The old fluff was.. Let's call it Constellationally challenged.

Pretty much nobody living anywhere in the Calixis sector could give you a straight answer, if you had the audacity to point straight up at noon and ask: "What do you guys call yours?"

Because while there were an abundance of inhabited planets and other objects in need of a stellar body to orbit, there was a dire shortage on stellar bodies. I haven't counted them, but I'd guesstimate there were maybe 10 stars in the the entire Calixis sector.

So please, dear developer guys, let's not have a repeat of this, yeah? When you come up with a place, put it somewhere. And try to make it somewhere sensible, if you can. I don't expect you guys to have degrees in astrophysics, but I promise it won't hurt you to crack open a layperson-oriented book on the subject.

Another problem the Calixis sector had, was that you were extremely unlikely to be in a position to go somewhere to point up at the local star and ask the awkward question above. Because there weren't any Warp Routes, and the Imperium doesn't really do interstellar STL travel. So yeah, if you weren't living on Scintilla or Iocanthos, chances were you weren't going anywhere. Missions for the God-Emperor be damned.

So lets have some Warp Routes between the Star Systems, shall we?

And while you're at it, you should stick the old White Dwarf Warp Travel times in the core book, under the goods & services chapter somewhere.

Oh and! Whatever you do, please leave the otherwise awesome Rogue Trader's Warp Travel nonsense out of it. DH isn't a game of Warp Incursions During Transit, and even if it was, the RT ways of handling this are somewhere between painfully stupid and hopelessly unwieldy (oh Navis Primer, you're like the Smelly Cat of RT. I almost don't regret buying you, or the IQ I forever lost from reading you).

Say what?

Not sure but I think its a rant.

I almost not regret having read this post.

Erm, well, I can agree with some of the OP rant. The lack of any warp travel rules in DH1 is a detriment. And I would have liked the Sector map to include stars, and not just (some) planets.

The Edge of the Empire rulebook has a beautiful galaxy map - I really hope they include something similar for DH2.

I don't think we need rules for travel. My players get around in ships with plotonium engines that travel at the speed of narrative convenience. DH isn't a game about space travel, so let's gloss over it as much as we can.

Erm, well, I can agree with some of the OP rant. The lack of any warp travel rules in DH1 is a detriment. And I would have liked the Sector map to include stars, and not just (some) planets.

A skip, hop and a jump like a proper fruit from Point A to Point B can potentially take weeks, if not months. Even a small jaunt through the warp would warrant at least some downtime narrative and a finger-pointer on the ongoings.

And a Warp Map of the Calixis would've been nice, but not really necessary.

Either way, I don't understand the rant on stars at all. Stars are usually not mapped at all, and every planet mapped is assumed to belong to a star system, unless I've been missing something.

Either way, I don't understand the rant on stars at all. Stars are usually not mapped at all, and every planet mapped is assumed to belong to a star system, unless I've been missing something.

Because seriously, how hard is it to add a couple of warp routes and a line or two of information on the star system, when you're writing a gazetteer for some point of interest or other?

But beyond that being exactly the sort of boring detail that is the reason I pay professionals instead of doing it myself, it also just happens to strike me as precisely so slipshod that it really irks me.

"Only as much detail as you'll actually use at the table" is a great rule of thumb for us GMs, but it's a craptastic design principle for professional products.

It's a much easier way to organise information, and it's nice for the SF nerds among us, and it avoids the awkward question I pointed out in the OP.

The wargame doesn't need this stuff, because things like transit and looking up aren't part of that game. But this is not a wargame, it's a RPG.

I don't get why every single one of you guys don't want these things as much as I do.

Like I said, fair enough, warp routes and travel rules and fluff would've been nice, but I still don't understand the Stars. It's a star. Every solar system has one. What more do you want?

A detailed description of each planet's solar system? When describing our own solar system from a point of relevance to a narrative, why'd you care about Venus?

What do you call your sun?

...

We just call it "the sun," because it is the only sun we will ever know. This is also true for the staggering majority of Imperials, who live out their entire lives doing the same jobs as their great-grandparents and never leave their home planet.

For those who are curious, our sun is technically called Sol, so we live in the Sol system.

This OP confuses me because it really doesn't match up with the title of the thread. Beyond that, it was my understanding that the Calixis map between the front and back covers was of the most stable warp routes. I could be wrong, and I don't have any of my books available to double check. I was pretty sure the brighter the line, the more stable or more well used the routes are supposed to be.

I'm completely lost on the lack of stars complaint. Planets without starts, or rogue planets as they are known, are uninhabitable and probably incredibly dangerous. I'm pretty sure that would be mentioned in any write up on any worlds it pertained to. It never occurred to me that it might not be assumed that each world, unless otherwise stated (like asteroids or deep space stations, etc), didn't have it's own star that it's orbiting. Just as an example, if memory serves me correctly, the Prol system has 9 worlds, each known as Prol I through Prol IX. There's one star, Prol, and each world is named by it. Our system is the exception because all that stuff was named centuries ago.

I was also gona say the same thing as Covered in Weasels about our star being called Sol, although I'm not sure I remember where I heard that.

Finally, very very few worlds in DH1 have a Gazetteer. Not to get into a topic that was pretty popular on that game's forums, but there was never a comprehensive gazetteer, and the only worlds that got any real thorough write ups were in the published adventures, and they were primarily to advance that adventure.

The old fluff was.. Let's call it Constellationally challenged.

Pretty much nobody living anywhere in the Calixis sector could give you a straight answer, if you had the audacity to point straight up at noon and ask: "What do you guys call yours?"

Well I would guess the Sun. It's a bit weird to expect people to call that big ball in the sky to be called otherwise especially how deeply it's embedded in the language.

If you wonder about star name I would guess its [Planet Name] Prime as other inhabitable planets would be [Planet Name] I, II, XIII, etc. As only planets with some population get individual names.

Because while there were an abundance of inhabited planets and other objects in need of a stellar body to orbit, there was a dire shortage on stellar bodies. I haven't counted them, but I'd guesstimate there were maybe 10 stars in the the entire Calixis sector.

This is so wrong I don't know where to begin with it. Every planet on the map is implied to have a star and be in different star system since Systems like

Fyade System (Malfian Sub) are explicitly shown to be systems containing multiple planets (in that case Fyade Minos[Agri], Junos[Mining] and Kessae[Pleasure]). One planet shares name with the system as it was most likely settled first and others have their own.

Other Example. Unsettled world like AFG:218 just have id code with no real name.

So please, dear developer guys, let's not have a repeat of this, yeah? When you come up with a place, put it somewhere. And try to make it somewhere sensible, if you can. I don't expect you guys to have degrees in astrophysics, but I promise it won't hurt you to crack open a layperson-oriented book on the subject.

Another problem the Calixis sector had, was that you were extremely unlikely to be in a position to go somewhere to point up at the local star and ask the awkward question above. Because there weren't any Warp Routes, and the Imperium doesn't really do interstellar STL travel. So yeah, if you weren't living on Scintilla or Iocanthos, chances were you weren't going anywhere. Missions for the God-Emperor be damned.

So lets have some Warp Routes between the Star Systems, shall we?

And while you're at it, you should stick the old White Dwarf Warp Travel times in the core book, under the goods & services chapter somewhere.

Oh and! Whatever you do, please leave the otherwise awesome Rogue Trader's Warp Travel nonsense out of it. DH isn't a game of Warp Incursions During Transit, and even if it was, the RT ways of handling this are somewhere between painfully stupid and hopelessly unwieldy (oh Navis Primer, you're like the Smelly Cat of RT. I almost don't regret buying you, or the IQ I forever lost from reading you).

Ok

A) As mentioned there was front/back cover with some warp routes if you really need to have them described to you.

B) If there are none GM could do GMs job and imagine them. Really unless you only run stock adventures and just panic when players do something that's not described there. Otherwise you make stuff up. Same goes for warp travel you make up whatever you want if it's not in the books. Usually travel between systems is off time for players so you (as GM) give them as much time as you want.

I'll agree with posters above that DH1 lacks in proper Gazetteer describing planets better than 1,2 lines in CB if they're even there. But isn't one of the pleasures of GMing that you imagine those worlds you form them and present them to players for better or worse.

What do you call your sun?

...

We just call it "the sun," because it is the only sun we will ever know. This is also true for the staggering majority of Imperials, who live out their entire lives doing the same jobs as their great-grandparents and never leave their home planet.

For those who are curious, our sun is technically called Sol, so we live in the Sol system.

The "The sun is called Sol" is almost impossible to say in most languages, because Sol = Sun.

If anything, this just reinforces your overall point.

That being said, I'd expect a great many civilizations in the 41st millennium that are part of the Imperium would have specific names for their suns and refer to it as such, in the same way Mars, Venus and Pluto have been named by us and are referred to by name, even though they are by far less relevant to our continued existence than the great fireball in the sky.

What the stars/suns are called, however, and what the various non-essential planets of a solar system are called, is largely irrelevant to the narrative of an investigation-focused roleplaying game dealing with galactic heresy. Sure, it'd be nice to be able to say "Iocanthos is orbiting the star Iocanthi, and the nearby planets are X, Y, Z, X being the only one with a voidstation attached to it, mining precious gasses, used to refuel the many passing transport ships", followed by data.

But it's largely irrelevant and I don't see how adding such minutiae can be seen as a constructive use of time. I would like to have it, yes, I would like to see a Dossier on every single major player on every single planet, and a full Gazetteer on every planet, every hive, and a small star-map for each system, with some general pointers and major sights.

And it would be possible to do that today, by uploading much of this information online, free of charge, but obviously only really useful for those playing the games.

I would love it. But I don't see how I could talk FFG into considering it a worthwhile investment.

I have a feeling people who call their sun "Sun" are also prone to call their planet "Earth", simply because in many cases that's the name for the substance they are standing on.

Anyways ...

I suppose a "proper" stellar cartography like it exists for Battletech, Star Wars, etc could be useful, but then again I'm not sure I would really deem it necessary for this game. Since in this franchise it is standard policy to just make stuff up as you go, any GM could easily come up with an appropriate number of stellar bodies and names relevant to their game. If assistance is required, you could even "steal" a mechanic like Battletech's star system generation rules to roll up whatever planets and sun/s are in close proximity to the planet your adventure takes place on.

You could even argue that the "archaic" style of astrographic presentation is part of the IP, in that it is intentional that such otherwise crucial information is missing from the greater picture. Even if the real reason was probably that, to put it simply, nobody bothered.

In short, personally it'd be nice to have (because it saves you the work), but there are certainly things I would consider more important.

You could even argue that the "archaic" style of astrographic presentation is part of the IP, in that it is intentional that such otherwise crucial information is missing from the greater picture. Even if the real reason was probably that, to put it simply, nobody bothered.

That's not a bad idea. The Star Wars book has a mostly-realistic star map because it makes sense for the settting. In 40k nobody knows how anything works, so seeming some crazily illustrated 16th century-style mostly-incorrect star map would be totally fitting. They look pretty cool, too.

I don't think we need rules for travel. My players get around in ships with plotonium engines that travel at the speed of narrative convenience. DH isn't a game about space travel, so let's gloss over it as much as we can.

My first real contact with 40k was through DH1 corebook. Suffice to say, when Rogue Trader hit the shelves, it turned out everything I understood about space travel was dead wrong.

I don't necessarily endorse having solid rules on space travel, but a solid sidebar explaining the realities of it, from the massive scale of imperial vessels to a general timescale involved (in the vein of "it usually takes X days/weeks to reach a neighboring system, Y weeks to traverse the whole sector etc.") would be nice for those who don't live and breathe 40k lore.

Also, some kind of random chart with "space travel complications" would be nice as well.