07-10-2018, 02:45 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
It owes a lot to the fact that I don't like space travel: unlike the stereotypical sci-fi writer I do have a sense of scale, and that means I realize that most of space is superfluous. If you don't actually use those bits in between then the difference between different planets in one universe and the same planet in different universes is academic.
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07-10-2018, 03:17 PM | #12 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
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07-10-2018, 03:25 PM | #13 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
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Also I may not be thinking of these alternate IWs as strictly as you are. Quote:
*The New Dinosaurs, Dougal Dixon, 1988. |
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07-10-2018, 04:04 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
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Locals get somewhat over their fear of the crash site -- maybe centuries later -- and explore the wreck. AI doctor wakes up ("Please state the nature of the medical emergency..."), realizes the situation, and attempts to lure the locals in for check-ups, de-worming, re-setting bad breaks, etc. Without a common language, the first couple of patients are deposited in the chrysalis more as sacrifices to appease the God of the Metal Cave. The doc does its medical thing, then plays "warmer-colder" with projected images and physiological reactions to see what they might want. What really gets the patients excited is images of their totem animal and especially human-totem chimeras.... |
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07-10-2018, 04:34 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
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And then there are the Quintaglios and the Dragon Lords. |
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07-10-2018, 06:19 PM | #16 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
It's not like realistic sapient "modern" dinosaurs would look recognizably dinosaurian to laymen. Compare us to the mammals wandering the cretaceous period.
Being a game, one could play with absurd levels of convergent evolution. Early mammals just happened to evolve into what we picture evolved dinos would look like. Under the surface, they have all the expected mammalian features.
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07-10-2018, 07:35 PM | #17 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
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Dimetrodon is a pre-mammalian, not a pre-reptile/pre-dinosaur, as distinctly identifiable by the number of holes in its skull, among other features. And really if we can get panagolins and armadillos, it's not too much of a stretch that other scaled/plated mammals could evolve given different conditions.
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07-10-2018, 09:09 PM | #18 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
I did say, "sapient". Developing human level intelligence would require too much evolutionary adjustment to lead to anything much like prehistoric dinosaur appearance.
But I certainly agree with everything else you wrote.
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07-11-2018, 06:12 AM | #19 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
9) Mirrorskies
In 1997 Earth discovers a naturally-occurred portal to another world. (Where exactly it would have to be to both have avoided detection for so long and be accessible-enough to make cross-world travel worth it I have no idea.) On that world are other portals to other worlds. There is apparently an entire multiverse linked by said portals, some uninhabited, so inhabited by TL 8 societies (with occasional hidden ones at lower or higher TLs) who treat the portals as just another natural choke-point in international relations. No existing society knows how to create, destroy, or manipulate the portals. No records exist of one forming, disappearing, or changing location. No other method of inter-world travel is known. Sort of like #1 in that Earth is the "new kid", but unlike that one everyone's about equal in terms of being able to shoot each other. It's definitely a different experience when you can't just conveyor yourself directly to the world you want to explore. (This is a setting I created for a game some friends and me played a while back. The portals are an excuse to have the unrealistic trope of disparate ecological/geographic regions next to each other without having to worry so much about "why?". I didn't mention the magic, slightly-divergent tech, or non-humans in the entry here to avoid coloring it for anyone, but the original setting was more Saturday Morning Cartoon kitchen sink.) |
07-11-2018, 06:42 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Alternate Versions of Inifinite Worlds
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As an aside, the thing I'm most concerned about with the idea of sapient dinosaurs is that the most likely group to develop sapience is also the one that was eliminating digits - they have a shortage of manipulators to work with. Parrots seem to have done the best with the body plan in that regard.
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog Last edited by Bruno; 07-11-2018 at 06:55 AM. |
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