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Old 07-03-2011, 10:24 PM   #41
IrishRover
 
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Default Map of Mars with water added...

This site: http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PLANETS.HTM
has a map of Mars with water and teraforming added, done as realisticly as the author could manage. It also has some other excellent worlds--some other earths for infinite worlds, Venus terraformed, and some very well thought out other worlds.
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Old 07-03-2011, 10:31 PM   #42
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Default Re: Mars 1917

I'd like to get his map without his names on it.
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Old 07-04-2011, 09:18 AM   #43
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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I'd like to get his map without his names on it.
Looking at it, it seems to me like you could just use the one I linked and consider everything coloured blue to be water.
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Old 07-04-2011, 10:02 AM   #44
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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I believe Mars was at opposition early in 1916 and 1918.
Oppositions were on 10-feb-1916 and 15-mar-1918. The German weird-science weapon ... doesn't feel satisfactory, somehow. Emulating the way the transportation happens in A Princess of Mars, where John Carter is overcome by smoke in an Native American medicine-woman's cave might be more satisfactory; this is science-fantasy and pretending it's science fiction feels to me like spoiling the tone. Having your troops take refuge in a museum with prehistoric artifacts, which is then set on fire by shelling could allow the emulation, while leaving open the possibility that it's all some kind of hallucination.
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Old 07-04-2011, 10:13 AM   #45
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Oppositions were on 10-feb-1916 and 15-mar-1918. The German weird-science weapon ... doesn't feel satisfactory, somehow. Emulating the way the transportation happens in A Princess of Mars, where John Carter is overcome by smoke in an Native American medicine-woman's cave might be more satisfactory; this is science-fantasy and pretending it's science fiction feels to me like spoiling the tone. Having your troops take refuge in a museum with prehistoric artifacts, which is then set on fire by shelling could allow the emulation, while leaving open the possibility that it's all some kind of hallucination.
Ulysees Paxton had no such paraphenalia involved, but then his case clearly happened when he was dying and thus his transportation was purely spiritual.

A stong circle or a faerie ring might seem more naturalistic than a museum.
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Old 07-04-2011, 01:45 PM   #46
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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Great idea for a campaign. I would suggest the latter map -- real Mars is an amazing landscape.
True...but not really well-suited to the planetary-romance version of Mars, IMHO. For this purpose I'd go with the Lowell/Schiaparelli map. If you want canals, for ex, drawing water southward on Real Mars means that you're sending it uphill in most directions. That implies some serious pumping technology and strains WSOD in a 'decaying Mars' setting.

In a decaying Mars setting, if you want the canals you probably also want the remaining civilization to be mostly in the old ocean beds, the land is lower and it would be easier to move the water that way, and air pressures would be higher, too, and it would likely be warmer. But if you insist on Real Mars, your ocean beds are either inconveniently far north or confined to isolated holes like Hellas.

I think the GURPS Mars setting had the right idea, though with the idea that ice gets melted by geothermal energy, since that would last far longer than most other forms of energy. You probably also want to assume somewhat more extensive water-ice caps at the poles, to provide more liquid (and partially address Wallace's devastating engineering analysis of the canal concept). I do wonder if you could have a stable 'core' of dry ice at each pole, with an extensive fringe and cap of water ice around it, that would give a nice bit of 'exotic' extreme environment in an otherwise near-Earthlike world.

Some other suggestions/thoughts:

I have a 'dying-Mars analogue' world in my own Orichalcum Universe, and I addressed the question of evaporation by plagiari- (ah, paying homage) to Tatooine in Star Wars (itself Golden Age Mars in disguise, of course). I have mechanical 'vaporator' machines lining the canal pathways and the fertile strips, using Old Tech to condense water out of the air and drop it back into the canal system. (I assume the ancients built canals instead of pipelines because they require less mainteance and provide water transport).

The ancients on my verison of Dying Mars left behind maintenance robots that work to maintain their constructions, they are harmless (usually) until messed with...

Mars' low mass/gravity means that atmosphere tends to bleed off and water photodisassociate. Your ancients may have left some kind of shield or screen in place above the atmosphere that prevents this, holding in the precious water. The machines generating it could be hidden (probably in many places) across Mars.

Now, your Engineers would want to maintain those, of course, in the long-term they're critical to Mars' survival. But! If they do break down, or get destroyed, or looted for parts...the effect won't matter on a daily-life level for centuries or millennia or more! So you've got conflicting interets, and it might be hard to convince someone to risk her/her life for the sake of something that won't matter for 10,000 years...
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Old 07-04-2011, 01:48 PM   #47
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Ulysees Paxton had no such paraphenalia involved, but then his case clearly happened when he was dying and thus his transportation was purely spiritual.

A stong circle or a faerie ring might seem more naturalistic than a museum.
Or alternatively, the ancient Martians might have visited Terra in their glory days, and left behind teleport stations that can still work when Earth and Mars are close enough and Conditions Are Right. Instead of a German weapons test, maybe the Germans are digging into a Martian site they've discovered somewhere, and the Australians are there as part of an attack by the Entente to stop whatever the Germans are doing.

Which means if they manage to teleport back, you have an excuse to drop them anywhere there might still be an underground machine working, literally anywhere on Earth...
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Old 07-04-2011, 02:24 PM   #48
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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Or alternatively, the ancient Martians might have visited Terra in their glory days, and left behind teleport stations that can still work when Earth and Mars are close enough and Conditions Are Right. Instead of a German weapons test, maybe the Germans are digging into a Martian site they've discovered somewhere, and the Australians are there as part of an attack by the Entente to stop whatever the Germans are doing.

Which means if they manage to teleport back, you have an excuse to drop them anywhere there might still be an underground machine working, literally anywhere on Earth...
How about a mining operation like the Messines Ridge ones? The mine and countermine break into the sealed facility and start fighting for control, at which point someone sets it off...
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Old 07-04-2011, 05:53 PM   #49
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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How about a mining operation like the Messines Ridge ones? The mine and countermine break into the sealed facility and start fighting for control, at which point someone sets it off...
Good idea. The Tunnelling Companies deserve more recognition for the contribution they made to the 1st AIF.
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Old 07-05-2011, 12:01 AM   #50
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Default Re: Mars 1917

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Good idea. The Tunnelling Companies deserve more recognition for the contribution they made to the 1st AIF.
Here's a suggestion based on the teleporation system idea.

If we assume that Venus is also 'Golden Age', i.e. hot, jungle-ocean, etc, then the teleporter gives you a plot hook. Suppose that Mars was once girded by a teleporation network, but it requires transmitters and receivers to work, you can't jump just anywhere, you have to jump from one station to another working station, and the machinery has to be working on each end. If you know how to use it, you can jump from any station to any station in range, though, and on a given world that's all of them. Assume the system works at the speed of light.

OK, suppose at their their height, the ancient Martians established jump stations on Earth and Venus, using robotic ships. Then they could jump from Mars to Earth and back when the planets were close enough, at much higher than usual energy cost. Mars and Venus never get close enough for a straight jump, but the Martians explorers could jump to Earth, wait for Earth and Venus to get close, and then jump from Earth to Venus, and back.

This means that Venus was also accessible from Mars, but only by using Earth as a relay station.

So under those conditions, the explorers would probably set up a base on Earth, one big base, and subsidiary jump stations to explore Earth with, and from their big Earth base they'd send further missions on to Venus, where they'd also have one big city/base and subsidiary jump stations.

This opens up future possibilities. If and when your party gets back to Earth, they might want to track down and find the ancient major base/city, it might be quite elaborate (maybe with lots of relic tech). This could happen during the interwar years, a cliffhangers adventure, complete with the requisite Great War veterans for PCs. And of course there's Venus awaiting on the other side of the jump network...

If very many of the Earthside jump sites still work, and your heroes can figure out how to work them, they can circle the world faster than the fastest airliner, too. But some of them may not be working now, and some may be guarded by something, and some may be malfunctioning...
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