When is Traveller set?

[Septimus Faber]

[deleted.]

[Ashtagon]

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/History
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Technology_level

Asking when Traveller set is a bit like asking when the United states is set. That campaign setting encompasses a number of subsettings in various epochs through a unified history.

Traveller TL10 is canonically achieved in 2120 AD.

[Saladman]

^What Ashtagon said.

It's a side note if you're making your own setting, but it's still useful to know the Imperium itself is deliberately a far future setting. Civilization has fallen and risen again multiple times, and our own era is forgotten to history. So if you do come across a tech level or a particular element in the rulebook you can't see a way to fit in a near future timeline, go right ahead and leave it out.

I don't know how far along you are, and I'm actually a big fan of rolling your own sub-sectors. But there is a near-future Traveller setting, 2300 AD, if you want to see another take on it. (There's also an even-nearer future one without FTL or artificial gravity, called Orbital, but it doesn't sound like that's what you're going for.)

[golentan]

There's also a sourcebook for GURPS traveller set during the interstellar wars (Vilani vs. Solomani in the wake of Earth developing FTL). Obviously, mechanics would need to be ignored, but it would be a good fluff source material.