[IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I still don't get the point. At best it can be replaced with a tiny bottle of multivitamins.
I suppose it might work as a treatment for someone with a malabsorption disorder or lacking in certain intestinal microbes.

Bottles can be lost, or worse found by the wrong people. The Anime-6 treatment, as long as it doesn't mess up your hair, is more covert. And in cultures like Classical Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient or Medieval India, where one can simply say, "my people do this to please our gods," even the weird hair isn't to much trouble.

[Astromancer]

Here's an odd valuable, it's hard to conceptualize though, an entirely new art form. It's easier to work this the other way, a world where an art form we take for granted is missing. Certainly introducing music into a world that knew nothing of it would be a wild thing.

On a less overwhelming level, you could simply encounter a new genre of an existing artform. A new type of fiction or a new means of displaying offering visual art. It would be much easier to get everyone to understand something like that.

[Astromancer]

A fine "treasure" would be a well informed "local" rescued by out timers and recruited. A well-read middle aged theatergoer from Queen Elizabeth's day would be a profound treasure to literary scholars. A scribe who knew Narmer, and had the low down on what was really going on, would open vast vistas of Egyptian history. The local informant, because they live within the culture, has information that no outsider, even if they witness the same events, can ever really have.

[Steve Jackson]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

an entirely new art form.

True. To take a recent example from our world, in which I have an interest - the "studio glass" movement uses technology hundreds of years old, but as a Thing To Do With Glass, it's only a few decades old. Prefigured by Lalique, sure . . . but if you took a Chihuly piece to an alternate where he'd never been born, people would gasp in amazement.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

True. To take a recent example from our world, in which I have an interest - the "studio glass" movement uses technology hundreds of years old, but as a Thing To Do With Glass, it's only a few decades old. Prefigured by Lalique, sure . . . but if you took a Chihuly piece to an alternate where he'd never been born, people would gasp in amazement.

Or horror. Some of those look more like Lovecraftian monstrosities than anything. Many art forms seem like they might require the right historical background to be appreciated at all, and I expect a lot of alien (or sufficiently divergent parallel) non-representational art (including music, one I've seen a lot of people make questionable assertions about in SF and the IW settings, it's *not* universal) would be similarly inaccessible to us.

Though anybody who actually works with glass or sculpture may be impressed by the technical features - I have no idea how some of those things stay up, let alone survive being transported between installations.

[Flyndaran]

I've read some assertions that music is strongly influenced by a species' metabolic rate and natural vocalizations, and not just hearing ranges.
https://www.wired.com/2009/09/monkeymusic/ It even has a snippet of a "fear song", and one of a "calming song".

Oddly, the calm song sounds not unpleasant, and kind of like background sounds to a friendly alien landing in a sci fi.

[Kax]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I've read some assertions that music is strongly influenced by a species' metabolic rate and natural vocalizations, and not just hearing ranges.
https://www.wired.com/2009/09/monkeymusic/ It even has a snippet of a "fear song", and one of a "calming song".

Oddly, the calm song sounds not unpleasant, and kind of like background sounds to a friendly alien landing in a sci fi.

Check out the music written and performed for cats, dogs, and dolphins. All weird to our ears.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Here's an odd valuable, it's hard to conceptualize though, an entirely new art form. It's easier to work this the other way, a world where an art form we take for granted is missing. Certainly introducing music into a world that knew nothing of it would be a wild thing.

On a less overwhelming level, you could simply encounter a new genre of an existing artform. A new type of fiction or a new means of displaying offering visual art. It would be much easier to get everyone to understand something like that.

Or an art form is older, or more developed. Imagine if early Greek theater had a strongly interactive element. Perhaps it splits, with small groups performing drama collaboratively, while theater as we know it grows popular with larger crowds.

Centuries later, someone brings in some mathematical shapes which roll well. Or maybe knucklebones are used to resolve small matters of story....

Give pen-and-paper roleplaying 20 times as much history, and who knows what you'd get!

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Kax

Check out the music written and performed for cats, dogs, and dolphins. All weird to our ears.

I doubt music for dogs is possible, because they vary so greatly in size, metabolic rates, and instinctive temperaments and sensory acuity/ranges.

[Kax]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I doubt music for dogs is possible, because they vary so greatly in size, metabolic rates, and instinctive temperaments and sensory acuity/ranges.

From a musician and a dog specialist:
https://www.rover.com/blog/what-kind...-dogs-like-in/