What do you use for star mapping?

[apoc527]

Simple question, no good answer, I fear...

What do you GMs do when you need to map stars for a sci-fi game? Piece of paper? MS Paint? Campaign Cartographer 3 with Cosmographer add-on? Steal shamelessly from Traveller and just suffer the 2D maps in silence?

I have struggled with this forever and I'm curious what other dedicated GMs do with this. Now I remember why I was enamored with Infinite Worlds--no need for starmaps!

[Nereidalbel]

My group has used Ipad apps to look at where real stars are before. Also, a game on Steam called Universe Sandbox will let you basically build a star system, if you want to be creative.

[scc]

What sort of galaxy do you have? 3D or 2D? And how do you move between stars? If you use a portal network yED Graph Editor should work

[ericthered]

I use 2D maps and use a couple of justifications to help me live with it:

first: if you have limited jump distances 10 stars in 3d space flatten to 2d with about a 15% error in distance. So for small maps 2d isn't a terrible shorthand.

second: if you are using a large chunk of the galaxy and only mapping interesting stars, you are effectively pretty flat. you need 500+ ly between stars if you are using this effect though.

Third: mark 3d adjustments on the grid: this star is at this position, +5 in the z position. this one is at -3. Its not as intuitive, but it works.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by apoc527

Simple question, no good answer, I fear...

What do you GMs do when you need to map stars for a sci-fi game? Piece of paper? MS Paint? Campaign Cartographer 3 with Cosmographer add-on? Steal shamelessly from Traveller and just suffer the 2D maps in silence?

I have struggled with this forever and I'm curious what other dedicated GMs do with this. Now I remember why I was enamored with Infinite Worlds--no need for starmaps!

I use a tramline model and simply list the destinations you can reach in one, two or three jumps from each inhabited star at the end of that star's writeup. Honestly it's much easier to figure out than a three-dimensional map. Of course I also use an FTL model that allows that to make sense.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Of course I also use an FTL model that allows that to make sense.

If there aren't limits on routes, starmaps tend to be almost totally useless -- just list the major destinations and the requirement to get to each one, the way air travel works (I just randomly looked at routes from OAK to to ALB; would a map tell you that going via LAX and ATL makes sense?).

[GodBeastX]

2D Maps, and I make them with CC3, mapped off data generated elsewhere. I prefer the Hex Crawl of space :)

http://donjon.bin.sh/ <-- Great Solar System Generator here.

[mook]

Though I own Astrosynthesis, I don't run a lot of scifi so haven't used it very much at all. Sure looks like it fills the niche you're asking about, though it might be a bit of overkill depending on what you're looking for (the way sometimes it's a lot easier to just cobble together a map in Paint instead of using Campaign Cartographer 3).

[Dammann]

Astrosynthesis has a GURPS plug-in. I used it back when I was running a sf game.

[korbeau]

1 word; Astrosynthesis!