Well, this comes after a rather longer gap than I'd expected! However, progress has been continuing with this map throughout, if at a slower and much more intermittent pace than previously. Unsurprisingly, six months after the start, quite a number of folks who embarked on the D23 concept in January are either also finding problems and delays, or have abandoned the project entirely, so some ongoing progress is a positive note at least.

My scrawled notes have now got up to area 271, although getting them typed-up has slipped back further, as I'm currently only up to starting area 211 with those. It is, of course, always much easier to add a few jottings to a piece of paper in a few spare minutes than to have to set up the wpc on the computer, type, check and correct stuff that can be deciphered from said handwritten notes, often written many weeks earlier!

The map continues to receive small changes, and at some point I really must remember to add a key and a title to it... However, in honour of this Solstice update, let's start with an overview of the current state of the entire map:

From which it's clear that tweaking of label placement continues, along with amendments to the appearance of the map, albeit for the labelling, only in areas for which the type-up has been completed still. The enlarged numerals, while now easier to read overall (at a higher-res than is suitable for the Forum, at least), have needed moving off their rooms entirely at times for clarity of map details. Area 210 has even had to have an indicator line added, so things still look OK on that bit of the map. That's the hidden entrance room to the old Thieves' Guild, also known as Toad Hall, incidentally. You'll have to wait to find out why though, as for today's closer examination, I thought we'd head into the more upmarket part of the Hall (or what was, when it was still occupied, at least), Khy Row (167-190):

Why Khy Row? Well... When I was looking over the randomly-appointed features for the various rooms here, I thought one should be a bazaar. So it became the Old Bazaar (170); and for those who may not know, or recall, there was an old British Music Hall style song, "In the Old Bazaar in Cairo" 😁.

For those undeterred by such awfulness, 😉, these are the PDF notes extracted from the full document just for this part of the Hall:

Hopefully not quite so long a delay for the next update, though after what's happened lately, I make no promises!

But the hexes are too small to see...Oh wait, WIP... 😉

A quick run through of the YouTube videos for this (they're all VERY short!) suggests the idea is to use whatever's generated with a tablet to actually run games. There are plans to make the dungeon maps SVG format too and to add fog-of-war options for showing/hiding areas.

Perhaps of greatest interest is that the hexmaps are in development for zooming-in to show features like maps of settlements (which are generated by - go on, guess - Watabou!). This should indeed enhance using such a system for online/computer use.

You might be able to use resized pieces of Cosmographer starship gear for the space-stations Jim, if they'll stand resizing sufficiently. At this scale, something that obviously isn't the shape of a planet will probably work!

Also, is it "Disapora"? I don't know Starfinder, but for a scatter of asteroids (which is what this seems to be), "Diaspora" might be more apt.

Thanks @jmabbott !

I tried playing around with some of the CA97 B&W drawing tools, fills and symbols, which is what made me realise that if only the resolution of some of the original images for the fills and symbols had been a lot better, it would have solved many of the current issues. Of course, whether the original drawings were of any higher res, I don't know. The style's about eight years old, so maybe we could suggest a makeover for it as a few others have had lately, especially given the current popularity of OSR systems overall. [Is that too subtle a hint? 😁]

It's interesting that hex maps never really caught on for dungeoneering. I recall one of my early close-acquaintance DMs used a clear plastic covered hex map and erasable marker pens to draw out key settings on the fly, but that was pretty much of a rarity (this was back in the very early 1980s). I think they have continued to appear from time to time, though quite rarely. Of course, as your drawing neatly illustrates, hexes do create the fresh problem of partial hexes - there's just no winning whatever we try 😉!

Although the ShadowDark dungeon maps use squares on the solid floors (only), which gives a sense of scale to the drawing and in use, the rules are deliberately very free-form-vague about distances overall, with just Close = 5 feet, Near = up to 30 feet and Far = within sight, which (finally!) pulls the game further away from its wargaming roots, of sometimes ridiculously precise needs for measurement on the tabletop.