traveller spinward marches map

Mongoose Traveller: Spinward Marches Map Pack

Mongoose Traveller: Spinward Marches Map Pack is a Mongoose Publishing supplement for Mongoose Traveller .

The Spinward Marches awaits your exploration in this huge poster map, featuring every system , trade link and starbase in the sector . Beautifully illustrated in full colour, this map is the first in a series that will allow you to explore the entire Third Imperium and beyond, joining posters together to form one gigantic map!

Includes a full key to aid navigation.

Credits [ edit ]

Table of contents [ edit ], library data entries (public) [ edit ].

• Spinward Marches
• Nick Robinson . Spinward Marches Map Pack ( Mongoose Publishing , 2010), 1.
• Mongoose Traveller Books
• Mongoose Publishing Books
• Published 2010
• Articles at intermediate completion state
• Astrography Source
• Sector Source

Navigation menu

The Zhodani Base

Maps and data, library data and astrography.

This library data section is not alphabetically ordered. Instead it is location ordered, so that You easier can find what is relevant for a specific planet.

GypsyComet, Dylan Lee and I have mapped the Foreven Sector . Foreven Sector is directly spinward (left) of the Spinward Marches .

The Space Atlas:

• The Classic Galaxy ( dotmap )
• The TNE Galaxy
• The T20 Galaxy

WARNING, Horizontal scrolling ahead!

Making your own subsector:

Check out the Random Subsector Generator . Make as many Subsectors as you want…

If you make your own Subsector, Have a look at this post: What makes a Subsector popular?

For the TML Landgrab , I have grabbed Cipango (Chronor 0705)

Four very good mapping programs are:

• Traveller Universe
• Galactic 2.4 (Yahoo Group)
• Heaven & Earth
• sec2pdf (Makes pdf from sector files)

Some ATU Subsectors:

• Merry X-Mas
• A Vargr Subsector
• Origo Point Subsector (Tutorial)
• Florensa Subsector (With a nebula)
• SKA-1979 Subsector
• Subsector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
• Eire Subsector (for games on the 17:th of March)
• Lancaster Subsector (for games at TravellerCon/USA)
• Chambersburg Subsector (more fun with the starship Notorious)
• Old Worlds (where you can find Lave)
• The Iron Stars (and Inonri District and Onrira Province)
• Xexedi Cluster (and Riredi Realm, Veisti Territory and Inera Realm)

Some Blank Maps:

• Sector Map made using QuickHex .
• Subsector Map made using QuickHex .
• Small Sector Map made using QuickHex . ( Spinward Marches , Foreven Sector , Solomani Rim , Ley (T20) )
• Big Sector Map made using QuickHex .
• Domain Map (4 sectors) made using QuickHex . ( Spica Domain )
• A Jump-6 radii map ( Cipango , Sheyou )
• Isodecahedron WorldMap with hexes .
• Larger Isodecahedron Worldmap .
• Even Larger Isodecahedron Worldmap .
• Big Subsector Map made using QuickHex .
• Big Subsector Map (printable) made using QuickHex .
• Huge Sector Map (printable) made using QuickHex . View it using the Chrome Browser, (since Firefox and Exploder seems to have problems showing huge image files) or you could download a zip-file with the Huge Sector Map.

Other traveller sites with library and astrography data are:

• Hyphen (Library Data, and Huge link-list.)
• Traveller in the DED Zone
• Interactive Atlas of the Imperium (SQL-based, very cool.)
• Underdeveloped Sectors (Vargr Extents mapping project.)
• The TRAVELLER Map (Scrollable Map, very cool.)
• Atlas of the Imperium (Big impressive book.)

Real astronomy maps (that doesn’t match the TU very well):

• Galaxy Map (Very useful for creating a realistic TU or for writers)

4 thoughts on “Maps and Data”

Excellent new look and the Striker Video is killer. Thank you for all the great work you do to keep Traveller alive.

I can’t see any jump-6 images…

Any idea how to get Universe these days? Not getting any response from BITS.

Peter Trevor made Traveller Universe . You can also find him at facebook .

Leave your reply Cancel reply

All your base are belong to us.

SPINWARD MARCHES

* While these products were not published with the original "Classic Traveller" material, they are designed for that time period: circa 1105.

Back to Sector Index

Stargazer's World

A Roleplaying Games blog

Review: Traveller Spinward Marches – Excellent Maps for Explorers and Merchants

I don’t think I need to tell you about the importance of maps in roleplaying games. Even the most crudest of maps can still be a very helpful tool in any campaign. A great map might even help to immerse the players more deepy into the game.

An excellent example of such a map is the Traveller Spinward Marches map by the German oublisher 13 Mann Verlag. In its print edition it’s 96 cm x 68 cm, printed on both sides, and even laminated. I am not sure if you can use boardmarkers to write on it, but it should at least be protected from greasy hands or spilled drinks. As a physical handout the map is just awesome. It’s made to look like a product available in the actual Traveller universe. One side shows the scout map of the Spinward Marches, with every system detailed. You don’t need to look up stats in a book, everything you need is right there on the map.

The other side features the trade map for the same area, and features all of the information needed for crew of merchants trying to make a buck in this region of space. Especially the trade map can look a bit intimidating at first, but should come in handy during the game – especially if your campaign focuses on trade.

Some people may ask themselves whether a physical map still makes sense in today’s world. I have to admit, I still like having physical handouts at the table. And the map is definitely a great eye-catcher.

If you prefer a digital version of the map, you can get it as well – which actually contains one PDF for each of the two maps. The digital edition is a bit of a mixed bag to be honest. It looks great, is only 7 MB in file size and looks pretty good even on a tablet PC, but it’s just not as useful as the printed map – at least in my opinion. Your mileage may of course vary.

The print edition of the map sets you back €24.95 (about 31$) which is a pretty fair price, if you ask me. It’s available directly from 13 Mann or through local retailers. The PDF version is also available from DriveThruRPG and sets you back $15.55. If you are a fan of any edition of the Traveller RPG and if you’re playing in the Spinward Marches, you definitely should check this product out.

Share this:

• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

• Next Welcome to Valheim!
• Previous Realism in Roleplaying Games

You may also like...

Buck rogers xxvc: gear quality, mental health in roleplaying games, leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Improved Automatic Border Generation for TRAVELLER Sectors

Online demo.

To experiment with the algorithm, try out the Interactive Border Generation Demo .

To generate borders for a sector, try out the Border Maker .

Sectors in Traveller are hexagonal grids of 32 by 40 hexes. Each grid space may contain a single star system, represented by a "main world." Further details (multiple stars, multiple worlds) are ignored at this level of representation. The fraction of occupied hexes varies, including at the extreme some large empty areas known as rifts, but outside of rifts the density is generally between 0.3 and 0.6. Each main world has an allegiance to an interstellar polity, or is "non-aligned". Traveller data for sectors has generally consisted of lists of the occupied hexes and the details of the main world compressed into a data format known as Universal World Profile (UWP), commonly shared as "flat" text files with the .SEC extension.

No polity allegiance data is given for empty hexes. It is possible to argue that since there is nothing in such a hex it can't be claimed by a polity, but deep within a large empire it is unlikely that incursions of a foreign force will be viewed with indifference regardless of what hex it lies within. Maps of Traveller sectors — most notably the classic references Supplement 3: The Spinward Marches and Supplement 10: The Solomani Rim, show borders around the edges of polities, thus implicitly claiming the empty hexes.

Recently, several hex maps of Traveller sectors have been produced with polity borders like the following.

Note the claimed empty hexes (1) that extend outside of the polity with little justification — they don't fall between occupied hexes. Also note the unclaimed empty hexes (2) that are inexplicably unclaimed in the light of similarly claimed hexes nearby (3), and worlds that end up cut off from the main body of the polity due to unclaimed hexes (4).

The features are not present or are rare in the classic Traveller reference materials. One reason is that thanks to fast personal computers and software aids, borders now are often automatically generated.

Automatic Border Generation

One of the best resources for TRAVELLER cartographers today is J. Greely's Gateway to PDF [1] which includes sec2pdf , a tool for generating PDF maps from classic ".SEC" sector format files, and allygen , a tool that "tries to create plausible regional borders for a sector, based on starports, tech level, and population." Greely also defines a ".MSEC" data format for sector metadata beyond simple tables of UWPs, including allegiances, borders, routes, and other features necessary to generate complete sector maps. The tools are provided with full source, and modification and redistribution is encouraged. Sample data is provided for the classic Spinward Marches as well as the Gateway Domain sectors featured in TRAVELLER d20 (T20.)

The allygen and sec2pdf tools also share and define an elegant mechanism for representing borders by defining a traversal from the upper-leftmost hex in a polity proceeding clockwise around the exterior. This is extremely amenable to producing graphical representations of the border.

This author used allygen while generating borders for many sectors for the Traveller Map site ( https://travellermap.com ), but found that the borders generated suffered from the issues identified above.

The allygen tool determines allegiances for empty hexes per the following heuristics:

• In order of decreasing importance (based on starport, tech level, and population), worlds claim nearby empty hexes (up to a distance dependent on starport)
• Unclaimed hexes are claimed based on "votes" by adjacent hexes
• Non-aligned worlds "repel borders" (pun present in source code comments)
• Non-aligned worlds are prevented from breaking polities apart
• Claimed empty hexes distant from the claiming worlds are unclaimed
• Claimed empty hexes with fewer than two claimed neighbors are unclaimed

This set of heuristics produces reasonable borders, but is prone to the issues noted above. It is also very sensitive to tweaks in the algorithm — reordering or changing any of the heuristics produces very different borders.

The allygen algorithm borders are subjectively most reasonable when dealing with many small polities within a sector, and most notably problematic when dealing with large polities occupying large portions of a sector.

Proposed Algorithm

In order to achieve the goal of automatic border production which matches the hand-crafted borders from Supplement 3: The Spinward Marches and Supplement 10: The Solomani Rim , and are as free from distracting artifacts as possible, a different algorithm must be used.

This algorithm is modeled on formalization of "concave hulls" known as Alpha Shapes [2] .

In 2D geometry, a convex hull is the minimal surface surrounding a set of points — consider an elastic band surrounding push-pins on a cork board, and is a well defined shape for a set of points. A so-called "concave hull," by analogy, is an informal notion that humans would tend to draw concave shapes around point sets with obvious concave features — consider the Great Rift separating the Domain of Deneb from the main body of the Imperium.

Alpha Shapes formalize this notion by constructing a convex hull over a set of points via Delaunay triangulation of the set, but disallowing spans over a certain length characterized in the algorithm by α. This tends to produce very reasonable "surfaces" over point sets, when the value of α is carefully chosen.

These algorithms take place in Cartesian space. In the hexagonally quantized space of Traveller , an approximation is used. The following algorithm is proposed.

• The sector is scanned, and the number of worlds allied to each polity is calculated.
• Starting with the polity with the smallest number of worlds, all unclaimed empty hexes are (provisionally) claimed by the polity
• A set of algorithms are applied which eliminate unreasonable claims on empty hexes, until a steady state is reached
• The next largest polity is considered, until all polities are processed

Rule #1: Erosion

"If a hex is empty, and it has 3 unaligned neighbors, make it unaligned"

This satisfies the heuristic notion that empty hexes that "stick out" from a polity shouldn't be considered part of that polity.

In the following examples, it is assumed that the polity extends above and to the left of the shown worlds. This hints at another challenge when generating borders: the data present in a .SEC file covers only a single sector, so the creation of borders for polities that extend beyond a single sector is problematic. The original allygen tool has some special cases to deal with the fact that .SEC data handles a single sector — a "border" one hex deep is assumed to exist around the sector and may be claimed by various heuristics, but is not unclaimed by others. In the proposed algorithm, the code is extended to load a 3 by 3 grid of .SEC data files so that correct borders can be generated for the central sector.

On its own, though, it is not sufficient — this will leave straight spans of empty hexes between filled hexes. In other words, rule 1 produces the convex hull of a polity, but we want the Alpha Shape . Therefore, once a steady state has been reached by applying rule 1, we break out the next heuristic.

Rule #2: Span Breaking

"Break any spans of length greater than 4 - but only in the middle of 3-in-a-row"

Without this rule, "inlets" and "bays" are claimed. For one and two hexes, this is desirable or you end up with "spindly" borders. One notable example is a feature I call the "Horn of Vland." Without this rule, the areas coreward and rimward of the horn would be claimed.

Unlike rule #1, The heuristic does contain "magic numbers" (4, 3) which are derived experimentally:

• Span lengths of 3 should not be broken, or spindly borders occur frequently
• Span lengths should not be broken unless they contain straight segments, or concave regions are too heavily broken up.

This is analogous to the careful selection of α-values when producing Alpha Shapes .

Then keep repeating rules #1 and #2 until no changes are made. More precisely, apply rule #1 until a steady state is reached, then if rule #2 results in changes, resume applying rule #1.

Known Issues and Future Directions

In the following configuration, both hex 1 and 2 are susceptible to erosion, and the occupied worlds become isolated. This can occur in other configurations, such as worlds offset by one column and separated by two hexes. To address this, a new heuristic will need to be introduced.

Non-aligned worlds that end up "within" polities are not considered. In the classic Traveller references, borders are not consistently shown for these hexes.

• J. Greely, Gateway to PDF , http://dotclue.org/t20/
• Ken Clarkson, hull — convex hulls, Delaunay triangulations, alpha shapes , http://www.netlib.org/voronoi/hull.html

Complete Your Quest®

Role Playing Games

Board games, miniature games, historical minis, magic & ccgs, dice & supplies.

Spinward Marches - Excellent Maps for Explorers and Merchants

By: 13Mann Verlag

Type: Ziplock

Product Line: Traveller (13Mann Verlag)

Product Info

Description, just added to your cart.

Just added to your want list

Related Products

Recently viewed, grading system.

Every item in our inventory has been inspected, very strictly graded, and bagged for its protection.

Shrink Wrapped. Still in the original factory shrink wrap, with condition visible through shrink noted. For example, "SW (NM)" means shrink wrapped in near-mint condition.

Perfect. Brand new.

Near Mint. Like new with only the slightest wear, many times indistinguishable from a Mint item. Close to perfect, very collectible. Board & war games in this condition will show very little to no wear and are considered to be punched unless the condition note says unpunched.

Excellent. Lightly used, but almost like new. May show very small spine creases or slight corner wear. Absolutely no tears and no marks, a collectible condition.

Very Good. Used. May have medium-sized creases, corner dings, minor tears or scuff marks, small stains, etc. Complete and very useable.

Very well used, but complete and useable. May have flaws such as tears, pen marks or highlighting, large creases, stains, marks, etc.

• Boxed items are listed as "code/code" where the first code represents the box, and the second code describes the contents. When only one condition is listed, then the box and contents are in the same condition.
• A "plus" sign indicates that an item is close to the next highest condition. Example, EX+ is an item between Excellent and Near Mint condition. A "minus" sign indicates the opposite.
• Major defects and/or missing components are noted separately.
• Boardgame counters are punched, unless noted. Due to the nature of loose counters, if a game is unplayable it may be returned for a refund of the purchase price.
• In most cases, boxed games and box sets do not come with dice.
• The cardboard backing of miniature packs is not graded. If excessively worn, they will be marked as "card worn."
• Flat trays for SPI games are not graded, and have the usual problems. If excessively worn, they will be marked as "tray worn."
• Remainder Mark - A remainder mark is usually a small black line or dot written with a felt tip pen or Sharpie on the top, bottom, side page edges and sometimes on the UPC symbol on the back of the book. Publishers use these marks when books are returned to them.

If you have any questions or comments regarding grading or anything else, please send e-mail to [email protected] .

Turn your old games into cash, no alchemy necessary

We are your portal to all things gaming.