2300 AD Project Bayern Hyades Cluster

[CJBeiting]

One of the interesting additions to the Project Bayern supplement for 2300 AD over the first edition is all of the stuff it has added to the Bayern mission, particularly the side mission to the Hyades cluster. The Hyades part is particularly interesting given the fact that, unlike the Pleides Cluster, the Hyades Cluster is old enough to have formed planets that Travellers are able to explore--and, indeed, have to, in order to uncover the dark secret at the heart of the Hyades.

So I was a little surprised to discover that, while Project Bayern provides a good map for the contents of the Pleides Cluster, it doesn't have anything anywhere near as detailed for the Hyades Cluster.

Is there another possible map of the objects in the Hyades Cluster out there on the net anywhere? Any suggestions someone with more astronomy knowledge than I possess could provide would be welcome.

 

[CordwainerFish]

The first thing that comes to mind is that the Hyades is (are?) far enough away that present surveys are probably both incomplete and imprecise, and dispersed enough that transit between the bright stars is going to depend on lots of Ks and Ms whose, again, existence and location are not nailed down.

 

[GJD]

Honestly, I was burnt out after mapping the Pleiades. The Hyades are a more open cluster as well, and the intent wasn't really to spend as detailed a time these as in the Pleaides. If you want a deep-dive there are several academic papers on the components of the Hyades, including this very informative one: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2019/03/aa34045-18/aa34045-18.html

 

[CJBeiting]

Oh, sure, I get the amount of work that went into the star mapping. But I have to say that I found the Hyades part of the campaign on one level more interesting than that of the Pleaides part due to the fact that, in the Hyades, there's stuff that typical players can actually -do-, like visiting actual planets. One of the great flaws of the original Bayern adventure was that, apart from discovering the [SPOILERS] in the heart of the Pleaides typical players wouldn't have much to do, unless they were astronomers or astrophysicists who were keen on star-charting. I find interesting that, in your revision of Bayern, you did exactly the same thing that I did when I ran the adventure all those years ago, and that was trying to spice things up a little by including a potential saboteur subplot. In my case I made the culprit Aristotle, coming down with a bad case of HAL-9000itis and turning all the ship's systems against the crew as a result. That did make the campaign more appealing to my players, even if it did shamelessly rip off "2001".

But in any case, thanks for everything you did to expand Bayern into the epic campaign that it now is--to date, it's the best thing in the new 2300AD line. Thanks also for the reference about the Hyades that you provided above--maybe one day if I can figure out the math, I can crunch up a map of my own.