'Imperial Culture' (non-canonista)

[CombineGeneral]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

"no, I would expect the Imperials have formal, commissioned chaplains for many, many faiths."

After a point that might become logistically awkward. I know the US does this, but the US hasn't done this over thousands of planets for thousands of years.

In most modern western militaries, chaplains have to "switch hit" and attend to the spiritual needs of servicemen of other faiths - I am sure this would be a requirement in Imperial militaries too.

I don't use the OTU, I began playing Traveller before most of the OTU was written so we developed a "Terran Empire" loosely based on Frank Herbert's Dune (it also meshed well enough with GW's miniatures line we could borrow liberally from their material as well) but we dispensed with the "god-emperor" stuff and assumed a system more like the Imperium described in the 1st Dune novel.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

An alternative is to recruit chaplains on a unit-for-unit basis rather then by the Imperium.

During the War Between the States units in both Union and Confederate service elected their own chaplains, typically ordained clergy from their local area (units were recruited by county on both sides). Maybe Imperial units use a similar system that varies by world.