In the original '77 LBB's there were a few bits that hinted at some aspects of the OTU and its dominant cultural aspects. You could extrapolate on those and come up with something sketchy, but there.
The concept of a feudal organization for subsectors and nobility as part of chargen. And nobility actually means something since it provided DM's for success rolls in chargen. The nobility has strong ties to the military, as well, since the Social Standing DM's are there in chargen. This implied an old aristocratic empire of some type.
The Traveller's Aid Society implied a large cohesive galactic civilization where star travel was common enough a future form of AAA was spawned. So this feudal empire had been around a long time and was pretty civilized. The organization and classifications of starports further support this since they imply some sort of standardized interstellar infrastructure that would need a long established stable government (empire) to create and maintain.
The Psionic Institute and the rules regarding bias and worse against psioincs in society implied some sort of psionic enemy must exist, or existed at one time. Otherwise, why would the Institute be secret and individuals hounded across the star systems? Later this was confirmed by the Zhodani, but the indicators were there and confused me and a lot of people at the time since you would think psionics would be standard fare for a scifi setting.
So I gleaned form those bits and a few others that Traveller would involve a space opera-ish galaxy-spanning empire on one side, with an enemy who could melt your brain with his mind on the other. The empire would be old and established enough that it had a long-established infrastructure supporting interstellar travel and trade, people traveled a lot so they had specialized organizations to help support that, and a universal monetary system supported trade across the parsecs.
The empire had a navy and Marine Force that had strong traditional ties to the ruling aristocracy and probably traditions of noblesse oblige similar to old Earth empires like the British had. And I would bet they had their share then of civil wars and other political machinations for control of the crown and territory, especially given distances and how established the nobility was in the Navy.
That was the image I got when I first read the rules, along with the things mentioned already on this thread. The psioincs was a biggie for me - it really said to me that there was some sort of house universe that we weren't told about. I was familiar with Tekumel and EPT so I just assumed Traveller's rules came form a similar source: someone's personal universe, like Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Tekumel, and Glorantha, and these were the rules used that someone decided to publish.
But I still had to make my own universe up since there wasn't an actual example to follow, unlike those other examples I mentioned.
The concept of a feudal organization for subsectors and nobility as part of chargen. And nobility actually means something since it provided DM's for success rolls in chargen. The nobility has strong ties to the military, as well, since the Social Standing DM's are there in chargen. This implied an old aristocratic empire of some type.
The Traveller's Aid Society implied a large cohesive galactic civilization where star travel was common enough a future form of AAA was spawned. So this feudal empire had been around a long time and was pretty civilized. The organization and classifications of starports further support this since they imply some sort of standardized interstellar infrastructure that would need a long established stable government (empire) to create and maintain.
The Psionic Institute and the rules regarding bias and worse against psioincs in society implied some sort of psionic enemy must exist, or existed at one time. Otherwise, why would the Institute be secret and individuals hounded across the star systems? Later this was confirmed by the Zhodani, but the indicators were there and confused me and a lot of people at the time since you would think psionics would be standard fare for a scifi setting.
So I gleaned form those bits and a few others that Traveller would involve a space opera-ish galaxy-spanning empire on one side, with an enemy who could melt your brain with his mind on the other. The empire would be old and established enough that it had a long-established infrastructure supporting interstellar travel and trade, people traveled a lot so they had specialized organizations to help support that, and a universal monetary system supported trade across the parsecs.
The empire had a navy and Marine Force that had strong traditional ties to the ruling aristocracy and probably traditions of noblesse oblige similar to old Earth empires like the British had. And I would bet they had their share then of civil wars and other political machinations for control of the crown and territory, especially given distances and how established the nobility was in the Navy.
That was the image I got when I first read the rules, along with the things mentioned already on this thread. The psioincs was a biggie for me - it really said to me that there was some sort of house universe that we weren't told about. I was familiar with Tekumel and EPT so I just assumed Traveller's rules came form a similar source: someone's personal universe, like Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Tekumel, and Glorantha, and these were the rules used that someone decided to publish.
But I still had to make my own universe up since there wasn't an actual example to follow, unlike those other examples I mentioned.
