Is your world round? Do the PCs know it.

[Woas]

Well, when you give up an odd shape to a world, it's interesting to look at possible consequences. Things like the long night on the Outside proposed by d4, or gravity variations, can be interesting.

Yeah, there are a lot of crazy stuff to take into account when working with a non-normal world. Like how water flows. Or seasons. But this can be part of the fun too and can make some really fantastical worlds.

Alright, back on topic.

 

[orsal]

You might want to double check that. Last time I checked, it was far more useful to consider that thge planet was going around the sun.

That's correct if you're using a frame of reference in which the sun is fixed. But you yourself provide the best counterargument to that a few lines down, when you say

The populace of the planet will use coordinates because they are useful not because they are spiffy geometry. Sailors and farmers and armies care about the rising and setting of the sun, and the seasons. Higher mathematics aren't their forte.

There is a reason why, for most of human history in (to the best of my knowledge) every society the standard worldview has been geocentric: the frame of reference in which the earth is fixed is the one that describes our experience.

The reasons the heliocentric worldview was eventually adopted are all scientific. It allows a simpler description of the motions of other heavenly bodies; it allows an explanation for the observed motion of the planets (Kepler's Laws, as derived from Newton's law of gravitation); it allows for the application of the law of inertia at an astronomical level (the geocentric worldview does not, since the frame of reference in which the earth is fixed is not an inertial frame).

But none of these have anything to do with the establishment of the cardinal directions as the standard co-ordinate axes, a convention which every culture independently managed long before anybody understood Kepler's Laws or inertial frames of reference. The cardinal directions are recognized as a convenient standard because they are rooted in a regular phenomenon observable on a daily basis. In the geocentric worldview, that phenomenon is the daily motion of the sun through the sky; in the heliocentric worldview, the rotation of the earth on its axis.

Notice that you yourself referred to "the rising and setting of the sun". In other words, you use the geocentric worldview even today, when you're talking about everyday phenomena. So do I. I'll switch to the scientific worldview when I want to discuss scientific ideas, but when I want to discuss the origins of a particular co-ordinate system for our geography, I'll use the language of the naive worldview.

As a side note, the earth's movement around the sun is irrelevant to the current discussion -- it explains seasonal change, not daily change.

If your torus spins, the residents would be likely to think similarly

But is there any reason my torus should spin? Also, if it did spin, why would the residents think of it spinning? For most of human history people did not think of this planet spinning, they thought about the astronomical phenomena which result from that spin.

To my way of thinking, the cardinal directions of a world should not be set up in a way that is mathematically nifty just for the sake of niftiness. The populace of the planet will use coordinates because they are useful not because they are spiffy geometry. Sailors and farmers and armies care about the rising and setting of the sun, and the seasons. Higher mathematics aren't their forte.

I agree completely, and part of developing the idea for a torus-world is figuring out what phenomena would yield a natural co-ordinate system. I'm thinking of the sun going around the world in a constant east-to-west direction, but equally above every "latitude line". Note that if north and south are relative directions, then latitude lines are as arbitrary as longitude lines.

One way to visualize this: the world is the *inside* of a donut, and the sun moves through the dough, circumnavigating the hole. Technically speaking there is no donut hole, that's a notion that comes from trying to embed the torus in Euclidean 3-space, and the inhabitants of torusworld wouldn't do that. But if you like to picture your toruses as donuts, this will work. The motion of the sun establishes east and west, and the perpendicular axis is north-south. Maybe I could have a moon that moves north to south.

If you really are wedded to the idea of a fixed sun, you may prefer to think of the donut rotating around the hole, which would have the same effect. I prefer to let the world be fixed and move the heavenly bodies. There's a mythic quality to much of D&D. The gods, much like gods humans have posited to explain the inexplicable, are very real and their magic tangible, their answers to petitioners' prayers unmistakeable. Many monsters that have existed in legends of various cultures on earth are real in D&D. In keeping with that, why not make the naive worldview the literally correct one? Regardless of the shape of the world, I'd always be inclined to have the sun move across the sky as guided by the appropriate god, because I think that fits the flavour of D&D as I see it better than trying to incorporate Copernican astronomy.

 

[RFisher]

The world is flat, but I suspect the player's don't know that. They may think its round. It hasn't come up.

Although, in truth, it may be both round & flat.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The world is round, and everone knows it's round. Even the church has given up on convincing people otherwise. Then again my game world is reformation era not medieval. The New World has been discovered.

The Auld Grump

 

[Ferret]

I was thinking if the Torus spun, and the sun went around the 'circle' form a side cross section, it would leave a nice spiral mark, and if done right it would give a strange light-dark zones.

Or if it passed over the top of the torus (and then under) and the torus spun on the void....

 

[ivocaliban]

I suppose the answer for me is "It's not really an issue." It might be a matter of some debate to scholars, sages, and philosophers, but considering global travel isn't a reality in the time period in which I play (it's far before an "Age of Exploration") it's simply a moot point. Technically speaking, of course, I do play in Greyhawk so there's your answer. I would say most commoners and layfolk would suspect the world is flat, while only a few of the wisest wizards and clerics would know with any certainty that the world was round.

 

[Aesmael]

Well, one obvious way to work with it is to make it a ringworld. Put the sun at the center of the torus. You now have a dayside and a nightside to work with - no need for underdark, when the "outside" of the torus is in perpetual darkness. You can get soem interesting seasonal light and dark by having the sun oscillate up and down along the axis of symmetry.

Or put another sun on the outside of the ring, perhaps again giving you regions that are light only every few years, depending on if you want to go for the astronomical or the evocative. Or both. The colour red lends itself well to the feel of a dark outer world and colour contrasts can be fun.

The current cosmology I am working with is shaped like a two dimensional sheet with a crack running through the middle, broadly speaking. A vast but finite mesh of planes.
The actual world the pcs start on, I have not decided if it is round or flat, yet. But the ocean does have a surface, and no, they don't know that yet.

This thread has been very interesting (and Umbran is teh cool!), especially the torus talk. I once (and will again) worked on a setting based on 'weird' geometry. The only part I had set out was a wraparound world facing another. I suppose that could be represented as a torus within a torus.