Back in June, James over at Grognardia shared an amazing piece of lost GDW history: a map of the Imperium at the end of the Rebellion.
I have a love/hate relationship with Traveller. I love the setting and I think that the character creation system is one of the best mini-games in the entire history of RPGs, but I’ve never really known what to do with any of it as a GM. The scale is so large and the setting is so…settled.
As a consequence, I found the idea of the Rebellion to be really interesting. It created conflict, it broke the massive setting into a variety of smaller fronts…but I still had no real idea what to do as a GM. Nothing ever really inspired me.
The New Era was a mistake. It did an awesom job of radically reducing the scope of the Traveller setting, but it did so at the cost of everything that made the Third Imperium interesting. GDW went bankrupt shortly thereafter. Marc Miller produced another version of the game set at the dawn of the Third Imperium (I still have a copy buried somewhere on my book shelf), but it suffers from the very same problem as the New Era. It lacks everything that makes the Third Imperium so interesting to me.
Enter this wonderful map. This may very well be the most inspiring map I have looked at in a long time. I have found myself mentally preparing an actual Traveller campaign; however, what fascinates me is not the idea of the campaign itself (the likelyhood of actual play is fairly low at this point in my life), but the reason why I finally have a grasp at what a Traveller campaign might look like.
Over the years, the most successful campaigns I have run (regardless of genre or system) all have one thing in common: there was something lost that everyone is trying to find. The best way I know how to set this up for a D&D campaign is the Points of Light model, where the Bright Empire has collapsed and the PCs are now some of the main actors in trying to re-discover/re-establish the values of the Bright Empire in a sea of Chaos.
The Rebellion, the New Era, and Marc Miller’s Traveller all have the right idea: they are all striving to create a Points of Light setting for use with Traveller. The reason that they all fail is due to timing. Marc Miller’s Traveller chooses the wrong Bright Empire. Instead of trying to re-establish the Imperium that is so beloved (the Third), we are istuck flailing about trying to re-establish the First and Second. The New Era goes too far. The utter destruction of such a vast empire makes the dream of re-establishment nigh-impossible. The Rebellion comes the closest to success; however, it is set during the collapse instead of its aftermath. Rather than re-discovery and re-establishment, PCs are asked to fight for the survival of the Bright Empire.
Realizing this, I have come to understand why this map excites me so much: there are a dozen sectors on this map that could be used as the starting point for a Points of Light Campaign. The Bright Empire may not be what it once was, but it still exists and the dream is still alive. A PC may be beyond Imperial territory, and may even be within enemy territory, but they have the ability to become a Light in the Sea of Chaos.
The best part of all of this to me is that for the first time, I feel like the Third Imperium can now become my version of the Third Imperium.
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