History of the Imperium Working Group
History of Imperium working group (HIWG) is a fan organization for Traveller.
Ed Edwards and Michael R. Mikesh started History of the Imperium Working Group in 1987 when MegaTraveller came out. It was originally to develop Imperial history through the Rebellion. It did a lot of this, and many ideas went into Rebellion Sourcebook and other products. It outgrew this focus, though, as people exchanged programs, wrote up sectors, and developed races.
To encourage ownership and friendly competition, sectors and areas were allocated to "analysts." (This paralleled a Game Designers' Workshop practice with licensees, a practice they have moved away from.) Some of this material has seen print as library data, some published sectors have had their worlds named by HIWGers, and others are very sketchy.
HIWG has copies of the various files that DGP and GDW released into the GEnie library for comment. Most of these are sector files; the HIWG versions have most of the worlds named due to member input. Besides these, there are many draft documents written by HIWGers ranging from comments of ship design to ship designs to Contact! alien articles.
Also collected have been works by many non-HIWG members. Including Software, Spreadsheets, Deckplans and anything else a fan might generate. HIWG documents are available on HIWG CD. Currently there is about 230 (zip'ed) megabytes of material available.
External Links
HIWG divided charted space into four quadrants, only two have made it to the web.