Traveller is chock full of tables which produce random results. Chargen, sysgen, trade, encounters, NPC reactions, you name it. There are dozens of tables which produce results based on a die roll or two plus the occasional DM...
What I"m about to say is not a knock on MarsStraub or anyone else who doesn't see the potential for solo play built into Basic
Traveller.
It has become my observation that a lot of people familiar with
Traveller have not read the
Traveller rules. There's nothing odd about this -- many people learn and RPG through oral tradition, not by reading rules.
It has also become my observation that most people know Traveller, even Classic Traveller, through the later editions of the Classic Traveller rules. (
The Traveller Book and
Starter Traveller.) Even if someone started the game by owning Books 1-3, they eventually set these books aside for these later editions.
Note that in both
The Traveller Book and
Starter Traveller all mentioned do solo play has been removed from the text. Without introducing the context of solo play many people might read the rules without the "lens" of seeing how those tables and charts could be used for solo play. The text of these later two editions put all the emphasis of play on the Referee and the relationship between the Referee and the players.
Finally, even if one is familiar with the books (even all of them) it seems to me that that many people have reduced the rules and text down to very slim segment of what is actually available to use in the game. Most people are familiar with character generation, UWPs, kind-of-the-resolution-system (and their frustration with its implementation), kind-of-the-combat-system (and their frustration with its implementation), kind of the trade, kind of the ship combat and so on. The "kind-of" quality of the reading and memory of the rules leads to a lot of house rules (as it should!) but also means that what is actually in the books is often ignored and forgotten.
Random Encounter rules are a weird vestigial artifact from the early days of RPGs for lots of players. Using Reaction Tables really isn't much in vogue and problem never referred to and so on.
I bring all this up not to say people should be using these things, but to point out that I don't think lots of people ever think about them when it comes to Classic
Traveller specifically or
Traveller in general. For most people
Traveller has become the setting, not the game -- which mean the game elements are ignored, forgotten, tossed off, or seen as useless. The game becomes "something about prior service tables and a 2D6 system that you need to fix" and everything else is kind of extraneous. All the interlocking rules, systems, and tables one finds in Books 1-3 that produce an intriguing, well thought out and complete game kit in the style of OD&D are forgotten.
So... I completely get why the notion of solo play might not make sense to someone even looking right at the rules.
o:
