[mxyzplk]

But "it's diverse" is a copout. Somehow they manage to generate lots of setting information in all the additional books. And the grognard community certainly doesn't treat any of that as optional suggested information as if this really were a "freeform" rpg.

And by everyday, I don't mean some peasant somewhere, I mean the average Traveller. How does one normally travel from star to star, are there starliners? Or is it always booking passage on smaller ships? How much interstellar trade is there? Does every single ship get boarded and searched by customs or is it like seaports today where maybe .5% of stuff gets looked at? In a universe with different "tech levels" what exactly is the legality/implications of carting a ship full of iPods to the renaissance planet? Etc. All of these are fundamental assumptions that change the way a game would run for PCs.

Anyway, the setting comes out later in big chunks, and it's a design laziness ported from the earliest versions that there's info in the core book - or even a core setting book - to sum it up. You all have heard of other settings for other RPGs and how they work right? Here's the main FR book that gives you the general stuff and then here's the neverending line of splatbooks that goes into detail?

Here, you have no idea how e.g. the military works in the future until you buy whichever military book they put out first. And then, future military books have the poor grace to refer to that book for stuff unveiled there, so you have to get all or nothing. It's a bad decision that hasn't been replicated by other RPGs despite Traveller certainly not being the only large scale or sci-fi or whatever other descriptor you care to put on it out there.