I wanted the playing field for the players to suggest a set of world names that seemed similar, somehow familiar, perhaps a bit old-timey, not just lifted from some existing SF media property, and decidedly not fanciful or made-up. Accordingly, I hit upon the plan that each subsector of stars would feature world names directly cribbed from the subway map of one of Earth’s Global cities. The system names become less important than the world names – in some cases, the world name might be the familiar name for the system’s most populated world, in others, its largest space-station.
The first subsector built would use names from the London tube map, thus Barbican subsector (where Barbican is the name of the world located in the system around Barnard’s Star, and the primary world for the subsector – primary worlds for each subsector are those with the best startport, closest to Sol; Earth is the primary world in the subsector containing Sol). Subsectors built later will use names taken from the subway systems of other global cities, not yet decided (most likely, Paris, Tokyo, and Beijing). The particular configuration of the world names make very little sense with respect to the cities from which they’re drawn; in general the world names just happen to mostly start with the same letters as part of the system names for which they stand.
Data methods. I used the tables from Book 3, adjusted slightly for some simple house rules. In order to generate a nice map, I’m using the excellent online Traveller Map resource (if you use the “poster maker” tool there, it lets you enter your own custom data). The only tricky bit is it has specific expectations about the format, including some bits and generated data that’s not part of the old Book 3 system. Accordingly, I massaged some of the stellar codes from Stellagama’s Near Space book because the Map site didn’t like some of them, and I fudged the trade codes (which I suspect are derived from guidelines found in later versions of the game that are slightly different). In the end, though, I got a nice map included here.
For the known jump routes, I used the chances from the table in the 1977 version of Book 3, and not the “communication routes” guidelines from the 1981 rules. I also decided to hand-place a set of routes that are not known commercially, but are “service routes” known as classified information to the Scout and Navy services – this helps to string the subsector together a bit more, projecting known jump routes from naval and scout bases that seem to make some sense, and might prove tasty secrets for player characters to seek out.
Barbican subsector
The subsector just rimward and coreward of Sol is named Barbican subsector. It has four worlds with class-A starports, and two class-B, mostly located to the trailing and rimward side of the sub-sector.
| World | UWP | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Barbican | A867976/E | Nb, Gg |
| Becontree | E676765/3 | Ag, Gg |
| Brixton | E55A533/3 | Ni, Gg |
| Edgware | B000355/B | Sb, Ni, Gg, Ab |
| Gant | C89858A/5 | Ag, Ni, Gg |
| Gloucester | A430442/E | Ni, Po, Gg |
| Golder | E5A1203/3 | Ni, Gg |
| Grange | C210488/7 | Ni, Gg |
| Greenford | X457735/1 | Ag, Gg |
| Gunnersby | C5A0331/7 | Sb, Ni |
| Hainault | X4A2223/2 | Ni |
| Hammersmith | B660988/B | Gg |
| Hendon | D00087A/5 | Sb, Na, Ab |
| Highgate | D530887/1 | Na, Po, Gg |
| Holborn | C442455/7 | Sb, Ni, Po, Gg |
| Hounslow | C51097A/9 | Sb, In, Na |
| Morden | E54637C/6 | Ni, Gg |
| Osterly | X65A346/2 | Ni, Gg |
| Oval | E8A0ADC/5 | Gg |
| Preston | D435337/3 | Sb Ni Gg |
| Richmond | C466755/9 | Ag, Ri |
| Stanmore | A100875/E | Na, Gg |
| Victoria | XA9A265/0 | Ni, Gg |
| Warwick | X230548/0 | Ni, Po, Gg |
| Wanstead | C500575/8 | Ni |
| Willesden | D858669/5 | Sb, Ag, Ni, Gg |
| Whitechapel | A100778/8 | Nb, Na, Gg |
| Woodford | X610342/0 | Ni |
Remarks legend
Nb, Sb – Naval, Scout base
Ag – Agricultural: atm 4-9; hyd 4-8; pop 5-7
In – Industrial: atm 0-2,4,7,9; pop 9+
Na – Non-Agricultural: atm 0-3; pop 6+
Ni – Non-Industrial: pop 6-
Ri – Rich: atm 6,8; pop 6-8; gov 4-9
Po – Poor: atm 2-5; hyd 3-
Gg, Ab – Gas giant(s), Asteroid Belt(s)
Solid lines: known commercial jump routes
Dashed lines: classified, naval jump routes
Dotted lines: classified, scout jump routes
At this stage, I don’t want to think too much about the details of the map; I’d like to let things stew a little bit. Still, some features seem obvious.
travel patterns. A major travel corridor obviously exists ranging from Hammersmith to Edgware and then round a horn to Willesden. As well, all the high-value starports are hubs for commercial traffic. This makes sense given the string of worlds that are only a single jump away from one another along the right edge of the map, and the tweaks I used to make the worlds towards the bottom right corner of the map more likely to have better starports; Sol is just off the bottom-right corner of the map, a single parsec away from Hammersmith.
Away from the class A starports and the bottom right corner of the map, the ease of travel drops off precipitously. Beyond Willesden and Gunnersbury, only the Scout service has reliable jump data. Only the navy knows about a quick way to get to Wanstead. Any routes not already known must be calculated and programmed at jump time, and the compute resources required for this are prohibitive to most.
restricted access worlds. Victoria, Becontree, and Willesden all start with explicit “captive government” power structures (Government rating 6). This leads to questions about who’s running the show there. The Terran Commonwealth is the overall authority in the quadrant, and they likely don’t formally recognize any rival multi-world governing structure: that said, like confederation or commonwealth, Earth likely formally recognizes that individual worlds might have sway over perhaps a pair or even three systems; and pragmatically speaking, Commonwealth projection is likely to be (intentionally) limited to the core systems that are nearer to Sol (those within immediate reach of Jump-4 ships).
Victoria seems like a great place to put a penal colony; it’s likely that government ships from Whitechapel jump directly to Wanstead, and then to Victoria. It may make sense to include another route known only to the Navy between Wanstead and Victoria, or it may instead make sense to demand that prisoner transport there be capable of the dynamic jump-2 calculation on their own.
Becontree, given the population at Hounslow, and the known route to Hounslow, it seems like Becontree may well be a vassal state. Becontree may well be the bread-basket for Hounslow, given it’s agricultural status, and Hounslow’s distinctly non-agricultural status. Perhaps Becontree is a world filled with subsidized agri-business (at best) or plantations (at worst).
Willesden has a scout base, and is a vital linchpin connecting the well-travelled bottom right of the map with the top left where, mostly, only scouts know how to proceed. It makes sense that access to Willesden may well be strictly controlled by the Commonwealth Scout service and largely interdicted to civilian traffic. Gant’s position between the Scout-controlled Willesden and Edgware, and its high law-level would seem to make it the foreward checkpoint for Willesden.
Looking ahead
In the spirit of not preparing too far ahead of the players, I’d like to avoid explicit thinking too much further beyond this preparation point. What kinds of characters the players create and where in particular they’d like to start play should drive further diving into detail. One further step I might take is to gather the rest of the “trade code” data gathered from the Traveller Map site process (much richer and more varied than the LBB data), and perhaps spin that out into simple “tags” for the worlds in the sub-sectors, similar to the notion of “tagging” that comes from Sine Nomine’s Stars Without Number SF game, but I don’t want to overburden the game with too much in the way of hybrid house rules, until I at least get a good set of adventures off the ground using pretty much as pure Traveller as I can.
A party that wants to stick closer to civilization and get involved in adventures that range less on the frontier will probably want to stick close to the Hammersmith-Edgware corridor of easy jumps and fat starports. Remote clusters of adventure could centre in the cluster of worlds around Gloucester or Hounslow. Morden is a mostly livable, low-population, but moderate tech-level world that’s a jump-2 from the rest of civilization, so explaining why they’ve been cut off and getting them back in contact, could provide for a set of focused adventures that might be rather un-Traveller like, but nevertheless interesting.
We’ll see what the players want to do.