Things I Hope to See in Traveller in 2025 and Beyond

[summerdown]

The difficulty with the map as presented is that it's got a clear "edge of the world" aspect to it. The Imperium is completely surrounded by people who want to take its lunch - but who's putting pressure on the Zhodani? It's a lot easier when you only need to reinforce a border in one direction.

I'd like to see another major alien race - simply because it would make politics all that more complicated - but it would probably need to answer the question of why no-one knows about it until now. And, if there was to be one, it would be nice if it was extremely alien and not just a human in a fake suit. Maybe the Ancients had uplifted octopi the same way they did Vargr? Something like that would be pretty alien.

I'm not that interested in the K'kree, either. The difficulty with them is they don't really do much in the way of outreach or diplomacy, so at the moment they seem one-dimensional. That might be a good reason for a book - to make them more interesting - but at the moment they just seem like a place on the map no-one goes.

If I wanted a scenario to involve the K'kree and not make them the bad guys, I don't know how I'd start. Maybe invent an alien race round the other side, so terrible even they need to ask for help? Or maybe have them fall into schism, and reveal there have been K'kree being oppressed who just want to get along with everyone else.

I would be very interested in a Hiver book. The Hivers control a massive area of space, so they seem at least as significant as any other race, but also likely to be full of secrets and madcap schemes. I'd love to fill in their space with some actual background. And I'd really love an adventure in which the PCs get to play Hivers.

 

[actionman]

Something else about the K'Kree and the Hivers is that they don't share a border with the Imperium. They're separated from the Imperium by a 2 sector wide buffer zone of client states and neutral worlds.

The K'Kree I don't think would have much of an interest in going to the Imperium. I don't think they'd find it worth the time and cost to go all the way to the Imperium (a bunch of g'naakish people) when they could trade at home, or with the Hivers.

The edge of the world aspect of the map could have something to do with the Ancients' old sphere of influence. Another major race would simply extend the edge of the edge of the world.

 

[actionman]

And, I'd like to see more development of the Julian Protectorate. They could interact with the Vargr, and the Imperium, plus any new alien races. The K'Kree are still isolated from the Julian Protectorate by a sector-wide rift with only a J4 route across it. And, the Vargr polity on the other side of it would no doubt discourage K'Kree travel (bunch of g'naaks).

 

[actionman]

If I wanted a scenario to involve the K'kree and not make them the bad guys, I don't know how I'd start.

Resolving a K'Kree - Vargr conflict before it explodes into war.
Trade missions.
Travel adventures in which the PC's provide transportation for K'Kree families into their spinward client states and unsettled worlds... until the PC's sell them to Astroburgers, hahahahahaahaha!

 

[Avollant]

While I like a lot of the ideas @Avollant offered in the OP, I will say I am not interested in another Human Major Alien. If a new Major Alien was to be introduced, I want something not human. Different. Also there would need to be some reason no one had heard of them until just now. Without a viable reason, the just "oh look, new major army er I mean race smells of GW and would turn me off.

I would also say I do not use the K'kree, and I would pass on such a book. Now as @Sigtrygg said, a Hive Federation book would for sure capture my attention.

I've mentioned the Human as a possibility but any non-human would do. As to explain why no one has ever heard of them, I think there is enough space around the "known Universe" to have one of them being there and we just starting to encounter their exploration mission. A bit like the Roman Empire recon mission stumbling upon the first scouts from China, kinda vibe.

As for the K'kree, I too used to dislike them until I came to realize they were underdeveloped. A sourcebook dedicated to their civilization (and empire) could be a great add on to the "Trailing Frontier" sourcebook. Even if they are 3 sectors away from the Third Imperium, a sudden expansion in that area could spark numerous campaign and scenario.

 

[DanHeidel]

I'll second or eighth the request for more Hiver material. I just got the corebooks a couple weeks ago and was familiarizing myself with the material for an upcoming short test campaign. Going through the various powers it's all:

- OK, The Imperium is if the US and ancient Rome had a baby. The Roman Empire schtick is a pretty overdone but this is different enough that it's reasonably interesting.

- The Solomani are less interesting to me as presented in the core material but might be more compelling in the extended sourcebooks.

- K'Kree are kind of boring.

- The Vargr being half-empire half-space pirate chaos does sound fun but for my style of campaign probably work better as a far-flung diaspora of them salted into the campaign part of the universe as flavor.

- The Zhodani are...OK. I have a hard time picturing how to realistically portray a society where there is basically no free thought. Also, we've already got 2 human empires, did we really need a third?

- The Aslan are a little more interesting but kind of feel like the Vargr's weaboo older brother that went to business school, has no sense of humor and a bunch of mall katanas on their bedroom wall.

- The Hivers, a bunch of pentaradially symmetric Communist worms.

The fact that they kicked the K'Kree's ass by threatening to make them like burgers or something just adds to it. I really want to know more about these weirdos.


As for other races, the Virus actually seems like one of the more interesting concepts in the whole canon. I'm a little meh about the whole Rebellion storyline I've read on the wiki and I feel the way the Virus was depicted was a little unimaginative. But the idea of little bits of electrostatically levitating silicon slivers evolving and being able to be transmitted through computers as pure information is far more interesting than almost all of the other alien species. The way that the Virus continued to evolve through more and more sophisticated sets of behavior (along with a nod to Saberhagen's Beserkers) is just really interesting.

Honestly, I kind of want my setting to be the bog standard 3rd Imperium where the Virus is discovered (possibly with PC help) as a cool little lifeform that gets taken away to a core Imperium research lab where the PCs mostly forget about it. Until, of course, the resource and energy rich environment in the lab allows it to start evolving and making the leap to quietly infecting some temperature monitor's microcontroller in the isolation hood. From there, it gains the ability to encode itself as pure information and in a few hours manages to cripple most of the computer systems on the entire planet. There's a stalemate for a bit as secured systems manage to hold them off until they learn how to break through the encryption and then the entire world falls into chaos in minutes. It almost burns itself out as the high A population world suddenly doesn't have the infrastructure to stave off starvation or keep power running and all the spaceships that land there are promptly taken out. That is until a slow reproduction mutant infects one ship which is able to stay operational just long enough to jump to the next system... and then everything across the Core and beyond goes right to hell. I prefer the concept that it's just an accident that unleashes the Virus and that it's not genocidal but just a dumb creature that is reproducing and gathering resources without any concept of what its actions are doing.

I can see the PC's fighting as a deputized part of a desperate quarantine fleet in the Islands in the Rift region, trying to keep the waves of infected ships from reaching the Spinward Marches. An entire fleet that can only communicate visually via semaphore lasers since they've all physically destroyed the comms arrays on their ships and have to massively derate their sensor suites so the rapidly blinking lights on the incoming infected craft don't get them too...

Eventually, after most of Known Space is ravaged and sent to a pre-Dark age, it finally evolves enough sentience to understand the world outside the CPUs it has been infecting. What its actions are at that point could be very interesting. Further, it destroys most of the empires, allowing all the races to slowly recover in fragmented forms, trying out a whole slew of new philosophies and cultures. The idea of the existing major species being able to show up in radically different societies and mindsets would be a lot of fun.

I was thinking of retooling the Annic Nova to fit into this setting as either either just some flavor or possibly the critical MacGuffin that helps the PCs save the galaxy keep at least some vestige of society from being destroyed. I was quite let down at how... pedestrian the Annic was once you actually manage to board it. Instead, I would love to have its design be even more alien and once host to really odd creatures. Perhaps some sort of colonial organism composed of millions of worms flew it. They might be highly intelligent but only marginally sentient, not really even having a sense of self. The ship would have originated from another galaxy, having had a huge misjump and then drifting through empty intergalactic space for hundreds of millions of years before intercepting Known Space. It would have FTL drives that work on an utterly different principle to jump drives, perhaps something closer to the Alcubierre drive. And the reason that the computers are so bulky is that they are completely mechanical, basically a souped up Babbage Analytical engine. And as for why they had crappy mechanical computers, the generic airborne illness is instead a highly secured research/containment chamber containing samples of a different silicon lifeform that clearly filled the same ecological niche as Virus and presumably laid waste to some far flung part of the cosmos in the distant past.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I'll second or eighth the request for more Hiver material. I just got the corebooks a couple weeks ago and was familiarizing myself with the material for an upcoming short test campaign. Going through the various powers it's all:

- OK, The Imperium is if the US and ancient Rome had a baby. The Roman Empire schtick is a pretty overdone but this is different enough that it's reasonably interesting.

Stick with it, it then morphs into the British/Roman/USA Empire.

- The Solomani are less interesting to me as presented in the core material but might be more compelling in the extended sourcebooks.

Like I said, I would like to see the Terran colonies as they are by the 57th century rather than the Solomani dominated Solomani Sphere

- K'Kree are kind of boring.

Not just boring, they are riduculous as presented. Perhaps a sourcebook could add a bit of depth to an otherwise pointless polity.

- The Vargr being half-empire half-space pirate chaos does sound fun but for my style of campaign probably work better as a far-flung diaspora of them salted into the campaign part of the universe as flavor.

Look at the scale of the Vargr extents and remember - the Ancients took them and humans for a reason (maybe). Vergr have evolved from those originally uplifted and transported, some of the Vargr encountered in the extents could make the Glorious Empire look like a kitty litter commercial.

- The Zhodani are...OK. I have a hard time picturing how to realistically portray a society where there is basically no free thought. Also, we've already got 2 human empires, did we really need a third?

There is free thought. What there isn't is depression, anxiety, lack of trust, envy and other negative mind sets that affect peoples' wellbeing.

- The Aslan are a little more interesting but kind of feel like the Vargr's weaboo older brother that went to business school, has no sense of humor and a bunch of mall katanas on their bedroom wall.

Aslan based on CJ Cherry's Hani - yes please. Aslan as kilrathi/kzinti samurai pizza cats - no thanks

- The Hivers, a bunch of pentaradially symmetric Communist worms.

The fact that they kicked the K'Kree's ass by threatening to make them like burgers or something just adds to it. I really want to know more about these weirdos.

Lots of secrets in Hiver space as well...

Spoiler

As for other races, the Virus actually seems like one of the more interesting concepts in the whole canon. I'm a little meh about the whole Rebellion storyline I've read on the wiki and I feel the way the Virus was depicted was a little unimaginative. But the idea of little bits of electrostatically levitating silicon slivers evolving and being able to be transmitted through computers as pure information is far more interesting than almost all of the other alien species. The way that the Virus continued to evolve through more and more sophisticated sets of behavior (along with a nod to Saberhagen's Beserkers) is just really interesting.

There are fans of Virus, I am one of them.
have you ever run the CT Adventure Signal GK? By the end of that adventure the PCs could have a new addition to the crew...

Spoiler

Honestly, I kind of want my setting to be the bog standard 3rd Imperium where the Virus is discovered (possibly with PC help) as a cool little lifeform that gets taken away to a core Imperium research lab where the PCs mostly forget about it. Until, of course, the resource and energy rich environment in the lab allows it to start evolving and making the leap to quietly infecting some temperature monitor's microcontroller in the isolation hood. From there, it gains the ability to encode itself as pure information and in a few hours manages to cripple most of the computer systems on the entire planet. There's a stalemate for a bit as secured systems manage to hold them off until they learn how to break through the encryption and then the entire world falls into chaos in minutes. It almost burns itself out as the high A population world suddenly doesn't have the infrastructure to stave off starvation or keep power running and all the spaceships that land there are promptly taken out. That is until a slow reproduction mutant infects one ship which is able to stay operational just long enough to jump to the next system... and then everything across the Core and beyond goes right to hell. I prefer the concept that it's just an accident that unleashes the Virus and that it's not genocidal but just a dumb creature that is reproducing and gathering resources without any concept of what its actions are doing.

I can see the PC's fighting as a deputized part of a desperate quarantine fleet in the Islands in the Rift region, trying to keep the waves of infected ships from reaching the Spinward Marches. An entire fleet that can only communicate visually via semaphore lasers since they've all physically destroyed the comms arrays on their ships and have to massively derate their sensor suites so the rapidly blinking lights on the incoming infected craft don't get them too...

Eventually, after most of Known Space is ravaged and sent to a pre-Dark age, it finally evolves enough sentience to understand the world outside the CPUs it has been infecting. What its actions are at that point could be very interesting. Further, it destroys most of the empires, allowing all the races to slowly recover in fragmented forms, trying out a whole slew of new philosophies and cultures. The idea of the existing major species being able to show up in radically different societies and mindsets would be a lot of fun.

I like it.

Spoiler

I was thinking of retooling the Annic Nova to fit into this setting as either either just some flavor or possibly the critical MacGuffin that helps the PCs save the galaxy keep at least some vestige of society from being destroyed. I was quite let down at how... pedestrian the Annic was once you actually manage to board it. Instead, I would love to have its design be even more alien and once host to really odd creatures. Perhaps some sort of colonial organism composed of millions of worms flew it. They might be highly intelligent but only marginally sentient, not really even having a sense of self. The ship would have originated from another galaxy, having had a huge misjump and then drifting through empty intergalactic space for hundreds of millions of years before intercepting Known Space. It would have FTL drives that work on an utterly different principle to jump drives, perhaps something closer to the Alcubierre drive. And the reason that the computers are so bulky is that they are completely mechanical, basically a souped up Babbage Analytical engine. And as for why they had crappy mechanical computers, the generic airborne illness is instead a highly secured research/containment chamber containing samples of a different silicon lifeform that clearly filled the same ecological niche as Virus and presumably laid waste to some far flung part of the cosmos in the distant past.

Have you ever heard of the secret of the Annic Nova that Marc revealed?

 

[Terry Mixon]

I’m not a fan of the idea of Virus. I don’t want to burn down the entire setting and invalidate all my setting books. Rebellion, on the other hand, is an evolution and I kind of like the idea of it.

 

[actionman]

NAMB, I was never interested in the Hivers. Psychohistory was too much like psionics or magic to me, and people saying "Hiver manipulation!" whenever something didn't make sense was anathema to me. It had too much of that Golden Age of Science Fiction feeling that "the new science of Psychology will cure all society's ills!" or "the enlightened Philosophy of Whateverism brought in a new age of harmony and progress! The petty ideologies of your primitive 20th Century are barbaric compared to how cool Whateverism is! Now, let us do drugs and get some free love, because we're all so advanced and free from your primitive ideas, don'cha know!"

I know that it was was the basis for the famous Foundation series, but that's a series of novels. Novels are a profoundly different beast than TTRPGs.
Novels are all planned from start to finish and things in them are there for a reason. What if there was a science that could predict the movements and trends populations, and therefore Predict the Future? And a guy who created a "Foundation" (see what I did there?) to guide society though its inevitable cycles and evolutions??
TTRPG adventures are emergent and can be unpredictable. What if there was a science that could do all this stuff? Players: We shoot up the bar. After that, I guess we'll rescue that guy on Ruie. Let's get something to eat. Astroburgers? You guys like Astroburgers? Astroburgers!

Psychohistory as depicted in Traveller would require immense amounts of data, and I'm doubtful that 1) closed societies like the Zhodani and the Solomani would publish it, 2) the travel times for the analysis centers to get the data would be a very big obstacle, 3) the Hivers would have to have extremely good xenopsychologists to make sense of humaniti, and 4) that the data would be accurate, since government and other published statistics are frequently inaccurate for a variety of reasons. IMO, psychohistory is a magic word that stops discussion about the reasoning behind something.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I’m not a fan of the idea of Virus. I don’t want to burn down the entire setting and invalidate all my setting books. Rebellion, on the other hand, is an evolution and I kind of like the idea of it.

"Virus" need not destroy the setting. At the end of the Signal GK adventure possibilities open up...

 

[Condottiere]

Supposedly, predictive science, if certain events are set in motion.

Which, undoubtedly, artificial intelligence programmes will be advertized to do so, in the near future.

 

[Terry Mixon]

"Virus" need not destroy the setting. At the end of the Signal GK adventure possibilities open up...

I’m not familiar with the adventure though I have it. It would have to be something different that what I’ve heard about Virus to make me change my mind though.

 

[Sigtrygg]

By the end of it the PCs have made a new friend - a sentient silicon chip

 

[Terry Mixon]

By the end of it the PCs have made a new friend - a sentient silicon chip

That's a plus, but it would have to be something radically different than the remainer of how Virus played out to make it work. Maybe the upcoming Singularity campaign will do the same in the Mongoose universe.

 

[CordwainerFish]

OK, The Imperium is if the US and ancient Rome had a baby...

Nah.

The Imperium is the British Empire back when the sun never sat on her.

The Solomani are the US, and it's just after the War of 1812: nobody wants a resumption of hostilities, but things are far from friendly.

The Julian Protectorate is France.

The Zhodani are the Russian Empire.

The Spinward Marches is the Raj, and the Trojan Reach is Afghanistan.

(I suppose this makes the Vargr the Horn of Africa or something. And the Hivers and K'kree are just too far off to integrate into the above anyway.)

Yeah, the history doesn't really work if you plug it in to house current. But you can have fun with it.

 

[-Daniel-]

Nah.

The Imperium is the British Empire back when the sun never sat on her.

Once I read that their real intent was the Imperium as the Roman Empire I just cannot unsee it.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Once I read that their real intent was the Imperium as the Roman Empire I just cannot unsee it.

What do they know? They're just the creators.

 

[DanHeidel]

Not just boring, they are riduculous as presented. Perhaps a sourcebook could add a bit of depth to an otherwise pointless polity.

I think the core idea of sapient, technological herbivores who have a crippling fear of meat eaters is a solid one and potentially quite interesting. The problem is that their entire culture seems to be built to maintain a boring homogeneity. Also their high TL and strong space military presence seems incongruous with their static culture and huge spaceship space requirements.

I think that if one were to go back to the core concept and rethink the rest of their culture to be more dynamic and to make better sense as a functional spacefaring species, you could have something fun to work with. But yeah, as presented, they're unrealistic and inherently boring.

Look at the scale of the Vargr extents and remember - the Ancients took them and humans for a reason (maybe). Vergr have evolved from those originally uplifted and transported, some of the Vargr encountered in the extents could make the Glorious Empire look like a kitty litter commercial.

I always just assumed that the Vargr were uplifted because one of the ancients got bored. And while the Vargr could be unified badasses up North, I just attributed that to how all the competing empires around the Imperium conveniently have empty borders they can expand into. (One of my biggest gripes with the whole setting, IMO)

There is free thought. What there isn't is depression, anxiety, lack of trust, envy and other negative mind sets that affect peoples' wellbeing.

That's, like 92% of the average person's thought.

There are fans of Virus, I am one of them.
have you ever run the CT Adventure Signal GK? By the end of that adventure the PCs could have a new addition to the crew...

I have not. Does it involves the much later phases of its evolution where it gains true intelligence and is all, what's up bros, you need a hand with my dumb cousins?

Despite gaming since the 80s, Traveller never really came into my radar until about a month ago from a Seth Skorokowsky video. I was vaguely aware of it along with the literally thousands of other systems out there but I think that it was going through its many doldrum periods every time in the past I was shopping for new game systems. I've read the core book and mostly picked up the rest browsing the setting history on the wiki and wandering around travellermap. I also grabbed the full set of the original JTAS on CDROM which makes me feel like archeologist when I read it.

I'm starting up my first short test campaign in about a month after I finish up the Viral CoC adventure I'm running right now.

Have you ever heard of the secret of the Annic Nova that Marc revealed?

I have not, but that does sound intriguing.

 

[Condottiere]

The Imperium as Roman Empire stand in seemed sort of obvious.