Review: Twilight Sector campaign setting

November 2, 6:09 AMChicago RPG ExaminerMichael Shorten

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The game supplement Twilight Sector - Campaign Setting Sourcebook by Michael Cross & Matthew Hope and published by Terra/Sol Games is a 126 page guide to a unique original Traveller compatible universe. It goes into the history of mankind, a description of the explored/settled area of space, describes various aspects of the technology and social aspects of the campaign setting and then goes into specifics for a particular area - the eponymous Twilight Sector. The scope of this campaign setting is both vast and very focused and provides an interesting look at an imagined future. The intent of this sourcebook is to be used either for homebrew campaigns or to be used with specific Twilight Sector modules that are coming out in the future.

I would compare the scope of this setting similar to what you might have found when the Third Imperium was first introduced, or when the Battletech universe of the Inner Sphere was fully described. I very much enjoyed the overview as well as laying out the pieces of humanity and how things fit together. There's a lot of background material and current information to make this an extremely useful start to a Traveller campaign, or any sort of science fiction campaign. There is enough material here for a "story based" campaign with an overarching plot, or for a sandbox campaign. It's the latter that I'd like to address the rest of my review.

I define sandbox campaigns where pieces and people are set in place, and then the players put the universe into motion. To do that, one has to have the high level "flavor" of the universe, so that as the players explore and discover new things, the Game Referee can stick to the "flavor" while making his/her decisions either based on random determination or by what has already been established. For a published game setting to support a sandbox, it needs to paint the setting in broad brush strokes. There needs to be enough details to hang things on, yet not so much that the Game Referee doesn't have some freedom to start a sandbox in his/her image and allow growth to happen according to how the players explore and develop within the universe.

This book manages to walk that fine line in a fantastic way. It gives a snapshot of the state of humanity from a technological and sociological perspective that gives the Game Referee a lot of great material to start with. There's a discussion of various specific technologies from a high level perspective, such as AI, Economics, Religion, Transportation and Communication. There's many pages devoted to the various factions and governments set up across human-colonized space. This gives the Game Referee a great deal of material to start with, while not locking them into too many specifics.

Within the actual Twilight Sector, each major system and/or faction is given more detail, but not to the point where there can't be growth. In fact, there are some areas that are purposefully left wide open, allowing an enterprising Game Referee to come up with their own creations. One of these is the mysterious Netherell system. Under interdiction and blockade by a specific faction - the Archenar People's Republic - this system is left in mystery, and nothing is really known about it aside from the possibility of worlds within the system. Who knows why the APR is so secretive about it?

Wrapping up the book is an Encyclopedia Galactica which gives a brief summary of most of the topics covered. There is various artwork and maps - nothing too spectacular, but informative and meshes well with the text. There is, thankfully, an index which lends itself well to making this book a good reference.

I really can't find much to fault with this book as a sandbox campaign starter and reference. Everything that I need to create a campaign arc within the Twilight Sector is found here and it's laid out in such a way that I would not feel constrained by any particular. I hope that the modules produced in this setting are just as adaptable and wide open. As an alternative to the Third Imperium materials out there, I find Twilight Sector to be a joy to read and use.

Twilight Sector is available from Studio 2 Publishing.

This review is part of the Twilight Sector carnival. Want to see what some other people had to say about Twlight Sector? Check these links out:

• Atomic Array: Twilight Sector (Atomic Array 034)
• Game Cryer: Review by Chris Perrin
• The Zhodani Base: Twilight Sector - A new TU
• Apathy Blogs: Something New For Traveller
• Rogue Puppet: A Role Player's Dream is Discovered