Thoughts on the Dark Imperium

[Vormaerin]

That's true in the sense that large population worlds dwarf every other world. When your entire subsector has a population of 18 billion and 10 billion live on one planet, that's gonna make the majority live on high population worlds.

And since the Imperium tolerates completely awful planetary governments without any apparent issue, the quality of life of its citizens is clearly not important to the Imperium.

 

[Bense]

A vague sketch , that is clutching at straws. It is a fully fleshed out setting especially when you consider that Supplement 3 is only one of several setting sources produced in that year, and the same Imperium was being used right through to the advent of the Library Data Supplements, which is where you get the noticeable changes.

A calendar, some galactic directions, a page of library data and a couple of paragraphs for each subsector is not what I would call "fully fleshed out."

"Fully fleshed out" is something like the GURPS version of Behind the Claw, where there were thirty-five pages of background material before the subsector details, and then every mainworld got at least a paragraph, and then another 20 pages or so of background and commentary. And it's also more than I want. As a Referee I much prefer the current Mongoose approach, with only three or so planets in each subsector receiving entries and the left rest to the Referee.

You're right, they incorporated the pre-1980 material directly rather than starting over.

 

[Bense]

That's true in the sense that large population worlds dwarf every other world. When your entire subsector has a population of 18 billion and 10 billion live on one planet, that's gonna make the majority live on high population worlds.

And since the Imperium tolerates completely awful planetary governments without any apparent issue, the quality of life of its citizens is clearly not important to the Imperium.

It can be played either way. It's hard to determine how "awful" a government really is just from two UWP stats.

 

[MasterGwydion]

It can be played either way. It's hard to determine how "awful" a government really is just from two UWP stats.

A world with high stats in both Gov and Law, is probably a pretty horrible place to live.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Although now that I think about it, the other end of the spectrum with low digits in both may be equally horrible.

 

[Bense]

A world with high stats in both Gov and Law, is probably a pretty horrible place to live.

Well, again, it depends. The more extreme government types on the upper end of the scale could be very pleasant places to live indeed if the leaders involved are good people who genuinely care about their populace.

 

[Condottiere]

If it's hard to pass unmonitored, currently, in urban areas, it's probably impossible three millenia later, without extensive countermeasures.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Well, again, it depends. The more extreme government types on the upper end of the scale could be very pleasant places to live indeed if the leaders involved are good people who genuinely care about their populace.

Autocracy is the best form of government if your leader and those who follow him are moral, but that almost never happens and even when it does, the next Supreme Leader is rarely as beneficent as the original good leader.

 

[actionman]

but that almost never happens

It never happens.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[MasterGwydion]

It never happens.

I was trying to be positive. lol

 

[actionman]

Sometimes I think there's a secret thread that Condo is responding to, a secret thread that I can't see.

So here's my contribution.

 

[Bense]

It never happens.

Cincinnatus.

 

[Vormaerin]

It can be played either way. It's hard to determine how "awful" a government really is just from two UWP stats.

We don't have to guess about what these worlds are like. We have plenty of examples of completely awful worlds within the Imperium.

Heck, even Regina has "strangulous" regulations and government authority, where mass arrests for simply being in the vicinity of a crime are the norm. Though, at least, you do have to have a trial or be released..eventually. At least, unless the Duke of Regina is involved.

You have "nice" totalitarian religious worlds like Pysadi, where membership in the church is mandatory, the Mother Church controls basically everything, and there is limited freedom of moment tolerated. But the Church itself is, at least, not a particularly awful version of dictatorship.

There's a world, Sima, where they maintain serfdom. Everyone is bound to their estate and employed solely at the whim of their local feudal lord, though they aren't slaves in that they can't be sold or killed on a whim.

And these are considered benign worlds where people are largely happy.

You, as the GM, can naturally decide what worlds are like and whether those totalitarian dictatorships are cuddly or not. And you can say that people are largely happy that they have no say in the government on most worlds, because they are corporate owned or the franchise is super restrictive or whatever.

But that's not generally the experience on Earth. And I doubt human nature has changed that much in the future.

 

[Vormaerin]

Cincinnatus.

What? Cincinnatus was not remotely a nice guy, unless you were a fellow aristocrat. He's famous because he gave up absolute power without having to be forced, but he was adamantly opposed to any sort of authority or legal protections for the plebeians and may have used his power as dictator to punish a man who brought a legal accusation against his son.

But so much of Cincinnatus' life is fictionalized that it's hard to say.

 

[Bense]

We don't have to guess about what these worlds are like. We have plenty of examples of completely awful worlds within the Imperium.

Actually only a very small sample of the worlds of the Imperium's worlds have ever been described in Traveller. The roughly 400 worlds of the Spinward Marches, which have been the most detailed over the years, are less than 4% of the 11,000 Imperial worlds. And the Spinward Marches is a frontier sector, said to be quite atypical in many ways.
Most of the Mongoose sector books describe around 3 mainworlds per subsector of 40 or so, and it's still only a few paragraphs for each world.

You, as the GM, can naturally decide what worlds are like and whether those totalitarian dictatorships are cuddly or not. And you can say that people are largely happy that they have no say in the government on most worlds, because they are corporate owned or the franchise is super restrictive or whatever.

But that's not generally the experience on Earth. And I doubt human nature has changed that much in the future.

It is a humaniti that has expanded into tens of thousands of alien worlds, grown 5 or more orders of magnitude in total population (from today's 8 billion to at least tens of trillions), doubled the amount of recorded history, absorbed and assimilated the languages and cultural traditions of humans who diverged from us hundreds of thousands of years earlier, and encountered actual alien civilizations.
By all rights it should be a very different human nature from what we know now.

If anything the Third Imperium's humaniti is far too similar to our own to be strictly plausible. But gaming with unrecognizable humans wouldn't be much fun.

 

[WHULorigan]

But that's not generally the experience on Earth. And I doubt human nature has changed that much in the future.

By all rights it should be a very different human nature from what we know now.

No. Human nature will not have been changed, unless they have been genetically altered at a neuropsychological / instinctual level. Culture, outlook, viewpoint, perspective, social values, etc, . . . yes.

Nature, . . . No.

Nature is inherent. It is people's belief that they can change human nature (or that people are born tabula rasa ) that dooms the great promises of most modern social and political movements to failure, because they fail to account for this factor. Learned (conditioned or "nurtured") behavior is built over the top of a substrate of hardwired, instinctual "firmware" that comes from our genetic biological ancestry.

Social and political movements that fundamentally require a change of human nature for their successful implementation either end up as laughable failures or horrendous tyrannies as their leaders try and compensate.

 

[actionman]

A world with high stats in both Gov and Law, is probably a pretty horrible place to live.

A possible reason for this is that the population might behave in such a way that it requires a high law level to mitigate it.
In addition to governmental harassment, travellers might also need to be on their guard against crime and violence from the general population.

 

[WHULorigan]

It is a humaniti that has . . . absorbed and assimilated the languages and cultural traditions of humans who diverged from us hundreds of thousands of years earlier, and encountered actual alien civilizations.
By all rights it should be a very different human [civilization] from what we know now.

If anything the Third Imperium's humaniti is far too similar to our own to be strictly plausible. But gaming with unrecognizable humans wouldn't be much fun.

↑
This I will agree with.

 

[MasterGwydion]

So, I have been giving more thought to this whole "Dark Imperium" thing. Assuming that the Third Imperium is a "Dark Imperium" as has been noted in the "fluff", then I believe that some of the mechanics of the game do not line up with that. For example...


Now look at the rules as written. It is insanely easy to make money Spec Trading. It is insanely easy to make money manufacturing and mining. These are just 2 examples of Traveller Rules, not setting-specific rules, that make the mechanics not match the "fluff". Same with robots. Buy a robot for 24KCr out of your Mustering Out benefits for a robot with Profession/2. This robot can work 3 shifts a day versus a sophonts 1. General Crew with a skill of level 2 are paid 150% the rate of a skill level one worker, so 1,000Cr/mo times 150% equals 1,500Cr/mo. Working 3 shifts this robot now brings in 4,500Cr/month and the maintenance costs are only like 2Cr (or 20Cr if I did My math wrong) per month. If an average person spends 50% of their income on "Living Expenses", that would be roughly 2,200Cr/month for Living Expenses putting this sophont in the High Standard of Living bracket. This would seem to disprove the statement above that only planning and executing daring schemes work for the acquisition of wealth and power.