Traveller Theme 1: Proto-Traveller

[robject]

One of the main points of Proto-Traveller [...] is to ... return ... to a [remote section of space] that is wild ... untamed ... colorful ... to have the allure of ... adventure fiction.

That's one destination.

Proto-Traveller is a way to run Traveller with some setting other than the OTU. So you could run Dumarest (which is one kind of what you were describing), but you could also run something Barsoom-like, or Foundation-like, or Star Wars-like, or Space Vikings, or Norton's "Central Control" or Solar Queen universe, or Cherryh's Downbelow Station, or Jack McDevitt's "Hutch" series, or Saberhagen's Berserker universe, or Niven's Known Space, or a CoDominium-like setting, or a Polesotechnic League, and so on.

Using Traveller to fit a particular pulp Sci Fi setting. Typically a "golden age of SF" setting.

Or, to fit your own home-brewed setting, with bits and pieces borrowed from any of the above.

Note that despite its size, the Traveller5 Core Rules are very Proto-Traveller. If you're going to run a Traveller5 game, you have to borrow a setting from other Traveller supplements, or roll your own. SO much so that some people have been sorely upset at the dearth of setting material. It's been a long time since Traveller rules didn't come with [plenty of] setting material.

 

[creativehum]

That's one destination.

Proto-Traveller is a way to run Traveller with some setting other than the OTU. So you could run Dumarest (which is one kind of what you were describing), but you could also run something Barsoom-like, or Foundation-like, or Star Wars-like, or Space Vikings, or Norton's "Central Control" or Solar Queen universe, or Cherryh's Downbelow Station, or Jack McDevitt's "Hutch" series, or a Berserker universe, or Niven's Known Space, and so on.

Using Traveller to fit a particular pulp Sci Fi setting. Typically a "golden age of SF" setting.

Without doubt. Although I'm not sure which of the settings you mention are not "wild, untame, colorful, and adventure fiction." Certainly Barsoom and Space Vikings are exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about, which are the only two on your list I am familiar with.

More to the point, the kind of fiction I'm referencing is found in the tales Miller specifically has named as the core inspiration for Traveller: Tubb's Dumarest books, Anderson's Flandry books, and Vance's Demon Prince books. These, too, are exactly the kinds of destinations I'm pointing at. Any of those could serve as inspiration for anyone's Proto-Traveller setting material.

 

[creativehum]

I suppose I better say quick that in my long post about the British Empire and the Punjab, I wasn't saying "This is how you're supposed to do it" or that is the kind of setting one is supposed to build.

I was illustrating what I meant about having a setting (The British Empire in the Age of Sail) and a setting of play that is focused on a slice of geography (the Punjab), in the same way one can have an interstellar empire that is composed of countless subsectors, but focus the beginning of a campaign on only one or two subsectors.

In case anyone wanted to show up and tell me there are dozens of ways to set up a Traveller campaign. Which I agree with and is my point all the time.

 

[mike wightman]

Proto-Traveller is a way to run Traveller with some setting other than the OTU.

Interesting point rob.

I've always thought of proto-Traveller as being the proto-Imperium setting.

If I design my own setting I am just playing Traveller, not the proto-Imperium - perhaps a new term is needed

 

[flykiller]

I've always thought of proto-Traveller as being the proto-Imperium setting.

it is. lbb1-3 has nobility, armies, navies, merchant marine, interstellar luxury travel, fraud, forgery, travellers' - everything but the named "imperium" entity. the 3i was a simple addition, probably the simplest possible.

If I design my own setting I am just playing Traveller

non-imperial traveller. wilderness traveller.

free traveller. free-form traveller.

or <insert name of your own campaign> traveller.

 

[creativehum]

it is. lbb1-3 has nobility, armies, navies, merchant marine, interstellar luxury travel, fraud, forgery, travellers' - everything but the named "imperium" entity. the 3i was a simple addition, probably the simplest possible.

As always, I'm perplexed by this logic.

You are saying that if I use all the elements you listed, but create a setting that is unrecognizale in detail to those who know Third Imperim cold, it would sill be the Third Imperium?

 

[creativehum]

Rob, quick question:

Does Proto-Traveller requires any reference to OTU elements?

I ask because S3 and early adventures clearly list things like The Vargr and the Zhodani.... So I had assumed PT is variations on those early elements, taken in whatever direction the referee wants to go.

But you seem to be saying that I can blow of any reference to OTU materials (which means any proper noun except the Psionics Institute and TAS) and it is still what you would call Proto-Traveller?

Not challenging you by the way. You started this thread and you keep tweaking it. Just want to grasp where you are coming from.

 

[kilemall]

I suppose I better say quick that in my long post about the British Empire and the Punjab, I wasn't saying "This is how you're supposed to do it" or that is the kind of setting one is supposed to build.

I was illustrating what I meant about having a setting (The British Empire in the Age of Sail) and a setting of play that is focused on a slice of geography (the Punjab), in the same way one can have an interstellar empire that is composed of countless subsectors, but focus the beginning of a campaign on only one or two subsectors.

In case anyone wanted to show up and tell me there are dozens of ways to set up a Traveller campaign. Which I agree with and is my point all the time.

I'll answer this instead of the big rambley post.

My point is not that you HAVE to map the whole darn thing, you probably DON'T want to and get narratives bogged down in library data entries the players wave in your face from 3 years ago.

I AM saying that it is of value to make SOME determinations about the nature of the galaxy outside the initial subsector adventure crib, and that the 'way things work' and 'how the galaxy really is' would be reveals as the players move on from the Space Punjab into Space Australia, Space Africa or Space Mideast. To use your metaphor, you decide what the British Empire IS and what it's business culture and concerns are so the Punjab is defined in context and what adventures may await dealing in the rest of the Space British Raj area or the larger neighborhood.

To use another metaphor, The Hobbit doesn't explain the big wide world of Middle Earth, just runs one hobbit through all manner of adventures in one slice of it, but lurking under it all is the story of the Lord Of The Rings and even behind that the stories of the First and Second Age in the Silmarillion.

Which made the Hobbit a deeper richer place even if Bilbo himself never made it to Rohan, Gondor, Moria or anywhere else.

And the little innocent magic burglar's ring, wasn't innocent after all and had a history.

 

[aramis]

Rob, quick question:

Does Proto-Traveller requires any reference to OTU elements?

I ask because S3 and early adventures clearly list things like The Vargr and the Zhodani.... So I had assumed PT is variations on those early elements, taken in whatever direction the referee wants to go.

But you seem to be saying that I can blow of any reference to OTU materials (which means any proper noun except the Psionics Institute and TAS) and it is still what you would call Proto-Traveller?

Not challenging you by the way. You started this thread and you keep tweaking it. Just want to grasp where you are coming from.

The consensus reached on the board here was that ProtoTraveller was essentially

Bk 1-3
Part of Bk 4 (the ironmongery... and maybe the Mass Combat system.)
Adventures 1-4
Supplements 1-4
And maybe a couple of the DA's...

Sup 3 as released has almost no setting data. 1 page library data, 1-2 paragraphs per subsector. No sector book I've seen rivals its sparseness. The original printing even left out the zone markings on the maps!

Note that there were other ways to acquire the Bk 4 weapon tables; Judges' Guild's GM screen included the usage tables (but not stat mods), Snapshot included full stats.

 

[creativehum]

I AM saying that it is of value to make SOME determinations about the nature of the galaxy outside the initial subsector adventure crib...

This is true and I absolutely agree with you.

Again, my "rambley" post began as a response to something you wrote, and I said upfront that I might have been misunderstanding something you wrote. Apparently I did. In either case, we are in agreement.

 

[robject]

As Wil/Aramis noted, the setting material in Proto-Traveller booklets is sparse to the point of being vague, relatively value-free, and easily ignored.

The baked-in assumptions of the game are the only difficult-to-change bits. Per flykiller: nobility, armies, navies, merchant marine, interstellar luxury travel, fraud, forgery, travellers', and so on, and of course the skill list in general.

 

[flykiller]

I AM saying that it is of value to make SOME determinations about the nature of the galaxy outside the initial subsector adventure crib, and that the 'way things work' and 'how the galaxy really is' would be reveals

true that. but then (heh) one determination leads to another, then another, then another, mostly ad hoc. and then the game can bog down in ad hoc determinations the players wave in your face from 3 years ago.

you can't pre-determine everything. but game expansion will go more smoothly if you have a pre-existing framework of coherent rational pre-decided determinations available.

like, oh, say, the third imperium ....

 

[creativehum]

EDITED TO ADD:

I was out walking dogs and finished this post after others had posted since my last post.

The consensus reached on the board here was that ProtoTraveller was essentially

Bk 1-3
Part of Bk 4 (the ironmongery... and maybe the Mass Combat system.)
Adventures 1-4
Supplements 1-4
And maybe a couple of the DA's...

Sup 3 as released has almost no setting data. 1 page library data, 1-2 paragraphs per subsector. No sector book I've seen rivals its sparseness. The original printing even left out the zone markings on the maps!

Note that there were other ways to acquire the Bk 4 weapon tables; Judges' Guild's GM screen included the usage tables (but not stat mods), Snapshot included full stats.

Hi Wil and Rob,

I am familiar with the working definition of Proto-Traveller (and loved it when I bumped into it here a few years ago).

You are correct about the sparseness of S3. And the library dat of the adventures is light as well. And yet... The Ancient, other races, details about the Imperium are placed, even if lightly, throughout these products. (As you point out, S3 is particularly light, however.)

But even with that sparseness, S3 establishes "The Imperium," of 11,000 worlds which has lasted over a thousand years. That's pretty specific! But it isn't a given. Using the rules of LBBs 1-3, a Referee could create a setting along the lines of Space Vikings which lacks a powerful centralized government. In this case the services of character generation would be local to specific planets or clusters of planets.

If we only look at LBBs 1-3 there are underlying assumptions, but the specifics of a setting are quite elastic. But the moment one introduces S3 and the adventures, lots of details start to get nailed down -- even if they are not as specific as what was to come after.

Given that Rob surprised me (and apparently Mike!) with his phrasing, so I just wanted to follow up.

If the point is "...to run Traveller with some setting other than the OTU..." my quick question would be, "Then introduce S3 and the Library Data from the Adventures at all?" Because the references, slight as they are, do start making a specific setting, which runs counter to "other than the OTU."

Simply using only LBBs 1-3 (with the aid, if one wishes of S1, S2, and S4 for additional open-ended resources and material), allows one to easily get to a setting other other than the OTU. (Certainly, that is my approach!) But it is exactly what LBBs 1-3 were built to do.

I'm not advocating for this, mind you. I simply want to grasp where Rob is drawing his line out of curiosity. (It's all arbitrary, after all, and everyone should be doing whatever they want with their own play no matter what!)

 

[flykiller]

The baked-in assumptions of the game are the only difficult-to-change bits.

the concept of nobility alone carries vast amounts of baggage, nothing sparse about it at all. and while the implemention may be vague (blood nobility? bureaucratic nobility? cleos nobility? imperial nobility? clan nobility?) the implementation cannot be permitted to be at all vague.

the concept of navy carries enormous baggage, nothing sparse about it at all. it implies large-scale and complex and well-developed industrial capabilities, large-scale and complex and well-developed social structures, and border disputes among multiple significant or a few very large polities who are equally capable.

etc.

 

[robject]

the concept of nobility alone carries vast amounts of baggage [and navy]

Yes. Traveller itself is perhaps a setting framework, something short of a setting?

It is therefore closely aligned with Traveller key concepts, embodied in the post: What is Traveller?

 

[creativehum]

true that. but then (heh) one determination leads to another, then another, then another, mostly ad hoc. and then the game can bog down in ad hoc determinations the players wave in your face from 3 years ago.

you can't pre-determine everything. but game expansion will go more smoothly if you have a pre-existing framework of coherent rational pre-decided determinations available.

like, oh, say, the third imperium ....

But this logic is absolutely specious in the face of reality. And by reality, I mean I can point to dozens of thread on this forum arguing about such matters as nobility, the military, process of law, relationship between the Imperium and its client states, and more.

Right now I can point to a thread which has gone on for pages in which people who are very invested in reading through the OTU material argue whether or not there is an Imperial Army, and, if there is an Imperial Army, what form it takes.

Let's think about that for a second: After forty years of development, highly informed people still cannot agree whether or not the central feature of the OTU (The Imeperium) has a standing army.

With that in mind, how is the OTU anything but as ad-hoc as a Referee couldn't slap together on his own? If there is a firm background that easily informs a Referee for play I certainly have not seen it on my time on this forum.

*****

But this is beside the point I have asked you about twice now:

You insist that's the Third Imperium is the only setting that could be build from the implied assumptions in Books 1-3. I find this a ridiculous proposition, of course. But I am fascinated. Twice now I have asked you to explain how you could reach this conclusion. You never responded a couple of months ago. And you don't seem to be responding now. But I am really curious. Especially because I might be misunderstanding you.

Are you really saying "Third Imperium" with its specific history, geography, politics, list of Emperors...? Or are you meaning something else?

I'd really love to know.

 

[flykiller]

Traveller itself is perhaps a setting framework, something short of a setting?

can't build a framework without a setting. while not stated outright, the traveller setting is implied, and the 3i is the least complicated and most direct expression of that setting.

 

[flykiller]

But his logic is absolutely species in the face of reality.

"specious".

 

[flykiller]

can't build a framework without a setting.

Tell that to the LBBs.

heh. the lbb's are a good illustration of an implied setting.

 

[flykiller]

I think it's more generic than that

one can make it "more generic" sure - it's a game, the referee says "I decree!" and it is thus - but unless you drop parts of lbb1-3 then I think you'll wind up with a 3i variant - maybe young, maybe decayed, maybe with cyber or something, but an interplanetary polity ruled by an absolute bureaucracy (the 3i) nonetheless.

probably the easiest variant would be to drop the "nobility" thing. be more like republican rome, sending the space legions out spqr for glory and fame. or like early america, pioneers in the wilderness. or something.