On aging: this is one of my big gripes with the Traveller character
system, one only partially addressed by DGP in the Vilani'n'Vargr Ahoy!
book. The question isn't one of macroscale ("3000 years in the future"
don't mean diddly if society's collapsed for most of that time), but
of microscale (on Skivgik, you're lucky if you reach 35, but on Gloomph
if you die at 150 they bury you in a cradle). The trick isn't time
passage but PERCEIVED time passage, i.e. technological advancement and
quality of lifestyle. I think the GDW folx did a global average of tech
levels for the Marches and used that to ballpark the aging stuff; when
more very-hi-tech worlds come into the equation the average age of a
character should go up a lot with respect to "aging" thresholds. So I'm
considering a sliding scale based on tech level of birth, childhood etc.
(But this utterly ignores the primary reason for aging: killing off or
crippling characters that are getting too powerful. I'm getting soft in
my old age; I let people like Dow (hi Dow) run characters in their 40s.
In my cruel youth I never let anyone get past 34 and stay in the service;
it kept their skills and cash manageable.)
Timelines: Again, you're thinking of macroscale vs. microscale. The years
from 1100 to 1140 are a drop in the bucket w/r/t the history of Humaniti
(and a bare sneeze to Yaskoydray, wherever the hey HE is these days), but
on a character's level they constitute a huge timespan with a ton of good
history (including two wars, the Fifth Frontier War and the Rebellion) to
choose from. If you choose any time before 1117, you're not IN the MegaTrav
universe; you're in Trav Classic, with its VERY different assumptions of
how the Universe works. (And, I might add, the appropriate differences in
many of the rules. I'd hate to put a standard TravClassic character from
anywhere other than the Marches up against a well-hardened MegaTrav character.)
If you go as late as 1140, you'll be making it up as you go along, because
only the GDW and DGP crystal ball gazers know what's beyond 1121 at this point
(with one VITAL exception: the GDW game writers made a very big slip in the
MegaTrav rule books, one that gives away an important piece of future
history that's obvious once you know what to look for. But I won't tell. |-> ).
I'd advise sticking to the years right after the Rebellion's peak (1119 to
1120 to start with); the most material is available for that period.
Sectors: Talk to Mark Cook. Both sectors you've named have been fully
mapped with full UWPs for all systems.
metlay