Traveller Sandbox

Life was too busy for too long and I completely lost my momentum with the Magic World write-ups. I hope to continue them in the autumn, but for now... have some more Traveller.

My Traveller Universe — or is it?

My first Traveller set came from a secondhand bookshop, some time in 1993/4 (I was at uni). It was the 1981 box set (the 3 LBBs) with a copy of Book 4: Mercenary, Double Adventure 3: Death Station / The Argon Gambit, and a photocopy of a White Dwarf article about Imperial Credits. I'd seen a handful of articles and ads in Dragon, and a few Megatraveller articles in the four issues of Challenge I'd gotten my hands on, but that's it.

My first adventures (solitaire, of course) were therefore set in my very own approximation of the Third Imperium setting. I rolled up a subsector, which I decided was part of the Spinward Marches (I knew the name but little else), and my newly-mustered out PCs set about exploring it in a scout ship. For the most part, the grand and sweeping aspects of the setting didn't matter much, but some things did need this context. Just about anything I needed I cribbed from either Asimov's Foundation (I'd read the first 3 books) or Dune (also the first three books, but primarily the David Lynch film).

In my early peregrinations through the internet I chanced upon some treasure troves of information in the form of fan-made Amber Zones and plain-text versions of the Library Data supplements typed out in full (this was at my uni's computer lab). Over the years I acquired a lot more Traveller books, and read a lot about the Official Traveller Universe (OTU), and played all my Traveller games (solo & group) there.

Some time ago I acquired physical copies of the two main German Traveller books from the 80s, The Regelbuch (Rulebook: The Traveller Book mixed with Starter Traveller) and Buch II, ITALSöldner, Scouts und Handelsprinzen (Mercenaries, Scouts and Merchant Princes, comprising Books 4-7, Special Supplements 1&2, plus the combat system from Azhanti High Lightning). I, of course, rolled up a pile of characters and a subsector or two and played out some solo adventures. The notes for these are all in German, as it seemed like a good way to practice my composition. For the adventures, I reverted to my old way of doing things, partly out of nostalgia, but partly to keep me from constantly looking up official translations of OTU concepts. And a lot of it I just made up as I went.

The first campaign set up a lot of what followed. After I rolled up the first subsector, I arbitrarily grouped systems together into polities and put amber zones at the sites where interstellar conflicts flared up. I was only using Buch I (so, LBB Books 1-3), so the setting was necessarily a 'small ship' universe. Even my naval campaign used Book 2 ships with High Guard PCs.

The technological basis uses standard LBB conventions. Socially, there is a distant Imperium with its concomitant nobility, but out on the fringes local stellar 'nations' hold sway. Very rarely the great ships of the emperor make an appearance -- these probably should use High Guard rules & sizes. No psionics or sentient aliens, but ruins of dead alien civilisations have been discovered elsewhere in space.

For tradition's sake as much as anything else, I'm using the 365-day Imperial calendar. To go with the German rules, I wanted the lingua franca to be futuristic space German, so the common tongue is called Galaktisch. Many people speak languages local to their world and/or ethnic enclave. Many more people speak only Galaktisch, though with a variety of local accents.

There is no subsector/sector-wide nobility outside the faraway Imperial core as the holdings are spread too thin. On the fringes, the ruler of a stellar 'nation' is usually the Fürst/Fürstin (lit. Prince/Princess, SOC F). Nobles of lesser rank administer worlds or parts of worlds. The 'nations' are therefore mostly principalities (in the literal sense of being ruled by a prince). They take their names from the ruler's Noble House, which in turn takes its name from / lends its name to the ruler's homeworld.

My Sandbox

My sandbox is in an (as yet un-named) sector on the coreward margin of the Imperium. The surrounding subsectors are sparely populated, and there are no systems within J-5 on any side (in case I want to do any deep space exploration adventures). It isn't quite the OTU's Island subsectors, but it is similarly self-contained. (I put the UWP data on a page here, mostly for my own easy reference. It won't be on the test.)

Internal politics are byzantine in their complexity, with some rulers being little more than figureheads. Because most of the noble houses and/or polities are in conflict with one another if not currently at war, a Sternenrat (Stellar Council) was founded on Ehembert, a pleasant (if dry) neutral planet. Most politicking takes place there; violence is strictly prohibited, though duelling is occasionally tolerated, and a formal Code Duello assures that duels may not be used as ersatz assassinations.

Situated at J-3 from Ehembert and J-2 from Gavf (an important, unaligned industrial world) is Wegpunkt (Waypoint), a space station orbiting a large brown dwarf. Wegpunkt exists both as a means of allowing governmental ships from the trailing polities to reach Ehembert without crossing through hostile territory and giving J-2 merchant ships a safe corridor through unaligned systems running Coreward to Rimward. The station contains a fuel refinery and a fleet of shuttles specially designed for skimming the turbulent atmosphere of the brown dwarf.

As usual, I got some very strong ideas about the setting and individual worlds as I was rolling it all up, but a lot of it is just basic data waiting for my adventurers to show up before I detail anything; and rather than witter on about the minutia of my setting, I will wait until my PCs' adventures make it important to write out any additional Library Data.

But I do have a few rules-related items of note, mostly concerning Law Levels.

The first is about bladed weapons. Marines training with the cutlass is embedded too deeply in Traveller's DNA to reject, so I'm keeping that in MTU. Nobles, however --and those who would be nobles, such naval officers especially-- always duel with daggers (like in Dune). A duel between nobles who are former marines may be fought with cutlasses at the challenged party's request. As the dagger is a symbol of nobility, nobles treat Law Level as [SOC-10] points lower for purposes of carrying bladed weapons. Thus, a Fürstin (SOC 15) would still be allowed to wear her dagger on a planet of LL 13, but no one else would. If she were an ex-marine as well, she could wear a cutlass on a planet of LL 12, but still would not be allowed any firearms.

The second item is that I increased a bunch of the Law Levels for various planets where the standard world creation procedure left them too low for my tastes. I've always thought that corporate worlds (Government type 1) should have much higher LLs than the 2D6-6 the rules prescribe. I left at least one as rolled, with LL 0 -- and made it a Red Zone due to whatever catastrophe caused such a breakdown. I similarly increased the LL of all the vacuum, insidious, and corrosive atmospheres to at least 7, as I always found it hard to justify letting people run round sealed environments with rifles slung on their shoulders (this eminently sensible idea actually comes from Star Frontiers).

Also, starports are owned by the planet they are built on/over, and have the same LL, with a minimum of 7 for orbital facilities. There's no extrality barrier, just customs checkpoints.

Adventures

Ultimately, my little setting is not noticably different to the OTU, and not at all different in the way I run my adventures. If I hadn't mentioned it, it would just seem like pocket empires or Imperial client states off in some far-flung sector. Its isolation makes it easier to treat as a self-contained unit, and the lack of non-imperial civilisations means everything has a certain inward focus. The adventure that shall follow was another completely random start, but more of that anon.