2300AD: star maps and real star maps

[Lemnoc]

There’s an interesting confession in the Introduction of MGT:2300AD that some attempt was made to map the game to modern astronomical knowledge of the neighborhood around Sol, but it was abandoned because it “broke” the setting.

Relevant passage:

science has marched on and we know the positions of stars with greater accuracy, as well as finding dozens of brown dwarfs. These refinements of the star charts and tables would have damaged or destroyed the original setting, so to preserve it, the decision was made to retain the original Near Star List and the map it generated.

Would like to know more about that.

I’m guessing modern data “broke” the three arms of the original 2300AD game, but they were always a bit kludgy, particularly the French Arm, which IIRC nudged a few stars around from known positions to get them within the 7.7 ly limit.

I am wondering if new star data, while breaking the arms, doesn’t also remove some of the kludge? Can someone shed some starlight on this?

 

[Strithe]

The original star data was based on the Gliese 2 survey which dates back to the late 60's or early 70's, and was the most accurate database available when the game was published. Gliese 3 invalidated some things, and modern data alters it even more.

The only starts that I know for sure were blatantly fictional were most of the systems in Kaefer space (anything with a BK, DK, HC, Chien, or O'Niel name). There's some disagreement over whether the star systems for Vogelheim & Kimanjano are "real," but as far as I can tell they were as far as the database GDW used.

If you stick to the 7.7 ly limit, there is no French Arm: Nyotekundu ends up being 7.8 ly away and I think the American Arm ends at Broward, which means you can't get to the Chinese Arm either. You can bump the limit up to 8.1 ly and get most of original Arms back minus a world or two, but paths to them get weird. The French Arm sort of dead-ends at Neubayern, and by other means heads to the Beta Canum Cluster. There ends up being a link between the Nyotekundu / Neubayern / Bessieres and the Latin Finger. Aurore & Hochbaden end up in a position to get easily cut off by Kaefer Space. The Chinese & American Arms stay more or less intact but getting to them is by a very indirect route from before.

This website, did a pretty good analysis of the problems involved: http://evildrganymede.net/category/rpgs/2300ad/

 

[Doctor_Rob]

Just got the 2300ad rulebook. I could not find the near star map - am I missing something, or will this be publised separately?

(The three colonial maps were there, but not the map that accompanies the near star list at the back)

 

[Strithe]

Just got the 2300ad rulebook. I could not find the near star map - am I missing something, or will this be publised separately?

(The three colonial maps were there, but not the map that accompanies the near star list at the back)

Mine didn't come with one either, I think the arm maps are it as far as the rulebook goes. As far as I can tell, the colony maps have all the star systems you can get to within the 7.7 ly limit with the exception of going farther up Pentapod or Kaefer space.

 

[HorusZA]

Just got the 2300ad rulebook. I could not find the near star map - am I missing something, or will this be publised separately?

(The three colonial maps were there, but not the map that accompanies the near star list at the back)

Huh... what a coincident: I was just visiting the forum to ask the same thing!

It would nice to get a hi-res JPG/PDF version of the Near Star Map based on the segments used in the book.

 

[CaptainTrips]

I wouldn't mind seeing the three stellar arm maps published in a similar format to the Traveller sector maps that Mongoose publishes.

 

[Tarkin]

How about a map pack like those for Traveller's Spinward Marches and Trojan Reaches?

 

[Wil Mireu]

The Realistic Near Star Map linked to earlier just got a big update (individual pages linked below in order):

Introduction
Overview
New French Arm
New American Arm
New Chinese Arm