Star Map

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

According to every interview I've ever read by ever astronaut, space is anything but "boring." The tend to say things such as, "everything is trying to kill you."

And a 1920s barnstormer could say the same thing about flying and for the same reason. They're using glitchy semi-developed technology. But only particularly dangerous thing about hanging out in a realistic garbage system that doesn't even have an outpost is that probably nobody can hear you scream for help if something goes seriously wrong but such places by definition don't offer much of a reason to go there unless you have a drive that requires you to stop in at systems along the way and you don't want your progress to be observed until you arrive at your destination. Even if you were exploring, the GM would generally say "You spend the next 5 weeks surveying a dozen garbage systems but on the 13th you detect something interesting..."

Of course you can make things more interesting by adding a plethora of negative space wedgies and non-oxygen-dependent life. But if you're going to put it on a map, there should be some reason to go there, if only "it has a military outpost". Otherwise if you are just travelling off the beaten path, there's no reason to put it down. Just bear in mind that there will always be at least a good dozen unoccupied garbage M-types or brown dwarfs that you can pass by on the way to where you are really going. Instead of a map, such places, if visited on the way should just have a random encounter table with entries that read things like "uneventful", "pirates", "space whales" and "Aurora".

[Flyndaran]

On your way from inhabited point A to inhabited point B, you pass 100 or so brown and red dwarf systems of no value.
It's not like a basic map of my town needs to detail every single house.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

According to every interview I've ever read by every astronaut, space is anything but "boring." The tend to say things such as, "everything is trying to kill you."

Space is lethal, but it is lethal in an extremely consistent way. It's pretty much a case of "well, this would be really boring -- except if you screw up you die".

Originally Posted by tshiggins

However, the existence of tons of other stars, red dwarfs off the beaten path, create the possibility of trips that aren't boring, at all. Why would you not want that option, in your campaign?

I certainly want non-boring options in a campaign. Absent things like mysterious alien ruins, I fail to see how the existence of those other stars make things interesting.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by Dammann

I had a map I got somewhere for Astrosynthesis that had stars out to a couple hundred light years, IIRC. It's been a few years, though, and I don't remember where I got it. Maybe from someone at the NBOS site?

It actually has the full hipparchos catalog, which contains about 100,000 stars.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

As much as this may upset astronomers, I don't think brown dwarfs or even red dwarfs on the small side really matter to anyone else. Removing them should clear up a lot of clutter. Not to mention increase the accuracy as those buggers are hard to find.

Just for the record, we can't really see brown dwarfs at any distance. However, it's not only M dwarves that are lacking. In a magazine article of several years ago I read that half the Gs and Ks within 25 light-years had not had their distances properly measured.

For real accuracy it would have to be parallax and parallax work is technically involved without being greatly rewarding in terms of grants and publicity.

So even if you had the best available map out to 100 ly it would not only be incomplete (and incomplete even in potentially habitable star systems) but inaccurate too. Especially it you make habitable worlds (what is probably) realistically scarce you might as well make things up.

Using a mixture of Space and First In I looked at frequency of Garden worlds and 100 ly was the average distance between them. In a recent thread someone else looked at the possibilities and only found 5 candidate systems within 40 ly and you wouldn't really expect hits in every system where star age and type made it even theoretically possible.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Using a mixture of Space and First In I looked at frequency of Garden worlds and 100 ly was the average distance between them. In a recent thread someone else looked at the possibilities and only found 5 candidate systems within 40 ly and you wouldn't really expect hits in every system where star age and type made it even theoretically possible.

I think his standards were too high. After all, Alpha Centauri contains not just one but two candidates.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I think his standards were too high. After all, Alpha Centauri contains not just one but two candidates.

Alpha Centauri A and B are in one system and were included in the above number. "6 stars in 5 systems" might have been too much detail for a casual mention. They are also just barely far enough apart and may have been closer when they were younger.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

...
Using a mixture of Space and First In I looked at frequency of Garden worlds and 100 ly was the average distance between them. In a recent thread someone else looked at the possibilities and only found 5 candidate systems within 40 ly and you wouldn't really expect hits in every system where star age and type made it even theoretically possible.

Garden only in the absolute loosest sense of the world, I'd say, as in may allow liquid water to exist at its surface.
Any other guesses are pure wild hopes.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Just for the record, we can't really see brown dwarfs at any distance. ...

I count infrared as light, so by that definition I believe we have seen a few. And I'm sure some very young ones would give off enough visible light for a human to see while in system, if I wanted to approach douche levels of pedantry.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I count infrared as light, so by that definition I believe we have seen a few. And I'm sure some very young ones would give off enough visible light for a human to see while in system, if I wanted to approach douche levels of pedantry.

I consider IR to be light and close enough to "seen" for telescopes. It was the extremely low luminosity I was thinking of.

They have been discovered farther away than I expected but maybe not by general surveys. I would expect that for simple reasons we will for a long time have discovered an even smaller number of brown dwarves than red dwarves.