"Nonsense, my good chap. Of course one can't simply borrow a marine platoon. No, no, no. I am merely passing on to the good captain here a request by the newly formed system government for his troops to perform a series of integration and public relations training exercises with their new militia. The new system government is a good supporter of the Imperial Navy and Marine Corps, after all. Eh, what?"

On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 9:03 PM, John Groth <aurictech@cox.net> wrote:

Knapp wrote:

What is the moral to the story? What do you guys think are typical
Traveller morals that you have read or played? Which ones make the best
stories or games? Why?

Here is the moral that I have drawn from Traveller (specifically, from a campaign in which one of my two characters commanded a Rapid Interface regiment in the Spinward Marches, with the other being the Regimental S-2), in the form of a *very* short catechism:

Q: What is our first duty?

A: To serve the Imperium.

Q: And how are we to discharge that duty?

A: As we see fit.

I got something very close to that once, without the player actually putting it into so many words. One of the PCs was playing the heir to an Imperial Barony. Although he didn't have any formal governmental authority (or else he couldn't have been part of a "standard" adventuring party), his player roleplayed his extremely-high social standing with . . . substantial verve. I was using the old Beltstrike setting and this player decided to help the independent belters in Bowman set up a system government. Of course, Ling Standard Products objected to this plan. So the player asked the captain of an IN cruiser that happened to pass through the system to dinner one evening . . . and asked to "borrow" a platoon of marines and a couple of dropships, to provide increased security for the planned Constitutional Convention.

Another player (one new to both our group and to Traveller in general) laughed at loud at hearing this and scoffed, "Yeah. Right. He can't do that. Nobody can 'borrow' Marines."

I looked over at him and replied, "Well, actually, *he* can."

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice." - Bill Cosby

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester