Nature of the frontier

[aramis]

Star Trek has a serious advantage that the 3I does not:

a galaxy where
1) ships can flow around in 3d
1a) Starships remain in N-space, and can be detected
1b) Fleet movements are just as comples as tactical movements.
2) only a handful of races are off-world, and they are reoughly the same age as the protagonist "empire" (the federation), and therefore, roughly the same size.
3) They can detect, montior, and nudge non-starfaring races by use of a variety of Unobtanium technologies.
4) information moves faster than ships.
4a) ships can outrange comms, but not outrun them.
5) Ships use flight-like mechanics, rather than space-like newtonian mechanics.
6) ships range is measured in Light-Centuries and years of supplies.
6a) Ships can go around or through most astrgraphic boundaries with nothing but time.

Traveller suffers from ships being beyond comms range of base most of the time, and astrgraphic limitations on resupply, with very limitted endurance and range.

You can't get a star trek feel with traveller... but you can get that 1890's feel. No real frontiers left, but lots of "Wild Spaces" left.

 

[mike wightman]

There was a frontier in the CT setting, Adventure 4 explored it. But there was plenty more to investigate.
Ignore the AotI and DGP's mapping of Trojan Reach etc. and you have your frontier at the Spinward Marches as originally intended.

 

[mike wightman]

Look at the map in Library Data A-M, there's a domains worth of fronier client states and pocket empires to explore (there's a frontier of sorts) and beyond it...

wild, uncharted space

 

[kafka47]

Also, as Hans** eluded to the whole Vanguard Reaches & Beyond are frontiers. Plus, what do you mean by frontiers...certainly any interstellar state bordering the Imperium would provide lots of room for exploration.

Taking a trip into the Extents or the 2000 Worlds would certainly provide an "alien environment" for any Imperial Scout. I understand your lament but even in the Marches there is room enough for a frontier. Look and get your inspiration from the early issues of JTAS to realize what a frontier that the Marches truly is. Simply, because we know more about it in 1116 does not make it any less of a frontier.

Think about mankind's exploration of this planet. Even though, every spot can be catalogued and viewed from a high tech spy satellite there are plenty of wilderness and lost civilizations deep in the Amazonia not to mention the lost civilizations of Anarctica. Or who has been to the bottom of the Oceans?

Frontiers are lines that don't exist in Traveller. Every planet is a brand new planet, as the expression in the Scouts go. Taking your players beyond the boundaries and search out that Deep Space supplement will give you hope.

Glad that MJD and I are on the same wavelength...pun intended

with 1248!

**HANS, contact me via private message as I would very much like a copy your work!

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by Aramis:
You can't get a star trek feel with traveller...

I didn't mean actually to suggest Traveller was like Trek. My reference to Kirk was merely to invoke the image of a (space) explorer. I might as easily have said "Lewis and Clark."

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
There was a frontier in the CT setting, Adventure 4 explored it. But there was plenty more to investigate.
Ignore the AotI and DGP's mapping of Trojan Reach etc. and you have your frontier at the Spinward Marches as originally intended.

The trouble with that is that you will also have to throw away a lot more. Such as the entire history of the Spinward Marches, which has the Glisten subsector settled around 300, and the history of the Aslan, which has them crossing the Great Rift in -1044. The Outrim Void frontier in the Adventure 4 sense of "There's nothing in the Library Data about that system, Captain" simply doesn't fit with being next door to an active, starfaring culture with enterprising merchants and a scout service for 700 years (or next door to an agressively expansive race like the Aslans for two millennia).

It is my opinion that if you want a true unknown frontier in the Outrim Void, you have to set your campaign in Year 200, though I might accept Year 400 as an outside date.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by kafka47:
Also, as Hans** eluded to the whole Vanguard Reaches & Beyond are frontiers. Plus, what do you mean by frontiers...certainly any interstellar state bordering the Imperium would provide lots of room for exploration.

I think he means an unexplored frontier. One where the PCs can't check the library data and get a ton of information about the next world.

(Note that IMO a single previous expedition would return with a ton of information about any world it visited. That doesn't mean that there won't be multiple tons of information yet to gather, but it just won't be the same as being the first one there.)


Hans

 

[daryen]

Originally posted by rancke:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by kafka47:
Plus, what do you mean by frontiers...certainly any interstellar state bordering the Imperium would provide lots of room for exploration.

I think he means an unexplored frontier. One where the PCs can't check the library data and get a ton of information about the next world.</font>[/QUOTE]Thank you Hans. That is correct.

 

[clementk]

<nods> By the time of the Third Imperium's founding most worlds* have been surveyed/explored/settled before anywhere from 1 to 5+ times. Personally switching to Year 0/200 or TNE/1248 doesn't really change things. Someone's been there before. Setting a game during the first two Imperiums changes that somewhat but even then you still have ye olde setting. But I'm drifting into another thread topic with that.

As is IMO the OTU does not support a real "Let's see what's out there" style game, especially in or from Imperium space. It's more "Let's see what's changed since the last Imperium (or other government/survey) swung through this area." Too bad, as I like the Scouts.

* meaning within and near to the 3I's greatest extent

Casey

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Casey:
<nods> By the time of the Third Imperium's founding most worlds* have been surveyed/explored/settled before anywhere from 1 to 5+ times. Personally switching to Year 0/200 or TNE/1248 doesn't really change things. Someone's been there before.

Well, I should hope so. Exploring isn't any fun unless there's something to discover, and people (of whatever species) make for fun discoveries. The big difference lies in whether you've heard about those discoveries beforehand or not.

As is IMO the OTU does not support a real "Let's see what's out there" style game, especially in or from Imperium space. It's more "Let's see what's changed since the last Imperium (or other government/survey) swung through this area."

That's not really true of the Trojan Reach. It got settled around -1700 by people who were leaving the RoM and didn't report back. The Darrians and the Sword Worlds may have had a little contact trading with selected TR worlds, but neither of those two cultures went in for much long-distance explorations. And besides, it is quite possible that around 200 few Imperials had done much digging through Darrian and SW archives. Maybe just enough to find a few tantalizing rumors.


Hans

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by rancke:
Well, I should hope so. Exploring isn't any fun unless there's something to discover, and people (of whatever species) make for fun discoveries. The big difference lies in whether you've heard about those discoveries beforehand or not.

I would agree with this. By someone I was referring specifically to someone from the previous Imperiums or the Terran Confederation, not a native species or native pocket empire. Possibly the other current Major Races as well (see below). In those cases the explorer likely would have library data.

That's not really true of the Trojan Reach. It got settled around -1700 by people who were leaving the RoM and didn't report back. The Darrians and the Sword Worlds may have had a little contact trading with selected TR worlds, but neither of those two cultures went in for much long-distance explorations. And besides, it is quite possible that around 200 few Imperials had done much digging through Darrian and SW archives. Maybe just enough to find a few tantalizing rumors.

Okay. Even then it's settled by someone from the prior Imperium. So when Scouts from the Third Imperium show up it's like long lost cousins showing up for a family reunion. Good room for adventure there but it's not where no Major Race explorer has gone before. Also isn’t it right up against Aslan colonies or is that just fan work/fuzzy canon? All I have currently is the Zhodani Base entry.

As for rumors and non-Imperium sources good seeds there. Depending on the situation though there is the potential for the "Vulcan key holder and exploration retread" situation Enterprise falls into now and then. Too much of that and you’re merely following in someone else’s comparatively recent footsteps. I don’t count Ancients in this as they’re more in the interesting discovery category. That and I like the Cthulhu Mythos too much not to have a long “dead” race.

Casey

 

[kafka47]

Of course, there is always the option of misjump...one of those on the Beyond/Vanguard Reaches can set players pretty far from home.

Plus, who is to say that the Ancients did not tunnel more N-Space maybe one of the Expressways takes you far Coreward where they were studying the Primordials and other long sleeping cultures. I have used this plot device for my TNE campaign but it could be easily adapted to suit any Milieu. Scouts, after the Navy would be the first ones who would push through the portal.

In my early days, I was very much influenced the AD&D notion of a multiverse and that Traveller was a companion universe. Imperial Research Stations are broaching the same topic believing that they are baby universes created by the Ancients but what if...Chartered Space merely represented a larger enclosure by more advanced beings...And, God Created the Universe...would have a wholly different meaning...it literally just closed off a portion of the celestal sphere.

 

[Jame]

It occurs to me, a frontier doesn't have to be unsettled, just unsettled by that certain government...

 

[piperfan]

Originally posted by Jame:
It occurs to me, a frontier doesn't have to be unsettled, just unsettled by that certain government...

In fact, few "frontiers" are "unsettled" as both Captain Kirk and the early European explorers/conquerors of the Americas discovered when they went "where no man has gone before."

 

[BetterThanLife]

One thing to remember is that space travel has been around, by the year 0 even, for over 300,000 years. Someone has probably been there before. Perhaps longer after all no place in Canon does it state that Grandfather was the first to take to the stars.
If you are looking for virgin territory, where no one has gone before, (TNG vs Classic Trek) you should have been around before man was scattered about the galaxy. And even then...

 

[mike wightman]

In the MT Referee's Manual it states that intelligent life has been travelling the stars for more than a billion years using generation ships, cold sleep, and even electronic personality transfers

 

[kafka47]

Plus, all of Traveller deals with the OTU...not neccessarily what lies beyond it. We should always think that it is a bigger universe out there. What it states about our Galaxy does not preclude really advanced beings coming from another Galaxy for a visit. Their drive trailings open a whole series of portals that connect to parts of the universe.

In short, I think that we are wrong to assume the frontiers of the Imperium are closed...it is just by 1116 there was no longer a will to find a way.


Daryen, also would you consider T20 "time travelling" read the early JTAS and play the Marches as a frontier, as they were intended.

 

[robject]

I want the same thing Daryen wants -- a Traveller Universe that can use the published adventures for the Spinward Marches, but has "uncharted" space spinward of that. A setting where the official timeline is in effect, but with a referee's preserve in the form of "everything beyond this point has not been well-explored". Foreven is a good candidate for this kind of thing, because the Imperial frontier sort of peters out right in front of it, plus you have several small polities in the way. Very frontiersy-feeling, right on the doorstep so to speak.

I think this could be done without hurting much at all of published material -- except of course that stuff that deals with Foreven etc.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I have another idea about frontier. Use Gateway domain. That is right, it is published and settled, but if the PC library data is blank on everything outside the Imperium.... Just remember you control the information. It may be frontier to the Players but fairly well defined to the GM. (After all he does have to know what is out there.)

 

[mike wightman]

What's the problem with using the Spinward Marches as a true frontier?
How much real canon data is there for the sectors beyond them?