A New Setting

[mactavish]

I considered having Homo sapiens evolve on Earth, then spread to the stars just prior to some sort of catastrophe that destroyed their advanced civilization so completely that no artifacts remain anywhere on Earth (but maybe the moon, Mars and/or one of the Jovian or Saturnine satellites).

What notes I've written so far (regarding this aspect of the setting) are as follows:

In deference to the Drake Equation, Homo sapiens is the only intelligent species to have evolved naturally in the galaxy.

However, terrestrial humans are not the original Homo sapiens. Their forebears evolved on a distant planet, somewhere in the Milky Way, approximately a million years before modern humans first appeared on Earth. These ancient humans, referred to in-game as Seeders, succumbed to some unspecified malady eons ago, but not before sending out hundreds or thousands of artificially-intelligent FTL probes that – upon locating a world on which Homo sapiens could potentially survive and thrive – would hijack the local ecosystem so that an accurate reproduction of their own genome would be the pinnacle of that planet’s evolutionary process. Of course not all were successful, and even when humans did evolve, they didn’t always survive. Nevertheless, there are planets throughout the galaxy inhabited by humans fundamentally identical to terrestrial Homo sapiens. While local environmental factors and random mutations have altered each population to some degree, the Seeders’ hard-coded genetic programming – still operating to the modern day – ameliorates enough random variation in the DNA to prevent speciation, meaning humans from one star system are still genetically compatible with those from Earth (or anywhere else they evolved in the galaxy).

Of all the worlds on which humans evolved, Earth is still a unique case. For some reason, perhaps because Earth was so similar to the world that the Seeders themselves evolved on, the forerunners of hominids had already appeared millions of years before the Seeders’ probe came upon the Sol system. Earth was already on the path to developing intelligent life, though natural selection appeared to favor Homo neanderthalensis over all other contemporary specimens of the Homo genus. Consequently, the Seeders’ intervention quickly produced Homo sapiens roughly 50,000 years ago, which wiped out all potential rivals. Unlike on other worlds where humans evolved as the result of Seeder interference, terrestrial humans have some small amount of Neanderthal DNA in their genome.

Though likely not the first planet on which the Seeders intervened, Earth was ostensibly the most successful, having evolved humans that developed technologies advanced enough to permit them to leave their homeworld and expand out to the stars, something that the Seeders apparently never did themselves.

How't that read?

mactavish out.

 

[JFGarber]

misjumps can throw ships backward and forward in time as well as space, a very early jump accident sent an entire industrial manufacturing/research station back millions of years, the population of that station were able to survive, build more stations, grow their population and spread throughout the galaxy, cultural collapse after collapse mean there are only a few places in the galaxy that have records of the true history

I really, really like this. That could be great fun

 

[Major B]

How't that read?

Interesting. I like it because it opens at least as many possibilities as it closes and it doesn't stretch plausibility any more than a space-faring setting stretches plausibility.

A couple of questions:

Do I understand correctly that the Seeder's home planet evolved Homo Sapiens naturally while Terra, without their intervention, would have evolved Homo Neanderthalis naturally? Would Homo Neanderthalis have evolved to the point that they could have been spacefaring at some time? If so, there could be other worlds that evolved Homo Whatchamacallit that became spacefaring too. They don't have to be close enough that we run into them but the idea that there are other near relatives out there is a possibility to explore in the future - worlds that the Seeders missed that still put forward their candidate to conquer the galaxy.

Second, do you have a reason why the Seeders would do that? It can be a mystery to everyone in-game of course but I wonder why they would develop that tech but miss out on discovering jump drive themselves.

 

[wellis]

So essentially in the present "time" of this setting, Terra has had several collapses which allows for humans to have already spread to various planets and such by the present era of the setting?

 

[Major B]

So essentially in the present "time" of this setting, Terra has had several collapses which allows for humans to have already spread to various planets and such by the present era of the setting?

That was the essence of my idea Wellis but MacTavish is going with an alternative where the "Seeders" evolved on another world then sent what amount to seed pods out to other worlds to steer them toward developing human life there too. The result is the same species seemingly originating on multiple worlds. The "Seeders" are not from Terra though.

 

[mactavish]

Do I understand correctly that the Seeder's home planet evolved Homo Sapiens naturally while Terra, without their intervention, would have evolved Homo Neanderthalis naturally?

Yes, the Seeders - the "original" Homo sapiens - arose (presumably naturally) on a planet on the other side of the Milky Way (~25,000 parsecs from Sol). And yes, Homo neanderthalensis had evolved naturally on Earth prior to the Seeders' "seed pod" (I prefer "genetic ark"). It was the Seeders' intervention that prevented Neanderthals becoming the dominant lifeforms on Earth.

Would Homo Neanderthalis have evolved to the point that they could have been spacefaring at some time?

One never knows. Based on what I've read about all the Homo species that came before Cro-magnon man (Homo sapiens), they lacked some of the higher brain functions attributed to modern man. One theory suggested that all of the hominids - including Neanderthal - lacked the ability to think in future terms, that they were living in an "infinite now." That alone suggests that they would likely never evolve beyond (or even up to) the Bronze Age.

Second, do you have a reason why the Seeders would do that?

The Seeders possessed FTL space travel; that's how their machines traversed the galaxy. Truthfully, I imagine the Seeders as shorter, slighter humans of Asiatic appearance. Their psychology was obviously similar in many ways to "modern humans," so their motives would likely never be considered alien. I was thinking, honestly, of the fact that the Chinese - in the 15th century - were far more advanced than the rest of the world. They had massive junk-style seafaring ships, but they never really went anywhere to explore. They kind of sat around and let others come to them.

I guess these Seeders either a.) were too much homebodies to leave their idyllic planet, given all the potential horrors that await in space, b.) explored via unmanned drones that reported back to them, or c.) discovered FTL travel too late in their decline for them to make active use of it. Take your pick or come up with something else.

It seems that the Seeders have been gone for thousands of centuries, but a few of their machines may still be out there. Perhaps one of their few starship prototypes, a damaged/deactivated genetic ark, or ruins of one of their exceedingly rare science research outposts... or even a Seeder corpse found after eons of floating through space (let's see the medics explain that one!).

mactavish out.

 

[mactavish]

I've also been thinking about why starfaring terrestrial humans haven't found evidence of other human-occupied planets. Then I considered a couple or three reasons:

1. Earthers haven't expanded out far enough yet. There are human-occupied worlds, perhaps just a few more parsecs out.

2. Fermi's Paradox applies. There are several iterations of humans who've achieved technological advancement, split the atom, then destroyed themselves with atomic weapons. Or maybe a big asteroid wiped out their TL2 proto-Roman Imperium before it could achieve a renaissance. Or maybe the local fauna was simply too hostile, and humans are soft and tasty...

3. They've simply missed the signs. Maybe there was a thriving, technologically advanced human civilization on Proxima Centauri-2, but all signs were scoured away 100,000 years ago when a coronal mass ejection scoured the surface clean.

Or maybe it's a combination of all three. Maybe there's a nascent Mongol-dominated planet in the Mu Herculis system (~9 parsecs from Sol), ruins of a civilization on the cusp of an Industrial Revolution apparently wiped out by a radiation pulse that sterilized enough of the population that the remaining fertile portion couldn't make up the difference and they just faded away a few decades or centuries earlier. Maybe there's a TL4 theocracy that dominates the population like the Ayatollahs in 1979 Iran on Gliese 667-3, or a TL5 balkanized world with the various nation-states poised on the edge of a global war on 18 Ophiuchi-4.

There will be other clues, too. Far-ranging scouts, explorers and adventurers may return home after years abroad with tales of a Sultanate that put the 19th-century terrestrial Ottomans to shame and strange and wonderful spices from that very world. Or some of their rugs. Or even one of their people (though how could you ever know for sure that the passenger wasn't just some crazy guy from Hoboken, and the Travellers are just pulling a P.T. Barnum-style con?).

Again, there are many worlds where Homo sapiens evolved, but not all of them came to fruition, dying out early. Or who succumbed to an influenza epidemic that wiped out their entire TL5 population. Or who are, just out of sight, progressing quite well, ready to produce their first working steam engine, internal combustion engine, or rocket engine. Or maybe those weak radio signals that you thought were just "I Love Lucy" reruns are actually human radio transmissions emanating from the Zeta 2 Reticuli system.

I've been working on a whole bunch of these session seeds using the awesome Near Space materials from Stellagama Publishing, making the worlds closest to Sol (i.e. within a radius of 6-7 parsecs) pretty unpleasant for human habitation, encouraging a slower pace for exploration, the prevailing thinking going something like, "Why do we keep going further and further out when all we find are airless rocks, blistering deserts and frozen ammonia seas?"

It's going to take some real explorers and adventurers to push out beyond the edge of human-scouted space before they find something really interesting...

mactavish out.

 

[kilemall]

The beauty of your setting is you can still have those oddball planets with full tech and pop without the tortured explanations of how they can exist and be their weird selves inside the embrace of a centuries-long empire.

Easy to roll for too- just substitute X for starport A selections.

 

[mactavish]

Thanks, kilemall. That's at least part of what I was going for when I sat down to build this setting.

I love Traveller. I played the original 3BB version in middle school with a couple of older guys that were REALLY into it, particularly the Third Imperium. And while I appreciate all the time and effort put into building that background, and while I DO think it's cool and enjoyable to play in (especially when you base it almost solely on the original 1970s source material), my preference is for characters and setting that the players can, to at least some degree, identify with during play.

I also love little flourishes "borrowed" from other settings, like the fact that a great majority of Travellers are smokers (let's hope they remember to take their daily anti-cancer pills!), and their preferred brand is Red Apple. Or the cut-rate Low Berth transport company is called Polar Express. Or that one of the most popular rock groups of the 23rd century is Benny and the Jets, especially that lead singer with her electric boots, her Mohair suit; you know, I read it in JTAS magazine.

But I digress.

Indeed, it's far easier to take a newly-developed world and populate it with humans. Regardless of their strange tics and peccadilloes, the PCs have something fundamentally in common with them, even if the local pass time is juggling goslings...

I have about a dozen worlds roughed out, with about 2/3 of them having ruins of varying ages (i.e. one is 30,000 years old and it's nearly impossible to learn much from it, while another is 10 years old and the planet is in the midst of a nuclear winter).

The remaining planets have human civilizations at some level of development LESS than that of Earth and its attendant colonies and outposts. There may be, somewhere in the galaxy, a human-inhabited planet on the verge of orbiting its first satellite, but that's likely the most advanced group they'll find, at least in the short term.

And knowing my players, at least some of them will want to sell (or give) the Nubian-Viking-analogues of Ceti Alpha-2 automatic weapons and attack helicopters (or a Jump-capable starship!), just for the sheer fun of it!

mactavish out.

 

[gchuck]

Looking for an example?

Since you seem to be looking for an explanation of your setting. You might want to give a look at David Webers 'Honorverse'. The Honor Harrington stories are full of fairly detailed rundowns on most inhabited planets, with good background on most of them, (sometimes pretty brief), more than enough to give you some ideas.

 

[wellis]

Since Earth humanity here is more divided and all, what would be the equivalent of the Traveller's Aid society, or Traveller News Service in your mind?

And hmm regarding your jump drives, are there other differences about them beyond having a size limitation kn jumping, or how far they can jump?

Like do they use different amounts of fuel compared to canon?

 

[mactavish]

Since Earth humanity here is more divided and all, what would be the equivalent of the Traveller's Aid society, or Traveller News Service in your mind?

So glad you asked, wellis!

The Interstellar Commerce Commission, which is supported by most starring polities

This is from one of my posts on the first page of this thread.

The ICC is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) formed in the vacuum of the collapse of the United Nations when everyone fled Earth and established new homeworlds elsewhere.

Among other things, they established a common currency for trade, based on early-21st century hyper-secure cryptocurrencies, called the Interstellar Commerce Commission Unit of Monetary Credit, commonly referred to as the credit. It sets the value based on the wealthiest polities on a near 1:1 ratio (so if the Alliance dollar was the most valuable local currency, the credit would be worth close to that... maybe a little higher or a little lower).

The ICC mediates disputes between polities in the finest tradition of corporate America. (That's meant to sound sardonic, in case you didn't pick up on it.) This is typically trade-related, but occasionally about other issues (i.e. violent armed conflicts) as well. All signatories agree that ICC-led mediation is binding with the understanding that, if you break the rules, then you lose all the perks (i.e. nobody will trade with you, all other interested parties will go out of the way to make the lives of your population as miserable as possible without starting a war, etc.). And if that's not cause enough to behave, real belligerents would suffer the wrath of all the other signatories' military forces (which, in many cases, is only a token), but the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (made up of the former-US, UK, Canada and Australia), the Russian Oligarchy, and two of the Chinese Successor States each controls a powerful FTL war fleet, and - apart from the brushfire wars they start by pitting lesser polities against one another - it's one of the few opportunities to show off how powerful one's ships and weapons really are.

The ICC also licenses all traders under a common system accepted by all member states, whether massive interstellar corporations or lone free traders. They issue varying degrees of licensing that determine what traders can haul, the more dangerous and/or valuable the cargo, the bigger the potential payoff, so it's typically worth the price for those that can afford it.

In line with licensing merchants (as well as private military contractors [mercenaries] and private law enforcement contractors [bounty hunters], both of which are commercial operations, too), the ICC is responsible for the construction, operation, maintenance and security of extraterritorial starports on the mainworlds in each human-occupied star system, with larger and more important states having better facilities than those on the lower rungs.

Part of this includes an ICC Constabulary, which serves as something of an airport security/port authority possessing specific legal powers, including stopping commercial ships to check papers, search (and also seize) cargoes, impound ships, and so forth. They keep their reasonably-armed patrol ships within range of the starport, but leave most other issues to the local states (which sucks for those lesser states without their own meaningful aerospace forces to deal with piracy; sometimes they make devil's bargains with bigger powers for "protection" [which the Russians LOVE!]).

Like some polities, the ICC also subsidizes private vessels to make sure that even the wettest backwaters receive relatively regular deliveries of the necessities. (This works like in Classic Traveller, though they will subsidize smaller vessels than 400 dTons as smaller ships have greater range.)

In line with their licensing and subsidizing activities, the ICC also operates an interstellar mail/package delivery service (which is also similar to Classic Traveller), but not the only one. However, ICC delivery services go pretty much everywhere, while some of the UPS/FedEx types avoid certain systems.

Finally, the ICC serves as an ad hoc interstellar bureau of weights and measures, essentially dictating starship component design specifications. They decided - in "collaboration" with the member states - what the common standards would be over a century ago, and (if you want to make sure your ships can find compatible parts), you either played along or got rich enough to support your own proprietary standards (i.e. imperial vs. metric, anyone?).

The Interstellar Commerce Commission is doubtlessly an extremely powerful organization, and it holds a lot of wealth thanks to ICC-imposed tariffs (< 0.00001%) and various fees. But it's only as powerful as the signatories allow it to be. Since most of them are interested only in a single system, or possibly a couple of adjacent systems, most are grudgingly okay with letting the ICC run "the space in between." If one of the major players withdrew, the ICC would likely survive, but if two or more unilaterally backed out of their commitments, it would fold like a house of cards.

Oh, I almost forgot to answer one of your main questions...

Finally, the ICC manages this setting’s [as-yet unnamed equivalent of] the Travellers’ Aid Society.

Among its manifold responsibilities, it operates the United News Network, and publishes both Voyager, a news and current events magazine (electronic and hard copy), and a series of travelogues (Voyager's Guidebooks) for various planets and interstellar nations.

Rather than offering precise equivalents of TAS-like member benefits, it offers StarPass, which provides several membership benefits:

@ Access to StarPass member facilities, available at most class-A-D starports (i.e. Centrum terminals, exercise rooms, showers, etc.)
@ Free access to StarPass hostels [assuming vacancies] at any ICC starport
@ One gratis Low Passage every two months for personal use (or to give away, but not sell, which violates the membership agreement)
& Foregoing two Low Passages makes the member eligible for one Standard Passage (max. 1/year)
@ Discounts at more upscale starport lodgings (class-A, B and some C starports only)
@ Free news daemon software that – when within range of a Centrum network – downloads and organizes stories it determines to be of interest to the member to his StarPass personal device
@ Subscription to the in-house magazine (Voyager), both hard copy and e-reader versions

My thinking on this has many disparate facets, not the least of which is - once the PCs (or whomever) discovers lots of human-occupied worlds - there are accepted standards in place (though some may be interested in circumventing them to access new markets, establish "client states," and so on).

* Centrum is the evolution of the Internet. Every TL7+ facility has its own Centrum node. ICC mail carriers transport Centrum updates as they travel from system to system, so that news gets to the important mainworlds multiple times a day (though the boondocks tends to get news whenever someone who's been anywhere drops by).

And hmm regarding your jump drives, are there other differences about them beyond having a size limitation kn jumping, or how far they can jump?

No, the Jump Drives, other than size limitations, are as-written in Cepheus Engine.

Like do they use different amounts of fuel compared to canon?

Fuel requirements are the same, though some poorer states with access to radioactives sometimes use fission reactors for their starship power plants rather than the more expensive fusion reactors. They're bigger and the fuel costs a lot, but they only refuel annually whereas fusion plants need regular refueling.

This sets up a lot of fun ideas, like the PCs responding to a distress call and having to board an Afghan starship on the edge of reactor meltdown, or finding wreckage floating in space that ends up contaminating the crew with radiation when they haul it aboard.

Wow, I wrote a lot there. I think I'll take a break for a little while.

mactavish out.

 

[mactavish]

The last post makes reference to the Voyagers' Guild. That's one of the names I'm tossing around for my TAS replacement.

I'd be much obliged if you could post your suggestions up here as well.

mactavish out.

 

[Carlobrand]

There's always some variation on Asimov's Foundation setting, some time between the collapse of the Empire and the emergence of the Mule, away on the other side of the galaxy from the First Foundation - or delete the First Foundation and the Mule, and assume a collapse without any genius there to predict and prepare for it. Earth's an ancient memory, little more than myth, its location long forgotten. Humans have expanded throughout the galaxy and, presumably, pre-empted or drove into extinction any spacefaring competition tens of millenia ago. The Galactic Empire is centuries dead, stories handed down from generations past of of better times and magical technologies as its one-time member systems fight among themselves and form small alliances and pocket empires, beginning the rise after the collapse.

 

[wellis]

The last post makes reference to the Voyagers' Guild. That's one of the names I'm tossing around for my TAS replacement.

I'd be much obliged if you could post your suggestions up here as well.

mactavish out.

Voyagers' Guild sounds interesting. And it makes me imagine the common parlance here would be "Voyager" instead of "Traveller" which might be a neat little way you can show there is a difference between the OTU 3I setting and yours. How even little things like terminology may be different.


Hmm regarding your setting, would the average TL for electronics be several TLs higher than the TL for everything else?

Makes me imagine most mainframes or PCs or laptop equivalents might use holographic screens and such, or maybe a lot of people have computers and tech like this?:
https://youtu.be/jzLYh3j6xn8


Hmm would the ICC attempt to keep all the colonies and such at the same TL as core worlds?


And what is the general TL of your setting? Is it less advanced compared to the 3I setting of the OTU/MgTU?


Finally, since your setting is more 21st century in computers and such, how do you figure High/Medium/Low Passage might differ in your setting compared to the Cepheus Engine standard?

Does the forced smaller size of ships here make suites smaller in general you'd say?

 

[epicenter00]

On the subject of Earth. I think a concept to consider is that humanity, by and large, was forced to give up Earth. If you tie the idea of some ancient disaster to why humanity left Earth, it will leave deep cultural concepts turning Earth into a kind of romantic Eden or a similar idea of a "lost home."

This disaster doesn't need to have a single cause. For instance, it could have started as climate change caused major human migrations from desertification. These migrations were resisted by the peoples who dwelled in the areas in destinations of the migrating populations. But as climate change taketh, it also giveth - formerly less desirable areas were being opened up for settlement or exploration, and conflicts erupted over these as well. These conflicts bubbled on years, even decades but the perception that things were getting worse and worse on Earth persisted and various populations began to explore the idea of orbital communities to ride out the worst of Earth's conflicts, leading to a large expansion in solar system settlement and infrastructure; while at first ridiculously expensive, over a few decades, Earth was home to a number of orbital communities with spin-gravity each housing tens or hundreds of thousands, with more planned as space infrastructure improved. The first FTL drives were invented at this point.

At this point, astronomers detected a large "doomsday" sweeping in towards our solar system - perhaps a neutron star or black hole. This body was calculated by astronomers as not impacting the Earth outright -- at least not immediately. However, it would be captured by Sol and would settle into a temporary or permanent orbit in the inner solar system. It had to be something that could not be conceivably deflected or resisted by human technology. It would also have such far-reaching consequences - planets thrown out of orbit and something unlikely to be weathered by living anywhere in the solar system, certainly not around Earth. At the same time, the early tiny FTL ships had discovered worlds with atmospheres and reasonable gravity (though none of them could be called habitable).

The scare at the time was sufficient to get millions to get up and strike out for the stars to settle, as well the general malaise regarding conditions on Earth made people more willing to give up Earth and strike out for the stars. How bad the actual intruder was to the Sol system is up to you - perhaps Earth was destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Or maybe things aren't too bad ... yet. I personally favor the idea that nobody knows or didn't know until relatively recently: Perhaps the FTL ships of the time were not up to the task of carrying colonists to planets to colonize them, so STL cold sleep ships were used to haul colonists the distances necessary taking thousands or tens of thousands of years to arrive at their destination, even at some low-ish percentage of C. This would leave a strong impression of humanity's lost home in humanity's minds but FTL just doesn't have the reliability or range to reach Earth from these colony worlds (or perhaps it didn't until pretty recently). It would also mean the colony worlds were likely isolated from each other for a very long time, until the FTL drives were developed which has gradually allowed the human colonies to recontact each other.

 

[mactavish]

Yeah, Technology Levels...

I despise the way Tech Levels work in Traveller. I always have.

There's no reason for more than about a dozen Technology Levels, so I am using GURPS 4e Technology Levels (slightly modified) instead.

My opinion is that 12 Tech Levels (well, 13 if you count TL0) - combined with modifiers like Emergent, Mature and Late - make identifying how advanced or antiquated a civilization is in overall technological development compared to the galaxy at large (i.e. the PCs' default TL).

I like when a world or a race is at the same Technology Level as another, but one is, say, Emergent TL8 and the other is Mature TL8. It's scenarios like this where you end up with Operation: Desert Storm with Mature TL7 Iraq completely trounced by the Late TL7 military machine. Lots of the same technologies on both sides - tanks, jets, radar, etc. - but the latter is ~20-30 years ahead of the other.

GURPS has shown Technology Levels like TL7.2 or TL9.6, but I figure if you're going to have that kind of gradient, you might as well have 20-30 separate Technology Levels.

Finally (and this is also from GURPS Space 1e, I think), I really like having fairly average worlds that are one or more Tech Levels ahead in one area: Computers, Medicine, Energy Production, and so on. Like in the Star Trek Enterprise novels, where Coridan is advanced in warp propulsion and average or slightly behind in everything else. That's why you always go to the Bynars for your computers, the Romulans for your cloaking technologies, and the Borg for... well, everything else, I suppose.

Sorry to cross genres like that, but I'm using this Tech Level chart because a.) I want to, and b.) my players are all familiar with GURPS already, so it's easier for me to say "They're sporting TL8 assault rifles," and have them know precisely what I mean.

So I ended up with this:

TL0 - Stone Age
TL1 - Bronze Age
TL2 - Iron Age
TL3 - Age of Sail
TL4 - Renaissance
TL5 - Industrial Revolution
TL6 - Atomic Age
TL7 - Space Age
TL8 - Information Age
TL9 - Interplanetary Age
TL10 - Interstellar Age
TL11 - Galactic Age
TL12 - Pangalactic Age

Most of these are pretty clear through TL8, or the Information Age. I would conclude that 21st century Earth (c.2018) is at the tail end of an Emergent TL8 world, possibly with slightly more advanced computer technologies.

While TL7 is the Space Age, that really just amounts to breaking through Earth's gravity and reaching orbit, or, at Mature TL7, reaching the moon, orbiting a satellite, and so on.

Mature TL8 is when a planet first sends manned missions to other planets in the same system, typically whichever is/are closest. Late TL8 would be The Martian, with extended manned exploratory missions of said planets. This is also where I place experimental induced human hibernation (i.e. cold sleep/low berth precursors).

Experimental FTL comes in at some point near the end of TL8 and mature TL9.

TL9 is when a polity establishes permanent colonies and outpost throughout their own star system, sends fast STL probes to neighboring star systems, and (at the mature stage) exploits extraplanetary resources (i.e. asteroid/comet mining, terraforming the most suitable planetary candidates in the system, etc.). It generally ends with safe FTL travel, though comparably slow to what comes next. And no artificial gravity or gravity propulsion (except maybe at the very end of TL9).

My setting is at the end of an emergent TL9 "local" interstellar expansion. Most worlds colonized by terrestrial humans are less than 20 years old. Terraforming is a long and arduous process that takes centuries. Computers and robots are capable of "weak AI" and digital personas capable of passing the Turning test, but there are no self-aware machines at this point (or at least not intentionally).

TL10 is when the interstellar neighborhood really opens up. This is when you find thriving extra-solar colonial worlds, advanced space habitats, advanced nanotechnology, and other cool stuff that we can conceive of quite well, but have no clue how to really make it happen. This is also when "strong AI" becomes practical and gravity has been reconciled with the other fundamental forces of the universe.

TL11 is when a significant portion of the home galaxy has been explored and colonized, and when resource exploitation peaks. Solar power is nearly 100% efficient, computers/robots are not only potentially self-aware (which is intentional by the designer), but smarter than the smartest person who ever lived. Exploration of a star's chromosphere in a small ship becomes not only feasible, but practically commonplace.

TL12 is "the age of miracles." This means pretty much anything one can imagine, including black hole farming for limitless energy, stellar ignition as an everyday event, and people commute from one galaxy to another for work and still make it home in time for dinner. Teleportation, pocket universes, understanding of what 42 is the answer to... these are all TL12 accomplishments. Those and everything else.

mactavish out.

 

[mactavish]

Having just posted my last response, it is important to note that a lot of that doesn't actually apply to my Traveller universe in this case.

As a Conservative Hard Science Fiction setting with Jump-1 and 2 starships as the only honest to goodness breaker of physical laws, no technologies introduced after TL9 will EVER become available (save by Referee fiat).

While existing technologies will continue to improve, there will never be handheld energy weapons or non-spin-based artificial gravity. There will never be starships faster than Jump-2 (or maybe, much later in the game, Jump-3... but NO PROMISES).

mactavish out.

 

[Straybow]

TLDR due to wall-of-text, but interested... later posts have good white space, maybe edit early posts for readability?

 

[kilemall]

So I ended up with this:

TL0 - Stone Age
TL1 - Bronze Age
TL2 - Iron Age
TL3 - Age of Sail
TL4 - Renaissance
TL5 - Industrial Revolution
TL6 - Atomic Age
TL7 - Space Age
TL8 - Information Age
TL9 - Interplanetary Age
TL10 - Interstellar Age
TL11 - Galactic Age
TL12 - Pangalactic Age

Most of these are pretty clear through TL8, or the Information Age. I would conclude that 21st century Earth (c.2018) is at the tail end of an Emergent TL8 world, possibly with slightly more advanced computer technologies.

While TL7 is the Space Age, that really just amounts to breaking through Earth's gravity and reaching orbit, or, at Mature TL7, reaching the moon, orbiting a satellite, and so on.

Mature TL8 is when a planet first sends manned missions to other planets in the same system, typically whichever is/are closest. Late TL8 would be The Martian, with extended manned exploratory missions of said planets. This is also where I place experimental induced human hibernation (i.e. cold sleep/low berth precursors).

Experimental FTL comes in at some point near the end of TL8 and mature TL9.

TL9 is when a polity establishes permanent colonies and outpost throughout their own star system, sends fast STL probes to neighboring star systems, and (at the mature stage) exploits extraplanetary resources (i.e. asteroid/comet mining, terraforming the most suitable planetary candidates in the system, etc.). It generally ends with safe FTL travel, though comparably slow to what comes next. And no artificial gravity or gravity propulsion (except maybe at the very end of TL9).

My setting is at the end of an emergent TL9 "local" interstellar expansion. Most worlds colonized by terrestrial humans are less than 20 years old. Terraforming is a long and arduous process that takes centuries. Computers and robots are capable of "weak AI" and digital personas capable of passing the Turning test, but there are no self-aware machines at this point (or at least not intentionally).

TL10 is when the interstellar neighborhood really opens up. This is when you find thriving extra-solar colonial worlds, advanced space habitats, advanced nanotechnology, and other cool stuff that we can conceive of quite well, but have no clue how to really make it happen. This is also when "strong AI" becomes practical and gravity has been reconciled with the other fundamental forces of the universe.

TL11 is when a significant portion of the home galaxy has been explored and colonized, and when resource exploitation peaks. Solar power is nearly 100% efficient, computers/robots are not only potentially self-aware (which is intentional by the designer), but smarter than the smartest person who ever lived. Exploration of a star's chromosphere in a small ship becomes not only feasible, but practically commonplace.

TL12 is "the age of miracles." This means pretty much anything one can imagine, including black hole farming for limitless energy, stellar ignition as an everyday event, and people commute from one galaxy to another for work and still make it home in time for dinner. Teleportation, pocket universes, understanding of what 42 is the answer to... these are all TL12 accomplishments. Those and everything else.

mactavish out.

Spacemaster has a similar setup to yours, they go up to TL30, if you just divide them in half you get say TL10, TL10.5 etc. and it's a lot more consistent then Traveller's TL.

In general I agree with your thesis, only keep in mind those TLs were designed for gaming and not consistent tech definition.

One other thought- in a one starfaring species, we can probably expect at least one or more of the Seeder colonies to have done some local uplifts. That may not suit your interests, but some other people looking to get some aliens in their version could use that assumption.