Does anyone know of any? Where we might be able to find one, that would be useful for playing an RPG Sci-fi campaign, with the emphasis on usability for being able to determine things like location of different stars and estimating distances?
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;356661Does anyone know of any? Where we might be able to find one, that would be useful for playing an RPG Sci-fi campaign, with the emphasis on usability for being able to determine things like location of different stars and estimating distances?
RPGPundit
Project Rho is your friend! (http://www.projectrho.com/smap12.html)
Of course, if you like Traveller, there is this site. (http://www.travellermap.com/)
GDW's Traveller:2300 (aka 2300 AD) came with a poster-map showing all the stars within, IIRC, 50ly of Earth that was scientifically accurate at the time (though from what I understand it's since been rendered obsolete...).
Quote from: T. Foster;356669GDW's Traveller:2300 (aka 2300 AD) came with a poster-map showing all the stars within, IIRC, 50ly of Earth that was scientifically accurate at the time (though from what I understand it's since been rendered obsolete...).
It has been rendered obsolete (it was based on data from 1969), however there is a new and more accurate data set if you want to do the work to create a new near star map. Just run a search for Hiapparcos Satellite Data and you can download the massive tables.
If you aren't looking for college academia level accuracy in data though, the
2300AD/Traveller: 2300 Near Star Map and Near Star List are one good way to go.
I have a book at home that has real star charts of the Milky Way Galaxy in it.
I'll try to track it down. I don't recall the title at the moment.
Quote from: RPGPundit;356661Does anyone know of any? Where we might be able to find one, that would be useful for playing an RPG Sci-fi campaign, with the emphasis on usability for being able to determine things like location of different stars and estimating distances?
RPGPundit
The data set files that came with the Cold Space (http://www.flyingmice.com/coldspace.html) and FTL Now (http://www.flyingmice.com/ftlnow.html) pdfs is accurate as to 2006/2007 respectively. You can freely DL them from their respective pages, linked above. You'll need the NBOS Astrosynthesis Reader (free DL from NBOS) or the full Astrosynthesis to read them, though! Both show the Oikumene, a 20 LY radius around Sol. Commonwealth Space uses the same data set, so it didn't have a separate one.
-clash
Quote from: jeff37923;356666Project Rho is your friend! (http://www.projectrho.com/smap12.html)
Of course, if you like Traveller, there is this site. (http://www.travellermap.com/)
Wow, very good, thanks!
RPGPundit
Hi long time lurker. I thought I'd throw in my suggestions.
Project Rho is a great resource as per jeff37923 suggestion, its been an invaluable resource.
However for an overview map I often use the following artists impressions of the Milky Way from the Spitzer Space Telescope site. The great thing is these are free for you to use and are supplied in High Resolution so you can overlay your own detail over the top.
They can be found at the URL below (about eight or so images down the page) with a host of other images you might find useful as props.
http://gallery.spitzer.caltech.edu/Imagegallery/chron.php?cat=Artist_Conceptions
Hope thats useful.
Quote from: It was all a mistake;356933They can be found at the URL below (about eight or so images down the page) with a host of other images you might find useful as props.
http://gallery.spitzer.caltech.edu/Imagegallery/chron.php?cat=Artist_Conceptions
Hope thats useful.
This link is going into my bookmarks.
Post more! You are contributing value to this site!
Very useful! Welcome to theRPGsite!
RPGPundit
One of the broken links off Project Rho is to a starmap (http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk/starmap.gif) I use all the time.
I found it super useful for a 2-D representation of the local star system.
Nifty link off the source page (http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk/starmap.htm) is to a map with the places from Larry Niven's "Known Space" (http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk/nivenmap.gif) series, which I liked as well, since I really liked those books.
That hex-starmap is really great, Tellius!
RPGPundit
I looked for that book last night.
I can't find it.
To hell with it.
Quote from: RPGPundit;357149That hex-starmap is really great, Tellius!
Another handy use is to map space lanes / wormhole lanes and see the tactical locations appear before your eyes. Throw in a couple space stations in the middle of nowhere and campaigns just jump out at you.
On wormholes, if you want to play anything in the Lois McMaster Bujold literary space (the wormhole nexus (http://pw1.netcom.com/~fresne/nexus.htm)), it is also handy since most of the planets are implied to be in this area of space.
Quote from: jeff37923;356666 (http://www.projectrho.com/smap12.html)Of course, if you like Traveller, there is this site. (http://www.travellermap.com/)
Your sentence reads as though there is more than one correct answer. :)
Quote from: StormBringer;357215Your sentence reads as though there is more than one correct answer. :)
Not for interactive Official Traveller Universe maps. If someone could program a site like that for a real world stellar map in 3D, that person should get a Nobel Prize.
I'm kind of partial to Simbad (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/) database, Vizier (http://vizier.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/VizieR) catalog, and especially the Aladin (http://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/aladin.gml) sky atlas located here. Uses the actual Hipparcos and Tycho catalogs to chart nearby stars, even better, it's integrated with other atronomical observatories worldwide. They have some real high resolution star charts that include velocity and trajectory of star systems and groups as well as data on the newly detected exoplanets.
With Aladin you can map out actual unamed stars, and determine their relative distance in parsecs and/or light years either from Earth, or from other nearby known stars . I used this to create a high resolution 3d map of the Plieades star cluster about nine months ago.
The Plieades are some 440 LY or 130 PS distant and there were no charts available for all the visible stars in the cluster. With Aladin data, I was able to include many of the lesser stars (including the earth-type F & G stars there) in the map of that cluster.
Project Rho is really good too! +++
Quote from: jeff37923;357228Not for interactive Official Traveller Universe maps. If someone could program a site like that for a real world stellar map in 3D, that person should get a Nobel Prize.
That would be awesome.
What I meant is that there is only one correct answer to "...if you like Traveller..." :)
It's not free but Astrosynthesis (http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro.htm) is a 3D space mapper that has a bunch of built in tools like travel calculators, system generators, etc.
The maps on this page and the pages that link off from it might be useful for gaming. There are several real star maps on the page.
http://www.stdimension.org/int/Cartography/Maps.htm
- Ed
Quote from: tellius;357026One of the broken links off Project Rho is to a starmap (http://www.newsfrombree.co.uk/starmap.gif) I use all the time.
I found it super useful for a 2-D representation of the local star system.
Nice work. You've succeeded at a project I started (then subsequently aborted) a couple of years ago.
To clarify for my benefit, the map is oriented along the Galactic Plane -- the X and Y coordinates -- right? Then the +Z or -Z number next to the star is the distance in light years "up" or "down" from the Galactic Plane, yes? Again, nifty.
!i!
Quote from: Ian Absentia;357378Nice work. You've succeeded at a project I started (then subsequently aborted) a couple of years ago.
To clarify for my benefit, the map is oriented along the Galactic Plane -- the X and Y coordinates -- right? Then the +Z or -Z number next to the star is the distance in light years "up" or "down" from the Galactic Plane, yes? Again, nifty.
!i!
It isn't my work Ian, though I wish it was :D
But yes, exactly as you say, oriented along the Galactic Plane and the number next to the star (+/-Z) is the distance in light years up or down.
Quote from: tellius;357387It isn't my work Ian, though I wish it was :D
That map is an update of the old map from SPI's StarForce as Mr. Chung notes on his website. I have used that for over 30 years, falling apart though it is. :)
There was a pull-out (20" x 30") starmap in the back of the Bughunters game book from TSR. It included co-ordinates for each star, as well as a formula for calculating travel distances and times (and a table for the most common trips). The book can generally be had for peanuts these days.
If you have the co-ords from one of the many star charts that are available, the formula for finding out the distance between two points in three dimensional (euclidean) space is:
(http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/file.php/3653/M208_1_U022e.gif)
This should be good enough unless there are some dirty great big masses in between the two points.
Quote from: tellius;357482This should be good enough unless there are some dirty great big masses in between the two points.
That would certainly ruin one's day - run into a stinking F5 on the way to Fhloston Paradise :)
Weird, the picture of the formula doesn't show up for me. Doesn't matter, distance between two points in a cartesian co-ordinate system is not rocket science.
It's the Pythagorean Theorem: The square of the length of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two sides.
!i!
[Edit: Ah, tellius got the image of the formula to work.]
Quote from: Ian Absentia;357509[Edit: Ah, tellius got the image of the formula to work.]
No idea why it isn't working for some, I did nothing to get it working. I nicked the image of the formula from here (http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=303475) if it makes it easier.
Quote from: Koltar;357372The maps on this page and the pages that link off from it might be useful for gaming. There are several real star maps on the page.
http://www.stdimension.org/int/Cartography/Maps.htm
- Ed
That's a useful site, Ed!
RPGPundit
Necro bump for my own interests.
This is relevant as well, although it seems "off" to me: https://starmap2d.appspot.com/
This is cool http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/ I would love to use it in a game, it isn't being updated anymore though.
If you can find it. SPI's starmap packed with their Universe RPG mapped in 3d co-ordinates the stars in a 20 light year radius around earth.
heres a little example.
(http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/starmaps/media/reading/universe.png)
http://stars.chromeexperiments.com/ might not be useful for RPGs, but it's damned beautiful.
Just for the record, I'm pretty sure SPI's Universe, Spacemaster Second Edition, and Bug Hunters all had the same map in them. It's a decent map, not really up to date but good enough if you want and need a map to game on.
I swear by the Astrogator's Handbook (http://www.scifi-az.com/astronomy/astrogators_handbook.htm).
There was also this awesome 3D starmap over at Exosolar (https://www.exosolar.net) that even doubled as a great in-game prop, but it's gone apparently. :(
Quote from: CRKrueger;357268It's not free but Astrosynthesis (http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro.htm) is a 3D space mapper that has a bunch of built in tools like travel calculators, system generators, etc.
The Cold Space and FTL Now pdfs come with Astrosynthesis maps of the Oikumene. Unfortunately you have the printed versions. I can send you the maps though!
-clash
Quote from: Omega;789351If you can find it. SPI's starmap packed with their Universe RPG mapped in 3d co-ordinates the stars in a 20 light year radius around earth.
heres a little example.
(http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/starmaps/media/reading/universe.png)
This was the inspiration behind the StarCluster starmaps. Unfortunately, they are not sol-centric.
-clash
Quote from: Omega;789351If you can find it. SPI's starmap packed with their Universe RPG mapped in 3d co-ordinates the stars in a 20 light year radius around earth.
heres a little example.
(http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/starmaps/media/reading/universe.png)
GDW expanded this out to 50 light years in the 2300 AD Near Star Map project.