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TL;DR. In a long, rambling post I try to describe what the world Mora, the “hub” of the Spinward Marches, would be like in solarpunk Traveller . I focus more on the nature of life in a large, technologically advanced solar system and less on the stuff adventurers care about. Although this is in reference to a table top role playing game, my actual goal is to think about what a successful,…
TL;DR : Our biopunk future is becoming real faster than I expected. Techniques which use genetically engineered viruses to insert custom proteins to correct a medical condition are now in clinical trials in China. And I want people to move away from a cyberpunk vision of cutting the body and adding things and move towards a vision of changing the nature of a person's body. Way back in 2009 I…
The Big Picture TL;DR. In this post, I try to pull together what an actual solarpunk Traveller adventure would actually look like. At a high level and focusing on games that would appeal to the average “traditional” Traveller player. What I did not do, is focus on “cozy sci fi” which is something I think Traveller could do—and maybe I’ll talk about that later. This is post #5, the first four are…
TL;DR . Human technology does not require corporate ownership of intellectual property and capitalist investment to thrive. Technological advancement requires people with different skill sets to work together towards a common goal. Yes, this can be funded by the wealthy for the soul purpose of increasing their wealth, but it is not required. In fact, in an open setting, capitals protection of…
Why people wont ship food between worlds (much). Here are links to the earlier posts. Solarpunk Traveller #1 and #2 I’m writing this in Q2 of 2026 in the time between when the oil has stopped flowing from the Middle East but before the last cargo ship arrives in North America. We have been watching a crisis unfold slowly across the globe as locations which use Middle Eastern oil for energy start…
It took me a while to figure out how to approach this, but I think I have it. This is Part 2 of a series that starts here . Why would people go into space? If you want to create a realistic solarpunk interpretation of the Traveller universe, you have to start by answering the question, “Why do people go into space?” This is the main problem holding back modern space exploration. No one can come up…
TL;DR. Foundation Model AI have effectively reached their current limit and that isn’t good enough to replace most educated workers. I have heard, both in person and on-line, CEOs of AI-based companies saying that their new technology is going to make most workers redundant. They claim we won’t need most skilled workers in the future. Exactly when? Really soon. This is just a marketing lie.…
I have a hard time considering running a Traveller game within the default setting because it is just so unrealistic. As I’ve already mentioned (in my four earlier Traveller posts, #1 , #2 , #3 , and #4 ), the game is based on backwards-looking science and tries to recreate something like the British Empire in space. It’s fine if you are into that sort of thing, but I want something with more…
This is my fourth post on “modernizing” Traveller . The others are, here , here , and here . The importent bit is that in the last one I mentioned one flaw with the biology of the game. Namely, that it did not take into account how easy it will become for humans to modify their own biology. Traveller uses a mechanic called Technology Levels to track how sophisticated a culture needs to be before…
This is my third post regarding the Traveller RPG. It is not a secret that I’m trying to build a case that we need a solarpunk interpretation of the game’s setting. And to get there, I wrote this post as background on the game and this one about how the science in Traveller was “backwards looking”; It is a game that focuses on old, not modern, science. The two major sciences in my professional…
