Who will win the Fifth Frontier War?

[Alqualonde]

The FFW can be a boon for adventures. You can have character level involvement (recovering an Imperial warrant, scouting, spying, smuggling, or just trying to dodge the big fleets while trying to get rich), Marines/Army units level (thanks to Mercenary. Either as invasion forces, resistance, etc.) or capital ship level (with the Naval rules).
On top on that, it can be open ended (depending on the character's involvement, succeses and failures you'll have a different outcome.
Even if your player's group doesn't want to be involved, just knowing what systems get invaded/liberated & when, can spice things up for a merchant crew.
You can even have Far Traders drafted in the war for a small operations (to transport marines/troops for exemple). I remember reading a short story in SGS deck plans for MegaTraveller (although the Far Traders were 400dT ships).

 

[Sigtrygg]

But I really don't know why they couldn't just have launched TNE as its own setting like 2300 was its own setting without tying themselves to unwanted elements of the existing setting.

Because the Traveller brand name was what sold. There is a reason Traveller:2300 caused confusion and then dipped as a product line when rebranded to 2300AD - despite the new rule books being much better.

But confusing Traveller (the rules) and The Third Imperium (the setting) isn't a recent phenomenon by any means.

The Third Imperium was long dead by the time TNE was decided upon as a way to move the setting forward. MegaTraveller and the rebellion era did for it. The GT ATU tried to keep it going.
The Third Imperium is only a small part of the 1105 OTU.

My opinion of the Third Imperium is still heavily influenced by the early CT adventures, quite how the Imperium became the good guys thanks to the FFW is still a mystery to me. One of the reasons I am looking forward to the Mongoose version is I will once again be able to point to the Imperium being a corrupt, decaying, authoritarian protection racket.

 

[Vormaerin]

Right. I just don't see the confusion argument. D&D has a variety of settings. 2300 had the problem of not using the Traveller rules, so calling it Traveller was sketchy. Traveller: NE used a new ruleset and was effectively a new setting. Mongoose is running two settings on the Traveller rules with a third to come, plus having licensed Mindjammer to use the Traveller logo since it has a Traveller rules version.

I was under the impression that one of the reasons they wiped the setting with Virus was that they wanted to do Star Vikings and didn't see how to to do it with the TI still around. But I could be entirely wrong about that. My point was just wishing they'd made the break between setting and rules a lot earlier in the game's history. But that's not what happened and it was 30 years ago, so the water's not just under the bridge, its down to the ocean and evaporated back into the clouds.

I, too, prefer the early vision of the Imperium. Thriving, effective civilization is generally the bane of traditional adventuring. Though the shiny happy Imperium was still better than than the kind of sly sniping at the earlier setting concepts that we got in books like the Regency Sourcebook.

 

[Dalton Calford]

For me, the distances involved, the relatively small number of imperial ships and the megacorps, always gave the setting, the feel of the 1780's to the 1850's with rayguns.
The core worlds were 2 years away by jump 2 . It was always an easy setting to game in. Most of my early games were rip-offs of boothill games

 

[MongooseMatt]

One of the reasons I am looking forward to the Mongoose version is I will once again be able to point to the Imperium being a corrupt, decaying, authoritarian protection racket.

 

[alex_greene]

... I know.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The early adventure and TAS News bulletins instilled in me the feeling that a lot of people in the Spinward Marches did not want the Imperial jackboot controlling their lives...

 

[Garran]

Eeh. "Evil empire" is pretty much a Star Wars shtick and best left to that franchise, just like the idealized/ultra-enlightened Federation is best left to Star Trek.

The "more beneficial than not on balance, with serious issues due to sprawl" motif of MgT so far is a good middle ground that doesn't leave the brand looking like it's trying to imitate someone else, and it's much more flexible in terms of the game styles and stories that it allows.

 

[Vormaerin]

The Imperium was not an evil Empire like Star Wars. It was just definitely not the good guys. More like the government in Firefly. Most folks thought they did useful stuff, but there was seriously shady nastiness in there too.

 

[Jame Rowe]

The Imperium was not an evil Empire like Star Wars. It was just definitely not the good guys. More like the government in Firefly. Most folks thought they did useful stuff, but there was seriously shady nastiness in there too.

It  wants to do good, but there's lots of agents with their own agends? If so I like it.

 

[Vormaerin]

Well, Strephon wants to do good. Dulinor wants to do more good than Strephon thinks the Imperium can do. Not clear what anyone else thinks.

But the early adventures for Classic Traveller had a lot of fun stuff:
1) The Imperium disappeared a senator into a political prison, then offered a MCr1 reward for finding out what happened to the poor fellow.
2) An Imperial Research Station was conducting experiments on Chirpers, a sentient race
3) The Imperium approves rival merchant lines waging war against each other, including attacking each other's ships.
4) Pretty much everything said by an Imperial official about the fighting on Efate was a flat out lie
5) The general tolerance for completely garbage totalitarian governments as long as they don't interfere with interstellar trade
6) Other fun stuff I don't recall off the top of my head.

 

[Seffix]

I wonder what the Imperium's version of The Onion would be.

 

[Condottiere]

Shrek.

 

[locarno24]

Well, Strephon wants to do good. Dulinor wants to do more good than Strephon thinks the Imperium can do. Not clear what anyone else thinks.

But the early adventures for Classic Traveller had a lot of fun stuff:
1) The Imperium disappeared a senator into a political prison, then offered a MCr1 reward for finding out what happened to the poor fellow.
2) An Imperial Research Station was conducting experiments on Chirpers, a sentient race
3) The Imperium approves rival merchant lines waging war against each other, including attacking each other's ships.
4) Pretty much everything said by an Imperial official about the fighting on Efate was a flat out lie
5) The general tolerance for completely garbage totalitarian governments as long as they don't interfere with interstellar trade
6) Other fun stuff I don't recall off the top of my head.

To be fair, the 'darker side' of the imperium still pops up in things like secrets of the ancients with the totally unofficial prison hulk and imperial agents like Galen.

 

[Sigtrygg]

There is a totally official prison hulk in A1 Kinunir. It's where the PCs get locked up with no trial for breaking a law they are unaware of.

The hulk, named the Gash (for its scrapped out drive sections) is a notorious
political prison, with constant reports of torture and rights violations

There are (implied) INI agents/troops in A2 Research Station Gamma that kidnap sophonts so they can be imprisoned and experimented on.

 

[Condottiere]

9

Impersonal Bureaucracy

Ruling functions are performed by agencies that have become insulated from the governed citizens

 

[paltrysum]

The Imperium was not an evil Empire like Star Wars. It was just definitely not the good guys. More like the government in Firefly. Most folks thought they did useful stuff, but there was seriously shady nastiness in there too.

More like an empire of disinterested neglect and looking the other way when something ugly is seen. The idea that the only thing that can successfully link us is free trade and naval force is more than a bit cynical. But hey, a jolly utopian empire would be a little dull, right?

 

[Vormaerin]

More like an empire of disinterested neglect and looking the other way when something ugly is seen. The idea that the only thing that can successfully link us is free trade and naval force is more than a bit cynical. But hey, a jolly utopian empire would be a little dull, right?

Yup. The general trend towards increasing the Imperium's jollity and actual governance over time is not to my taste.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

I think an amazing option would be the discovery of a dimensional portal that allows the Travellers to visit a different universe where a different faction won the Fifth Frontier war. Obviously inspired by the Star Trek Mirror Universe and almost anything written by Michael Moorcock.

This could open lots of other options for universe expansion, without corrupting the canon irrevocably.

Just a thought.

 

[Alqualonde]

I think an amazing option would be the discovery of a dimensional portal that allows the Travellers to visit a different universe where a different faction won the Fifth Frontier war. Obviously inspired by the Star Trek Mirror Universe and almost anything written by Michael Moorcock.

This could open lots of other options for universe expansion, without corrupting the canon irrevocably.

Just a thought.

In place of a proper portal, you can access this dimension with a missjump & an unhealthy dose of Handwavium. That would make the trip difficult to reproduce.