Danestar
Mongoose
Ran that once, things went well until the players all decided to be a bunch of antisocial gun nuts.
The Premises of Traveller: 2. Space Travel is Unpleasant and Most Do Not Do It
- Thread starter Spirit of 1977
- Start date
I was reminded of the Steerage ideas in this excellent Yet Another Traveller Blog... blog:
travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com
travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com
Passenger Deck/Steerage Geomorphs and Illustration
Okay, so maybe I watched Titanic one too many times, but in my Traveller universe there is a passenger class between middle passage ...
travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com
Hammer Class Passenger Variant with Steerage
One of the regular blog readers, Peebo-Thuhlu Thuhlu, pointed out how well the steerage compartment might work with the Hammer...
travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com
1: as the author and others have pointed out this is actually a very small percentage of peopleSeems to me that there are many reasons for people to travel to other systems.
1) Traders and Merchant Navy. Their quarters may not be 5 star but they do it because it's their job and they get paid.
2) the rich: example is the adventure search and rescue where people land on red zone planets.
3) Bureaucrats, the nobles etc.
4) Workers for Megacorps: you go where we tell you or get fired.
Travel might have started off being dangerous but it must be reasonable in order to make it effective.
There is a lot of variation in travel styles today: from crew bunks like in modern navy vessels, cruise liner cabins etc but I don't think cars or planes are a good analogy. I used to drive 70 miles to work. Took me 90 minutes. This is completely different to a week long journey. Similarly for a flight where the max is about a 16 hour flight.
In our games, we have to think of ways to make it a viable process e.g. low berths. Yes, some people's experience of space travel will be crap, some will find it lots of fun, for some it will just be something they have to do for their job. But, if it isn't safe then the vast majority of people won't do it. But, given that people do it, I'd say it has to be safe enough.....otherwise, think of all those insurance premiums and Health and safety departments and Government departments who would come down like a tonne of bricks on violators of the regulations
Regarding Low berths, annual maintenance of the ship would include maintenance of the pods including signed certificates to say they were safe to use. I never use one unless I see that certificate
2: another tiny group of people
3: no this is what the X-Boat network is for
4: mega corp wouldn’t move people around why would they the corporation in our world where travel is vastly easier don’t except a very tiny percentage of 1%
There's a giant logical fallacy here - if travel is uncommon, the Imperium would not be as it is today. A solar system has almost unlimited resources that would take a civilization many centuries to exhaust. There would be some materials that MAY be less common, but for the most part running out of raw materials and needing to source them from somewhere else would mean the need to leave a solar system should only occur about once a millenium.
If you account for the need to "have your own tracts of land" (castles sinking the swamp are optional) then moving to other systems might occur more frequently, but also, as we've seen, at a certain point it just gets too expensive to keep churning out kids as your society gets more advanced.
The best historical equivalent to moving between systems in Traveller is around the early 1900s, which is known as the golden age of liners. I found this map (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...-Map-shows-DAYS-took-travel-abroad-1900s.html) that shows average times to travel across the British empire. Trade and passenger traffic were enough to keep thousands of ships on the high seas (not even counting smaller local vessels) and busily sailing around the world.
1) Travel is crazy expensive - Traveling in luxury, yes. Yet yeoman farmers and such were able to raise funds to buy passage on liners in 2nd and 3rd class. Conditions weren't the best, but for many neither were their living conditions. Tech has greatly reduced that issue. I would argue the game does a poor job of extrapolating this into the 52nd century and is more wrong than right. All the evidence points towards that dichotomy.
2) Travel is uncomfortable - Huh? That is completely wrong. It may be "cramped" for some, but "uncomfortable" is a false statement. Nobody travels for a week in economy seating - they get rooms with their own bed, they get a bathroom, they get space to move around - AND they have access to all the gadgets and comforts of a 52nd century civilization. None of that points to it being uncomfortable.
3) Travel is complicated - Well, sure. But it always HAS been. Yet civilization has been doing it for thousands of years. As we have seen throughout history methods are created to minimize things and make them as smooth as possible with the technology and limitations they work within. Railroads used to swap out engines and crews to minimize station dwell times for long-distance trains. Sometimes you had to change trains at certain locations because it was the end of the line for the one railroad and you and your baggage got on the next available train to continue your journey. People took that into account when traveling long distances because there was no other way. People today can't comprehend a 2hr layover because they are conditioned to having very little delays. And setting up caches of fuel in deep space is impractical for regular travel due to the inherent limitations of transporting enough fuel as cargo to deposit and then get back. So travel across rifts using way stations would, naturally, be quite complicated and quite expense. In this exception that is a true statement.
4) Most worlds are not Earth-like - In this case having settlements and/or travel to them would be limited to resource extraction. It's far cheaper and more reasonable to just build a station in an inhabited system to have a place to live (or even just a domed environment). Why travel lightyears to do exactly the same thing you can do at home??
In order for empires to expand there has to be a reason. And in order for them to expand people have to have a reason to WANT to go someplace new and start a new life. In most industrialized nations you see a slow, but continual, movement of people from the countrysides to the cities because larger cities mean more amenities you cannot provide to smaller populations. Whether it's national, continental, system or interstellar scale, the movement of people really shouldn't change.
Just because Marc Miller wrote it doesn't give it accuracy or meaning.
It boils down to the fact that the Traveller rules were intended to replicate the 60s and 70s era space opera frontiers. It absolutely is not designed to create the core and says as much in the section where it advises massaging the results to get the type of situation you are interested in.
The mechanics are designed to replicate a backwater/frontier area where people can get up to crazy stuff, deal with weird & dangerous environments, go trade pioneering, and be threatened by pirates and other hijinks. None of those things are likely to happening in a developed, mature region.
In the end, the GM has to decide what they want their campaign to look like and reverse engineer the explanations to reflect that. Do you starships flitting about as commonly as aircraft? Or do you want a tramp trader stopping at the port to be a Big Deal (tm)? Both work, but they lead to different interpretations of the space infrastructure that goes undescribed in the rules.
The mechanics are designed to replicate a backwater/frontier area where people can get up to crazy stuff, deal with weird & dangerous environments, go trade pioneering, and be threatened by pirates and other hijinks. None of those things are likely to happening in a developed, mature region.
In the end, the GM has to decide what they want their campaign to look like and reverse engineer the explanations to reflect that. Do you starships flitting about as commonly as aircraft? Or do you want a tramp trader stopping at the port to be a Big Deal (tm)? Both work, but they lead to different interpretations of the space infrastructure that goes undescribed in the rules.
The percentage of people travelling may indeed be tiny but that is a tiny percentage of a gigantic number.
The most populous worlds in the OTU have ten billion-plus inhabitants so even if only one in a thousand people from Mora travel in a given year that is over a million travellers (which incidentally matches the figure for passengers per annum given on the wiki page) and even if we assume that most travel is on large liners with hundreds or thousands of passengers that is still multiple liners leaving the starport per day not to mention the huge volume of goods that would come in and out and the presence of a huge naval base etc etc.
And I don't have the World Builders Handbook if that is where that passenger figure is calculated from, but IMTU the percentage of people travelling will tend to be inverse to population as barring specific reasons for isolation small populations are more likely to have come from somewhere else or to leave while large populations typically have higher tech levels and all the comforts of interstellar civilisation so would be less motivated to move.
And remember the most documented sectors of the OTU are frontier zones which RW historically do see more migration and what may be true of the Imperium in general is not necessarily as true of the Spinward Marches or the Solomani Rim.
The most populous worlds in the OTU have ten billion-plus inhabitants so even if only one in a thousand people from Mora travel in a given year that is over a million travellers (which incidentally matches the figure for passengers per annum given on the wiki page) and even if we assume that most travel is on large liners with hundreds or thousands of passengers that is still multiple liners leaving the starport per day not to mention the huge volume of goods that would come in and out and the presence of a huge naval base etc etc.
And I don't have the World Builders Handbook if that is where that passenger figure is calculated from, but IMTU the percentage of people travelling will tend to be inverse to population as barring specific reasons for isolation small populations are more likely to have come from somewhere else or to leave while large populations typically have higher tech levels and all the comforts of interstellar civilisation so would be less motivated to move.
And remember the most documented sectors of the OTU are frontier zones which RW historically do see more migration and what may be true of the Imperium in general is not necessarily as true of the Spinward Marches or the Solomani Rim.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If people had a choice, most won't bother to leave their neighbourhood.
That's like saying the game is called Dungeons & Dragons. Positing that most NPCs aren't encountering dungeons or dragons regularly is a head scratcher.
Anstett
Emperor Mongoose
I think that both of these being true point out clearly how on a macro scale there is a lot of movement of people and goods. But the personal scale of the people playing often are not that relevant to that flow.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
I was looking at our local marina this morning, and being winter, mostly empty.
What you will have, is probably a lot of smallcraft cabin cruisers, so intrasystem traffic.
What you will have, is probably a lot of smallcraft cabin cruisers, so intrasystem traffic.
And yet a lot of the NPCs that the PCs encounter will have some relationship to dungeons and dragons (or other monsters), they have info on the dungeon that the PCs need, they want something retrieved from the dungeon, they want the dragon killed, they need to be rescued from the dragon.That's like saying the game is called Dungeons & Dragons. Positing that most NPCs aren't encountering dungeons or dragons regularly is a head scratcher.
Someone is building all those 100, 200 and 400 ton ships that are common everywhere for the Travellers to encounter and fly around in. Someone is building all those starports, with patrons hanging around in the starport bars waiting to hire the Travellers, brokers ready to buy and sell cargo and passengers looking for ships to transport them to other systems. In short, the game directly says there's a lot of travelling going on. Saying there's billions of people that will never be involved is neither here nor there, there's still plenty that will, and the Travellers will never encounter those billions anyway. So I disagree with the original premise, "most do not it" may be true in an absolute sense but the Travellers are not "weirdos" simply because they travel (it's the usual player shenanigans that make them "weirdos").
Sure, there's space travel going on. It isn't clear how much of that is INTERSTELLAR vs INTERPLANETARY. And it makes a big difference whether it is is tiny sub community or there are huge liners constantly shipping people hither and thither.
The infrastructure of mass transit for space is not present in Traveller as written. It is perfectly reasonable to add all that infrastructure. Traveller is a Map Only As Really Needed system.
The RAW are conflicting on the matter. The fiction talks about MORA being a huge port with tons of passengers, but where the heck are they going? There's two non Amberzone worlds within Jump 4 that have a sizable population (6+).
And if you don't assume Jump 4 commercial vessels are normative (which the fiction tends not to do, because in early editions of the rules they were not) then it becomes even more stark.
The OP is correct that early Traveller assumes you are in a backwater and that ship traffic is rare enough that subsidizing a tramp trader to ensure they actually visit your planet regularly is a necessary thing for a lot of places. Later Traveller products, especially post GURPS, do not maintain that flavor.
IMHO, the point of discussions like this is to talk through the various considerations around the topic so each GM can set the dial where they want and do so with the level of consistency they desire. There's no right answer. But there are very different assumptions that need to be made based on the answer you want in your campaign.
The infrastructure of mass transit for space is not present in Traveller as written. It is perfectly reasonable to add all that infrastructure. Traveller is a Map Only As Really Needed system.
The RAW are conflicting on the matter. The fiction talks about MORA being a huge port with tons of passengers, but where the heck are they going? There's two non Amberzone worlds within Jump 4 that have a sizable population (6+).
And if you don't assume Jump 4 commercial vessels are normative (which the fiction tends not to do, because in early editions of the rules they were not) then it becomes even more stark.
The OP is correct that early Traveller assumes you are in a backwater and that ship traffic is rare enough that subsidizing a tramp trader to ensure they actually visit your planet regularly is a necessary thing for a lot of places. Later Traveller products, especially post GURPS, do not maintain that flavor.
IMHO, the point of discussions like this is to talk through the various considerations around the topic so each GM can set the dial where they want and do so with the level of consistency they desire. There's no right answer. But there are very different assumptions that need to be made based on the answer you want in your campaign.
Well since all of Traveller isn't the Spinward Marches it would be kind of silly if all of like was like the SM.
Yeah? Did I ever say anything like that?
But that IS what the system generation method creates by default. Because it is essentially the same system as the 1977 rules. It creates the Spinward Marches and other frontiers. If you want developed regions, you are going to have to do all the work. The rules as written will not produce sensible results for a developed, long settled region with huge trade volumes.
It's not like GURPS Far Trader says "merchant traffic is like this in frontiers, like that in core" either. Every GM is going to have to decide what their corner of the universe is like and make adjustments to get it to work that way. The Spinward Marches are different from The Spinward Extents which are different from Gushemege or the Domain of Vland. Conversations like this are not going to produce a consensus. They are going to provide a range of options for folks to work from.
Spirit of 1977
Cosmic Mongoose
Actually, MegaT has some adjustments for more developed areas. The starport table has Mature and Cluster areas where the probability of Class A & B ports is higher. But that's all.
Spirit of 1977
Cosmic Mongoose
This quote from @Asuma is very interesting:
The various stances of worlds have a direct impact on travellers. They may be welcome at the starport but not the world. Or the world may be actively recruiting travellers to become citizens and leave behind the decadent life of an Imperial citizen, and so on. Think "global elites" for travellers and you get a feel for the conflict.
So, what would you think about such a setting?
because it is a good part of my setting. So, serious question to @Asuma. How would you respond to a setting where the vast majority of worlds (but not population) are ignored by their Empire? I find this an amazing setting, with Pop 7- worlds free to take many different stances: 1) we hate the Empire and oppose it; 2) we ignore the Empire as they ignore us; 3) we use our non-importance to do what we want; 4) we wish the Empire cared more about us; 5) we are actively petitioning the Empire to include us; and so on. Conversely, Pop 8+ worlds are almost always important and may or may not relish that status.
The various stances of worlds have a direct impact on travellers. They may be welcome at the starport but not the world. Or the world may be actively recruiting travellers to become citizens and leave behind the decadent life of an Imperial citizen, and so on. Think "global elites" for travellers and you get a feel for the conflict.
So, what would you think about such a setting?
I think it's fair to say that interstellar travel will be robust in some places, not so much in others. A busy port, say like Mora, will need to have destinations on each side that people are traveling to - unless Mora is their final destination. Pricing in the game (for passengers and freight) is different than historical pricing, but probably can be accepted as far as a game goes. For anyone that likes to see more crunchiness, here is a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) where the authors did a study of pricing between lines and discuss how companies used the introduction of new ships to gain better pricing power - even over ships that weren't named Mauretania and Lusitania. link - https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22426/w22426.pdf
It's probably safe to say that there wasn't a lot of deep thought put into place for the original books. The original LBB were basic, and sci-fi RPG was still a new thing. Heck, we used to have fun just trying to survive character creation rolls.
But, over time, the game fleshed out more the gaming universe, and today we still have a number of potholes to deal with. Not everyone cares about production quality of materials and completeness of background - they just want to pew-pew. Traveller has been veering all over the map since 1977. I don't see it changing today or tomorrow.
It's probably safe to say that there wasn't a lot of deep thought put into place for the original books. The original LBB were basic, and sci-fi RPG was still a new thing. Heck, we used to have fun just trying to survive character creation rolls.
But, over time, the game fleshed out more the gaming universe, and today we still have a number of potholes to deal with. Not everyone cares about production quality of materials and completeness of background - they just want to pew-pew. Traveller has been veering all over the map since 1977. I don't see it changing today or tomorrow.
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All depends on how LARGE of a setting are you going to do. If you want a template to follow that seemed to work for both big and small things, one need to look no further than the Lands of Greyhawk setting. A large land area was detailed out, with major polities, cities and land references. Enough detail was given for the kingdoms to provide a basic setting, but large swaths were left untouched for referees to make their own settings within the greater setting. Then they got even more clever and assigned the published modules to actual locations on the maps - thus boosting the overall setting with information anyone could incorporate into their games.
The Firefly setting was something akin to this as well - a strong central government that wanted control, but also didn't care what the hinterlands did so long as they didn't cause trouble. You'll find some will pine for more support while others will spurn it since there are probably strings (i.e. rules) attached.
The one thing that usually kills such settings is the "why" - if the vast majority of worlds are lower-tech, sparsely populated and far-flung, why in the hell would anyone GO to them? A planet is pretty damn big, so even a handful of worlds can absorb an exodus of disgruntled people seeking lands away from whatever they are running from. If you have tens, or even hundreds of worlds like this the "why" question makes it even less reasonable. Since planets and systems are pretty damn big, it's probably better to concentrate and provide a setting for enough to get going. If you design the underlying framework from the start to have expansion (just no details) then you can accomplish the former while not setting yourself up for failure or having to juggle the "don't look too close or else it falls apart" concepts that some games follow. While you can't hide star systems as undiscovered , you can make it so that the next subsector is still to be detailed and leave it at that.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
The real question would be, exactly why after millenia, local governments and corporations hadn't developed their industrial base to closer to the interstellar norm, because consumer demand alone should have supported it. let alone the military industrial complex.
