Is your world round? Do the PCs know it.

[Psion]

I'm more interested in game worlds than our history. I have studied history a fair bit and there are many places I could go to satisfy my curiosity there, so let's keep this on-topic, eh?

 

[Umbran]

It seems to me that if it WAS round, given the general utility and accesibility of magic, people would know the world was round. What do you think?

Short of a couple of the more powerful divinations (like Commune) magic really isn't going to help much. Magic, in fact, will probably get in the way of the discovery. Finding out the world was round was a feat of ingenuity of applying mathematics to the real world. With D&D-style magic, one would have to do that less often.

I'm one of those "don't designate it until you have to" type people. If the shape of the world isn't going to have an impact on the game, I don't worry about it.

 

[Alhazred]

The world of my campaign is round, roughly the size of Earth with a similar land-to-sea ratio. Since all adventures take place on a single continent (there are several continents, I just haven't bothered to flesh them out) the matter never comes up.

 

[Gez]

Well, the material world is round. However, its various ethereal layers aren't. They're infinite and totally non-Euclidian.

The educated knows that the material world is a sphere of finite dimensions. What they don't know is if there are other continents.

They know, though, that the moon is their world's twin planet, and that it has several continents -- they can be seen. Contrarily to ours, the moon rotates visibly so that if shows different faces. (It's possible to know what day you are in the month just by the combination of phase (more or less waned/waxed) and face (the geography displayed).)

And you know what? He was wrong, and they were right, and they were right to laugh at him, and it was only him getting lucky and discovering America that saved him from going down in history and as a fool.

And even then, he didn't discovered America, just a few islands. (Cuba, IIRC, but I wouldn't swear on it.) He didn't found either continent.

 

[diaglo]

I'm more interested in game worlds than our history. I have studied history a fair bit and there are many places I could go to satisfy my curiosity there, so let's keep this on-topic, eh?

do you want history of the game? or history of specific campaign settings?

i already answered what it is for my campaign.

 

[Bihor]

Mine is a cube. Each side is a elemental plane and the top is the combination of the for sides the make the material plane. And from bottom to top there's the etheral plane.

People know that the world is flat but nut many knows about the elemental planes.

And around the surface there is elemental nexus, where element come out to the material plane.

 

[Aristotle]

I've given some thought to odd shaped worlds but in the end decided to go with a round world for my homebrew. It doesn't come up that often in games, but it does seem to help players feel somewhat familiar with the setting (and I've screwed enough with the environment in the setting that they deserve something 'familiar').

So yeah... my world is round (the body of the first god actually). It also has no oceans. It is a "land planet". There are several large inland seas; a vast network of rivers; and huge expanses of geyser riddled earth, dreary marshland, and forbidding rainforest. It isn't an iceball or a desert world. It has climates and seasons, allbeit much harsher and much more extreme than those of our own world.

 

[Ferret]

Mines round. No one really cares, but some of the educated from an advanced race knows it.

 

[was]

Yes, it's round. Yes, they know it. Doesn't seem to matter much.

 

[Silveras]

Mine is, in Spelljammer terminology, a cluster of flatworlds.

What that means is that my world is made up of a set of separate flat "plates" of land, most surrounded by water. Some actually abut each other, and the seams between them can be traversed. Most, however, are separated from the others. Those are connected by violent magical vortexes called Stormgates.

Skilled sailors have a chance of navigating the Stormgates successfully, and those merchants who do so reap rich rewards for their risks. A cabal of arcanists jealously guards the most complete knowledge of the Stormgates, and hires out its members to merchants who wish to increase their odds of success in passing through the gates.

Failed passage of the Stormgates can destroy the vessel altogether, or hurl you out from a different gate, or into a different time.