Is Your Setting Pretty Much Earth?

[Impeesa]

They do accelerate. In fact, they accelerate faster under normal falling rules than they do in real life. People who advocate the 1d6/10 ft/10 ft rule are actually getting distance confused with velocity. They're using numbers related to distance fallen, which has nothing to do with the velocity at which you hit the ground - think parachute: long distance, low velocity (you hope). I can be much more detailed on this if you wish.

I like the Aristotle physics idea - if anything, it might get players out of the habit of using too much real world knowledge.

Right, plus it's funny when people make the embarassing discovery that a well-constructed parachute makes them fall faster from the increased mass. That'll teach them for metagaming by saying their character watches birds fly or something.

--Impeesa--

 

[gizmo33]

Right, plus it's funny when people make the embarassing discovery that a well-constructed parachute makes them fall faster from the increased mass.

Must be the decreased air resistance that causes someone to fall faster with a parachute. Two objects of different mass fall at the same rate because the force of gravity (ie. weight) is proportional to mass. I think the famous story for this was Galileo dropping two different sized objects off of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (note to self - add strange building to campaign world) and the objects hit the ground at the same time.

 

[gizmo33]

So, it's a question of using the same words to designate two different concepts. Just like dimension in "dimensional travel" doesn't mean spacial dimension as in height, width, and depth, element as in Elemental Plane doesn't mean element as in Mendeleiev's periodic table.

Actually, dimension does mean the same thing as height and width when used in terms of "dimensional travel". The concept comes from the idea of hyper-dimensional spaces - like 4 dimensional, 5 dimensional, and so on. The theory is, if you have more than 3 dimensions, than an entirely different 3-dimensional universe could exist in parallel within a 4 dimensional space (the way that multiple 2-dimensional objects, like flat pieces of paper, can live in 3-dimensional space). That's also where the term "parallel worlds" or "parallel dimensions" comes from. Although the typical representations of the various planes/dimensions in DnD does not make this kind of relationship clear. (Actually the typical universe is at least 4-dimensions - time is included, but the same reasoning applies)

I'm going to do some dimensional travel now by driving to work. I guess the fact that I'm passing through parallel 2-dimensional universes doesn't impress anyone though.

 

[Impeesa]

Must be the decreased air resistance that causes someone to fall faster with a parachute. Two objects of different mass fall at the same rate because the force of gravity (ie. weight) is proportional to mass. I think the famous story for this was Galileo dropping two different sized objects off of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (note to self - add strange building to campaign world) and the objects hit the ground at the same time.

I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not. But just in case... yes, in real-world physics, ideally all things fall at the same rate because force is proportional to mass, and acceleration is proportional to force over mass (mass cancels out, becoming irrelevant). Real-world physics also has drag, though. The guy with the parachute has a much, much larger coefficient of drag than the apple, so he falls slower. Galileo's famous experiment involved two objects of approximately equal shape (one-pound and ten-pound weights, I think), so drag was about the same and they fell at the same rate. The joke was that under Aristotelian physics, which was being discussed above, objects of larger mass fall faster and no other factors are accounted for (thus the embarassing mistake of adding a parachute to your mass in a feeble attempt to slow your fall).

--Impeesa--

 

[Nifft]

My setting is called the Demon-Haunted Earth. The maps are geological surveys of Earth. The population centers are a bit different, due to... er, events... but most land masses are as we know them.

Barsoom is a bit different than Mars, and no-one's made it to Perlandria yet, but they will see that a bit different from Venus.

The Elemental Planes are a single 5d hypersphere (in 5d, no stable orbits exist, and fusion conditions in the core don't preclude a cool, walkable surface). Light attenuates rapidly.

Outsiders come from places with more than 3d, which is why they can teleport and are hard to damage. Adamantine is a 5d metal.

-- N

 

[VirgilCaine]

Light attenuates rapidly.

To make slender, fine, or small: The drought attenuated the river to a narrow channel.
To reduce in force, value, amount, or degree; weaken: Medicine attentuated the fever's effect.
To lessen the density of; rarefy.

Wow.

 

[Nifft]

Wow.

Is that a "wow" of comprehension?

-- N

 

[AuraSeer]

The Elemental Planes are a single 5d hypersphere (in 5d, no stable orbits exist, and fusion conditions in the core don't preclude a cool, walkable surface). Light attenuates rapidly.

Awesome! Let me guess, you've read Greg Egan's Diaspora? That's the only fiction I can think of that makes any attempt to explain a universe with more than 3 spatial dimensions. If not, I definitely recommend the book, and also Egan's website which has lots of cool simulations of high-dimensional geometry.

I really want to run a campaign in the novel's setting, but haven't had a chance yet-- I just read it a couple of weeks ago.

 

[gizmo33]

I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not.

Oh no, I was being serious but I seriously misread what you wrote, plus missed the joke, plus kinda miswrote what I intended. That's the short version. Sorry if it came off rude.