How do we perceive a sector? What do we look for? Where is the adventure? I have discussed this before when I tried to find out why a subsector was popular. I may have been partly wrong. It looks like the position of a subsector within a sector also is an important factor.
Using a new function at the TravellerMap one can now rotate a map. (When I write this there is no UI. You have to use the API to do this.)
This is what the Spinward Marches looks like upside down:
So what can we see here? My eyes move up to Glisten subsector. Starting from Glisten and running a J-1 ship to Five Sisters subsector suddenly looks like an interesting idea. Lunion subsector also looks like it a good place for adventures since it is so close to the Sword Worlds. (But the Sword Worlds really needs to be stronger.)
Less interesting is the backwater Regina subsector in the lower end of the map. The conflict with the Zhodani is now in an unimportant lower corner. That doesn’t look very exciting or important any longer.
What do you see in the upside down Spinward Marches?
It’s from the Zhodani perspective isn’t it?
All those worlds ready for us to conquer and move into…
I added UI to the poster maker to select map rotation in increments of 60 degrees. 30 degrees is also fun but pointy-topped hexes look very un-Traveller.
Just don’t use map rotation and image rotation at the same time – the math goes wacky at the moment. 🙁
This would be the Vargr perspective, no?
Yes, this is more like a Vargr perspective. I added an image of just Regina subsector upside down at the Zhodani Base facebook page. That image really let you see how the Vargrs see Regina subsector.
Well, that too. Only I imagine the Vargr are too chaotic to have a ‘standard’ orientation for their maps. Anyway up as long as we get there…
I’m reminded of a scene from the TV series “The West Wing”: https://youtu.be/OH1bZ0F3zVU
Interestingly for me, where as before I just saw the Imperium as “there”, from this perspective they actually look like an aggressive and expansionist empire, the other territories holding out against their expansions.
At the top of the map, they just need to occupy a few more systems along the Confederation border and they will lay claim (whether those systems want it or not) to all of the systems between their two regions at the top.
And then below the Confederation you can see them extending out, attempting to flank the Confederacy. Once surrounded, they can embargo the Confederacies in their net, until they surrender independence to the Imperium.