How would a Flat World work, visually?

[Stoat]

So is it correct that the most immediately noticeable difference is that you can see farther on a flat world? If a person was looking out to sea, or across an otherwise flat and featureless expanse, would the flat world horizon look any different?

As a flat-world DM, I'm curious about any other differences you might see between the two.

 

[Woas]

Well perhaps you could see further, but if so anything really far away would all just blend into on large blob/shape. Assuming an atmosphere even remotely close to our own world (has air with many types of particles suspended in it) you run into something that artists call Atmospheric Perspective. Its why distant hills or buildings or anything in the far distance look bluish and has much lower contrast.

Aerial/Atmospheric Perspective

 

[MrWildman]

This thread reminds me of several limited-scope campaigns and settings I've made, so here's some random thoughts:

A current campaign is set in what amounts to an impact basin, with no tangible world beyond. A circular valley surrounded by sharp, young mountains and concentric rings of hills. Starting out from a village in these hills, the PCs' quest will eventually take them to the middle of the basin and the broken central peak. Any questions on what lies in the other direction are met with: "It is the Will of The Sisters that we not know." The Sisters being three goddesses representing Sun, Moon, and Hidden Moon.

A light-hearted setting we call "The Fey-Team" (yes, I start these sessions with the A-Team music) has the world cupped in the hands of the local god, named "Rantwi" after Robert Anton Wilson, author of "Schroedinger's Cat" and other wiggy books. The sun is known as "Rantwi's Gaze", representing the god's daily loving inspection of his creation, and other Planes of existence are held by other gods and goddesses and are occasionally visible in the sky!

That's the cool thing about flat-worlds; since you've already got a distinctly un-natural natural world you can make that world as capriciously mutable as L. Frank Baum's Land Of Oz, where landscape features came and went at the author's whim and physical laws were mere local ordinances, not universal constants.

There was something else I wanted to share, but it has slipped my mind (or fell off the edge ). Maybe I'll remember later...

Oh, and:

Alternately, it could go all the way down. ALL THE WAY DOWN. Not even turtles.

Now I have to go read some Isaac Asimov.

Peace.

 

[Nadaka]

the "horizon" would seem to be higher as well as farther. In every direction you look, the odds are that there will be an object higher than your eye. However with a curved world, the curvature reduces the effective height of objects along the same line.

This phenomenon has been observed in exploring the moon where the horizon seems a little lower than on earth. Astronauts have noted that they feel taller on the moon as a result.

On the topic of fantastic geography: one of my D&D campaigns I have a torus shaped world. On the outside it is almost imperceptible from a sphere. Its just that the east-west horizons dip a little lower than north-south. As one moves towards the inner surface the two "higher" horizons rise and move together. When you reach the midpoint and continue the other side of the world rises above the horizon in a great arc. At first it is barely noticeable in the glare of the sun, but at night it it occludes the stars in the background. A little farther in and you can see the sunlit side of the opposite side of the world at night as a glorious glowing arc next the the starless void. During the day, enough of the other side rises above the horizon to be clearly seen even during most of the day. Days grow shorter and shorter as more of the sky is hidden behind the other side. And finally as one approaches towards the inner center of the world, you can witness the eclipse of your own world as it passes in front of the sun towards mid day.

 

[Quartz]

Have you considered having the world as the shell of the turtle?

 

[RFisher]

Not so long ago, I was on a road-trip during which I thankfully got to be a passenger. I had been running a campaign with lots of traveling, so I really paid attention to how far I could see as we traveled.

Very much most of the time, it was not very far. Maybe...I dunno...a few miles. Trees, buildings, the rolling of the terrain, all often blocked the view.

Of course, it depends upon the specific location. I’ve also driven I-10 before, but I think that’s more the exception than the rule. Especially if you live in a world without the US interstate highway system.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

It is very weird, when on a road-trip you fall asleep in rocky, valley, hill covered Ontario and wake up in the plains.

That kind of shock times a couple would I imagine be similar to a person from ordinary world going to a flat-world.

 

[Dlsharrock]

A light-hearted setting we call "The Fey-Team" (yes, I start these sessions with the A-Team music) has the world cupped in the hands of the local god, named "Rantwi"

This reminds me of a theoretical artificial flat world model I read about a few years back; theoretically (in a very theoretically improbable kind of way), you can have a flat world using science. The model involves a Dyson Sphere (itself theoretically improbable) which surrounds a sun. At a point just above the equator of the sphere you build a horizontal 'flat' plane. A coin within a hollow ball. At its central point the disc passes over the sun at a distance whereby the gravitational pull of the sun is enough to create a limited region of downward gravity. A circular mountain range (more akin to the walls of a crater) surrounds this central region and in this you plonk atmosphere and your culture. The mountains keep the atmosphere from bleeding out and the sun heats the ground, warming the atmosphere.

This might be a nice way of forming your 'cupped in the hands of a god' flat world.

The science doesn't hold up, of course, under even medium distance scrutiny. For one thing, a Dyson Sphere is virtually impossible without a society of extraordinarily high technological capability and near-limitless resources, and to place the disc close enough to the sun to get the benefits of gravitational pull you'd risk frying the disc, not to mention the tremendous strains on the disc itself. You'd have to use magical material strong enough to withstand the stress. Think about a six inch circle of tissue paper with a marble plonked in the middle. Light a match under the middle of the tissue paper and you have something closer to reality

If you can get past the illogical science (and we are talking fantasy here) I think it gives you quite a nice 'believable' setup for your flat world. The inner walls of the Dyson Sphere would blot out all regular stars, so the planet would be perpetually dark. There'd be no light, so some kind of Tolienesque lamp or shining tree might be nice, or you could make your disc semi-opaque and have light filter up from below. If the inner surface of the Dyson Sphere was highly reflective you'd have a second dim sun reflected in the sky above. With a decent telescope you could also spy on any part of the disc-world by pointing your lens into the appropriate part of the sky.

 

[Umbran]

That kind of shock times a couple would I imagine be similar to a person from ordinary world going to a flat-world.

I don't think there'd be much shock at all, honestly.

As many have noted, round or flat - much of the time, ytou don't actually get to see the horizon anyway - trees and houses and ground variations block it from view - unless you are in a very flat space (an ocean or really flat plains) a person wouldn't notice the difference.

 

[Merkuri]

What a nifty thread... I was pondering this question myself a little while ago. I like having flat or otherwise non-spherical fantasy worlds to separate them from the real world. I just feel like it's too easy and too familiar to put your world on a sphere and have it orbiting the sun. If you want to instill a sense of wonder in your world you have to make it significantly different, yet familiar enough for your players to understand it.

I imagine that in places where you could normally see a horizon on Earth (like a very flat plane or over the ocean) there would no longer be a clearly defined line between ground and sky. Due to dust, water, and whatnot in the air there would come a point somewhere that the air would appear an opaque white or pale blue, like a haze or fog in the far distance. The sky would just sort of fade into this fog from the top and the ground or the ocean would fade out of it on the bottom. On really clear days over the ocean you probably wouldn't be able to tell what was ocean and what was sky. It might look like somewhere in the distance the ocean curved up and actually became the sky over your head. (And in a fantasy world, who knows, that might actually be what happens!)

In most cases, though, you usually can't see further than a few miles due to objects blocking your line of sight (buildings, trees, hills, etc.), and in those cases a flat world would be no different from a round one.

Really, I think the only time it would really matter would be in the case of the ocean or really tall objects. Tall objects could probably be seen from quite a distance, but eventually they'd simply become small enough that the human eye couldn't pick them out from the sky, or they'd fade into the horizon-haze. If you were on top of said tall object then it would probably be similar to looking out over the ocean, where things just fade into haze after a hundred miles or so, and far enough out you'd only be able to see really big features anyway, since everything else would be too small to pick out.