D&D General Setting Idea: Arcane Dyson Sphere

[Zardnaar]

It's a globe apparently according to GRR Martin. The title sequence is just to look cool. TV show also has comets.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's a globe apparently according to GRR Martin. The title sequence is just to look cool. TV show also has comets.

It could still be a globe, and have the people living on the inside (or both inside and outside). There are alternative ways to explain comets. "A ball of ice falling through space" is only a modern one (and wouldn't explain why the one in GoT is red).

I believe the hollow sphere globe does actually appear in background shots in the Magister's hall as well as in the credit sequence.

But GRRM's world does understand the difference between what is true, and what people believe, and takes a "neither confirm nor deny" approach.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Nah it was just what the title creator did to make it look cool, GRRM has specific called it as an alternative earth

"In the beginning, it was very simple, nothing animating and everything very flat. One of the things we realized early on was that you couldn’t really tilt the camera up very far because it raised the question, what’s beyond the map? (…) The fact that I wanted to be able to move the camera anywhere led us to the fact that this whole world had to exist on the inside of a sphere, which took us a while to figure out. (…) If you have a whole world inside a sphere, what would be in the middle of that sphere? The sun! Or whatever the light source of this world is."

GRRM
"This may be a silly question, but: When you think of the world you’ve created, where seasons last for years, where is it? It is another planet?

It’s what Tolkien wrote was “the secondary world.” It’s not another planet. It’s Earth. But it’s not our Earth. If you wanted to do a science fiction approach, you could call it an alternate world, but that sounds too science fictional. Tolkien really pioneered that with Middle Earth. He put in some vague things about tying it to our past, but that doesn’t really hold up. I have people constantly writing me with science fiction theories about the seasons — “It’s a double star system with a black dwarf and that would explain–” It’s fantasy, man, it’s magic."

"3) Is your world round. I mean if Dany traveled far enough east couldnt she come to the other side of westeros?

Yes, the world is round. Might be a little larger than ours, though. I was thinking more like Vance's Big Planet.... but don't hold me to that."

 

[gyor]

The civilizations exist within the Dyon Sphere, and originally the internal surface where the Greys, Nordics, and Reptilians dwelled to study the test subjects was disguised as a night sky.

This allows you to add say worlds as you want to the setting. I've started off with one. Themes are magical experimentation, occult alien abductions, and alternate history.

 

[gyor]

But how would you have night time inside a hollow sphere?

In this setting people leave on planets and moons within the Dyson Sphere. It's not a Hollow Earth setting, a Dyson Sphere is the size of a solar system in this case with hundreds of inhabited planets and moons inside.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

How is that different to the standard spelljammer crystal sphere?

 

[Derren]

In this setting people leave on planets and moons within the Dyson Sphere. It's not a Hollow Earth setting, a Dyson Sphere is the size of a solar system in this case with hundreds of inhabited planets and moons inside.

So when you have normal planets, why all this backstory with the dyson sphere?

 

[Umbran]

Living inside a hollow sphere isn't a new idea in fantasy. Nehwon (Fritz Leiber) is this kind of world, as is the world of Game of Thrones.

I think you are incorrect on both counts. Where, for example, did you find that Nehwon is such a world?

 

[Umbran]

The idea is an alliance of multiverse traveling alien races, with extremely advanced technology discovers for first time that in some universes magic exists big time.

So they build a magical Dyson Sphere around a young sleeping Sun Titan to study magic isolated from the rest of the multiverse. Its basically a giant magical lab.

Wait a minute. They have magic enough to build a "magical Dyson sphere"... a magical structure that engulfs an entire star, but need to study magic?

This idea hangs together much better if the Sphere itself is not magical at all. Tech aliens may need to study magic. Magic aliens, not so much.

Also, if you haven't, go read Larry Niven's novel Ringworld. It doesn't bother with an entire sphere, but uses a ring, which is plenty big enough. The point of a Dyson sphere is to catch all the radiation output of a star for your civilization to use. If you're not doing that, the entire sphere simply isn't necessary.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think you are incorrect on both counts. Where, for example, did you find that Nehwon is such a world?

In one of the stories (I think it might have been "Trapped in the Sea of Stars") Fafhrd and the Mouser go on a long sea voyage to the other side of the world, where they realise that the "stars" are the lights of cities on the other side of the sphere, and waterspouts they encounter actually support planets an other heavenly bodies.