I was reading a MgT2e adventure (Last Train out of Rakken-Goll), and they mentioned that Terran horses were spread through the Imperium.
We know that connections of Firefly to the game. Was the widespread availability of horses a thing in the first edition, or is this something more recently adopted in 2nd edition lore?
Posted Oct 1, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC
Poni in the Scout logo of Traveller is the most common riding steed steeped into the core of the lore of the game. Like the original version.
Traveller wiki to the rescue!
https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Poni
Have fun!
Kians, native to Prilissa/Trin's Veil, are the riding animal I most identify with Traveller, probably because Grenadier bothered to make a 25mm miniature and rider back in the early 80s.
One of the early books said that the player characters could carry their riding animals from planet to planet in cold berths.
Do you think that an empire that spans thousands of worlds with a wide range of tech levels and wealth isn't going to have horses (and other riding animals)? Looking at 21st century Earth, for example, we see that there are areas where horses, mules, and camels are still popular and in common practical use.
There are going to be planets where the locals use horses for transportation because sure, air/rafts are faster, but what are you going to do if your air/raft breaks down and it's going to take you a year to get a replacement grav plate? No, better to rely on locally sourced draft animals to begin with; that way you're not scrambling to adapt to a change.
Other riding animals, yes. But I was asking about Terran horses in particular.
And I was asking about what was n the canon of the original edition’s lore, not what could be or would be logically.
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Huh? That Poni logo is from CT.
Probably an elaborate geek joke on the courier/x-boat Scout function and the US Pony express.
Don't forget the Miniphants
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I always thought that that was just there so that the Characters And NonCharacters had some form of transport when on more primitive worlds.
Trick is, will Terran horses metabolize local fodder?
To the extent I'd get into the issue, I'd use horses as a default and substitute local equivalents to provide color or if the planet is just way too different to support imported feed plants.
ISTR there were rules about eating random animals from the wild encounter tables, so I think it's pretty much established it's all compatible. Maybe the ancients did it with their gene-seeding.
Clearly.
Horses exist all the way back to Classic Traveller, though riding animals were not a major focus of the lore for obvious reasons. Supplement 6: 76 Patrons mentions (page 43) "four horsed cavalry brigades of militia-constabulary" on (page 42) "a primitive world on the frontier of the Imperium". This seems to at least imply availability.
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