Stellar Cartography — User Guide

For Stellar Cartography 0.25.2 · Foundry Virtual Tabletop V14

Stellar Cartography is a shared stellar atlas for your Star Trek campaign. Explore locations, read their briefings, plan voyages, mark discoveries, and view historical map snapshots. Each player controls their own camera while the campaign shares its ship, course, and applied era.

Quick start

1. The GM installs and enables Stellar Cartography in the world's Manage Modules screen, then reloads the world.
2. Press Shift+G, or click Stellar Cartography near the connected user list, to open the atlas.
3. Search for a location in the left sidebar and select the result to focus on it.
4. Read its information in the right sidebar.
5. To travel, have the GM or an authorized navigator select a destination, add it to the course, choose a warp factor and timer, and click Engage.

Press Shift+G again to toggle the atlas. Escape dismisses an open popup first, or closes the atlas. Closing the atlas does not stop an active journey.

Installation and settings

When a download is available, paste the supplied manifest URL into Foundry Setup → Add-on Modules → Install Module. Use the manifest, not the module's webpage or ZIP address. Then enable the module in your world. Your GM may instead have installed it manually.

In Configure Settings → Stellar Cartography:

• Configure shortcut opens the controls configuration. Change Toggle Stellar Cartography to your preferred key.
• Configure ship / view credits lets the GM set the shared ship name. Players can read the model credits.
• Stellar Cartography graphics selects Low, Balanced, or High graphics for your client.

The module creates its atlas journal when initialized by a GM. If journal information has not appeared yet, allow initialization to finish with a GM connected.

Moving around the map

Click the map before using camera keys. Typing in a search or text field will not move the camera.

The bottom sliders adjust tilt and rotation. Panning releases a focused orbit target.

Follow ship follows the moving ship while preserving your zoom and viewing angle. It is a personal choice. Panning or focusing elsewhere releases following. Engaging a course does not reset your camera.

Locations and briefings

The left index searches the location catalog and can filter by affiliation. Clicking a location opens its briefing on the right, including available historical context, source links, and linked journal content. Read atlas entry opens the associated journal when available and permitted by its Foundry permissions.

Symbol color represents the location's recorded affiliation, which can differ from the surrounding territory. Unknown affiliation is not evidence of ownership by a nearby faction. Some indexed references have no supported map position; they remain searchable but cannot be used as normal plotted destinations until placed.

The atlas is a perspective view of a map plane. Marker height, ship banking, and the curves in flight paths are visual effects rather than measured stellar elevations.

Adjusting map density

Use the bottom-right layer controls to show or hide Territories, Emblems, Borders, Labels, and the Reference chart.

Open Map visibility to customize your own view:

Category checkboxes control homeworlds, other systems, starbases/deep-space stations, outposts, natural regions, and marker overlays. The index remains available even when a category is hidden.

Name placards fade separately from symbols. Major landmarks and pinned locations resist automatic dimming. In a location's briefing, use Always show for me to pin it personally; the GM can use Always show for everyone. Explicit category filtering can still hide pinned categories. Selected locations, current ship location, course stops, hover targets, and pings receive visibility protection.

Clusters is optional: it groups nearby ordinary locations when zoomed out. Leave it off if you prefer individual symbols with transparency.

Planning a course

The course controls are in the top toolbar.

1. Select a destination.
2. Click + Stop, or right-click the location and confirm Add stop beside the cursor. Right-drag still orbits the camera.
3. Repeat for each destination in travel order. Open Course to inspect the itinerary.
4. Use Remove last course stop or Clear to revise it. Detour, when available, inserts the selected location before the final destination.
5. Choose the Warp factor and review the estimated fictional travel time.
6. Choose a playback timer and whether to pause at stops.
7. Click Engage.

Movement is shared with the crew; everyone sees the same journey progress when viewing the atlas. Keep a GM connected for navigation requests, stopovers, and arrival processing.

Warp time versus playback time

These are two different clocks:

• Travel estimate: the fictional journey duration, calculated from mapped distance and warp factor, including applicable route penalties.
• Timer: how long the animation takes in real time. Its default is 30 seconds. It does not advance Foundry's world calendar.

Timer presets range from 10 seconds to 120 minutes. For another duration, enter Custom journey timer in seconds and click Set timer. Supported custom durations are 5 seconds to 8 hours. Set the timer before engaging; an active journey keeps its original duration.

This makes the timer useful for a timed crew discussion or challenge while the ship travels.

Pausing and arriving

Enable Pause at each stop before departure to wait at waypoints until someone resumes the course. Pause also freezes the running countdown; Resume continues it. Time spent paused extends the total real-world duration.

The GM can use Arrive to complete a normal galaxy journey immediately, or Reset to start to return to its departure. These controls are not granted to player navigators. A GM encounter hold requires the GM to release it.

Final arrival displays an LCARS notice naming the ship and destination, even if the atlas is closed. Click Acknowledge, or let it disappear automatically. Intermediate stopovers do not produce the final-arrival notice.

Who can navigate?

The GM opens Navigators beside the course controls and checks the connected users who may control navigation. These choices persist across reconnects.

A connected GM is required for shared navigation. Navigator authorization does not grant general GM permissions.

Proposing routes and saving missions

Navigator console lets crew members draft a route, select warp, add notes, and Submit course proposal without changing the live course. A new submission replaces your previous pending proposal; Withdraw my proposal removes it. Proposal notes are shared, so do not put GM secrets in them.

The GM reviews Crew proposals and accepts or rejects them. Accepting loads the proposed route but does not engage it. The ship must be idle at the expected departure, and changed or stale proposals require another review.

Use Mission plans to keep reusable galaxy courses. The GM can Save current course as mission, add a shared briefing and stop objectives, and edit or delete missions. Players can read them; authorized navigators can load them. Loading requires the correct departure and does not move the ship. Editing a loaded course does not overwrite the saved mission.

Adding points of interest

Select a location and find Shared points of interest in its briefing. Choose a marker type, enter a label, and click Place marker.

Available types are Point of interest, Mission, Danger, Anomaly, Supplies, and Investigate. These markers are shared with other users. Players may remove their own; GMs may remove any. They persist when the author goes offline.

For an entirely new destination, the GM uses + New location, enters its details, clicks the desired map position, and chooses Create location. Use the location's editing controls to maintain campaign details afterward.

Using the historical timeline

Open the era control in the top toolbar. 2378 — Reference map is the default.

• Scroll sideways through milestones, use Jump to era, or step with Previous era / Next era.
• GM selection creates a local preview. It does not change the crew's map.
• Apply era for everyone shares the selected era. Exit preview returns to the applied map.
• Compare with applied borders shows the available border comparison.
• Show era event markers adds historical points of interest. Read the briefings and use focus links to inspect relevant locations.
• Find a historical event helps locate a specific event.

Enable TV series & films — chronological reference to see series spans and film diamonds. Faint guide lines connect film markers to their positions on the timeline. Clicking a reference shows its notes; for a GM it can preview the nearest available map snapshot, but never applies it automatically.

Milestone spacing follows events, not a uniform year scale. A media reference does not imply a separate researched map for every year. Read coverage notes: some borders are sourced for the selected era, while other regions retain reference geometry. The timeline is not a complete reconstruction of every historical frontier.

Exploring beyond the reference map

The GM can create Frontier charts for homebrew regions anchored to the galaxy atlas. Prepare locations and staged briefings, then reveal discoveries through these stages:

1. Hidden: absent from the player chart.
2. Detected: an unidentified contact.
3. Surveyed: identified location and survey information.
4. Explored: additional exploration briefing.

Save draft preserves preparation; Publish discoveries updates the player-facing chart. Generated discoveries are homebrew prompts, not canon locations. Edit module-managed discovery briefings through the frontier tools, because publishing can replace manual edits to their journal pages. Keep private preparation journals private.

Traveling between maps

Use Gateways to link published locations as border crossings, wormholes, or other passages. The GM sets endpoints, direction, and transit time. Gateway briefings are shared.

In the gateway itinerary, add both endpoints in order, for example:

Earth → galaxy entrance → frontier exit → frontier destination

The GM or an authorized navigator can engage the cross-map route. View ship map opens the ship's current chart. Follow ship can follow map changes; other viewers can switch manually. A return trip requires an available gateway route in the permitted direction.

Cross-map routes use their own controls. Saved galaxy missions and course proposals do not currently span them. Standalone regional flights are separate from the campaign ship's gateway journey; use Gateways when moving the campaign ship between maps.

Sharing a view

Open Presentation to Ping selected location. Pings highlight a destination temporarily; they do not force another user's camera to move. Recipients can choose View ping.

The GM can present a location or Start presenting camera. Players choose Join GM presentation to follow. Release GM presentation, or moving your own camera, returns control to you. This shares the main galaxy camera, not private preparation panels or regional charts.

Backups and performance

The GM's Mission plans tools include export and recovery checkpoints. Exported recovery files can contain private preparation: keep them with GM material. Recovery currently targets the original world, not migration to a different world. Keep normal Foundry world backups as well.

If the map feels slow, choose Low graphics. Balanced and High use more detailed models; Low uses simpler markers. Close the atlas when not using it to suspend its rendering. Hiding labels or dimming symbols improves readability but does not necessarily reduce geometry workload.

Troubleshooting

When reporting a bug, include the module and Foundry versions, browser, graphics preset, your role, the steps to reproduce it, and a screenshot when helpful. Do not include passwords or private campaign exports.