Crossposted.

I'm thinking of running Classic Traveller again sometime, the little black books.

But, the tech is kind of massively out of date, unsurprisingly given it was written in the 1970s.

I don't mean the massive computers, real life naval computers have comparable weights actually, but the utter absence of AI, portable computing of any meaningful competence, biotech, nanotech, computer assisted systems (we have guns today higher tech than those in Trav), and there are others implied by the setting.

For example, if they had sophisticated data storage techniques then you could have each character having access to huge volumes of data on worlds in their sector, but typically data on worlds seems to be skimpy and often out of date.

There are tons of other examples, basically Traveller is the 1970s in space.

So, is there any way to make it make sense within our current knowledge of the possible or possibly possible (ie biotech is possible, nanotech is to be fair only possibly possible, we're not sure).  Is there a way, without radically changing it, to make it closer to modern hard sf rather than classic hard sf?

Ideas?

I should add, I want to keep to the setting assumptions in the books, but I don't care about sticking to the actual Third Imperium setting itself.

I can't see it, myself. If I were to run Traveller I'd just embrace the 1970s thing. Maybe even pump it up a bit, like GURPS Atomic Horror.

I'd go at it from the other direction and ask what it is about LBB Traveller that you want to preserve? Then you take that, inject it into your projected future, and see if it works.

Did the GURPS book have a whole lot of stuff about this? Or is that out of date too?

Oh, man.

This is a huge can of worms, one that's feeding epic-length CotI threads, and moreover one that would make you work a LOT as GM. You'd have to weigh every single current futuretech assumption against its potential setting-altering repercussions in the OTU.

I'm not following these debates at all closely, but IIRC Marc has said nanotech for example would break the Age of Sail, universe as loose confed of trade partners model, being as most stuff could be instantly generated planetside at little cost.

And re. the data issue, well yes, comprehensive data storage/availability is probably realistic, but then nothing cries adventure as a skimpy, ambivalent Library Data entry for an Amber Zone system.

Well a lot of the stuff that you said was missing in the old Traveller was also missing in the Star Wars movies.  It just wasn't the direction most space science fiction was going back then.  Shortly afterwards, especially in the early nineties did the AI stuff really get big (not saying it wasn't there in the 70's just not everywhere).  Basically it's a game that copied the scifi movements of the time.

My two cents.

Some things to consider about the data problem is the fact that travel takes a long time (from edge of known space to core, where most of the data would be catalogued and then distributed), conditions can change rapidly (ecnomically, politically, socially), and then also some people may have a vested interest in disinformation. Think of the historical anecdote of Greenland and Iceland, IIRC their discoverer didn't want colonists flooding the nicer of the two so he misinformed his sponsor about the climate of both to keep the best land (Iceland) to himself for development.

Working on naval computers in my dayjob, I always thought the assumption that a starship computer would fit on your laptop was really naive.

I suggest you read Chasm City by alaister reynolds. He deals with way complex advanced technology by having it subverted by a alien techno plaugue (similar to tne? I know nothing of the later iterations) So starship drives (stl in this case) still work, but AI is dangerous...
You could probably extend it to cover things like blasters and whatnot.

Another approach is to think about space as being divided up in a way similar to, but perhaps more complicated than our world now. so there would be a collection of core civilizations that have super high technology, but the societies on the edge would have access to only what leaks from the core worlds. Kind of like Firefly, where you see things like laser rifles and whatnot, such-like just aint fer nermal folk.

Yet another way of doing it would be to place the story in an ancient and decaying empire, where things are wearing out and the secrets of the really cool stuff have all been lost due to a series of galaxy spanning catastrophees- or perhaps just simple carelessness spread out over tens of thousands of years.

.

This argumenat doesn´t float.
It only shows that the OP hasn´t got a good grasp of the Traveller Oevre.

No need to "modernize" Traveller. It already is pretty modern. Look at GT, does it look old?

Traveller´s assumptions are not what you think they are.

Gee, Sett, you're so fucking wise.

Elliot asked a good question, what do I want to keep from it?

In a word, freedom.

What are the implicit setting elements in Traveller?  Looking at the LBB, the Imperium is not actually mentioned at all (it comes later in other books).  What we do have is the following:

An organised navy, army and marine corps.

A merchant navy of some sort.

A scouting organisation, which appears to be an intersteller body comparable to the military arms.

The Traveller's Aid Society.

Feudalism.

Freedom measured by access to firearms, actually I think that's just an Americanism that crept in, without remotely wishing to comment on the pros and cons of gun control it is fair to say I think that it's really only the US which sees the right to bear arms as linked to human rights generally, certainly in Europe they're basically unconnected issues and Traveller (like Gurps originally) simply reflects that American political perspective.  That bit I would happily dump, save allowing access to weapons tends to make for better adventuring environments.

Information poor, this isn't stated but is implied, the nature of the trading rules seem to indicate that you can't just look up a database of what the world you're going to has need of and buy accordingly.  It's not that simple.

So we have a feudal state with an organised military and scouts and some kind of merchant navy.  Worlds seem to be left to decide how to run themselves, but within an overall feudal structure (which follows from the nature of the jump drive in the setting).  Tech generally is low key, there's no distributed computing or augmented realities (none of which had been thought of when it was written of course) and even contemporary tech like pinhole cameras seems advanced for the setting.

So despite a fairly autocratic in some ways regime, there is considerable personal freedom.  You can go where you wish, you can bear arms, you can defend yourself and you can seek to make your fortune.  There doesn't seem to be sophisticated surveillance technology in use as if there were I'm not sure all the existing elements would make sense.

And that I think is getting to the heart of it, you are free to do what you wish, life is on a human scale and technology has in no way replaced us, but you can look at a map and decide to go anywhere and do anything.

It's about space as the frontier of the possible, but on a human level.

Does that make any sense?

Pierce is likely right that nanotech would break the age of sail concepts.  He's also right that most classic Traveller style adventures don't work once you have even moderately competent (ie modern day) data libraries.

I may steal Jeff's idea about central collation and distribution of data, which would allow for many inaccuracies to creep in, and the Firefly analogy is a fruitful one I suspect.

Good list here from another thread of key setting elements:

1) Vast stellar empire of loosely affiliated worlds, mostly self-sufficient and mostly self-governed.
2) Slow FTL travel times. Jumping from planet to planet is for the professionals and the adventerous. Most people likely never leave their system and certainly don't travel for months to years.
3) Slow communication times. Communication is only as fast as the fastest ship. Local governments often need to make decisions without Imperial direction.
4) A mix of low and high tech worlds. I don't see that being unrealistic, as we have a mix of tech levels right here on Earth.
5) Human dominant culture, at least within the Imperium proper
6) Technology has not significantly changed humanity.
7) Stories are mostly about the actions of people, not "What is human?"
Adventurers tend to be older and experienced, often but not necessarily with military backgrounds.

Incidentally, for me I plan to drop the whole major/minor race thing, humanity will be the only extant major race, frankly I struggle to reconcile the idea of multiple starfaring intelligences at the same time with the Fermi paradox.

There will be other starfaring races, but they will be starfaring because we gave them that tech, aliens will either be vastly beyond us, vastly less advanced or as advanced as us because we shared our tech with them for some reason.

Edit:  On some other notes, I'm fine to include psionics, it's core to the setting for me, ok it's bollocks but it's classic sf bollocks.

I like the idea of a 150-200 year lifespan, but I am concerned it throws out the calculations one makes in chargen as you no longer risk aging by continuing in your career.

Quote from: BalbinusI may steal Jeff's idea about central collation and distribution of data, which would allow for many inaccuracies to creep in, and the Firefly analogy is a fruitful one I suspect.

You're welcome to it.

As an added suggestion, you may want to consider information to be a commodity that depreciates with time. That seems to have fit into my ATU Traveller games very well.

i'm wondering what is meant by "nanotech would break the age of sail" bit.  as long as you don't fuck with the no-FTL commo rule, and communication is limited to the speed of jump travel, why not try to introduce nanotech?