Re: Non-Imperial campaigns...

[Mark's mail came to traveller-request by mistake, so I forwarded it to
the Traveller Mailing List at large -- James]

I've never run a traditional Traveller campaign, but I've used something
like the Traveller system (actually, it's gradually mutated into something
wiquite different, including a bunch of new characteristics, lots of new
skills, and a weapon system that's reasonably close to realistic--i.e.,
Jesus!  They're shooting REAL guns at us!  I mean, we could get KILLED
from ONE SHOT!  Jeez!

Anyway, and this background stuff is copyright Mark Gellis 1991, it's
fifty thousand years in the future, and humanity is now a young, but
respected member of the intergalactic community known as the Network.
The Network spans the universe.  There are no jump drives, people se
(oops, that should be "use") hypergates, enormous machines that can
punch portals through spacetime...they have no maximum range so people
can just cross the distance between galaxies at will.  In other words,
you've got as many solar systems to play with as you need.

There are three large human governments--the Solian Commonwealth, the
Po Empire, and the Ocyron Federation.  Technically, Solia are the good
guys ("good" a relative term in politics).  There are also dozens of
smaller federations, hundreds of independent systems, and millions of
independent nation-states in the thousands of human-controlled solar
systems.

There are more aliens than you can shake a stick at.  If you want an
alien character, bounce an idea off me and if I don't think it will
needlessly unbalance the game, it's yours.

Technology has reached a high and stable level.  Assume Tech Level 20
is the norm, except there are no psionics and anti-gravity (sorry, I
just don't believe in 'em)(), although some civilizations are rumored
to have much higher technology at their disposal.  Eeek!

Don't worry about uncontrolled mayhem.  The universe does not have a
government--it's too big--but it does have caretakers.  Long ago, an
ancient race (actually, several of them, working as allies) fought
another ancient race and ITS allies, and won, so the universe was
not devoured by the bad guys several billion years ago, and the good
guys built the Modems, a machine race who own, control, and often are
the hypergates, and who have a racial prerogative to observe the
organics and make sure they don't genocide each other out of existence
(murder and war are okay, but genocide and uncontrolled expansion
are no-nos).  This is actually my explanation for why WE are here
now--after all, if you have intelligent life and FTL travel billions
of years ago, they would have kept expanding and colonized Earth
and we would never have evolved, unless something stopped them.  (Sound
bizarre...try this experiment, a civilization with a trillion people
doubles its population ONLY once every million years, but it can
travel at infinite speed and its doubling rate starts in a hundred
solar system region two billion years ago...what's one trillion
doubled TWO THOUSAND times?  A lot of aliens, and no room for poor
evolving proto-humans.)

Of course, and many of you have listened to me chat about this every
now and then, I really have all of my adventures in only ONE solar
system.  How can I do this?  Simple.  Any space industrialized solar
system, with an asteroid belt (which I assume most of them have, or
will have after they shatter a few big moons) and a sun for solar power
and gas giants and comets for hydrogen has the raw materials to build
habitats (city-states) for several hundred billion people.  Usually,
I figure, you end up with a few million habitats organized into a few
hundred archipelagos.  Each habitat is its own city-state, but the
archipelagos are nations or federations, which are either independent,
or have allied or joined some larger federation, like the Solian
Commonwealth.

Can you say, "Gee Mark, that sounds like an awful lot of places to
set adventures...and each habitat can have its own set of corrupt local
politicians, local criminals, local celebrities, etc., and so on"?

Why yes, it is.  That's why I like it.  I have an infinite range of
possibilities to work with, and I just narrow down to a particular locale
each campaign (or send people running around the system) and work out
the details.

Oh, did I mention that since there is no anti-gravity, and people are
limited to reaction drives (like a 1,000,000 Isp fusion drive--the most
common spacecraft drive) that the cometary halos of every solar system
are effectively a permanent frontier?  They're so spread out that no
government can possibly control them, and they contain an enormous
number of cometary nuclei, which can each be used as a base (big ones
can be used as raw materials for entire habitats), so you get a lot
of free nations, some of them basically pirate nations, out in the
cometary halo of each solar system.  Good for adventures.

Anyone who has any comments, etc., I would be interested, but it might
be better to send them to me via email, so we don't tie up the newsgroup,
since this is so different from the regular Traveller that it might not
really be fair to people who are interested only in the GDW games, etc.

[As list admin, I feel that FOLLOWUPs on specific setups are indeed best
directed at the orginator, but PLEASE feel free to send in an OVERVIEW
of your setup as Mark and others have kindly shared -- James]

Anyway, enjoy.

Mark
[email removed]