Headscratchers / Traveller

• Why are the maps flat?
  • Simply put, it's an Acceptable Break from Reality. Marc Miller has admitted it in many cases.
  • Put with more complexity, it's a map of jumpspace. Alternately, it's a map of slices of the galaxy; each hex goes from the top to the bottom, with at most one star system of interest is in any hex, and star systems in adjacent hexes are of close enough "altitude" that no one worries about it much in-universe. Star systems are not necessarily in the exact center of their hexes, and occupy a tiny portion of the hex.
• Isn't that the Nostromo on the cover of the Atlas of the Imperium? How did GDW get away with that, I wonder?
  • The same way that Ironclaw got away with having Lina Inverse and Naga on the cover. If the copyright holder never finds out about the infringement, they can't sue.
• The era from the end of the Solomani Rim War to the beginning of the Fifth Frontier War in 1107 is being called the "Golden Era of the Third Imperium" in current Traveller materials, and it was the original setting after all. But really, arguments can be made that the Imperium was much larger when the Solomani Autonomous Region was at least nominally still part of it, and possibly that it was more dynamic at the time.