[mxyzplk]

It would be one thing if Traveller was truly sold as a generic ruleset. It's not. The Imperium is interlaced into the core rules. Just not enough to use really, and then there's no single starter source on the setting.

My gripe isn't so much with the core book per se as the way the Imperium setting is always done. I'd be fine with:

Core "generic" rules
Imperium setting book <-- here's the problem, this doesn't exist
Specific setting splatbooks

-or-

Core rulebook with sufficient Imperium setting info <- also does not exist
Setting specific splatbooks

Only the oldest games- Traveller, D&D - get away with the sloppy design of having rules that are kinda generic but really are spiked with loads of setting assumptions that you'd have to go clean out to really use them as a generic ruleset. Traveller compounds this by, for no reason other than tradition, not having a good setting overview - in the core or in a "Meet the Imperium" dedicated book - but instead a series of splatbooks.

Sure, people like Traveller and get it and revamp the rules to use in other settings. It doesn't change the fact that that's not the way Traveller is designed and thus it supports that use case more poorly than if it were designed that way.

Fading Suns had about a dozen times as much setting info in its corebook as Traveller does, and then it had the "player's companion" that provided more setting info and options. *Then* it had the splatbooks.

Look, no fault of Traveller's initial design, it's fine for the 1970s when people didn't know any better. The other games put out then largely did the same thing. But somehow every modern version of Traveller feels constrained to make the same mistake, and even put out the same damn supplements named the same damn things. That's unhealthy.