World Geography

[Trifletraxor]

Dyson sphere? It sounds familiar but remind me what it is. would it be able to support the flat, warm in the middle, frozen at the edges idea? (or actually, a planet could support that to, as long as it always showed the same face toward the sun.)

I think the setting should be "firmly" fantasy, having a sci-fi explanation for that it's built on would be fine. It could be hinted at for the GM, but never fully revealed.

Anyway, I think this bit is the most important to get down before starting the work. The basis of the universe kindoff serves as the foundation for the setting, and makes it much easier to add to it.

I can add a subwiki to this thread, but I'm not sure if where ready for that yet.

SGL.

[jarulf]

It's even cooler than a ringworld. :-)
Dyson sphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

Dyson sphere? It sounds familiar but remind me what it is. would it be able to support the flat, warm in the middle, frozen at the edges idea? (or actually, a planet could support that to, as long as it always showed the same face toward the sun.)

I think the setting should be "firmly" fantasy, having a sci-fi explanation for that it's built on would be fine. It could be hinted at for the GM, but never fully revealed.

Anyway, I think this bit is the most important to get down before starting the work. The basis of the universe kindoff serves as the foundation for the setting, and makes it much easier to add to it.

I can add a subwiki to this thread, but I'm not sure if where ready for that yet.

SGL.

A Dyson Sphere is essentially a "hollow" shell build around a star. Generally you take the material in a solar system and use it to build a ball that completely encloses the sun, at just the right distance to support life.

So no matter where you are in the sphere, the sun would be "up". We could have other stellar bodies inside the sphere that could orbit the star and give us day and night cycles, or even some Ancient-created screen that shields half the plaet at a time. Over the years the screen has been damaged and there are little holes in it that the people on the ground call stars.

You can have all the weather fluctuations we have on Earth and probably some that we don't.

Basically any culture that can build one can pretty much do whatever they wanted to scientifically, and ironically, probably wouldn't need to build one.


As for size, well it one were built for our sun at 1AU (93 million miles/150 million km) from the sun, the sphere would have an area of 7.07x10^16 square kilometers, and a volume of 1.41x10^34 cubic meters. The Sphere would have a diameter of 300 million km, and would only curve 1º every 833,333.3 kilometers--thats close to 21 times the diameter of the Earth!

So for all practical purposes it could be considered flat by the inhabitants and each section could be treated as a separate "world".


The high level of engineering required to make a Dyson Sphere world means that anything goes as far as world building. Things like floating cities would be childs play.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by Sven Norén

Do we need tides at all? It's not like they are of much use, except perhaps for restricting when larger ships can enter or leave harbour.

Not at all. However...

Originally Posted by frogspawner

OTOH, maybe there should be details like that from the RW, but they have different, weird causes.

Weird tides would be more interesting. For example if two beings/gods/races are battling under the sea, you could get exceptionally low or high tides, or a low tide that lasts a month, etc.

Originally Posted by frogspawner

Which is it easier for GMs to have - normal tides/seasons/etc (to have to keep track of) or weird/none? (remembering a lack of normal ones might be even harder!). Now I'm thinking maybe they should be intermittent (at the whim of the gods?). No worries about tracking them, no limits on using them as plot devices!

Weird could be cool. I like the mythological backgrounds. Going back to the sun/moon bit (which I'm not married to but makes a good example for this case) There could be an extreme Sun Cult dedicated to changing the sun/moon object to always be the sun (which would pretty much cook the world and destroy all life) and a Moon Cult dedicated to making it a moon forever (pretty much freezing the world and destroying all life).

So the party could actually go on quests to do things like restore the tides, or end a long winter, etc.

Originally Posted by frogspawner

PS: If there are no tides, what would clear the sandcastles away?

I vote for big trolls with clubs that scour the worlds beaches looking to smash any sand castles that they find.

Originally Posted by Trifletraxor

I think the setting should be "firmly" fantasy, having a sci-fi explanation for that it's built on would be fine. It could be hinted at for the GM, but never fully revealed.

I agree 100%.

Hinting at a possible sci-fi origen is cool, actually detailing it upfront really kills the fantasy image of the game.

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

A Dyson Sphere is essentially a "hollow" shell build around a star. ... So no matter where you are in the sphere, the sun would be "up". We could have other stellar bodies inside the sphere that could orbit the star and give us day and night cycles, or even some Ancient-created screen that shields half the plaet at a time. Over the years the screen has been damaged and there are little holes in it that the people on the ground call stars.
You can have all the weather fluctuations we have on Earth and probably some that we don't.
Basically any culture that can build one can pretty much do whatever they wanted to scientifically, and ironically, probably wouldn't need to build one.

Wow. A literally tremendous idea. Kind of fits with the flat-earth, stationary sun, sun/moon, and bowl-shaped ones too all at once. A shame to lose the icicles dangling off the edge, though - but maybe Fist-of-God type incidents could create some? Or would the shell be too thick for that, in order to give the right gravity? What would the sky look like? Could you see the other side, or the Night-Screen during the day?

Originally Posted by Rurik

So the party could actually go on quests to do things like restore the tides, or end a long winter, etc.

Or sort out any other troubles caused by squabbles of the gods. If the SphereWorld Engineers didn't have to build it, maybe they just did it for fun - so they could play at being gods?

I vote for big trolls with clubs that scour the worlds beaches looking to smash any sand castles that they find.

Quite right - thinking about it, trolls (albeit small ones) probably account for more sandcastle-destruction than tides in the RW anyway.

Hinting at a possible sci-fi origen is cool, actually detailing it upfront really kills the fantasy image of the game.

Yes, this is a problem. It'd be a shame to let it stop such a great idea, though. Can it be stated, yet not become interferingly relevant?

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Hinting at a possible sci-fi origen is cool, actually detailing it upfront really kills the fantasy image of the game.

I think if the difference is great enough, the high tech aspects really wouldn't be distinguishable from magic.

From the view of someone living on the surface, is the world flat or just a big dyson sphere? Are the starts objects in the sky, sprints, a sign from the gods, or holes in the sunscreen? Are wacky tides the result of battle gods, or did a dead whale get caught in the disposal mechanism and cause it to back up? Are magical powers gifts from the gods, or have the entire populace been genetically breed for psionic potential? Functionally it makes no difference, so we could describe things from an entirely fantasy viewpoint, be dead wrong about everything, and it would be fine.


This could allow us to use both high and low tech cultures to some extent on the same setting, just far apart. Most of the world could have fallen to a medieval state of development, with a few enclaves of more advanced culture that have a different worldview. Perhaps even restrictions against revealing the truth to the natives for several reasons.

But that is just one way to go with it, based on giant spaceship idea.

[Rurik]

My fear with the hard sci-fi background described is it can become limiting. I like the idea of cults being able to affect the world's tides/seasons etc. - a whale getting stuck can explain wacky tides, but how about when the sun cult really socks it to the night cult or whatever? I think having party quests affecting the 'natural events' of the world is more plausible with a fantasy background than a sci-fi one.

I'd also like a spirit world with ghosts and the like, and an underworld (possibly the same as the spirit world). I don't want as many otherworlds as say current Glorantha, but would like something like the old RQ2 spirit plane.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Rurik

My fear with the hard sci-fi background described is it can become limiting. I like the idea of cults being able to affect the world's tides/seasons etc. - a whale getting stuck can explain wacky tides, but how about when the sun cult really socks it to the night cult or whatever? I think having party quests affecting the 'natural events' of the world is more plausible with a fantasy background than a sci-fi one.

Well I did say earlier about the idea hat everyone could be a latent ESP, so basically the sun cult knocking it to the night cult would be a manifestation of psi powered mass belief.

Basically we could described it completely in fantasy terms. If the tech is high enough (as with a Dyson Sphere) whatever we can imagine could be rationalized away scientifically, assuming we ever desire to do so.

For instance, what if everything was run by computers since the Anceints went into stasis, hopped on an a outbout starliner for a trip to Disneyworld or whatever. The computer wants people to be happy and tries to do so by altering the enviroment to the wishes of the populace. If the people to want to worship the Sun and have thier crops blessed, rather than just requesting a 3% increase in sunlight to the farmlands, that's fine with the machines.

Originally Posted by Rurik

I'd also like a spirit world with ghosts and the like, and an underworld (possibly the same as the spirit world). I don't want as many otherworlds as say current Glorantha, but would like something like the old RQ2 spirit plane.

Could all be some form of virtual reality. You "spirit" leaves you body and travels on the "spririt plae": couldeasily be cyberspace from the view of a pre-computer society.



So anything could go. The locals won't know the difference, and we don't have to tell.

[Atgxtg]

Or worse, what if instead of computer the Ancients hired someone to run the place while they were gone. The who sphere has been outsourced, and the people running it are inept, don't speak the language, and tend to get things wrong.

So a request to the from the High Priest of the Earth god, leading his army of 10,000 followers, to send his gnomes and have themdown the fortress of the unbelievers, could come across as:

Request for terraforming on grid coordinate 23-45-86 With a POP Rating of 10K

Some paper pusher goes "Ten thosuand huh, they must really want to terraform that section. Probably want to put in a swimming pool or something. Better activate some of the earthmover robots. "

[frogspawner]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

So anything could go. The locals won't know the difference, and we don't have to tell.

Ah, but we have told. We have to define things, and people will know them because they are stated here. So we should define them in a way that allows the maximum number of fantastical possibilities. Saying the world is run by a computer which pretends to be gods, or the spirit plane is a matrix-like cyberspace, seems a bit too limiting to me. I'm not saying we should reject those ideas, but we should define the setting to allow them and a multitude of others.

I suggest that the Ancients were so advanced both scientifically and spiritually that they individually had the power of gods. Those few who are interested enough in the SphereWorld to watch, visit occasionally or even get involved are it's gods. They all have different personalities, agendas, archetypes they impersonate for fun, and so on - and the world is just their plaything. But they know it is the plaything of others of their kind, too - so they cannot overstep the mark, endanger the world, reveal too much truth, force their ideas/technology on areas whose gods object, or otherwise spoil the other gods' fun - or all the others would turn on them and throw them out. They must all get along and play nicely with their SharedWorld.

So we are like those gods. We can have areas run by automated computer-gods, or cyber-spirit planes, or low-tech barbarians, or even high-tech space-goers, or whatever we like - so long as it doesn't dominate the whole setting, and leaves room for others to have fun their way.

How's that for a Great Compromise?

Are magical powers gifts from the gods, or have the entire populace been genetically breed for psionic potential?

I like this/these ideas too. Assuming the 'gods'(ancients) are metaphysically advanced enough to syphon off some psychic power from lesser beings that attune themselves (via 'worship'), they had a reason to create enhanced psionic potential in the populations - and side-effects of that are various systems of Magic...