Need Maps Advice for TOS RPG Campaign

[ghoyle1]

I'm planning an RPG campaign set during the TOS time period. I'm using the Risus RPG rules for the game itself, but i'm looking around to all the Trek games and reference books for inspiration. The game will center on an exploratory vessel like the Enterprise.

The main issue I'm pondering is mapping. I know that there was really no official map of Federation, Klingon, and Romulan space during TOS, so I wonder if I need one for my game. I've been looking at maps from lots of different sources, and I'm not quite sure which one captures the feeling of exploring the great unknown that is associated with TOS.

Since the game will probably be episodic in nature, I'm not convinced that I need a map that plots every single location on the Star Trek universe. However, some internal consistency would be nice. Any suggestions or recommendations>

Guy

[The Tatterdemalion King]

My main beef with most maps is that they fail to take into account how damn big and mostly empty space is. Imagine countries made of up of islands the size of Pitcairn, drawing lines across the Pacific, and trying to enforce those lines with dinghies. Now take the surface area of the Pacific, and cube it. Yeah.

Anyway, the writers never used maps, except in the vaguest of implications (Klingons over here, Romulans over here, Federation in the middle...).

[somaticon]

Another issue with maps is the tendancy to show only one plane of travel which is at odds with space travel. The Enterprise's 5 year mission would look something like a 3d stellar map with zig zags and spikes. I think I've seen one trek style map which showed the galaxy as blocks on top of blocks. Something else to consider is Orion territory which in Fasa is described as a sort of donut shape covering federation and Klingon space.

[ghoyle1]

Well, I have AstroSynthesis (see http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro.htm ), so I can do 3d maps of space. Having XYZ coordinates would help, of course. I have "Worlds of the Federation', too, which has 3d coordinates of all the worlds it contains, but I'm not sure it has all the planets mentioned in TOS and TAS (which are mainly the ones I'm interested in, I guess).

There actually are quite a few maps of the Federation and surrounding areas online, but i'm just not sure which one I want to use, if any. As mentioned above, they didn't map out anything for the show, which certainly would be OK for an episodic-style campaign such as the one I'm planning.

I might also consider some other alien worlds from later series that might have been known to the Federation during TOS, just to give some variety. The Trills, Cardassians, and Betazoids are all possibilities, IIRC, but I don't expect to use them a great deal. Are there other species that might have been known during ToS?

Guy

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I might also consider some other alien worlds from later series that might have been known to the Federation during TOS, just to give some variety. The Trills, Cardassians, and Betazoids are all possibilities, IIRC, but I don't expect to use them a great deal. Are there other species that might have been known during ToS?

Emony Dax hooked up with McCoy once, and Tobin Dax met Iloja of Prim in exile on Vulcan, so Trills and Cardassians are definitely known to the Federation in the 22nd and 23rd centuries. The Cardassians might be a very different culture than the one we meet in TNG; impoverished, but without the resources to dominate planets with force, they could be encountered as settlers on inhospitable worlds as miners, or refugees fleeting increasingly repressive actions of the military establishment.

The Acamarian Gatherers left their world around the TOS period, and the Peliar Zel were a starfaring species by the 22nd century, so there's two more.

[jkp1187]

See here:

http://solstation.com/

Nice 3-D maps of actual star locations. A lot of Trek star systems (61 Cygni, 40 Eridani, Rigel, etc.) are real, and you can plot their locations, backfilling fictional systems (Qo'noS, etc.) as you need to.

I actually had a Trek map I drew up based on this a good many years ago....hidden somewhere in the HDD archives.

[jkp1187]

My main beef with most maps is that they fail to take into account how damn big and mostly empty space is. Imagine countries made of up of islands the size of Pitcairn, drawing lines across the Pacific, and trying to enforce those lines with dinghies. Now take the surface area of the Pacific, and cube it. Yeah.

This is absolutely the truth -- and the idea of a 'neutral zone' being an enforceable zone stretching from the 'top' of the galaxy to the 'bottom', the violation of which would result in a bunch of Klingon cruisers coming after you is an idea that someone with no sense of scale invented. The best you could hope for is a neutral zone (maybe more like an ADIZ) around each individual star system. Anything more than that would be a waste of resources, I'd think....

[tonyg]

Well, that is pretty much the problem with Trek travel times. I don't think Roddenberry and company really unhderstood just how vast space is. Ships cruising around at TOS wf4 (64 times the speed of light) seem fast, until you realize that a short hop to a nearby star system (say 3 light-years) would would still take 17 days.

Considering how fast the ships get around the galaxy on screen (the infamous "speed of plot") the ships must be going much faster than the official speeds suggest.

As far as maps go, they work out okay if the GM wants to set up the campaign in a specfic area, but become more problematic if the GM wants to move the Pcs around the Federation they way the various Enterprises do on the shows.

What I used to do was invoke a "Slasher Flick" rule, inspired by the lshuffling pycho killers in horror films that somehow manage to overtake people who were running flat out. That is, when I was running in a set campaign area, ships moved according to the warp factor table, but when "off camera" the ships could move much faster, getting to where they were supposed to be. Something like wf light years per day.

[Cdre Bob Wesley]

I essentially had the same problem when I began my TOS campaign. What I realized is that it doesn't translate to the tabletop very well, if at all.

Since then, I've relied on "speed of plot" and the players don't even notice.

[Tomcat]

Both of my campaigns have addressed the distance, and the time it requires to travel in the great expanse of space. I have always thought of starships in relation to modern day submarines going off to their station, wherever that may be.

In our last game, it took over 70 days for the ship to get on station. So, what I do/did as GM, is to create a series of sub-plots that the ship faces while in transit to where the main campaign story-arc will be played out. The whole series of stories builds on the main campaign and gives the crew things to do and adventures to experience.

This all said, I used the Star Trek star charts book as my reference source. Plotted the course to our adventure, figured the time it would take to get there at sustainable warp speed and then plotted three to four small locations along the path for sub-plots. Yea, the map was only a two-dimensional plane, but it would take only a little more effort to illustrate the course in three dimension.

I personally have never cared for the idea of 'speed of plot', and between my sub-plots, I always addressed to the players the timeframe that was spent getting to where they were going.

[jkp1187]

Well, that is pretty much the problem with Trek travel times. I don't think Roddenberry and company really unhderstood just how vast space is. Ships cruising around at TOS wf4 (64 times the speed of light) seem fast, until you realize that a short hop to a nearby star system (say 3 light-years) would would still take 17 days.

Well....getting to Alpha Centauri in less than a month still sounds pretty fast to me. I just build it into the story: "It's going to take six months to get to Orion, so let me know what sorts of things you'd like your department staff to work on in transit." Also useful to drag out a few random events, too.

[Nuclear Fridge]

Maybe you're going at this the wrong way?

Do you have particular "arch enemies" in mind for your crew? Say, a Klingon commander - smart, sneaky, opportunistic, but still ruled by a code of honour? A Romulan who likes to play "war of nerves" games? The Romulan officer in 'The Enterprise Incident' was - I believe - more than up to match wits with Kirk.

Is your focus exploration, defense, diplomacy -- or a melting pot of all three? This will have an impact on your stories.

Just because Kirk & crew seemed to lurch from one end of known space to the other doesn't mean your crew will!

[tonyg]

It all depends on just how much time is spent traveling about, and how the GM handles the downtime.

A "five year mission" where the PCs make the tripFrom Earth to Q'onoS and back at Warp 3 isn't going to be a lot of fun if nothing happens during the 23 months it takes to get there, and the GM makes the players play though it.

[ghoyle1]

Maybe you're going at this the wrong way?

Do you have particular "arch enemies" in mind for your crew? Say, a Klingon commander - smart, sneaky, opportunistic, but still ruled by a code of honour? A Romulan who likes to play "war of nerves" games? The Romulan officer in 'The Enterprise Incident' was - I believe - more than up to match wits with Kirk.

Is your focus exploration, defense, diplomacy -- or a melting pot of all three? This will have an impact on your stories.

Just because Kirk & crew seemed to lurch from one end of known space to the other doesn't mean your crew will!

That's a good point. It might be more fun to approach it from the stance of developing a particular sector. Maybe I need to make my own "bible' to figure out the kind of stories I want to do.