Amber and Red Zones in the Spinward Marches

Fireflame

Mongoose
Okay, so I am running my players - most of them new to Traveller - through the Spinward Marches.

But what I'm interested in finding, is a list of Amber and Red zones and why they are classified as such. Sure, the Spinward Marches book details which systems are interdicted and ambered, but often times not why. Sure, for Red Zones, you can pull the Imperial secret line, but not so easy for the ambers.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

FF
 
Do you have the Mongoose Spinward Marches book? That might have some explanations - though given the nature of the totally random, pre-scouts CT Worldgen don't expect them to make much sense ;). (I'm not surprised that Martin wanted to update some of the UWPs...)

Though there's also a question of why some worlds aren't classed as Amber zones... there's plenty of high law level worlds that aren't Zoned at all, and several have oppressive governments (e.g. Duale (Mora 0308) has gov B and Law F, and Dodds (Trins Veil 0309) has gov D and Law F but bother are green zones!). And several populated worlds with no law level at all are fine to travel to, apparently.

Meanwhile, being uninhabited (or at least, uninhabited with X starport) is apparently enough to warrant being a Red Zone (which presumably means the world is patrolled and interdicted).
 
Also, GT:Behind the Claw has a brief writeup of every world in the Marches (I dunno how compatible it is with the new SM book though), but I note that in some cases Martin (who wrote both books) has just said "the reasons for interdiction are unknown" for some of the worlds in there ;) .
 
I do have the Mongoose Spinward Marches book and while it's good, is a little brief on some of these explanations. Great notes on the imperial history and the like, but was hoping that there would be at least a little details on each of the worlds in each subsector, instead of an indepth look at just two worlds. For each subsector listing, the book does state which ones are amber and red, but not always why.

I'll scour ebay for Behind the Claw...

FF
 
EDG said:
Meanwhile, being uninhabited (or at least, uninhabited with X starport) is apparently enough to warrant being a Red Zone (which presumably means the world is patrolled and interdicted).
Roll 1D:

1. The world is reserved for future colonisation or development by a Megacorporation.

2. The world is a private hunting preserve belonging to a senior Imperial noble, with no permanent inhabitants permitted.

3. The world is regularly used for target practice by the Imperial Navy.

4. All the inhabitants of the world were killed in a huge natural disaster. The world has been preserved empty as a memorial.

5. All the inhabitants of the world were killed by a highly virulent plague, which is still laying dormant in the world's fauna.

6. All the inhabitants of the world were killed by vicious predatory alien Xenomorphs, who went into hibernation again once all other organic life was destroyed.

The referee should determine the course of future events...
 
Red Zones are (or can be) determined by die roll. If the starport comes up as an "X", the world is Red Zoned.

Amber Zones aren't all die roll determined. Some can be in certain editions, where certain combinations of Law Level and Government Type are "Auto Ambers", and the Rebellion and Hard Times periods lead to huge swaths of space being Amber or Red due to war.

The Ambers and Reds in Aramis, Regina, and Five Sisters subsectors, as well as District 238, are all described in CT adventures (Shionthy/Regina, for example, has a lot of free-floating "contra-terrene" matter in the system). Victoria/Lanth had its own JTAS article and is also discussed in Mongoose's Spinward Marches book.
 
When we did BtC, we did a little detail on every world and STILL get flak for it. It's kinda nice to see that some people actually liked the idea.
 
I'm pretty sure that not all world with X-class starports are red zones. I thought the same, and raised the query on seveal boards, and as it turns out there are examples of worlds which have one or the other, but not both. I'll have to look back and see if I can find the specifics.
 
Ir varies by rule set. MGT specifically has the 'X' for no starport, but some systems use 'E' for unexplored/ no port and 'X' for red zone. It came up during playtest. This thread has some of the details.
 
I'm only familiar with CT and MGT, so red zone ≠X starport seems to hold true. As far as the Golden Era OTU is concerned, there are several published examples which bear this out (IIRC).

From my reading of the MGT rules, the placement of red and amber zones is largely up to referee discretion - as it should be, IMO. To get back to the original question, I would say that if you can't find any official sources, try to go by the guidelines in the TMB to see if there are any clues in the UWP.
 
MJD said:
When we did BtC, we did a little detail on every world and STILL get flak for it. It's kinda nice to see that some people actually liked the idea.

Some people want the freedom to create their own interpretation of the UWPs I guess. Me, I'm in the camp that would prefer to have had someone at least start synthesising something onto the very bare bones. If I don't think it hangs together, I can always dump it, neh?
 
Find a world that is amber or red. Do a Google search on the name (you'll be surprised what info. is out there). Determine if it's OTU material, or just someone's homebrew. Decide if you want to adopt it or not. If there is no info. design your own thing. It's your game, so do with it as you please.

For instance, I started a campaign on Candory, ignored it being a Droyn world and instead had it as a highly xenophobic population who are being convinced by the Imperial Navy that the Fourth Frontier War has not finished, thus they are interdicted for their own protection. This is in fact a cover to allow some elements of the Navy to mine a certain ore from the planet. What is it? Why are they doing it? At what level has this been sanctioned?.....
 
MJD said:
When we did BtC, we did a little detail on every world and STILL get flak for it. It's kinda nice to see that some people actually liked the idea.

Well, here's one more. "You stupid" :twisted: :wink: "blasted git." :roll: :P

I actually was wondering why you guys didn't do that for MgT Spinward Marches.
 
Jame Rowe said:
MJD said:
I actually was wondering why you guys didn't do that for MgT Spinward Marches.

I would imagine that he got enough flack for BtC that they didnt want to do a write up of every world. I think there's enough canon about the Spinward Marches that he did a great job with the MGT book, throwing hints in to whats out there on each world like Tarsus.

I think the idea to Google a SM world name is a great idea. There's a lot of non-canon 'Traveller Landgrab material' from the TML on worlds in the Spinward Marches. Some of it is here:

http://landgrab.downport.com/sectors.htm

Mike
 
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