Is Your Setting Pretty Much Earth?

[Drew]

And for the record, learning that a planet is round because it has a horizon isn't as easy as it looks. For one thing, you need a flat, distinct horizon for it to work. I'm betting the horizons most of us see on a day to day basis exist because of hills, mountains, or buildings, not because of our planet's shape.

Don't bet on it man, its pretty flat here in Iowa.

Don't expect easy answers on this one. I've been asking this question here for two years and getting no closer to understanding people's aversion to my kind of fantasy world.

I'm interested in your world ideas. I recall a thread a while back about using different rules of physics in D&D. In a nutshell, how does incorporating Aristotelian physics change D&D? Where can I go to get a readable (to a layman) explanation of said physics?

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Homebrew is a planet nine times the size of Eareth, rotating on its axis, at the center of its crystal sphere. It has nine moons, and one actually is capable of supporting humanoid life, each one being the size of Earth. It has two planetary bodies between it and its first sun, and five more planetary bodies between the first and second sun.

I'm interested in your world ideas. I recall a thread a while back about using different rules of physics in D&D. In a nutshell, how does incorporating Aristotelian physics change D&D? Where can I go to get a readable (to a layman) explanation of said physics?

This might help.

 

[the Jester]

My campaign setting takes place on the inside surface of a huge air bubble some 780,000 miles in diameter. So, no, it's not much like earth.

 

[Desdichado]

Why does a setting need to be so fantastic? There are places right here on earth that still freak me out as it is...

That said, currently my setting is not very earth-like. It was, but long ago the planet was ripped apart and is now a mass of continent and island sized pieces of rock floating in space.

You'd think that they'd all drift apart from each other, that the atmosphere wouldn't still hang around the entire cluster, or that gravity wouldn't work right in such an environment. And yet, somehow it does.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

My world is flat. Laws of physics have never applied in D&D (falling damage, monster HP etc) and I don't try to have them. The way I look at it is there are essentially two parallel laws of physics in my D&D world. The standard ones and the magical ones. Both of which get broken alot when the two get in fights.

 

[Odhanan]

In other words, is it an earth-sized sphere orbiting a sol-like star?

No. It's kind of a hollow world, but from the surface it's looks pretty much like earth.

Generally speaking, do the rules of physics of the real world apply to your fantasy world?

If so, why?

Yes, because there is gravity, and there is a distortion of dimensions toward the center of this hollow world (comparable to black holes in the principle).

How do you feel about flat worlds? Worlds where the sky is actually a demi-plane hung with crystaline lanterns. Worlds where sailing east will eventually result in falling off the world. Worlds where the sun is actually a burning ship drawn across the sky each day by magic flying condors.

All these ideas are really cool, and could make really cool settings for characters to explore. I like the medieval/legendary feel of them all.

Are there worlds out there that actually reflect medieval "science" and superstition?

Your lantern and chariot ideas can be compared to Middle-earth, where you've got first the trees, and then their fruits in the sky. In Roleplaying Games, Glorantha, creation of Greg Stafford, once the setting for RuneQuest, now for HeroQuest and HeroWars, published by Issaries Inc, would certainly interest you, if you don't know it. It's physical cosmology is heavily based on its pantheons and mythologies. There is an inter-dependance there between what the world is and what its people believe.

Do you think it would be cool to game in such a setting, or would it strike you as "wrong?"

Absolutely not "wrong". Actually, like you, I'd like to see more original cosmologies like this.

Why do we have such a proliferation of "mundane" worlds in a magical/fantastic gaming genre?

That's an excellent question. Because designers try to make their world believable and think (whether this is true or not) gamers wouldn't go for settings that would be "too" original. Perhaps it has to do with gaming history as well. In any case, this seems like a very subjective tendency. There's probably also this "why bother" syndrom mentioned above.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the grand details of a given world are the easiest to create. The gods, the ten thousand year histories, cosmology, contienents, dragon kingdoms ... all of these are not terribly difficult to create.

Well. Not difficult if you dismiss it from the start as being non-important for player characters...

What's hard is figuring out small villages and figuring out just how they've survived living next to the evil reptile cult for so long and what would persuade them to call on adventurers. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

... but I do agree that details aren't easy either. Furthermore, I think that pointing out, practically, in the text, the inter-dependance between the cosmology and the base layout (the villages, regions, people of the world) may be difficult to realize, but not impossible. Far from it. The difficult part, I think, is to emphasize it enough so that the world takes multiple dimensions all linked together in the DM/players' minds. To find the balance and the right "stimuli" or "punch lines" that create the spark, if you want.

 

[Ferret]

My world complies with enough physics as I care to remember. Its an earth sized moon floating round a Gas giant. And thats it. No special floating chariot, or vieing gods.

 

[Shade]

I prefer an earth-like home world, but I frequently take my players on planar jaunts to much more fantastic places.

 

[AuraSeer]

My favorite custom world is shaped like an enormous torus. It's as long as Earth's whole orbit, but only as thick as a regular planet. The sun is in the center, and the day cycle is caused by the planet's rotation around its annular axis. (Picture a round rubber gasket with a dot drawn on the top. Twist the gasket so the dot moves into the hole, down across the bottom, then back up the outside. That's one day.)

The inhabitants believe their world to be an infinitely long cylinder. Its curvature in the "north/south" direction is too small for them to measure, and no one has ever travelled far enough to circle the world in that direction. They can't even look across the center to the other side, because the sun is too bright to see past.

In the real universe "Noodleworld" would be unstable, with a tendency to drift off center and eventually graze the sun. Also, its day/night cycle would slow down over time, as the flexing of its crust converted rotational energy into heat. But of course my game doesn't use real physics, so I can explain those problems away with some technical-sounding pseudoscience.

 

[Gez]

One can say it's basically earth, in that anything that exists on Earth also exists in my homebrew. (Except for turnips, 'cause I don't like turnips.)

That said, there are so many more things... So, yes, the world is a planet, a big round ball of dirt... Except that it's also an infinite flat world, it just depends on where exactly you are in the Ethereal (the most material layer is the finite sphere, each other Ethereal layer is different, sometimes finite, sometimes infinite).

Yes there are other planets... But these other planets also have ethereal layers, which correspond to the outer planes. So Limiole is the Plane of Fire & Radiance, while Peline is the Plane of Faerie.

And yes, there's a sun. But Prime isn't a big ball of burning hydrogen, instead, it's a pyre that burn the nothingness from the Nihil (think Far Realm) and, from this combustion, generates reality. (Which explains very well why the illithids want to extinguish it, by the way...)

It's just like Earth, but an Earth where space's geometry is a frail thing, as dimensions are folded and torn and otherwise damaged in a lots of place. So, an inner sea is actually a bottomless pit, because somewhere in its depth, the dimensions slides to become that of the Elemental Plane of Water. (And moving back up can be difficult.)