[TML] Nobles in Traveller

[Hans Henrik Rancke-Madsen]

davebill <davebill at clear.net.nz> wrote:

>When I was running a lot of CT back in the late 80's and 90's I use to dread
>the cry, during a character generating session, of "Hey, I've rolled a
>noble" as there was so little to go on. The articles this webpage is based
>on were a great help, but I always had this question, why would any head of
>a politically important social grouping (which is what, basically, Traveller
>nobles are) let the scion of the house go adventuring? Especially with a
>bunch of low-life's like the PCs?

I had the same problem. It seemed to me that an Imperial baron would be the
social equal of The Queen of England or the President of the US. A marquis
would be the social equal of the President of the World Federation, if Earth
had one of those.

Also, there was a distinct risk that a player could end up as one of the 300
most important people in a society with 15 trillion members (Or at least
closely related to one of them). Not the kind of social connections I 
wanted any of my players to have.

My solution was to say that the nobles you got from the character generation
system wern't Imperial nobles, but planetary nobles (Unacountably missing
from the Traveller social ranks. You go directly from the upper middle 
class (SL9) and the planetary gentry (SL10) to Imperial knights (SL11)). I 
extended the middle of the social ladder accordingly. Imperial barons 
became SL 24 and the emperor himself became SL 33. The noble ranks a 
character earned in the Imperial Navy and other organizations weren't 
planetary titles, of course; they were lesser Imperial knighthoods that 
were the social equal of planetary barons, marquesses, counts, etc.



Hans