A _Traveller_ Frontier

I wrote:
>>In my copious spare time I'm working on redoing Beyond and Far Frontiers
>>sectors, but it's a lot of work if you aren't satisfied with completely
>>random data. I like my universe to make a bit of sense (although I'm not
>>a fanatic; I'll take playability and the proper ambience over realism any
>>day ;-), so it's slow going. Is there anyone out there that might be
>>interested in working together with me in creating several small
>interstellar
>>communities and a large honest-to-goodness nobody-knows-for-sure-what's-at-
>>the-next-star unexplored frontier?

Arthur Green writes:
>Hans - I'm interested.

And Steve Higginbotham:
>Sounds like a good idea to me.  How do we get started?

Perhaps I should start by outlining what I've already done, and
what I hope to finish up with in the end.

I've taken the Beyond and Vanguard Reaches starmaps (from the
Paranoia Press publications) and thrown out practically
everything except the star positions and a few of the names. I
then took the starmap in _Vilani & Vargr_ and enlarged Foreven
Sector enough to make out which hex what star belongs to. I'm
sure I've made some mistakes, but hopefully not all that many
(One sub-sector  -  Urnian, the one directly spinwards of Five
Sisters  -  I had made up randomly years earlier, so that one
dosen't correspond to GDW's version at all).
I then worked out the political boundaries shown on the V&V map
as best I could. There's one fairly big realm stretching across
5 or 6 subsectors that is called 'Die Weltbund' (German for
'Federation of Worlds') by Paranoia Press. I decided to make
that my 'staging area', the civilized provider of technology,
R&R and patrons. Most of what I've done till now has been in
connection with Weltbund. I have a rough idea of the first 3
centuries of settlement (2nd to 4th after the Imperial Calendar),
a sketchy timeline, names and UPPs for some of the worlds and
some ideas about the dominant culture (the Navy is sorta like
the Napoleonic Era English Navy with German sounding ranks ;-).

As for the unknown, I've retroactively wiped out the governments
of roughly 7 subsectors of Vanguard Reaches and Beyond and inflicted
THE NOMADS (drumroll, please) on them:

Library data:

"NOMAD DOMAIN:  Area roughly comprised of subsectors H, K and L
of VANGUARD REACHES and subsectors E, F, G and I of BEYOND. The
area is dominated by a unique starfaring nomadic culture. Seven
_hordes_ have divided the area's systems between them and lives
by exhorting what they need from the planetary populations.  If
they  encounter  resistance  they  bomb a part of the offending
planet down to TL 0, which usually makes the rest of the planet
toe  the  line.  They  stay  for  a year or two in each system,
and  then  continue on to the next system.  Before they leave a
system they destroy as much of the local manufacturing capacity
as  possible,  to  ensure  that the system will not grow strong
enough to defy them when they return in 15 or 20 years.  Rumour
has  it  that  in the few cases where a planet has succeeded in
keeping  a  horde  at bay,  word have been sent to other hordes
which  thereupon have sent their own forces to help,  resulting
in the complete defeat and rape of the planet in question."


I plan to open up the Domain by having Weltbund (aided by the Imperium)
trap and destroy most of the nomad fighting ships. Sufficient ships will
survive to be able to trouble Weltbund and PCs for many a year, but the
intrepid merchant (or survey team) will be able to penetrate where no
non-nomad has flown for a millennium. Furthermore, the nomads have been
a barrier to contact with the systems on the other side (the rest of
Vanguard Reaches). Some knowledge has seeped around the edges, of course,
but those systems are pretty much terra (or terras :-) incognita. With the
breaking of the nomads, merchants suddenly become interested in knowing
about them. Exploration parties could be sent out, but I have no particular
ideas about what's there.

What I would like is to expand this sketchy outline into a full-fledged
campaign background. My ideas about how are rather vague. Perhaps each
of us interested parties could select one bit of the whole to work on
and I could coordinate the efforts?

I could e-mail the timeline and the world names and UPPs that I have so
far, but there's already a fair amount of data, so I don't think I should
post it.

Scott Kellogg:
>Well, I don't have a lot of time to help you develop an unknown sector,
>but I'd sure like to give what small help I can.

>A while ago, I made up a sector of my own, composed of a lot of worlds stolen
>from published adventures that had no location in the Spinward Marches.
>Basically I pieced Foreven sector together, with odds and ends and some
>original stuff.

>I can dig out my notes of what original stuff I came up with if you are
>interested.  All the worlds I was dealing with were limited to TL 12 maximum
>though with a few TL 14 planets inside the Zhodani Consulate.

Sounds good.

>There were a few interesting ideas:
>A minor K'kree race.  They had been left on the planet by the Ancients and
>had developed into a very different culture because of it.  For one, all the
>plant life on the planet was inedible to them.  Therefore they had to eat the
>local herbivores in order to survive.  Also present on that world were the
>G'naak carnivores that the K'Kree had exterminated on Kiruir.

I've already developed Weltbund to a point where these wouldn't fit, but
there's plenty of room for them elsewhere on the Frontier. I like the idea.

>I had 2 races at war with each other. One race could only live on planets
>with dense atmospheres, the other could only live where gravity was pretty
>heavy. Thus, they were after the same planets for totally different reasons.

Sounds neat too. But my problem isn't so much neat ideas (though you can
never have too many of those :-) as sheer time to work out the tedious
details (No wait, that didn't come out right: the details aren't tedious,
but working them out can be; I don't enjoy ship design too much, for
example, but I love having deckplans to show my players).

>There were some other ideas, but I need to check my notes.  Let me know if
>you are interested.

Oh, I am, I am...



      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
        "This gives a possible range of 56 to 178 starships
         total  in the three Terran starport facilities,  a
         believable quantity for such a star system."

        "We have a maximum of 178 ships in port, and (as it
         is a busy star system)  we will say that there are
         70 docking berths at the Phoenix facility."

                        ---Journal of the Traveller's
                           Aid Society # 18