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Science Fiction Mapping Tools and Examples

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
In previous posts here I've talked about Sci-Fi maps and settings...

Here's a bit more of the sci-fi setting I've been putting together as an example sandbox / playground for my personal RPG rules engine.

The rules engine I currently call eXiSTeNCe. and the campaign is currently called "Salvage Space"

On the frontier of human exploration 48 light years from Earth, explorers find an alien starship graveyard and the gold rush for xenological artifacts is on.

The Alliance government has dispatched the Navy to patrol the system and commissioned universities to catalogue and study the finds - but it's too little too late to keep the freelancers, pirates, and dreamers from flocking to the system looking for their own big score.

If only the derelicts themselves were not so full of alien dangers...

Alliance Salvage Space Star Map (0-15 parcecs from Sol):
https://armageddonmoon.com/existence:star_maps

The real star data my map is based on comes from Terry Kepner's 100 light year extract of the Hipparcos sky survey data.

This is available in a ready-to-use format for AstroSynthesis 3 which is the mapping program I use and what generated this image.

Rather than set the frontier at the edge of my map data, I used a data set twice as wide as the area I wanted so that future "space hexcrawl" adventures that leave the system have plenty of room to expand outward or return inward to the more populated / colonized areas.

Niecti System (HIP 1368) Inner and Outer System maps:
https://armageddonmoon.com/existence:star_system_maps

Next up are two maps of planet and belt orbits within the system - both an inner system view as well as the outer system view.

These views have dark blue orbital lines in them which can be hard to see in the thumbnail view but look pretty great (to me at least) in the full view if you click into them.

These initial survey maps do not have the names colonists and explorers initially assigned to things.

The views are generated from the star system data generated by and kept within Astrosynthesis 3.

Finally, some views of the night sky as seen from these new worlds:
https://armageddonmoon.com/existence:night_sky_maps

These are generated in Celestia by moving the viewpoint to Hipparcos 1368 and then targeting Sol again.

Our star system is smack dab in the middle of the view.

And to give you an idea of how far we've stepped, I've included the view of how much our constellations are distorted when the same patterns are plotted after a 15 parsec shift to the edge of the frontier.

Wrap Up
So, there you go, using 2 tools and realistic data set can help build and maintain a complex and dense sci-fi setting without breaking your brain.

Astrosynthesis 3 from NBOS Software is designed as a sci-fi GM tool to create and manage "stellar empires"

And Celestia is a fantastic desktop astronomy tool that can be used to "cheat" having to do a lot of math yourself.

Terry Kepner's data set is freely available from the NBOS download site and is documented to be used with other tools as well.
 

JochenL

CL Byte Sprite
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Gamer Lifestyle
Borderland Explorer

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Ack I forgot to update this - I posted - and then started moving things around.
The perils of wikis run by non-web admins.

Yes, the split is basically that I am using Salvage Space as a "proof of concept" setting to finish out my base game system.

And when I went to start adding planets - the mess would have all been in the core folder a.k.a. namespace in the wiki.

Later I can do a modern setting and a fantasy setting, and put them in other name-spaces linked back to the top seperately - while updating all of the "GM side" stuff to be setting agnostic.

Or that's the theory at the moment.
 

Stephan Hornick

Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
Although I appreciate how much time and energy you invest in this, sadly, I must confess that I don‘t know how to use this in an actual game. I just see a black canvas with a couple of stars and lines on it.

When rumors about a star are established in my setting, and thus, the players and PCs are at least motivated to travel there, only then I can present my players with a prop such as this map. It can then become relevant in the sense of distance and travel time. At least if the system or story gives a cost for this. But apart from this…?

How do YOU generally use a map like this?
 

ExileInParadise

RPG Therapist
Staff member
Adamantium WoA
Wizard of Story
Although I appreciate how much time and energy you invest in this, sadly, I must confess that I don‘t know how to use this in an actual game. I just see a black canvas with a couple of stars and lines on it.

When rumors about a star are established in my setting, and thus, the players and PCs are at least motivated to travel there, only then I can present my players with a prop such as this map. It can then become relevant in the sense of distance and travel time. At least if the system or story gives a cost for this. But apart from this…?

How do YOU generally use a map like this?

There is so much information generated and available from something like this, there is no simple answer.

But I can try to paint a broad picture.

First, click into a map to see that its much more detailed then the thumbnails suggest -- my map color scheme didn't really show up well in contrast with the bright page background.

When it comes to MAP ... MONSTER ... CHEST ... well, stuff like this is how I stock the Map when it comes to sci-fi with FTL travel.

In AstroSynthesis - each star, planet, moon, ring in the map has its own database entry including GM notes.

You can map trade routes (the lines) and designate polity for a system - creating and maintaining empire maps across space and the notes about the current status of the things in the empires.

But AstroSynthesis implements a customized set of "generators" to take the basic "spreadsheet" of star data and generate the contents of the systems ... and then track and use the results.

With one click I can take a star that has nothing, and have AstroSynthesis "roll up" a star system.

For those without AstroSynthesis - you can do the same with tools like StarGen freely available on the web:
https://www.eldacur.com/~brons/NerdCorner/StarGen/StarGen.html

AstroSyntheis is a nifty wrapper around a StarGen-like creator - to help manage hundreds or thousands of these generated star systems for writers or GMs.

Drilling down, the realistic physical data for the star is useful detail itself and the basis for generating those star system contents.

For example, HIP 1368 is a class M0 reddish star with a fraction of the output energy of our sun.

So right there I know - the starlight is reddish - the inner worlds will look spooky and blood drenched when you stand on the surface in an EVA suit working amongst rocks, craters, ice, etc.

That spooky effect was chosen because the heart of the game loop is exploring and salvaging dangerous alien derelict ships ... under blood red starlight? Yeah ...

Generating the solar system data itself from the star data - you find the number of planets, and moons/rings/clusters around them - either small rocky planets like Mercury, or gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn -- there's your map of the solar system and the ability to generate which planets are visible in the skies when looking up.

With the orbit data - you just got how long the year is for each world.

With the planet's revolution data - you just got how long the day is for that world.

And if the body is tidally locked then you know one side ALWAYS faces the body it orbits which plays havok with climate.

The physical data of the planet also gets you things like atmosphere composition and hydrographics -- is there AIR? Did you CHECK?

In the Traveller roleplaying game - worlds can be represented by a compact string of numbers like a stat block.

Size of the body, atmospherics, and hydrographics get you the first 3 digits of that stat block.

You can even get an estimated population which leaves the GM just Government Type, Law Level, and Technology Level to figure out for that world -- and if you have the empire data and trade routes those feed into the socio-economics.

https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Universal_World_Profile for details on the "short codes" for planets.

All of this is "you are there" data - which is particularly what I like the night sky map for and why I go out of my way to have one.

The simple question of "what do I see when I look up at night" can be a complicated one, especially in sci-fi.

Explorers and settlers of new star systems are not just going to blindly carry our constellations along - those star patterns only mean something to us where we are.

Using Celestia, I can move to the star in question, point back to Earth, and see what the night sky looks like, along with landmarks.

There are quite a few examples in sci-fi literature of colonists "looking back at Earth" and that moment is a great one to include at some point.

Have you ever gone stargazing and made up your own constellations?

With stuff like this - your adventurers can do this as a bit of side flavor that also feeds into your campaign world and they get a piece of ownership in the setting.

Those constellations are markers you can use during EVA as well to keep adventurers more easily oriented.

And what is the day like on this new and crazy world?

Plug the UWP into Explanator and get pages of "you are there" text about the world.

https://peterssoftwareprojects.com/2018/05/19/explanator-nsf/

So, the idea is to use a small subset of realistic data, rendered through some sophisticated and very specific generators, to create a setting backdrop without too much time or fuss being involved.

With approaches like this, you can generate a pocket full of local star systems and lots of "adventurer usable" data for your setting - from scratch... as well as have a rational framework for it all to sit within.

Star system sandboxes ... that's what I use this stuff for.

And using the tools to do the generation lets the computer do the heavy lift AND provide cool prompts for adding your own imagination on top.
 
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