Ad Astra mapping conventions vs Traveller

AD ASTRA isn't really meant to be too much like a Traveller game, but I am borrowing a lot of the mapping conventions from Traveller, with some other material "inspired by" Stars Without Number, another sandboxy space exploration game.  Keeping that in mind, here's some quotes from a blog post about how it works, which in turn quote some of the early versions of Traveller.  Keep in mind that Traveller came out in 1977, and although Star Wars also came out that year, the timing is such that Star Wars can't have played much (if any) of a role in developing the game (although no doubt it influenced it later, and it influenced the sales and the expectations of the players, if nothing else.  AD ASTRA is meant to imitate more of the Star Warsian type of swashbuckling space opera, although the mapping and travel conventions—as well as their obligate implications to the setting—are more like that described in Traveller than that described in Star Wars.

Anyway, on to the quotes.  They are from the Tales to Astound! blog.

Part of the lure of the Official Traveller Universe is its immense size.

It stretches across countless subsectors. Contains 11,000 worlds. Has politics back at the Core as well as on the frontier of the Zhodani borders. There are 16 subsectors in the Spinward Marches alone. It’s vastness and immense scope is part of its glittering appeal. And yet, I am going to suggest you don’t get lured by all that glitter. The key is to ask, “How much do I need to get going?” 

Here is what the 1977 edition of Traveller Book 3 said about the matter:

Initially, one or two sub-sectors should be quite enough for years of adventure (each sub-sector has, on the average, 40 worlds), but ultimately, travellers will venture into unknown areas and additional subsectors will have to be charted.

The text above was written two years before GDW published any material abut the Third Imperium. 

Let’s assume for now that the text is valid even if we are setting a game in the Third Imperium. Let’s assume further that the rules and text and the implied setting details of Books 1-3 and why a starting in a setting of limited scope makes perfect sense.

Here's another snippet from another post:

In the section on generating the setting, the 1977 rules state: “Initially, one or two sub-sectors should be quite enough for years of adventure (each sub-sector has, on the average, 40 worlds), but ultimately, travellers will venture into unknown areas and additional subsectors will have to be charted.” 

The 1981 rules, on the other hand, state: “Sixteen subsectors (arranged in four rows of four subsectors each) form a sector, probably the largest size practical for a continuing Traveller campaign.” There is no mention of the details from the 1977 quote. 

Note that in the 1977 rules, the process is laid in the most practical terms: “Here’s how you start. Here’s how much you need.” (The term “sector” never appears at all in the 1977 edition.) 

I consider this difference huge, as in one case the Referee is told that 40 or 80 worlds is enough to get going with play. And in the other case it is implied that he or she should probably generate 640 worlds to create a fair sized setting for play.

Now, that's not exactly fair.  The 1981 books do not suggest that you should generate 640 worlds to create a fair sized setting for play, it suggests that that's the maximum practically usable size. When I started developing the New Alderamin sector, using mapping conventions very similar to Traveller, I did indeed have an entire sector, but at the same time: not really.  Not that I need to justify myself to the comments of this guy, but I think he's right in broad terms, and I'm going to show that actually I don't think that I'm as far off as all that anyway.

For one thing, I did not use the same "standard" density.  The standard density means that half of all hexes (on average) will have a system in them.  This works well because of the Traveller convention of jump-1 and jump-2 drives being much more common than jump-3.  In AD ASTRA, jump-3 (or its equivalent) is standard which means I can reduce the density, which means route-finding can still be interesting and yet also more varied.  Rather than a ½ density, I went with a ⅓ density.  Rather than 640 worlds, my sector would have 425 (given the law of average, anyway—in actuality, I got 421.)  Even then, I doubt that I will ever actually develop more than ⅓ of even those, so if I get 140 worlds, I think that's about the maximum scope that I'll be looking at.  That's between three and four subsectors worth of standard Traveller mapping; a bit more than the blog post is recommending (actually, if you deep dive his post, he only recommends starting with about half of a subsector!) But given that I'm not actually running, developing this stuff is, at the moment, the expression of my hobby. I think I'm in good shape, honestly.

If I'm only going to develop about ⅓ of the worlds that I generated placement and political affiliation for, then why did I generate the rest of them, anyway?  Much of it was to give the setting that I do develop context, and because the workload to do so was trivial.  Even then, I had much more material than I was ever going to need; I've probably named about 200 systems, but I won't actually develop any detail beyond the name, hex location, and political affiliation of about 140 (I actually tried to count the ones I identified as targeted for development on my setting page, but I got distracted, lost count, and decided that I didn't care, because I was obviously very close to my targeted number as determined by the mathematics of using ⅓'s)  That was more than I thought I'd do, but the other reality is that as I'm doing this development, I'm finding that it's giving me ideas for games and fiction and all kinds of other things, but that I've got several campaigns worth of stuff out there, much of it discreet from other campaigns.  I can see several campaigns, in fact, centered on the Carrick Grand Marches and the stuff around them; political tension between the Carrick and the Carthen Colony, for instance.  Or weird adventure amongst the neighboring Voormellei Federation.  Interesting stuff going on that would take up tons of potential adventure in just a handful of the independent worlds nearby.  Or the Saraeans and their ambitions; they add potential whole 'nother campaigns by themselves.  The same for the Dhangetan "wretched hives of scum and villainy."  And it goes on and on.  And yet; that is in a subsector's worth of worlds.  If I move my focus more to the galactic west, around some of the other, smaller Bernese colonies and their relationships with Saraean Outremer, or the Altairans or the Takach, etc.  I do, certainly, have much more information than I could possibly ever need to run AD ASTRA campaigns on a weekly basis from now until the time that I die, with the material that I already have.  On top of that, I could write dozens of novels that don't even interfere with those campaigns—all with that ⅓ of a ⅓-density sector—and I'd still have dozens of worlds that I maybe dropped a name and a political color code on, but otherwise did nothing else with (for instance, I have no plans at the moment to ever detail any Altairan Ascendency or Reaver world.  Although maybe I'll change my mind about that some day too.)  I find that I want to use the four or so Bernese colonies as potential protagonist characters, if setting elements can be seen as characters, so I'm developing them and their surroundings at the expense of the other areas that will be left in a null state for the time being.

So, again, while I'm not playing Traveller, I've obviously got a lot of information from Traveller, and it's hard for me to step too far outside of the paradigm of Traveller when it comes to setting development.  I think the way that star mapping and star travel (and, as I said, the downstream implications of those) works in Traveller are wonderful.

I do not on the other hand, have as much fondness for the way that character generation and the implications on what that is for characters from Traveller.  Which, I suppose, is why I've adopted rules for star mapping and travel that is very similar to Traveller but not anything else, really, from the game, which is otherwise based on an interpretation of Star Wars.

UPDATE: I went back and did do an accurate count.  Not counting the worlds that I did as a prototype but which are actually off-map, I have 147 identified to do (and granted, there's not a lot of urgency for most of those.)  I've actually done 43 so far, so... just under a third.  Granted, that does make my list more daunting.  But like I said, most of it isn't very urgent to be done, and if it takes me even a couple of years to get around to it, that's OK.  I've got plenty that can be used right now around the Carrick Grand Marches—and to be honest, I think I want to concentrate my first efforts on new stuff with systems that are close enough to the Carrick that they can contribute to a that setting within the setting.

So, my first targets will be a number of Dhangetan worlds that are in the somewhat immediate vicinity of the Carrick Grand Marches and its surroundings:

• 1624 Moise
• 1625 Drini IV
• 1631 Vorli VI
• 1724 Tawasy
• 2123 Kari Jora
• 2223 Fthughu
• 2224 Cadon
• 2328 Kribblu VII
• 2428 Sakuleth

Add to that list, the Cilindarean world 1723 Peleres, and we're all set for the immediate future.

But before I do any of those, I want to continue my work on replacing my sector map with a more aesthetically pleasing version.  Although I will almost certainly still be working on that offline as these data sheets start to come up.

UPDATE 2:  I took about six of the Dhangetan worlds off of the list that needs doing.  They were simply too far away to be necessary for anything centered on the Bernese colonies as a protagonist "Setting of Play."