Map Question

[Jorick]

I'm asking this question here, instead of the Savage Rifts forum, because I'm hoping to query the largest number of people most familiar with the original source material.

TLDR: Is there a reference to the continued existence of the North Carolina coast and barrier islands ( as they are now in the real world) somewhere in the books?

The Savage Rifts campaign just released a brilliant map of North America. It's really great, and this question, even if it leads to the discovery of an error, is in no way a complaint. This new map is a great resource for any GM.

During the creation of this map, I critiqued a rough draft on the PEG forums. My critiques were listened to to the letter, and the final version of the map ("the SR map") has the corrections. All but one (which even originally I described as more a matter of my ignorance, than certainty of an error).

The rough draft of the Savage Rifts map was clearly based on the "Rifts Atlas," a homebrew map stickied in this forum. It made similar errors, specifically as regards the locations of various Archie bases. Those have all been corrected in the SR map.

My question (then as now) regards the presence of the North Carolina coast and barrier islands, separated from the flooded mainland of Rifts North Carolina. I took this to be another result of copying the Rifts Atlas. However, even in the Rifts Atlas, it looks like the coast and islands were intentionally left unflooded. The way the cartographer drew the lines of blue (to represent flooding) looks like he took care not to cover that portion of North Carolina. The fact that other changes were made to the final version of the SR map, specifically those I suggested, but this one wasn't (though mentioned in the same thread, different post), suggest that the final draft intentionally left that landmass for some reason.

They stick out. Anyone who has spent any time with the books knows the mid-Atlantic coast was flooded. We have a map of the Carolina coast in Dinosaur Swamp. The descriptions of the coast throughout the book strongly suggest that that portion of land is no more. However, with the Archie bases, for instance, I can find explicit locations and names that narrow down considerably the positions of even inexact locations. Because of that, I can point to page numbers that proved errors in the rough draft. I can't find something so explicit for the Carolina Coast. It's even possible that the map in Dinosaur Swamp doesn't show the ocean that far east (a bit of a stretch). And like Manhattan, seismic activity (or magic, whatever) could explain their reemergence above the waves. I don't mind them being there. I mind not being certain why they are there, if they should be.

So, here I am, assuming other people spent more time researching these maps (certainly the guy who did the Rifts Atlas spent more time, and he made a great thing, despite the errors). Is there some mention anywhere in the books about the persistence of this landmass?

TY in advance.

[ShadowLogan]

WB26 pg133 does have a map of the Carolinas and their coast line, which does include some small islands though it is hard to tell if those islands on the map are the the Barrier Islands OR something new created by the rise in sea level and loss of land (they just might be to small to appear on the hemisphere level maps found in the old RMB). Erin Tarn's geography overview also omits mention of the islands in RMB or RUE.

[Jorick]

WB26 pg133 does have a map of the Carolinas and their coast line, which does include some small islands though it is hard to tell if those islands on the map are the the Barrier Islands OR something new created by the rise in sea level and loss of land (they just might be to small to appear on the hemisphere level maps found in the old RMB). Erin Tarn's geography overview also omits mention of the islands in RMB or RUE.

Those new barrier islands are drawn very close to the new coastline, and cannot be the older barrier islands. The description suggests the Carolina coast is similar to the Georgia coast, and therefore those islands are similar to the newly forming barrier islands off the coast of Georgia. I agree that these new islands might be the reason the cartographer of the Rifts Atlas left the barrier islands above water, but that would be an error. The new SR map keeps the form and location of our real world Carolina coast/islands as the Rifts Atlas does. Because the best description I can find of this coastline is the one you have referenced, I believe the Rifts Atlas was in error, and the SR map copied it (and no one checked the glaring error on the Atlantic coast when reviewing the artwork). But, as I said above, there's good reason to suspect this was done intentionally.

[Jorick]

All I can find that's on point is on pg 7 and 8 of Dinosaur Swamp. "The barrier islands of North Carolina were wiped clean and vanished in one fell swoop." "I-95...had become a rough marker of the new eastern shoreline." That second sentence matches quite well with the rough zoomed out maps of north america in many of the books. The coastline cuts further west in Virginia (as if along I-95) than it does in the Rifts Atlas. The eastern peninsula of Maryland still exists in the official PR maps as well, but does not in the Rifts Atlas.

One thing in this area the Rifts Atlas does get right is that the Chesapeake Seaport is at the mouth of the Susquehanna, NOT the real world mouth of the Potomac as it is now in the Savage Rifts map. In the official maps, which roughly follow I-95, the mouth of the Potomac would be somewhere near DC.

I'll admit that I'm a bit annoyed. A homebrew map was copied to make the SR map, with no double checking of the original source material. And it is to the extent that even a basic reading of Palladium Rifts would make the presence of the North Carolina coast, obviously an outlier alone in the middle of the Atlantic, suspicious. Sean Roberson has obviously done enough reading of the very books in question to be suspicious of this, so I have a hard time believing he is responsible for the maps. I've read all the interview and listened to all the podcasts. I like how Sean has approached this project very very much. But whoever made the map took a shortcut, and whoever was supposed to confirm that the shortcut was correct (Palladium) did not do so.

[Mlp7029]

Where can I get the SR map online?

[Jorick]

Where can I get the SR map online?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product_in ... _id=189142

[Todd Yoho]

The barrier islands off the coast of Rifts North Carolina are new barrier islands formed by natural geological processes that created the current barrier islands. They are definitely not the current barrier islands. The Rifts coast roughly follows I-95, so those new barrier islands are roughly where the current coast of NC is. I didn’t make up or do anything funky with the geography; I used the map from the original Rifts base book and extrapolated out from there.

[Jorick]

The barrier islands off the coast of Rifts North Carolina are new barrier islands formed by natural geological processes that created the current barrier islands. They are definitely not the current barrier islands. The Rifts coast roughly follows I-95, so those new barrier islands are roughly where the current coast of NC is. I didn’t make up or do anything funky with the geography; I used the map from the original Rifts base book and extrapolated out from there.

Thanks Todd. I concluded as much. My original suspicion that the current barrier islands could somehow be referenced somewhere in the books comes from the peculiar way the Rifts Atlas was marked, which was then copied exactly by the Savage Rifts cartographer. A bizarre error, in my opinion, because it seems like such an obvious error to me.

It'll probably be cleared up in a future edition, and the map is pretty awesome regardless.

[Mlp7029]

Where can I get the SR map online?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product_in ... _id=189142

Thanks