How much can you change traveller and still have traveller?

[The Thing]

In Gurps traveller, Loren Wiseman wrote an excellent sidebar about why nanotech isn't used that much in canon traveller. He talked about how nanotec could possibly be used to create virtually anything from basic elements, and how such a setting might be a good game universe but it wouldn't be traveller, because traveller revolved arounf interstellar commerce and the setting depended on that.

He was right generally speaking. Unfettered nanotech would change traveller totally, as who needs trade when you can make steak and potatoes out of dirt and manure with a good, high end nanotech processing system? (Of course nanotech can't produce basic elements, just manipulate atoms and molecules, it can't change atoms so you'd need the basic atoms, meaning there might be some trade in the form of basic elements. But nothing compared to the trade in the mainstream traveller universe.)

(BTW, I do think there is some basic nanotech in traveller at some levels. There's a vehicle in T4 called the Mobile fabrication facility, or MFF for short if you can avoid snickering at what else those letters might stand for. It can supposedly make almost anything in the imperial military catalogue from a vehicle axle to a microchip to a spring for a gun trigger. Something like that seems to need some for of nanotech, even if it's limited and can only do certain functions in a eutectic environment.)

But this made me think on something: How much can you change traveller and still have traveller?

Sounds like a great conversation to me, so....


I think the backbone of traveller is in the jump rules. (Hey, it's called "trave;;er", so the rules for travelling would seem to be important. )

Given the limits on jump and communication, the traveller universe maintains a certain flavor, where worlds are, at least in strategic terms, part of some polity like the 3I, but in day to day, tactical terms, are on their own.

When communication between systems takes weeks, months or even years, each system is fairly free to develop it's own society with only nominal influence from the outside, and that's a major part of the traveller setting.

So monkeying with the rules for interstellar travel or communication is a heap big no-no if you want to keep the core essence of traveller intact.

Nanotech has been discussed, so AI's next. AI might take too much away from the game in terms of what characters do. I mean, if your ship can fly itself and you have AI drones to maintain it all, what do the players do on the ship besides polish...various things?

AI could really make humans mostly unnecessary and obsolete, and I don't think "uncle cleon" wants his subjects unemployed and feeling like there's no point to anything. Also, really, AI would likely be the most dangerous thing humanity, or anyone else, could ever possibly develop. I mean, the danger a hostile AI could pose would dwarf the danger nuclear arsenals pose, because a nuclear arsenal is at least predictable, whereas a true AI might not be. (Skynet or HAL, anyone?)

But the main thing is that AI would leave the players with less to do, so it needs to stay out of traveller if you want to keep it traveller.

Now there are a lot of things that could be brought into traveller without completely changing the whole thing into a different universe. Genetic engineering, within limits, could be used in a traveller universe so long as it's not being used to create 'ubermenschen" that unbalance the game. Ditto for cybernetics.

I think as long as you keep the travel and communication rules intact, don't disrupt interstellar trade and keep the setting one where people count as much or more than gadgets you'll have a recognizable version of the traveller universe to play in.

I'm hoping this thread can become a guideline to anyone wanting to create a unique traveller universe while still keeping it a traveller universe.

 

[hunter]

Traveller is different things to different people. To me Traveller is the flavor and feel of the rules and general play. The OTU is a whole different beast from Traveller itself IMO.

That said, cybernetics, genetic engineering and similar already exist in the OTU, as well as AI. Nanotech doesn't exist in the OTU as we know it and agreed it would be a bad fit (hell it would be bad in many settings)

 

[The Thing]

Traveller is different things to different people. To me Traveller is the flavor and feel of the rules and general play. The OTU is a whole different beast from Traveller itself IMO.

That said, cybernetics, genetic engineering and similar already exist in the OTU, as well as AI. Nanotech doesn't exist in the OTU as we know it and agreed it would be a bad fit (hell it would be bad in many settings)

I knew there were low level cybernetics and some GE in traveller, I was talking about adding it to the level of something like transhuman space.

I think there must be at least some nano level technology in traveller if T4 is canon, otherwise I do not see how that MFF could work as described...


I don't think limited, "works only in a sealed box and can't autoreplicate/evolve/escape it's environment" nanotech would hurt traveller much, in fact it would explain how survival recyclers and other waste recycling systems work.

Just keep it limited in function, perhaps out of tech limits, perhaps out of fear of a ;grey goop" scenario.

 

[Spinward Scout]

So monkeying with the rules for interstellar travel or communication is a heap big no-no if you want to keep the core essence of traveller intact.

I think as long as you keep the travel and communication rules intact, don't disrupt interstellar trade and keep the setting one where people count as much or more than gadgets you'll have a recognizable version of the traveller universe to play in.

Funny you should say that. I actually think the only thing that SHOULD be changed is Travel and Communications. I like the Known Space paradigm. I just wanted to be able to get to places faster. One week in JumpSpace always seemed a little too much.

A while back I posted this JumpComm that could travel up to 36 parsecs before needing repeating and travelled 60 times faster than a ship going through JumpSpace. Basically giving you the ability to contact the edges of Known Space in about a day. Put a repeater at each X-Boat stop and you have the same communications network. Just faster.

One of the things I've been thinking about was making it so a ship could envelop itself with the same 'energy' used for the JumpComm and go the same speed. It would still keep Travel and Communications at pretty much the same relative speed to each other, but 60 times faster. Long journeys would delay the ship, of course, due to refueling, but on a short hop, Comm speed stays the same as Travel speed.

It would pretty much eliminate the need for Cold Berths, tho.

Spinward Scout

 

[Fritz_Brown]

And, as Hunter says, Traveller is different things to different people. 'Cause I'm going to disagree with SS - his change would make it non-Traveller to me. But, of course, YMMV. Have fun with it - it's a game. (For Bill Cameron! )

 

[Rover]

I will have to agree with Hunter on this one. For me there are a few key things that are required like the jump and communications rules. Travell and communucation should take time. that is key to a decentralized imperial goverment with power concentrated in ther local nobility and merchant princes.

For me another key feature is the class system. It woiuld not be the same without Scouts and merchants, rouges and Mecenaries.

Tech should be as presented in the book, nanotech and excessive cybernetics would spoil the flavor.

Although many will disagree with me, I never felt that aliens were that integral to the dame/setting. Just a personal thing. IMTU there are only humans on the 11,000 worlds. Aliens are hinted at, but never seen.

R

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

Traveller is different things to different people. To me Traveller is the flavor and feel of the rules and general play. The OTU is a whole different beast from Traveller itself IMO.

I'm another who agrees with Hunter on this. To be honest, many of my Traveller games have not taken place in the OTU, but in Alternate Traveller Universes which only vaguely resemble the OTU from the shared rules set.

Things that get invented or discovered since Traveller originally came out either do or don't get integrated into my games depending on various reasons.

Take nanotech, for instance. I allow it to exist IMTU, but as a manufacturing process that must be carefully monitored to perform correctly. This prevents the "replicator crisis" from taking over the game. It also provides interesting locales, like a Red Zone world where a "grey goo scenario" ran amuck. Personally, I also believe that there are some insurmountable engineering problems with build-anything 'magic' nanotech (waste heat, for one).

Wormholes are another. IMTU, alternate or official, a jump drive is a device that creates a self-collapsing wormhole that allows you go to from point A to point B. However, at sufficiently high tech levels, wormholes can be created which allow time travel to occur - which can cause major causality violations (see Allen Steele's novel Chronospace for some good examples). This is also one of the real reasons why Grandfather killed off his progeny in the Ancient's War, one of them began experimenting with time travel (which is about the only thing I could think of that would scare Grandfather into the Ancient's War - one of his children playing around with causality violations).

 

[The Thing]

I'm another who agrees with Hunter on this. To be honest, many of my Traveller games have not taken place in the OTU, but in Alternate Traveller Universes which only vaguely resemble the OTU from the shared rules set.

Things that get invented or discovered since Traveller originally came out either do or don't get integrated into my games depending on various reasons.

Take nanotech, for instance. I allow it to exist IMTU, but as a manufacturing process that must be carefully monitored to perform correctly. This prevents the "replicator crisis" from taking over the game. It also provides interesting locales, like a Red Zone world where a "grey goo scenario" ran amuck. Personally, I also believe that there are some insermountable engineering problems with build-anything 'magic' nanotech (waste heat, for one).

Wormholes are another. IMTU, alternate or official, a jump drive is a device that creates a self-collapsing wormhole that allows you go to from point A to point B. However, at sufficiently high tech levels, wormholes can be created which allow time travel to occur - which can cause major causality violations (see Allen Steele's novel Chronospace for some good examples). This is also one of the real reasons why Grandfather killed off his progeny in the Ancient's War, one of them began experimenting with time travel (which is about the only thing I could think of that would scare Grandfather into the Ancient's War - one of his children playing around with causality violations).

That's one explanation for grandfather's act of mass murder. I always saw it more, from the material I've read, that he was simply arrogant and when some of his progeny began doing their own thing instead of existing to serve him he more or less copped a divine attitude and said "Those who will not serve me shall die by my hand!!!"

But your explanation works too, some of them were playing around with things he knew shouldn't be tampered with...

 

[Icosahedron]

I have nanotech IMNCTU at TL13+, but the manufacturing processes require huge energy and cash inputs (no mobile MFFs and nothing a PC can get hold of). Hence it is only manifested in the availability of some mass-produced (to be cost-effective) exotic materials such as Spider Wire. I like JMH's idea of constant monitoring - as long as this can't be achieved with AI and robots.
I use AI as a rumour - maybe some of the most complex computers at the heart of a few secret Imperial research facilities have 'evolved', or maybe they haven't. Robots are available, but humanoid ones are rare as people are naturally distrustful of them - as they are of psionic powers.
Genetic Engineering and cyborgs are similarly frowned upon, but are available at high TL for those with the money and a disregard for the opinions of society. Of course, those are the very people who can make interesting arch-villains...
I think MTU is still traveller.

(And I really don't care if anyone disagrees - now all I need is loadsa money and a cyborg army. Bwah-hah-hah-har!)

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Aliens are hinted at, but never seen.

Hmmmm. Must be Hivers, then...

 

[Droyne668]

Depends on the players...

I've lucked out - my on/off CT campaign only has one player who is interested in roleplaying, no rollplaying. I've done the following and not noticed it changing things much:

1. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology (more of a bio-nanotech) - starting at TL 12, a player could opt for a "rebuild" and have stats lifted to at least half of the TL from which the treatment is obtained. From 12 or so up, people don't get sick, don't scar, and generally live a heckuva long time. If someone wants to spend a bazillion credits, they can basically get whatever stats they want if they can get treatments at a sufficiently high tech level.

2. Nanotech can only work in controlled environments (handwave) because of Brownian Motion, the Uncertainty Principal and Arvaangulesh's Theorem. People that have it accept it as a given, kind of like nuclear power - it can do cool things for you, but its done in a big ominous building with lots of guards and safety protocols.

3. I left Jumpspace and travel time alone. I like it the way it is.

4. Medical technology quickly gets to the point at the higher TLs where you can basically survive anything IF you get treated in time. On backwater or low TL worlds, though, you're still out of luck. Sure, they can probably grow you a new leg in Glisten System, but you have to survive the fight and get there first.

5. Distribution of TL and Wealth - the Nobles IMTU own everything. The way they maintain their position is controlling wealth and technology and distributing/allowing it for their vassals depending on whim, favor, service, potential threat, etc. So, a bunch of scruffy Free Traders are less likely to be tolerated with a Regina-Biobuild Enhancement than would be a Noble Lady of Mira.

6. So there's this huge black market in stolen high TL goodies. People will pay a lot to live 500 years or more. People who want to stay in control will do a lot to make sure they don't have competition. Big risk in "tech running" to lower TL worlds, but a big payoff if it works.

7. But even if you get some TL 15 goodies to a TL 8 world, they don't always work (hand wave) forever. There's no infrastructure to maintain them. Some are designed to routinely self-destruct and stop operating if they're moved or if the light is the wrong wavelength. Most are just incomprehensible and no one knows how to recharge/reload.

8. No limits on how high a stat can get. Its fun to see someone role up an Aslan Munchkin Warrior only to end up with a Soc (or whatever the equivalent stat is) of 24 and therefore own most of a planet somewhere back home. Abdication isn't always healthy when the rest of the clan thinks you're either 1) dishonorable or 2) may come back and disrupt their plans to take over and redistribute the wealth. And a Hiver psychologist with Manipulation 18 is just a hoot to watch.

etc etc.

This works, as the single remaining player has a character (TL 15 Noble) whose sole interests seem to be Chirper Rights and thumbing their nose at the establishment by associating with various undesirables (Anubis Combine Long Traders, Droyne, Zhodani, Daryens, etc.).

YMMV.

Best,
Will

 

[Golan2072]

I think that the three bare-minimum essentials for Traveller would be:

1) Communications limited to the speed of travel (or mostly so), and travel being relatively slow. This allows for two pivotal components of Traveller: first, a wide diversity of cultures and societies (instant interstellar mass-media tends to promote much more uniformity), and second, more importantly - the reliance on dependable individuals (i.e. the PCs) on-site rather than on quick re-enforcements.

2) A human universe; aliens, biotech, robots, AIs, cyberware or even nano won't break Traveller per se, but if they - and not human beings - become the center of the setting, it is not Traveller anymore.

3) A serious, semi-realistic attitude with a hard-scifi feeling (but not always "pure" hard-scifi assumptions). Traveller isn't "Sci-Fantasy".

 

[BlackBat242]

Ah, but many of my favorite Science Fiction stories involve "alien-centric" settings or events, with the poor isolated human/human group trying to understand/survive in this alien world.

CJ Cherryh's "Faded Sun" trilogy & Chanur series for starters, but there are many others.

Of course, there are multitudes of the reverse... poor isolated alien/alien group trying to understand/survive in this human world.


And then one of the best I have ever read... Alan Dean Foster's "Nor Crystal Tears"... both situations in the same book!


That book inspired me for MACTU*... located about equi-distant from Terran (Solomani) & Hiver space is the 9-system "pocket empire" of the Thranx... Spica sector, subsector C, worlds 2105, 2205, 2207, 2306 (Hivehome), 2307, 2404, 2405, 2406, 2407 (using "The Atlas of the Imperium" star-map).



My Alternate CTU: the Terrans and Vilani (1st) Imperium had their early wars, but the Imperium didn't completely collapse.

The Imperium and the Terran Confederation have formed a "Neutral Zone" in the following sectors: Zarashugar O,P; Massila M,N,O,P; Delphi M.

 

[The Thing]

I think that the three bare-minimum essentials for Traveller would be:

1) Communications limited to the speed of travel (or mostly so), and travel being relatively slow. This allows for two pivotal components of Traveller: first, a wide diversity of cultures and societies (instant interstellar mass-media tends to promote much more uniformity), and second, more importantly - the reliance on dependable individuals (i.e. the PCs) on-site rather than on quick re-enforcements.

2) A human universe; aliens, biotech, robots, AIs, cyberware or even nano won't break Traveller per se, but if they - and not human beings - become the center of the setting, it is not Traveller anymore.

3) A serious, semi-realistic attitude with a hard-scifi feeling (but not always "pure" hard-scifi assumptions). Traveller isn't "Sci-Fantasy".

Have to disagree about the humanocentric bit, aliens are a big part of the traveller universe.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Golan wasn't saying no aliens, just where the focus is. If aliens are everywhere, and humanity is a bit player, it becomes less Traveller. (Don't necessarily agree, but I don't disagree, either.)

 

[Golan2072]

Sorry for being unclear; my point should have been about persons rather than biological humans, and about bizarre aliens rather than just aliens. My point is that in Traveller, the person comes first, and his cyber/psi/biotech/strange alien abilities come second. Sure, you could have a pure Aslan or even a pure Hiver game, with all the differences these aliens have from humans, but humans remain the frame of reference, and, more importantly, aliens are persons first and not just collections of better-than-human abilities.

In other words, non-humans fit Traveller well; superhumans don't.

And you could have Traveller without any aliens whatsoever.

 

[Icosahedron]

Have to disagree with your disagreement, Thing. Traveller started out as the 3LBB boxed set - which is the point at which MTU diverged from the OTU. The OTU alien races appeared later (and not IMTU). Are you saying the original boxed set and TUs constructed from it are not Traveller?

 

[aramis]

Have to disagree with your disagreement, Thing. Traveller started out as the 3LBB boxed set - which is the point at which MTU diverged from the OTU. The OTU alien races appeared later (and not IMTU). Are you saying the original boxed set and TUs constructed from it are not Traveller?

For me, The OTU existed by the time I got into Traveller (1983, fall). It was implicit in the TTB that there was an imperium, it was monolithic, and there were aliens. (I started with Deluxe Traveller {Bks 0-3 + Adv 0, effectively including the worlds from Supp 3, but only a bit of the Lib Data} AND the Traveller Book {esentially Bks 0-3 + Shadows, the Regina SS, and ...). Mention was made of the other races in Bk 0.

M1stTU was essentially Proto-traveller, but still has aliens (since I had rules for Zhodani in the DT box), has a defined system of Nobility (CGen, Bk 1), has possibly extinct aliens without CGen (Shadows, TTB), has imperial governance by Dukes (TTB & Bk 0), a strong TL15 navy presence (in 3-5 KTd Battleships), and a tiny minority of the populace ever leaving their birthworlds. Marines were mean, Scouts were party animals or loners, and 200 man crews were huge. The Imperium was evil, and there were loads of aliens, but only one playable alien race: The Zhodani.

Then I got Best of JTAS, and got TWO alien races playable: Aslan and Vargr.
And two more in another BoJTAS.
And the Droyne in Adv 3.

So for me, Traveller always has had aliens.

It also has always had speculation trade flows, week-long jumps, huge jump fuel requirements, popsicle passage, and the truly uniquely Traveller weapon: Sandcasters.

I don't like the OTU as much as ProtoTrav...
But I've run both. Until they leave the marches, it's not much of a difference in data, just in perceptions of the imperium.

I really don't consider something Traveller unless Bk 0 is included... it's proto-traveller.

 

[hunter]

Have to disagree about the humanocentric bit, aliens are a big part of the traveller universe.

Not particularly. Previously the most you really saw of aliens in the OTU were Vargr with a smidgen of other races, usually local ones and those few and far between. It's a very human dominated setting. Aliens exist, but mostly remain on the periphery of events in the OTU.

Frankly I think Gateway gives more attention to the alien side of the OTU than anything previously. It's hard to get away from the things, between the Hivers, the K'kree (and the Lords of Thunder) and the other alien races across 4 sectors, only one of which is actually in the Imperium (well Glimmerdrift is somewhat, but very little of it).

 

[Gallowglacht]

I think that the three bare-minimum essentials for Traveller would be:

1) Communications limited to the speed of travel (or mostly so), and travel being relatively slow. This allows for two pivotal components of Traveller: first, a wide diversity of cultures and societies (instant interstellar mass-media tends to promote much more uniformity), and second, more importantly - the reliance on dependable individuals (i.e. the PCs) on-site rather than on quick re-enforcements.

2) A human universe; aliens, biotech, robots, AIs, cyberware or even nano won't break Traveller per se, but if they - and not human beings - become the center of the setting, it is not Traveller anymore.

3) A serious, semi-realistic attitude with a hard-scifi feeling (but not always "pure" hard-scifi assumptions). Traveller isn't "Sci-Fantasy".

Spot on Golan. Exactly how I'd define Traveller too. (not to say anyone elses vision is wrong but mine matches Golans.)