Favorite Sector

[Timerover51]

Had more time, yes, not have. Having just had my first child (7 months old today) I am starting to realize just how much of a commodity time really is.

Yes, I did used to spend days on end sitting at a coffee shop working out the details of my 'pet sector.' Then I got married and days turned to hours - still a lot of time. Slowly that turned into the occasional weekend and now...

So I guess I do understand why so many people would favour a fully developed sector after all.

Congratulations on the safe birth of your child. Having gone through three pregnancies, with three cases of toxemia, and with the first one, not knowing if my wife was going to survive, while our 3 months premature son did not, I always give thanks for those who do not have problems.

And do not forget to enjoy him/her while they are small. They grow very fast, and all too soon you will be flying to their new domicile to visit for Thanksgiving.

Pardon the thread digression.

 

[Murphy]

all too soon you will be flying to their new domicile to visit for Thanksgiving Traveller Game.

Fixed that for ya.

 

[Timerover51]

Fixed that for ya.

Maybe and maybe not. Neither my son or daughter is interested in roleplaying games, although they both like board games. Australian Rails by Mayfair Games is the favorite. My son likes Lunar Rails by Mayfair. My daughter's boyfriend is into D&D however.

 

[Dagrill]

I personally like the entire Spinward Frontier:
Spinward Marches/Trojan Reach and 1-2 sectors to spinward of these.

Ditto, they and bits of Deneb and Gvurrdon are the only ones I've used in games.


David

 

[Dagrill]

I must admit that I am surprised, not just at how many people favour the same sector, but that for most it's for the same reason. Having details laid out for you definitely makes a GM's job a lot easier, but I've always found great reward in creating my own worlds and detailing my own histories and timelines. I have pages and pages of nothing but history of the Tracerie sector stemming from Ancient times all the way up to TNE. I guess I've always assumed that most other GM's share this common desire to create.
Am......I odd?

No,

I was very inexperienced as a GM in the 80's and used the D&D modules and traveller adventures as background. These days I have more confidence, but still have a nostalgic attachment to the old campaigns.

kind Regards

David

 

[Murphy]

I was very inexperienced as a GM in the 80's and used the D&D modules and traveller adventures as background. These days I have more confidence, but still have a nostalgic attachment to the old campaigns.

How odd. It's the opposite for me. When I was an inexperienced GM 10 years ago, I used to write adventures from scratch. I spent weeks experimenting and thinking up scenarios and NPCs, to no end.

Now I don't have time for such extensive preparation, so I use someone else's work, or resort to improvising -- both of which are clearly easier in a defined setting.

 

[jappel]

I've definitely evolved over the years. I was a homebrew guy for decades, having both played and run in sectors and milieus created by myself and others. (I've got material forming the earliest basis of my "Exile Clusters" setting that date back to 1980.) But I also played a lot of games in the Marches, searching for the Kinunir and chasing clues about the Octagon Society and Twilight's Peak.

Like a lot of us, I found that the demands both on my time and on my creative energies made keeping up a homebrew universe problematic. This came coupled with a realization that what really matters is things that will affect the characters, or things the characters can themselves affect. Was it going to matter to my player characters what the order of the Barracks Emperors was? Did I need to have the precise orbital information for every astronomical object in Virgil subsector of my homebrew? Was the precise date of the Mahgriz going to come up while they were fighting off horse-mounted nomads trying to fire a recoiless rifle into the engine nacelle of their Fat Cat? Well, no, it wasn't.

So when I got the chance to start up a group about 18 months ago, I looked to what kind of adventures I wanted to run, and what stories to tell. This led me to cracking open Legend of the Sky Raiders and to the old FASA stomping grounds of the Far Frontiers sector. This gave me the best of all worlds - a fair few well-detailed worlds with some ready-made adventures for when I want them, the overall backstory of the 3I setting during the Fifth Frontier War if I wanted it, but lots of worlds without much besides the UWP and an allegiance code. This lets me make up stuff as I need or desire, and provides room for me to drop in ideas I scavenge from other sources.

 

[Khan Trav]

Spinward Marches yea!

 

[Frewfrux]

Foreven Sector

I've long ignored details about other sectors as I have my own that I work with, but I just came across the Foreven sector on the FFE website. It looks like it's intentionally left undeveloped, and placed close enough to Spinward Marches that it's playable by fans without "ruining cannon."

It looks like there's enough development to give it a bit of background, but beyond that it has been left alone.

I just may just try a new sector for my T5 games (once I can get them going).

http://www.farfuture.net/FFEForevenSectorReserve2008.pdf

 

[FairWeather]

Judge's Guild Sectors vs. OTU?

I'm just getting back into Traveller after a 30+ hiatus. I've been looking at some stuff on on the Judge's Guild sectors as a possible starting point. I know there's a question/discussion/debate about the quality/usefulness of the Judge's Guild materials, but what is the back story on the Judge's Guild sectors vs. OTU?

 

[aramis]

I'm just getting back into Traveller after a 30+ hiatus. I've been looking at some stuff on on the Judge's Guild sectors as a possible starting point. I know there's a question/discussion/debate about the quality/usefulness of the Judge's Guild materials, but what is the back story on the Judge's Guild sectors vs. OTU?

Real simple story: They were licensees. They produced a 4 sector block. For whatever reason, their block was 50% overwritten when Atlas was published. Several other licensees worlds were incorporated into the Atlas, but not JG's.

No other backstory/reasoning has been made public.

Me, I like them. They're better than Supp 3 overall, IMO, tho' the physical quality was lacking.

 

[inexorabletash]

Several other licensees worlds were incorporated into the Atlas, but not JG's.

Per the credits in the Atlas: Old Expanses (High Passage) and Reaver's Deep (J. Andrew Keith in High Passage/Far Traveller) - any others?

 

[aramis]

Per the credits in the Atlas: Old Expanses (High Passage) and Reaver's Deep (J. Andrew Keith in High Passage/Far Traveller) - any others?

GW's, but that's because they were released in GDW materials prior, and were done for GDW as work for hire.

 

[whulorigan]

I'm just getting back into Traveller after a 30+ hiatus. I've been looking at some stuff on on the Judge's Guild sectors as a possible starting point. I know there's a question/discussion/debate about the quality/usefulness of the Judge's Guild materials, but what is the back story on the Judge's Guild sectors vs. OTU?

Also note that MJD published a sourcebook for the 4 sectors of the Gateway Domain for T20 set in about the year 1000.

The interesting thing to note about it is that Ley Sector, Glimmerdrift Reaches Sector, and Maranatha-Alkahest/Gateway Sector all use the same subsector names, but the world names, UWPs, and stellar positions are all different.

Crucis Margin Sector, on the other hand, is the exact opposite: all of the Subsector names are different, but the names, positions, and UWPs (adjusted for year 1000) of the worlds are all the same as the JG material.

That's the part I can't figure out.

 

[inexorabletash]

GW's, but that's because they were released in GDW materials prior, and were done for GDW as work for hire.

Interesting! I had to do some quick googling.... GW => Bob McWilliams, credited with Trojan Reach from Leviathan and... lo and behold, there in the credits for Adventure 4: "Produced and edited by Albie Fiore, Ian Livingstone and Andy Slack of Games Workshop Ltd., England"

Learn something new every day - thanks Aramis!

 

[Hemdian]

AFAIK not only was JG retconned, but Paranoia Press was too. (They did Beyond and Vanguard Reaches.) Despite that, in recent years I've found an update to the Vanguard Reaches and another unpublished PP supplement on eBay.

Meanwhile I've never heard of Group One being retconned, so their Theta Borealis material is still theoretically part of the canon.

I don't know the status of FASA's material. I *thought* they'd been retconned but I might be mistaken.

 

[aramis]

AFAIK not only was JG retconned, but Paranoia Press was too. (They did Beyond and Vanguard Reaches.) Despite that, in recent years I've found an update to the Vanguard Reaches and another unpublished PP supplement on eBay.

Meanwhile I've never heard of Group One being retconned, so their Theta Borealis material is still theoretically part of the canon.

I don't know the status of FASA's material. I *thought* they'd been retconned but I might be mistaken.

If it was in the area covered by the Atlas, it's been retconned. If not, probably not. Where was it?

 

[rancke]

AFAIK not only was JG retconned, but Paranoia Press was too. (They did Beyond and Vanguard Reaches.) Despite that, in recent years I've found an update to the Vanguard Reaches and another unpublished PP supplement on eBay.

Meanwhile I've never heard of Group One being retconned, so their Theta Borealis material is still theoretically part of the canon.

I don't know the status of FASA's material. I *thought* they'd been retconned but I might be mistaken.

There's a differenc ebetween retconned and decanonized. If it's been retconned, there's new canon to replace it. If it's just been decanonized, it's no longer a mandatory part of the OTU, but whether you can use it depends on whether it contradicts other canon. Thus Paranoia Press' various hyper-tech[*] civilizations are out but the star positions in Beyond and Vanguard Reaches are still valid.

[*] I use the term 'ultra-tech' for stuff that we don't yet have on Earth but the Imperium does and 'hyper-tech' for tech beyond what the Imperium has.​

Hans

 

[Hemdian]

If it was in the area covered by the Atlas, it's been retconned. If not, probably not. Where was it?

I'm fairly certain Paranoia Press was retconned yet both their sectors are outside the Atlas area (spinward of Trojan Reach).

Theta Borealis is four sectors spinward of Riftspan Reaches.

And FASA's adventures were set in the Far Frontiers sector which is two sectors spinward of the Spinward Marches (the other side of Foreven).

 

[Hemdian]

There's a differenc ebetween retconned and decanonized. If it's been retconned, there's new canon to replace it. If it's just been decanonized, it's no longer a mandatory part of the OTU, but whether you can use it depends on whether it contradicts other canon. Thus Paranoia Press' various hyper-tech[*] civilizations are out but the star positions in Beyond and Vanguard Reaches are still valid.

Ah. Okay. I was using the two terms synonymously. (I need to find the original text that said what was being changed and check the wording.) In the case of Paranoia Press I believe the star positions may have been replaced ... there was a pretty distinct star pattern in Paranoia Press's I'Sred*Ni subsector that isn't present on TravellerMap.com.