Solarpunk Traveller #1

 

I have a hard time considering running a Traveller game within the default setting because it is just so unrealistic. As I’ve already mentioned (in my four earlier Traveller posts, #1, #2, #3, and #4), the game is based on backwards-looking science and tries to recreate something like the British Empire in space. It’s fine if you are into that sort of thing, but I want something with more science fiction, less historical.

What do I want? What I am really trying to accomplish with these posts is to motivate someone to write a descent Traveller setting that I can then convince my Monday night gaming group to play, without me having to write it myself. If you are thinking of writing a forward-looking version of Traveller, please feel free to take any or all of what follows and incorporate it into your work. I want to play this game, not write it.

What is solarpunk? Like all fiction genera, solarpunk is ill-defined and means different things to different people, but it tends to cluster around a few core elements. I consider them to be:

Refusing pessimism: Solarpunk is not about accepting that all human existence must be miserable and dark. Instead, people can create societies that are functional and fair. Further, we can create technology that works for the benefit of people.

Sustainable technology: Solarpunk says that humans can create technologies that allow people to have a good life within these functional and fair societies. A lot of solarpunk focuses on renewable energy, but here we are talking about Traveller which assumes cheap and clean fusion power is easily available, so this is less of an issue.

Social equity: In order to have these fair and functional societies, we need to recognize the role of social equity. In my mind, this includes recognizing the inherent worth and dignity of all people. And we also have to recognize that wealth accumulation is a function of the rules of a society, and these are written by the collective will of the people.

The second issue with social equity is that we must recognize the fallacy of biological determinism (which I have posted about here). This becomes an even bigger issue when we realize that at relatively low Traveller Technology Levels people will be able to modifier the genetics of their progeny. So, for example, in my game Rubble and Ruin their are bad people who have intentionally created races of big, low-intelligence humans. Solarpunk Traveller is going to have to address this application of technology.

Do-it-yourself: Lastly is the idea that the ability to create and modify technology does not have to be controlled by oligarchs. Much of the idea that modern technology cannot be modified or repaired is created by corporate entities trying to force people to buy a new device rather than repair an old one.

This becomes critically important when you think about interstellar trade in a Traveller-like universe. In a Traveller universe, there are nearly infinite markets. You do not need to intentionally make a bad product to drive sales. In fact, if you want to sell something off-world, you need to have a reputation for being reliable and repairable.

I argue that DIY in the Traveller universe is the presence of transparency and technological standards. Transparency means that you have to say what things really are. No withholding important information. What is the thing made out of? What are the operating conditions under which it is intended to work? How is it designed and how does it work? And standards imply that others can build things that work with what you have built. If you make an electronic devise, I need to be able to know exactly what power supply it needs. We already do this on Earth. There is just a handful of electronic plugs and voltages that are supplied, and you need to make sure your electronic equipment conforms to those standards.

But more than that in Traveller. All your information technology needs to interoperate. Imagine not being ably to repair a starship because the navigation computer was made on Mora, and they use a different jump drive interface and the computer and the drive cannot function together. Now consider this for every two pieces of equipment that are supposed to work together. Imagine missiles fired from a starship that accidentally swing back and attack the firing ship because the targeting system uses the wrong measuring scale.

The most important thing that the Empire does is to keep the technology from one world able to operate on another. Any reader with a technology development background is likely say, “Of course, that is a massive and wildly important task”, while other readers are likely shaking their head and saying, “How trivial and boring.” In a sense, they are both correct. But most real conflict in a Third Imperium type world will come from conflicts over standards rather than over resources.

===== Getting Started =====

The Ground Rules. What am I keeping from the Third Imperium and what am I letting go?

The Map? Let’s start with the map. It is a silly, 2D hex-based map. I love it. When 2300 came out, everyone I knew loved the realistic 3D star map. Someone had already done the work of finding routes away from Earth that matched the space travel technology postulated by the game. It was great. But at the end of the day, for me, it neither enhanced play or immersion. I accept that some people will want a nice, modern 3D map, but I’m willing to not worry about it.

The Future History? What about the background? I’d like to keep the major events. The Ancients seeded many worlds 300,000 years ago. These scattered worlds have become the home to humans who have spread out across the nearby space. There are other alien races who have also developed space travel, and they are different from humans. That’s all works for me.

The Core Technology? Let’s keep it. Let’s keep the restriction that jump drives take a week to travel, independent of the distance they go. This is a great mechanic and it leads to an interesting situation where travel between human communities is once again long and dangerous. Let’s also keep the important fact that there is no faster way to communicate between worlds than to travel there.

Psionics? I vote no. I was there in the 1970s. Many, many people truly believed that psionics were a real thing and they were just about to become understood. This was a traditional that traced back to the dawn of science fiction. People honestly believed that magic was a real thing that we just didn’t yet understand—but it was coming soon. This hasn’t aged well and I think we can let them go. (As an aside, you find psi powers in all hard sci fi games of that time, Morrow Project, Aftermath, all of them.)

But we are going to need to add a modern understanding of biotechnology. And we will need to modernize the information technology. But those are separate issues.

For now, I think I am going to stop this here. I have a start. The next post will start with what I think a solarpunk Third Emporium will look like—or at least, what issues we need to consider. In till then, as always thank you for taking the time to read this and I always welcome comments, questions, or concerns in the comments below.