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Old 07-05-2018, 11:20 AM   #11
JLV
 
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Default Re: Modular Cidri

Based on the description Chris quoted, I always assumed a single planet as well, with possible gate connections to places like Earth or whatever other world you wanted to explore.
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Old 07-05-2018, 11:51 AM   #12
Rick_Smith
 
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Default A really, really big Cidri. Big enough for all GM's campaigns to fit.

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Originally Posted by Chris Rice View Post
Actually, Cidri is described in the introduction to In the Labyrinth....

So clearly it is a single gigantic planet. Nevertheless, due to the existence of the Gates, there no reason that connections with other planets can't exist.
Hi Chris, everyone.
Yes, I read that, but as a single planet gets bigger, its gravity goes up, even if you use progressively less and less dense materials. You soon hit the point where it has to be some super science engineered device. Let us say that it is a hollow world. (Gravity on outside, free fall inside.) That could work, you could make a 'planet' arbitrarily large that way.

But then you need a super strong material, to support it. If people dig down 75 meters on Cidri, do they hit some sort of grey metal that nothing can go thru? Volcanoes are right out, right? No real geology, just stuff that mimic's geology, right? Huge world have to spin, really, really fast to make the sun go around every 24 hours right. But on a gigantic world that would reduce the force of gravity. OK, well, we can increase the mass of Cidri to make up for that, but then gravity changes as you move north and south, right? Maybe we don't have one sun, but two small ones, close in? No, that does not make sense, because you couldn't get seasons to work.

Anyway, I decided that in my campaign, Cidri was multiple worlds connected by huge gates, hundreds or thousands of km long.

It just seemed easier than working out the physics of an arbitrarily huge world.

Warm regards, Rick.
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Old 07-05-2018, 01:15 PM   #13
JLV
 
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Default Re: A really, really big Cidri. Big enough for all GM's campaigns to fit.

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Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
You soon hit the point where it has to be some super science engineered device.
One word: Mnoren.
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Old 07-05-2018, 01:19 PM   #14
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Default Re: A really, really big Cidri. Big enough for all GM's campaigns to fit.

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Originally Posted by Rick_Smith View Post
Hi Chris, everyone.
Yes, I read that, but as a single planet gets bigger, its gravity goes up, even if you use progressively less and less dense materials. You soon hit the point where it has to be some super science engineered device. Let us say that it is a hollow world. (Gravity on outside, free fall inside.) That could work, you could make a 'planet' arbitrarily large that way.

But then you need a super strong material, to support it. If people dig down 75 meters on Cidri, do they hit some sort of grey metal that nothing can go thru? Volcanoes are right out, right? No real geology, just stuff that mimic's geology, right? Huge world have to spin, really, really fast to make the sun go around every 24 hours right. But on a gigantic world that would reduce the force of gravity. OK, well, we can increase the mass of Cidri to make up for that, but then gravity changes as you move north and south, right? Maybe we don't have one sun, but two small ones, close in? No, that does not make sense, because you couldn't get seasons to work.

Anyway, I decided that in my campaign, Cidri was multiple worlds connected by huge gates, hundreds or thousands of km long.

It just seemed easier than working out the physics of an arbitrarily huge world.

Warm regards, Rick.
Ok... let's check for the gravity component. I'm going to spincalc

Plugging in my oversized...
diameter 23000 km
Rotations/second 1/86400 = 0.000011574074074074073
Tangential Velocity 27.876786663798313 m/s
Centripital Acceleration 0.0000337876188999532 m/s^2 = 0.0000034453782790201752 G

Lets take a much bigger sphere (remembering that it's going to make horizons much further, and thus empires larger)... with the hollow world assumption

diameter 100,000. km
Rotations/second 1/86400 = 0.000011574074074074073
Tangential Velocity 121.20342027738397
Centripital Acceleration 0.000014979905560957282 G

OK.... let's use spin calc to see what size we need for 0.1G at 1/86000 rpm...
That's about 667,560,950.9 km, and has a horizon distance for a 1.7m eyeline of 1,506.6 km. 100m signal towers have an eyeline to each other of 22,993.7 km (assuming a 99m eyeline). Yes, 22 Mm. 900 days march.
and that could be a shell some 5,500,000 km thick at SG 5.5. (lose a few dozens of km for a base layer of scrith...)

That's freaking huge. The empires see 22,000 km of flat terrain - a mountain fortress can see enemies coming months in advance, and can control as much as the wizards can shoot.

Becomes utterly alien once the surface sighting range much exceeds 10 km, as even on earth, a 100m tower commands a 52km view
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Old 07-05-2018, 02:34 PM   #15
Chris Rice
 
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Default Re: A really, really big Cidri. Big enough for all GM's campaigns to fit.

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Originally Posted by JLV View Post
One word: Mnoren.
What he said.
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Old 07-05-2018, 04:21 PM   #16
Jim Kane
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Default Re: Modular Cidri

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Originally Posted by Chris Rice View Post
Actually, Cidri is described in the introduction to In the Labyrinth.... So clearly it is a single gigantic planet. Nevertheless, due to the existence of the Gates, there no reason that connections with other planets can't exist.
Correct, but I think of it as "one *big* world" which is made up of many smaller worlds... sort of like how the human brain is *one* organ (big world), but has all those individual, yet connected, nodules across the surface... or how a bowl of spaghetti (one *big* world) is actually made up of all those individual, yet connected, strands.

So, whatever Cidri actually is, this is how I always viewed it; so I could, as a GM, justify any distinctly individual alternate-reality game-world - being part of the larger whole - which, also would allow *cross-overs* to occur; and yet, keep each *world* distinct and separate - accessible via Gate, of course.

And, to my mind, this is where the *polyglot* idea comes in. In computer programming, when a program is written as a polyglot (multiple language script performing the same function), is what allows the *cross-over* to occur between multiple modularities.

So, right or wrong, that's what works for me.


JK

Last edited by Jim Kane; 07-05-2018 at 04:33 PM. Reason: Typo
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Old 07-05-2018, 05:41 PM   #17
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: Modular Cidri

Based on the ITL description, Cidri has a minimum size of about twice earth's radius; that would give it a surface area of around 2 billion square km, half of which is land, mostly distributed among close to 50 continental land masses of averaging 20 million square km each. At least, that is a plausible match with the description. If such a planet had a density like the terrestrial planets, the surface gravity would be very close to 2 g's. If it were a full sphere with a density similar to granite (so, no core and not considering compression of rock at high pressure), the surface gravity would be about 1 g.
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Old 07-05-2018, 05:42 PM   #18
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Default Re: A really, really big Cidri. Big enough for all GM's campaigns to fit.

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Originally Posted by JLV View Post
One word: Mnoren.
One word:Eratosthenes

If one wanted to figure the size of Cidri, one would have to travel a significant distance to take the second measurement. Which could be an adventure/campaign all it's own.
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Old 07-05-2018, 06:53 PM   #19
Steve Jackson
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Default Re: Modular Cidri

I have intentionally never answered that question. Not even for myself - why close any doors? I enjoy reading the theories and the objections to the theories. I agree that the fact that some locations are accessible by Gate, but unreachable otherwise, is a clue.

I had never thought about a rosette of worlds connected by stepping di/////////// err, Gates. That might work! And it doesn't have to be ONE rosette, does it?

If the Mnoren could build a gigantic Thing, they could make adjustments in the atmosphere to limit viewing to whatever they thought reasonable, right?

Changing focus a bit: Experience suggests that MOST of you want background material to build into your own adventures, as much as you might enjoy adventures that happen to have good background.
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Old 07-05-2018, 07:36 PM   #20
JLV
 
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Default Re: A really, really big Cidri. Big enough for all GM's campaigns to fit.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomc View Post
One word:Eratosthenes

If one wanted to figure the size of Cidri, one would have to travel a significant distance to take the second measurement. Which could be an adventure/campaign all it's own.
While an interesting sidelight, that has nothing to do with "explaining how Cidri came to be." Which is what I was talking about. Maybe you meant to quote someone else?

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Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
Changing focus a bit: Experience suggests that MOST of you want background material to build into your own adventures, as much as you might enjoy adventures that happen to have good background.
I think that's precisely correct. And it doesn't have to be technical details on how to build a Dyson sphere or anything -- it merely needs to provide an impetus to our imaginations by offering ideas. To go back to an old-skool product that did something similar, the original Wilderlands stuff from Judges' Guild provided brief background on the areas of the Wilderlands, which was enough to launch us down various paths, and without going into punishing detail (especially if you exclude the individual hex write-ups and just focus on the "background" material). For example, there were a few paragraphs about Barbarian Altanis which gave you a feel for what the region was like and some of the outstanding features, but didn't go into exhaustive detail about every little thing. That's more or less what I personally am hoping for -- a springboard for our imaginations, not a crutch to hobble them with.

Last edited by JLV; 07-05-2018 at 07:46 PM.
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