Known Worlds 3D Mapping

How to do it

3D maps are a bit more fiddly that 2D ones, but far from impossible to do.

Step 1

Make a 10x10 grid of squares on a big (A3 or more) bit of paper or computer graphics file. Hexes are OK, but squares are easier to draw, and once you get beyond jump 2 it's as much of a pain to work out distances as it is with squares.

Number it 0-9 along the X and Y axes.

Step 2

Roll 1000d10. Or do what I did and use a spreadsheet. Do it by groups of 10, one group for each square of map, and note where in the sequence of d10s you got a 1, stick a spot in your square with a number on it for each 1 you got, the number being the Z axis (how far 'up' your system is), again using 0-9. Some squares will have no planets, some multiples, just jig 'em about so they fit.

Example: I roll 7, 1, 3, 10, 4, 6, 7, 1, 3, 7. I put spots marked 2 and 8 in my square. If the tenth one had come up a one I'd have put 0, we want a range from 0-9. Makes writing the positions a tiny bit easier in the UPP, you just put xyz as three digits without having to stray into hexadecimals and use A for 10.

On the example map I used a bit of colour coding as well, easy to do with a graphics program.

Step 3

Eyeball your map and look for planets close together and mark key jump routes. I'm going to explain this by long-winded stages as I know maths evades many people.

Now to be generous I'm allowing Jump 1 ships to cover everything out to 1.99 parsecs, anything short of 2, Jump 2 covers 2 to 2.99, Jump 3 out to 3.99 and so on.

Distance between two points is √(x² + y² + z²), where x, y and z are the distances on the x y and z axes. Set up a widget on your spreadsheet to do the maths.

Example: Planet Alpha is at grid 137, planet Beta is at 145, so distance is 1-1 = 0 on the x axis, 4-3 = 1 on the y axis and 7-5= 2 on the z axis.

Square them, 0, 1, 4, add them up, 5, take the square root, 2.236... and it is a Jump 2 between these two worlds.

In practice you don't have to get your calculator out and do hundreds of sums, as anything one square over, one along and one up or down or less turns out to be jump 1; 2 squares difference in just one or two of the axes jump 2, and 2 squares difference in two and one in the other is jump 3.

On the example map I have marked all the jump 1 routes in magenta, some of the jump 2 routes in blue and a couple of jump 3 routes in yellow. Putting in all the routes will make the map an utter mess of lines, but make sure each has at least one connection.

Go on doing this until you have a web of connections joining every planet and you have an idea of how planets cluster and which are comparatively isolated, though such worlds may be easily accessible from neighbouring sectors. If players want to go off these lines, fine, they will have to get their calculators out and see if they can do it.

Download from Google Docs here

Where is my sector?

Earth is at the centre of Known space and occupies the far corner of the eight central sectors. Your sector's 0,0,0 square will be some multiple of 10 parsecs spinward, trailing, coreward, rimward, north or south of Earth. The first four directions will be familiar enough to old Traveller hands, north and south refer to being 'above' or 'below' the basic galactic plane. The example map, Aquila Sector is 0 parsecs spinward, 10 parsecs rimward and 0 parsecs north of Earth.

On the diagram below the eight core sectors are in blue and Aquila Sector is marked in yellow, with the 000 point marked as a spot in one corner.

Didn't you say something about distance from Earth affecting population?

Yup (see last post). Now you know where Earth is relative to your sectors 000 point (0, -10, 0 for the Aquila Sector) you could work out the exact distance for each planet in it, but that being a ball-ache, you could use a rule of thumb and say everything left, right, above or below a certain line will have a certain pop mod. In the case of the Aquila Sector I deem everything one the left half of the map up to column 4 to be close enough to Earth to merit a -2 pop modifer, so pop is rolled on 2d6-4, everything in column 5 or above a -3, so pop is rolled on 2d6-5.

The right half of the map will have plenty of sparsely inhabited or uninhabited systems, places with nothing more than a few dozen people eking a living on the frontier, making up a scientific expedition or perhaps a military unit left as a 'place marker' until their home nation can get enough people together to make up a proper colonising expedition. Some places will be a name and a number on a star chart somewhere, visited briefly by a scoutship years ago to count how many planets they had and rarely visited since, if ever.

The real edge of Known Space is another 10-15 parsecs out, with places ever more vaguely mapped and more systems not visited at all. Anything could be out there, anything... That lost colony of space Nazis you hear about it starport bars, that interstellar equivalent of the Donner expedition, stranded on an airless moon eating each other, an asteroid made of gold, a monastery of psionic Buddhist monks, real live bug eyed monsters with tentacles and everything...

Filling in the details

Don't. Start with one planet, maybe roll up the planets within one jump in case the players decide (or have to) skip town. The players might want to know where the highest tech place is they can go to and stock up on gear – tell them a random blank one some way off and dice it up when they get there. Ship's Star Atlases are generally an out of date mess (see Scouts below) and further out from Earth you get the sparser the data gets. The only reliable info will be the actual location of the stars themselves. Some crackpots claim they have seen wandering stars and that the Russians/Americans/Chinese/Freemasons/Secret Cabal of Lizard Overlords have deliberately introduced falsified data on that to hide secret systems and lead enemies into jumping into interstellar space light years from anywhere.

Scouts

There is no unified scout service in Known Space. Each large nation and alliance on Earth and the well established independent colonies has their own, and private companies and freelancers operate as well. With colonies springing up, amalgamating, splitting and fizzling out all over the place much of the work of the national scout services is surveying, visiting known worlds and seeing what is going on, and as couriers maintaining contact with colonies set up by their home nation. Exploration still goes on, with scout companies sending ships hither and yon gathering data and selling it to the highest bidder, all hoping to strike it rich by finding a new Earth and selling it's location and resource data to any nation willing to pay for getting a head start on its exploitation and colonisation.

Next week - the Known Worlds Wiki, and, hopefully, an adventure.