Traveller Is 45 Years Old Today!

Traveller was first created by Marc Miller in 1977, published as a box containing three black, digest-sized books by Game Designer's Workshop. The game was the first to use a lifepath system for character creation (one in which, famously, characters could die before play even began!) These days, the game is published by Mongoose Publishing.

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[payn]

In terms of piracy the problem for a pirate in the Traveller is that you HAVE to operate close to your base. I mean, suppose you have a 'hot' ship, Jump 3! OK, you can maybe cover several systems, but you constantly need to refuel, certainly after every jump. You can do it way out the back of beyond at some smelly gas giant, but the fact is, the Navy is going to pretty soon know that your base is in a certain volume of space. If its extensive enough to service ships, then there must be SOME way to supply it, so its location cannot remain perfectly hidden.

So, I'd posit that pirates may exist in areas where there is 'red' territory within Jump 2 or so such that the Navy can't go there. They KNOW where the pirates are, certainly within a small region of space, but some other empire, aliens, whatever prevents them from acting on that information. Of course most merchants will just NOT GO THERE! Or they will stick to a few very heavily defended jump points close in to destination worlds.

Basically pirates are going to be stuck going for free traders that are dumb/desperate enough to work routes out in known dangerous space away from patrols and such. Its not much of a living.

Contrast this with the Age of Pirates situation back in the 17th-18th Centuries. A sailing ship of the late 18th Century could easily cross entire oceans without needing to make stops, and there were MANY places to hide and resupply. A ship crew could basically 'live off the land' for years at a time, travel to various parts of the ocean with little chance of being spotted, and then strike. The oceans were also a legal no-man's-land where ships of many competing polities freely sailed. Governments could simply issue letters of Marque & Reprisal to any old Joe with a boat, and they could pretty much go where they wanted. There WERE a few 'pirate bases' in various places at various times and that worked because you could slip out, sail far away from any patrolling warships, and take up your trade.

Piracy actually seems pretty non-viable in the Traveller milieu for basic technological reasons, really. I'm sure it would exist, to a degree, and that might be all that matters for an RPG, but I doubt it would be very prevalent.

This is how Pirates of Drinax works. Its a backwater buffer space (Trojan Reach) between empires. Theev is basically Nassau.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is how Pirates of Drinax works. Its a backwater buffer space (Trojan Reach) between empires. Theev is basically Nassau.

Right, but if you think about it, what are the pirates based there going to do? Sure, they can jump to a bazillion locations that are basically out in the middle of noplace. You could simply jump your ship to some empty system, power down most of your systems and probably lurk for YEARS, maybe CENTURIES, nobody will ever find you. OTOH if you jump into a system where there is 'prey' it must be pretty close to Drinax, like no more than Jump 2 or 3 away. The Navy surely heavily patrols all trade routes in that relatively small volume of their space.

One of the main differences with the 'age of pirates' is just the technical problem. A 17th Century sailing ship could be repaired by the crew, it was just wood, pitch, canvas, and rope. Anyplace with fresh water and anchorage was a decent base, and many of those were far off the beaten path, so patrolling them all was impossible, and then you could sail 3000 miles to find some ship to take.

For piracy to flourish like that in a Traveller starship tech milieu is unlikely. You could alter things, say that 'jump 1' is 20 light years or something. Or just posit some other way for hyperdrive to work. Its a different universe though. I always thought that Marc really insufficiently considered the full implications of the Traveller 'drive system' in terms of economics and such too. Its hard to understand why an Imperium would even exist.

 

[payn]

Right, but if you think about it, what are the pirates based there going to do? Sure, they can jump to a bazillion locations that are basically out in the middle of noplace. You could simply jump your ship to some empty system, power down most of your systems and probably lurk for YEARS, maybe CENTURIES, nobody will ever find you. OTOH if you jump into a system where there is 'prey' it must be pretty close to Drinax, like no more than Jump 2 or 3 away. The Navy surely heavily patrols all trade routes in that relatively small volume of their space.

One of the main differences with the 'age of pirates' is just the technical problem. A 17th Century sailing ship could be repaired by the crew, it was just wood, pitch, canvas, and rope. Anyplace with fresh water and anchorage was a decent base, and many of those were far off the beaten path, so patrolling them all was impossible, and then you could sail 3000 miles to find some ship to take.

For piracy to flourish like that in a Traveller starship tech milieu is unlikely. You could alter things, say that 'jump 1' is 20 light years or something. Or just posit some other way for hyperdrive to work. Its a different universe though. I always thought that Marc really insufficiently considered the full implications of the Traveller 'drive system' in terms of economics and such too. Its hard to understand why an Imperium would even exist.

My understanding is that they built networks throughout the Trojan Reach. You jump out to a certain trade route area and off load cargo to smugglers after you take a prize or two. Then, head home and reorganize. Some megacorps are even in on it for insurance scams and sell info to pirates. The better and bigger ones actually have fleets, making it more difficult for hunters and navies.

It's different than in the Imperium, which has a navy and patrols. The Trojan Reach is all backwaters with many different local govts, many which are too lean to even effectively combat piracy. Since trade is so lucrative between empires (Imperium, Hierate, Florian League) there is always tempting targets but not enough resources to protect them. So, megacorps and govts hire pirate hunters to solve the issue or petition the Imperium to send naval patrols if the problem is that out of hand.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

My understanding is that they built networks throughout the Trojan Reach. You jump out to a certain trade route area and off load cargo to smugglers after you take a prize or two. Then, head home and reorganize. Some megacorps are even in on it for insurance scams and sell info to pirates. The better and bigger ones actually have fleets, making it more difficult for hunters and navies.

It's different than in the Imperium, which has a navy and patrols. The Trojan Reach is all backwaters with many different local govts, many which are too lean to even effectively combat piracy. Since trade is so lucrative between empires (Imperium, Hierate, Florian League) there is always tempting targets but not enough resources to protect them. So, megacorps and govts hire pirate hunters to solve the issue or petition the Imperium to send naval patrols if the problem is that out of hand.

Yeah, the whole "trade between empires is so lucrative" part was also a bit of a puzzler. I mean, LOCAL trade? I can see some of that, given that it is economically feasible to build ships that can carry it out with what seemed like numbers that sounded reasonable. The problem is, if you have 1000's of worlds, millions really if you count all the obscure little corners of the Imperium, surely even within a few parsecs of your world there will be one that can supply the sort of goods you want. Think of trade back in the old times on Earth. It was pretty much based on the fact that there were unique resources you could only obtain by going to some other region to get them. At TL10+ how feasible does that really seem? I mean, OK, some few luxury goods and cultural artifacts might trade somewhat more widely, but with that kind of tech most things can be made locally, or sourced in a nearby system. Its hard to imagine what would hold together a 'jump 2000' empire!

I mean, as a fun imaginary concept its fine. There are just things like piracy and a lot of the Imperial politics and such that make zero sense. Its not like Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. make even as much sense as Traveller's OTU anyway.

 

[pemerton]

Honestly, back in the day when I regularly ran Traveller my description of things was that the 'nobility' were hereditary planetary leaders and/or families that had been rewarded with Imperial holdings back in the day. The Empire itself we imagined on a much smaller scale, like a few hundred inhabited systems or something.

We haven't worried about how big the Imperium is. Our starmaps have grown to two or three dozen worlds, and we know the Imperium is bigger than that!

That was also back in the day, there wasn't any Book 5 and TCS. Azhanti High Lightning was basically as big as ships get. I always liked that interpretation of the milieu better, it means that indeed PCs can assume large roles in society, potentially.

I've used the Book 2 rules to design the Imperial Dreadnaught and Imperial Carrier, both of which the PCs have seen in action - in an Imperial assault on a psionically-inclined world.

The only time I've used the Book 5 rules is to help adapt a 70,000 ton outstation from a Spacemaster module, mainly as an experiment to see what it would look like (but it does sit in the starmap, on the edge of the galactic rift). It's hard to see how it makes economic sense, but I'm happy to squint a bit and let it live.

Piracy actually seems pretty non-viable in the Traveller milieu for basic technological reasons, really. I'm sure it would exist, to a degree, and that might be all that matters for an RPG, but I doubt it would be very prevalent.

I've looked at placing/using pirates in our game - one of the PCs is a (ex-)pirate - and I've had this same thought. It's not clear how they're viable, as everyone who cares can work out where they live.

The starship encounter chart that I use combines the 1977 and 1981 charts (assuming a roughly 50/50 split across them). The chance of encountering a pirate vessel in a system with a Class A to D or Class X starport is 1 in 12; in a system with a Class E starport it's 1 in 18. (Why the difference for Class E systems? Don't ask me, I'm just implementing what GDW sold me!)

Class X system pirates are, presumably, like the pirates of old(e), living rough, making their own repairs, etc. They must jump into other better-travelled systems, ravage, and return. Why are they not hunted down? And what do they spend their ill-gotten gains on? Who knows!?

But the Class A system pirates surely are operating in some sort of connivance with local authorities/power-brokers. Nothing else makes sense! That does fit with the overall cynical perspective the game takes on authority. It does raise the question, What is the Imperium even for? But given that question has no answer even if we ignore the pirates thing, I don't regard the pirates as making it any worse!

 

[Celebrim]

I don't think I would ever run a Traveller game, but I really admire the rules.

Just the fact that it had a character burner as it's CharGen method makes it for me a Hall of Fame type game. I'm continually amazed at how sophisticated some of the concepts of the very early RPGs turned out to be. We often saw the warts of them back in the day and we often had really naive and wrong ideas how to make them better, but now 40 years on I still see the warts but the creativity and the clarity in some of the concepts amaze me.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Oh, definitely. But at the time my gaming group didn't have the language to conceptualize any of that. No Demon Princes, No Deathworld, not even Lensmen. What we knew of Sci-fi was limited, and crept into our Traveller games despite the fact that the game itself was absolutely soaking in those older influences.

Maybe. I must have gone to see Star Wars right about the time I started playing Traveller, but I don't recall any mixing of genre conventions. Traveller is definitely Norton, Harrison, Asimov. While the PCs are very often scoundrels of one sort or another, I never got a Star Wars sort of feel from it. For one thing its darn hard to outrun trouble in Traveller. You shoot it out with a revenue cutter and your ship registration and probably your captain's name, etc. are all going out in all directions at Jump 6... You can forget all those nice starport refueling stops and routine maintenance now! Logically its a bit hard to see too many 'pirate bases' and such lasting long, nuclear tipped missiles are a bitch, and the Navy is happy to lob a few at you! So, the milieu tends to be a bit less 'anything goes' than Star Wars, where you can just jump to any random one of a billion worlds by next Tuesday.

Of course the authors of Spinward Marches did manage to create various grey areas and whatnot, though they mainly exist more due to "if we go mess with those people in that system the Zhodani will get pissed." or "Its in Hiver space, technically..." vs "the Navy cannot find us here."

The other element with Traveller is, the PCs are SMALL. You don't really have plots that involve things like battling the Third Imperium to decide the detiny of Man. Its more like grubbing around on one of the 5 million planets in the Empire trying to make some money to pay rent on your Free Trader. It would take at least a year to reach the Imperial capital, and probably involve 100's of sessions of play, so really the Empire is a completely abstract concept in practice.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

We haven't worried about how big the Imperium is. Our starmaps have grown to two or three dozen worlds, and we know the Imperium is bigger than that!


I've used the Book 2 rules to design the Imperial Dreadnaught and Imperial Carrier, both of which the PCs have seen in action - in an Imperial assault on a psionically-inclined world.

The only time I've used the Book 5 rules is to help adapt a 70,000 ton outstation from a Spacemaster module, mainly as an experiment to see what it would look like (but it does sit in the starmap, on the edge of the galactic rift). It's hard to see how it makes economic sense, but I'm happy to squint a bit and let it live.


I've looked at placing/using pirates in our game - one of the PCs is a (ex-)pirate - and I've had this same thought. It's not clear how they're viable, as everyone who cares can work out where they live.

The starship encounter chart that I use combines the 1977 and 1981 charts (assuming a roughly 50/50 split across them). The chance of encountering a pirate vessel in a system with a Class A to D or Class X starport is 1 in 12; in a system with a Class E starport it's 1 in 18. (Why the difference for Class E systems? Don't ask me, I'm just implementing what GDW sold me!)

Class X system pirates are, presumably, like the pirates of old(e), living rough, making their own repairs, etc. They must jump into other better-travelled systems, ravage, and return. Why are they not hunted down? And what do they spend their ill-gotten gains on? Who knows!?

But the Class A system pirates surely are operating in some sort of connivance with local authorities/power-brokers. Nothing else makes sense! That does fit with the overall cynical perspective the game takes on authority. It does raise the question, What is the Imperium even for? But given that question has no answer even if we ignore the pirates thing, I don't regard the pirates as making it any worse!

LOL, yeah. So, my possible answer is just that there really is no Imperial authority. The 'empire' is just basically a bunch of trade routes and bases and such that bring prestige goods, and maybe a few bulk goods that happen to be particularly amenable to importing, to the Home World. It maintains some 'Imperial Navy' for that purpose, and maybe enforce a certain degree of peace, order, and law within limited areas. Outside of that its just local polities at the system and multi-system level that do whatever they want. Maybe some are nominal subject to the 'Emporer' (IE they are ruled by Imperial nobles), but much of it is not. The Empire really can't get involved. So pirates and such, as long as they don't mess with Imperial trade, can exist, they are just funded by/ignored by the next system over.

I think you would want to develop more sensible subsystems though with that in mind. Like class A and B starports represent points of Imperial interest, and obviously naval bases and scout bases would be focused on patrolling and enforcing. You'd actually deal with Imperials on a pretty rare basis. So, encounters at, say, C and lower starports would tend to be rather different, purely local stuff. That's where you'd be likely to run into the majority of your 'scum and villainy', particularly in certain regions where stronger local governments are unable or unwilling to exercise authority.

That seems to be sort of how the Imperial model in OTU was originally envisaged, I think. It just seems like over time the Third Imperium got more and more authoritative. Its also why being SS12+ doesn't necessarily get you THAT much, you may be Imperial high status, but the locals could care less, or vice versa.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I don't think I would ever run a Traveller game, but I really admire the rules.

Just the fact that it had a character burner as it's CharGen method makes it for me a Hall of Fame type game. I'm continually amazed at how sophisticated some of the concepts of the very early RPGs turned out to be. We often saw the warts of them back in the day and we often had really naive and wrong ideas how to make them better, but now 40 years on I still see the warts but the creativity and the clarity in some of the concepts amaze me.

It is a pretty clearly designed game. There were some other really sophisticated games out there in the mid-70s. I'm trying to recall the name of the game, where your 'character' is basically a starship. It was a very strange and fairly obscure game, lol. There was some really crazy stuff back then, and you'd be surprised how little the innovations of the last 20 years have added to what was tried back then! A lot of it just didn't stick the first time around...

 

[aramis erak]

Big lists like this are the main thing that keeps me from even trying to get into Traveller. It always seems like something you'd have started with 30 years ago to have any kind of clue what's going on.

To be honest, if you're looking at it as a new-to-Traveller experienced-rpg player, don't even worry about the piles of prior edition. Pick an edition, generate a subsector, have players generate characters, and go. Just use the assumption you're on or near the border of an imperium at least 60 hexes across.