Traveller is a role-playing game set against a background drawn from adventure oriented science fiction.
In the distant future, interstellar travel is as common as international travel is today. The tremendous distances involved in travel between the stars dictate that such voyages take weeks, months, and even years. A situation similar to Earth in the eighteenth century is created, where communication is limited to the speed of travel, and the stage is set for adventure in a grand fashion, with all the trappings of classic science fiction: giant, star-spanning empires (good, evil, or both), huge starfleets, wily interstellar merchants (or pirates, depending on your point of view), complex diplomatic maneuvers, larger-than-life heroes, heroines, and villains.
— The Traveller Book
The Traveller Universe
The Official Traveller Universe (OTU) is the primary setting for various editions of the Traveller game, owned by Mongoose Publishing. This is the universe described by publications from Game Designers' Workshop (GDW), Far Future Enterprises (FFE) and Mongoose Publishing, and by past licensees such as Digest Group, FASA, Imperium Games and others. The setting includes the Third Imperium, Zhodani Consulate and Solomani Confederation, alien species such as the Aslan, K'kree, Vargr, Hivers and Droyne, and a history from the Ancients through the New Era.
Under the Fair Use Policy, the Traveller Map presents an interactive view into the OTU, making use of official data approved and provided by FFE — as well as apocryphal and unofficial data.
Official and Unofficial Data
The status of a sector's data is called out when the sector is clicked or centered in the map view. Official data has no annotation - this is data supplied by FFE's Traveller 5 Second Survey (T5SS) project. Some data is still In Review and further refinements are expected - corrections and feedback is appreciated. Unreviewed data was officially published data for one of the many prior revisions of Traveller but has not yet been reviewed by the T5SS; it is expected that this data will become official eventually.
In contrast, Apocryphal data was formerly supplied by Traveller licensees but is no longer considered official; all, none, or some elements of this data may be retained when analyzed by the T5SS. Unofficial data was created by the Traveller community, including organizations such as HIWG and individuals. Mixing official and unofficial data within the same map may be concerning to those who want an authoritative, unassailable and pure source of truth. Those who are familiar with the lore of Traveller will recognize that truth is a rare commodity and slippery substance, and often contains contradictions and unsettling gaps. Even the official data is intentionally incomplete, and may contain mistakes, secrets, lies and deliberate omissions.
Important Links
This site was created by Joshua Bell. You are welcome to send email with any comments, suggestions, bug reports, praise, or offers of help to inexorabletash@gmail.com.
Author, source, and publisher information for all sectors can be found on the Credits page.
For details about submitting your sectors, see the Submissions page.
Substantial changes to the site, data and APIs are announced and discussed at the Traveller Map Blog. Changes to the code can be found by looking at the commits on GitHub, or following the @TravellerMap Mastodon feed.
Bug reports and feature requests can be made using the Issue Tracker.
Tips and Tricks
Search Tips
Use the search field to look up worlds, subsectors, sectors, and
regions by name. By default, searches use "prefix" search. So
reg will find the Regina system and the Regina
subsector, among others.
You can use * and ? as wildcards.
* matches zero or more characters, so
*ward will find the Spinward Marches sector.
? matches exactly one character, so
t?rra will find the Terra system. You can also use
character ranges like [8-C] or [89A].
Specify uwp: to search UWPs. For example,
uwp:*-g will find tech level 16 worlds.
uwp:B[5-7][6-7][3-9][4-8]?[4-7]-[B-D] will
find all starport B, medium size, standard atmosphere,
wet, moderate poulation and law-level words with
average stellar tech level.
Specify pbg: to search PBG. For example,
pbg:??0 will find systems without gas giants.
Specify zone: to search travel zones,
using G for "green" or no zone. For example,
zone:A will find Amber Zone worlds.
Specify alleg: to search allegiances. For example,
alleg:Im* will find Imperial worlds (in any domain).
Specify stellar: to search stellar data. For example,
stellar:"M? I*" stellar:D will find red giant stars
with white dwarf companions. (The question mark matches any spectral
digit, the asterisk finds any luminosity class starting with I,
and quotes are needed because of the space between the
spectral class and the luminosity class.)
Specify ix:, ex:, or cx:
to search T5 Importance, Economic, or Cultural extensions.
For example, ix:5 will find worlds with Importance 5,
cx:[8-F]??? will find worlds with Heterogeneity 8 or
higher.
Specify remark: to search for remarks/codes. For example,
remark:Hi will find high-population worlds.
Specify in: to restrict search to workds in
a sector. For example,
uwp:*-f in:Deneb will find tech level 15 worlds
in Deneb sector.
Specify like: to find similar-sounding words. For
example, like:caboodle will find Capital.
Specify exact: to find exact matches. For example,
exact:sol will find Sol subsector, but not the
Solomani Rim sector. You can also surround a word or multiple
words in quotes like "Nova Terra" to require an
exact match.
Specify world, subsector or
sector to restrict searches to just that type of
result. For example solo sector will find only
the Solomani Rim sector.
Multiple words form an "and" search. For example,
sol
ri
will find the Solomani Rim sector, but not the Sol
subsector. c* uwp:*-f will find all worlds starting
with C that are tech level 15.
As a special case, searching for sector hex
will find a specific world if present,
e.g. Vland 1717 or SPIN 1910.
Keyboard Controls
How It Works
The map page is a Web application built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The page uses script to request image tiles from the server. As the map is moved, more tiles are fetched from the server, filling in the edges of the map.
The server providing the map tiles is running Microsoft's IIS with a custom image generation service implemented in C# using ASP.NET and GDI+ to render the tiles as bitmaps. Maps can also be generated in PDF format (via PDFsharp) or SVG for print-quality use.
The full source code to the site - both client and server - is available on GitHub and is released under the Apache open source license.
The map data comes from two sources. The macro-scale data - comprising the governmental borders and rifts is based on classic publications such as the Imperium Map poster released by GDW in the early 1980s. The micro-scale data is derived from sector data in ".sec" format. Official data from the Traveller 5 Second Survey effort is used where available.
API
Most of the data that allows the site to function is exposed by various APIs over HTTP and can be used by other sites and applications. See the API Documentation for more details.
Design Notes
The aspect ratio of the map follows the Classic Traveller convention of hexagonal parsecs, so parsecs are cos(30°):1 rather than square. This means that the map on this site matches the Classic Traveller resources such as the Imperium Map, maps in the Alien Modules, the Spinward Marches and Solomani Rim modules, and hexagonal subsector maps. Maps that use squares for parsecs, such as the Atlas of the Imperium or MegaTraveller-era publications, may appear distorted in comparison.
When zoomed out to larger scales, the stars are rendered pseudo-randomly rather than trying to display the actual system data. This maintains the appearance of the Imperium Map poster. Rifts are simply left empty. Zooming out further, rifts details from Mike Mikesh from Security Leak fanzine are used, and at extremely large scales the structure of Milky Way galaxy is represented using an illustration by Robert Hurt (SSC), JPL-Caltech, NASA, circa 2005.
History and More
This site was inspired by many sources, most prominently some of the treasured posessions from my childhood: the Imperium Map poster which provided an overview of Charted Space in the Classic Traveller era; the Spinward Marches poster included with Deluxe Traveller; and the Atlas of the Imperium, which provided cursory maps of all sectors of the Third Imperium. In the early 1980's, using these and the classic Alien Modules, I carefully pieced together a map of known space on paper. I also dutifully entered the Sector Generator BASIC program into my Apple II and spent endless hours trying to coax a decent map from a dot-matrix printer.
In early 2005, after a hiatus from Traveller of nearly 20 years, I purchased a copy of the GURPS Traveller rulebook, which includes a map of charted space within the frame of an imaginary computer-based map viewer. I first saw this within weeks of Google Maps appearing, and was inspired to create a functional version of the map viewer using contemporary Web technologies. I was also inspired by the many other online Traveller map resources and desktop applications such as Jim Vassilakos' venerable Galactic.
Starting in 2013, this site began hosting the official data files of the Traveller 5 Second Survey effort, as well as older published data and unofficial fan submissions.
Easter Eggs
- Follow the Grand Tour route taken by the intrepid adventures from The Travellers' Digest.
- Follow the Arrival Vengeance - Archduke Norris' last desperate attempt to save the Third Imperium.
- See the locations of FASA adventures set in the Far Frontiers sector.
- Follow the route of the Cirque des Sirkas through the Spinward Marches sector.
- You have followed the Zhodani Core Route all the way to the core, haven't you?
Privacy Policy
This site uses cookies and similar technologies to remember your preferences, and provide usage analytics to improve future development. By using this website, you agree that the site can store these types of cookies on your device. If you disable your browser or device's ability to accept cookies, the website will still function, but preferences will not be retained.
No user data uploaded by forms is retained. Such content is only used for the duration of a single request.
Copyright Information
The Traveller game in all forms is owned by Mongoose Publishing. Copyright 1977 – 2024 Mongoose Pubishing. Traveller is a registered trademark of Mongoose Publishing. Mongoose Publishing permits web sites and fanzines for this game, provided it contains this notice, that Mongoose Publishing is notified, and subject to a withdrawal of permission on 90 days notice. The contents of this site are for personal, non-commercial use only. Any use of Mongoose Publishing’s copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, any program/articles/file on this site cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author who contributed it.
Materials produced by Digest Group Publications (DGP) are copyright Roger Sanger. Any use of Digest Group Publications' copyrighted material or trademarks anywhere on this Web site and its files should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights. Usage is intended to follow the guidelines announced by Roger Sanger on the Traveller Mailing List for preserving the overall Traveller milieu.