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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Traveller Tuesday: X-Boat Routes in the Marches

As everyone who reads my Tuesday Traveller series knows, I am an inveterate tinkerer with a tendency to obsess over things which don't make sense.  Thus it should come as no surprise when I mention that the X-Boat routes throughout the Spinward Marches have driven me absolutely bugnuts, and when I discovered a way to change them to my liking I spent close to an entire evening doing just that.

Here, then, is the new Spinward Marches according to Erin.



Some notes as they occur to me:
  • The purple lines are for high-speed (J-5 and J-6) military and diplomatic channels. They are not usually available for commercial use, although an obscenely wealthy corporation could buy space on one -- but they likely have their own J-6 ships for that. 
  • I have no way to differentiate between a route that stops at a system and one that simply passes through it. Sorry. You'll have to use your discretion. 
  • Whenever possible, I made a direct line to subsector capitals. 
  • Whenever possible, I made loops instead of lines, both for speed of transmission and for the ability to route communication around damage where needed. 
  • Using this system, communication from sector capital Mora to the other subsector capitals is damn fast, considering that each hex is a parsec (3.5 light years across):
    • 2 weeks to reach Lunion and Rhylanor
    • 3 weeks to reach Lanth, Glisten and Trin
    • 4 weeks to reach Aramis, Frenzie, Regina, Mertactor
    • 5 weeks to reach Iderati
    • 6 weeks to reach Mire and Jewell (but only 2 weeks from Jewell to Regina)
  • Ivendo and Fosey become these odd J-6 hubs, which become less odd when you realize that Ivendo has both a Navy and a Scout base, and Fosey has a Naval Intelligence office. Hmm....
  • Icetina is a weird, nonsensical dogleg that existed before I changed the map. I made the reason for its existence into a plot point. 
  • Similarly, Walston is now a Class B port and X-boat hub due to the actions of the PCs. (It's going to be integrated into the Imperium as soon as the population gets it racism under control.)
  • I switched the locations of Bronze and Steel because I had an adventure called "Project Steel" which was all about removing the X-boat base at Biter and routing it through Steel, and the canonical position of Steel made that idiotic. Rather than change the adventure (Steel is habitable, Bronze is not), I used GM fiat to switch the positions of the systems. 
  • It's now a Jump-2 for the Sword Worlds to get any mail from the Imperium. Suck it, Swordies. 
  • Flammarion is now even more of a critical hub as it is the official link from the Imperium to the Darrian Confederation. It goes to Spume and not Darrian because I figured it was more important for mail to get onto the Darrian's mail service than to go to the old capital. 
  • The Zhodani were deliberately left unchanged. 
In all likelihood, I have made some mistakes with this map. If you see anything that looks strange, please let me know. 

8 comments:

  1. Collace to Wonstar looks like it might be J7

    I like what was done with the Regina, Roup, Inthe route.

    And a direct link from Rylanor to Fosey. Hmmm....

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  2. Drat, so it is. I must have miscounted. I'll fix that.


    And yes, hmmmm.....

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  3. I've never read Traveller, let alone played it. But this kind of stuff trips my nerd trigger, so I might *sigh* have to pick it up. Best edition?

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  4. That's a bit like asking "Best version of D&D": guaranteed to garner a lot of arguments. I personally like the Mongoose version despite all the typographical errors, as it seems to blend the 1970s flavor of the original version with modern sensibilities (computers no longer weigh tons, cybernetics are a thing and planetary internets exist).


    But the neat thing about Trav is that whichever rule set you use, you have 30+ years of development to draw upon. :)

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  5. And not just any office on Fosey, but the regional records office.

    And records for spooks are like catnip.

    Meanwhile Rylanor is the Intelligence Corps HQ for the Marches if memory serves

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  6. Best edition is the free one!


    Seriously, look for either the 'classic' Traveller books OR the Mongoose stuff which is out now. +Erin, correct me if I'm wrong, but this map doesn't apply (or is of less use) for the MegaTraveller and the Traveller: 2300 AD settings.


    There were some old GURPS books for this same setting with a divergent timeline. And there was a short-lived (sniff) HERO system release for the setting as well.

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  7. You are correct, this is only of use in the classic setting and Mongoose (which is basically a reboot of classic).

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  8. I wonder if Traveller would lend itself well to a game set in the Starflight universe?

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