Settingless Traveller: What is Imperium and What is Not?

[Ackehece]

I am a proud player in "Imperium" but from reading I see that several like to be "setting free"

so what is Imperium Setting?

• Current Major and Minor Races
• Name MegaCorporations
• Imperium itself (1st to 4th and all the history that is implicate and explicit)
• Ancients

but: Are the following Settingless?

• Ship Types and Names
• Set Planet Descriptions (I would probably put this Imperium)
• Precursors vs. Ancients
• Scout Service? (smaller? Less Ubiquitous? Who is the sponsor?)
• Navy? (as above)
• Sector Fleets?
• Sectors! (maybe some other form of generating polities?)
• Nobility? Social Rank? This appears core to the system to me,

What are your thoughts?

 

[whartung]

Imperium is the wrong term, rather it's OTU, since they're all components of the OTU. The OTU has been around since before the Imperium (e.g. Ancients).

One could argue that sectors are more an organizational unit manifested by the rules (actually, sub-sectors), but as with anything else, it is also a geographic polity, so you could say that the Imperium uses sectors/sub-sectors to demarcate the star systems for internal purposes.

 

[mike wightman]

When I first started playing Traveller there was no Imperium at all.

A friend of mine ran a game where we teleported from world to world to have adventures.

Then I bought Mercenary and an Imperium was mentioned - but the rest of it read like the works of Pournelle and Niven so they were a major influence, as were the Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld books by Harry Harrison.

I was big fan of Dune so the first Traveller game I ran had an Imperium - but it was based on you know what.

We didn't start playing in the OTU Imperium until I bought Twilight's Peak - since the adventure was so closely tied to the setting. Next came the Kinunir and my protoTraveller dark Imperium took shape - still influenced by all that had gone before.

The Traveller Adventure was the big shift in perception of the Imperium as being the white hats.

 

[Ackehece]

Imperium is the wrong term, rather it's OTU, since they're all components of the OTU. The OTU has been around since before the Imperium (e.g. Ancients).

Quite correct, I tend to view the Imperium and OTU as synonymous but that is wrong. Thanks for pointing that out

 

[Ackehece]

When I first started playing Traveller there was no Imperium

Am a bit to young for that.

Stainless Steel Rat-Verse. Could be a blast!

 

[kilemall]

[FONT=arial,helvetica]

• Ship Types and Names

Those are usually pretty generic, long as they aren't sporting an alien race name or are Kkree meadow ships for instance. I won't be running any AHL ship class boats, but ACS types, most are fine out of the box.

Set Planet Descriptions (I would probably put this Imperium)
Precursors vs. Ancients

Definitely setting specific. Although one should assume there was always some earlier race and humanity and local space are not the only tech beings to have ever existed.

• Scout Service? (smaller? Less Ubiquitous? Who is the sponsor?)
• Navy? (as above)

Pretty much any interstellar polity is going to have a navy, for anti-piracy if nothing else.


Scouts are a little more problematic. If they have the IISS flash then definitely setting specific. However they don't have to be.


IMTU they are the ONLY major Terran Confederation service as the navies are retained by charter nation states, are the only service holding things together by wiles exploration and Jack-o-T, are under constant threat of being horribly compromised by the Pharmabanks with their planetary conservation role, and are constantly walking political and danger tightropes.


Alternatively, they could be understood as being like the Merchant service, privatized explorers and frontier troubleshooters with a sorta honorish code, a license to discover and sell information rights and commercial laws/markets regulating such.

Sector Fleets?
Sectors! (maybe some other form of generating polities?)

Most polities would have some subdivision of some sort with the travel/comm times as such if they get that big. Good enough generic material independent of 1-4 Imperium bling.

Nobility? Social Rank? This appears core to the system to me,

I have no nobility IMTU beyond nobility associated with extant present day families on Earth, and no plans to introduce them as structured power elements.

Instead I'm treating Social Standing as an indication of social level with concomitant access to fiscal and political power resources. This could be because they are insanely rich and well-regarded, politically powerful, a dynasty of political or moral leaders that have a multi-generational inheritance of reputation, or as fleeting as being this year's IT girl.

In particular, being a celebrity based on media or entertainment gets you access to places and/or people most cannot get to, but may not be the heights of power behind closed doors that say an E or F possess and use.

So I treat social standing as something that is VERY changeable by player action, and quickly too.

I also put in class mores and behaviors, so your character could be a filthy rich trillion credit guy but since the character cannot function in a high end setting he has a glass ceiling he cannot break through with money alone.

He will have to be coached, practice, act with public propriety, do charity work/fundraising, maybe stop doing Startown pub crawls/brawls, save planets and puppies, etc. and impress the Right People in order to up that SOC.

So, besides the nobility rank bling, the mechanic can work just fine without the Official Setting.


Oh, should also say, I equate Social Standing with above all honor and paying debts and obligations, social and fiscal. So a scandal of say not paying taxes or or cowering in time of war or defaulting on loans hurting pensioners and orphan funds is Serious Business.
[/FONT]

 

[mike wightman]

Army - planetary armed forces
Navy - space navy
Marines - soldiers serving in the Navy
Scouts - merchant explorers/corpration sponsored explorers/Navy explorer corps/planet sponsored explorer corps
Merchant
Other

(Hidden secret of the nth Imperium - there is no such thing as a scout x-boat pilot, x-boats are robots and the x-boats are a way to ferry scouts from mission to mission)

 

[Timerover51]

Going with nothing as Imperium/Official Traveller Universe is not exactly easy, but can be done.

I use a lot of material from the Andre Norton "Solar Queen" series, some of her other books, and the books by H. Beam Piper. Christopher Anvil also has some useful ideas.

 

[GypsyComet]

You can certainly re-arrange the institutions without needing to necessarily redo the careers. The careers can easily represent "what I did" vs "what named service was I part of".

Norton's Patrol is half Scouts and half RCMP field agents, as one example, and even the OTU Scout Service is both the Scout and Bureaucrat/Citizen career paths from way back and includes some Marine functions after the GURPS treatment.

The ship Types are pretty generic. The deckplans and architectural styles are OTU.

The drives you install in a ship are just numbers, though you can certainly alter those to attain a very different set of balances in ship design. What they do for moving you around is more setting dependent.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

• Precursors vs. Ancients

Ancients is not settingless if you make make mention of the Droyne being the descendents or if in your description you make references to Yaskodray, maybe The Final War as well. In general, the more detail fluff you put in the more you are characterizing a setting of some sort.

• Nobility? Social Rank? This appears core to the system to me,

What are your thoughts?

Social Standing settingless. Nobility is not settingless. Nobility to me is a Campaign construct to explain large empires existing despite the technology of Jump Drive. Campaigns of smaller scale than the Imperiums have no need of the feudal nobility system. Social Standing yes. Nobility no. Mongoose Traveller 2300 uses Social Standing just fine without a nobility.

Before someone gets on about stutterwarp, If you used Jump Drive it is only ~17 parsecs to the edge of 2300 Space. Much less time than Regina to Capital and thus much less need for a man on the spot nobility system.

 

[savage]

3I is...

• a robust setting, backdrop for adventuring with many told and untold stories.
• makes more sense if Marc fills in the canon history gaps.
• not a fully detailed, accurate environment.
• /has been impacted by many writers with different views.
• /has been impacted by many mega players that want the public version to be "their own thing" versus what was canonized.

 

[robject]

What is Traveller, versus what is setting.

My post here tries to describe what Traveller is, so that everything else would be setting-dependent.

For example, megacorporations are part of the Third Imperium ("OTU") setting. They're not strictly Traveller. Same with the races, including the Ancients. Same with the map of Charted Space.

Even sector fleets are OTU -- I am not sure but I think they are not defined in Traveller in general, separate from the OTU.

However, squadrons of various values and missions (billion credit and trillion credit as examples) are Traveller, as are Big Ships (no apologies!). So are UWP and its associated codes, ship types, the Scouts, the Navy, mercenaries, pirates, subsectors and sectors, the Nobility and Social Standing: all core Traveller.


Now that said, there is at least one instance where I think a setting can change a core aspect of Traveller most easily: a "Small Ships" setting.

 

[Ackehece]

So nobles is Traveller and not OTU. There was some argument in this thread about that..

 

[aramis]

What is Traveller, versus what is setting.

My post here tries to describe what Traveller is, so that everything else would be setting-dependent.

For example, megacorporations are part of the Third Imperium ("OTU") setting. They're not strictly Traveller. Same with the races, including the Ancients. Same with the map of Charted Space.

Even sector fleets are OTU -- I am not sure but I think they are not defined in Traveller in general, separate from the OTU.

In re Megacorporate trade liner fleets...

They're presented as having rules importance in CT Bk7 and MT Character gen.

something higher than subsector fleets exists in CT bk 5 character generation; it's called Imperial Navy.

 

[David Johansen]

I think one could make a fair argument for the jump drive as presented in the rules as setting specific.

The images of the iconic ships are also setting specific though the names and statistics are not.

 

[robject]

In re Megacorporate trade liner fleets...

They're presented as having rules importance in CT Bk7 and MT Character gen.

something higher than subsector fleets exists in CT bk 5 character generation; it's called Imperial Navy.

I didn't recall those, but I'm not surprised that those mentions are there. Certainly megacorporations are clear implications from the basic rules and some Space Opera in general.

But since the Imperium was clearly not in GDW's minds from the beginning, I'll call that an interpolation. I think we all at least agree that the OTU setting was mixing with rules early on.

 

[Ackehece]

For a system this old and well established it is not too surprising that edge cases between system . Setting are hard to separate.
In GIS the question we ask rhetorically "Where does the forest end and the field begin?"

So (nameless)mega-corporations, nobles, jump drives have all been edge cased. OTU or System. Good arguments for both. So the real question might be should we care? Is there a fundamental reason to say that it is OTU over system? Or vice versa? What changes does it bring in either camp?

I for one would say JDrive and nobles definite feel systemic to me as they exist back to CT77. The character generator definitely creates social distinction and many rules are dependant on that distinction. JDrive and MDrive have similarly been central to the tenants of the game and the rules design, alternatives have been introduced over the years. But in whole or part many of the assumptions made in the game are based on these technologies.
Mega-corporations I am not as sold on but I hear Aramis' point on it.

Robjects philosophical thread is definitely definitely place to refine the points. I suspect that he has the clearest view of system vs OTU outside of Marc. And Marc only because he can define it as a wills .

I do wonder how we deal with the strategy games as they would definitely cement setting and system together more closely than most assume

Snapshot, the aliens
Fifth frontier war, empires and fleets
Imperium
Battle Rider
Brilliant Lances

Do we use them in the cut between system and setting?

 

[robject]

In GIS the question we ask rhetorically "Where does the forest end and the field begin?"

Quite. But, your next comment helps:

So the real question might be should we care? Is there a fundamental reason to say that it is OTU over system? Or vice versa? What changes does it bring in either camp?

"Should we care?" is a good question, and that also helps clarify what Traveller is: it is a view of how societies work in interstellar space, regardless of setting.

I for one would say JDrive and nobles definite feel systemic to me as they exist back to CT77.

Quite. And they're there to create a particular look-and-feel for the game.

I do wonder how we deal with the strategy games as they would definitely cement setting and system together more closely than most assume[...]

For that, I would apply Don's rules of canon and treat them as secondary sources. For example, Beltstrike and Imperium both have their own rules, but show the sorts of environments GDW's minds were interested in exploring with Traveller.

 

[kilemall]

Snapshot, the aliens
Fifth frontier war, empires and fleets
Imperium
Battle Rider
Brilliant Lances

Do we use them in the cut between system and setting?

Snapshot to me is very independent of setting, it's a fast tactical resolution game on starship and facility battles, essentially 'battles indoors'. The iconic ship plans can plug in anywhere.

Aliens are very setting specific, but they can be sources for ideas and inspirations IYTU as much as any movie or novel.

FFW is very setting specific, but the system can be lifted and units/maps redefined for IYTU.

Imperium I believe predates all this and got retconned in, but FFW comments apply.

BR and BL I have not seen, but I'm gathering are crunchy munchy versions of HG/CT ships. Can't comment other then like anything else, a discerning ref can lift a system and scrub it of 1-4I/OTU bling.

 

[robject]

I think this topic should be in the Lone Star forum. Anyone agree?