I’ve been posting about the Planetary Display for the past few weeks for people interested in the #planet23 #dungeon23 challenge for 2023. Now here’s a filled-out example of it to demonstrate how a planet can be mapped out.
The Planetary Display TITAN project is an example completed Planetary Display using 6 images of Saturn’s moon Titan as imaged by the Cassini mission, and fitting that information into the faces of the Planetary Display. (Since the images are all from an equatorial orbit, the poles are mostly incomprehensible. But 30 faces is a pretty good map.)
The Wilderness of Ordurak adventure has been out for a few years now. The original backers (who picked that level) got print versions with both the adventure book and a poster (12″ x 18″) copy of the map. But, since it was made available on DriveThruRPG, the print version of the map has not been available, until now.
There were a couple of typos in the original Ordurak map. After the crowdfunding campaign, when we first made the adventure available to the public, after making the corrections, the print version had a lot of bad, unexplained pixelation. I tried a couple times to re-send the file, but I couldn’t get a decent print version. So this got shifted to the back burner. Most people were okay with getting just the PDF version anyhow, it seemed.
However, one long-time DQ fan wanted a print copy, and helped keep this in my attention. I recently got Affinity Publisher, and decided to try using that to export the print file, now that DriveThru is explicitly recommending Affinity as software to produce print ready files. So I used that to export the image file for the map and sent that to DriveThru.
And, although it’s the busy season, I got the proofs back yesterday, and this time, they look fine.
I think what had happened was just a production glitch; but I could never understand why the problems that we had cropped up. The side-by-side image above shows the older, pixelated version (right) and the current, corrected version (left). The pixelation is not in the original image file, and anyone who got the PDF version of the map had a perfectly good copy. But something about the printer’s settings at DriveThru caused problems.
Unfortunately, if you want to get print versions of the whole package (the adventure, the gazetteer, and the map), you have to place two separate orders, and pay shipping twice, because the map is printed by their cards facility, rather than their book facility.
If there are a number of people who want to get the full print package, I could assemble sets myself, and send them out as a complete package. It probably won’t be until mid-2023 that we’d do this, but if you would be interested in a complete print package from us, shipped all together, let us know here: [email protected]
If we get enough interest to justify it, we’ll put together some whole sets for you and send them out.
Here’s a first section using the Planetary Display, to show how it might be used for #dungeon23 #space23
This pass is just sketching in the major hydrographics (bodies of water and rivers), a couple of major cities, and some mountains. One option could be to do a couple more passes at the sections, and fill in more of the detail, once I’ve got the preliminary layout done. Or maybe this will be enough, and the next month I’ll do another planet.
It seems like a good idea to play around with things a bit before the beginning of the year, so that it goes more smoothly once things get underway.
There’s lots more to be worked out with this, potentially. Three cities/settlements could be a later source for development, or wait until there’s something specific to do with the planet to add more of those details.
Back to a simple hatching style for this one, but with a small set of chambers that have a decent amount of interconnection and choices in the pathways from one side to another.
I look at this as a set of rooms with connecting passages, but I also can see it as a couple of larger chamber with some blocky obstructions in the middle. Wonder if there are other reads folks have for this?
As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.
There is a dungeon-drawing project currently taking off on Twitter and on Mastodon. The original suggestion was made by Sean McCoy, and is spreading with the hashtag #dungeon23 (or, for space-themed variants, with hashtag #space23). The idea here in the dungeon iteration is to create a megadungeon. Beginning on January 1, participants will create one room each day, and move to the next level each new month, using a journal or daily planner for this to collect the notes for this. At this rate, by the end of the year, you will have accumulated 365 rooms and descriptions over 12 levels – a megadungeon!
There are different approaches one could take for extending this idea from a classic megadungeon and doing something more science fiction. A tower complex or a space station are ready options I’ve seen some people discussing. I’ve also seen suggestions of doing a Traveller sub-sector. And, if you want to do a dozen planets for this, I have some resources for you.
A few years ago, I made some resources for planet mapping that are based on a truncated icosahedron (which you may also know as a buckyball or a soccer ball). Since it has 32 faces, this makes it nearly ideal if you are doing one section a day. (And since there are north- and south-poles, if you let those go, then the remaining 30 sections are even easier to fit into monthly formatting.
Assuming that a few people might be interested in working with this, I’ve made discounts for these from DriveThru RPG:
A set of Planetary Display Log Book pages, with one section per page designed for printing an 8-1/2″ x 11″ notebook for mapping a planet.
This Logbook is designed for mapping the surface of a single planet (or other spherical body). The surface is divided into 32 faces; 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, all with equal edge length.
A POD print version of the Planetary Display Log Book The print version has a blank globe on the cover (image right), but unfortunately, the glossy cover isn’t very easy to draw on.
Single page PDF poster with the latitude and longitude lines and the 32 sections.
I hadn’t done anything with the Planetary Display logbook for a few years. But I just re-opened it to check it out again. I found it works very well as a digest (zine) size 5-1/2″ x 8-1/2″ booklet. I also did a re-ordering of pages and printed it in the order “1, 3-40, 2” which might also appeal to you as a better layout.
The discounts on these at DriveThru is good through the end of January.
A rough, jagged map seemed to be called for. Hatched poche seemed that it would be too much, so instead, you see the simple stipple for this. I wasn’t thinking about the last, swoopy map posted last week, but this is pretty much in contrast to that one.
I took a couple of pictures of the page as I was working on it, so I have a sequence of the various states of progress to get to this point. The whole thing isn’t all that involved, so it’s not all that dramatic or exciting, but I’m thinking about posting that as a way of showing the process and progression with this.
As usual, feel free to use for any non-commercial purpose, or contact me if you’d like to use this on a commercial project, or if you would like to commission a custom piece.
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