Finding the right sector for a campaign

[l8knight]

I've been working on my first campaign but as I've begun writing the "story" I'm realizing the gaps.

My campaign involves a party of smugglers (think FireFly) crash landing on a remote unexplored planet. On this planet I have created some unique alien life as well as a history that involves a small colonization by the Bwap race, now enslaved. The idea is for the party to explore the planet and uncover its mysteries and hopefully find a way off the planet.

I had originally marked this campaign to take place after the Fifth Frontier War but now wondering if this is ideal. My biggest problem is trying to figure out where this world could be located to tie in with the fact its gone unexplored and is so remote (yet reachable by a small party of Bwap to have established a small colony).

From the research I've done I was leaning towards the Foreven Sector or the Hinterworlds. Am I barking up the wrong tree?

I'm trying to get it right, to fit within whats already been established within Traveller. Since I've stopped writing the campaign so I can go back and firstly create a "World Data" book for the planet I've created, I'd like it to be applicable for a particular sector and/or time-frame.

So I guess I'm seeking some guidance/suggestions. Maybe I'm over analyzing and should just create the world wherever I want in whatever time-frame I pick and call it a day I worry about a purist coming along and saying "wait a minute, if this place is in this sector how can it not belong to the Imperium and house some kind of base?!"

Thanks!

 

[DFW]

How about a remote part of Rift area?

 

[rust]

You could use any of the frontier areas of the Imperium as well as the
Rift running partially through the Imperium. The planet in question does
not necessarily have to be anywhere near a trade route, the Bwaps' star-
ship could have misjumped over a huge distance.

I worry about a purist coming along and saying "wait a minute, if this place is in this sector how can it not belong to the Imperium and house some kind of base?!"

If this should happen and you are in an area where it is illegal to hit some-
one on the head with a hard object, just tell him where to find a door and
how to close it from the outside. It is your game, you (and your players)
decide what is real in your universe and what not, and as long as you ha-
ve fun you are doing it right.

 

[l8knight]

Actually thats exactly where I was placing it when I started out writing the campaign but started second guessing myself.

So now looking at the Great Rift map I'm thinking the Oheaaye'eal subsector of Touchstone may work perfectly. It fits with the story of the group avoiding the common route (j-5 Route) in order to avoid detection and is completely remote having only the one world.

 

[GypsyComet]

I've set a new campaign in Arzul, but am finding that the extant UWPs are in need of a bit of help. When a two-subsector cluster out-pops Core, it's time for drastic measures...

 

[l8knight]

I've set a new campaign in Arzul, but am finding that the extant UWPs are in need of a bit of help. When a two-subsector cluster out-pops Core, it's time for drastic measures...

This is actually part of my problem... I can't find a UWP that corresponds to what I've created. It would be nice to be able to actually locate a suitable planet so I can include the real sector map in my world data book.

Is there any kind of "world locator" app? I've been browsing through TravellerMap.com but it doesn't seem to search for planet codes (X000000-0).

 

[GypsyComet]

Not that I'm aware of. What sort of world are you looking for?

 

[l8knight]

The UWP for my world is X75843C-6 Ga Ni

The race I've created are amphibious but live mostly in water, so of course the Hydrosphere is key. No space port to maroon the party and support the fact it shouldn't be an explored world. World size and atmosphere are somewhat flexible.

 

[rust]

If the planet is unexplored, you can just put it anywhere on the map in
Reft Sector (or wherever), because it is not on any of the official maps
anyway.

 

[Elrick]

What about Reaver's Deep? Bordered by the Aslan, Solomani and Imperium and on the fringes of the Great Rift which should give you plenty of scope for complicating things for the players.

See: http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Reaver%27s_Deep_Sector

 

[GypsyComet]

The UWP for my world is X75843C-6 Ga Ni

The race I've created are amphibious but live mostly in water, so of course the Hydrosphere is key. No space port to maroon the party and support the fact it shouldn't be an explored world. World size and atmosphere are somewhat flexible.

Those population numbers are not going to occur as part of normal UWP generation, which may be why you aren't finding a good match. The highest Law Level you'll get with those Pop and Gov results is an 8 or 9.

 

[DFW]

This thread kinda brings to light the problem with the 3I. It has almost no real "frontier" areas in the classic sense. It is a huge, advanced empire surrounded by other huge, high tech empires. There is no real areas far from these entities.

It would be like calling an area in Northern Montana a frontier area...

 

[GypsyComet]

On the other hand, the frontiers that remain are often very abrupt. That Extrality Fence that we take for granted in the Imperium doesn't exist elsewhere, and any Impy who treats a frontier port as auto-safe is in for a rude shock.

The trailing border of the Imperium is loaded with pocket states, many of whom do not respond well to a clueless Imperial touching down. The Spinward frontier, on the other hand, is a bit more sparse but a lot deeper, with frontier states of dozens of systems as much as a year's travel beyond Five Sisters. At the same time, those frontier states are surrounded by many parsecs of once- or never-seen worlds. Get stranded out there and help is not a matter of time, but a matter of miracles. On the Spinward frontier, that could happen within two sectors of the Imperial border, and long before you reach the farthest outposts of Man.

 

[l8knight]

Get stranded out there and help is not a matter of time, but a matter of miracles. On the Spinward frontier, that could happen within two sectors of the Imperial border, and long before you reach the farthest outposts of Man.

And that would play into premise of the campaign. However, I also like the suggestion of Reaver's Deep because the reason they've crashed on the planet is as a result of damages suffered from pirates. There are a couple sparse sectors upward from the Riftrim and Gulf sub-sectors of Reaver's Deep. So I'm researching the Reaver's Deep and what kind of material I can use from its history to further develop my own, but what GypsyComet describes is what I had envisioned; frontier states surrounded by many parsecs of once- or never-seen worlds.

 

[DFW]

The trailing border of the Imperium is loaded with pocket states, many of whom do not respond well to a clueless Imperial touching down. The Spinward frontier, on the other hand, is a bit more sparse but a lot deeper, with frontier states of dozens of systems as much as a year's travel beyond Five Sisters. At the same time, those frontier states are surrounded by many parsecs of once- or never-seen worlds. Get stranded out there and help is not a matter of time, but a matter of miracles. On the Spinward frontier, that could happen within two sectors of the Imperial border, and long before you reach the farthest outposts of Man.

None of them are distant from HUGE, powerful empires. A few handful of jumps at most. Which is the entire point of my post.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Zhodani only explore extensively in one direction, and the Aslan are largely blocked by the Great Rift. The cluster of states in Far Frontiers, Yiklerzdanzh, and the Vanguard Reach are either reactions to the Zhodani or are Imperial escapists.

A "few handful of jumps" for either the Imperials or the Zhodani is potentially an entire sector or more. The backwater frontiers found in the Hinterworlds and Trojan Reach are not that large, yet are clearly under-settled. If that can occur with hordes of hungry capitalists so close by, you don't really need a five sector head start to get truly lost. The multi-world polities of the Vargr also thin out very quickly heading coreward, while astrography limits the Solomani, Hivers and Aslan from going much farther rimward.

From the point of view of the Imperium as a whole (a suspect POV, given its size) the howling wilderness is someone else's problem. In the scale of a single ship, the frontiers are close enough to get lost in. Which is the point.

 

[DFW]

Which is the point.

No, that isn't my point. My point is that the 3I lacks a frontier, beyond which is unexplored and hasn't been settled for a VERY long time. The setting is stagnant & fairly static. The 3I is fine as ONE setting. The owner should have done the D&D model of creating new settings using the Traveller mechanics. From the players I've known over the last 30+ years, it is a major reason for going to others games...

 

[GypsyComet]

You aren't the OP. He wants an frontier big enough to get lost in. For one ship (as opposed to an entire mighty nation) that's easily doable.

If you want frontiers big enough to lose empires in, you'll need to push out the edges of the map. It's called "Charted Space" for good reason.

Alternately find a different setting that's set up on a cheese wheel model instead of the "beset on all sides" model of the 3I. Battletech's Inner Sphere comes to mind.

 

[rust]

On the one hand the "known space" of the Third Imperium is indeed most-
ly a well explored interstellar state without much of a frontier, but on the
other hand the entire Traveller universe is just a very tiny dot on a map
of the unexplored Galaxy.

This combination is a bit weird, one would expect a constellation of dense-
ly settled core regions (Imperium, Zhodani, Hivers ...) surrounded by a
far wider region which is continually less settled and less well explored
the further one gets from these core regions.

Instead the overall picture is much more like a town map of Los Angeles
put into the middle of the Sahara, a highly unlikely settlement pattern,
probably caused by the author's method to map out all sectors of the
"known space" in full detail, and then to draw a sudden border between
fully mapped and completely unmapped sectors, instead of a gradual
development from fully mapped through partially mapped to unexplored.

 

[GypsyComet]

It's a side effect of the setting being 5000 years along.

Look back at the genesis era, right as the Vilani and, not too far behind, the Zhodani are pushing into space. Even as hundred-world empires, they are years of travel apart. As five-hundred world empires they are scarsely closer to each other. Each continues to grow, the Vilani along star lanes, the Zhodani in a pre-meditated sphere. Each encounters smaller states and absorbs them, but remain years apart even at their largest extents.

Then, in a flash of a few centuries, new empires emerge in unexplored corners, not close to or noticed by the two oldest players. One of these reaches out and stings the massive Vilani Empire, then kills it and in a blink absorbs it. The replacement dies of Vilani overdose, and sputters into darkness. The Zhodani continue their slow growth. New players appear, grow, and in one case, vanish in a solar flash. Three of the new players spreads where there is no resistance and grow large, while another grows, fractures, recombines, and fractures again, spreading in fractured unity. Two of the more distant newcomers meet and engage in protracted war at their farthest frontiers, ignoring all others. The Zhodani meet and rebuff the fractured amoeba that is the Vargr.

All while the center is dark, broken only by occasional sparks.

Then the center produces another spark, which quickly grows, filling in the frontiers between all others, beating back those frontiers in a few places. A daughter state appears, is consumed, and re-emerges, but the vast gap between the other states is suddenly full.

1104.

In another eyeblink, the giant empire in the center fractures, struggles with itself and its former parts, then sets off a bomb that erases most of itself and most of it neighbors from existence. Only the most distant portion and the neighboring Zhodani survive at this scale, and the Zhodani are being eaten, or perhaps eclipsed, from the outside.

---

The lack of frontiers is an accident of the moment in time the game is set in.