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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 393479" data-attributes="member: 99">If you want some further reading that is related to this subject, there are a variety of stories and novels by Larry Niven that might be of interest.  It is worth reading his books just because they are excellent works of hard science fiction but I’ll summarize a few ideas he puts forward.He has an excellent essay called The Theory and Practice of Teleportation that describes some of the interesting physics effects one derives from teleporting.  Most of them do not (in my opinion) belong in a fantasy world, but a few might be worth including just to keep things interesting.  These primarily involve the conservation of energy (which is violated all the time in D&D, but regardless…).One effect is that if you teleport from a higher elevation to a lower elevation, you lose a great deal of potential energy.  You gain this energy back in the form of heat so if you teleport down off a high mountain, you might catch on fire at your destination.  Conversely if you teleport up onto the mountain, you lose a similar amount of heat and might go into hypothermia, so wear a warm coat.There are other similar effects from teleporting with or against the rotational velocity of the planet.  What this means is that there might develop certain “way points” that you would teleport to in order to keep the buildup or loss of energy to a manageable level.  It also means that there would be certain “sweet spots” that you could teleport to and from without difficulty (primarily locations of similar elevation along similar longitudes).  All of this would just be a few of the ways that you could add some interesting complications to the placement of the “Teleportals”.Sociologically, some other effects came into play.  Namely what he calls “Flash Riots”.  Basically, if something interesting happens at a location serviced by the teleportal network, word gets out about it (since communication is very fast across such a network).  Assuming that teleportation is cheap or free, lots of other people start to teleport in to see the interesting thing.  Soon, the large concentration of people itself is an interesting phenomenon and even more people show up.  Then you’ve got a “Flash Riot”.One other possible defense against enemies invading your city via the teleportal is to put it in the middle of a maze.  Then you would have a “guide” take them through the maze to an entrance to the city proper (similar to the way that a Pilot would come aboard a ship and guide them through the reefs and shoals into a harbor).  The caravan could be sealed in a “blackout wagon” with no windows to keep them from figuring out the maze.  But with the availability of scrying magic, this method might be easily defeated.Just a few thoughts.</blockquote>

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