Imperial Regional Cultures and Books Detailing Them: Continuation Thread

[Grognardia]

Apparently you haven't a clue about my level of education, intelligence or maturity and are willing to engage in snark and personal attacks - fair enough.

You played Rifts lol lol lol - how's that for mature?

You can not separate the two, knowledge is knowledge. Even if you think you are playing in character you still know the metagame stuff you are pretending not to know "in character" and that will inform your actions.

I have, many times. Many, many times. I have also run adventures set in whatever the OTU was at the time, CT every adventure, double adventure and boxed adventure, MT Knightfall and Flaming Eye, TNE every adventure, T4 every adventure. I used other rule systems to run some of those adventures, I ran bespoke setting galore.

I have tried to run T5, I have run MgT1e and 2e games, but I always go back to my homebrew CT mish mash of rules and my Long Night or Culture settings.

Which OTU do you mean? The Third Imperium? The Rebellion era? TNE, T4 and the early years of the Third Imperium?

And yet it happens, the setting says so. So somehwhere out there in the MgT OTU there a super powered characters...

Go and read what I said, slowly this time.

I said I like that the referee will get to decide the outcome, not that there is no setting. How do you have a FFW with no setting?

'Go and read what I said, slowly this time.' You really need to cut it out with these childish jibes.

 

[actionman]

The problem is their authors make stuff up that isn't consistent with their own rules and setting details,

And they need to rein that in hard.

And make their authors use the rule books and systems as written.

Absolutely, they absolutely must.

how much history you have with the Traveller game.

Since 1978, no offense taken. I have all editions, much in hardcopy and a complete CD ROM collection. I'm not trying to say that I'm some kind of expert, far from it. Traveller was my first ttrpg, not DnD. And that set me on a path that changed my gaming destiny, forever.

Mongoose have done a really good job with their core rules. They have some superb campaigns, adventures and supplements.

If I had been them I would never have tried to go into the detail they have without first stating that all previous work is hereby consigned to the dustbin, this is how it is. And make their authors use the rule books and systems as written.

I completely agree. They should have declared that Mongoose Traveller is its own thing with its own canon, and the canon of CT/MT/TNE/T4/GT/T5 does not apply, or at the very least Mongoose canon takes precedence.

Mongoose now has the opportunity to take care of many of these issues and implement some much needed version control. I hope they do.

 

[Vormaerin]

Traveller is a rules set. You can play Traveller with just the core rulebook and make up all your own worlds. That was how it was designed. That was how it functions now.

Charted Space is a setting. It is not what Traveller is about and you do not have to use it to play Traveller. And yet there are people demanding that the Core Rulebook has a primer on Charted Space in it. I think that is a terrible idea. Fortunately, Mongoose seems to be moving the other direction.

Charted Space is not the only published Traveller setting. 2300 is a Traveller setting. There is also an officially licensed version of the Mindjammer setting. There's also Hostile & Earth/Clement Sector that use Cepheus, which is off label version of Traveller.

Pioneer is a Traveller setting that is coming out soon.

Mongoose has a Sector Construction Guide that is about how to make your own homebrew sector to play in. The rulebooks (Central Supply/Robots/High Guard) have rules for stuff that doesn't exist in Charted Space. You can build with warp drives or have sentient playable robots using the Traveller rules.

I do not understand how people can think that they "need" to buy all this Charted Space stuff to play Traveller. You don't. You never did. And you never will.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Apparently you haven't a clue about my level of education, intelligence or maturity and are willing to engage in snark and personal attacks - fair enough, the gloves are off

You played Rifts lol lol lol - how's that for mature?

Ok more seriously, the two can not be separated in my experience, knowledge is knowledge. Even if I think I am playing in character I still know the metagame stuff, pretending not to know "in character" does not stop it informing character actions.

Pretending not to know in character? You mean the same way you are pretending to be a Traveller character? You can "pretend" to be a character who knows more than yourself, but can't "pretend" to be a character that knows less than yourself. I am pretty sure that means you are simply playing yourself in every game you play, since "based on your experience", "the two can not be separated."

Which OTU do you mean? The Third Imperium? The Rebellion era? TNE, T4 and the early years of the Third Imperium? And which version the the Third Imperium? The MgT version, the earlt GDW version, the later GDW version that saw the nature of the Imperium change...

There is only one OTU now since Mongoose owns all of the IP. As of now, the OTU is whatever Mongoose says it is. All of the former OTUs are now ATUs.

And yet it happens, the setting says so. So somehwhere out there in the MgT OTU there a super powered characters...

If no PCs or NPCs run the adventure, then there are no super-powered characters. All of the background information is still happening in the OTU, but if no NPCs or PCs follow that specific adventure path, the result of super-powered PCs never happens. If Mongoose wrote NPCs that completed the Ancients storyline, then you would be correct in saying that in the OTU there are super-powered characters. If they don't, then it is only background information that no one has find out about or acted on.

I said I like that the referee will get to decide the outcome, not that there is no setting. How do you have a FFW with no setting?

As it should be at your home table, but you can't continue the OTTU timeline if the results of major events are never written, so by your way of thinking, there can be no OTU except as a snapshot in time. No past. No future. I am not sure how you would consider that a "setting".

 

[Jame Rowe]

I'm pretty sure that every starport is going to have a MacDonald and a Starbuck franchise in each.

Probably several Starbucks.

And one local Starbucks knockoff where the "b" is replaced by an "f."

 

[Condottiere]

 

[actionman]

There is only one OTU now since Mongoose owns all of the IP. As of now, the OTU is whatever Mongoose says it is. All of the former OTUs are now ATUs.

True, and they need to make the OTU sensible, consistent, and well-defined. And example is in the Third Imperium book, it states that the Imperial collects taxes from its member worlds, but it doesn't say how the taxation system works, how heavy the Imperial tax burden is, what the Imperial nobility's role is in the tax collection system, etc. And it would be so easy. A simple paragraph with statements like "The Imperium requires a tax of 10% of each member world's gross world product each year, and one of the duties of the nobles assigned to worlds and subsectors is to ensure that taxes are properly collected." It's not hard, and it provides a good reason for Imperial nobles to be assigned to worlds. It also provides great adventure material, like being mercenary tax collectors for the subsector duke, adventurers against corrupt tax collectors, compassionate nobles trying to do something about worlds groaning under Imperial taxation, etc. But, all we get is a couple of mentions of taxes.

From the beginning, Traveller was designed as a rules system without a setting, with the setting added later. DnD was similar, with the settings of Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and others added later. But, it is a compelling setting that brings people in. People want to know what they can do in a game, what the adventures will be about, what the paradigm is. You don't get new players to try a game because the rules are great, but because the setting and the potential adventures in it sound interesting. Though Traveller has very well-developed systems for generating star systems and sectors, most people don't have that much of an interest in generating a setting large enough to play in. Some people do, most people don't, especially new players who are not invested in the game and don't know much about how the game works. Settings are immensely useful for firing the imaginations of players and inspiring their own to creativity. That's why it's important that there is a setting, and that's why it's important that the primary setting is done well.

 

[Vormaerin]

Sadly for the wannabe tax farmers, Traveller freelancers tend to be more inclined towards astrophysics, engineering, and military theory and less in tax accountancy.

 

[-Daniel-]

There is only one OTU now since Mongoose owns all of the IP. As of now, the OTU is whatever Mongoose says it is. All of the former OTUs are now ATUs.

While I agree with the core thought, I will point out that as long as Mongoose chooses not to cut off the other sources, it remains unclear what they intend to be the OTU and it leaves the issues around what exactly is and is not official lore so to speak.

 

[phavoc]

Traveller, like other games, didn't start off with a fully defined universe and setting. One can see how additional layers were added to it as they continued to publish and refine the source materials. That's really no different than a lot of games. Some have more structure, history and pre-defined expansion points while others get the same treatment. Nothing wrong with that - why go through the effort of laying everything out if your game dies at the gate? I think, ideally, you get the 50,000ft view down to start and leave logical stubs to expand upon later if sales and growth allow it to occur. Going back and revising things constantly because you didn't think of any of it beforehand is not necessarily the best way to design a gaming system.

As for the details of things, I think there's a happy medium to be found somewhere. The Atlas of the Imperium is pretty clearly the result of a lot of random dice rolls to generate quantity - but not quality. And for something the size of the Imperium that sort of makes sense - though in hindsight it would have probably been better to simply list the sectors, or even the star systems, but leave details out until they were ready to actually fill them in. Some locations, like the Spinward Marches, got more thought put into it because it was scaled at a level that one could.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with providing the lay of the land, so to speak, to provide an initial framework. TSR did wonders with their World of Greyhawk - it was detailed enough to provide high-level structure and locations for endless adventuring - but not so detailed that any referee found themselves having to toss out a lot of things in order to shoe-horn in their own adventure. Personally i will purchase a supplement or an adventure because it's a good read or just really interesting - even if ultimately I never play it. When possible I like to reward the authors for quality work - just like I'm happy to punish a gaming company that puts out poor quality materials by withholding my gaming dollars. I don't see any reason to reward a company for schlock work.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Taxation systems are sufficiently unadventurey that I would not expect them in my RPG book any more than I would expect them in the opening scroll of a Star Wars movie.

...

...what? Aw, crud.

 

[Vormaerin]

While I agree with the core thought, I will point out that as long as Mongoose chooses not to cut off the other sources, it remains unclear what they intend to be the OTU and it leaves the issues around what exactly is and is not official lore so to speak.

Mongoose clearly intends to make money on its acquisition. They have authorized 3rd party CT products now and even released a new CT book. So it seems unlikely that they are intending to write off all the old material.

I like that Mongoose is putting out a lot of different ways to play the game even if you stick to Charted Space. Pirates of Drinax, Fifth Frontier War, Deepnight Revelation, Mysteries/Secrets/Wrath of the Ancients, Singularity, etc are not really intended to be all true at the same time in the same campaign.

I liked that CT had single planet campaigns (Tarsus boxed set), Single System Campaigns (Beltstrike Boxed Set), and support for adventures with starships and adventuring without a starship.

 

[Condottiere]

I'd say that each Imperium noble gets a ten year estimate on the planetary gross domestic product, and gets a tax target that they have to reach within a specific timeframe.

 

[Vormaerin]

So the far future is the distant past with such antiquated systems as Tax farming?

 

[Geir]

Sadly for the wannabe tax farmers, Traveller freelancers tend to be more inclined towards astrophysics, engineering, and military theory and less in tax accountancy.

Or in my case I knew enough about it to change careers away from it after less than two years as a financial analyst. In school it's all about math in process; in reality it's a lot of guesses, subterfuge, and mysteries.

That's why I only put in tariffs in the WBH, because they're simple to calculate. So is a well-defined VAT. Unfortunately (from a game designer perspective, not an economist's perspective), the Third Imperium is pretty explicitly built on a no tariff assumption.

And I can't figure out how a starport actually gets close to breaking even, because it's not berthing fees (which is why, not OTU, but not explicitly not OTU, A and B starports should only sell refined fuel - still not enough to pay for upkeep and salaries, though. Duty free shops?). And then we have to wonder who pays for the Imperial Navy and how. So best to just ignore the giant elephant in the room and not to step in its dung. Or you could just assume that everything you buy everywhere in the Imperium has a built-in VAT.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, I tend to assume that there's some kinds of excise taxes on interstellar goods, but I don't worry about the details. Just like I don't worry about the business licenses, professional certifications, registration fees, and myriad other ways governments extract revenue from businesses.

 

[Condottiere]

The issue for tax farming is that the bidder gets to keep anything above that he's committed to the Treasury.

Percentage would keep them more honest, and from slaughtering any number of golden geese.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Individual worlds pay the Imperium protection money tax for membership in the Imperium. They sign up to free intersteller trade so that the mob enforcers nobility will see to the well being of the world, and are required to be a market for mob megacorporation traders.

The Imperium guarantees their security (as long as they keep up the payments) and access to megacorportaion goods (for the benefit of the megacorporation). All intersteller trade must go through the Imperial authorised staport.

Taxation is treated the same way as insurance - it is ignored at the PC scale.

 

[Condottiere]

Pretty sure local and regional governments will impose taxation in some form, if only to fund their own operations, and the Imperial tithe.

 

[Anstett]

I cannot imagine zero taxes