Traveller is an endlessly fascinating game to explore in the 2020s. Its first release was only three years after Dungeons & Dragons, but unlike D&D, which really is just a name and a couple of archetypes attached to a number of very different games, the revised 2nd edition Traveller from Mongoose has changed very little from Classic Traveller. Even though there have been about as many different edition over the last 48 years. And like D&D is sticking to some mechanical elements because they are traditional, even though their original purpose hasn’t existed for over 30 years, Mongoose Traveller is sticking to some terminology even when it’s completely outdated by now. While Traveller is presented specifically as a generic sci-fi game about characters who own and operate a small private cargo ship, and the rulebooks of the various editions come with no description of an assumed default setting, fans have long recognized that, just like the earliest edition of D&D, there is actually a lot of worldbuilding being done in the tables and character options. If you don’t alter the tables and mechanics to make the rules fit the world you have in mind for your own campaign, they do reveal quite a lot about the default assumptions that probably seemed obvious and not requiring any explicit mention at the time of writing almost 50 years ago.
The first thing where I noticed it is with the types of armor. One of the basic types of body armor is “flak jacket”, which comes at the standard Tech Level 7 version and the improves TL8 version. Flack jackets were an early type of modern body armor common in the Vietnam War and introduced in the early 50s. So a TL5 technology. The flak jacket can be seen as an ancestor of modern (TL7) ballistic armor. But calling those flak jackets is like calling a modern car a motor carriage. In the mid-70s, this was an appropriate term to use. I don’t know if sticking with it was a deliberate choice or ignorance on the side of the most recent writer, but I do find it quite endearing. Maybe the world of Traveller is so retro-futuristic now that they actually do have flak jackets in space?
Another thing that had been puzzling me for a while is with some of the Trade Codes. They have names like “Industrial”, “Poor”, “Ice-capped”, or “Non-Agricultural”, that seem like they would be entirely self-explanatory. But creating some planets and checking which Trade Codes apply to them, I found it weird to see some codes applying to worlds where I think they don’t fit, or planets not qualifying to a code that I think they really should have. “Industrial” is the one that stands out the most. Somehow none of the homeworlds of the big shipbulding species and their major factory worlds did qualify for being “Industrial”. Either their population was too small, or their atmosphere wasn’t one of the correct types. So let’s flip the question around: What conditions are required to have an Industrial World.
As it turns out, the planet must have a population of at least 1 billion people. So just having a planet whose economy is dominated by heavy industry is not enough. It has to be industry on a massive scale. And second, the atmosphere has to be either non-existent, tainted, exotic, corrosive, or insidious. Or, in all cases, non-breathable to humans.
“Why would anyone pick a planet where they can’t breath to settle a billion people?” I was asking. But that’s looking at it from the wrong side. Nobody would do that. Instead, the planet started with a population of billions of people, and then the air became unbreathable. That’s the intended meaning of an “Industrial World”.
I was born in the mid-80s. I didn’t become aware of what was going on in the world until the early 90s. I remember acid rain. I remember Forest Death. I remember lakes being covered in dead fish as far as the eye can see. I remember “wild mushrooms are radioactive”, and the latest reports of radioactive contamination in milk. Americans might remember the river being on fire 14 times in Cleveland alone. Yes, climate chance can cause a lot of damage on a global scale. But toxic pollution and it’s local and regional environmental effects before the 90s were on a level that is hard to comprehend now. The idea that a planet with a focus on heavy industry on a massive scale would be a toxic wasteland probably seemed very logical and obvious back in the mid 70s.
That’s why the industry has to be on such a massive scale of billions of people. If the population is smaller, they don’t have the capacity to poison the global atmosphere. And if air is still breathable, then it is not “industrial”, no matter how big its manufacturing sector and its output of goods is. Almost all the goods that can be found on Industrial worlds (excepts polymers and robots) can also be found on High Tech worlds. So non-apocalyptic advanced manufacturing is possible in the world of Traveller. Though High Tech means Tech Level 12 or higher. Which is very high.