Reimagine the OTU!

[EDG]

Premise: As it currently stands the OTU/Charted Space setting is broken. It needs fixing. So let's reimagine it - keep what was good from the old setting, and discard and reinvent the rest. (Right now, I'm not concerned about the play elements - those should come out from the setting).

(oh, and if you're fine with the OTU as it is... this ain't the thread for you. I'm interested in how people would reimagine the whole OTU here, not in how they'd like to keep it the same).

Me, I would really darken up the whole setting. The Imperium is nasty. It blackmails worlds into joining it, blockading them and denying them access to space and other markets and key technologies (which is really what it does in the current OTU anyway, but everyone's too polite to say anything about it). While each world is culturally different, they have all sworn fealty to the Imperium if they are members. Everyone is an Imperial citizen first, and a planetary citizen second. Low pop worlds are colonies of other nearby worlds, and share the Imperial allegiance. The core worlds of the Imperium were subjugated long ago and are faithful and loyal members.

The Frontier worlds on the other hand are fractious, rebellious and not too keen on being controlled by a distant Emperor. As a result, the borders of the Imperium are progressively more violent and lawless as you approach the edge of Imperial space - Imperial forces have to frequently take Police actions to quell uprisings, and often right at the border the rebels are funded and supported by external polities.

The surrounding states are a dark mirror of what they are in the current OTU:
-The Solomani are a true fascist state - everyone within its sphere is of pure Solomani origin, with any other human subspecies either forced out, obliterated, or subjugated as slave races.
-Hiver manipulations are much more selfish than they already are, usually playing Solomani against Imperial in order for the Federation to strike and take control afterwards.
-The K'Kree are homicidal maniacs. They're all basically like the Lords of Thunder - expansionistic, psychotic zealots who believe they are dominant over all.
- The Vargr are bloodthirsty and fractious. The whole of the Extents seethes in bloody civil war as Pack faces off against Pack. They'd be like Reavers from Firefly - everyone fears them, and is glad they're mostly tearing themselves apart. Every now and then though a raiding party enters Imperial or K'Kree or Zhodani space and leaves bloody destruction in its path.
- The Zhodani really are how the Imperium paint them in the current OTU - oppressive, invasive, and mindcontrolling. Think 1984 with psionics.
- The Aslan are honourable but savage, and think nothing of those who are not of their kind. Think of all the bad klingons from Star Trek.
- The Droyne are Ancient. Fortunately they keep to themselves on their dreamstate worlds, but they can't stand trespassers and all the lesser races are like ants to them - and woe betide anyone who tried to frak with them. The last bunch who tried to assault them had their homeworld casually obliterated and everything in the surrounding 20 pc rendered uninhabitable as colatteral damage when the Droyne caused their sun to supernova. There are riches to be found at the edges of Droyne space, but only if you can survive the ultratech traps - and pray that the Droyne themselves don't notice you.

The planets and systems would be realistic. In the Imperial core, most humans concentrate on the habitable worlds, few live on the uninhabitable ones. A few worlds even have tens or hundreds of billions of people on them - these Hive Worlds range from still having some greenery on them to being vast, crowded worldcities like Coruscant, leeching the resources of all the worlds around them. On the frontier, it's every sentient for itself. Life is hard, and even the uninhabitable worlds have colonies or settlements on them. Most die off in a few years, only to be reborn by the next wave of settlers. The ruins of previous colonies often litter the landscapes of the more marginally habitable worlds.

So what you have here is something more Fireflyish, with a dash of Blakes 7 or Star Trek with the Rebels and the Empire, and the darkness of nBSG. If you want to trade peacefully, you can do it in the core of the Imperium, but be ready for rampant corruption, bureaucracy and oppression. Or you can take more risks in the Frontier, and maybe smuggle goods and be an actual hero with a cause. Or you could be on the front lines, stamping out the rebels and alien scum.

How would you reimagine it?

 

[Colin]

I would change the technology. Make jump drives faster, have cloning, bioroids, cyborgs, and nanotech. Something like the technology of Transhuman Space, plus jump drives. I would compress the tech curve, too.

I wouldn't go so far as to make the Imperium nasty. Benignly negligent, self-absorbed. And militarily fierce. Psycho, even. I would agree that frontier regions should be wilder, and more rebellious. The Imperium as it stands is too static, but yours is a little unstable.

I would make the Hivers and K'kree weird. Almost incomprehensible. Have them do things that make no sense at all. Play up the carnivorous tendencies of both Aslan and Vargr. I like dreamstate worlds, just to add colour.

 

[Sangrolu]

Me, I would really darken up the whole setting.
(...)
The surrounding states are a dark mirror of what they are in the current OTU:

Except for the Vargr & Zhos, that's pretty close to how I already run things.

Me, the biggest thing I'd change... I'd like to see more interstellar war. A lot of my fondest notions of SF fancy are rooted in classic SF artwork, depicting huge fleets clashing in space, powered troopers and gunships sweeping over huge well established worlds. As it stands, the OTU seems too static and well protected, and conflicts isolated to frontier worlds.

 

[Dave Chase]

I am not sure how this could be done with out relocating some of the other Empires, but the Imperium is surrounded currently.

There needs to be either an open way for expansion (no matter what direction) or more of an unaligned section of space where the Imperium could expand but is care in how it does it.

Even though they could take over some of the independent worlds, if they do too much the rest will band together against it. But if they don't expand then over time, they will be shut down.

That allows a front of conflict to always be present with out having to go to war.

Also, I would like there to be a good reason as to why the other surround races don't attack the Imperium (war or territory taking) other than the Zhodani. Are they that peaceful (Hiver) or do they have other issues more pressing on their opposite border from the Imperium?

Dave Chase

 

[EDG]

I am not sure how this could be done with out relocating some of the other Empires, but the Imperium is surrounded currently.

They're only surrounded on a 2D map...

 

[captainjack23]

Add frontiers, and unexplored territory; Erase any of the trans rift Aslan areas and likely the julian protectorate; Shrink the solomani sphere andrearrange the hivers and Kkree to take up far less space.

Possibly remove the weight of continuous civilization from the game. The glacial tech change across 1000+ years is hard to pair with any kind of adventure or expansion ethos.

Consider shrinking the heck out of the imperium; make it more like german or france in Europe than Russia in Eurasia, or Rome in the Med. Add in lots of Belgums and "almost peers".

Stay much more neutral on mood -in many ways the empire is too paternalistic/1970s SF empire; and ostentatiously Dark or ostentatiously Noble both limit Players and particulalry GMs. Besides, we already have WH40K and Star trek to cover those.

Politically, I'd say one may as well stick with the current limited technomonarchy -I can't see how any form of government at this scale can work and be understandable in modern terms, so why the heck not ?

If there was a way to really really steepen the tech scale, I'd love it. That would probably have the practical effect of homogenizing civilized space to a moderrate but not vary variant level, with extreme outliers for the fun games.

I've considered giving everyone a TL stat, and giving a minus to any situation where their native tech differs from what they are doing, or for just being in a different tech environment. Anytime one works with tech less than yours, or tries to generally function in lower tech, subtract the difference; and square the difference for any tech above yours.

 

[Vile]

Well, I guess with a bit of tweaking there is still hope for the OTU. I would try to change as little as possible of the letter of the setting (because I'm lazy), but my interpretation would (and does) differ quite a lot in some cases.

The polities - All of them can stay, really, but with some minor tweaks - e.g., things would be 'darker', but only to extent that they should already be. Interstellar feudal systems can't be that clean-cut by their very nature. But there probably wouldn't be any highly oppressive states like the former DDR, IMO such a thing is simply too difficult, costly and labour-intensive to maintain on an interstellar scale. Bureaucratic, corrupt, inefficient, arrogant, self-centred or plain alien - all of those and more would define the big empires, but not "evil".

The borders - I would keep the size of the thing same, but my corner of the OTU would be quite compact. Just large enough to include the borders of the nearest interstellar big guns, with the wild west in the middle (and probably going off the map to one side). Everyone's borders will be pulled back by a few subsectors, leaving "no-sophont's-space" between the polities. These zones will be the focus of adventure, espionage, powerplays and exploration.

The races - Only the really alien ones, like Hivers and maybe K'kree (possibly Vargr, at a stretch) would stay. Aslan would become another human race, with absolutely no change otherwise except to reinforce some of their cultural difference to other humans. The Droyne would require some very serious re-design, and would probably not be direct descendants of the Ancients - descendants of one of their slave races, maybe.

Technology - Call me old-fashioned, but I like retro-tech. Big computers, clunky ships, shotguns. I'd probably dump the whole fuel thing, assuming fusion is still the main power source. I would diversify technology somewhat, so that there are viable alternatives - gravitics would be hideously expensive, so that orbital habitats and beanstalks are more popular, and you get other forms of transport like VTOLs, airships, submarines and ekranoplanes. Fusion comes later in the game so that fission, solar power and antimatter are also around. More solutions to the same problem, instead of one-tech-fits-all.

FTL - I would change jump drive so that it doesn't require huge amounts of fuel, just huge powerplants and capacitors. I would introduce alternative FTL (from the MGT book), so that civilised high-traffic worlds would be more likely to have hyperspace gates for economy-of-scale. Travel would take longer, too, again to make the size limits of empires more realistic.

The UPP - I would like to see a reasonably realistic distribution of star types and planetary systems, with world size, atmosphere and hydrographics and location having much more effect on their population, government, law level, tech level and starport type. I would also have a much higher incidence of balkanised systems, where not all worlds are colonies of the main world. I would see more emphasis on the sheer size of star systems, to get away from the idea that there is nothing but a bunch mainworlds out there. No big interstellar trade - the free traders really would be all there is, no world needs to ship in iron ore on interstellar transports. Every trade mission is speculative. That would also make the wildly varying tech levels (which I really like) more realistic.

History - I would like someone else to sort this out. Get some tech-level consistent expansion worked out, have a few more races or polities get wiped out or subjugated because they did not happen to have similar tech levels when they met, that sort of thing. And introduce some real reasons why the technologically superior types don't end up taking over the galaxy. I'd also dial back the thousands of years a bit for the same reason - with jump drive, everyone could have spread much farther than they have on the map.

Artificial Intelligence - Definitely would show up in some form, but I would be very careful about it to avoid creating a super-race which could outcompete everyone else. More robots, with all the moral issues they raise.

So, really, given all of that - not so much a re-write as a re-shuffle. :wink:

 

[Golan2072]

Everything is too big and needs collapsing. The scale, the timeline, the size of common warships... Everything in the OTU is on a far greater scale than is needed or desired for play.

So make it smaller. If you want to be conservative about that, reduce the Imperium to about 9 sectors total, with some of them (like the Solomani Rim and the Marches) being split between the Imperium and rival polities. If you want to be radical about this, replace each sector with a single subsector. This will make an interstellar government more plausible, allow you to travel from one side of the Imperium to the other in the framework of a single campaign with ease, reduce the time needed to settle everything and maybe even make Grandfather and/or the Vilani unnecessary.

Get rid of Grandfather or, for the very least, make him less central to the main OTU plot. If you want early settlement of everything with Humans, keep the Droyne (and Hivers?) as an ancient race who did this in their former day of glory - not just a single genius, but a whole empire of ancient Droyne. Now their empire is dead and all that remains are a few survivors who are very dim shadows of their empire's former glory; most don't even know that their species once held a large interstellar empire.

Shorten the timeline. Millennia upon millenia of history and cultural evolution on so many worlds would create too much diversity and too much weirdness for an average campaign to plausibly hold.

The Imperium (and all other polities for that matter) should be shown in shades of grey. The Imperium should be considerably corrupt and oppressive at times but not a total Evil Empire (tm); the Solomani should suffer from factionalism, with some factions being fascist and virulently racist and others less so - the Confederacy should vary greatly from world to world depending on the ruling faction.

The overall feel should be similar to the one given in A1: Kinunir and A4: Leviathan, with a somewhat corrupt and underhanded Imperium and a real frontier to go empire-building in.

 

[rust]

Remove the Emperor or turn him into a mere figurehead and split the
Empire into several regions with at least slightly different cultures, all
clinging to the idea of a common Empire to avoid conflict, but at the
same time using all political and economic means short of war to en-
sure that it becomes their version of Empire.

Remove the entire Ancients storyline, replacing the Ancients with at least
a dozen ancient interstellar civilizations, and with the Ancients remove
all human races except the humans from Earth and all races meddled
with by the Ancients, including of course the Vargr.

Remove the Aslan and introduce some more alien species, like the Gaim
from Babylon 5, and make at least half of the alien species technologi-
cally significantly more advanced than the humans, to give the Empire
a reason to stay together despite all internal conflicts (and the player
characters something to discover, trade with, and so on).

While I would not like a "dark" Empire, I would very much like an incom-
petent one, with a huge bureaucracy that moves only very slowly, with
a fleet that is kept small by disputes over its budget, with frontier re-
gions acting like the Empire did not exist and trying to connect to the
nearest friendly alien species instead - and with true frontier worlds al-
most left to their own devices, only molested now and then by some
bureaucrat from the core.

However, this would probably make the Empire too much like my own
Solar Federation setting ...

 

[Dave Chase]

I am not sure how this could be done with out relocating some of the other Empires, but the Imperium is surrounded currently.

They're only surrounded on a 2D map...

If the galaxy was a sphere I could see this. But as a flatten disk where they would reach the top and bottom (sort of to speak) they would then move out toward the greatest concentration of stars/planets.

And then even if we assumed some what of spherical shape of expansion after several 1,000's of years of looking and meeting the borders of other race empires, the wall/border would move up until they either
ran out of stars (flattened disk shape of the galaxy)
or
one empire was faster in the race and started to envlope the other empire.

If there is a different model of how this could be, please explain. I am all ears (eyes) to learn more. Thanks. (and there is no sarcasm in this request of mine )

Dave Chase

 

[rust]

If there is a different model of how this could be, please explain. I am all ears (eyes) to learn more.

The disk of our galaxy is about 3,000 light years "thick", which gives
a lot of space "above" or "below" the plane of any interstellar nation,
and there are both "holes" (empty regions) and useless (no planetary
systems) or dangerous (expected supernova) regions within that disk.

Therefore it seems possible to me that there could be huge unexplored
regions as well as powerful but as yet undiscovered interstellar nations
"above" or "below" an Imperium-like state, and that the concept of the
"walls" between neighbouring states would be impossible where such a
"wall" would reach an empty or dangerous region.

 

[Sangrolu]

I am not sure how this could be done with out relocating some of the other Empires, but the Imperium is surrounded currently.

They're only surrounded on a 2D map...

If the galaxy was a sphere I could see this. But as a flatten disk where they would reach the top and bottom (sort of to speak) they would then move out toward the greatest concentration of stars/planets.

The (milky way) galaxy is 3000 light years thick.

The entire depicted OTU map is only about a third of that in the coreward-rimward direction (8 sectors * 40 parsecs / sector * 3.26 light years / parsec = 1043 light years). If you were really to depict the OTU in 3D, there is no realistic constraint to moving up or down the disk in the current scale.

This is one of those things I just try not to think about when running Traveller in the OTU or otherwise use 2D starmaps... but nowadays, plugging into the OTU is the only reason I'd suffer the cognitive irritation of a 2d starmap. If I make my own universe, it'd be 3d.

EDIT: Ninja'd by rust

 

[kafka]

Premise: As it currently stands the OTU/Charted Space setting is broken. It needs fixing. So let's reimagine it - keep what was good from the old setting, and discard and reinvent the rest. (Right now, I'm not concerned about the play elements - those should come out from the setting).

ok, this sounds like fun but let us compare it to MTU. Which has been going on since about 1985/6 with wide swaths and prolonged absences.

Me, I would really darken up the whole setting. The Imperium is nasty. It blackmails worlds into joining it, blockading them and denying them access to space and other markets and key technologies (which is really what it does in the current OTU anyway, but everyone's too polite to say anything about it). While each world is culturally different, they have all sworn fealty to the Imperium if they are members. Everyone is an Imperial citizen first, and a planetary citizen second. Low pop worlds are colonies of other nearby worlds, and share the Imperial allegiance. The core worlds of the Imperium were subjugated long ago and are faithful and loyal members.

I would never go far as to say nasty. But, indifferent and self-serving...certainly. I still have the low pop worlds being independent but usually captive to larger interests. Whether, it be the Imperium, neighbouring worlds, megacorps, or criminal syndicates. And, sometimes a combination. I agree with you that they are citizen of the Imperium, first. Save nobody can accurately define what that means other than the benefits. Sort of like the position of Wales or Croatia in Europe or Sixox nation in North America. Certainly, they know they are part of the larger matrix of institutions but day-to-day just blind following. At a higher level does planetary politics come into play ie the realm of the Nobility.

The Frontier worlds on the other hand are fractious, rebellious and not too keen on being controlled by a distant Emperor. As a result, the borders of the Imperium are progressively more violent and lawless as you approach the edge of Imperial space - Imperial forces have to frequently take Police actions to quell uprisings, and often right at the border the rebels are funded and supported by external polities.

Some are fractious, others are loyal (attempting to curry favor in exchange for domination over their neighbours). Certainly, lots rebel groups, would be revolutionaries, terrorists, pirates, highwaymen, etc.

The surrounding states are a dark mirror of what they are in the current OTU:
-The Solomani are a true fascist state - everyone within its sphere is of pure Solomani origin, with any other human subspecies either forced out, obliterated, or subjugated as slave races.

Not a true fascist state but a thousand splintered fascist state united only by their common distain for the Imperium. Therefore, preserving a facade of a unity state but in reality just a confederation. Think Switzerland or Russia with jackboots. And, loyality would be ensured by the Imperial threat.

-Hiver manipulations are much more selfish than they already are, usually playing Solomani against Imperial in order for the Federation to strike and take control afterwards.

Not really interested in territorial acquistion but yes, essentially the above. Better to keep the humans fragmented lest they pose a threat to us.

-The K'Kree are homicidal maniacs. They're all basically like the Lords of Thunder - expansionistic, psychotic zealots who believe they are dominant over all.

ditto. Save they are moderately expansionistic. Only, the Lords of Thunder (who have been geneered) are expansionistic. And, they perpetually fight among themselves that they cannot find a way. Think the SG-1 System Lords for a picture of the K'kree. The main 2000 Worlds are kept in tow by Steppelords which try to exercise caution and exile the hotheads to the Lords of Thunder realm - who in turn make a move against the 2000 Worlds Steppelords. However, once they become ruler of so many passive K'kree, compromises are wrought and the whole cycle begins again.

- The Vargr are bloodthirsty and fractious. The whole of the Extents seethes in bloody civil war as Pack faces off against Pack. They'd be like Reavers from Firefly - everyone fears them, and is glad they're mostly tearing themselves apart. Every now and then though a raiding party enters Imperial or K'Kree or Zhodani space and leaves bloody destruction in its path.

Ditto. Save there is that virual reality device that is slowly uniting the Vargr but there fractious personality makes hard for the device to take hold over a long period of time...as factions form and the device takes time to adapt.

- The Zhodani really are how the Imperium paint them in the current OTU - oppressive, invasive, and mindcontrolling. Think 1984 with psionics.

This is where we differ quite substantially. I tend to protray the Consulate as a Beatomth but not as the Levathan of 1984. Think of a benign dictatorship eg. Seycheles or late Tito's Yugoslavia. However, the Imperium paints the Consulate like you do.

- The Aslan are honourable but savage, and think nothing of those who are not of their kind. Think of all the bad klingons from Star Trek.

Throw in a dose of L5R clans and we have an agreement.

- The Droyne are Ancient. Fortunately they keep to themselves on their dreamstate worlds, but they can't stand trespassers and all the lesser races are like ants to them - and woe betide anyone who tried to frak with them. The last bunch who tried to assault them had their homeworld casually obliterated and everything in the surrounding 20 pc rendered uninhabitable as colatteral damage when the Droyne caused their sun to supernova. There are riches to be found at the edges of Droyne space, but only if you can survive the ultratech traps - and pray that the Droyne themselves don't notice you.

Never thought of the Ancients really surviving into the present day Droyne save as a racial memory that the Final War erased or blocked. For me the Ancient Droyne were Leader of the Leaders - clones of Grandfather who led the Droyne to the Stars those millennia long ago. The Final War did not wipe out all of them but they have passed from this realm of existance into another. This is where I go fully transhuman or transdroyne. Not sure about the obliteration. Not necessary, as the Droyne homeworld may still exist but rather like the Earth in The Time Machine populated by Elloi & Morlocks. Even if someone were to land on it. They would either go insane or not even notice what lies beneath the placid surface. True, the Droyne stick to themselves but a few venture out. But these are without a firm Otryp hence are less Droyne like and take on the characteristics of the Dominant civilization around them. But, are still different.

The planets and systems would be realistic. In the Imperial core, most humans concentrate on the habitable worlds, few live on the uninhabitable ones. A few worlds even have tens or hundreds of billions of people on them - these Hive Worlds range from still having some greenery on them to being vast, crowded worldcities like Coruscant, leeching the resources of all the worlds around them. On the frontier, it's every sentient for itself. Life is hard, and even the uninhabitable worlds have colonies or settlements on them. Most die off in a few years, only to be reborn by the next wave of settlers. The ruins of previous colonies often litter the landscapes of the more marginally habitable worlds.

ditto. Not sure about the Hiveworlds. Even the Core will have pleasure worlds that everyone lives like in suburbia rather than Milton Keynes...which can be just as oppressive.

So what you have here is something more Fireflyish, with a dash of Blakes 7 or Star Trek with the Rebels and the Empire, and the darkness of nBSG. If you want to trade peacefully, you can do it in the core of the Imperium, but be ready for rampant corruption, bureaucracy and oppression. Or you can take more risks in the Frontier, and maybe smuggle goods and be an actual hero with a cause. Or you could be on the front lines, stamping out the rebels and alien scum.

no, what you have here is MTU. And, what I mainly took from the OTU over the years.

 

[Dave Chase]

OK, you have kind of explained, but lets see if I can make my point clearer.

First, It is a fault/difficulty the way the OTU is layed out in design and being a 2D map to boot. So that would have to be changed to make things better.

Some facts (from the current OTU)
A parsec is 3.26 light years
A sector is 117.36 X 130.4 light years (Spin/trail X Core/Rim)
The Imperium is 6 Sectors by 5 Sectors approximately or (704.16 X 652 Light years in size (as drawn up)

So assuming that they (Imperium or any other race) does only expand by general wheel spoking, you would be correct. (Wheel spoking, similar to spherical or expanding from a common center point fairly equally in all directions)

But, what I am saying is this

Assuming that there has been at least 1000 years of expansion/scouting during the all the major races. (This is also counting the Long night and other issues that lasted for generations/years that would have stopped/limited some actual expansion.)
And assuming that they only expanded 1 parsec a year, then the major races empires would indeed be only 1/6 to 1/5 of the thickness of the galaxy.

But only 1 parsec a year over a 1,000 some years. I don't think so. (IMO)

Saying one subsector a year is a bit much too. But I do figure that scouting and some expansion would take place at about 3 parsecs a year.
Why 3 parsecs? Because not every system has easily habitiat planets and not all systems that do have ready to use resources. Any major race would consider these when looking for a colony/outpost planet first then location/military/outpost second.
Also, Empires/nations that want to expand will scout/recon in all directions avaiable.

So assuming 3 parsecs a year scouting/claiming ground over 3,000+ years of jump capacity and only 1,000 of those years being actually fruitful in that enterprise, gives a 3,260 lightyear sphere of influence.

Nor does this include any government type control or easy of running such an empire as set buy Traveller standards, so I am not including that as a direct factor.

But I am considering that once the borders of the Imperium (or any major race) was hemmed in on 4 of the 6 sides (if you will) then of course they would expand in the other directions that were not hemmed in.
It's like squeezing a flexible silicon ball that is growing in volume. The more you squeeze in 2 or more directions the more it moves/grows in the unrestricted directions.

Hope that makes sense. Because we are talking 1,000 of years of FTL drive capacity for expansion. 3,000 light years does not seem that big when you look at it that way.

Dave Chase

Edited for spelling

 

[rust]

Hope that makes sense.

Of course it does.

What you describe is one of the many possible paths a starfaring Impe-
rium could have developed, with a policy of constant expansion.

What prevented me from using that possible path in my setting was the
fact that human populations in a high tech civilization probably do not
grow fast enough to follow such a pace of the exploration.
Therefore in my setting the explorers expand the sphere of the known
space, colonists follow more slowly, and the interest in exploration (and
the budget for it) calms down until that "shell" of the sphere has been
developed to a certain point and stabilized.
Then the next "wave" of exploration and colonization sets in to explore
and settle the next "shell", with each of the "shells" becoming bigger (mo-
re surface area and thereby volume) and the process therefore becoming
slower.

However, this is just another of the possible paths, there are many more
possible developments, I think.
Civilizations can become stagnant for various reasons, internal crises can
halt the expansion, budget restraints can reduce the speed of expansion
(think of what happened to NASA during the late Vietnam war), and so on
and on.

 

[Dave Chase]

...
However, this is just another of the possible paths, there are many more
possible developments, I think.
Civilizations can become stagnant for various reasons, internal crises can
halt the expansion, budget restraints can reduce the speed of expansion
(think of what happened to NASA during the late Vietnam war), and so on
and on.

I agree and understand. But even after 3,000+ years and only assuming 1,000 years worth of possible expansion during that time still leads me to believe that the Imperium (among many of the empires in OTU) should be larger.

Not that I am saying that OTU needs to be huge or even bigger than it currently is.

After relooking at the maps, I wonder if each major race was pulled back say about 50 to 100 light years toward their center, with only casual contact between the borders versus entire 100's of light years worth of borders, that things would not be more interesting in OTU.

Dave Chase

 

[BP]

IMTU - Given the size and the Jump limit, a central government only makes sense on a dispersed 'genreal purpose' level - so the whole Emperor thing is silly. Basically motivations should be commerce and defense - as expansion and conquering butts up against alien cultures and no real lack of physical resources.

With even the very best approach there is still an initial 1 week delay with a 2 week feedback and 3 weeek confirmation cycle for communication. A jump train (where ships are ready to immediately jump as incoming ships come in - thus only adding minutes/hours accumulated time to transfer info one way) can minimize the accumulated lag, but there is still a tremendous disjoint.

My solution is that the Imperium is a United Union of dispersly run confederations with a 'common law' base and committed military assets. Funding would come primarily from duties and tariffs (not direct taxation), and bureaucracy for inter system commerce would be heavy to discourage inter-system crime. Of course, due to the communications lag, this means that crime can pay - but is subject to future repercussions such that constant diligence is required by the criminal to avoid even minor entanglements. In other words - the law has a long memory, while having a slow grasp.

The upside of this is that local laws practically supersede 'Imperial' laws, until contested to the level and time required to be addressed by a higher power. I.e. - similar to U.S. where local municipalities can and do impose their on silly legal ways, often conflicting with state laws, which in turn are often overruled by federal ones. Doesn’t stop fines and arrests taking place that violate the higher laws – just means there is an out or repercussions possible down the road.

The whole Grandfather/Ancients thing is, well, treated like a silly mythical kind of legend - where no such thing really existed, but artifacts and history have been woven into the story (aka Atlantis). One could give it more credibility as a universal ‘truth’ by assuming it has falsely taken this position just because the vast majority cannot relate to it and doesn’t question their ‘experts’ (such as the case in my own numerous First Aid trainings as a youth – the procedures for handling seizures and choking were utterly wrong and silly if intelligently analyzed, but I not only believed them, I shared them).

I like really like EDG’s dark alien universe, though I don’t see the Imperium quite so nasty as to have too great an impact on interstellar trade (since this would seem to cause way too much ‘prohibition’ style behavior). I think the ‘blackmail’ and economic sanctions would come more generally in the form of bureaucratic red tape – i.e. trade status vs. embargos. I don’t see the Imperium forcing trade, so much as being an opportunity that most systems would not want to ignore (and thus would agree to the general guidelines in order to facilitate trade).

And I think rust’s TU is more in line with my union style, bureaucratic Imperium – where if there is a Royalty it is a token only and has no real legal authority – even in their own home (though political power can allow them to skirt the laws).

 

[RockViper]

I would do two things (which I am doing in my campaign)

1. Update the technology to a believable level

2. Dump the nobility/empire as currently depicted and rebuild it as a technocracy with titles being merely political titles or just honorary.

 

[rust]

I agree and understand. But even after 3,000+ years and only assuming 1,000 years worth of possible expansion during that time still leads me to believe that the Imperium (among many of the empires in OTU) should be larger.

Yes, indeed.

This is one of the many cases where a part of the OTU is not plausible be-
cause of its internal logic, but where those who use the OTU as their set-
ting have to come up with a more or less plausible explanation.

As someone else noted, the OTU has too much history, and this causes
lots of "plausibility gaps", from the one you described through the incre-
dibly slow development of the technology to the often more than strange
economic situations, and so on and on.

While it may be fun to find more or less convincing explanations to make
these "features, not bugs", they ruin my suspension of disbelief and turn
me away from the idea to ever use the OTU as a setting.

 

[Dave Chase]

One of my favorite ATU universes was a game called

Other Suns

no jump but FTL drives with gravity and contra gravity being 2 different things. Lots of alien races and Humans were not top dog and were one of the newer races on the space empire scene.

Lifesupport was not generic, your body type and size and (a few other things) determined how much you needed to live and could effect how well the ship would be able to maintain you.

Dave Chase