frogspawner

The idea does have its followers.

People liked the map, but I don't think anyone suggested to use it jfor shareworld.

Apart from tzunder, tedopon and Loz, y'mean?

Not too negative a reaction, so I may put some more features on it later, then - otherwise I'd just be sewing socks... It'd take a lot of work to make it look as good as the Iceland map, though, so no promises.

BTW, would a Sky Mountain be at the centre, or the south edge?

I've never been sure of missile weapon SRs, and the whole strike-rank system seems unnecessarily complicated to me.

Why not just let everyone do all their moves/attacks for that round, in DEX-order?

(Flame away - I've got my asbestos suit on now...)

Finally, much like in Rurik’s Portal, a hoard of northern, horse-riding barbarians arrive on the scene.

Hey, don't forget the horde of southern, moa-riding barbarians arriving at the same time... (Yes, nice one.)

And there is always a "local Level" SF idea. For instance image what fun could be had with "just" the solar system. We could have people terraforming Mars, mining the ateroid field between Mars and Jupiter, or epliring the other planets and moons.

Or even half the solar system - which would fit in the Dyson Sphere - might provide enough fun, especially if the 'gods' had put a Jupiter-like planet inside as well, with it's plethora of moons. Maybe if the Sphere radius was a little a bit more than 1AU, and a planet just like Earth was also in the sky...

Ah, but a stationary sun and other details could show even more clearly that is isn't Earth, just a divinely-created alternative. I think that might help, by allowing approximations to those ancient cultures, without having to worry about historical accuracy too much.

I haven't given up on the Sphere idea yet.

(But if everyone thinks it's a non-starter, I won't have to bother putting any more fiddly mountain-ranges on... )

PS: Did you notice the over-sized "Islandia", that everyone liked, at the top?

Inspired by Atgxtg's mention of Greeks, Egyptians, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, Scythians, Iberians(?) and Nubians, I started on a map drawn from the same Ptolemaic maps as the RQ3 Fantasy Earth maps.

Is it worth putting any more details on?

PS: Oh, and (didn't I say?) The Sphere is one very huge living ship, plowing through space, looking for more specimens and a soul...

Maybe there's the occasional hole (two? ten?) thousand miles deep, to the outside - look down and see stars going by in one direction: "My god it's full of stars".

I don't see anything so far that's incompatible with fantasy. Trying to stick to the principle of 'never reject an idea', and it's ok so far.

I see no reason why we can't have a semi-historical 'fantasy mediterranean' (a good quick-start basis, btw), bordered by The Green and Asherayne, and other less-known lands receding into the distance, all on a tiny part of a Dyson Sphere, with stationary sun (screened to fade into a 'moon' with stars at night) and bridged moon, magic-rich, with any gods imaginable, at least one skyborne city (powered by liftwood psychically-linked to it's million sparrows) - all on/near the edge of a thousand-mile high plateau with mountainous icicles hanging off it...

Ideas are gold dust. Keep 'em all. Reconciling them is the fun bit, and where myths can come from. Maps - yes, by all means!

I was wondering about the Geography and History of a Shared World.

I'm still sold on the Sphere idea (obviously we'd only define a tiny portion), so I'll give answers accordingly:

The deities are actual, and all have chosen roles/forms/realms for themselves according to their own whims/interests, some of which may clash. There are thousands or even millions of 'gods' (but not that many will be interested in the part of the Sphere we develop). All have effectively limitless power but they cannot interfere so much with other realms/interests that it spoils the other gods' fun - or they will get banned from the forum, sorry world. They can come and go, can leave forever or new ones happen by (probably only over quite long time-scales, by mortal perception, though).

The physical world was created by all the gods together, as their toy. Some may have created the mountains/rivers/whatever in the region(s) they are interested in if they so wished.

I'm sure most peoples will have creation myths, either true or false and as powerful as the gods of their region have let them become. (One limitation I can see, though: mortals cannot become gods).

Hopefully this view doesn't have too many limitations to hinder author creativity.

What would really be nice is a place for contributing writers to add campaigns, senario's and particularly mini-adventures that people could add to each world. ... There could also be a place for additional societies, cults, fantastic, legendary items and whatnot. ... Another neat thing would be a rumors thread about what is going on in each setting.

An 'idea pool' like that could be really good. Maybe trying to define an entire world from the start is too ambitious and even off-putting for some people. But this way we just collect any ideas we can, and perhaps meld them together later...

On that note It would be nice to see to see a semi-private forum where writers could suggest stuff to one another or have solid, honest editing help with one anothers work.

Not sure if this would be worth the admin work Mr Trifletraxor would have to put in, but then again I would perhaps like advice with writing-out stuff from my own world that's derivative of commercial settings (i.e. nearly all of it!)

Thank you very much!

The method I was describing is intended to do just that - give original authors the final word over what is canon in their world. Do you think it fails in some way?

For the GatedWorlds I am not sure. If the creator of the world wants full control, tehn maybe an own folder in the download section would be better. If he/she wants to share it like the SharedWorld will be shared, where everyone can add to it, then a wiki for each of those will be in order too.

I think the main idea with GateWorlds is that other people are invited to contribute to them. The author doesn't have to accept contributions he doesn't like, but rejected contributors would be free to copy the original world, and publish it again with their additions (so long as it's marked "variation of X's world"). Downloads seem to fit that model better - unless you can restrict who can update a wiki? Or maybe GateWorld wiki's could have an "unapproved" section?

I also think it's important to measure the popularity of the various worlds. Download-counts lend themselves to that quite simply, but might not reflect which worlds are actually liked/used. Maybe regular polls?

Very good question. How's it gonna work, Mr Trifletraxor?

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...

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?

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?

Do we need tides at all?

Yes, quite. Ditto seasons? This is just the sort of big-scale thing we should be deciding now.

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

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!

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

What about the world being an enormous habitat on a huge grown living ship, slowly propelling through space? ... The players wouldn't know anything about being on a ship of course...

Mmmm - a bit close to Metamorphosis Alpha... and if the inhabitants don't know, do we need to define it? Anyway, I'd thought of it more as a giant snowglobe on the mantelpiece in the gods' living room... one advantage of which is no SciFi battle-cruisers can turn up and start taking pot-shots! But these could be just two of various theories the inhabitants have.

Actually, I had another stationary sun/moon idea where the sun fades at night and actually becomes the moon, and at dawn brightens back into the sun. It could be quite possible to get the moon and walk on it and have adventures at night time, but it would be highly advisable to get off of it by dawn.

That's great. But - walking on the moon? That's absurd: you'd fall off!

However, since the Moon-Sun is stationary, what causes the tides - something lurking down there...? (dun-dun-duuhnnn!) Something vast, breathing under the Central Sea (what with the world being an oval bowl shape), near the centre where it boils daily in the afternoon Sun...

Sounds like a good license for the shared Universe. Can you track it down?

Here we go:

The GNU General Public License - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Yes, it's designed for software, but they say you can use it for any work:

Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU Licenses

If you look at "The Foundations of the GPL" and for "software" read "setting", it seems right:

A Quick Guide to GPLv3

These guys seem to know what they're doing, and it's a worthy cause. Freedom!

Takes place after humans leave earth poisoned and broken... post apocalypse barbarians... ancient ruins... heads in jars and roving tribes of slave herding cannibals... a mostly toxic environment... supernatural mechanics... technological, some biological and some "spiritual"... a hodge podge of contradiction. I'm looking forward to this project a lot.

Me too. Sounds wonderfully nasty. I can see people visiting and then fleeing in horror back through the gates... if they can!

BTW, I'm all for 'hodge-podges of contradiction'. If possible - can you leave it that way?

THE GREEN ... The whole idea would be that the relatively limited setting would be overshadowed with vast trees. The canopy would be a world of its own complete with strange races, both intelligent and bestial and adapted to their verdant environment. ... Beneath this green world is the dark, swampy root world where other less wholesome critters dwell. ...

That sounds really good to me, and refreshingly different. I'm not quite clear - are you offering it up as part of SharedWorld, or just giving us a glimpse of your own GatedWorld? I think The Green would be a fine addition to SharedWorld.

You'll have to explain this one to me as I'm not getting it.

OK, you got me. I thought Shaira had picked up on your first reference to "pixel bitching" and hadn't read to the explanation at the end. It was a pretty long post, and I was glad because I thought I'd made it to the end without dozing off, as us Million-Year-Olds often do. Anyway, I.... zzzzz

I am all in favor of a flat world... Perhaps the sun does not rise or set, but fades in and out for the day night cycle, remaining stationary. The lands directly under the sun are hottest (possibly uninhabitable - by normal beings) and the world gets colder and darker in all directions outward.

Now that is good. I can see it now, with gigantic icicles hanging off the edges...

I'm no great mapper but I have campaign cartographer...

Then go for it!

People can work up a concept and it it makes something important, then that is a reason to include that feature. ... The other players can chime is as we brainstorm, but history can be treated as "you break it you own it".

Quite. Let's make room for everyone's creations. I've found 'post-justification' can be very creative!

I like the odd bit of wacky geography, but I'm worried it might put some potential authors off. Do people think it would be too silly, or can they live with these sort of ideas?

And we are predisposed to think large landmasses are inhrerently better than islands. >:->

A balanced approach with some of each, is probably best I guess.

But should there be any off-the-wall features? Like, er... hollow, cuboidal, floating sky-nations, flat (though not necessarily held up by elephants), a bridge to the moon(s), stars are nearby holes into heaven, oceans of heavy gas, rivers of mercury, upside-down mountains, ice-'cap' around the equator (or even north-south), magic dead zones, crystalline/d12-shaped, banana-shaped...?

I like the style of the old map of Iceland, but it's probably not suitable.

Maybe it wasn't suicide, just cryogenic freezing?

...but occasionally they need to come out (at night, to minimize thaw) seeking transfusions (because blood isn't perfectly preserved)...?

Well I must admit that the original campaign arc idea may have involved a couple minor plot devices involving the weakening of the wards on the demon gate and the return of the ancients...

Wow. SciFi and CoC crossover already. Spot on!

... a few hundred years - a historical lunch-break - and may only be a temporary 'blip'...

A few hundred years? That is the entire length of history over here...

We really should use more emoticons. Could get into trouble, otherwise. Allow me to deploy a belated

Seriously though, the 'size' of History may need debating too, but another time, another thread.

Meanwhile, are we any closer to a Geography? The ideas are coming, and need a home...