What is Proto-Traveller?

[mike wightman]

The major difference between LBB2 versions is the X-boat.

In 77 edition you can build them .

In 81 edition you can't (at least not using the rules as written).

Easy fix is to use your 81 edition (or TTB, ST) and just drop the requirement that a jump drive requires a power plant.
Another fix is to fudge the amount of pp fuel - 10t for 1 weeks operation.

Or forget about 100t X-boats being jump 4. Or leave out X-boats altogether.

 

[robject]

Proto OTU is senators locked up in prison ships, corrupt nobles, brave freedom fighters, small ships, tramp traders.

^^ THIS ^^

The major difference between LBB2 versions is the X-boat.
[...]
Easy fix is to use your 81 edition (or TTB, ST) and just drop the requirement that a jump drive requires a power plant.

My take is a variation on the Easy Fix: there is a self-powered jump drive which explicitly can't power maneuver drives, or perhaps can't coexist with them in a ship.

 

[McPerth]

My take is a variation on the Easy Fix: there is a self-powered jump drive which explicitly can't power maneuver drives, or perhaps can't coexist with them in a ship.

This would be closer to MT design system, where JD was totally independent from PP, while MD was dependent on it for power.

 

[rancke]

Proto OTU is senators locked up in prison ships, corrupt nobles, brave freedom fighters, small ships, tramp traders.

^^ THIS ^^

The thing is, you need a much lower population density than the Proto OTU had to have those tropes (That is, to have them make sense -- you can have them if you don't care about verisimilitude). I'd guess (I obviously haven't tested it) that increasing the number of systems by a factor 100 and having the extra 99 out of 100 automatically be empty would just about work. Especially if you concentrated the populated worlds in clusters with a density of, say, 1 inhabited out of 10.

Combine it with making inhabited space roughly 100 parsecs deep and you might wind up with a fairly plausible Proto-Traveller universe.

A less drastic solution would be to drop all populations of the Proto-OTU by two levels.


Hans

 

[DangerousThing]

The thing is, you need a much lower population density than the Proto OTU had to have those tropes (That is, to have them make sense -- you can have them if you don't care about verisimilitude). I'd guess (I obviously haven't tested it) that increasing the number of systems by a factor 100 and having the extra 99 out of 100 automatically be empty would just about work. Especially if you concentrated the populated worlds in clusters with a density of, say, 1 inhabited out of 10.

Combine it with making inhabited space roughly 100 parsecs deep and you might wind up with a fairly plausible Proto-Traveller universe.

A less drastic solution would be to drop all populations of the Proto-OTU by two levels.


Hans

Wouldn't high population density in the core of the empire help with whole evil empire? And the freedom fighters would be on the fringe I would think, as well as the tramp traders. Yes, I would lower population away from the core.

 

[mike wightman]

You have hit on a very important point.

In LBB4's intro and Adventures 1-3 library data suggest that the Imperial Core worlds are directly ruled by the Imperium and that the highest TLs are commonplace.

It's out on the frontier where lack of Imperial control allows local governments much autonomy and Imperial forces are spread thin.

Then Spinward Marches was published. S3 is the first nail in the coffin of proto Traveller.

The worlds of the Spinward Marches have too many high population worlds, too many high technology worlds and far too many worlds that have been settled for centuries by the Imperium.

I suggest that much of the Spinward Marches history be ignored if you want to keep a proto-Traveller setting. Frontier Wars going back centuries, fleets travelling back to the Imperial core worlds to overthrow emperors?

Not something the worlds described in LBB4 and adventures 1-3 would be capable of.

 

[Whipsnade]

Then Spinward Marches was published. S3 is the first nail in the coffin of proto Traveller.

Agreed.

The worlds of the Spinward Marches have too many high population worlds, too many high technology worlds and far too many worlds that have been settled for centuries by the Imperium.

Again, agreed. The idea that the Imperium has been active in the Marches for over 1000 years, over 500 years longer than it has been on the Rim, simply doesn't work. All the various hand waves and other explanations, official or not, haven't solved the problem either.

 

[Mithras]

He did answer, and the answer was what I thought it would be.

And he is correct, for how it is handled in published materials. For my own games, I take it in to account.

I also have a great workaround for my protoTraveller setting, I don't allow populations of 9 or 10 to turn up, and allow the Industrial trade classification to use a pop8 world, instead. And of course I roll up a frontier region....

 

[Mithras]

To me the X Boat smacks of the third imperium, so I leave it out.

The major difference between LBB2 versions is the X-boat.

In 77 edition you can build them .

In 81 edition you can't (at least not using the rules as written).

Easy fix is to use your 81 edition (or TTB, ST) and just drop the requirement that a jump drive requires a power plant.
Another fix is to fudge the amount of pp fuel - 10t for 1 weeks operation.

Or forget about 100t X-boats being jump 4. Or leave out X-boats altogether.