I don't suppose we're so lucky that it also changed what a starport B code means? :devil:
Hans
Last edited:
T5's take on Imperial Nobles
- Thread starter DonM
- Start date
I don't suppose we're so lucky that it also changed what a starport B code means? :devil:
Hans
I knew I was missing something...
Another solution to the "how many nobles" problem is to use GT: Nobles.
In addition to the specific noble assigned to and associated with a world, GT: Nobles assumes about 1 knight per 12.5 million people, about 1 baronet per 62.5 million people, and about 1 baron per 250 million people.
The Solomani Rim supposedly has about one trillion people and about 300 worlds that are part of the Imperium. That would correspond to about 300 planetary nobles and about 80,000 knights, about 16,000 baronets, and about 4,000 honor nobles (mostly barons, but there might be higher titles, too).
The Imperium supposedly has a population of about 11 trillion people, so the total number of knights, baronets, etc. (above and beyond the planetary nobles) is about ten times what one has in the Solomani Rim.
That seems pretty reasonable to me.
Don, what do you think? Is it safe to use these numbers, at least as a rough baseline, for JTAS articles? Also, what about solar systems with more than one noble...how does that work?
Another solution to the "how many nobles" problem is to use GT: Nobles.
In addition to the specific noble assigned to and associated with a world, GT: Nobles assumes about 1 knight per 12.5 million people, about 1 baronet per 62.5 million people, and about 1 baron per 250 million people.
The Solomani Rim supposedly has about one trillion people and about 300 worlds that are part of the Imperium. That would correspond to about 300 planetary nobles and about 80,000 knights, about 16,000 baronets, and about 4,000 honor nobles (mostly barons, but there might be higher titles, too).
The Imperium supposedly has a population of about 11 trillion people, so the total number of knights, baronets, etc. (above and beyond the planetary nobles) is about ten times what one has in the Solomani Rim.
That seems pretty reasonable to me.
Don, what do you think? Is it safe to use these numbers, at least as a rough baseline, for JTAS articles? Also, what about solar systems with more than one noble...how does that work?
The figure in GT:Nobles is up to 1 baron per 250 million, implying that the actual number is smaller. Backwater worlds like Rethe probably don't have nearly their full quota.
High nobles, not planetary nobles. There would be up to 300 of them, but doubling up on titles would reduce that number. Countal, ducal, and archducal titles are not awarded for achievements, so there would be proportionally fewer of them among the honor nobles.
The figure I've heard is 15 trillion people.
It'll work for the Imperial nobility. In addition there could be 635 million planetary nobles[*] or the equivalent (for worlds without explicit aristocracies).
[*] This guesstimate is based on there being 508 peers in Great Britain in 1818 and a population in England and Wales of nearly 12 million in 1820.[**]
[**] Incidentally, the British peerage definitely does not follow the "one to five" rule. In 1818 there were 28 dukedoms, 32 marquessates, 210 earldoms, 66 viscounts and 172 barons, and I know (from a textbook I had back then) that the proportions were similar around 1970.
EDIT: I found the textbook I mentioned above (Britain Today by R. Musman, first published 1973) In 1970 there were 31 dukes, 38 marquesses, 175 earls, 116 viscounts, 490 barons, 19 peeresses in their own right, 142 life peers, 19 life peeresses, 2 archbishops, and 24 senior bishops in the House of Lords. The population of the UK was 55.7 million. Or one member of the HoL per 53,000 people, about half as many as in 1818.
Hans
Last edited:
By the way, welcome to the CotI boards, Mark.
Hans
Good to see you, too, Hans.
Yes, sorry, I meant "high noble" instead of "planetary noble." And, yes, you could have a huge number of local nobles, millions of them easily, although most of them would obviously not be seen as being as important as the high nobles (there are some exceptions...the king of a world with billions of people is, according to GT: Nobles, about the same status as a count or a duke, although he lacks the specific Imperial powers of such a high noble).
And, yes, GT: Nobles is not necessarily canon for all flavors of Traveller, but it does provide a lot of information, so usually I draw on it for possible examples, etc.
Just curious...what is your objection to the B-type starports? (If I should not have asked that question, I apologize!)
That the only difference between a class A and a class B starport is the nature of the vessels the associated yards build. Spaceboats only, it's class B, spaceboats and starships, it's class A. Everything else, A and B, they've both got it, C and below, something is missing. It's a waste of a classification, especially since the information is usually available in another part of the UWP, namely the tech level (Shipyards can only build vessel of a higher tech level than the local one if there's someone around that is willing to pay the extra cost of shipping in components for assembly, which is something better left for someone looking at a whole cluster of worlds simultaneously to determine rather than to random world by world determination).
(As an aside, class B starports are more likely to be a pain to explain than class A starports. At least shipyards can sell their products to people in other systems. How do you explain a boatyard in a system with no space traffic to speak of? Not saying that some class A starports aren't pains to explain too, but personally I've run across more of the former than of the latter).
Whether a world can produce ship or only boats is also of far more interest to a government (or a wargamer) than to anyone who wants to know what services he can get at a prospective stopover. Maintenance? Interesting. Repairs? Interesting. Fuel? Interesting. Can I buy a spaceboat? Very limited interest.
I've previously suggested changing the definition of a class B starport to being able to provide annual maintenance but NOT ship or boat building and class A starports to having yards -- ship- or boat- as the case might be.
Hans
IMO, too much talk of nobles becomes pythonesque: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKIWjnEPNY
The Dux Bellorum way makes more sense with the title ex officio, or following the office, yet when the bearer becomes mundane, they still are able to carry the title. This is how the title of President of the US works, and it fills the gap in chargen; also if one is assigning some numerical hierarchy.
The Dux Bellorum way makes more sense with the title ex officio, or following the office, yet when the bearer becomes mundane, they still are able to carry the title. This is how the title of President of the US works, and it fills the gap in chargen; also if one is assigning some numerical hierarchy.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
COMBAT DUCKS RULE! :rofl:
The way I've handled it is to assume the smaller shipyard is a "symptom" of a smaller port. Each letter indicates a class of size of an order of magnitude, with an E-type port, able to handle about 2,000 dtons of ships, and served by a handful of employees, to an A-type port that is a city unto itself with tens of thousands of workers and maybe 20,000,000 dtons of berths.
This is NOT canonical, and I also assume it is the average but not the universal rule, that there are lots of exceptions, but it is a pretty good baseline. It does not seem to violate any canon and its a fair match for the descriptions of some of the starports that show up in various books.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
At least for the first few centuries AD they did.
Picture, if you will, a group of uplifted mallards in battle dress. Like the AFLAC duck goes to war.
Avenger Enterprises
SOC-11
SOC has always been problematical, and reconciling the various things published about Imperial nobility and planetary nobility etc with the rules has at times been tricky. A good hard rethink might have been a fine idea, and T5 was the oportunity to do it.
Since it seems not to have been done, we're left with the same problems as before, most of which can be dealt with by remembering that the phrase 'noble associated with the world' is used a lot. Nobles hold their rank within the Imperium, not their host world, though they may have a fief there. They act as a sort of liaison between Imperium and world government, rather than governing.
So your title is determined by where your fief is (the 'of wherever' part, not your rank), but it doesn't necessarily mean you were born there or hold any formal rank there. Your rank is in the Imperium, and that translates to influence rather than power in many cases. Ie the world government will normally listen to you, but you can't give them orders under most circumstances.
When you look at it like that, the system sort of works okay, though comms lag raises other questions that have to be answered with proxies and echelons of represenation.
So, if you take SOC as Social Standing as recognised by the people who compile Imperial Who's Who, that works. Exactly what your status is on any given world may not be so clear-cut.
Since it seems not to have been done, we're left with the same problems as before, most of which can be dealt with by remembering that the phrase 'noble associated with the world' is used a lot. Nobles hold their rank within the Imperium, not their host world, though they may have a fief there. They act as a sort of liaison between Imperium and world government, rather than governing.
So your title is determined by where your fief is (the 'of wherever' part, not your rank), but it doesn't necessarily mean you were born there or hold any formal rank there. Your rank is in the Imperium, and that translates to influence rather than power in many cases. Ie the world government will normally listen to you, but you can't give them orders under most circumstances.
When you look at it like that, the system sort of works okay, though comms lag raises other questions that have to be answered with proxies and echelons of represenation.
So, if you take SOC as Social Standing as recognised by the people who compile Imperial Who's Who, that works. Exactly what your status is on any given world may not be so clear-cut.
No, it doesn't, for reasons I've mentioned before. For one thing, a social ladder where the lower and middle class are distributed across 9 rungs and the supra-planetary elite is distributed across 6 or more rungs SHOULD have the planetary elite distributed across more than one or two rungs.
Even so, it might have worked if Traveller writers had realized early on that even a "lowly" Imperial baron would be about as rare as emperors are on Earth and used SOC 10 planetary nobles as patrons and NPCs instead of SOC 12+ emperors and suchlike, and that SOC 12 people would be very very unlikely to serve as enlisted men and customs inspectors. But they didn't.
Hans
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Prince and the Pauper? Slumming? lol
Seriously, I agree with you on this Hans. Still, it seems you are flogging a dead horse...
I guess you can come up with an explanation even for emperors (or at least relatives of emperors) serving in low and middle class jobs (though it usually involves not using the old name and titles); what you can't do is come up with a story for every 36 NPCs you encounter.
In the old days I almost felt a compulsion to set people straight on this issue (and several others). Nowadays I just do it when I have a bit of spare time on my hands and feel like it.
Hans
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
Hans, In America, state of Kentucky, there is a type of "noble". They are called "Kentucky Colonels". It's a holdover from our "civil war" days. It means that the holder self proclaimed his position.
Colonel Sanders, KFC fame, is one such.
Still, 1 in 36 doesn't leave to many menials and serfs to do the real work. My last steward kept claiming to be a Count...
Colonel Sanders, KFC fame, is one such.
Still, 1 in 36 doesn't leave to many menials and serfs to do the real work. My last steward kept claiming to be a Count...
As I've seen it explained, people of sufficient stature in the community were accorded one of two honorifics when they reached a certain age, 'Colonel' for military gents (even if they hadn't actually reached that rank for real) and 'Judge' for more civilian gents. It was something the neighbors "awarded", not the gentlemen themselves.
These honorifics were usually (always?) bestowed on people who were already part of the Southern Gentry.
That's really the salient point. It's not the title itself that determines how noble it is. It's the rarity and power and prestige that it denotes that matters. If one in 36 is a count, counts won't count for much. If it's one in a couple of millions (with commensurate power), counts gets considerable respect, on the order of what those who have read about European nobles would expect. And if it's one in several billions (as Imperial counts would be), they're not going to be treated like mere paltry Eupropean-style counts.
Hans
Kentucky Colonels are actually a personal title awarded by the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky to an individual. It's as close to a noble title as anyone outside Hawaii is entitled to within the US.
Technically, it's a commission by the Commonwealth, and bears state military precedence due to officially being an "Aide de Camp" to the Governor of Kentucky. In practice, it's a membership nominated honorary title.
In other words, pretty much the same kind of deal as a UK knighthood: Neat title, no duty per se, and a lifetime award, normally given in response to a nomination from the others for some achievement, but new ones can be created at whim and/or without explanation.
Judges, however, are another matter - Many a man served a year as an elected "county judge," but once an initial term has been served, the title "judge" is lifetime. Keep in mind, many states didn't require county judges to actually be lawyers, tho lately (last 50 years) almost all have been.
Technically, it's a commission by the Commonwealth, and bears state military precedence due to officially being an "Aide de Camp" to the Governor of Kentucky. In practice, it's a membership nominated honorary title.
In other words, pretty much the same kind of deal as a UK knighthood: Neat title, no duty per se, and a lifetime award, normally given in response to a nomination from the others for some achievement, but new ones can be created at whim and/or without explanation.
Judges, however, are another matter - Many a man served a year as an elected "county judge," but once an initial term has been served, the title "judge" is lifetime. Keep in mind, many states didn't require county judges to actually be lawyers, tho lately (last 50 years) almost all have been.
Vladika
SOC-14 1K
True today, though in earlier years, post "civil war" it was self proclaimed. During reconstruction they were a dime a dozen.
