Recently someone posted a link to the online works of Orwell.
They are like a Cliff's Notes edition of Classic Traveller.
QuoteBefore the war you were either a gentleman or not a gentleman, and
if you were a gentleman you struggled to behave as such, whatever your
income might be. Between those with L400 a year and those with L2000 or
even L1000 a year there was a great gulf fixed, but it was a gulf which
those with L400 a year did their best to ignore. Probably the
distinguishing mark of the upper-middle class was that its traditions were
not to any extent commercial, but mainly military, official, and
professional.
People in this class owned no land, but they felt that they were
landowners in the sight of God and kept up a semi-aristocratic outlook by
going into the professions and the fighting services rather than into
trade. Small boys used to count the plum stones on their plates and
foretell their destiny by chanting, 'Army, Navy, Church, Medicine, Law';
and even of these 'Medicine' was faintly inferior to the others and only
put in for the sake of symmetry. To belong to this class when you were at
the L400 a year level was a queer business, for it meant that your
gentility was almost purely theoretical. You lived, so to speak, at two
levels simultaneously.
Did everyone else recall the random character generation tables? Navy, Army, Merchant, Scout, Other?
QuoteTheoretically you knew all about servants and how to
tip them, although in practice you had one, at most, two resident servants.
Theoretically you knew how to wear your clothes and how to order a dinner,
although in practice you could never afford to go to a decent tailor or a
decent restaurant. Theoretically you knew how to shoot and ride, although
in practice you had no horses to ride and not an inch of ground to shoot
over. It was this that explained the attraction of India (more recently
Kenya, Nigeria, etc.) for the lower-upper-middle class. The people who went
there as soldiers and officials did not go there to make money, for a
soldier or an official does not want money; they went there because in
India, with cheap horses, free shooting, and hordes of black servants, it
was so easy to play at being a gentleman.
Miller modeled his fictional galaxy on the Age of Sail, but to me it has always been much more like American sailors playing British colonials in India. (And the British colonials in India were themselves playing at being British gentlemen...)
QuoteIn the kind of shabby-genteel family that I am talking about there is
far more consciousness of poverty than in any working-class family above
the level of the dole. Rent and clothes and school-bills are an unending
nightmare, and every luxury, even a glass of beer, is an unwarrantable
extravagance. Practically the whole family income goes in keeping up
appearances. It is obvious that people of this kind are in an anomalous
position, and one might 'be tempted to write them off as mere exceptions
and therefore unimportant. Actually, however, they are or were fairly
numerous. Most clergymen and schoolmasters, for instance, nearly all Anglo-
Indian officials, a sprinkling of soldiers and sailors, and a fair number
of professional men and artists, fall into this category. But the real
importance of this class is that they are the shock-absorbers of the
bourgeoisie. The real bourgeoisie, those in the L2000 a year class and
over, have their money as a thick layer of padding between themselves and
the class they plunder; in so far as they are aware of the Lower Orders at
all they are aware of them as employees, servants, and tradesmen. But it is
quite different for the poor devils lower down who are struggling to live
genteel lives on what are virtually working-class incomes. These last are
forced into close and, in a sense, intimate contact with the working class,
and I suspect it is from them that the traditional upper-class attitude
towards 'common' people is derived.
This is the plight of Traveller player-characters. They have all the disadvantages of both the piratical scum and the hidebound nobility. They have no budget, but they must pay for exit visas and fuel and parts. They fight opponents with better weapons, but their own weapons get searched and confiscated by imperials. They are on a tighter budget than E.C. Tubb's Dumarest character...Etc.
QuoteAnd what is this attitude? An attitude of sniggering superiority
punctuated by bursts of vicious hatred..
All right, at this point, it's a stretch to compare this to by-the-book Traveller.
...
Quote...
It is useless to
say that the middle classes are 'snobbish' and leave it at that. You get no
further if you do not realize that snobbishness is bound up with a species
of idealism. It derives from the early training in which a middle-class
child is taught almost simultaneously to wash his neck, to be ready to die
for his country, and to despise the 'lower classes'.
http://www.george-orwell.org/The_Road_to_Wigan_Pier/7.html
The snobbishness I got from Miller's Imperium definitely did seem to be tied up with idealism and a willingness to die for the greater good...
Heh. Nice post, riprock.
Also, the late Edwardian mellieu of Orwell's childhood was really clinging to the Age of Sail myth of empire, even as it was crumbling away. I think one could see the Imperium in a similar state, just on the brink of a major crisis that will destroy it and pass power to the former colonies. (Some of this may have been covered in later editions, but I'm not familiar with them.)
Orwell himself could be considered a Traveller PC in this regard, with one term in the colonial service before being mustered out/leaving (Player: "Hm, okay well maybe he leaves out of a crisis of conscience?"). The Spanish Civil War is precisely the sort of thing that PCs might get embroiled in.
Ned
Thats the way I used to play the TRAVELLER universe - 20 to 25 years ago. Now things are different.
When I was a teenager I always compared the Imperium to the British Empire when it was at its height. Mostly because of the planet and subsector bnamed Regina got me thinking that way.
Nowadays, that influence is still there....but my version of that universe has a lot more variety to it. I tend to sneak in bits of influence more from the Renaissance era of history than anything else.
- Ed C.
Outstanding insights, and gave me several adventure ideas.
I really need to read some more Orwell -- haven't touched him in years.
Yes, very insightful; not much like I've tended to play Traveller (where the PCs usually are merchants), but very cool and definitely explaining the nature of the Traveller as a class.
This could go on to explain a lot about PC adventurers in many RPGs in general.
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