Word
“The players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals. The typical methods used in life by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the acquisition of wealth and power. As for the referee, modern science-fiction tradition provides many ideas and concepts to be imitated.”

That phrasing, “…they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals…” seized my imagination when I first read them. It was my first encounter in RPGs that the Player Characters would be the motivating engine for play. It is RPGs designed to easily to make this the case that I’m most drawn to.

But compare that phrasing with the entire notion of Patrons, who are “the key to adventure in Traveller.” The Patron is the character with goals. The Player Characters are merely the tools of those goals. I think these two elements clash horribly. And if I had to pick, I’d dump the patrons and make sure the Players created goals for their characters that really motivated them. Sure, they might be hired someone to keep going within the framework of those personal goals. But the key thing is: If the Players are really carrying “the burden” of moving, acting, and traveling in search of their own goals, what does that like?

It looks like Revenge. Or a desire or need for Power. Or a desperate attempt to leave poverty behind and be set for life. Or helping someone in you’d do anything for.

The key elements, I think, were suggested above: Men and women who leave the services without a sense of home, without a means of settling down; men and women who know how to get things done with violence and a take charge attitude. Criminals of some sort, either purposeful or accidental, who commit crimes for reasons selfish or justified for a greater good.

The grifter/criminal element. The abrupt violence. The amoral plotting of the protagonists. The loyalty to those you served with, or served at all, because only they know what it means to be loyal when the shit hits the fan. The tension of the men and women from civilization who don’t have the knack for being civilized. It all fell into place.

Who are these people who don’t fit in? Who are these people who go travel between the stars when most people don’t? Who are these people who don’t know how to get a job? Start a family? Who keep in motion because everything they do demands they keep in motion?

“Tough Men. Bad Odds. The Edge of an Interstellar Empire.”

If I had a tagline, that would be it. That's what I'm looking for.

So I want to pay attention to what the Players are talking about at the table, what is intriguing them, what sides they want to join or fight, and provide opportunities and plans along those lines. I want them to push forward and make their own trouble and try to get out of it.

There are tools I can steal from other games to build this (Fronts from Apocalypse World or Factions from Stars without Numbers). Basically, these tools organize off-screen opposition off doing their thing or coming after the PCs that the PCs are interested in.

So, I want a PC driven game. It'll take a session or two for that to get going I think. I'll start something up in media res, along the lines of a more detailed Across the Bright Face: the PCs get caught up in a rebellion being funded by off world resources, and the choices they make set up their next round of allies and enemies. And so on.

 

[creativehum]

I think the reason many people say the setting is implied by the rules - and that the setting would always be the Third Imperium - is because of the careers. Read, character creation.

For instance how can you have a Scout career track available to all the planets in your original, built-from-ground-up setting? Well, of course each world or empire has a Scout service! But the devil is in the details - why do they all use the same char gen template? This suggests the Scout service reaches out and affects all the planets/empires/clusters in your campaign area in the same way... thus implying an over-arching civilization, ie, the Third Imperium. So now you have to adjust the Scout service tables for each and every civilization in your campaign...

I'd like to address this!

There will be a major interstellar power. The PCs will all be from this interstellar power. This power will have made a move into the subsector. There will be one of two or more other powers -- but their influence not as strong. They will be working to undermine the power already setting up in the subsector.

Imagine this: It's the period of the British Empire. Colonies are flung about the globe, some old, some new, some have already rebelled. The PCs are soldiers of one kind or another in this Empire. The adventures take place in these lands far from home. So, I'm not worried about the tables for Character Creation. It is assumed that the six services exist in the empire the PCs are all from.

I don't care about building PCs from India. I care about the PCs being from England. What I care about even more is how these soldiers choose to behave in India once they drum out and -- by definition -- don't want to go back home.

Remember, I'm not trying to build a all-encompassing all-playable universe. I'm building a focused subsector with lots of politics and struggle. The PCs are from lands far away and end up here, at the edges of their empire. And then begin their adventures.

 

[mike wightman]

I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops.

 

[Shonner]

Some players like to be told what to do with their characters by the NPCs. Some players like their characters to be the center of the universe and tell NPCs what to do. But role-playing in character is best practice. Everything else then follows.

 

[rancke]

I, for one, think Traveller as a game could benefit from some separation between the game and the Third Imperium. I'm all for unique and creative settings.

Traveller could certainly benefit from a greater awareness that referees don't HAVE to set their campaigns in the OTU, that it's just one example.

As for the same people who publish OTU stuff also publishing other settings, I'm worried that it would reduce the amount of OTU material published. Settings published by third parties and endorsed by MM & Co. I think is an excellent idea.


Hans

 

[rnadams2]

Traveller could certainly benefit from a greater awareness that referees don't HAVE to set their campaigns in the OTU, that it's just one example.

As for the same people who publish OTU stuff also publishing other settings, I'm worried that it would reduce the amount of OTU material published. Settings published by third parties and endorsed by MM & Co. I think is an excellent idea.

I agree on both counts. As far as separation of game from setting, maybe publishing 3I material separately from the rules book(s) would be the simplest way to accomplish this.

And, of course, FFE would continue to nurture the OTU alone--it's quite an excellent setting, despite all the inconsistencies that have cropped up over nearly forty years. It's also an example of what's possible for referees who want to tackle the creative challenge themselves, and the rules could certainly leverage it as such much more than they do.

Bottom line: The Third Imperium is just awesome, and I definitely see why a majority of referees would want to use it, just in the savings of time and effort alone. But it shouldn't, IMHO, be placed in such a way that it seems to imply that it's inseparable from the game, which I fear is the case currently.

 

[creativehum]

Subsector Basic Assumptions

“Traveller assumes a remote centralized government…”
-- Traveller Book 5

The following is from the rules of Book 1, 2 and 3, or extrapolated from the rules.


A Focused Setting
Traveller assumes there is a centralized government—and that it is far away. So do I. This means the focus of play is at the edges of the centralized government or beyond it.

When I write in posts below about the setting, I am only discussing the logic (for economics, culture, politics, and so on) in the discrete setting of the subsector where play takes place. I am not trying to model an interstellar civilization.

There are many, many things that one could say about the interstellar government that the Player Characters served in. However, the things I will care about are the things that matter to the subsector where the adventures occur.

An example: If we were to play an RPG set in the British Raj, there would be many details that would applicable to the setting in the Raj that would not have any sense being in 19th Century London. More importantly, there would be many details of 19th Century London that would have no home or pertinence in the British Raj.

In the same way, working out every detail of what is happening countless subsectors away from the action of play makes little sense. What matters is how they decisions bring conflict and tension to bear on the subsector and the Player Characters. Since the stuff that matters is the stuff that matter to the PCs, there is a filter of importance.

Here, in no particular order, are the macro assumptions about how I’ll be setting up the subsector:

1. The setting is at the edges of a political power

2. The purpose of the setting is to provide adventure for the Player Characters.

3. Trade, commerce and political influence do not work in the same way in the subsector as they do back in the hub of the government’s star systems. The trading rules in Book 2 are designed to reflect this, as well as focus on Player Character level economics. The rules of trade that work here might not work in other parts of the interstellar government -- and that's fine.

4. High end starports will be rarer than they are in the Book 3, and C-class starports will be more prevalent.

5. Per the rules, starships can only be built at A-class starports. A-class starports are much rarer here than they are back within the centralized government. Thus, fewer ships are built locally. And since trade is both easier and less risky back home, most ships don’t travel out to this part of space.

6. It is assumed that building an A-class starport is a Big F##king Deal and hard to pull off. If not, why not build more? (Note that this isn’t just a matter of a bigger or nicer starport. It is a matter of being able to build the technology that makes interstellar travel and civilization possible. There must be reason every starport doesn’t have this tech.)

It is my assumption that building a facially that can build and install Jump Drive technology requires:

• lots of capital investment up front
• the knowledge of how to do it
• the knowledge of how to do it well or horrible things happen
• an incredibly skilled labor force (physicist and engineers, some of whom have worked on several A-class starports and are in great demand)

7. A-class starports are not always built around main worlds with high populations or lots of resources in-system. Why this is so is a matter for another time. The point for now is that building such a facility often takes a lot effort in terms of gathering resources and personal and keeping it staffed.

8. Points 4-7 not only mean that ship building facilities in the subsector are rare, but that an A-class starport will always be a magnet for trouble from those who would wish harm toward those who own it and profit from it. Attacks, both covert and overt, are always a possibility. Lots of resources will be devoted to protecting such ports. (I expect I will declare that one of the B-class starports I roll up was actually an A-class starport attacked and destroyed by an enemy. It will currently be under construction to regain its A-class capabilities.)

9. Those who control A-class starports will not want others to posses A-class starports. The corollary of point 8 is true: That A-class starports under construction will be magnets of attack from the powerful who do not wish others to have access to making starships.

10. Starship Travel is Dangerous. Trade may be quite easy back in the remote centralized government. Not so here. There is a 1% chance of hijacking every time a merchant ship sets sail! (Book 2: “Nevertheless, there is a chance of an attempted hijacking, for ransom, or to steal the multi-million credit vessel. Roll three dice for 18+ to indicate a hijacking attempt.”)

11. Starship Travel is Dangerous. Pirates may be encountered in systems with C, D, E, and X-class starports.
C Throw 10
D Throw 9
E Throw 11 or 12
X Throw 10
This means whenever a ship enters a system that it not A or B-class, the ship has about an 8.5% chance of being attacked by pirates. Since more than half the systems will have C, D, E, or X-class starports, that's a lot of risk from piracy!

12. Starship Travel is Dangerous. Refined fuel is only available from A and B starports. Any other starport (or gas giant) can only provide unrefined fuel. (From Book 2: Military and quasi-military starships often use unrefined fuel because it is more available, and because their drives are specially built to use it. Commercial ships sometimes use unrefined fuel because it is cheaper.”)

Because A and B starports are rare in the subsector, most commercial ships make many jumps with unrefined fuel. This means a 3% chance for a misjump on each of of a ship’s travels. (from Book 2: Each time the ship engages in a jump, throw 13+ for a misjump: Apply the following DMs: +1 if using unrefined fuel (and not equipped to do so).

The empty space of the subsector is littered with ships and corpses of those who never made it safely to a destination. (Imagine how many ships are the at the bottom of earth’s oceans. We’re really going for something like that.)

13. Starship travel is dangerous.

Drive Failure: Each week, throw 13+ for drive failure; apply the following DMs:
+Iif using unrefined fuel (and not equipped to do so), +Ip er engineer missing
from the crew list, +I per week past annual maintenance overhaul date. If a malfunction
occurs, then throw 7+ for each drive in use (jump, maneuver, power plant)
to determine which actually fail, (if any). Failed drives cease operations completely;
maneuver drives will no longer thrust, jump drives will fail and indicate that they
cannot support jump; power plants stop delivering power. Batteries will provide life
support and basic lighting for ID days. Throw 10+ per day of repair attempt with
DM +engineering skill of the attending engineers to fix them temporarily. More
complete repairs must be made at a starport by qualified personnel.

There is a 3% chance of misjumsp and 3% there might be a failure in the Power Plant, Maneuver Drive, or Jump Drive while using unrefined fuel. Given the circumstance, each of these events will range in consequence from at least a costly problem to life-threatening situation.

14. Given points 10-13 above, we know not only that Starship travel is dangerous, but that billions of credits worth of starship are lost every year. Investing in and building starships for frontier use is a financially risky proposition. It takes a certain kind of temperament or love of risking assets to get into the business.

15. The society structure of the interstellar culture is harshly stratified and that stratification matters. We not only have Social Standings that are a vital component of how a Character is both viewed and classified. We know that there is a noble class--literally a noble class. (I get the feeling people writing about 3I saw nobility as basically a society of meritocracy-worthy bureaucrats with cool titles. I don't have much patience for that. These will be Royal families, with power passed down through children and family members, and these Royal Families working hard to keep their pride and power in place through both hard and harsh methods.)

We also know that Low Passage has a 15% chance of killing anyone attempting to travel on the cheap--so we know life is hard for the poor. (Yes, I know the 15% death rate is taken from the Dumarest books and in the books was based on technology built for animals and not people. And I understand that in 3I--a much more civilized place than the society presented in the original rules--such tech would be improved to reduce the chances of death for Low Passengers. But my point would be this: I don't think the death rate is a mistake. I think Miller wanted there to be a class of people who risked death every time they got on a starship. The question isn't "How do we fix these high odds of death?" but "What sort of economic and social conditions exist where this is happening?" So, I'll keep the bad odds for Low Passengers and keep the Low Passage berths for animals that are sometimes used for humans. Because the social tension is the thing I want.)

16. The implied setting of Books 1, 2, and 3 speak to the society of the "remote centralized government" from the quote above. It is the society that the PCs come from.
Other cultures and worlds that are not part of this society will have different social structures and assumptions.

 

[creativehum]

Setting Politics -- Overall and in the Subsystem

Overall...
1. Mankind settled the stars, countless, countless stars, thousands upon thousands of years ago.

2. There have been many expansions and contractions over these thousands upon thousands of years.

3. History has been created, forgotten, re-written, lost, and reforged by countless, scattered, interstellar societies.

In this Region of Space...
4. Earth has been forgotten and lost from memory, a myth to some, non-existant to others. But the key thing is this: Earth doesn't matter at all to this setting. The Interstellar Empire of the Player Characters has its own origin myths and pride in itself. It doesn't look to humanity's past for its value. It looks to itself.

5. Hundreds of years ago it began rebuilding its technology. For four hundred years it has been expanding. Now it is an interstellar government. This is the empire of the Player Characters, the "remote centralized government" located off the subsector map.

6. The empire had been unaware of other interstellar civilization, but aware of rumors that they existed once. When they get to the subsector of the setting, they discover there is another power several subsectors away on the other side.

7. The empire is taking control of other, weaker civilizations on newly discovered worlds. The model is more colonial empires of 17th through 20th century earth than Roman Empire. One point of expansion is the subsector of the setting.

The Subsector...
8. The nobility of the interstellar government hold tight to their grip on interstellar technology. They provide patents to companies for starship construction and charters for trade. Tensions often grow between the the chartered trade companies and the nobility. The nobility always close ranks. (Conflict!).

9. In the subsector, there are several trading companies (1-3, TBD), ruling large areas on several worlds with private armies and assuming administrative functions. The nobility in the subsector representing the interest of the governments royalty both let the companies handle the affairs as they wish, but keep an eye on them as well to make sure the companies don't get too big for their britches. (See East India Company for a reference model.)

10. Some nobility, desperate to increase or save family fortune, get involved with with trade and war, working against other noble or chartered companies. At least one noble family is struggling to find a way to gain enough power to either break free of the royal family or topple it.

11. Points 8-10 all refer to nobility and companies from a single interstellar society. Player Characters grew up in this society and served either in noble or private corporate armed services of one kind or another. This society is the "norm" of the setting. Setting information is revealed to the Players with the point-of-view of this society and its culture.

12. The worlds of the subsector were left cut off for hundreds upon hundreds of years. One cluster retained J-1 interstellar travel. A few retained interplanetary travel. Some collapsed and died. Some made drastic genetic modifications to their people to survive. Some are intelligent, native alien races that could survive.

The people of the subsector have their own cultures and values. Some are excited to become part of the growing empire. Some are resistant. The remote interstellar government sees the people as savages and the worlds they live on as resources to be exploited. The trading companies often work to pit the natives of the worlds against one another.

13. There is at least one other remote interstellar government with an interest in the subsector. But it failed to find a foothold earlier and now moves carefully to disrupt the new ruling interests with covert and occasionally overt operations. The natives of the subsector often get caught up as pawns in these machinations -- sometimes to their detriment, and sometimes to great reward.

 

[WistfulD]

Something else I've found implicit in the Traveller setting:

there is a currency (the credit), that is used throughout the major power the PCs come from. It is universally accepted, relatively difficult to forge and/or launder/integrate into major financial networks (at least as difficult as modern cash). It obeys the basic laws of modern economics. However, due to the slow propegation of goods over vast distances, localized economic effects such as rarities, gluts, inflation, etc. can have a greater effect on the PCs than on the emperium.

Perhaps more importantly, the rewards of an action and determinants of future success are often rewarded in non-credit form. For the PCs, this might mean that they are rewarded in a trade good that is worth X... but only if they can get it to market Y (and if they can't show their face in market Y, well then that's another adventure). Trade and other 'change of status' agreements are more valuable than a hold full of gold. The ultimate status change, being labelled pirates or criminals, can be a fate worse than death and severely limit character choices and yet happens with amazing frequency (depending on how much your GM likes "clear your name" plots). Likewise, the ultimate score isn't money, but a getting (responsibility to use and make a profit with) a bigger, better ship.

 

[rnadams2]

I'll agree that there's a setting implied by the basic 3-book CT rules, but that setting doesn't necessarily have to be the 3I. Starport codification, credits, jump drives, red and amber zones, Scouts, the TAS--any referee is allowed to take creative license to any and all of these to make something as uniquely his or her own. Hell, you could even call credits "ducats," introduce warp gates, and dump the TAS altogether if it suits.

I just hate to see an implied setting quench potential for creativity. Look at what's not implied in those three books: No aliens, or even a system for creating them. No robots or system for creating them. No military ships beyond 800 tons. No established sectors, subsectors, or worlds. With all the implied setting, there's still a lot of potential to create something very much not the Third Imperium.

Reading through creativehum's posts here, I see a great example of taking the nuggets of implied setting and making them something not quite 3I.

 

[creativehum]

Perhaps more importantly, the rewards of an action and determinants of future success are often rewarded in non-credit form. For the PCs, this might mean that they are rewarded in a trade good that is worth X... but only if they can get it to market Y (and if they can't show their face in market Y, well then that's another adventure). Trade and other 'change of status' agreements are more valuable than a hold full of gold. The ultimate status change, being labelled pirates or criminals, can be a fate worse than death and severely limit character choices and yet happens with amazing frequency (depending on how much your GM likes "clear your name" plots). Likewise, the ultimate score isn't money, but a getting (responsibility to use and make a profit with) a bigger, better ship.

I think this is an excellent point, and something I've thought about for a while. While there is an Experience system in Traveller (and I like it , it's part and parcel of the game's structure of having to trade off choices) it doesn't scale the way other RPG game systems scale. There is not, in other words, a steady improvement.

The PCs improve the survivability not in terms of greater Hit Points or other characteristic-based increases, but by the gear they surround themselves by. This is one of the reasons I want to make sure to use the starship combat system in play. It is my belief (as yet unsupported by observation!) that this will set goals of increasing the computer size, programs owned, and weapons mounted.

I think other non-credit goals such as social or political clout are also viable: By getting a patent from a noble for a ship, or a charter from a trading company, the group can move around more easily, have back up on certain worlds, and so forth.

These larger rewards, never paid out in Cr (and often worth more in Cr than the PCs might ever accumulate) that I think serve as really great goals and rewards for the PCs.

In this respect, I think the game is a lot like AD&D's rules for clearing land and building fortresses, or the political-building feel of Adventurer, Conquerer, King. The goal in the systems isn't just to keep adventuring but to build something you end up managing and can take pride in building. I would love that for my PCs in Traveller.

I'll agree that there's a setting implied by the basic 3-book CT rules, but that setting doesn't necessarily have to be the 3I. Starport codification, credits, jump drives, red and amber zones, Scouts, the TAS--any referee is allowed to take creative license to any and all of these to make something as uniquely his or her own. Hell, you could even call credits "ducats," introduce warp gates, and dump the TAS altogether if it suits.

Speaking of that, I haven't mentioned it yet, but here are some things I won't be using that are in the rules:

• Red and Amber Zones*: I never really got them. If there's a dangerous place, it's a dangerous place. But shouldn't all star systems, in one way or another be dangerous? And if a system is so dangerous as EVERYONE KNOWS IT'S DANGEROUS shouldn't the fact that everyone is talking about it as dangerous be enough? (And, in fact, be so dangerous the PCs are of course drawn to it!) I don't want any government putting up ropes around dangerous places. I want tales and mystery and rumor of the places people just don't go to anymore... which only begs the question of what is there and what rewards haven't been found yet.
• No Traveller's Aid Society (i'll let the Player pick a new reward off the table if rolled).
• No Psionics Institute (though there will be a group that uses psionics in the subsystem -- a quasi-mystical-religious group more along the lines of the Bene Gesserit, working against the incursion of the colonial empire)
• No Xboats.** (I want a rougher, less smoothed out frontier. Book 2 assumed that the Scout ship was the quick, efficient method of communication. I want to stick with that.)
• The scout service exists, but not in the kindly-anthropologist-sociolgoist feel that I get from later 3I materials. I see them as the naval component of the Trading Companies. (Larger naval ships are the province of the nobility. The Trading Co's have Mercenary Cruisers and Transport Ships. Armed, but not the biggest of the Small Ship fleets.) The scouts deliver messages, scout out problems that crop up across the system, reporting back to Trading Co. HQ. I see a lot of crossover between the Scout Service and the Others Service as they often go to ground and sort out what's-what in terms of potential rebellions and acting as agitators to soften the ground for the trading companies.
• No Communication Routes per Book 3 1981, but rather the Trade Routes per Book 3, 1977. (I really like the map that gets produced using the Trade Route table, allowing there to be a real sense of geography -- the space lanes between worlds of regular trade and travel, and the backwater worlds most people don't go to, or don't leave, or don't bother with. In my imagination someone (or several people, over time) have scouted those worlds. But no real exploration or political overtures have been made. A Trading Company might be at war with the locals on that world, but no regular trade or travel has been established. Such a world is still very much "frontier" from the point of view of the citizens of the interstellar government.

* I just did some digging and found something that surprised me: There are no references to Amber and Red Zones in the 1977 edition of Book 3. They are introduced in the 1981 edition. On the other hand this shouldn't surprise me. It was the feel of the 1977 edition that I fell in love with back in the day. I suspect the Zones got introduced as a convenient tag for JTAS adventures (which began its run in 1979) and the concept was folded into the rules in the revised 1981 edition. But they were never my thing.
** Yes, I know there are no Xboats in the LBBs 1-3. But they've become so ubiquitous to how people think of Traveller I feel compelled to make the point. They are implied in the Communications Routes of the 1981 edition. But, as I said in the last point above, I'm gutting even those.

I just hate to see an implied setting quench potential for creativity. Look at what's not implied in those three books: No aliens, or even a system for creating them. No robots or system for creating them. No military ships beyond 800 tons. No established sectors, subsectors, or worlds. With all the implied setting, there's still a lot of potential to create something very much not the Third Imperium.

Reading through creativehum's posts here, I see a great example of taking the nuggets of implied setting and making them something not quite 3I.

When I really dig into the setting implied by the ships, the economics, the distribution of starports, tech levels, planetary environments, weapons, and more, the one thing that I think is TRUE about the implied setting of Traveller is this:

“Traveller assumes a remote centralized government…”
-- Traveller Book 5

The corollary to that is, of course, the setting for adventures is at the remote edge of an interstellar government. After that, all bets are off.

(One can, of course, set a Traveller game in the heart of the Interstellar civilization. But all the assumptions about trade, starships, starport distribution, tech levels, planetary environments, weapons, and all else need to be reworked. Because the game isn't set up to build those environments.)

 

[salochin999]

sounds cool

There is not, in other words, a steady improvement. The PCs improve the survivability not in terms of greater Hit Points or other characteristic-based increases, but by the gear they surround themselves by.

One option for gear is various kinds of implants and cybernetics that give stat or skill boosts. Personally I like the idea of that kind of stuff as a "treasure" substitute for progression especially if a lot of it has unfortunate side effects.

 

[mike wightman]

I really like what you are building here.

 

[robject]

I really like what you are building here.

Yep. Feels a bit like Norton's "Central Control" meets Dumarest meets the Hegemony from Citizen of the Galaxy...