Ramifications of a land world?

[trilobite]

I have been working on a desert world for my new campaign. I came up with a model kind of like the African plains. Once every couple of years you get some rain in the higher mountains. It basically flash floods down onto the plains for a brief period. You get alot of plant growth in the form of grasses right after this. The water is basically soaked up by the land and after a month or two your back to a dry scrub like plain again. In areas where there is no rain off you have desert badlands. Well water and natural springs are the big sources of water on the world. If there are any permentant standing surface water it would most likely have a very high salt content like the Dead Sea.

 

[Bagpuss]

I do like the idea of airships for transport as without extensive stretches of water it would probably be the best way to move heavy loads. But then super continents will lead to strong winds. Perhaps some airflows will be stable and trade routes would follow the wind patterns.

 

[trilobite]

I like the idea for a sail powered craft that travels over sand. It runs over the sand on long runners like hydrofoil. You would have to have some sort of dune sea for it to work or a level salt flat.

 

[alsih2o]

Seashells would be semiprecious, like torquoise.

And there would be less lighthouse "art"

 

[jgbrowning]

Costs for luxury items depending upon location would be much greater or have less supply as travel over land is much more time comsuming and expensive. You may want to think of alternate long-distance travel methods with comparable carrying capacities.

joe b.

 

[Aristotle]

Excellent information thus far. Trust me I'm writing this stuff down for further research. In the end I will make the world I want, but I would like a basic understanding of the science behind it all. Sure I won't be able to be 100% faithfull to the science, but at least I can give a certan appearance of complying to the laws of nature. (That, and sometimes the way things work can give you good ideas for plot devices and stuff.)

Anyway... I do like the idea of having several large rivers, and many smaller ones, that might provide a certain level of transportation and a balance for the ecosystem. Most of these would probably open into "small" inland seas, which would likely have populations built up around them as well. I also like the rainforest idea. I plan to have at least one, very large, area of rainforest.

I don't mind the concept of extreme weather beyond the concentrated points of water. I do want some areas of desert, tundra, scrub lands, and so forth. SO long as it is passably believable that there are "closer to normal" weather patterns and seasons closer to the concentrations of water that do exist.

I'm not sure where I want to go with the salt, but I really like the science behind it so I do want to explain it in some way. The inland seas could by extremely salty, salt water could be a common occurance deep below the surface... Just not sure yet.

Thanks for what you've given so far, and feel free to chime in! This is a huge help.

 

[Altalazar]

It's like Waterworld, only in reverse, and Kevin Costner isn't in it.

 

[tarchon]

If you want to use some verisimilitude, such a world would offer mostly hypercontinental climates.

Look at Mongolia for an example of what it can do. Temperatures that can reach -40°C in winter; but +50°C in summer. That can shift by +/-40°C between night and day. Where only lichen can thrive.
[/size]

Mongolians seem to get by OK, but it would be a very arid planet prone to temperature extremes, mostly steppe and desert. Most steppes and deserts have a lot more life going on than you might think though. Even parts of the Atacama where rain may only happen every couple years have life beyond lichens.

 

[Meeki]

Well the biggest thing to be effected.... IMHO.. would be the weather.. Since the hydroglogical cycle would not include larger oceans as a fuel source you have to assume that rain may me scarcer... unless you have a system where the groundwater is quickly recycled into the cycle.. ei the planet is very close to the sun thus making evaporation happen quickly. Another thing would be the temperature, the earth's oceans reflect alot of heat and effect the pressure systems of the earth. If you keep this new planet where earth is in the same typeof situation your temperature is going to be very low or very high, since the lack of evaporated water wont relfect heat back to earth. The earth's albedo will either be dramatically higher or dramatically lower than it is today depending on your preference. If you want plentiful amount of rain put it closer to the sun than the earth is and your world can be fairly wet.. or if you dont want that but still want a warm earth make the atmosphere contain alot of greenhouse gases to keep the earth warm. Look into articles on global warming, there are arguements for the earth cooling and heating up because of global warmring.

 

[Vrecknidj]

What that world would be like depends on lots of other things besides ratio of land to water. The size of the planet, the degree to which its interior is still warm, its distance to its sun, the size of that sun, the distance to other planets and the sizes of those planets, the distance to its moons and the sizes of those moons will all have an impact. That is, if you're worried about roughly-Newtonian physics.

Using the earth as our guidepost is only marginally useful. After all, of the potentially trillions of earth-sized planets in our own observable universe, we have very good data on one, and very poor data on the other 8 (or 7 or 9 depending on your take on planetoids).

But I'd say, since it's a fantasy world, do what you want and justify it however you'd like. With things like an Underdark and portals, you can justify just about anything you'd like in such a world (or any other).

Dave