I brought up the Prime Directive because most space nerds know it, and either are like "yeah" or they groan about it. But basically, the pursuit of greed has you interact and exploit native and low-tech races. In WH40K, you blow up inferior races, or conquer them. Even in Star Trek, they frequently violated the Prime Directive.It's not relevant save for describing how some see the acquiring of technology and discoveries. If science is shared simply by interaction, than the mere exploitation of a population will inevitably allow it to catch-up, like why the Native Americans aquired rifles and horses. Neither were native to their world, but through meeting with European merchants, and exchanging goods (and being armed for resistance) they became armed with horses and rifles.Traveller because of its focus on why Trade is Good will always lead to a setting where you don't really have races in enough isolation to have to solely ascend to space travel by means of relictech. At some point, a race will have a merchant visit it, who can sell them what they need in parts or in whole, the components for their own ascent to jump travel. In a setting where there are no protected in isolation worlds, like in Star Trek, I don't really see a viable setting where Relic-tech is the basis of scarcity itself. Maybe if you are playing a setting where your the first race to jump travel. But if you play in a setting with enough races already at that point, there seems to be logical shortcuts for races seeking to go 'upward'.On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 2:14 AM, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 4:46 PM, Michael McKinney <archangel620@gmail.com> wrote:--The idea that "the Prime Directive is violated" seems a theme in Traveller, but its a theme missing from Warhammer 40K. Well, there is one singular moment of it occurring, but the person responsible dies and thus is the reason for the post-apocalyptic feeling to the setting.I think you have Traveller confused with Star Trek. A Prime Directive - in the sense of "Don't interfere with the development of the poor, low-tech natives." - is not and never has been a feature of Traveller. The closest canon comes to that sentiment is that the Scout Service is *occasionally* able to get the Emperor to declare a particular native homeworld off-limits . . . so long as there isn't a megacorp which thinks that it can make a decent profit there.The prime directive of Traveller is the same as in modern Western society: "Make money however you can . . . just don't get caught."Richard Aiken
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