Brainstorming: Incorporate Dark Matter in a campaign

[Anders]

So I learned on Twitter that they've found a galaxy made up almost entirely of dark matter. That made me think about dark matter and how to incorporate it into a gaming world. Presumably IN SPACE, although I could easily see it in a horror campaign as well.

So what would you do with Dark Matter in a campaign setting? I'm thinking of having it as a kind of "dimensional shadow" of a parallel universe. We can see the gravity here, but no other forms of radiation. And somewhere there is a portal... and something wants to open it.

[Anthony]

Realistic dark matter seems to be almost totally uninteresting (it's basically a diffuse cloud of stuff that doesn't interact with much, including itself) except as it indicates we're missing something in our physics (it can't be made up of any of the particles in the standard model).

Cinematic dark matter could include stuff like alternate universes that only interact through gravity.

[Flyndaran]

Dark Matter not interacting with itself, outside of gravity, just means multiple shadow universes. ;)

And I'm suddenly reminded of The Large Hadron Rap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

[Dalillama]

The Schlock Mercenary comic features dark matter entities that want to destroy our kind of life because we won't stop travelling in hyperspace.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Anders

So I learned on Twitter that they've found a galaxy made up almost entirely of dark matter. That made me think about dark matter and how to incorporate it into a gaming world. Presumably IN SPACE, although I could easily see it in a horror campaign as well.

So what would you do with Dark Matter in a campaign setting? I'm thinking of having it as a kind of "dimensional shadow" of a parallel universe. We can see the gravity here, but no other forms of radiation. And somewhere there is a portal... and something wants to open it.

I use it as a buzzword to justify pseudo-reactionless drive.

[mukibear]

the Xeelee books by Stephen Baxter have the 'photino birds' as ultimate bad guys

Photino birds are a super-symmetric species of dark matter entities that inhabit the gravity wells of stars, with multi-billion year life span and the ability to travel faster than the speed of light. It is theorized that they began their civilization shortly after the birth of the universe and the beginning of stellar evolution. Being dependent upon stars for their breeding grounds, when the first stars of the universe began showing instabilities such as supernovae, they set out to correct these instabilities by accelerating stellar evolution throughout the universe. The end result would be a stable universe dotted with white dwarfs. This makes life impossible for most planet-bound life forms.

[Lord Azagthoth]

This tread just gave me an idea to use in my own campaign.

In Star Wars it is never justified why spaceships fly as if there is an atmosphere. The galaxy looks the same after 30.000 years. Hyperspace travel is only possible within the boundaries of its own galaxy. The Force...

Maybe its al related to a high concentration of Dark Matter.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Realistic dark matter seems to be almost totally uninteresting (it's basically a diffuse cloud of stuff that doesn't interact with much, including itself).

Can you even say that much? After all on the scale we can see it's effects we model stars as more or less a diffuse cloud, and yet matter does some interesting stuff at smaller scales.

What you can say about dark matter is quite limited - it produces a lot of gravitational attraction, it's apparent mass is distributed differently than the stars, and anything else it does is currently invisible to us. Anything beyond that is guesswork.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Lord Azagthoth

Hyperspace travel is only possible within the boundaries of its own galaxy.

Not entirely true, given that there is some hyperspace travel to the satellite galaxies (such as the Rishi Maze, the small spiral satellite galaxy seen at the end of Empire and mentioned in Clones). But you're right that there's no real linking with other large nearby galaxies....

I wonder... can we use Dark Matter to explain why a black hole cluster in the Outer Rim (the Maw, which the Kessel Run runs around) doesn't collapse in on itself?

[Johan Larson]

Dark matter only interacts with regular matter through gravity, right?

So, in a sci-fi setting with system-wide space travel, authorities detect a gravitational anomaly. A dark matter cluster of planetary size is moving through the system and is on track to pass close enough to an inhabited planet to affect its orbit and hence its climate.

World leaders launch an crash program to create a gravitational deflector. The plan is to move a very large asteroid close enough to the dark-matter cluster enough to bend its path away from the inhabited world.