As the originator of this thread, I'd say that it's about any novel or short story that influenced any part of Traveller, whether you're talking about the original rules or the 3I.
Oh, well then, yeah... the Dumarest books all the way down for
Traveller Books 1, 2, and 3.
Here's Dumarest getting revived from low passage at the start of the first book:
‘You made it,’ said the handler. He sounded pleased. ‘I didn’t expect trouble but for a minute back there you had me worried.’ He leaned forward, his head blocking more of the light. ‘You sure that you’re okay?’
Dumarest nodded, reluctantly recognising the need to move. Reaching out, he clamped his hands on the edges of the box and slowly pulled himself upright. His body was as expected, nude, bleached white, the skin tight over prominent bone. Cautiously he flexed his muscles, inflated the barrel of his chest. He had lost fat but little else. He was still numb for which he was thankful.
‘I haven’t lost a one yet,’ boasted the handler. ‘That’s why you had me worried. I’ve got a clean score and I want it to stay that way.’
It wouldn’t, of course. Benson was still fresh at the game. Give him time and he would become less conscientious, more time and he would grow careless, finally he wouldn’t give a damn. That’s when some of his kind thought it cute to cut the dope and watch some poor devil scream his lungs raw with the agony of restored circulation.
‘I’m forgetting,’ he said. He passed over a cup of brackish water. Dumarest drank it, handed back the cup.
‘Thanks.’ His voice was thin, a little rusty. He swallowed and tried again. This time he sounded more like his normal self. ‘How about some Basic?’
‘Coming right up.’
Dumarest sat hunched in the box as Benson crossed to the dispenser. He wrapped his arms about his chest, conscious of the cold, the bleakness of the compartment. The place resembled a morgue. A chill, blue-lighted cavern, the air tainted with a chemical smell. A low place, shapeless with jutting struts and curved beams, harsh with the unrelieved monotony of unpainted metal.
There was no need for heat in this part of the ship and no intention of providing comfort. Just the bare metal, the ultraviolet lamps washing the naked coffin-like boxes with their sterilising glow. Here was where the livestock rode, doped, frozen, ninety per cent dead. Here was the steerage for travellers willing to gamble against the fifteen per cent mortality rate.
Such travel was cheap— its sole virtue.
But something was wrong.
Dumarest sensed it with the caution born of long years of experience. It wasn’t the waking. He had gained awareness long before the end of the five-minute waking cycle. It wasn’t Benson. It was something else— something which should not be.
He found it after he had moistened the tips of his fingers and rested them lightly against the bare metal of the structure. They tingled with the faint but unmistakable effect of the Erhaft field. The ship was still in space.
And travellers were never revived until after landing.
Here is Dumarest realizing the Erhaft field has stopped mid-journey:
From a ship in space stars were the last thing anyone would expect to see. Not with the Erhaft field wrapping the cocoon of metal in its own private universe and allowing it to traverse the spaces between worlds at multi-light speeds. Stars could not be seen beyond that field. If she saw them it could only mean that, somehow, the field had collapsed. But when? When?
Here is a description of the use of quicktime to relieve the boredom of interstellar journeys:
Dumarest booked passage on a small ship carrying mixed cargo and passengers to Hive. It wasn’t the best of its kind but it was the first to leave and he was in a hurry to get moving. It would be a long journey. Not for those travelling Low, riding doped, frozen and ninety per cent dead in the bleak, cold-region of the ship, resting in boxes designed to hold livestock. For them the journey would take no time at all. For some it would be the last journey they would ever make, the unlucky fifteen per cent who had chanced their luck once too often and who would never awake.
Nor for those travelling High. They enjoyed the magic of quick-time, the drug slowing their metabolism so that time streamed past and a day seemed less than an hour. Even for them, though, time existed and had to be killed in traditional ways.
In another book a couple trying to hijack a ship will use both quick time and slowtime to pull off their plan -- doping the crew with quicktime and injecting themselves with slow time.
There is no centralized government but rather countless unique worlds that deal with each other through trade.
Each world is unique and strange in its society and social structure, allowing Dumarest to encounter, explore, confront, and match wits with on the social level on each new world he travels to.
A decadent nobility rules over disenfranchised citizens on almost every world, but the focus of the nobility is not interstellar but on particular planets. (Social disparity and its fallout matters a
lot in the Dumarest books. Also: Note the definitions of Nobility in
Traveller Book 3, 1977 specifically.)
Dumarest encounters characters with various psionic powers -- unique and lonely in the universe.
There is no instantaneous communication between worlds. Rather messages are carried on trade vessels plying the space lanes.
Dumarest constantly encounters wiling patrons ready to hire him for his skills to carry out a mission on their behalf.
He hunts and encounters strange and unique beasts as he travels from world to world.
Specific weapons and armor (Blade; Mesh) are lifted directly from the books and into
Traveller. Characters fight with swords and melee weapons as much as they use firearms.
And of course, this: "'Or you could hire a nulgrav raft,’ said the factor quickly."
And, of course, an almost endless string of unique and exotic worlds to adventure on, one after another. So many in fact, and so isolated from each other, the Earth itself has been forgotten and is just a rumor. The settings are often outlandish (though fun and compelling). Each planet is self-consistent in its logic, but no attempt is made to figure out how all these worlds would interact together. The rules for subsector and Main world creation in Book 3 seems designed specifically to create this kind of setting.
And note what is
not present in the Dumarest books (at least those I have read): There are no ginormous ships; no grand fleets; no massive space battles. There are a few high tech gadgets, but advanced firearms are not common at all.
Those elements are off the top of my head after reading a few of the books. You will also find the rougher tone found in the earliest Supplements and Adventures of the Classic
Traveller line. It's really all right there.
If anything the original
Traveller rules seem uniquely well-suited to
expand the Dumarest setting, where the Referee keeps coming up with cool worlds with unique societies, cultures, SF driven premises and environments for a group of hearty adventures to explore one after another. That's not what the rules were for, of course. But it sure seems like it was built to do something very "Dumarest-ish" right out of the box.
