Brainstorming thread: Sector History

[Malenfant]

Well, in my "hiver expansion through the ages" proposal I put the Hive Federation border in -1800 at the spinward border of Centrax. They wouldn't be in Leonidae, there's no Hiver territory there.

I think Hiver explorers could have been venturing into Phlask at the time, so in both cases you'd have the scouts of each race initiating first contact with eachother. Which works out kinda nice

.

 

[Klaus]

This is a bit weird. I've been developing material for a campaign set on the Solamni Rim (the Neworld sector 6 yrs after the Rim War, partly inspired by Firefly) for the past 2 months and joined the Moot hoping I could find some helpers. You're well ahead of me (by at least 3 days!) so I guess I'll throw in with you!

One thought: given that the Solomani aren't fond of the Imperium, wouldn't they use their own dating system. It will be 5514AD in the Julian calender when it is 993 by imperial reckoning. I know it makes it awkward calibrating material but it could give a more authentic Solomani orientated flavour to the sector.

 

[Malenfant]

Welcome aboard!

Well, keep in mind that we're not actually developing the Solomani Rim here - we're looking at Spica, which is two sectors to trailing (and one to trailing and one to coreward of Neworld). BTW, if you want info on the Rim itself, then I strongly recommend that you pick up the "Rim of Fire" book for GURPS Traveller. It's a very good resource for Solomani history.

Yes, I think the Solomani at Spica would probably use the AD dating system... however, it's much easier for us when we're talking among ourselves to work in the Imperial Calendar since most of the dates we've got are in IY. We can always convert back to Solomani later on.

 

[Klaus]

Its hard finding all that canon material. I'm a newcomer to Traveller, only seeing it in the CT reprints, though I've 20 years sf gaming under my belt, but I fell in love with it immediately. T20 was a must buy as I know the D20 back to back, and QLI have done an excellent job of marrying the two systems. Well, enough biog. Just thought I'd explain my background a bit, since you all seem to know what each other's about.

Its almost impossible to find any Traveller material not sold online in my neck of the woods, which is why I gobbled up the CT reprints so quickly, so I have large gaps in my knowledge of canon. Sp please be gentle if I post something stupid.

However, I do think there should be no rush to generate subsectors. My only real critique of the Spinward Marches is that it was really hard to work out which planets were important: the high tech industrial worlds that would obviously dominate the economy.

Maybe we should work out trade routes and economic factors before doing all that number crunching. Also maybe we should look at 'adventure planets', places where there's lots of opportunity for different kinds of game, and done in enough detail to allow people to get stuck in straight away. In the Spinward Marches I ended up getting drawn to Tarsus, which seemed the ideal place. I don't seem to be alone in that, considering the amount of stuff I've seen on the web. We should consider scattering a few of these ideal adventure planets around. There could be a gold-rush style colony world, a wartorn planet, a pirate haven, etc.

Talking about pirates, we need to work out how that economy works too. It seems ridiculous that Granicus could be a pirate haven, as its almost isolated in a rift. For pirates to operate, and to be able to strike at Stoner and Imperial targets, would need a massive network of secret deep space refueling points, and therefore a massive criminal organisation to support it, which is just not implied in the literature. We can avoid such anomolies if the Spica sector is 'designed' rather than 'generated'.

I also have some ideas about corporate 'free trade' zones and independent traders/miners (somewhat Firefly inspired) and how that conflict could work out, especially with the war as a backdrop. I apologise if I'm covering old ground. I should get up to speed soon.

 

[Malenfant]

The viability of piracy is big bugbear in Traveller... some people say they shouldn't be able to survive, others say they should. Me, I don't care - I think you'd always have people who prey on others, and there are a lot of places to hide in space (especially in lawless systems in non-aligned space).

That said, we do know (from AR3) that piracy does happens in this sector - a lot of piracy raids cross the border into Hiver space from the Solomani side. The Sollie government claims it can't do anything about it (or won't), but I half wonder if some of them are... er... I forgot the name. Privateers? Corsairs? The "officially sanctioned" pirates that had those letters of marque... anyway, "guys paid by the Sollie government to raise some hell on the other side" . Naturally the Sollie government would deny all knowlede of this if it was happening .

Still, do feel free to start separate threads on topics that you think warrant discussion . (It doesn't matter if you think they're silly questions ).

 

[Klaus]

i don't think piracy needs to viable. as it is, intersteller trade may not be viable. lets have pirates coz pirates are fun to have. but if we have them, then it should make astrographic sense

 

[RainOfSteel]

From a meeting aboard Spica 5:


Sol Confed Captain: "Raiders? The Solomani governement officially condems all piractical operations in Spica, and will pursue such terrorist to the ends of Charted Space."

Hiver Ambassador: "Then, could you explain what that vessel with a skull and cross bones on the prow was doing when it was seen attacking Hiver freighters three human months ago!"

Sol Confed Captain: "The Solomani Navy operates no such vessels."

 

[LcKedovan]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
The viability of piracy is big bugbear in Traveller... some people say they shouldn't be able to survive, others say they should. Me, I don't care - I think you'd always have people who prey on others, and there are a lot of places to hide in space (especially in lawless systems in non-aligned space).

That said, we do know (from AR3) that piracy does happens in this sector - a lot of piracy raids cross the border into Hiver space from the Solomani side. The Sollie government claims it can't do anything about it (or won't), but I half wonder if some of them are... er... I forgot the name. Privateers? Corsairs? The "officially sanctioned" pirates that had those letters of marque... anyway, "guys paid by the Sollie government to raise some hell on the other side" . Naturally the Sollie government would deny all knowlede of this if it was happening .

Privateers had a letter of Marque, Corsairs were pirate/privateers operating in the Mediterranean.

I haven't heard the Piracy in Traveller debate, but just going on history I can't see why it wouldn't exist... anyhow... definately Spica is a place for commerce raiders/Privateers from the Sollies..

-W.

 

[Tony Canopus]

Debate? What's to Debate? The only thing cooler than Pirates is Space Pirates!

 

[Klaus]

How about Ancient sites and other lost ruins? Be nice to have some archeology, and a juicy black market and cross border trade in artefacts.

 

[Malenfant]

Ancients did drop humans off in Hiver space, so there are minor human races there - actually there are "a handful of minor human races from Ancient-planted stock along [the Hive Federation's] spinward frontier", to quote from GT AR3 (pg 30_. So there could be at least one minor human race in the Hiver portion of Spica.

AR3 also says that Hive Federation apparently doesn't contain Ancient sites (sidebar pg 110), though the Inheritor Sphereworld is way off to trailing of the Hive Federation (see map for details).

Though as the Hass'kor show, there could be ruins of other races. What I think would be kinda interesting would be to find ruins of failed colonisation attempts - I don't see why all colonisation attempts should be successful...

 

[LcKedovan]

Originally posted by Tony Canopus:
Debate? What's to Debate? The only thing cooler than Pirates is Space Pirates!

Sing it brother!

ARRRRRRRRRR!
-Udephaeg Vhargh (Free Rogue of the Space Lanes)

-W.

 

[mike wightman]

Don't forget, there are races that pre-date the "Ancients"

 

[Klaus]

I like human ruins too. Maybe a medieval kingdom among the ruins of a high tech society, with the occassional relic.

Or dead cities possibly full of treasure but massively radioactive from some long forgotten war (tho it would have to be the mother of all fallout bombs!)

 

[Malenfant]

Just plain old failed colonies where everyone's dead would be nice too. It happens after all - people die from unknown diseases or unusual climatic extremes... there were several cases of viking settlers of yore settling on islands and lasting a few decades before being all wiped out as crops failed and so on.

 

[Klaus]

how many 'virgin' worlds do you think there'll be?

 

[Malenfant]

define "Virgin" in this case - you mean uninhabited earthlike worlds?

 

[Klaus]

Not necessarily Earthlike, just 'easily terraformable'. That's how one space colony nut described Mars.

 

[LcKedovan]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Just plain old failed colonies where everyone's dead would be nice too. It happens after all - people die from unknown diseases or unusual climatic extremes... there were several cases of viking settlers of yore settling on islands and lasting a few decades before being all wiped out as crops failed and so on.

Or Viking Settler's pissing off the natives and getting whupped

-W.

 

[M. Chester]

Perhaps some colonies could never have recovered from the so-named "Long Night"

Or perhaps like many such ventures, the economic support for such a venture wasn't there in the right degree?

At least remnants of these would indeed be interesting, to join the consensus...