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.
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.
Today’s project was working on putting together the print version of the Planetary Display Log Book. As soon as we’ve got an approved print, it will be available from OBS. This will be an inexpensive version, since it’s a blank book to be used for mapping a single planet.
For those who already bought the PDF version, we’ll have a discount code to get these print copies at a reduced price. I also need to figure out if we can do a bulk discount (4 for $12 or some such).
It will be nice if the cover is suitable to allow it to be drawn on. That’s part of the intent with having the simple, faceted globe on the cover. If it’s not markable (or can’t be marked well), we’ll probably revise the cover.
Our Trav campaign GM isn’t too into the idea of mapping any of the planets in our campaign (there are probably a half-dozen we go back and forth to in this current setup), but maybe this will make for at least some schematic mappings.
A false-color map of the Moon. The six hemisphere images from the USGS maps produced from data collected by the Clementine mission in 2002 are transposed into 32 faces of a truncated icosahedron in the Planetary Display Logbook format.
The colors show comparative elevation information (blue areas are the lowest; red areas are the highest).
Usable as a fantastic planet for science fiction game settings, whether as the Earth’s moon, or as a reference for a far-flung alien world.
This could be used as an alien world, with the blue sections used as water, and the higher areas as land. Or it could certainly be used in a near-space game where a moon map would be useful. Use it as a base to start from, and add further detail to make it your own planet for your own game.
We’ve just launched the latest DriveThruRPG product from Antherwyck House Games: the Planetary Display Logbook.
This takes our Planetary Display and turns it into a 40 page PDF with pages for mapping a planet (or other spherical surface) with a set of 32 hexagons and pentagons (like a soccer ball/football). Each page is for one of these sections, and additional information about the region can be collected on the page, as well.
Since it’s a PDF, you can print as many copies as you need for an entire campaign.
Eventually, we’ll have a printed version of the Logbook also available from DriveThruRPG. Those will probably be comparatively cheap, since they will be for a single planet, instead of being able to print as many as you want.
If you are interested in licensing this format for your game system or in having custom versions made, get in touch with us. We’re also hoping that early buyers will offer us feedback on how we might make the Logbook even better.
Today’s project was working on putting together the print version of the 
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