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

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:
The one thing I would have changed in the description was to have explained the Class A thing better - you'd really not have a Class A starport with all the requisite facilities on a world with a population of thousands in the middle of no where. Even automated ones. What you'd see would be a Class C with fuel and repair facilities. Far less mental juggling to justify such a thing. The rest makes sense, more or less.
 
For the vast majority of humanity, if they're living within their comfort zone, they're not going to migrate.

And for the casual tourists, there's the cost of passage.

Or at least, the one(s) that Traveller lists down.

As regards starports, it's quite possible to have a small, ultra modern type alpha serving the local system, compared to a sprawling low tech type beta doing the same for a n underdeveloped, but heavily populated, world.
 
The one thing I would have changed in the description was to have explained the Class A thing better - you'd really not have a Class A starport with all the requisite facilities on a world with a population of thousands in the middle of no where. Even automated ones. What you'd see would be a Class C with fuel and repair facilities. Far less mental juggling to justify such a thing. The rest makes sense, more or less.
Or the people running and operating the starport don't count as citizens of that world: contractors, for instance. A lot of times (usually when someone wants to run an adventure on a world where as written it won't work - but be that as it may...) how the population is counted may not correspond to the people in the system at any one time, for reasons ranging from old/bad data, political expedience, corporate rules to avoid taxation... whatever. This was done for instance with Cordan in a PoD-adjacent adventure (political reasons) - I'm sure there are many others, but that one sticks in my head.
 
Or the people running and operating the starport don't count as citizens of that world: contractors, for instance. A lot of times (usually when someone wants to run an adventure on a world where as written it won't work - but be that as it may...) how the population is counted may not correspond to the people in the system at any one time, for reasons ranging from old/bad data, political expedience, corporate rules to avoid taxation... whatever. This was done for instance with Cordan in a PoD-adjacent adventure (political reasons) - I'm sure there are many others, but that one sticks in my head.
Most of the problems I have encountered are how writers use or ignore the UWP. Take Cordan in the Trojan Reach for example. TR2821. It is listed as a Population Code 3, but if you read the fluff, this is only the Baronial Households, not the total planetary population. I hate this! This tells Me that none of the UWP is worth a crap. This makes any map or bit of information based on the UWPs 100% non-functional.

Mongoose, please, if you are going to continue using the UWP, which I like but needs to be changed to make more sense, please make sure the writers obey the world's UWP in their supplements and adventures.

Personally, I believe that as players and referees, We need an OOC UWP Code that reflects the actual stats of a whole star system as well as UWPs for the individual planets and moons. The Scout Service can still put out their inaccurate maps and UWP Codes, that is fine. That is all in-game stuff. Mechanics are OOC-stuff and therefore need to be accurate or any game system based on those numbers will automatically be incorrect. (Such as the actual amount of trade that runs through a system.)

I see it as a problem that We use an in-game database to calculate out-of-game mechanics.

Feel free to keep the in-game databases inaccurate for story reasons, but Referees need the actual numbers for actual out-of-game mechanics.

I am not sure if I have explained Myself very well. If I have not, I apologize.
 
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For the vast majority of humanity, if they're living within their comfort zone, they're not going to migrate.

And for the casual tourists, there's the cost of passage.

Or at least, the one(s) that Traveller lists down.

As regards starports, it's quite possible to have a small, ultra modern type alpha serving the local system, compared to a sprawling low tech type beta doing the same for a n underdeveloped, but heavily populated, world.
That begets the bigger question of what a type A starport is
Or the people running and operating the starport don't count as citizens of that world: contractors, for instance. A lot of times (usually when someone wants to run an adventure on a world where as written it won't work - but be that as it may...) how the population is counted may not correspond to the people in the system at any one time, for reasons ranging from old/bad data, political expedience, corporate rules to avoid taxation... whatever. This was done for instance with Cordan in a PoD-adjacent adventure (political reasons) - I'm sure there are many others, but that one sticks in my head.
It's possible I suppose, but it's the Darkover dodge in.my opinion. But when you go down that rabbit hole you get to other questions like why have an A port in the boonies that is too small to justify its shipyard status? how does the local industry suppor the yard without local industries to make the supply chain work?

It's much better to wrestle those question at the start and keep the exceptions as rare and not the norm. That's lazy world building.
 
For the vast majority of humanity, if they're living within their comfort zone, they're not going to migrate.

And for the casual tourists, there's the cost of passage.

Or at least, the one(s) that Traveller lists down.

As regards starports, it's quite possible to have a small, ultra modern type alpha serving the local system, compared to a sprawling low tech type beta doing the same for a n underdeveloped, but heavily populated, world.

Comfort zone is doing a lot of work there...

As we've discussed thanks to the randomness of the UWP rolls there are whole planets full of billions of people which are not going to be comfortable at all due to minor problems like their being no or a toxic - hell even corrosive (Tirem) or insidious (Retinae) atmosphere:

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And many, many more with a tainted atmosphere - which however we can generally handwave as locals developing some adaptation to so they don't have to wear filter masks 24 hours a day or have a fully functional airlock instead of a front door but even so may not be altogether pleasant.

Plus even a 'garden world' may still be too bloody hot or bloody cold or too bloody wet to be 'comfortable'.

And then there's water worlds which sound awesome but would I really want to live on one?

Plus the Third Imperium has no problem at all with its member worlds being all sorts of oppressive dictatorships - and the more populous the world the less likely to be any sort of democracy - or not just balkanised but with states fighting wars with each other.

And then there are the tech level variations - if you can get off planet for a thousand credits even with a small possibility of dying in transit (which doesn't stop RW refugees or migrants from risking their lives in leaky boats and treks over deserts) then why the hell are you going to stay somewhere with TL4 when even living on the streets at TL15 is going to be vastly safer and more pleasant?

Another aspect of the OTU that we don't think through is that pretty much every career guarantees you a very generous pension if you don't stop working at 34 because you wanna go off and become a space bum - 9 terms of working life and you get 18,000 Cr p.a. which assures you a good (Soc 7) standard of living and work until you are 66 and you get a high standard of living.

So I can visualise a LOT of retirees moving planet from those overpopulated Pop 9 and A hellholes to whatever is Space Florida in their subsector.

And nobody is gonna be changing all those UWPs to actually make sense so we instead need to reconsider RW assumptions about people and comfort zones (which are no longer even tenable on our RW as we career headlong into a new dark age of civilisational collapse and mass migrations).
 
Most of the problems I have encountered are how writers use or ignore the UWP. Take Cordan in the Trojan Reach for example. TR2821. It is listed as a Population Code 3, but if you read the fluff, this is only the Baronial Households, not the total planetary population. I hate this! This tells Me that none of the UWP is worth a crap. This makes any map or bit of information based on the UWPs 100% non-functional.

Mongoose, please, if you are going to continue using the UWP, which I like but needs to be changed to make more sense, please make sure the writers obey the world's UWP in their supplements and adventures.

Personally, I believe that as players and referees, We need an OOC UWP Code that reflects the actual stats of a whole star system as well as UWPs for the individual planets and moons. The Scout Service can still put out their inaccurate maps and UWP Codes, that is fine. That is all in-game stuff. Mechanics are OOC-stuff and therefore need to be accurate or any game system based on those numbers will automatically be incorrect. (Such as the actual amount of trade that runs through a system.)

I see it as a problem that We use an in-game database to calculate out-of-game mechanics.

Feel free to keep the in-game databases inaccurate for story reasons, but Referees need the actual numbers for actual out-of-game mechanics.

I am not sure if I have explained Myself very well. If I have not, I apologize.

Very much agree.

And as pointed out here or the other thread there are in fact several thousand more Imperial worlds than there are systems in the Imperium so multiple inhabited world systems are common and this gives writers and referees quite a bit of latitude which is almost never used.

However the sheer size of the OTU and resources like travellermap and wiki militates against adding whole new UWPs to thousands of systems and Mongoose presumably would prefer to publish new books for sectors that we already have rather than initiate a new Grand Survey project that to be useful would really need to be an online resource which are hard to monetise particularly at the price points Mongoose favours.
 
1. Basically, you locate the Terran standard temperate zone, or a region with a Mediterranean climate.

2. Retirees would depend on the retirement age, and the means to do so.

3. We invented air conditioning for a reason.

4. The issue about space bumming, is that you'd have access to your retirement funds, which might be a little iffy, not over interstellar distances, but time lag.

5. Human history shows a considerable toleration for dictatorshipness.

6. Quite a lot of people seem to like living in the backwoods - the one technology they probably would insist on being as high as possible would probably be medical.

7. Planetary migration policies will likely still be in effect.

8. Outside of economic refugees, and conflict ones, largeish scale migration might be a choice for groups that feel persecuted, either for their beliefs or other differences from the local norms, or want to impose their ideologies, but don't have the opportunity to do so.

9. Comfort zone does envelope quite a big umbrella of conditions that most people will tolerate, possibly because they have been conditioned to do so, through environmental conditioning, or cultural or political indoctrination.
 
This doesn't mean that everyone is a migrant - although almost everyone IS descended from migrants - only that there will be a lot of migrants as well as considerably more people who aren't (but many of who may be forced to become so if - oh I don't know - an archduke assassinates the emperor, a huge civil war breaks out and then a weird AI virus destroys civilisation and kills trillions).

And a lot comes down to how do we envisage the imperium - does it have freedom of movement between worlds? Personally I can't see how you could have a polity that has a single military, a single navy, free trade and an imperial pension that is the same on every world whatever their politics and tech level without any meaningful concept of imperial citizenship and that implies at least some freedom of movement.

But your Traveller universe may vary.
 
This whole thread boils down to two main views

I can't explain the UPP so I want the rules changed (note that the rules already say you can change them anyway)

I can explain the UPP in imaginative ways, leave them be

Yes.

The UWPs are not going to change so you want to play in the OTU you either have to change the OTU into your OTU or use your imagination.
 
Yes.

The UWPs are not going to change so you want to play in the OTU you either have to change the OTU into your OTU or use your imagination.
See My above post about deceptive use of UWPs. Even the writers do not obey the setting. Continue this for another 50 years and the mess will only grow larger.

PS- If I have to explain or rationalize away things in every system, then it is the system that is the problem. That is merely Problem Solving 101
 
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This whole thread boils down to two main views

I can't explain the UPP so I want the rules changed (note that the rules already say you can change them anyway)

I can explain the UPP in imaginative ways, leave them be
and as soon as you make that change, you have invalidated most of the rest of the published (both online and print) materials as they are no longer compatible. If you design a setting that does not obey its own rules, that is a very large issue.
 
Mongoose did not design the setting, people, and they are not responsible for all those crazy UWPs. Maybe they are responsible for some of them, I don't know, but sectors have been generated by lots of different people and companies, and some have been turned into Mongoose products, and some not. I would not hold Mongoose responsible to make sure all UWPs make sense, and sorting them all out is not the best use of game designer time.

UWP is interpreted in different ways by different authors, and referees, in order to world-build to make sense and that is fine. This is a non-problem. If you see a world that doesn't make sense to you, either come up with a good and interesting explanation, or change it, if and when a particular world starts to matter for your gameplay. Otherwise, just ignore it. Who cares if there is a world with pop 50 billion, tech 12, and an E starport two subsectors away, if your players never go there? Just let it sit like that and if they come close either change it to A, or decide maybe the Type A starport was blown up or something if you need it for a plot point.
 
Mongoose did not design the setting, people, and they are not responsible for all those crazy UWPs. Maybe they are responsible for some of them, I don't know, but sectors have been generated by lots of different people and companies, and some have been turned into Mongoose products, and some not. I would not hold Mongoose responsible to make sure all UWPs make sense, and sorting them all out is not the best use of game designer time.

UWP is interpreted in different ways by different authors, and referees, in order to world-build to make sense and that is fine. This is a non-problem. If you see a world that doesn't make sense to you, either come up with a good and interesting explanation, or change it, if and when a particular world starts to matter for your gameplay. Otherwise, just ignore it. Who cares if there is a world with pop 50 billion, tech 12, and an E starport two subsectors away, if your players never go there? Just let it sit like that and if they come close either change it to A, or decide maybe the Type A starport was blown up or something if you need it for a plot point.
I had a whole long post written, but the gist comes down to this. Not fixing it is laziness, pure and simple and the more products that are produced using a non-functional system, the larger the problem becomes and the harder it becomes to fix, but by all means, bury your head in the sand.

You should go into politics.

The easiest way to fix it, is by simply altering the Travellermap to make sense. Then every product you put out after that, uses the new Travellermap. Plus, since Mongoose does updates of it's previously published products, it is a "relatively" easy fix.
 
Have you stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, the majority of people are happy enough with things as they are and do not want to see " my super duper fix to everything I think is wrong".
"Fixing" the UPPs may suit your sensibilities.

Any TL9+ polity can provide the necessary equipment for the locals to survive in just about any environment. If the planet is really bad just build orbital settlements.

Every world in the Third Imperium has access to TL15 knowledge, the local industries may be limited but the science and engineering is only limited by what can be imported.

And the Imperium is all about free trade.

As things stand the more we learn about distant star systems here in the real world the world design system should just be "make up anything you want, out there are stars and planets that defy our models and understanding"

My usual method for world generation is to roll up starport to physical stats on one list, and all the population to TL on another.
I then match world population->TL to what I think are the most suitable physical stats.

Do I want to force everyone to change to suit my method?
 
I had a whole long post written, but the gist comes down to this. Not fixing it is laziness, pure and simple and the more products that are produced using a non-functional system, the larger the problem becomes and the harder it becomes to fix, but by all means, bury your head in the sand.

You should go into politics.

The easiest way to fix it, is by simply altering the Travellermap to make sense. Then every product you put out after that, uses the new Travellermap. Plus, since Mongoose does updates of it's previously published products, it is a "relatively" easy fix.
Travellermap has thousands of systems in it. The Mongoosers (Mongeesers?) put out big thick and mostly very well done books all the time. I think they are kind of busy. I don't imagine they are all in a big office tower with thousands of writers. In my imagination, which might be wrong, they are just a few writers and other staff. I would guess they have bills to pay and want to focus their limited time on things that have a reasonably direct line to saleable products, because otherwise the electric company will cut the power and there will be no more Mongoose books. This doesn't mean they always leave everything else aside, but I suppose they have to ration the amount of fiddling they do with things like Travellermap. If they spend all their time checking those UWPs, that's less time writing books for us. So obviously, it makes sense to fix the problems they notice as they put out a new sector map, but they won't be spending their weekends pouring over some random remote subsector thinking about how sensible the UWPs are.
 
Travellermap has thousands of systems in it. The Mongoosers (Mongeesers?) put out big thick and mostly very well done books all the time. I think they are kind of busy. I don't imagine they are all in a big office tower with thousands of writers. In my imagination, which might be wrong, they are just a few writers and other staff. I would guess they have bills to pay and want to focus their limited time on things that have a reasonably direct line to saleable products, because otherwise the electric company will cut the power and there will be no more Mongoose books. This doesn't mean they always leave everything else aside, but I suppose they have to ration the amount of fiddling they do with things like Travellermap. If they spend all their time checking those UWPs, that's less time writing books for us. So obviously, it makes sense to fix the problems they notice as they put out a new sector map, but they won't be spending their weekends pouring over some random remote subsector thinking about how sensible the UWPs are.
As long as UWPs are not used as an out-of-game fact, that is fine. It is not fine, when We can't use them mechanically, because they don't follow their own rules.

Game Mechanics are an out of game fact. They are a mechanic used to derive other information in the game. Imagine if every time you picked up the stock page of the newspaper (showing My age again) and it contained inaccurate information. That makes any decision that you make based off of that information, untenable.
 
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