Steve Jackson Games Forums - New Reality Seeds

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Re: New Reality Seeds

Yeah. It's easy to survey a system and identify the people who, if they pitch an enormous screaming, spitting hissy-fit, will get their way today. It's very difficult for a layman to predict the long-term consequences of said hissy-fit in an unfamiliar system (and thus, perhaps, the reason said hissy-fit is not being pitched). "Who has a great deal of power but doesn't appear to be using it much at all" is always an interesting question that leads to more interesting questions.

Re: New Reality Seeds

Try this one...

This Q6 normal manna Myth Parallel is an annomolly is several ways. First, the geography and geophysics of Big Planet(named for the Jack Vance novel) are radically different from Homeline's Earth. The continents are shaped nothing like those of Homeline Earth and added to that the planet is far larger than Homeline Earth. Measurements made by Homeline scientists show the planet to have a circumpherence of around 125,000 statute miles, and thus an area twenty-five times as great as Homeline Earth. But the gravity is only 0.97G. However, the peoples of this world all resemble Homeline cultures and societies of the 200BCE-200CE period. The laguages, cultures, literature, religions, and many more traits seem identical, even with the presence of Magic and functional Wizards! The atmospheric pressure is 18psi at sea level, 20% more than Homeland Earth. Although human groups seem nearly unchanged when compared to Homeline Earth, the flora and fanna of this parallel includes large numbers of creatures that look like survivors form previous geological eras including most of the Pleistocene megafunna and some dinosaurs and Pterosaurs. Fully mythological creatures like dragons, unicorns, and griffins, haven't been seen, but are widely reported. Homeline can't tell if these creatures are present or their stories are simply much more popular than on Homeline Earth.

Amoung the strange chages that seem to have few if any cultural effects are the flying ships (I'm cribbing from Space 1889 here, look at the Martian War Kites and Mercant Kites) which are the main arteries of commerce and comunication. The keels of these ships are alchemical wonders.

Basically, sword and sorcery with real human cultures. Prehistoric beasts replace myhic beasts, but their roles are much the same. Homeline, Centrum, and the Cabal, are fairly neutral to each other on this parallel. There are interesting exotic trade goods here. This exotic world can distact agents from the threats that both of their other competitors present. Scemes to replace Homeline agents with doubles are most workable in this environment. Still, swagmen, particularly human trafickers, love this vast chaotic world. As almost all human groups on this world practise slavery it's very easy to legally buy slaves. Some of these slaves will find the conditions of servatude under the swagmen, brutal as it is, far better than anything else they've ever faced, and may not wish to be freed.

Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 2342068)

Measurements made by Homeline scientists show the planet to have a circumference of around 125,000 statute miles, and thus an area twenty-five times as great as Homeline Earth. But the gravity is only 0.97G.

It is also hollow. It has 25 times Homeline Earth's mass, with that volume and gravity, but 125 times its volume. With an average density of about 1.1 grams per cubic centimetre, it's not plausibly solid, even if it has earthquakes and volcanoes. There's a bigger mystery to investigate here, and Pratchett's Strata may hold the answer.

Re: New Reality Seeds

It would have to be. It should actually (barely) possible for it to be a realistic product of an advanced civilization. For example, a crust and mantle with a thickness of 3200 km and a density of 3.3 g/cm3 with a 28,800 km core with a density of 0.66 g/cm3 would probably work. It could represent a hot Neptune that was transformed into an artificial terrestrial planet.

Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl (Post 2342095)

Eh, if it's got flying ships and a host of giant flying animals, despite the surface gravity, then even without the magic it's likely gravity doesn't work the same way it does in our universe. Or maybe it is solid but the value of G is smaller (side effect: the year is probably longer too, though partly offset by the sun needing to be much more massive to sustain fusion.)

Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:

Originally Posted by johndallman (Post 2342085)

Pratchett? The answer is send me his books to read and reread. But no, I was inspired by Jack Vance among others. This is a Sword and Sorcery planet with a few Planetary Romance elements. Although this world violates our universe's physics it survives by being magical.

Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl (Post 2342095)

In this world that advanced civilization could be the jinn or fairies.

Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:

Originally Posted by malloyd (Post 2342099)

The flying ships are Alchemical (but I steal my flying ships from Space 1889) so physics aren't the issue. Further, all of the huge flying animals are based on real world models. The Pterasaurs may not be exactly like Earth's Pterasaurs, but they could easily survive on less magical world's. Similarly, the giant birds are based on real world birds which were as large as small airplanes.

Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:

Originally Posted by malloyd (Post 2341697)

The problem there is that the efforts to get one historically never came close. Germany proposed negotiations in 1916, and the allies treated it as a ruse. Both Wilson and the Pope tried to mediate, and as far as I can tell couldn't even get both sides to set forth their demands, let alone open negotiations on them. The war actually ended with a series of negotiated settlements, but the governments of Russia, Germany, and Austria Hungary had already fallen before they signed. The Ottomans took two years of further civil war to formally sign something, and promptly lost the civil war anyway. The Russians shortly repudiated their treaty after Germany lost in the West, and they probably always would have, it gave away too much to be tolerable as anything more than a ploy to gain some breathing room.

The first new German government *also* immediately resigned rather than sign on to Versailles, it and it provoked so much unhappiness in the Allies that it arguably contributed to the changes in government in Italy and Japan, never did pass the US Senate (partly out of failure to address the problem of Ireland, the de facto civil war in the UK at the time), denouncing it as too harsh became a customary part of British politics for two decades, and it came pretty close to causing a right wing uprising in France over the failure to annex the Rhineland (i.e. for not being harsh enough). The minimum you were going to need to satisfy the populace of the Allies simply wasn't going to be tolerable to any of the Central Powers, and there were ongoing or looming civil wars in so many of the parties there wasn't a lot of room to maneuver.

Yes, it would be near-impossible for there to be a negotiated peace to end WWI, once the fighting began.

Only if somehow Czarist Russia completely collapsed from basically the start. For instance, if a meteor hit St. Petersburg - i.e., the divergence point of Lucifer-5, only six years later.

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Johnston2 (Post 2341717)

Nixon-2: The earliest identifiable point of divergence for Nixon-2 is the murder of W. Mark Fell immediately after his first meeting with Woodward and Bernstein. This along with several other odd events seems to have enabled Richard Nixon to successfully serve out his second term in office (although Spiro Agnew still ends being removed and replaced with Gerald Ford). South Vietnam still exists with American support and has become another "Asian Tiger".

However as the years go by more and more famous people are people who never made a mark in Homeline's history. This low historical inertia made Nixon-2 particularly attractive to Homeline business interests since Nixon 2 is filled with creative media from a plethora of writers and filmmakers who never got a break in most of the near-parallels Homeline has discovered. However in the year 2001 Nixon-2 experienced a massive and highly improbable terrorist attack with simultaneous attacks from both Islamic attacks and a homegrown conspiracy which includes the assassination of President Sutherland that kills over a hundred thousand Americans. Worse, the next year the world experiences a massive pandemic that is widely believed to be a follow-up terrorist attack.

An attempt by a Homeworld firm to do well by doing good backfired massively when their attempt to sell an offworld treatment for the disease is interpreted as the conspiracy behind the pandemic showing itself. Their rapid withdrawl to avoid exposure has only fed the paranoia.

Even if the writer & filmmakers who got famous on Nixon-2 never did on Homeline, they still would have lived on both timelines. So there would be copyright claimants on Homeline for anything original to Nixon-2.

I don't know the exact extent of crosstime copyrights. If your crosstime father/aunt/grandparent discovered something, but is no longer alive on Homeline, do you get the rights to it? What if it's an uncle/cousin/grand-aunt who never lived on Homeline?

But Nixon-2 is so close to Homeline that it would seem that any discovery there would have a Homeline claimant.

Re: New Reality Seeds

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astromancer (Post 2342068)

Try this one...

This Q6 normal manna Myth Parallel is an anomaly is several ways. First, the geography and geophysics of Big Planet(named for the Jack Vance novel) are radically different from Homeline's Earth. The continents are shaped nothing like those of Homeline Earth and added to that the planet is far larger than Homeline Earth. Measurements made by Homeline scientists show the planet to have a circumference of around 125,000 statute miles, and thus an area twenty-five times as great as Homeline Earth. But the gravity is only 0.97G. However, the peoples of this world all resemble Homeline cultures and societies of the 200 BCE-200 CE period. The languages, cultures, literature, religions, and many more traits seem identical, even with the presence of Magic and functional Wizards! The atmospheric pressure is 18psi at sea level, 20% more than Homeland Earth. Although human groups seem nearly unchanged when compared to Homeline Earth, the flora and fanna of this parallel includes large numbers of creatures that look like survivors form previous geological eras including most of the Pleistocene megafunna and some dinosaurs and Pterosaurs. Fully mythological creatures like dragons, unicorns, and griffins, haven't been seen, but are widely reported. Homeline can't tell if these creatures are present or their stories are simply much more popular than on Homeline Earth.

This world is about mystery, adventure, and exploration. This world has twenty-five times the surface area of Homeline Earth and a population of around 150 million to 200 million people. Cities are either isolated and small looking like pictures of Italian Hill Towns built for natural defensive advantage. Or they are vast marts of trade like Rome, Antioch, or Alexandria. But most of this world is a vast emptiness filled with mystery.