On Sat, 15 Aug 2026 01:49:10 -0700, Dom Mooney - dom.mooney at gmail.com
(via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote to Freelance Traveller:

>I wrote this a while ago for some new players who’d never experienced the
>Charted Space setting (or Traveller for that matter). Just tidied it up to
>share. Is there anything you’d add to this?
>
># ASSUMPTIONS IN TRAVELLER
>
>Traveller’s setting - Charted Space - is based upon the kind of SF
>pioneered by Isaac Azimov in the Foundation trilogy, Andre Norton in the

Asimov

>Solar Queen books, EC Tubb and the Dumarest saga with lashings of Star Wars
>(which was released the same year), Herbert, Heinlein, and many more. The
>setting has subtly developed as new and different waves of science fiction
>have washed over it.
>
>It is space opera with a veneer of hard SF.
>
>It is not the only setting that you can use; the tools in the game are
>quite flexible, as has been shown with 2300AD, Judge Dredd, and the
>forthcoming games of Pioneer and Dark Conspiracy. However, it is the
>default.
>
>The key features of the setting are:
>
>## 1) FTL - Faster than Light - travel
>
>This uses the 'Jump Drive'. Fueled with liquid hydrogen, the jumpdrive
>sends a ship into jumpspace, where it cannot be contacted. The ship stays
>in jump until it reaches the exit point plotted or it intersects with a
>large mass. A jump always takes a similar time; 168h +/- 10% (a week).
>
>Jump drives are rated with a number. This represents the maximum number of
>parsecs a ship can travel in a single jump. A parsec is 3.27 light years.
>
>Jumping near gravitational masses can cause a catastrophic mis-jump. Ships
>fail to emerge from jumpspace, or emerge many parsecs away from their
>destination, and sometimes in the future. The ship is surrounded by a
>jump-bubble when in jump space. The effect of the jump bubble is
>potentially harmful to humans exposed to it. Cases of madness have been
>reported.
>
>## 2) Communication is limited to the speed of jump
>Like the age of sail, messages are carried by ships. There is no FTL
>communication like subspace radio in Star Trek. Ships and agents operate
>independently as a result; you can’t call Starfleet for backup.
>
>## 3) Power is cheap and high efficiency
>Fusion power is common and can be quite small. It is certainly seen as safe.
>
>## 4) There is no conscious AI
>Computer technology is less well developed and AI pretty much unknown
>unlike settings like Iain M Banks' Culture or Neal Asher's Polity. The
>Imperium actively suppresses such technological innovation, but maintains
>research into the technology and has deployed it (for example when
>experimenting on creating much more heavily automated starships). Conscious
>AI eventually escapes into the wild, having been weaponised, and brings
>about the final destruction of the Imperium as ‘Virus’.
>
>## 5) There are multiple Polities, many of them Human
>By default, the game is set in the Third Imperium, a feudal empire that
>controls the space between stars but allows each world to govern as it
>chooses, so long as Imperial laws are not broken. The Imperium is
>surrounded by multiple other polities, several of which are human, but
>there are also alien polities.
>
>## 6) The Ancients dominated the region previously and had technology far
>in advance of that used in current times.
>Several hundred thousand years ago, an extremely advanced culture developed
>and tampered with the future of the species in the region. They destroyed
>themselves in a cataclysmic war and are the subject of speculation and
>exploration.
>
>## 7) Psionics exist
>Psionic powers exist and different polities take different approaches to
>them. The Imperium suppresses psionics officially, but it is at the heart
>of the Zhodani Consulate’s culture and a cause of distrust between the two
>polities. Of course, the Imperium also maintains research in this space
>despite its ban on the techniques.
>
>## 8) Feudalism Exists
>The Third Imperium is a feudal state, with nobles responsible to the
>Emperor for the systems they are granted as fiefs. The systems themselves
>can be representative democracies, theocracies and more, so long as they
>acknowledge the control of the Imperium and its ownership of the space
>between stars. It could (and has) been argued in the past that the Solomani
>Confederation (despite its one party state) is a more democratic society
>than the Third Imperium. Social standing is important if you want to
>influence and change how things are done.

Rather than "...acknowledge the *control* of the Imperium..." I might be
more inclined to write "... acknowledge the Imperium's *dominion* and the
Emperor's sovereignty ...". That the worlds may govern themselves as long
as they don't cross certain lines (for example, discriminatory trade
practices, nuclear weapons in non-governmental hands, etc.) indicates a
deliberate lack of control over the worlds by the Imperium.

>## 9) Mercantilism dominates
>The Third Imperium’s expansion was built as much upon trade & stability as
>it was with force. Trade demands stability, and stability requires peace.
>The writers for the Milieu Zero Traveller setting explicitly modelled the
>expansion upon the way that the East India Company operated; exploitation
>and violence. This upset quite a few people when it was released (as ‘not
>being realistic’) but it was officially signed off as canon. Although there
>are mega corporations that span the Imperium and beyond, there is also the
>space for small free traders making a living in the gaps the mega
>corporations leave.

I'm not sure that "mercantilism" is the right word for this - yes, the
Imperium is a trade-centric polity, but one of the problems with
mercantilism was that it viewed the "world economy" as a zero-sum game - if
you were doing better, then I had to have been doing worse - the notion
that wealth could be _created_ was outside the worldview of the people of
the time. Within the Imperial polity, however, any world that _can_ be
self-sustaining - that is, has 'domestic' resources (including people) to
allow for the building of an infrastructure that can adequately meet all of
the world's _needs_ from local resources - will likely _become_
self-sustaining, and eventually a net contributor to trade.

>These are the key features of Charted Space, specifically around the
>default Third Imperium setting. If you explored further around other
>polities and deeper into space (for example, the Zhodani Core Expeditions,
>the Solomani Rim Expeditions or the epic Deepnight Revelation mission) then
>you will find differences and exceptions to this, which is one of the
>reasons that I love the setting as much as the simple mechanics.
>
>If you’re a Traveller fan, what other bits have I missed?
>
>
>
>Sent from Proton Mail <https://proton.me/mail/home> for iOS.
>
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