Why is there no Setting Guide book that explains the whole setting without going deep into each sector?

In the old days of Classic Traveller the original rules didnt actually have a setting just some assumptions on the universe. The lore came later which I just gradually picked up from the adventures and library books, but wasnt a massive fan of a lot of it (especially most of the aliens which seemed daft to me). I never used the 3rd Imperial setting other than as a vague backdrop. It's always been cooler anyway to design your own subsectors and worlds.

But you can find 3rd Imperium setting info online dead easy and the online travellermap.com will give you all the maps you will ever need. All you really need for playing Traveller is the core rulebook. You could always get the old CT library books as pdfs on the Mongoose site or as books on Ebay and they will give you plenty of overview. The lore has never really changed over time, at least not in most of the Traveller game versions, although Mongoose are now taking the game into the future of CT with the Fifth Frontier War.

But see this for a potted history to start you off:

 
In the old days of Classic Traveller the original rules didnt actually have a setting just some assumptions on the universe. The lore came later which I just gradually picked up from the adventures and library books, but wasnt a massive fan of a lot of it (especially most of the aliens which seemed daft to me). I never used the 3rd Imperial setting other than as a vague backdrop. It's always been cooler anyway to design your own subsectors and worlds.

But you can find 3rd Imperium setting info online dead easy and the online travellermap.com will give you all the maps you will ever need. All you really need for playing Traveller is the core rulebook. You could always get the old CT library books as pdfs on the Mongoose site or as books on Ebay and they will give you plenty of overview. The lore has never really changed over time, at least not in most of the Traveller game versions, although Mongoose are now taking the game into the future of CT with the Fifth Frontier War.

But see this for a potted history to start you off:

My browser doesn't like the link or site, sadly.
 
A Guide to Charted Space/Introduction to Charted Space is not a bad idea at all as an overview, and something to consider...

An excellent OTU setting explanation was included as an insert in the later editions of the GDW Imperium board game, maybe 8 pages long. This text was re-used in the GURPS Traveller core rulebook in sidebars, which is where I first encountered it.

Perhaps that could be dusted off and released as a "freebie"?
 
A Guide to Charted Space/Introduction to Charted Space is not a bad idea at all as an overview, and something to consider...
I am glad the message came through. Such a book would probably be best made now when you have much of the sector writeups set into stone and would have been a major project when the lineup started. Now it is much easier to explain the timeline, to put together those ready texts from 5-6 books into a single book, with also some precursor coverage for upcoming sector books, i.e., covering he Vargr. The book could be multi-tome, with the first tome covering what exists now, and another tome when more sectors are released and can be easier referenced and summarized int he grand whole.
 
A Guide to Charted Space/Introduction to Charted Space is not a bad idea at all as an overview, and something to consider...

I like the way they do with Harnworld, for example. You have the bigger Harnworld and Harndex books which describe the world at large and all the main kingdoms, but in a broader high-level detail. Then if you want to go deeper in one of them, they have a book for each of the kingdoms that goes into more details on it.

So yeah, I think Traveller is missing that “Harnworld” broader main book to at least summarize each bigger section of space so players have a better knowledge which sector book they should buy next.
 
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