IMTU - In My Traveller Universe

IMTU - In My Traveller Universe...

So I started dusting off notes from my old Traveller games and posted some of them over at Citizens of the Imperium. Then I thought, well, since I'm running out of room on my current web pages, I could just dump 'em in Blogland and let 'em go from there. No copyright infringement is intended, all links are used without permission, and if it isn't your stuff it's my stuff and is copyrighted.

So, my Traveller RPG universe isn't quite canon.

Here are some examples:

1. Freely swipe ideas from CT, MT, TNE, T4, and GT . Use of both canon and non-canon sources out of chronological order and in the wrong context.

2. AI, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and transhumanism in high TL societies.

3. Droyne expansionism under an unknown leader coordinating activities across multiple sectors. While many Droyne are childlike and gentle, many more are violent, ruthless, and governed by strange emotions.

4. The 3I is officially run by the Emperor and Nobles in a sort of techno-feudal system, but the megacorps and other political and economical entities play an equally powerful role (sort of like the Dune Navigators telling Shaddam IV where to get off).

5. Other worlds and other critters. Psionic Shanthas of Jorune. Rumors of a strange planet called Tekumel far beyond the fringes of known space.

6. "Little Empires" that don't use Jump Drive and blast through space in their relativistic fusion rockets.

7. Pirates aren't terribly common, but are commonly terrible when they turn up, but smugglers abound and running Imperial blockades is a good career choice for many people.

8. The Solomani Rim War didn't go so badly for the Solomani, so they're still a distinct and very real threat to the 3I (Solomani on one side, Droyne/Zhodani on the other, and the K'Kree probing for weakness on the part of either the Solomani Confederation or the 3I).

9. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology (more of a bio-nanotech) - starting at TL 12, a player could opt for a "rebuild" and have stats lifted to at least half of the TL from which the treatment is obtained. From TL12 or so up, people don't get sick, don't scar, and generally live a heckuva long time. If someone wants to spend a bazillion credits, they can basically get whatever stats they want if they can get treatments at a sufficiently high tech level.

10. Nanotech can only work in controlled environments (handwave) because of Brownian Motion, the Uncertainty Principal and Arvaangulesh's Theorem. People that have it accept it as a given, kind of like nuclear power - it can do cool things for you, but its done in a big ominous building with lots of guards and safety protocols.

11. Medical technology quickly gets to the point at the higher TLs where you can basically survive anything IF you get treated in time. On backwater or low TL worlds, though, you're still out of luck. Sure, they can probably grow you a new leg in Glisten System, but you have to survive the fight and get there first.

12. Distribution of TL and Wealth - the Nobles IMTU own everything. The way they maintain their position is controlling wealth and technology and distributing/allowing it for their vassals depending on whim, favor, service, potential threat, etc. So, a bunch of scruffy Free Traders are less likely to be tolerated with a Regina-Biobuild Enhancement than would be a Noble Lady of Mora.

13. So there's this huge black market in stolen high TL goodies. People will pay a lot to live 500 years or more. People who want to stay in control will do a lot to make sure they don't have competition. Big risk in "tech running" to lower TL worlds, but a big payoff if it works.

14. But even if you get some TL 15 goodies to a TL 8 world, they don't always work (hand wave) forever. There's no infrastructure to maintain them. Some are designed to routinely self-destruct and stop operating if they're moved or if the light is the wrong wavelength. Most are just incomprehensible and no one knows how to recharge/reload.

15. No limits on how high a stat can get. Its fun to see someone role up an Aslan Munchkin Warrior only to end up with a Soc (or whatever the equivalent stat is) of 24 and therefore own most of a planet somewhere back home. Abdication isn't always healthy when the rest of the clan thinks you're either 1) dishonorable or 2) may come back and disrupt their plans to take over and redistribute the wealth. And a Hiver "psychologist" with Manipulation 18 is just a hoot to watch.

16. Jump-capable ships are usually smarter than their crews. A TL12+ ship is an NPC that can communicate through nanoengineered wireless systems with crew. Library data is transmitted directly to the crew or owner (or passengers if they have the right receivers and authorizations).

17. Chargen (that's Character Generation to the uninitiated out there) - one to three skill rolls per year, even with Basic CT. Starting the game with only Air/Raft - 1 and Cr100 kinda stinks. And your character can't die during Chargen.

18. Back to computers - AI is everywhere. High TL citizens have their own internal/intercranial Fire Walls.

19. Planetary systems can be crowded - the UPP is only for the primary or capital planet/object. A TL15 system can have trillions of inhabitants scattered from the star out to its Kuiper Belt.

13. STL (slower-than-light) space travellers are always popping up, many of whom are thousands of years behind the times due to relativistic time distortion.

14. Smart Weapons really are smart. Some work with the ship or grav carrier to make themselves smarter. You can snipe from orbit with a sufficiently advanced rifle.

ROBOTICS IMTU

1. People want machines that do what they're told, not machines that know, or think they know, what you want. Good example: Windows XP routinely thinks it knows what I want. Windows Vista is worse. I miss Windows 3.0, because it did what it was told. Simulated intelligence is bad enough!

2. AI at any TL is expense in terms of space and programming. Circuitry is big, and big is costly. And fragile. And prone to errors.

Depending on TL, robots are common, but not always in the Star Wars sense. Once you get to TL 7 or 8 or thereabouts (maybe earlier in some cases) you'll have industrial robots used in construction. TL 8 - 9 household and other "service" bots. Progressively higher TLs have progressively more robots in terms of number and ability unless there's some cultural bias for or against bots.

The vast vast majority of bots are high tech toys that do things sapients could do whether or not they themselves are sapient. Think of a "Furby" that can take clean your house or take care of your lawn. Most of these aren't intelligent - they just seem that way.

IMTU most vehicles, including starships, have some kind of autopilot function from TL 9 to A and up. Bigger is better, so many starships are fully intelligent beings in their own right, though mostly hampered by programming that forces (?) or limits their view of the universe to make them coworkers rather than rulers. The reason for this is that starships have to be big, and are already expensive, so adding the cost of a dispersed brain that makes up large sections of interior bulkheads is cost efficient. At the least it'll get you home. At the best it's a tour guide, chauffeur, and another member of the party.

My excuse for not having legions of robot soldiers - they're too expensive to shield from electromagnetic pulse and hack attacks. Plus MTU Imperium is very warlike (a feudal technocracy with the Megacorps and Nobles holding power distributed by the Emperor - think "Dune") and to deny any human the right to struggle for glory and honor is unthinkable philosophically. And it's cheaper financially. AI Warbots would be tank sized and vulnerable to electronic lobotomies. A barbarian trained to wear and equipped with a Combat Environment Suit is a lot cheaper.

J-Brains (Jupiter Brains), stellar brains, etc. - I just don't worry about them. No one needs that kind of processing power except the surviving Ancients, and they're not talking. When such minds have arisen, the plug has been pulled.

So, basically, robots are everywhere, but mostly in supporting roles due to expense and size.

Expense - think of it from the point of view of some guy from the Bronze Age while their horses are trying to pull a giant monolith. "Stop! You're killing the horses! Use slaves instead! They're cheaper!" And easier to brainwash IMTU.

And on a side note, the vast majority of Imperial troops are recruited from "barbarian" worlds (anyone TL8 or lower). They're easier to entice with high tech goodies and massively increased pay (i.e. recruit and train a thousand TL3 barbarians and equipment them with TL12 equipment, but pay them a TL6 salary). Kill all you want - we'll breed more! You don't need factories to get barbarians - you just need huts. Sure, you can make robots faster, but there are a lot more barbarian planets than robot warrior factories. And it's easier to smartNuke a factory than a planet...

On the topic of size - AIs are everywhere IMTU at TL10 and up. Most are very specialized and might more accurately be called "Simulated Intelligence." safetyNet is a good example. It's a common "AI" around starports. It watches for accidents (traffic, industrial, cargobot runs over someone, ship is leaking coolant, etc.) and calls them in to the local authorities (i.e. DownPort Management, or portNet). You can talk to it, and it can carry on a quite erudite conversation as long as you talk about DownPort things and safetyNet. Ask it about civilNet and it will continue talking.

It has just opened a channel to civilNet so it can relay information to you about local JTAS chapters or where to find a good restaurant or how to get to the Chirper Reserve. It happens so seamlessly and quickly that human minds never notice.

Kind of like how so many people use wireless phones, high speed internet, and internal combustion engines without a clue of how they operate. Once you're born into it, it becomes as much of the background as a tree or clouds.

Like robots. High tech societies (A and above) just accept them as a given.

Look at it this way - Sometime in the next 20 years at the latest, keyboards and hard drives as we recognize them today will have disappeared. Come back in 100 years and they'll be as out of date as chariots and spears. Come back in 1000 years and they might not be recognized as useful tools. They'd be as out of date at flint knives and mammoth hunting.

In terms of implants, everyone TL A and up uses them. Mostly they are non-invasive (i.e. contact lenses with HUD, tiny devices that adhere to the skin behind your ear and blend in). People can always be in touch with their local 'net, shipNet, fleetNet, etc. Its like the internet without a keyboard using highly advanced and improved wireless technology.

Weapon implants are usually highly specialized situations. At worst you're owned by the guys that installed them. At best you're ostracized by society at large.

So, here's an example. High Tech Cyber Warrior Dude lands on a TL 14 planet and takes a stroll through the DownPort. Everyone starts to call in reports of a heavily armed individual whether or not the weapons are allowed by law and whether or not the Cyber Warrior is behaving suspiciously or not. Local safetyNet nodes (the same light posts and hidden Eyes that call in traffic accidents) make the same calls. Cyber Warrior's onboard circuits begin to receive incoming messages and attempts at interrogation or outright disconnection by safetyNet AIs and concerned citizens. Word goes out on civilNet that a high tech "barbarian" is at the DownPort. Kids start trying to hack his systems just to see how closely his offworld systems resemble their own. Next thing you know, he's being returned to his ship "for his own protection". Shoot the place up? Cyber Warrior could do that, and do a good job. So could a guy with an ACR or PGMP. Eventually, however, whatever local equivalent of law enforcement exists is going to arrive in force and shut things down (usually a sniper or an EMP grenade or both). End result: it's never a good idea to run around scaring folks in public with obvious military hardware.

The other way to discourage it is not to offer military implants. Want one? Join the Army. What? You were mustered out? Then they kept their implant. Buy one on the Black Market? Sure. Now find a surgeon. How do you know the surgeon is trustworthy or even a surgeon? Now get it programmed and calibrated. Oh, you need an engineer and a bioengineer for that. Join the Army. What? You were kicked out? etc etc You could build an entire campaign about some guy trying to get military implants.

Why does this help?

I don't have time to educate Traveller newbies. Someone needs to be the Voice of the Referee and Provide Guidance. shipNet, civilNet and libraryNet do that quite effectively. It's nothing their characters couldn't find out by accessing the TAS databases - in fact, it's the same information. All you have to do is make the connection instead of walking across town. We do the same thing all the time now. Our descendants will do it even more often and more efficiently. When or if someone else joins the game, even if it's one of the Old Gang for a single session, it'll be the same for them. Which is a long winded way of saying, I don't have the time to explain everything to the players, so they can learn as they go as long as they're in civilized areas. When they're on some backwater world, they still have shipNet and the last library it downloaded before hitting the Jump Point.

And on biotech IMTU... I extend human modifications to biological enhancements. At a minimum, from TL A and up, people get sick less often and live far longer (nanotech, biotech, genetic engineering and bionanotech).

An Example:

Ms Noble is a Noble from a TL 15 world. As such, she's a child of privilege and has never known sickness or significant injury. She's never seen many old or disabled people. Because the world is TL 15, there are a wide variety of bodyMods that could have been chosen by her parents.

Str, Dex, End are generated by 1D6+6, Int by 1D6+8, Edu is F due to the natural of the high tech civilization. Soc (since the player wanted a noble) is base A.

A "Marduk" (warrior culture on the same world): Str, Dex, End are generated by 1D6+10. Everything else as above, except Soc is 2D6.

Does this result in powerful characters? I guess so, in the vague sense. You can have a Traveller SpaceHound with a profile of FFFFFF and he/she/it can still be taken out by a PGMP, a .50 caliber sniper, heck, a 9mm to the head, or a horde of savages with TL1 spears. It's just a way to demonstrating that high TL worlds and Nobles have it better than everyone else. Even if a bunch of "Ultras" with FFFFFF profiles take off a'piratin' on the Spinward Main, eventually someone with a meson spine mount is going to wreck their day after they've terrorized enough locals to really hack off the local Nobles and MegaCorps.

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying "Do what you think is best, and let the Imperium take care of the rest."

Religionnnn innnnnn Spaaaaace!

1. Solomani religions - some of the old ones are around and are still recognizable. Others are substantially altered (similar to the religions described in the Dune novels). Some new ones are localized and mostly ignored by everyone else. And there's the Solomani Hypothesis which some folks take as a sort of religion.

2. Zhodani - Treat religion as a "bad idea". Pray, and the Thought Police take you away and make you all better.

3. Vilani - More like the Solomani religions, but "odd". I always had this idea of a pantheistic religion with huge temples and gigantic statues that looked oddly like giant robots (i.e. the Ancient warmachines that ravaged ancient Vland). Lots of incense and hours of weird chants and really nasty sacred food that tastes like soured vegetable oil strained through a dirty sock and coated with armpit.

4. Droyne - No translatable concept. The coynes are a psionic focus that is used because, well, it's been used for 20,000 odd years. They're too practical, and mostly run on instinct or autopilot. As a species they don't spend any time on anything that's not directly related to their roles in their communities. They don't live long enough to wonder about things. If you have time to wonder about things, you're ready to commit ritual suicide and make room for the next bunch of hatchlings.

5. Aslan - Ancestor worship. Sort of. Doesn't translate well. More like long-running fan clubs. I like the idea of Aslan "worshipping" the possession of territory (males) or intellectual property (females).

6. Vargr - 20,000 worlds with 2,000,000 religions at least. Or ideologies that resemble religion. Sometimes. Until some guy with a Charisma of B comes up with something else to do in their free time. Too flighty for organized belief systems. The Church of the Chosen Ones is described in canon material, but doesn't seem to be terribly widespread.

7. Daryen - a sort of religion based on an odd little droyne-looking god with big eyes, like an ancestral memory of their time in the Orchards.

8. Hivers - no concept of religion. They've devoted thousands of years trying to figure out what it means, but have made no progress other than to build a huge library of the beliefs of others. The ultimate secular pragmatists.

9. K'Kree - CRUSH THE G'NAAK BENEATH YOUR HOOVES! SLAY THEM! DRIVE THEM INTO THE GREATER DARK, THAT THEY MAY PERISH OF STARVATION AND LONELINESS! But no religion. Its just the way they are. The imperative to kill G'naak via interstellar genocide is no more unusual to them than being curious is to a human. Its just an emotion that they experience in place of, say, happiness. Love is being with other K'Kree. Pride is biting another K'Kree until it abandons its retinue and flees away to the outer steppes.

Heck, there are thousands of worlds that have been developing in the TU for thousands of years. There could be any number of religions, some of which would resemble those we know in the real world, others that would be pretty much incomprehensible.

10. If you really want to have fun, let your players land on a planet of Gozer worshippers (i.e. Ghostbusters). You don't have to actually have ghosts or demonic canine accountants, or anything like that. But you could still have a lot of fun working up the society that developed around the concept of waiting for the Destructor and protecting hereditary lineages of Gatekeepers and Keymasters...

But that's sorta my take on it. With the right gaming group and a good story, religion could play a central and vital role in a Traveller game. On the other hand, if one's interest is running a Jump-2 tramp freighter along the Spinward Main, the closest thing you'll come to religion is the colorful language used by the engineer when the drive starts throwing off sparks halfway through the jump...

IMTU, religion as we would understand it, is a peculiarly human concept. The Vargr are a little more like Humaniti, so maybe they have concepts that are closer to "religion" in their cultures. The Aslan are a little further removed, so maybe they have beliefs/customs/behaviors/ideas that seem a ~little~ bit like religion, but not exactly. Droyne, Hiver and K'Kree are so far removed from Humaniti biologically and behaviorally that they may appear to engage in religious beliefs, but they really aren't. They're expressing their own alien ideas. Even more "alien" critters, like the various hot/cold worlders and the floating inhabitants of gas giants would probably have even less in common with Humaniti, and be pretty much incomprehensible.

That doesn't exactly lend itself to easy roleplay, especially for someone that wants to play an alien, but it makes sense to me.

Differences in religious beliefs between species...

A dog thinks, "Hey, these folks feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me ... They must be gods!"

A cat thinks, "Hey, these folks feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me ... I must be a god!"

Very different conclusions from the same data set.