Well, if you have the time and creativity to detail hundreds of worlds, more power to you. Personally, I found it a struggle to detail even a subsector's worth of worlds...
Oh, absolutely. That's why I would never advocate trying.
I mean, I did, as a teenager, after I bought Supplement 3. Because that's how I thought you were
supposed to do it. That's why going back and looking at the text of Books 1-3 in both the '77 and '81 editions had been so valuable for me. I've been able to dig out what the game was designed to do before the game became about selling more game setting material. (Or, at least, what I see the game was designed to do.)
And in the '77 edition of
Book 3: Worlds and Adventures and in
Book 0: An Introduction to Traveller, it is stated clearly the Referee should create one, at most two, subsectors. As you state, even a subsector full of worlds is still a challenge. But it is manageable.[/QUOTE]
Actually, unless an adventure requires being set elsewhere, I try to find some place in Regina Subsector, or at least the Duchy of Regina, to put it.
My mistake. I was going off your mention of a cross-Impeium tour in a previous post.
In nearly half the cases where travel to another system is important, a J1 ship will lose out in any race with a J2 ship.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. I mean, it's a fact, and it's true. But what are getting at? Are you telling me that a J2 is more efficient in covering space than a J1 ship? Because full disclosure: I know that.
Since I'm not sure what the point is, I hesitate to reply. But I'm an idiot, so I will anyway:
Yes, J1 is less efficient for travel than J2. That is by design, and in the design because the game is created for an RPG experience. The acquisition of goods and new technology on the part of the Player Characters is part of the reward system in
Traveller.
A campaign might start with the PCs locked in a cluster of worlds in a J1 ship. But then they acquire new wealth/technology/patrons and they then get to go to J2 routes. This is comparable to having early RPG players start in a Level 1 dungeon, and then find the means to get to level 2, and so on. Several early
Traveller adventures were built with the explicit reward of advancing Jump capability for the players. This may or may not be your thing... but it was definitely built on purpose.
As for the in-fiction fact that some ships are better than other ships... Well, yes. But that doesn't mean the PCs (in my view at least) should always be working at the most efficient technology available. The fact that in Basic
Traveller the core, consistent conceit of the game is that communication is limited to travel, and travel is limited to what Jump technology allows. There are limits, and limits suck. The limits have implications -- about travel, communication, how governments across star systems can work, and more. And these limits, in my view, is a feature, not a bug.
I like these limits. They cause friction for the PCs. Yes, they would
like to get to wherever they have to go faster. But time, distance, and technology cause trouble on this front. The Referee can either say, "No problem, you arrive." Or he can say, "The bad guys have caught up to you in a system half way to your destination system." This is all available and good.
Here's a thing I've been trying to articulate for a while, but I can't quite find the phrasing. I'm not saying you are doing this Hans, but a lot of this thread touches on it:
In talking about
Traveller settings, theres seems to be (I might be wrong) an underlying assumption that if there is a more efficient way for things to work in a
Traveller setting, that way should be used and should be the default setting detail.
Thus we have threads that don't say, "J1 Ships are less efficient than J2 ships," but "J1 Ships are Useless." Which I can't fathom at all. If a J1 ship is what the PCs have, it's very useful... and what they do with it is what play is about.
But it is not this thread alone. How the government is structured in Third Imperium so that the vast distances don't matter that much through the Xboat system, the desire to get rid of the dangerous Low Passage. All of it is part and parcel of a desire to take the friction of how complicated an interstellar civilization would be and smooth out the edges.
Now, look, everyone should be drinking whatever kind of cocktail they want. I'm not saying anyone is wrong for desiring Efficiency for Everything in Space. I'm simply saying I don't get it and it's not my point of view for fun play. Especially since I so often see crazy inefficiencies in the world around me. And especially since inefficiencies are where political stress, crisis, and fortunes can so often produce adventure situations.
But, again, I'm not saying that's the way to play or create a setting. I'm saying I approach this material from a different perspective than some. And laying out that foundation so anyone can see what that perspective is.
