Hello all. I've been reading the list with interest. I'm a DnD'er who is
interested in leaving what has become a bit of a jaded campaign and heading
for the stars. Spelljammer just wasn't quite it, I'm afraid. Now, if only
I could find some classic Traveller in the shops here...
Anyway, my contribution for what it's worth:
David Hall writes:
> I remember National Geographic putting out some pretty nice looking
>star maps and even galactic maps using a system similar to one somebody has
>mentioned. They had a large circle laid out on the paper, but tilted at an
>angle so that it looked like a long ellipse, i.e. as if you were looking at
>it from 45 degrees off of the Z-axis. Then they had stars marked in space
>by placing them above the right location on the circular reference grid,
>and altitude marked by using a line running down to a spot on the circular
>plane.
A similar device was used in the computer game "Elite," although it was
used to track other ships in 3-D space. This was very useful and corrected
with pitching and yawing of the ship, so that you were always oriented with
respect to the other ships who had you in their sights. It was not
particularly useful for gauging distances, but it seems to me that this
sort of thing is certainly amenable to fixed stars and could well be
adapted. We already use a PC for our games simply for ease of rolling dice
and running the mechanics of large NPC companies, so adding something like
this if it were available would fit in easily. I'm not a computer guru,
though, so it will have to be up to somebody else out there!
I now return to list-lurking and return you to your regularly scheduled
programme of informed correspondents.
Ian Davis [email removed]