I just received a preview pic of the Sixth World Almanac--it's up on the website, so take a look. Just a note--that's not a final print on the right, it's the cover stuck on some dummy pages. Hope you like the looks of it!

Jason H.

It's a pretty map.

Looks nummy.

I want one.

Is the map included in the .pdf? Any chance we can purchase copies of the map separately?

Both good questions. I think the map will be with the PDF, but I don't believe we are planning to sell the map separately. But plans can change--I'll run it up the flagpole.

Jason H.

Ooo - the map is cool. Didn't know it would be fold out. Nice.

Yeah, we've been needing a good map update for a LOOOOONG time

Awesome! And thanks in advance. As a collector I just don't see paying 50$ for this book and then tacking that map up my wall or even taking to the table to be molested. But if I could shelf one with the book and buy one for use that would be sweet. Printing one from the PDF is a viable alternative but it wouldn't be nearly as purdy.

What is the size of the map? By the looks, it seems it is A2 paper, right? I don't know, you can go to a professional ploter and get a map on good quality paper for less than U$15 (comparing to current brazilian currency). If you consider that 30% of the book's cost is the map, it doesn't look so expensive to me.

Yeah, I was talking to my wife about it--she recently had some posters made of her art at a price that seemed sensible. I'll definitely keep poking around on this.

Jason H.

That map is not the territory.

But it is f!cking awesome!

A couple critiques of a map that does look nice overall.

1. The Gulf of Aztlan is labeled the Gulf of Mexico – This does not bother me since I always found Gulf of Aztlan odd sounding, but it is canon as far as I know.
2. Uruguay is shown on the map – is this correct? or should it be part of Amazonia?
3. Why was a Mercator Projection used? It wastes a lot of paper space on the far north, and as a result compresses the most interesting portions of the map.
   • A classic Equirectangular Projection would have been much better, for the area covered.
   • By contrast, Rand McNally and the National Geographic Society use/used a Robinson Projection to overcome the problems with the Mercator Projection.
4. The border line between Quebec and UCAS stops too soon, it should go far enough to indicate that Labrador is part of Quebec, while Newfoundland is part of UCAS.

A1, and filled with colour. Yet 50$ for the map alone is too much.

I wonder if that map correctly reflects the new shape of the North Sea coastline after the massive changes caused by the Black Tide in 2011 (half of the Netherlands and parts of northern Germany submerged).

That map looks pretty sweet, but I'm more interested in the book itself. Do we have an estimated Street Date? This is certainly one thing I'm looking forward to purchasing right away!

I'm not allowed to estimate street dates. Sorry!

Jason H.

Oh poo! Not even a street year? Guess I'll have to keep a lookout on the website then...

Somebody didn't put away their legos.

Mesh

Yeah...
seems like the Greenlanders are getting a bit too much play.

That's the first thought I had when I saw it, but the target audience is American. We like the simple pleasures in life... like squares and rectangles. It's natural that way... like the Earth itself. So save your "mercators" and your "prime meridians" and your fancy oval Earths for the European version, ok?

Mesh

Is this going to be a hardback? The cover art looks great btw, who did it?

Yes, this will be hardback. The art is by the fabulous Echo Chernik, who also did the much-discussed Attitude cover.

Jason H.

I like that cover a lot as well. The pose looks accurate to me. looking at the close ups on her web page I think really shows off how good it actually is. Close ups.

Mercator maps certainly have their advantages, extrapolating coordinates from a rectangular grid is...oh wait, the "map" doesn't have a bloody grid, probably that clutter on the eastern seaboard (if a world map shows more detail than the regional map in the BBB, you're doing something wrong) was deemed more important.

IMHO, It's too cluttered and too dependent on details that won't show up on the actual book due to resolution restrictions.

And the loss of details will make it look strange – which is a bit strange, too, since the rest of his work is much more stylized.

Her work.

Whatever.

-- I can tell you the most likely answer but you probably won't like it

-- They drew the borders (probably in Illustrator) right on top of the NASA Blue Marble images. So, they downloaded the image, loaded it, drew on it, and voila So don't expect to see any evidence of sea level rise or toxic zones (unless they retouched the image, but I don't see any evidence of that in the preview map).

-- Which is a bit convenient if they release the vector layer itself as then we'll actually have a data layer with an implicit projection scheme. Saves people like me some time if they want to create a basic Shadowrun GIS layer (yes, I could heads-up digitize the borders but this would at least be the official lines)

It shouldn't be discounted that, for Americans (and I imagine Canadians), Mercator projections win simply because of familiarity: Mercator is the projection used on classroom maps in primary and secondary education, almost without exception.

The cover is a splattering of bright colours. I think I see every primary colour in there. This is not a recipe for a visually pleasing piece of art in my opinion.


Also, you rolled a four.

No, Echo is a woman, not a "whatever."

I find it kinda funny... I first started hanging out online with SHadowrunners back in '96, and I think one of the very first things I saw people talking about was how cool it would be to see a map of the Shadowrun World. This is a question that has come up in nearly every "What's Up With Shadowrun" Seminar at the cons for as long as I've been attending.

And we finally get one, and people are complaining about the shape of the map? Really?

*chuckle*

Wow.

Bull

You know what... I'm almost tempted to build a SR4A google map overlay set from this....

Bull....this is the Internet. If you were giving people a billion dollars, they would find a reason to complain.

Yeah, man. This is Dumpshock. I've been here two weeks and I already know nobody's ever happy with anything. You've got no excuse to not know this, Bull!

It's disheartening, no matter how often I see it...

I for one am REALLY looking forward to it. But I'm a geographer so that's sort of my thing.

ah dangit, now i have to pay taxes on that billion dollars!

i *hate* giving money to the government!

thanks for nothing, jerks

(you mean like that? )

Wow, Egypt is huge. does Egyt get a writeup too?

Also, nice work overall, though I'll reserve final judgement to when I see the map. Finally an update to Wordman's map though.

...and the result is what usually happens with such a long-awaited project: The developers try to squeeze in far too many features to make sure everybody gets what he hoped for, and the final prodct ends up way overloaded and poorly structured. In this case the intention obviously was to let everybody (well, everybody who doesn't live in Russia) see a city close to home on the map, and the result is cluttered like an anthill

Yes, Egypt is in there.

Jason H.

Egypt annexed the irradiated remains of Libya in 2014 after the UN had finished evacuating the last survivors of the 10 Minute War.

You seem to have gotten a lot more out of the preview taken with a personal digital camera and posted on a forum than I did, but you missed the lego so I'm going to guess your review is overloaded, poorly structured, and cluttered like an anthill.

Mesh

I know. I did not know this includes Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan somehow. I am also fairly certain these countries were mentioned in SoE, so I assume this is another case of annexiation because of Crash 2.0, like PCC's takeover of Ute? Curious to see where this takes Egypt. After all, it would be the only possible power to balance out with Arabia in the region then, what with Israel having walled in.

The city markings are somewhat hard to miss...and I doubt their number will decrease on a higher-res picture

I complained a bit on the official site in a comment about the map showing the old US state borders, which I think they should have kept off the world map (as it isn't consistent with the rest of the world not having them, it clutters the map somewhat more, and it is also already featured in the North American map in the main book). That said, my complaint is minor for me which sometimes does not come through in comments. I really like the map size, colors and _that it is done_ so I still like it a lot.

The cover art is a matter of taste, and it doesn't suit mine at all, sorry. Luckily it's the content that's important. The illustration on the opened preview page looks superb.

I can't wait for this book.

That being said, the cover is pretty garish. I don't dislike the 'art' itself, but the color scheme on it is eye searing.

Map looks pretty. Mine will probably end up full color copied and hung up.

Mmmmm, I would like to see one of these in person, as I have been wishing for a map to explain things to my players.

Hey! I wasn't complaining! I asked for a billion and one.

Wordman's 2062 world map is a superb map that was available since long, even if it's not up to date and not official. And it's vector graphics so you can print it as huge as you like.