I have, in fact, I haven't run a Traveller game in the Imperium in at least 15 years.
But it seems like most everyone else, barring a few really old grognards who were into Traveller like, when it first came out, just assume that the only acceptable setting for Traveller is the Imperium. Which I think is a horrible waste of Traveller's abilities.
RPGPundit
The short answer is 'yes', I've played in a few games that weren't specifically set in the Imperium. But I've got a slightly different point of view on that, which is that Traveller actually has a strong setting built in to the rules, and none of the games I played in felt markedly different from the Imperium games. The Imperium itself is a sort of extrapolation of the rules.
Yes. I've never used the Imperium, nor has anyone I ever played with. The most recent game we did was in a a universe inspired by Andre Norton's stuff and forbidden planet.
Yes, for the two games I've run and the one I'm running now, I just randomly generated a bunch of subsectors and went to town. The toolkit aspect of the game is the best feature.
As droog said, there is an implied setting in the game, but it's very easy to ignore and house rule.
When I played Mong Trav it was in a completely randomly generated universe. It also had humans only.
Many, many times!
Like KrakaJak, many of my Trav games have been in random rolled sectors with entire histories that didn't have anything to do with canon.
But hey, most gamers stick pretty close to canon.
Yes. The majority of my games with Traveller used the rules as a toolbox to create the setting. Early settings were rip-offs of Larry Niven's Known Space and Jerry Pournelle's CoDominion universes. I have primarily bought Traveller supporting products to provide inspiration and ideas.
My first Traveller game, started just after the game hit town, was set in E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman universe. As we were just playing in the universe and not actually playing Lensman as characters, it was actually easy to do. The hardest part was converting the rules for jump drives into inertialess drives which took about an hour of discussion and rules writing.
Yep, I rolled my own but used many of the same elements. Basically it was what happened if the ancients didn't exist. Earth expands until they meet the aslan and get their butts kicked. The hivers come to the rescue with new tech and the terrans push the aslan back.
I cloned the rules and used them in a modern espionage game, does that count?
I only played in randomly rolled subsectors, but then I'm one of those grognards who got CT when it first came out (November 1977 for me...)
-clash
Hey, slightly out of topic:
Does Mongoose's Traveller: Pocket Edition contain everything that's in the main book? Can I just buy the Pocket Edition and run with it?
Sorry for putting this here, I just felt it didn't merit it's own thread.
When Traveller first came out, and there was no Imperium yet, I made my own subsectors, polities, and so forth.
But now I'm one of those DFGs who actually likes the Third Imperium. It's one of the very few publisher-created settings that I'll use for a game.
Yes, I've only ever used my own settings for Traveller.
When my group play Trav, we make our own settings. I'm not that fond of the Imperium these days, it accreted too much detail to be fun anymore.
I got the first edition in 1977. Of course my first run was a ripoff of Star Wars, complete with Mos Eisley spaceport, with a bit of Jack Vance thrown in.
My second attempt started with Regina subsector from 'Kinunir', but with a distinctly Star Wars-y Imperium. They didn't say which direction the rest of the empire was. I thought it was off the left edge of the map. I used a map of Oz for the rest of the Imperium, with the capital where the Emerald City was. This was by far the most gonzo campaign, with rampant psionics, anagathics and ancients (ripped off from 'Land of the Lost'). The scouts were secretly conspiring against the Empire. They had a 'controlled misjump' technique that allowed them to cross a subsector in the same time as a regular jump. This allowed for a more star-spanning campaign.
I never used the Imperium. It always felt too hemmed in, too pat. The end of that for me was when GDW came out with maps and stats for the entire Imperium. A huge part of the fun is making your own setting. Right now I'm noodling around with a near Earth setting, but I miss the fun of my Retro-Stupid setting above. Or...
Andre Norton and 'Forbidden Planet'? Hmmm...
Quote from: vomitbrown;286866Hey, slightly out of topic:
Does Mongoose's Traveller: Pocket Edition contain everything that's in the main book? Can I just buy the Pocket Edition and run with it?
Sorry for putting this here, I just felt it didn't merit it's own thread.
Yes, the Pocket Edition has everything that is in the full size edition except for some sidebar comments that are for flavor. The Pocket Edition is just made with a smaller font size to get all the rules in a digest format. You can biy it just run with it.