alex_greene
Guest
A comment on another thread resurrected the idea, for me, of setting Traveller in Larry Niven's Known Space, the setting for his Ringworld quadrilogy.
Basically, for those unfamiliar with Nivenspace, Known Space is set along a kind of a timeline extending from now to about the middle of the 30th Century or so. You're probably familiar with the whole general idea: Mankind has conquered space, heading out to found colonies on exotic worlds first in sublight generation ships and, later, on FTL vessels.
What makes Nivenspace unique are all its strange, strange creatures and its signature technologies.
The Thrintun - overwhelmingly powerful psions with an irresistible psionic mind control power, they died out about 1.5 billion years ago, but not before seeding several worlds with food algae, including Earth.
The Tnuctip - biological engineers who died out at the same time as the Thrintun, developers of Sunflowers, stage trees and Bandersnatchi, as well as Slaver stasis fields, disintegrators and soft weapons. All of them traps.
The Kzinti - a vicious, carnivorous feline race predicated on honour, with strict gender divides (sound familiar? Now think of the Aslan if the females were non-sentient ... or were only pretending to be non-sentient ...)
Puppeteers - herdlike triped herbivores with two one-eyed heads mounted on long necks, their mouths making their heads look like sock puppets. Puppetters ran General Products, a company which supplied GP hull ships. The location of their homeworld is a mystery until the novel Ringworld.
Protectors - Really strong, tough and fast (3d6 to Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, natural armour); really smart (4d6 to Intelligence, Education); strong senses (sight, hearing, touch, most particularly smell). Creatures which were humanoid, but transformed when they ate a herb known as Tree-of-Life. Originally from a homeworld close to the galactic core, some three million years or so ago a colony of Pak arrived on Earth. Their Protectors died out, but the hominids survived, mutated, turned into us.
I think I'd prefer the setting to focus not on the Ringworld, but rather on Known Space. Several eras are covered: the ARM period, centered around Earth a century from now, where interstellar space exploration is still in its infancy; the Man-Kzin Wars period, characterised by the arrival of the Outsiders and the sale of hyperdrive to the humans; and of course, the post - Man-Kzin Wars period of comparative prosperity, the time of Carlos Wu and Beowulf Shaeffer - culminating in the time of Louis Wu, the evacuation of the Puppeteers and the discovery of the Ringworld.
What do you think. Nivenspace as a Traveller property? Does that have a nice ring to it?
Basically, for those unfamiliar with Nivenspace, Known Space is set along a kind of a timeline extending from now to about the middle of the 30th Century or so. You're probably familiar with the whole general idea: Mankind has conquered space, heading out to found colonies on exotic worlds first in sublight generation ships and, later, on FTL vessels.
What makes Nivenspace unique are all its strange, strange creatures and its signature technologies.
The Thrintun - overwhelmingly powerful psions with an irresistible psionic mind control power, they died out about 1.5 billion years ago, but not before seeding several worlds with food algae, including Earth.
The Tnuctip - biological engineers who died out at the same time as the Thrintun, developers of Sunflowers, stage trees and Bandersnatchi, as well as Slaver stasis fields, disintegrators and soft weapons. All of them traps.
The Kzinti - a vicious, carnivorous feline race predicated on honour, with strict gender divides (sound familiar? Now think of the Aslan if the females were non-sentient ... or were only pretending to be non-sentient ...)
Puppeteers - herdlike triped herbivores with two one-eyed heads mounted on long necks, their mouths making their heads look like sock puppets. Puppetters ran General Products, a company which supplied GP hull ships. The location of their homeworld is a mystery until the novel Ringworld.
Protectors - Really strong, tough and fast (3d6 to Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, natural armour); really smart (4d6 to Intelligence, Education); strong senses (sight, hearing, touch, most particularly smell). Creatures which were humanoid, but transformed when they ate a herb known as Tree-of-Life. Originally from a homeworld close to the galactic core, some three million years or so ago a colony of Pak arrived on Earth. Their Protectors died out, but the hominids survived, mutated, turned into us.
I think I'd prefer the setting to focus not on the Ringworld, but rather on Known Space. Several eras are covered: the ARM period, centered around Earth a century from now, where interstellar space exploration is still in its infancy; the Man-Kzin Wars period, characterised by the arrival of the Outsiders and the sale of hyperdrive to the humans; and of course, the post - Man-Kzin Wars period of comparative prosperity, the time of Carlos Wu and Beowulf Shaeffer - culminating in the time of Louis Wu, the evacuation of the Puppeteers and the discovery of the Ringworld.
What do you think. Nivenspace as a Traveller property? Does that have a nice ring to it?
