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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 3488997" data-attributes="member: 2205">Apropos of nothing; since I'm several days behind in reading this thread and don't even intend to catch up--worldbuilding can often lead to unanticipated plot points.  Here's an example from my own campaign:The thing in question started as merely an aesthetic.  There was a book I got from my local public library when I was a kid about space--on each page, the left hand side had a bit of white space at the top and a title, then a block of text; the right hand side was a color plate painted by the artist of the book.  It was really a fabulous book that I'd love to find if I could remember the title or author either one.  In any case, there was one picture near the end that showed a peaceful little idyllic landscape at night--little huts off in the distance nestled under some gentle hills with lights in their windows.  The landscape itself was the less than the bottom 1/4 of the picture.  The sky filled the rest, and it was a blue night sky with the gigantic whirlpool of a spiral galaxy filling the picture.  The premise was that this was some star just outside the Milky Way galaxy and you could see it at night filling the sky.  Brilliant, I thought!  So I wanted a similar set-up.Because my setting isn't strictly fantasy but more of a Weird Tale; i.e. undifferentiated between fantasy, horror and science fiction elements, I actually wanted the astronomy to be reasonably correct.  My first thought was to set the setting on a planet somewhere in the Large Magellanic Cloud--but I decided that I'm not 100% sure that I'd actually get the view I want from there.  I'm also not 100% that the Milky Way has the look I want after all; more recent studies than that which informed the painting in the book have the Milky Way as a barred spiral galaxy with a starburst ring just beyond the bar.  I googled up some Hubble telescope images of similar galaxies and wasn't 100% satisfied.  See where I'm going so far?  Pretty nerdy worldbuilding stuff so far; no doubt quite beyond the pale of where the OP advises me to spend my time.  In any case; moving on--while googling up those images, I decided I wanted to rotate my computer wallpapers out with pictures of galaxies, and several immediately caught my eye as beautiful, and exactly what I wanted.  M64--"the Black Eye" galaxy for instance, or NGC 4414 or NGC 3370.  So I decided to not worry about making this the Milky Way and just set it somewhere else.  "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away".  How long ago, and how far away?  Well that depends on what galaxy I pick.  If I pick M64, that's something like 12 light years away, so that's how far.  It's also how long--12 million years.  I want the galaxy to look like it does now so if I ever decide to whip up some artwork I can just Photoshop the Hubble image in.How does all this drive story?  Well, my original intention was to combine this idea with Noah's Ark--humanity had fled Earth during the Flood and arrived in the LMC.  They had not escaped God's notice, though--and since they were not Noah or his family, they shouldn't have been immune from the effects of the Flood.  So God sent a comet or two winging towards their planet to destroy it's ecosystem and make it uninhabitable.  The local gods rose up to protect the planet, but since they were individually much weaker, they could only blunt the effects.  Some water vapor remained on the planet, mostly in underground aquifers, and the atmosphere wasn't blown away after all.  The planet became a harsh, cold desert, but not completely uninhabitable.  This explains the local cultures' religions which demonize the giant galaxy in the sky and fear it, among other things.However, that wouldn't work if I now was putting it somewhere else and setting it much earlier.  However another astronomical problem presented itself to me--for other reasons, I want the star that the world circles to be an old, faint and weak one; an ancient orange dwarf.  These types of stars are the kind that might be found on the fringes of a galaxy--in the halo or in the ancient globular clusters, for example, and they are somewhat like 12-14 billion years old; nearly as old as the Universe itself.  However, they formed so long ago that litle stellar processing of the raw hydrogen that made up the primeval universe had yet happened.  The concept of their being enough heavy elements and dust to form terrestrial planets is unlikely.So now, I've got a bit of a problem that my "nerdy" obsession with world-building and making it astronomically plausible have concocted are suggesting all kinds of really cool ideas to me.  <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What's this star doing out here in the middle of intergalactic space in the first place?  Not so hard; I can posit a galactic collision or near miss, or some other gravitational slingshotting effect, and I certainly have enough time since the formation of the star to reasonably make it far enough away from the galaxy that it's now visible in it's entirety in the night sky.  Especially if this was originally a halo star in the first place. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If it's so implausable for there to be terrestrial planets around a star like this, what's one doing here?  It's artificial.  It was placed here by some other agent. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Who the heck would do that and why?  Who else?  Gray aliens.  As for why; some of the reasoning is their own inscrutiable motives, but I do like the concept of a Noah's Ark of sorts--humans have been originally placed here to protect them from some cataclysm. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If this is "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" how do you have humans that are genetically identical (albeit of completely alien ethnic groups) to humans on earth?  Again with the gray aliens.  The idea that we aren't the product of local evolution after all but instead of the tampering of some extraterrestrial entity is a compelling idea and one that's been floating around in my head as a great conspiracy theory type plot point ever since I heard of Van Danniken's Chariots of the Gods in the first place. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What is the nature of this cataclysm their escaping and what does that have to do with anything?  The cataclysm was not merely a natural disaster of some kind; it was a malicious entity who wanted to destroy humanity.  And despite the hiding of a remnant of humanity far from the galaxy in a place where it's much harder to find than the proverbial needle in a haystack, this malicious entity has somehow found them again.</li> </ul>So there we go--a high level, campaign finishing plot point has occured to me that wouldn't have if I didn't take the time to engage in some seemingly pointless worldbuilding.  From having a campaign without any defined goals or overarching purpose in mind, I'm now angling towards preparing my PCs to essentially deal with my own version of Galactus at high level when the campaign is ready for it's ultimate climax and end.</blockquote>

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