General MegaCorps in Traveller

[whulorigan]

With all this said, I was curious where I can find the list of canon sources. Specifically, does it include the latest JTAS issues?
In particular, back to my interest in Shushaka in Corridor, 1109. The Traveller Wiki was updated with information that depended on volume 11 of JTAS (new issue not old). So, is the JTAS information, published by Mongoose, now canon?

Historically, Canon under CT specifically excluded JTAS unless it was mentioned in another canonical source. Now that MgT owns Traveller, I do not know if their policy is that MgT JTAS is Canon or not.

‘Cause if it is, the Traveller World page for Shushaka is not consistent with the article in JTAS Vol 11. The article states Shushaka is a moon of one of the gas giants while the Traveller World page describes Shushaka as orbiting the primary star in the binary system.

The wiki data for Shushaka is taken from Traveller Map, which is (or has been) the canonical source for Charted Space world data, and was vetted via the T5SS process by Marc Miller et al. There is no indication in the world data there that the world is a satellite.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Historically, Canon under CT specifically excluded JTAS unless it was mentioned in another canonical source. Now that MgT owns Traveller, I do not know if their policy is that MgT JTAS is Canon or not.



The wiki data for Shushaka is taken from Traveller Map, which is (or has been) the canonical source for Charted Space world data, and was vetted via the T5SS process by Marc Miller et al. There is no indication in the world data there that the world is a satellite.

As far as I can tell, the Travellermap system generation is random, based on a RNG seed drawn from the world's hex number. That is, it's random, but each world always uses it's own same random numbers each time. Exising canon UWPs are slotted into the generation process, but other details may not be.

The resulting system description should be (and often has been) manually altered and saved to fit pre-existng canon system descriptions, where available. But this is not always the case,

 

[GypsyComet]

The Traveller Worlds site is entirely procedural, so any authorial attention given to a system or subsector is fairly likely to differ from it, unless that author was factoring in the Traveller Worlds interpretation when they wrote their description.

The baseline data in Traveller Map varies from straight up random data to curated through, in a few cases, quite a few revisions, re-thinks, cringe reductions, campaign-sensitive alterations, etc. Where a given sector sits on this spectrum is based on published history and/or the efforts of fans who may or may not see their work published eventually. As one example, I did a little work on Ziafrplians 30 years ago that eventually became published MCanon in the Mongoose v1 Zhodani book. Another example is much of Trojan Reach Sector, started under GDW (In Leviathan) then added to in a fanzine late CT and into MT. That material became the basis for Pirates of Drinax 10 years ago and the MT version from the 90s.

The canonicity of Mongoose material remains fluid as of right now, and is often case-by-case. I consider Ziafrplians and the Mongoose v1 Zhodani book pretty strongly Canon, with a few oddities perhaps, due to who wrote it (Don McKinney) and who else was looking over their shoulder (Marc Miller) during writing. By comparison, the early Mongoose Vargr book makes a few spurious remarks that makes me more cautious about accepting the book as unremarked Canon.

Use what you like, ignore or replace what you don't. Being accidentally over-written has been an occupational hazard of Traveller Refs since CT Supplement 3, and that's never going to change.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Take this real world article on how Big Potato is colluding to fix prices in the food industry, and how they aren't alone (other Big Food companies are doing the same thing in their niche markets).

Now think about the Information Advantage™ that megacorps would have in an interstellar society like the Third Imperium and go ... huh ...

Competition may be "good for the consumer" ... but history has demonstrated (repeatedly) that competition is bad for (entrenched) incumbent interests.



My point being that this sort of "market skullduggery" contains the type of story hooks that a Referee could hang (or more properly, impale) an adventure for Travellers onto. There's all kinds of angles for how to get PCs caught up in this kind of a market capture scheme, which then has all kinds of knock on effects. The PCs could be merchants themselves, merely transporting the goods ... or they could be investigators who have been tipped off about the price fixing scheme, and they need evidence (as allies of the law). Alternatively, the PCs could be "in" on a price fixing scheme that's being run by a megacorp and "someone who shouldn't know" has found out about it (and the PCs' culpability connected to it), so the "smart play" for the PCs is to "cover their backsides" by mean fair and/or foul. Lots of different opportunities for a Referee to turn a seemingly mundane problem into quite the deep rabbit hole for a campaign to fall down into.

• Bribery
• Corruption
• Conspiracies
• Delicious Snacks Too Addictive To Be True
• Cloak and Dagger
• Security Breaches
• Intrigue
• Double Crosses
• Innocents Caught In The Crossfire

Not all wars need to be fought with guns. Some can be fought with (too clever by half) accounting and boardroom meetings.

Gets even better if there's a discovery that leads to a scandal, but then the scandal isn't deemed "salacious enough" to stay in the headlines and public interest just drifts away from the "too small time to care about" story ... at which point the PCs need to decide in which direction their loyalties lie, with the collusionists or with the anti-corruption crusaders or with Team Apathy. When everyone else is stops caring, do the Travellers take a stand/make a difference ... or do they just drop the thread and move on to something else (letting the "bad guys" win)?

Lots of opportunity for stuff to happen in a "merchant trade war" type of campaign ... some of it might even be anticipated.

 

[Condottiere]

The Onion Futures Act is a United States law banning the trading of futures contracts on onions as well as "motion picture box office receipts".[1]

In 1955, two onion traders, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga, cornered the onion futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The resulting regulatory actions led to the passing of the act on August 28, 1958. As of October 2024, it remains in effect.[1]

The law was amended in 2010 to add motion picture box office futures to the list of banned futures contracts, in response to lobbying efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America.[2]

 

[Enoki]

Take this real world article on how Big Potato is colluding to fix prices in the food industry, and how they aren't alone (other Big Food companies are doing the same thing in their niche markets).

Now think about the Information Advantage™ that megacorps would have in an interstellar society like the Third Imperium and go ... huh ...

Competition may be "good for the consumer" ... but history has demonstrated (repeatedly) that competition is bad for (entrenched) incumbent interests.



My point being that this sort of "market skullduggery" contains the type of story hooks that a Referee could hang (or more properly, impale) an adventure for Travellers onto. There's all kinds of angles for how to get PCs caught up in this kind of a market capture scheme, which then has all kinds of knock on effects. The PCs could be merchants themselves, merely transporting the goods ... or they could be investigators who have been tipped off about the price fixing scheme, and they need evidence (as allies of the law). Alternatively, the PCs could be "in" on a price fixing scheme that's being run by a megacorp and "someone who shouldn't know" has found out about it (and the PCs' culpability connected to it), so the "smart play" for the PCs is to "cover their backsides" by mean fair and/or foul. Lots of different opportunities for a Referee to turn a seemingly mundane problem into quite the deep rabbit hole for a campaign to fall down into.

• Bribery
• Corruption
• Conspiracies
• Delicious Snacks Too Addictive To Be True
• Cloak and Dagger
• Security Breaches
• Intrigue
• Double Crosses
• Innocents Caught In The Crossfire

Not all wars need to be fought with guns. Some can be fought with (too clever by half) accounting and boardroom meetings.

Gets even better if there's a discovery that leads to a scandal, but then the scandal isn't deemed "salacious enough" to stay in the headlines and public interest just drifts away from the "too small time to care about" story ... at which point the PCs need to decide in which direction their loyalties lie, with the collusionists or with the anti-corruption crusaders or with Team Apathy. When everyone else is stops caring, do the Travellers take a stand/make a difference ... or do they just drop the thread and move on to something else (letting the "bad guys" win)?

Lots of opportunity for stuff to happen in a "merchant trade war" type of campaign ... some of it might even be anticipated.

You could add:

Smuggling: A food product or ingredient is banned for some reason somewhere, or the place it's available from is OMG hard to get in and out of, and someone with lots of cash wants a bunch of it.
Illicit manufacturing: Think the equivalent of being a moonshiner. For example, the players find an abandoned station (planet side or in space) where some product was manufactured. It's relatively intact and obviously not used for a long time. One player is allowed to find evidence that what was made there was some incredibly good (and expensive) snack, food, etc., they heard about as a kid but never got to try. They find a small amount in the station if they search carefully, and it looks like it's still good enough to try.
What they aren't told is it is incredibly addictive if eaten. If they don't eat it, they could decide to make more because the equipment there looks like they could do it and during their search they found directions / recipes to do it. If they do eat some, they end up needing to make more. If they make it to sell without becoming addicts...
Worse, if they are discovered by the authorities to be making and selling it, things worse than prison soon ensue...

Assassination: Company hires you to off rival company executive, inventor, scientist, etc. This could be for a variety of reasons from simple rivalry to the person left the company hiring you with all the trade secrets (which you must ensure don't fall into the rival's hands), to they've just invented something so good but so dangerous just knowing about it is horribly bad.

 

[Commander Truestar]

You could add:

Smuggling: A food product or ingredient is banned for some reason somewhere, or the place it's available from is OMG hard to get in and out of, and someone with lots of cash wants a bunch of it.
Illicit manufacturing: Think the equivalent of being a moonshiner. For example, the players find an abandoned station (planet side or in space) where some product was manufactured. It's relatively intact and obviously not used for a long time. One player is allowed to find evidence that what was made there was some incredibly good (and expensive) snack, food, etc., they heard about as a kid but never got to try. They find a small amount in the station if they search carefully, and it looks like it's still good enough to try.
What they aren't told is it is incredibly addictive if eaten. If they don't eat it, they could decide to make more because the equipment there looks like they could do it and during their search they found directions / recipes to do it. If they do eat some, they end up needing to make more. If they make it to sell without becoming addicts...
Worse, if they are discovered by the authorities to be making and selling it, things worse than prison soon ensue...

Assassination: Company hires you to off rival company executive, inventor, scientist, etc. This could be for a variety of reasons from simple rivalry to the person left the company hiring you with all the trade secrets (which you must ensure don't fall into the rival's hands), to they've just invented something so good but so dangerous just knowing about it is horribly bad.

Is this not, at least partly, in place given the drug "Dust Spice"?
At least, the way I read the published material, I handle it as a "Controlled Substance" with laws against unlicensed export from source worlds.
I also handle it, varying with Law levels, as a banned substance in systems where there are larger Aslan populations.

I have an up-coming adventure I'm still writing where:
- the PC's come across an apparently "very large" shipment of spice and believe this is a massive attempt to smuggle the shipment for
illicit profit
- they try to get involved, and are told, by several self-important officers in various offices to ignore it because "everything is fine"
- the "Truth" is that an Aslan clan are quietly buying up a massive shipment planned as a surprise during an upcoming festival
AND, various covert Imperial law enforcement agencies are working to help keep the secret.

I'm expecting my players will assume the authorities telling them to back off will view those as "as seen on TV, clueless paper pushers"
Of course, any questions they ask will be sent up line to an Operation Manager who may misunderstand the danger the PC's represent
And, of course, those in the field warned the PC's might show up might misunderstand the level of force to be used in making their point....

 

[Commander Truestar]

As far as comments regarding Berkshire Hathaway, and other "back office covert ops", I would mention that Imperiallines is documented to have a fleet of Jump 4 ships in general merchant service.

At the same time Imperiallines also secretly has a sub-fleet of Jump 6 ships which look exactly like the J-4 craft unless you get inside. Those are entirely devoted to covert support of Imperial Government operations.

So, the whole "Minority Owner misusing corporate assets or even misusing corporate funds" thing is old hat IMTU

I've also modeled Orders of Chivalry as a sort of 501C3, and some have massive assets.
My PC's are already in the early stages of ensnarement in one of these and have not figured it out yet.

 

[Enoki]

Is this not, at least partly, in place given the drug "Dust Spice"?
At least, the way I read the published material, I handle it as a "Controlled Substance" with laws against unlicensed export from source worlds.
I also handle it, varying with Law levels, as a banned substance in systems where there are larger Aslan populations.

I have an up-coming adventure I'm still writing where:
- the PC's come across an apparently "very large" shipment of spice and believe this is a massive attempt to smuggle the shipment for
illicit profit
- they try to get involved, and are told, by several self-important officers in various offices to ignore it because "everything is fine"
- the "Truth" is that an Aslan clan are quietly buying up a massive shipment planned as a surprise during an upcoming festival
AND, various covert Imperial law enforcement agencies are working to help keep the secret.

I'm expecting my players will assume the authorities telling them to back off will view those as "as seen on TV, clueless paper pushers"
Of course, any questions they ask will be sent up line to an Operation Manager who may misunderstand the danger the PC's represent
And, of course, those in the field warned the PC's might show up might misunderstand the level of force to be used in making their point....

I have one called "Sponge." It's incredibly addictive--one, maybe two uses and you're hooked, forever. It's also incredibly illegal, but the pleasure it gives users is so overwhelming it's very attractive as a recreational drug. Some planets allow controlled imports to keep those addicted functional, while others have a death sentence attached to a conviction for possession.

The nature of it makes it massively expensive, and a single shipment into some world could set you up for life. The problems are, if you are around it, it's possible you might get addicted while delivering it to some world could involve all sorts of risks. Is possibly being arrested and killed worth it? Is dealing with local criminals who might be equally dangerous and double cross you worth it?

 

[Commander Truestar]

I have one called "Sponge." It's incredibly addictive--one, maybe two uses and you're hooked, forever. It's also incredibly illegal, but the pleasure it gives users is so overwhelming it's very attractive as a recreational drug. Some planets allow controlled imports to keep those addicted functional, while others have a death sentence attached to a conviction for possession.

The nature of it makes it massively expensive, and a single shipment into some world could set you up for life. The problems are, if you are around it, it's possible you might get addicted while delivering it to some world could involve all sorts of risks. Is possibly being arrested and killed worth it? Is dealing with local criminals who might be equally dangerous and double cross you worth it?

Heh,
That's akin to another idea I've been waiting to spring on my PC's
Perhaps during the op I mentioned above...
....Perhaps, in one event, a packet of dust is dropped and everyone is exposed....
...Suddenly, they are euphoric when they're engaged in combat...LOL