On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 10:26 AM, Michael McKinney
<archangel620@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I can see where a universe with a generic history, but not specific to
> each world would cause obvious issues over time. Though I know that there
> have been efforts to go on about 'this world' or 'that world' in various
> Traveller publications, the fact that even large or medium-sized powers do
> not have an encyclopedia to them can be frustrating. But part of me feels
> that was intended for the Referees to exploit to their own needs.
>
>> The T5 game I'm running has 3 players who have never played a
>> pen-and-paper RPG before, plus my wife and daughter who have done this
>> for years. (My daughter is 22, she started RPGs at about 5 or 6...)
>
>
> Still seems like knowledge is a barrier in some capacity, though I am sure
> that having an expert on hand helps that become not so much a problem. I
> guess that applies to any game, but fantasy games seem to have a lower
> threshold because the GM defines expectations, but with Traveller, there's a
> setting that defines the rules, not rules that define a setting. Not
> complaining, but wondering if there is sort of a basic literacy one can get
> for Traveller without having the entire history at disposal.
>

Well, a similar barrier applies in Real Life. (grin)
Most people don't know the history of the area they live in all that
well, much less world history.
And yet they muddle through, somehow.

In the case of my players, I did things like making "tourist
brochures" for some of the worlds they were visiting, and gave them
links to the Traveller Wiki so they could look up places they were
visiting, or skim through other things.
I warned them there might be changes, and those were just articles
that didn't have every detail about a world, so don't be surprised at
differences, but that those were a basis of info.