Interstellar distance is calculated on the basis of jumps, which range in size from one to six. Some worlds are inaccessible with the use of lesser size jumps, while, in other areas of the universe, large clusters of worlds are all situated within one jump of each other. Different ships are also equipped with jump drives of different capabilities, which determine the jump distance each ship is capable of. Actually making a jump takes about one week of elapsed time, which includes navigational and pilot support, and normal preparation as necessary. Transit time to a point at least 100 planetary diameters out adds a total of approximately 20 hours to the whole trip.
There are several things to unpack here, all of which are, I think, important to understanding Traveller and its unique style of science fiction gaming. First, there's the statement that "some worlds are inaccessible with the use of lesser size jumps." Traveller's default style of play, as its title suggests, involves traveling from world to world in search of adventure and profit. It's basically an interstellar hexcrawl – literally, given what Traveller star maps look like. However, the limitations of jump drive can aid the referee in naturalistically constraining player choice to a handful of worlds "all situated within one jump of each other," if the characters don't have access to a ship whose jump drive is capable of larger jumps. This is, in fact, a plot point in the early part of The Traveller Adventure.
This might not seem like a big deal, but I think it is. A common complaint about hexcrawl-centric campaigns is that they give players so much freedom that it's difficult for the referee to plan in advance. For inexperienced referees or even those simply uncomfortable with thinking on their feet, this can pose a problem. Traveller's jump drive system gives the referee the means to limit choice without taking it away entirely. Likewise, it does so in a way that's consonant with underpinnings of the setting rather than simply being arbitrary.
Second, there's this: "making a jump takes about one week of elapsed time." This is regardless of the jump drive's rating. Whether your ship has a jump-1 drive or a jump-6 drive, it takes approximately one week of time (168 hours) to travel. During the time a starship is traveling, it exists outside normal space and is incommunicado. This is an important aspect of the play of the Traveller wargame, Fifth Frontier War, because the rival space navies of the Imperium and the Zhodani, once they enter jump, are committed to their final destinations and cannot change course in response to new information that might arise as a result of, for instance, battles.
This is probably the single most important consequence of the way jump works in Traveller: the bottleneck on information. There is no such thing as FTL communication in Traveller independent of starships. Unlike many popular science fiction series, like Star Trek or Star Wars, both of which feature faster-than-light communication systems, Traveller limits communication to the speed of the fastest ship (six hexes/parsecs per week). Depending on astrography, that speed might even be less than that, as even a jump-6 ship cannot travel more hexes than are possible on the map. So, if, for example, there's not a world within six hexes of the starting world, the ship will generally travel less. (The matter gets muddled in later Traveller materials, once fuel tanks become commonplace and jumping into an open hex a possibility.)
The end result of this is that Traveller postulates a universe not unlike that of the Age of Sail, where news travels slowly and ships, even military ones, are frequently out of contact with their headquarters. The captain of a starship on the frontier can't radio back to his superiors to advise him on the best course of action. Instead, he's left to his own judgment, which is both a blessing and a curse. It is, however, great fodder for adventure. James T. Kirk was rarely in situations where he couldn't contact Starfleet for instructions, but the average Traveller naval commander has no choice but to figure things out for himself.
Like a lot of the distinctive aspects of Traveller, it's easy to underestimate its impact. The comparative slowness of jump travel, combined with the veil of ignorance it creates for those traveling through jump space, is ripe with possibilities for creating fun and challenging scenarios. It's something that I've internalized over the years, to the point that, when I was designing Thousand Suns, I never considered the inclusion of FTL communications independent of starship travel. In fact, I listed it as one of the pillars of the game's meta-setting in my chapter on game mastering. (I also made FTL travel potentially even slower than in Traveller, but that's perhaps a topic for another post.)
I always liked that the week-in-transit system seemed to reflect the natural rhythms of weekly play sessions or perhaps television viewing.
ReplyDeleteHeh. Pre-cable TV certainly did tend to make people think in weekly cycles, less so afterward. These days the whole concept of watching TV on a network's schedule instead of your own feels backward for many people.
DeleteYes, FTL travel, but not communication, gives Traveller great potential for adventure and exploration like that witnessed during the Age of Sail. And the Sci-Fi options are cool too. Think about it, when the enemy transmits a message, you could actually go catch up with it to capture or distort the transmission. I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that Star Trek lost a lot of potential by offering FTL communication which undermines adventure and exploration in the same way that micromanagement from Washington scrambled operations during the Vietnam War.
ReplyDeleteI'm fully in agreement; it makes me crazy when space-y settings have instant communication across any distance. I remember getting wound up about that playing Mass Effect 2 (if anyone cares about spoilers for a fifteen-year-old game, avert your eyes now), which goes out of its way in the early game establishing that the player's ship has a special, experimental quantum communicator to enable nearly instantaneous low-bandwidth comms with exactly one other point, and apart from that, everything relies on "conventional" sublight communication unless it uses the setting's mass effect drives and relays. Then, at the end of the final mission, the player blows up a mass relay and wipes out an entire star system, and watches the tactical display from several systems over as it shows the consequences. Then there's an immediate space call from Space Admiral Spaceman of the Space Navy asking for details because everybody already knows about it. Meanwhile, I'm grousing at the screen about how there's no way *anybody* could know what happened -- myself included.
ReplyDeleteIs there any direct literary link to 1 jump = 1 week? I don't remember if Space Viking or the Foundation Trilogy being that specific (The most Traveller-related books I think I've read.)
ReplyDeleteI don't believe so.
DeleteWith a +/-10% variance on every jump, it's only sort of a week anyway. If you spend your life travelling things will likely average out, but someone who only makes a few jumps in a lifetime could easily see themselves considerably off their expected schedule, and no one can plan on making really tight connections when you could be early or late by as much as 16-17 hours with every transit.
DeleteI've never seen an article about it, but I strongly suspect there are superstitions around some people (or even categories of people) being lucky/unlucky jumpers whose trips skew early or late. And psionics being what they are, there might even some truth to that, with some wild talent (probably latent or at least unrecognized and thus untrained) able to apply a bit of a oomph or drag to the ship you're on.
Easy to imagine similar beliefs about some types of cargo, certain ship designs or configurations, particular dates ("You'll always jump slow if you depart on St. Dremble's Day"), and other variables. None of them can be reliable or there'd be a bajillion scientists and hyperspace drive engineers studying them, but that won't stop some folks from believing in them. Having some nutter charter your ship for a lucrative job nut only on the condition you repaint it with yellow racing stripes in a very particular pattern should be a thing that happens - and when you later run into anpther ship with the same esoteric paint scheme your crews will have something to talk about at the starport bar.
And of course when it comes to Ancient artifacts and similar incomprehensible relics, maybe there is something to all this guff. That "lucky coyne" the engineer always carries might actually be messing with the J-drive field on some level.
Though that jump time variation is a later addition to the rules. I'm not sure why they added it.
Delete"First, there's the statement that 'some worlds are inaccessible with the use of lesser size jumps.'"
ReplyDeleteThat's just not true. A humble J-1 drive can reach anywhere a J-6 can. It'll take multiple jumps and most likely drop tanks to accomplish, but you can get there. Admittedly, going to the trouble of doing so is rare and might require some weird and inefficient (ie fuel-heavy and/or "multi-stage" drop tanks) ship designs, but I've played enough Billion/Trillion Credit Squadron to know the value making an "impossible" jump can have, even if it's mostly as a bluff. If you "know" your enemy can't exceed J-2 and they suddenly pop up four parsecs away from their closest system you need to re-evaluate your entire military strategy and fast.
There have to be quite a few "historical" cases where getting past a void or bottleneck through multiple jumps were an absolute game-changer for whole pocket civilizations, especially following various mega-state collapses and Long Nights.
Drop tanks were introduced into Traveller when? High Guard in 1981?
DeleteDrop tanks are a separate issue -- this is just a matter of having _inboard_ fuel tankage to support multiple jumps. (IIUC Dick correctly!)
DeleteFWIW I always disliked 'drop tanks', felt they were destabilizing to the principles you lay out in this post, and excluded them from the setting(s) every chance I got.
Not an issue for me. Those tanks have trade offs as well (they take up space in/on your vessel, precious space that might have be used elsewhere).
DeletePlain and simple, a jump-6 vessel can travel that distance more efficiently and more effectively. If you wish to take the negatives/setbacks/trade offs of travelling the same distance in a much smaller jump-1 vessel, that's on you.
Just because a jump-1 vessel can travel that distance, doesn't necessarily mean it should, right?
That's only true if you allow empty hex jumps. Another thing added later.
DeleteBook 2 doesn't explicitly forbid empty hex jumps. Really depends on what the GM/referee allows at your table. Anyways, by 1983 The Traveller Adventure officially makes it so. I guess it depends if you fall into which of several camps: basic, classic, proto, etc. (each with varying definitions of play, etc.).
DeleteAny/either way, all fun.
See also JTAS #3 and A5 Trillion Credit Squadron.
DeleteI here a lot of "empty" hexes being bantered around. Even the classic core rules would suggest otherwise. You only map the most prominent feature in each hex. There can be other things in a hex (ie, planetoid, asteroid belt, gas giant, etc.). So my question is, can you ever prove a hex is truly empty and devoid of everything, anyways?
DeleteAdditionally, one ought to consider tech levels and construction/repair facilities (i.e., Starport types/letter codes and their capabilities, etc.).
ReplyDeleteDoes the PCs home world support the building of the vessel they (PCs) may start with? What is the home worlds tech level and how might that impact your plans and preparations? Does it have a starport capable of building/maintaining/repairing/retrofitting said vessel? Will you have access to fuel? Will you have access to the right type of fuel for your vessel?
Besides all the aforementioned prohibitors (see above), tech levels and starports must be considered as well. Without the right combo of these, your travellers may not travel that far at all, with or without drop tanks (which can be fun in and of itself as well).
Only one's imagination may tell.
I ran 4 sessions of '77 and I've opted to now, after 45+ years of owning and playing this game, alter jump times and distances to more faithfully recreate the fiction of EC Tubb and H Beam Piper -- jump takes a long time and you go a long, long way.
ReplyDeleteI'm especially enamored with the idea of Fast drug being used by luxury passengers (traveling "high" ha ha!) to eliminate the boredom of spending weeks on end in a tin can hurtling through a parallel dimension.
Admittedly, Carl, I've only recently started reading the historical fiction associated with this game due to it being mentioned on this blog recently.
ReplyDeleteI'm into my second Piper novel and I agree, travel times and distance are both significantly greater in the fiction, as opposed to the game.
I believe you may be on to something and I hope to glean more through additional sci-fi historical fiction reading of my own.