OTU Lore Resources for Referees (Updated 19/02/2024)

[GabrielGABFonseca]

Welcome to the Nir Admegulasha Gaburielak (or 'NAG') — Gabriel's Repository of Things!​

Who Are You?​

Just some guy who really likes the OTU and who has a rather Bwap-like tendency to catalogue things.

What is This Place?​

This post with a very pretentious name is a unified space where I can share all of the little Traveller-related things I've been working on-and-off over the last few years. I originally started making them for my own use, amusement, and to learn more about the Official Traveller Universe (OTU) but as they grew in scope I think they have become resources that would be of use or interest to more people than just myself. So here they are! I hope you find them as useful and interesting as I do.

What Do You Have to Offer?​

Why, am I glad you asked! There are currently three things in this post: The Traveller Timeline, Traveller: Sophonts of Charted Space, and the work-in-progress The Imperial Census, 1105.

Traveller Timeline:​

Traveller Timeline is, essentially, a lesser version and humble spiritual successor to Don McKinney's incomparable Traveller Integrated Timeline, but sourced exclusively from Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition. It is a comprehensive timeline of the OTU spanning from the Ancients Era up to the present day (1105 Imperial). Each entry in the timeline is marked with its source publication and page within said publication, using an extensive and comprehensive citation system (see the Appendix).
All entries have been added 'as-is'; I have made no efforts whatsoever to correct inconsistencies in dates except where an error was patently obvious, such as a missing negative sign for a given year when talking about events occurring before the founding of the Third Imperium. All such instances have been duly marked as such.

The Traveller Timeline can be found [here] as a 'living document' google doc.

Traveller: Sophonts of Charted Space:​

Traveller: Sophonts of Charted Space is a comprehensive catalogue of every single sophont species with a known homeworld in Charted Space. It was created by sifting through the files of all Official and In Review Sectors of the Traveller 5 Second Survey, which can be accessed through the irreplaceable TravellerMap. These Sectors have already been revisited (or undergoing it) and approved by the T5SS working group, overseen by Marc W. Miller himself, and therefore are as close to 'canon' as anything in a massive corpus of work such as Traveller can get.
An important caveat should be noted about the sophont listing in this document, however; it includes only sophonts whose homeworlds are present in the aforementioned sectors. Even if a sophont has appeared in a canonical work before, if its homeworld isn't within the official/in review sectors or it is otherwise unknown, they have not been included. This is mainly due to technical reasons of what is represented in the T5SS data, and how I'm able to process said data with python scripts.

Traveller: Sophonts of Charted Space can be found [here], as a 'living document' google doc.

The Imperial Census, 1105:​

The Imperial Census, 1105 is a deep-dive into the statistics of the Third Imperium as a whole; how many systems it controls, the distribution of Technology Levels and Government Types, landed Nobility Titles, among others. Its main feature however is a detailed breakdown of the Demographics of the Third Imperium, by individual Non-Human Species and Humaniti subspecies. In the document a link can be found at the end to the data in spreadsheet format for ease of reading.
This particular document is currently incomplete; whilst the Demographics section is essentially done, there is still work to be done pertaining the different statistics provided in the doc. Work is also being done on the presentation front to increase legibility. Suggestions and ideas for inclusion in the document are very much welcome.

The Imperial Census, 1105 can be found [here], and should be regarded as an incomplete, work-in-progress manuscript.

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[Galadrion]

Once suggestion I would make for these documents: make use of some sort of spacing or punctuation in larger numbers for delineating thousands, millions, and larger orders. The first thing that jumped out to my eye when I looked at your timeline was that it was not immediately apparent to me whether you were placing the emergence of hominids on Terra at 1.5, 15, or 150 million years ago. (All those zeroes kinda run together.) I honestly don't really care whether you use a space, a comma, or a period as the place marker, so long as it's a visible offset.

 

[Geir]

( I really need to start entering things I create in the Traveller wiki)
But on that note, the Ghenani of Drenalch are a minor human race.

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

I've updated both files in accordance with your remarks, thank you!

 

[Nelphine]

Is there any way to easily identify population percentage? Either for 3I (and other large factions) as a whole, or by sector?

 

[Galadrion]

Thank you! That is much more readable - before, I was reduced to highlighting portions of the relevant numbers in order to keep track of exactly which zeroes I'd already counted.

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

Is there any way to easily identify population percentage? Either for 3I (and other large factions) as a whole, or by sector?

Funny you've mentioned that, I've done so in the past for the Third Imperium, and have a partial script set up to do a count of this sort.
For non-Imperium factions it is a bit of a non-trivial matter, both due to data processing and its incompleteness - not all sectors beyond the ones the Third Imperium has territories in have been fully reviewed by the Second Survey, so the data is a big ??????.

That said, because of this I've started work on a new 'Imperial Census (1105)' document, outlining the demographics of the Third Imperium, at least according to the T5SS data. All things going smoothly, I'll put it up tomorrow.

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

Is there any way to easily identify population percentage? Either for 3I (and other large factions) as a whole, or by sector?

I'm happy to inform that a new document for this is up, albeit in a work-in-progress state. Hopefully it will be able to provide you with the info you wanted, I've done my best to present it in a thorough and readable way.

 

[Nelphine]

That's amazing, thank you. The vargr population is FAR lower than I realized (which isnt super surprising given I like Corridor so much)

 

[Geir]

That's amazing, thank you. The vargr population is FAR lower than I realized (which isnt super surprising given I like Corridor so much)

I think that came up before. The Vargr population is probably much larger than indicated in Travellermap, because there are probably thousands of worlds in Imperial space with Vargr populations in the single digit percentiles that don't show up as Varg0 - and even if they did, you'd be multiplying by zero...

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

I think that came up before. The Vargr population is probably much larger than indicated in Travellermap, because there are probably thousands of worlds in Imperial space with Vargr populations in the single digit percentiles that don't show up as Varg0 - and even if they did, you'd be multiplying by zero...

To avoid multiplication by Zero, I've used as a criteria the assumption that for a CODE0 population remark, the species' population on the planet needs to be >= 1% and less than 10% (because that'd cause it to have a CODE1 population remark instead). The medium and high-end estimates use 5% and 9%, respectively.

Now, regarding the Vargr population... there are 8987 systems in the Imperium, and only 65 of them have a Varg# population remark, but I don't think the total Vargr population value would be much bigger unless all High Population worlds in the Imperium had Vargr populations of just under 1%.

That said, as I said in the doc itself, by the very nature of the UWP it is only taking into account the populations of Mainworlds, so it ignores the populations of other planets in a same given system, to speak nothing of the permanently space-dwelling or itinerant (or should I say Traveller) populations. Then again, the Aslan population is double that of Vargr, so they would have a lot of catching up to do.

Or the Second Survey could add Varg# codes to more worlds too, I know I wouldn't complain!

 

[DigrizJB]

Suggest the below table with population, not just world count. Also percentages, what percent of the Imperial population lives at TL 9, etc.?
How Many Ag Worlds, Desert Worlds Etc?
How many systems have Gas Giants? How Many have Asteroid Belts? How many have both / neither?
How many scout / naval bases are there?
Thanks for compiling the data. I have done similar things on a Sector level.

• TL0 – 22 Systems
• TL1 – 9 Systems
• TL2 – 28 Systems
• TL3 – 34 Systems
• TL4 – 65 Systems
• TL5 – 298 Systems
• TL6 – 464 Systems
• TL7 – 861 Systems
• TL8 – 1040 Systems
• TL9 – 1136 Systems
• TL10 – 1212 Systems
• TL11 – 1160 Systems
• TL12 – 1037 Systems
• TL13 – 726 Systems
• TL14 – 550 Systems
• TL15 – 341 Systems
• TL16 – 3 Systems
• TL17 – 1 Systems

 

[GabrielGABFonseca]

The Traveller: Sophonts of Charted Space document has been updated to incorporate recent changes to the Spica and Langere Sectors, which gave names to more than half of the unspecified Minor Sophont Races.

Minor updates have also been done to The Imperial Census, 1105, and I've continued to add to Traveller Timeline in a trickle of constant edits as time permits. All links should be taking directly to the already-updated files.

Suggest the below table with population, not just world count. Also percentages, what percent of the Imperial population lives at TL 9, etc.?
How Many Ag Worlds, Desert Worlds Etc?
How many systems have Gas Giants? How Many have Asteroid Belts? How many have both / neither?
How many scout / naval bases are there?
Thanks for compiling the data. I have done similar things on a Sector level.

I've (slowly) started to add this info to the Census document. I've recently finished a python script that automates the pulling and compiling of Travellermap data, which saves me a lot of time and should allow for more frequent updates and data processing in the future.