I feel like I should point this out. The aforementioned starmap catches so much flak not because it is "non-canon" but because it suffers from the same problem as the "15 Colossi 2 years after Capella" campaigns. We here have a high degree of knowledge about what is "canon" in the Freespace universe, and so we can tell when a campaign has been thought out as a logical expansion to the events that were set in place by
. Campaigns that either adhere to that standard or make it clear that they are not trying to expand on the existing Freespace universe are fine. It's the campaigns that cannot expand on the universe as it is defined in any sensical way and yet that pretend to do so that we usually have problems with, and only because we can see too clearly why it wouldn't work.
Take that node map, for example. From what we know of the FS universe, the GTVA expands very slowly and cautiously into unexplored and uninhabited regions of space. I forget the exact number of star systems added to the "official" map between FS1 and FS2, but it's few enough to count on one hand. Extrapolate that 5, 10, 20 years out (when most campaigns are set) and it's absolutely impossible that just the systems in GTVA space could have been discovered in that time frame. And I'm not even about to go in to the "Shivan space" bit. It's about plausibility within the established universe; that map and any campaign based off of it have none and so are doomed to become that kinda-canon junk that kara was talking about.
