Vangaurd Reaches

[Jak Nazryth]

I am lucky enough to both GM a Traveller game and play in a Traveller game.
I start GMing in March and will begin playing on another night in April or thereabouts.
My game will begin in the Trojan Reach. Last night I found out the campaign setting will be playing is in the Vanguard Reaches.
I know nothing about it, except that is has a cool name. Upon reading just a little there seems to be very few official publications. From what I understand Judges Guild release some products in the late 70's or even early 80's only to be denounced later by GDW as "non-canon".

Has anyone had experience the the Vanguard Reach? Are there any good (recent - as in since the 70's) publications on history, powers in the region, nations, pocket-empires, that sort of thing?

 

[InexorableTash]

The Vanguard Reaches were first described in "Vanguard Reaches" by Chuck Kallenbach II, published by Paranoia Press (along with The Beyond by Donald P. Rapp). These are available from Far Future Entertainment (a.k.a. Marc Miller) in PDF form either from DriveThruRPG or FFE on CD-ROM on the Classic Traveller "The Apocrypha-2"

In the 1990s, Chuck updated the data for the 1201 "New Era". The Paranoia Press site is offline now but available via the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine"

Unlike the Judges Guild, the Paranoia Press sectors were never revisited and paved over ("de-canonized"). Later licensee Digest Group Publications (DGP) did publish "dot maps" showing differing stellar positions but never detailed the sectors in any way. No later supplements touched on them either.

Most recently, as part of revising the data for the Official Traveller Universe, Marc Miller has brought in some of the setting data from these older publications for review. They're up, modified slightly from the original, on TravellerMap - but this is just maps/sector data. There is no background on the polities beyond what's in the original 1980s-era supplement.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

A couple days after I posted this, the GM running the Vagaurd Reaches campaign posted the following on our google hang out page.

http://www.downport.com/hiwg/Archive/HIWG-docs/van_lib.pdf

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Vanguard_Reaches_Sector

Most every (if not all) minor race listed is "non-canon".. I'm not sure about the history. But at some point unless there is an "official" write up, people will fill in the blanks.

The above links do have a lot of interesting information, more than enough for me to understand the basic power structure. I really like all the 3I client states spread across the sectors Spinward of the Trojan Reach. So many un-tapped possibilities for Traveller adventures!

 

[steve98052]

There's nothing wrong with developing adventures in regions with little or no canon material -- except that you have to invent everything yourself, or use material developed by others without the coordination canon offers. In other words, if one fan creation is based on Paranoia Press and another on Digest Group, it's going to take a lot of extra work to bring them into alignment.

Of course, canon isn't completely self-consistent either. Foreven Sector is, per canon, strictly referees' preserve. But a few things are defined in contradiction to that, in the double adventure The Chamax Plague/Horde, and in a canon magazine article. But I assume it's fair to say that nothing more will be made canon there.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

All true.
The reason for my question though was because I was running a player in that sector. Until the GM replied, I literally had no information about it, other than the names of the client states and small holdings listed on the Traveller Map.
When I create a character, I get as much information as possible about the campaign setting to better understand the history and political landscape. It also helps me to develop a more complete character background.
Not sure where the GM got his information, but it works for me.