{"id":821,"date":"2024-07-27T18:59:51","date_gmt":"2024-07-27T22:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rpgquartermaster.net\/?page_id=9"},"modified":"2025-11-04T01:59:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T01:59:14","slug":"cartography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/?page_id=821","title":{"rendered":"Cartography"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cartography: Page Index<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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General Political Map, Central UFP<\/a>
Star Charts and the Missing (or Hidden) Z-axis<\/a>
Site Recommendation: Startrekmap.com<\/a>
Star Trek Star Charts Sample<\/a>
Licensed Trek Map Books<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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General Political Map, Central UFP<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

image by The Quartermaster at RPGQuartermaster.net<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n

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Digitally painted color political map By The Quartermaster of RPGQuartermaster.net
Click to view or download full size
Image is free to use or adapt for hobbyist online role playing games
Please credit and link back to this website if possible<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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The above map is an overall Political Map of the central UFP region and the surrounding territories. This map was loosely made with reference to the Star Trek Star Charts<\/em> book. Many of these territories extend far beyond the boundaries of the image, and often the claims encompass star systems that are not aligned with the territorial claims of these recognized powers and are unaffiliated or don’t recognize their authority. Otherwise, these are generally the boundaries observed by the UFP and neighboring interstellar Unions and Empires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Star Charts and the Missing (or Hidden) Z-axis<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

It should always be taken into account that the galaxy is thousands of light years ‘deep’ in cross section; you might imagine if this image were a cube which you were viewing through the top face, the territories could be as deep as they are wide in the image! So these territories can be imagined as ‘clouds’ and appear differently depending on which plane they are depicted from. The above interpretation uses a cloudy coloration to suggest this. When indicating the position of a system on a plane such as this one, it is not entirely ‘navigationally’ helpful for finding exact distances, because the star might be situated anywhere within the depth of the space as well, along the unrepresented z-axis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, a two dimensional plane remains useful as a political map. Further, the kind of loose narrative of distance and time represented in story telling plots could often be absorbed by the possibility that the given star systems being traveled between, while possibly appearing close in a flat projection on the plane, may be ‘in actuality’ (so far as that can be claimed in fiction) situated at greater distances apart when viewed from the missing axis.

This also affords the possibility of places where there are unclaimed or poorly defended ‘passes’ of territory, where powers such as the Ferengi and the Romulans might engage in trade, or the Cardassians and the Klingons, or the Klingons and the Romulans, might engage in battle, without necessarily crossing Federation space. It would allow for the passageway by which the UFP may be accessing what would otherwise appear to be non-continuous territory claims in the Beta Quadrant. It may also mean that the Romulans are not as hemmed in by the UFP and the Klingons as this projection might suggest.

Such interpretations are left to the imagination and to the demands of the plot.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A graphic from TNG episode “Conspiracy” demonstrating sectors in three dimensions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Site Recommendation: Startrekmap.com<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.startrekmap.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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screen capture startrekmap.com\/ufpmain.html<\/strong><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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sample image of Matthe’s PDF file<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Startrekmap.com<\/strong><\/a> is a project produced by Simon Matthe. It can be visited on his own site as an explorable experience with it’s own zoom and pan tools directly on the website’s map display. It’s also available as a large PDF free to download from the website. Matthe credits Mandel’s Star Trek Star Charts book as his primary basis, although he has made some decisions of his own in the charting process that makes his map unique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To work from the PDF File as an export to another file type, be prepared to manage a locked pdf file, and to handle the amount of artifacts the objects will be broken into between file type translations. This file is extensive, and therefore also a bear to work with. But as a free and practically exhaustive reference, interpreted by a fellow trek enthusiast, it’s still a chief resource online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Star Trek Star Charts Sample<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

This is a taste of the amazing printed work in Geoffrey Mandel’s 2002 Star Trek Star Charts book!<\/p>\n\n\n

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A stitched image composed of the fold out maps at the back of the Star Trek Star Charts<\/em> book by Geoffrey Mandel. Sourced from internet search, for noncommercial fan use only. Right Click for full view in a new tab.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Licensed Trek Map Books<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, these are all out of print, but sometimes can be found used, if one has the patience and money to seek them out. They are worth the hunt, if this is your jam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Star Trek Maps: The Navigational Charts of the Five-Year Voyage of the Starship Enterprise<\/strong><\/em>
Copyrighted 1980 by Bantam Books, this publication was released as a folder containing two double-sided fold out maps (4 maps in total) and a staple bound newsprint paper technical manual about navigation in space.
Design and Coordination: Jeffrey Maynard
<\/strong>Technical Direction: Michael McMaster
<\/strong>Astronomical Art: Geoffrey Mandel
<\/strong>Manual: John Upton<\/strong>
The entire publication can be appreciated at the following fan-made Star Trek reference site:<\/em>
https:\/\/www.cygnus-x1.net\/links\/lcars\/startrek-maps.php<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Star Trek Star Charts: The Complete Atlas of Star Trek<\/em> <\/strong>
Written and Illustrated by Geoffrey Mandel<\/strong>
Published in 2002 by Pocket Books – Recommended book! While there are still plenty of points for hard core trekkies to debate about here (let’s admit it, put any two die hard trekkies at a table in Tenforward and you can generate an endless source of debate energy from us), this guide does a beautiful job of making sense of disparate Trek lore from TOS to TNG\/DS9\/VOY and up through ENT, and most official Trek after this point seems to at least pay a solid nod to these charts in the continuing missions. It’s still possible to score a used copy online.
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The Internet Archive hosts a PDF of ST:Star Charts, which includes some material not in the original printed publication in the endmatter\u2026. You can browse it in the embed below or click the link to the internet archive to find a copy<\/p>\n\n\n

[archiveorg star-trek-star-charts width=750 height=800 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(ST:Stellar Cartography summary coming soon)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cartography: Page Index General Political Map, Central UFPStar Charts and the Missing (or Hidden) Z-axisSite Recommendation: Startrekmap.comStar Trek Star Charts SampleLicensed Trek Map Books General Political Map, Central UFP image by The Quartermaster at RPGQuartermaster.net The above map is an overall Political Map of the central UFP region and the surrounding territories. This map was … Continue reading Cartography<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-821","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1561,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/821\/revisions\/1561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rpgquartermaster.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}