Hello Again!

I've been thinking about Traveller again, so I'll yammer on about it a bit here.

I'm still keen on a pure LBB 1-3 setting, and on a fairly "cozy" play setting.

I've been leaning away from my notion of an "Independent Interstellar Scout Service," partly based on the way scout bases and navy bases get distributed in world generation, and partly for the convenience of having the players be more or less on the same side.

Stemming from some of the same areas, the setting that seems to develop from LBB3 worldgen seems to be better suited at building subsectors that are all within the embrace of a large, and hence not-cozy empire. So I want to think more about how to keep things small while still having them make "sense."

Another problem I'm running into with LBB 1-3 is that, as written, there's simply not enough to distinguish higher tech levels from each other. Incremental advances in computers and drives seem to be it; there's no real distinction between tech 13 and 15, for example. Maybe this isn't a problem: maybe this is an area where the Referee has to step in and get busy?

With my Festrian empire, I thought that the Imperial homeworld should be the highest tech possible, so frankly, I fudged it and made it so. This, I think, is a problem in a cozy empire. It puts the players closer to the core of absolute civilization, which is boring.

So I think I want to start again. I may retain all my old Festrian subsectors, not that it matters 'cause you've not seen them, but the issue of new Imperial tech might lead me to start from scratch.

The span of history is much like that which I put together in 2006:
http://festeria.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_archive.html

1) OLD EMPIRE: After perhaps a millennium of expansion, The focus of human society shifts from its largely forgotten, ruined home to a large skein of J1 worlds. At its core, a centralized Imperial government forms. With advances in Jump technology, human society expands still further.
3) THE FALL: after an extended period of Imperial success, something happens. The outer worlds lose contact with the coreworlds, and the Imperium effectively ceases to exist. interstellar trade crumbles and fragments. Self-sufficient worlds carry on, and some maintain pockets of civilization. Some worlds, cut off but survivable, go primitive. Dependent worlds starve. The horrors of the fall last anywhere between 500 and 1000 years.
4) THE FESTRIAN RENAISSANCE: Far from the Old Imperial Core, a new pocket empire begins to develop from an ancient ducal seat. The last Duke of Miralbis, Fester, declares himself Emperor Fester I, and he begins the pacification of the subsector and the neighboring polities, envisioning a new Spacer empire, based on the following basic principles:
*The Festrian Empire is an interstellar empire of Man, the heir of the Old Empire and the New Light against the Dark of the Fall.
*Worlds within the empire have the privilege and responsibility of self government, protected by the Imperial Navy and Marines.
*The Scout Service is the torchbearer of the New Renaissance, forever spreading out beyond the Festrian Main, mapping the outerworlds of the Old Empire and preparing the way for the Navy to extend Imperial reach ever further.
5) Fester I was succeeded after a century by Fester the Mad, who perpetrated the witch wars. These all but shattered the new empire, and lasted fifty years until his assassination and the accession of Fester III, which brings us to the current era.