Is the bit I bolded something Marc has actually said, or just speculation? Yes, it is implied that jump drives did not exist prior to Grandfather, but that in itself doesn't say anything about whether or not other forms of FTL existed prior to Grandfather.
Settingless Traveller: What is Imperium and What is Not?
- Thread starter Ackehece
- Start date
Is the bit I bolded something Marc has actually said, or just speculation? Yes, it is implied that jump drives did not exist prior to Grandfather, but that in itself doesn't say anything about whether or not other forms of FTL existed prior to Grandfather.
TNE was explicit that the OTU only had one form of FTL drive as of 3IY 1200, and MT was explicit that Jump was invented the first time by Grandfather. T5 adds Hop as canonical starting circa 3IY 1850-1900.
I've seen nothing to counter any of the above from Marc, Don, nor Rob.
So those other empires further away in the galaxy either rose after the time of Grandfather (but they must be a lot larger than the empires in Charted Space to be worthy of mention on a galactic map), or entirely using NAFAL? I'm not entirely sure if that would make sense in practice.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It is a MTU thing but the first starfarers throughout the galaxy had many ways to travel over interstellar distances, and some of them may have come up with FTL methods involving hop drives or higher, portal networks, psionic teleportation, or even stutterwarp or hyperdrive.
These races lived on the other side of the galaxy, or at the galactic core, i.e. beyond and before chartered space.
Some of them made it all the way up the TL scale to miniaturising their technology and hiding it in extra-dimensional space - this is what we call psionics.
Before transcending or wishing themselves into oblivion these primal beings seeded the universe with psionic potential and eventually a quiet pastoral race produced a genius level mutant with extreme psionic potential - this was Grandfather.
He was aware of extra-dimensions and so created the jump interface device that created the ability for jump drives to work. Before grandfather no jump travel, after grandfather jump drive can be invented/discovered/reverse engineered.
These races lived on the other side of the galaxy, or at the galactic core, i.e. beyond and before chartered space.
Some of them made it all the way up the TL scale to miniaturising their technology and hiding it in extra-dimensional space - this is what we call psionics.
Before transcending or wishing themselves into oblivion these primal beings seeded the universe with psionic potential and eventually a quiet pastoral race produced a genius level mutant with extreme psionic potential - this was Grandfather.
He was aware of extra-dimensions and so created the jump interface device that created the ability for jump drives to work. Before grandfather no jump travel, after grandfather jump drive can be invented/discovered/reverse engineered.
ShapeShifter
SOC-13
My TU isn't "setting free". It has a setting, but of my own conglomeration -- not from the canon.
I am an infidel in that I do not worship at the temple of OTU, that rigid and jealous god of Traveller gaming.
IMTU:
My campaign is 95% based on the wonderful "Dumarest Saga" novels of E. C. Tubb, 1% on The Mote in God's Eye, 4% other (inspired by 40-some years of scifi readings far, far too numerous to mention by name or author), with campy-fun goodness sprinkled in ad gustum from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Battlestar Galactica to lighten things up. There is a corner of my Traveller universe where I have my own version of Barsoom, but I choose to use OD&D (+ The Warriors of Mars wargaming book publ. by TSR in 1974).
Nobility? Yup, I've got 'em, also derived mostly from Dumarest, with a little of the Niven/Pournelle novel, too.
I don't use the official milieu (aka travellermap.com)...which is a very immersive, entertaining website getting those creative juices flowing, but I have my own sectors, realms, empires, etc. I favour a nearly-pangalactic scope, compared to the disappointingly small flyspeck of the Imperium and contiguous domains.
In relation to the previous, my tech has kiloparsec drives. These are restricted tech only available to megacorps, militaries, govts, a few very powerful noble families (who themselves may control shipping in their part of space), while the bulk of civilisation must make due with the J1 - J6 drives seen in the RAW/BtB. When I saw David Lynch's DUNE for the first time and witnessed the grotesque wonder of the Navigators, I've been dying to include some concept of that IMTU, but have thus far resisted.
I discard the canon races, save the Hivers...because they are very alien and cool My aliens are weird, funky, non-anthropomorphic: amoeboid Dralasites (from TSR's Star Frontiers RPG -- minus their love of humour and jokes), hive entities like swarms of polychromatic fireflies, ichthyoid species, mineral species, the Silkie (from the A. E. Van Vogt novel of the same name), plus some mutants from nuked planets. Lizardmen (like the Sleestaks of "Land of the Lost"), and man-sized frogpeople are also part of the campaign! No kitty-cat (Aslan) nor puppydog (Vargr) aliens, if you please!
I intermittently use the RAW chargen, but frequently just like a freeform chargen (pick a class/career; pick skills, the points of which are the sum of INT and EDU; add a little backstory and a few flavour bits; equipment; credits; weapons...and SHAZAM! All done!)
If I were to include a concept of "Ancients" they would be inspired by the Krell of the movie Forbidden Planet: extinct, mysterious, and having left far-flung colonies of ruins and a few rare, incomprehensible artefacts.
I find the OTU ships serviceable, but 'basic', in the current parlance.
A final note: MTU is definitely NOT at all based on that quaint, small-budget movie by Gene Lucas!
.
I am an infidel in that I do not worship at the temple of OTU, that rigid and jealous god of Traveller gaming.
IMTU:
My campaign is 95% based on the wonderful "Dumarest Saga" novels of E. C. Tubb, 1% on The Mote in God's Eye, 4% other (inspired by 40-some years of scifi readings far, far too numerous to mention by name or author), with campy-fun goodness sprinkled in ad gustum from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Battlestar Galactica to lighten things up. There is a corner of my Traveller universe where I have my own version of Barsoom, but I choose to use OD&D (+ The Warriors of Mars wargaming book publ. by TSR in 1974).
Nobility? Yup, I've got 'em, also derived mostly from Dumarest, with a little of the Niven/Pournelle novel, too.
I don't use the official milieu (aka travellermap.com)...which is a very immersive, entertaining website getting those creative juices flowing, but I have my own sectors, realms, empires, etc. I favour a nearly-pangalactic scope, compared to the disappointingly small flyspeck of the Imperium and contiguous domains.
In relation to the previous, my tech has kiloparsec drives. These are restricted tech only available to megacorps, militaries, govts, a few very powerful noble families (who themselves may control shipping in their part of space), while the bulk of civilisation must make due with the J1 - J6 drives seen in the RAW/BtB. When I saw David Lynch's DUNE for the first time and witnessed the grotesque wonder of the Navigators, I've been dying to include some concept of that IMTU, but have thus far resisted.
I discard the canon races, save the Hivers...because they are very alien and cool
My aliens are weird, funky, non-anthropomorphic: amoeboid Dralasites (from TSR's Star Frontiers RPG -- minus their love of humour and jokes), hive entities like swarms of polychromatic fireflies, ichthyoid species, mineral species, the Silkie (from the A. E. Van Vogt novel of the same name), plus some mutants from nuked planets. Lizardmen (like the Sleestaks of "Land of the Lost"), and man-sized frogpeople are also part of the campaign! No kitty-cat (Aslan) nor puppydog (Vargr) aliens, if you please! I intermittently use the RAW chargen, but frequently just like a freeform chargen (pick a class/career; pick skills, the points of which are the sum of INT and EDU; add a little backstory and a few flavour bits; equipment; credits; weapons...and SHAZAM! All done!)
If I were to include a concept of "Ancients" they would be inspired by the Krell of the movie Forbidden Planet: extinct, mysterious, and having left far-flung colonies of ruins and a few rare, incomprehensible artefacts.
I find the OTU ships serviceable, but 'basic', in the current parlance.
A final note: MTU is definitely NOT at all based on that quaint, small-budget movie by Gene Lucas!
.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
My TU isn't "setting free". It has a setting, but of my own conglomeration -- not from the canon.
I am an infidel in that I do not worship at the temple of OTU, that rigid and jealous god of Traveller gaming.
A comrade in arms.
I have given the Krell some thought, and I am still not sure about them. I am probably going to use Andre Norton's Bald Space Rovers, the Forerunners (possibly under a different name), and planets with the mysterious ruins and computers that Andre used a lot.
I do like the design sequence in Classic for star ships, but modify it a bit. I am still debating using the Jump Drive, or Piper's Hyperspace Drive, or a mixture of the two. Piper does continually change how fast his hyperdrive covers a light year.
A final note: MTU is definitely NOT at all based on that quaint, small-budget movie by Gene Lucas!
My inspiration comes from Andre Norton and H. Beam Piper primarily, with a bit of Christopher Anvil and Murray Leinster. Murray, in his Med Ship series, does design some nice planets, and his "Exploration Team" with the Kodiak Bears as assistants is one of my favorite science fiction stories.
I have Krell from Forbidden Planet in my dead races.
As inferred by DGP, my Brinn are from Ender's Game.
I think the no-FTL before Yaskodrei-Grandfather is canon with a stipulation...
It's canon within "Charted Space" AKA the tiny bubble of the known universe on just one local arm of the greater galaxy.
External Link: [http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Charted_Space ]
T5 had an early draft with allusions to life outside of Charted Space... Josh added it to the Traveller map when pulled out to the maximum. Some of those races must be major ones that independently developed FTL...
But, none of that is really canon... yet.
Marc is certainly working on the Galaxiad era, the far future of the Traveller universe, and I'm pretty happy that he shares his sand box with us... We just need to be patient.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
That is my tentative leaning as well, but there is another possibility:
It is possible that some of those races in other regions of the Milky Way (Galaxias) have been around for hundreds of millions, if not billions of years, and may have settled their regions of the Galaxy via STL/NAFAL type drives over a very long period of time, a long time ago.
There is already a fair amount of long-term NAFAL / STL colonization going on within Charted Space. I have been researching Traveller's existing sophonts and see that theme over and over again.
You might want to purchase 1248.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
I have all of the FFE Traveller CDs, and most Traveller material (all editions except Hero Traveller) in hardcopy (including 1248).
And Rob doesn't have any more inherent credibility than anyone else on this forum.
But I do have a gmail archive. Let me check, just in case Marc said something...
Rob said:
I started playing Traveller in 1980 or thereabouts. We had the boxed set and a couple of the supplements. We had no access to JTAS, etc.
The Imperium has always been to me the background GDW setting for Traveller, but for us it was very much in the background.
So much so that "Navy", "Army", "Marines", "Scouts" and "Nobles" were not necessarilly "Imperium" they could be local, planetary, etc. A "subsector" was a division of space for mapping purposes.
Adventures such as Annic Nova can be easilly pulled out of the Imperium background by simply changing a couple of names. Mission to Zhodane is pretty 3I specific though.
Megatraveller seems much more specifically setting tied than CT. I like CT well enough that I haven't really investigated the other versions.
The Imperium has always been to me the background GDW setting for Traveller, but for us it was very much in the background.
So much so that "Navy", "Army", "Marines", "Scouts" and "Nobles" were not necessarilly "Imperium" they could be local, planetary, etc. A "subsector" was a division of space for mapping purposes.
Adventures such as Annic Nova can be easilly pulled out of the Imperium background by simply changing a couple of names. Mission to Zhodane is pretty 3I specific though.
Megatraveller seems much more specifically setting tied than CT. I like CT well enough that I haven't really investigated the other versions.
