Thursday, January 22, 2009

Time Waster

If you ever want to know why, despite it all, I still retain a great fondness for both Traveller and the Third Imperium setting, take a look at this. Really, what's not to love?

Thanks to Rob Conley for the link.

10 comments:

  1. Cool link, thanks James and Rob.

    I still have my three Little Black Books from way back, but sadly the box is long gone.

    Traveller has always been one of those games I thought about a lot, but only played a little bit. The only extended game of Traveller I played in was, fortunately, a true sandbox setting, and boy did we get into a lot of trouble as smugglers.

    In that way it is like Call of Cthulhu and Gamma World. Love all three, but never played them nearly as often as I would have liked.

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  2. Well, for many people when they look at that map...they are looking for the sign that says: "Here Be Dragons" and the other side of the coin when people want to play something on a much smaller scale...the sheer size of playing space puts some off.

    But I think that you are right, there is much to love in that map.

    For me, however, I was always troubled by the holes in the Third Imperium and that it was too much modeled after the Roman Empire and the American Empire. It left very little room for a layered approach. So I did what every good Referee did...create my own interpetation.

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  3. I've never seen that before and never played Traveler. -My interest is piqued. I love the idea of a map of such staggering proportions. You could have an entire campaign in just a fraction of the space. And the possibilities of what may 'lie within yet undiscovered' are great.

    This makes we wonder: What is the largest fantasy setting (in terms of area) that's out there? Has anything with dwarves and dragons come close to such magnitude?

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  4. Easy...Planescape. Covered the whole freakin' multiverse.

    I don't know the answer. Back when I played AD&D 1e, I would routinely think of interconnections between planes, planets and different points of the space/time vortex accessible through gates. I think, if you adopt the Traveller approach of wheels within wheels it really helps.

    Again when I was DM'ing. I took a group of players from 1st level to 25th and beyond in the course of 6yrs. Sure we had many defections and fellow travellers but that was close that I could get to elegaic campaign. In which we traced some of the original campaign characters through their life and ultimately death and leading to a rebirth.

    AD&D has built-in stopping devices against elegaic campaigning unless there are long term friendships between the DM & the players. For elegaic play requires a certain amount of trust that standard campaigns that I have seen since do not have.

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  5. I've never seen that before and never played Traveler. -My interest is piqued. I love the idea of a map of such staggering proportions. You could have an entire campaign in just a fraction of the space. And the possibilities of what may 'lie within yet undiscovered' are great.


    Well that map doesn't have the Core Route project or the corresponding Rim expeditions.

    Basically in the Third Imperium Setting the Zhodani have an obsession about reaching the Core of our Galaxy. I think there are like 4/5th of the way there.

    Understand this is not an expansion but an exploration. So there is a thin chain of worlds and bases (mostly bases) leading to the Core.

    Well one fan mapped it out.

    Sadly his website seems to be down. But I believe there are archives of it around.

    Similar work has been done for the Solomani(i.e. Terran, us) Rim Expeditions out to the rim of our galaxy.

    This possible because of Traveller's easy method generating worlds and the fact it is easily computerized.

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  6. Core expeditions were the subject of Security Leak fanzine...and I think that I know the website you are referring to (as there was a big discussion of it over at the CoTI). And, T5 does have a galactic map but I can't talk about that.

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  7. Hopefully it will come out soon to us pre-order folks.

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  8. What is the largest fantasy setting (in terms of area) that's out there? Has anything with dwarves and dragons come close to such magnitude?

    Judges Guild's Wilderlands is quite impressively large when you consider that it's mapped out in 5-mile hexes, but, taken from a more objective perspective, I'm not sure anything can compare to Traveller's Charted Space.

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  9. Don't hold your breath for T5 CD ROM, right now it is just a mess of assembled Home Rules (in this case Marc's) and endless Tables & Charts. To speak of fluff on the playtest is verboten. I am deeply disappointed. What has come out should have been free and for the whole community to scrunitize and change. But, this is Marc's baby and nobody is going to tell him how ugly it is...rather there are spot comments like: "I think it has MT's eyes"

    There is much that can be redeemed in Traveller but I would rather place my faith in Mongoose (as juvenile parts of the rules/books are) they seem to have a grasp of what makes a game enjoyable - keep it simple & simple.

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  10. Glad y'all like the map. :)

    Actually, the Zhodani Core Route *is* there, along with all of the sectors between hither and yon. I imported it with permission of the creator (Clifford Linehan) before his site went offline.

    The Core Route starts at http://www.travellermap.com/?x=-175.59025&y=360.375&scale=64&options=887 - zoom out a few levels to gain some context.

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