The Premises of Traveller: 2. Space Travel is Unpleasant and Most Do Not Do It

[Asuma]

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.

They're called starports, they're all about interstellar travel. Traveller generally doesn't have a huge amount to say about in-system travel, so you can have as much or as little as you like and it would vary significantly depending on local system geography.

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 Traveller Adventure, published in 1983, has the Tukera jump 4 long-liner "...operated on many of Tukera's routes as a standard passenger liner" and the jump 4 freighter "...a standard Tukera transport ship design, and provides freight-handling service along the many Tukera routes within the Imperium" - so jump 4 commercial ships have been described as common since fairly early in the game's history. There's also the jump 3 Oberlindes cargo carrier.

 

[Asuma]

So, what would you think about such a setting?

It sounds interesting! If you set up your Traveller universe that way I think it would be the basis for a fun game. I don't think it describes the Classic Traveller/Mongoose Traveller 3rd Imperium setting though.

 

[Spirit of 1977]

if the vast majority of worlds are lower-tech, sparsely populated and far-flung, why in the hell would anyone GO to them?

Because most people don't want to be pioneers, just like most don't travel. They want their own high tech world improved.

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.

You could have THOUSANDS of such worlds, all Pop 6 or less, and that's less than the real population of earth. But you now have the conditions for lots of great weirdness to explore. Think early Star Trek. As someone noted above, the point is to entertain the PLAYERS. Having all the planets look the same is boring. If most of the high Pop high TL planets are similar, that makes some sense, and leaves a huge number of worlds to let the imagination run free.

Also, there was a time in my real life where I traveled more. In major cities, there are locations frequented mostly by the wealthy, that DO all look the same. But the more you go where non-rich people live, the more variety you get. Just my experience.

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.

This, in my opinion, was one of the bigger mistakes of the Third Imperium design. Just because you know the UWP of a world does not mean you know much about it at all. Consider Organia from Star Trek: if a starship had simply come across this world rather than the Federation-Klingon clash, they would have noted "primitive society" and moved on. Or consider the Metrons and other very high-tech sophonts, who stay hidden for millennia and don't seem interested in colonization. That's another factor: not all sophonts discover jump drive, and many more may not be interested in colonization. The response to this shouldn't be "that's not believable", but rather "why is this so"?

I realize this is impossible to a certain extent, but not thinking like a human (and particularly like an American, in my case) is key to thinking about different ways of organizing a campaign besides everything colonized, high-tech everywhere. We didn't colonize that Pop 6 world because it would have required slaughtering the natives, who happen to be fire-breathing pacaderms. The plantlife of this supposed "garden world" is full of acid, but SOMETHING lives there.

Think of it like a safer Points of Light setting: hundreds of settled high tech worlds where most people stay and travel between, surrounded by thousands of untamed and largely unknown worlds. That seems pretty believable to me, and lots of fun.

 

[Vormaerin]

They're called starports, they're all about interstellar travel. Traveller generally doesn't have a huge amount to say about in-system travel, so you can have as much or as little as you like and it would vary significantly depending on local system geography.

The Traveller Adventure, published in 1983, has the Tukera jump 4 long-liner "...operated on many of Tukera's routes as a standard passenger liner" and the jump 4 freighter "...a standard Tukera transport ship design, and provides freight-handling service along the many Tukera routes within the Imperium" - so jump 4 commercial ships have been described as common since fairly early in the game's history. There's also the jump 3 Oberlindes cargo carrier.

And what is your point? The game also says there's only one "starport" in each star system and that the majority of them are C, D, or E class. And it also puts a huge emphasis on "Mains" and talks about places that are Jump 3 or Jump 4 away as being isolated.

Btw, The Traveller Adventure also says that Tukera provides those services along the X-boat routes. "Tukera Lines is a rnegacorporation providing jump-3 and jump-4 transport for passengers and freight along the already established xboat routes that bind the Imperium together. " (Subsidiaries like Akerut handle the "feeder routes" off the X-boat path). Which is a tiny fraction of the Imperial worlds. And, hilariously, one of the two decent population worlds within jump 4 of Mora isn't on that X-boat route.

Obviously, Tukera doesn't follow the CT trade rules, because it would go bankrupt if it charged the rates given The X-boat routes are not pathed to match what makes sense as a "main trade route".

The fiction in Traveller is all over the place. It does not form a coherent whole. If you are trying to argue there's a one true way to make sense of it, I flat out disagree. If you want huge volumes of trade and travel like in GURPS, you need to massively increase the space infrastructure over what the game says exists. Mongoose has already thrown out a fair bit of the CT trade rules, so high jump ships can now think about being profitable. Though not if they are following the x-boat routes instead of going to sensible trading ports.

My point is there a wide spectrum of fiction across the published materials and the GM has to curate and modify it to get the feel that they want. Because the way the game is set up wasn't about making trade make sense. It was about getting the PCs into fun trouble. If you don't agree with that, fine.

 

[Asuma]

And what is your point?

My point, as I previously stated, is that I don't agree with the original post's premise, that interstellar travel is rare, and that the Travellers are "weirdos" because they travel. Note that there's a wide range between "rare" and "huge volumes of trade and travel", which I haven't argued for (but is perfectly fine as well).

If you are trying to argue there's a one true way to make sense of it

Certainly not. I'm afraid we've misunderstood each other, I am in total agreement that the setting exists to get the PCs into fun trouble and other concerns are secondary or non-existant.

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, yeah, ultimately words like "rare" don't have any concrete meaning. It's like when it says that Tukera has a monopoly on long distance trade in many subsectors. What does "Long distance trade" mean in this context? Jump 4 liners? Or people traveling 20+ parsecs? How are you determining "many"? 50 subsectors is "many" in one sense, but it's not a very large percentage of the Third Imperium (about 10%).

Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of Americans flew somewhere last year. It seems unlikely that space travel is anywhere near that popular. But even if .01% of the population of Mora takes a space flight, that's a million people. That's both freakishly rare and a huge number of people at the same time, depending on frame of reference. There's still the question of where are they going? Almost everything around Mora except Fornice is low pop and would be drowned by that kind of visitor count.

Interstellar travel is a conundrum in Traveller. It is extremely unlikely that people are taking interstellar vacations. If I'm on Planet USA and I want spend a week touring Planet Europe in the next star system, I need three weeks of consecutive vacation time to do that, even ignoring the cost. For most Americans today, that would be more vacation than they actually get. In the USA, you generally don't get that kind of vacation time until you've had many years at the same company. Even then, taking it consecutively is not the norm. (Though I gather from my friend in Austria that the situation is different there. Apparently he get's like 56 weeks a year plus holidays and stuff )

So either future employers give generous vacation allowances (possible) or most travel is business and immigration. Business travel would, of course, be limited to companies that have locations on multiple worlds. And would have to be people who could be completely out of touch (no cellphones, telegrams, etc) with their home office for weeks at a time. So probably not mid level employees who need supervision, unless they are flunkies accompanying their boss or people being transferred to another job off planet (aka emigration).

Definitely a very different situation from what we are used to

 

[MonsterX]

Before the advent of air travel, people DID travel, both for serious reasons and for leisure. Long distance leisure travel, however, tended to be mostly for the upper class, both because the upper class often didn't actually have jobs as such, or because they were the sort of jobs they could get away from or maybe do while travelling. Mark Twain's book Innocents Abroad is an autobiography of one such trip and it is definitely a good read. Lower class people generally travelled long distances to migrate, or because work took them there, or for leisure only locally - perhaps a train trip to the seashore. Seamen, of course, travelled all the time and everywhere, lumberjacks travelled from their farms in summer to the forests in winter, and so on. This is not an insignificant portion of society, but it is very different than what we have today. It might be pretty similar to Traveller, though. If there are hospitable worlds with large labour forces nearby to worlds that do resource extraction but are not hospitable, people might go back and forth.

The mass tourism of today kind of started in the 50s in that upper middle class people could afford occasional travel. It got massively cheaper and more widespread over time. In Traveller, in-system destinations in reasonably wealthy systems might see this happen, if there is anywhere to go.

Traveller has not only got a different travel situation, but also different social structure and technology. Some wealthy, high-tech, high pop worlds will have masses of very wealthy people with leisure time on their hands. I would expect that if there are attractive tourist destinations within a jump-1 or 2, there will mass tourism to them. Maybe mass low berth tourism, and lower volume luxury tourism, but mass tourism from a rich tech 15 world to places a parsec or two away wouldn't have to be low berth tourism.

In any case, there is an upper class in the Imperium, and these will engage in tourism. The upper middle class might also, where the situation is right. Maybe even mass tourism could happen via low berth, if the destination is close. However, distance will matter a lot.

 

[RogerMc]

Mass migrations are in fact a ubiquitous feature of world history - if they weren't we'd still all be living in Kenya.

And most current inhabitants of the Americas and of Australasia are only there at all because in relatively recent times their ancestors braved (or were taken in irons on) sea journeys far longer, more dangerous and more expensive if we consider the price of passage in relation to average incomes than Traveller assumes would be the case for interstellar journeys.

And having got there how many soon upped sticks again and loaded everything they possessed onto wagons or rickety trucks to head west (or south or north or east) in search of better things?

Traveller is like it or not a product not just of the 1970s but of 1970s America - a culture founded on migration and personal mobility and once you get past the thought that 'hey high passage looks kinda expensive and who'd wanna spend a week in a little stateroom' the rules reflect that.

You want a dystopian SF setting with an ossified class system where very few ever leave their homeworlds however miserable they may be then there is Dune or 40K.

 

[Anstett]

Business travel would, of course, be limited to companies that have locations on multiple worlds. And would have to be people who could be completely out of touch (no cellphones, telegrams, etc) with their home office for weeks at a time. So probably not mid level employees who need supervision, unless they are flunkies accompanying their boss or people being transferred to another job off planet (aka emigration).

Puts a whole new spin on the Work from Home / Digital Nomad lifestyle.

 

[RogerMc]

Companies managing employees days, weeks and months away in terms of communication is how all international commerce was conducted before the late 19th and 20th century - and yet RW megacorporations like the East India Company did not just exist but flourished.

Even crossing the 20 mile wide English channel could be problematic before the age of steam as contrary winds could keep ships in harbour for weeks, whereas short of blockade or piracy OTU mail and trade may not be instantaneous but is remarkably reliable in terms of time - your sector head office is 3 weeks away by X-boat and you can be pretty sure they will read your report in 3 weeks time and that you'll get a response another 3 weeks later.

Which is vastly better turnaround than London merchants communicating with their factors in Calcutta or Hong Kong had in the early C19.

But this also means world governments, naval commanders and corporate managers have the latitude to get up to all sorts of dubious shenanigans which adventurers can play a part in - but that there are limits and consequences as well.

 

[phavoc]

Because most people don't want to be pioneers, just like most don't travel. They want their own high tech world improved.

You could have THOUSANDS of such worlds, all Pop 6 or less, and that's less than the real population of earth. But you now have the conditions for lots of great weirdness to explore. Think early Star Trek. As someone noted above, the point is to entertain the PLAYERS. Having all the planets look the same is boring. If most of the high Pop high TL planets are similar, that makes some sense, and leaves a huge number of worlds to let the imagination run free.

Also, there was a time in my real life where I traveled more. In major cities, there are locations frequented mostly by the wealthy, that DO all look the same. But the more you go where non-rich people live, the more variety you get. Just my experience.

This, in my opinion, was one of the bigger mistakes of the Third Imperium design. Just because you know the UWP of a world does not mean you know much about it at all. Consider Organia from Star Trek: if a starship had simply come across this world rather than the Federation-Klingon clash, they would have noted "primitive society" and moved on. Or consider the Metrons and other very high-tech sophonts, who stay hidden for millennia and don't seem interested in colonization. That's another factor: not all sophonts discover jump drive, and many more may not be interested in colonization. The response to this shouldn't be "that's not believable", but rather "why is this so"?

I realize this is impossible to a certain extent, but not thinking like a human (and particularly like an American, in my case) is key to thinking about different ways of organizing a campaign besides everything colonized, high-tech everywhere. We didn't colonize that Pop 6 world because it would have required slaughtering the natives, who happen to be fire-breathing pacaderms. The plantlife of this supposed "garden world" is full of acid, but SOMETHING lives there.

Think of it like a safer Points of Light setting: hundreds of settled high tech worlds where most people stay and travel between, surrounded by thousands of untamed and largely unknown worlds. That seems pretty believable to me, and lots of fun.

The challenge of justifying thousands of worlds is pretty high, at least in my opinion. Now, Star Wars actually does that from a mapping perspective, but the lore focuses on just a handful. Having soooo many worlds in the galaxy full of humans and aliens was never really explained well - but SW never really bothered going too much into detail on a lot of things (kind of like how ubiqutious bacta was, but it literally was obtainable from a single planet). I think it goes back to the original point - why would anyone colonize thousands of worlds and then abandon them? Otherwise they'd have been self-colonized, and while we've historically seen that sort of thing (the millions of people drawn to the magic of "America"), they were drawn to a place/concept - and often oversold at that. While a planet, or maybe even a subsector could be the future equivalent, scaling that up to thousands of worlds seems much less plausible to me. To spend the resources to colonize such a vast area of space needs to somehow be justified to make the backstory more plausible.

Now, if you've had the rise and fall of civilizations, then in many ways it becomes more plausible. No need for a Grandfather to sprinkle humanity around - they did it themselves and then it all fell apart. Kind of like the Long Night for Traveller - just on a grander scale.

 

[phavoc]

Well, yeah, ultimately words like "rare" don't have any concrete meaning. It's like when it says that Tukera has a monopoly on long distance trade in many subsectors. What does "Long distance trade" mean in this context? Jump 4 liners? Or people traveling 20+ parsecs? How are you determining "many"? 50 subsectors is "many" in one sense, but it's not a very large percentage of the Third Imperium (about 10%).

Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of Americans flew somewhere last year. It seems unlikely that space travel is anywhere near that popular. But even if .01% of the population of Mora takes a space flight, that's a million people. That's both freakishly rare and a huge number of people at the same time, depending on frame of reference. There's still the question of where are they going? Almost everything around Mora except Fornice is low pop and would be drowned by that kind of visitor count.

Interstellar travel is a conundrum in Traveller. It is extremely unlikely that people are taking interstellar vacations. If I'm on Planet USA and I want spend a week touring Planet Europe in the next star system, I need three weeks of consecutive vacation time to do that, even ignoring the cost. For most Americans today, that would be more vacation than they actually get. In the USA, you generally don't get that kind of vacation time until you've had many years at the same company. Even then, taking it consecutively is not the norm. (Though I gather from my friend in Austria that the situation is different there. Apparently he get's like 56 weeks a year plus holidays and stuff )

So either future employers give generous vacation allowances (possible) or most travel is business and immigration. Business travel would, of course, be limited to companies that have locations on multiple worlds. And would have to be people who could be completely out of touch (no cellphones, telegrams, etc) with their home office for weeks at a time. So probably not mid level employees who need supervision, unless they are flunkies accompanying their boss or people being transferred to another job off planet (aka emigration).

Definitely a very different situation from what we are used to

There's some valid points here - costs and time make interstellar travel for light leisure relatively impractical for the masses. I'd think you'd see travel that was 1-2 jumps away from a planet account for most "local" leisure travel. Above that people probably don't travel much out of their local subsector. That leaves a relatively small number of people who'd book passage beyond that. I think that would translate into people making travel arrangements to get across a subsector on regularly scheduled liners and then starting over to cross the next one. Few would travel from say Core to Regina - especially leisure travellers.

OAG (who provides flight data) says the busiest day last year had about 18.5 million seats available on a single day. And in the US alone 862 million butts were in airplane seats in the US alone. But flights like that make a poor comparison to spending a week in transit for a single jump. For a fair comparison you'd need to go back to about 1900-1910(ish) and compare liners to their destinations around the world. To get from England to about anywhere in the British Empire took about 40 days (none of which was non-stop), depending on your specific mode of travel and how many coaling stops you had to make (or to drop off and pick up cargo).

For Traveller Mora would be a mid-point destination as you pointed out the worlds around it are insufficient to justify such large movements of people. I thought the Spinward Marches campaign was pretty good with the Al Morai merchant line. I thought that was decently thought-out and fit well within the Marches. Overall I think the Spinward Marches provides more than enough worlds and possible adventuring for players - it had most of the major races, it was a somewhat contested sector, and a very large range of places to travel and enough potential intrigue to probably never exhaust.

I started with the original LBB and eagerly awaited the next LBB to provide more meat to the bones of Traveller. It was new and exciting and sci fi (plus I had already gotten hooked on Piper, Cherryh and many of the more "classic" books of the time). Like many other systems it was kind of hoisted on it's own petard - it was never really designed as a tree, with each next addition being a logical branch, or leaf, that provided more coverage to the trunk. That can be seen by looking back at the editions and supplements and you could see early on how some things seemed to conflict with others. Not at all unusual for a gaming system, and kind of par for the course since it's h-a-r-d to lay a foundation and then build from that. Decades later it all seems rather obvious... though the shine has really yet to totally wear off for me. Plus now I know so much more about the real world that I didn't know at the time.

 

[Vormaerin]

There's some valid points here - costs and time make interstellar travel for light leisure relatively impractical for the masses. I'd think you'd see travel that was 1-2 jumps away from a planet account for most "local" leisure travel. Above that people probably don't travel much out of their local subsector. That leaves a relatively small number of people who'd book passage beyond that. I think that would translate into people making travel arrangements to get across a subsector on regularly scheduled liners and then starting over to cross the next one. Few would travel from say Core to Regina - especially leisure travellers.

OAG (who provides flight data) says the busiest day last year had about 18.5 million seats available on a single day. And in the US alone 862 million butts were in airplane seats in the US alone. But flights like that make a poor comparison to spending a week in transit for a single jump. For a fair comparison you'd need to go back to about 1900-1910(ish) and compare liners to their destinations around the world. To get from England to about anywhere in the British Empire took about 40 days (none of which was non-stop), depending on your specific mode of travel and how many coaling stops you had to make (or to drop off and pick up cargo).

For Traveller Mora would be a mid-point destination as you pointed out the worlds around it are insufficient to justify such large movements of people. I thought the Spinward Marches campaign was pretty good with the Al Morai merchant line. I thought that was decently thought-out and fit well within the Marches. Overall I think the Spinward Marches provides more than enough worlds and possible adventuring for players - it had most of the major races, it was a somewhat contested sector, and a very large range of places to travel and enough potential intrigue to probably never exhaust.

I started with the original LBB and eagerly awaited the next LBB to provide more meat to the bones of Traveller. It was new and exciting and sci fi (plus I had already gotten hooked on Piper, Cherryh and many of the more "classic" books of the time). Like many other systems it was kind of hoisted on it's own petard - it was never really designed as a tree, with each next addition being a logical branch, or leaf, that provided more coverage to the trunk. That can be seen by looking back at the editions and supplements and you could see early on how some things seemed to conflict with others. Not at all unusual for a gaming system, and kind of par for the course since it's h-a-r-d to lay a foundation and then build from that. Decades later it all seems rather obvious... though the shine has really yet to totally wear off for me. Plus now I know so much more about the real world that I didn't know at the time.

Exactly. Obviously, there was colonization. But colonization is dramatically different than normal "day to day" travel. Especially space colonization. It's all well and good to say humans like mass migration... but that took place by foot or wagon. Or, on rare occasions, by ship. Most transatlantic colonization was funded by government or business, not random people up and going. Immigration after the colony was thriving could be by individuals and families. But you have to have somewhere worth going. Traveller's very interesting in that most worlds are pretty crap. Why take a jump trip to some marginal to hellish world when you can go to a marginal or hellish world in the same solar system for a lot less?

There's quite a few references in the Spinward Marches to the difficulties the Ministry of Colonization has in getting folks move to a new planet as a colonist in the TAS reports and various adventures. It's all well and good to say humans like mass migration... but that took place by foot or wagon. Or, on rare occasions, by seafaring ship. "The West was stolen" by family groups loading up their wagons with other family groups and rumbling off in their wagon until they found a spot they felt like stopping. Ain't no way that's how space colonization's gonna work.

GURPS Far Trader is pretty well thought out. But it wasn't thought out by the same people who built the Spinward Marches, Trojan Reaches, Reaver's Deep, and other frontiers as adventure playgrounds. Tons of travel, not much travel.. its all good. I was interested to see what other folks thought might be tweaked to support various viewpoints and sort out the contradictions. I am distinctly NOT of the opinion that there's a clear right way to interpret the setting and other concepts belong in some other game world.

In Agent of the Imperium, shipping folks across the Imperium by low berth is apparently something you can arrange. I have no idea how that could possibly be with the lack of information you'd have at your point of origin. But the Third Imperium's logistics are clearly far advanced from anything we've managed on Earth with our feeble real time internet data. Of course, there's some kind of Vilani afterlife that the Agent can visit and get concrete info from, so...

 

[Spirit of 1977]

I was interested to see what other folks thought might be tweaked to support various viewpoints and sort out the contradictions. I am distinctly NOT of the opinion that there's a clear right way to interpret the setting and other concepts belong in some other game world.

OK, here's a way to interpret the rules, not necessarily a specific setting like the Third Imperium. This expands upon my "safer Points of Light setting" previously and brings together many of the ideas in these threads.

TL;DR: Because of the nature of jump drive, Traveller supports an Empire where 15-25% of worlds are important, the rest wilderness frontier, and these can be completely intermeshed within each other with no contradiction at all.

1) Star empires exist to promote space travel. Their territory defines the potential span of travel, but the territory is not necessarily fully settled.

2) Starports and Pop primarily define the importance of a world in a star empire. These are the worlds that will be connected by x-boats and couriers, naval and scout bases. Other natural connectors will be mains: strings of worlds within Jump-1 or each other. Together, this is both a lot of worlds and still a small percentage of total worlds. This is the main resolution of the contradiction: the empire IS the systems it chooses to connect, and without reliable jump drives or transport, the vast majority of worlds within the territory of Empire are hardly OF the Empire.

3) Let's quantify the math of 2). I'm using MegaT, which is close to CT and the intent of the original rules (we can riff on this later). The normal probability of a Class A or B starport is 5/12, and the probability of a Pop 8+ world is 1/6. The probability of both is 5/72 = 6.9% and the probability of neither is 35/72 = 48.6% (remember these rolls are independent in CT and MegaT), so somewhere between 7-50% of worlds might be considered important. Let's say 20%. So in a subsector of 40 worlds, 8 are important and 32 are not, and in a sector 128 are important and 512 are not, on average. It would be easy enough to establish Cluster/Backwater subsectors with more/fewer good starports (MegaT does this).

4) The results of 3) give us the following. Per 1000 worlds on average, 200 are High Pop/Good Starport, and 800 are only one or neither. 200 worlds is a lot of worlds, with a lot of Pop by definition and mostly good starports. Civilization! There is lots of travel and trade between these worlds. But there are 4 times as many other worlds with low Pop or mediocre or worse starports. The Wilderness Frontier! Scattered settlements of the widest variety possible: lone miners, religious sects, lost colonies, scientific outposts, pirate havens, disgruntled rebels, and on and on and on. But the resulting setup is relatively safe for Civilization, because the Wilderness Frontier has low Pop and probably low TL and resources. Low Pop is key: the Wilderness Frontier does not have the numbers to threaten Civilization en masse, though perhaps at points.

ETA: 4a) Low TL is a near absolute firewall for Civilization. TL 8- worlds can be completely ignored by the Empire in most cases, as they have no ability to engage in interstellar travel (or DO they...).

5) This is what I meant by "safer Point of Light setting." In a fantasy PoL setting, leaving the settlement is dangerous, and even the settlement may not be safe because you're surrounded by monsters. But in the setting above, it is easy to stay within Civilization without being bothered by the Wilderness Frontier despite being surrounded by it! So we now clarify what I meant by "weirdo Travellers": travel within Civilization is not weird at all, but travelling into the Wilderness Frontier sure is! Yet because of the nature of space and jump drive, the Wilderness Frontier can be completely intermeshed with Civilization, and Civilization can mostly ignore the Wilderness Frontier. This is what the Third Imperium ultimately did NOT do: it ultimately became mostly settled. This was a choice and did not have to happen.

6) Space is not land. There is no terrain to restrict movement. The only criteria for world desirabilty is distance and the world itself. It is quite reasonable to think that 70%+ of worlds are simply not worth the bother, at least in the initial stages of colonization. This justifies the 80/20 split above, but it also produces our first riff: we could and may be should adjust worlds for desirableness. So yes, if you roll a Garden World, up its startport and Pop. If you roll Pop 0 (planetoid belt) maybe you don't want it to have Pop 8+, and if you do, make certain it's TL 9+. I think Pop 0 Gardens and Pop A wastelands are crying out for explanation, but you can simply erase them if you want.

7) The Wilderness Frontier is RIPE for exploration for those crazy enough to go there! And you can always run back to Civilization to rest and resupply. 'Nuff said.

 

[RogerMc]

I feel a pivot table coming on...



So 54 out of 439 SM worlds have A starports - 12%

31 SM worlds have pop 9 and 11 worlds have pop A

Of these 42 high pop worlds 17 have A starports and 7 have B starports - meaning that 18 worlds with a population of billions have neither.

As you'd expect given how it is calculated there is a closer correlation between Starport and Tech Level:



Which shows up some anomalies - there are two A starports (Kinorb and Jae Tellona) which are supposed to be able to build starships but lack the Tech Level and a lot more B starports that have a tech level too low to actually build spacecraft - all of which to me just confirms that for non-isolated or interdicted worlds Tech Level is primarily an economic rating - so a TL 8 A starport can build and repair TL 15 starships but it will charge a lot more than standard because some parts and labour will need to be imported.

 

[Sigtrygg]

One of the benefits on Mongoose hosting CT books now is the pdfs are much better than the ones on my decade old FFE disc.

So I can cut n paste from CT LBB:0, remember this is Traveller not The Third Imperium.

Here goes:

In Traveller mankind has conquered the stars, and travels from one stellar system to another as easily as present day Terrans can travel from one continent to another. The tremendous distances involved, however, dictate that interstellar voyages can take weeks, months, and sometimes even years...

for the referee who does not have enough time or imagination to create a complete universe, we have created one which can be used with a minimum of effort, but which can be fleshed out and added to with only a little additional labor, perfect for the the beginner and the overworked referee...

Referees should feel free to modify any rule to whatever extent they see fit,
providing they bear in mind that:
- The rules are interlinked to a great extent
- The balance of play should riot be destroyed
- All changes should be rational, logical, and scientifically sound (after all,
Traveller is a science fiction role-playing game)
- The speed of communication should never be allowed to exceed the speed of
travel
- Do not expect other Traveller materials to match your universe if you engage
in large-scale modifications...

Roll the eight planetary characteristics for all worlds in a subsector, and write out what each of the numbers means in a single line on one sheet of paper. Then, proceeding down the list planet by planet, expand on the brief descriptions thus
generated, explaining away contradictions or eliminating them by changing numbers in the planetary profiles.
Does the planet have an A type starport, a high tech level and a very low population (1000 or less)? The starport could be automated to a great degree, and/or the starport staff the only inhabitants of the planet. The starport might be a government
facility, maintained to keep a vital trade route open, a military installation for defense of the district, or service a manufacturing or mining facility of a large interstellar corporation. Alternately, the planet could house an isolated research station, university, or other institution desiring seclusion. The government type in each case should be changed ta fit. If the tech level is very low, but the world has a good starport, the first thing that comes to mind is the primitive culture being
forcibly lifted to civilization by a superior people, with all the conflicts that calls to mind, such as native resistance movements (as in the American west in the 19th century), or "cargo" cults (as in Melanesia of this century).

Any contradiction which cannot be explained away can be eliminated by changing the characteristics, but almost every combination can be explained with a little effort.

 

[RogerMc]

One of the benefits on Mongoose hosting CT books now is the pdfs are much better than the ones on my decade old FFE disc.

So I can cut n paste from CT LBB:0, remember this is Traveller not The Third Imperium.

Here goes:

Well quoted!

And if I enjoy pointing out anomalies that is precisely because those anomalies generate story ideas.

 

[phavoc]

Exactly. Obviously, there was colonization. But colonization is dramatically different than normal "day to day" travel. Especially space colonization. It's all well and good to say humans like mass migration... but that took place by foot or wagon. Or, on rare occasions, by ship. Most transatlantic colonization was funded by government or business, not random people up and going. Immigration after the colony was thriving could be by individuals and families. But you have to have somewhere worth going. Traveller's very interesting in that most worlds are pretty crap. Why take a jump trip to some marginal to hellish world when you can go to a marginal or hellish world in the same solar system for a lot less?

There's quite a few references in the Spinward Marches to the difficulties the Ministry of Colonization has in getting folks move to a new planet as a colonist in the TAS reports and various adventures. It's all well and good to say humans like mass migration... but that took place by foot or wagon. Or, on rare occasions, by seafaring ship. "The West was stolen" by family groups loading up their wagons with other family groups and rumbling off in their wagon until they found a spot they felt like stopping. Ain't no way that's how space colonization's gonna work.

GURPS Far Trader is pretty well thought out. But it wasn't thought out by the same people who built the Spinward Marches, Trojan Reaches, Reaver's Deep, and other frontiers as adventure playgrounds. Tons of travel, not much travel.. its all good. I was interested to see what other folks thought might be tweaked to support various viewpoints and sort out the contradictions. I am distinctly NOT of the opinion that there's a clear right way to interpret the setting and other concepts belong in some other game world.

In Agent of the Imperium, shipping folks across the Imperium by low berth is apparently something you can arrange. I have no idea how that could possibly be with the lack of information you'd have at your point of origin. But the Third Imperium's logistics are clearly far advanced from anything we've managed on Earth with our feeble real time internet data. Of course, there's some kind of Vilani afterlife that the Agent can visit and get concrete info from, so...

I'd think most colonization ships would comprise legions of cold sleepers - it's the most economical way to move large numbers of people vast distances to a new home. I forget where there was a reference in one of the books about transporting colonists from core worlds all the way to the Marches (think it was near Regina). That would be a feat, and take quite a long time. Pournelle and his CoDominium novels had something similar - though colonists were not put in cold sleep and ate recycled protcarb crap... and most were unwilling colonists pulled from the lowest sectors of society.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Forboldn Project - A1 Kinunir Library data.

 

[RogerMc]

All transatlantic colonisation was by ship - the clue is in the name.

And while initial exploration and the earliest colonisation efforts were indeed mostly funded by governments or companies the great majority of the migrants 'white' Americans are descended from were random people who saved up their pennies or pesos or pfennigs to get up and go - and even slaves still mostly got there because private individuals needed unfree labour for their plantations and houses and other private individuals were happy to fill that need by trading for and transporting slaves.

And again Traveller is an American game informed by the myths of the western frontier and of manifest destiny as refracted through golden age SF so yes it does need restless pioneers and explorers and migrants going boldly where no sophont has gone before - but is also big enough to encompass pretty much any trope you want.