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Thread: Greating an Enormous World

  1. #1

    Default Greating an Enormous World

    For my own fun and possible use I'm fiddling around with an idea for a tabletop RPG setting. One of the core concepts of this setting is that the world is so large that no one has ever even heard rumors of there having been seen an end to it. I do actually plan to make an actual round planet. I imagine it would need to be at least ten times as large as the earth if not larger but I was hoping those that find the idea interesting might be willing to join a discussion about it with me here. Help me do a better job of it.

    So far I thought I'd get some opinions and maybe look around a little bit so I can decide on a proper general size. Then maybe look just a little into enough of how to do things properly so that geography fans wouldn't cringe at the sight of it. Get the general size of continents, large bodies of water, and mountains for the entire planet. Then select a large reason to be the default activity area for the setting. Fill in more details for that area. Rivers, lakes, forests, plains, and that sort of thing.

    I'm hoping to learn if I'm on entirely the wrong track there. Are there more efficient ways to go about this? Hangups to avoid? Useful software? Any constructive input would be welcome.

    A little basic idea on the RPG setting for those interested in leaving comment. It's a medium to high fantasy setting that I am building for the GURPS system. Technologically it will be advanced to the point of muskets and such but I plan to have technology pretty much permanently stunted in most areas. Civilization will be confined to very large, walled city states surrounded by wilderness that simply will not be tamed. So likely travel distances in a life time will be limited. Even for large flying creatures territory of other powerful creatures and such would likely have an effect.

    So, any thoughts or comments?

  2. #2
    Guild Grand Master Azélor's Avatar
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    It is possible to have a larger planet but increasing the size will likely also increase the mass and the gravity. It is possible to mitigate this problem by lowering the density of the planet (example: more water, less crust) but I don't know all the impacts it would have. On another point of view, increasing the gravity makes would also slow down the travellers.

    It can't be 10 times larger without killing everyone except if there is a magical explanation.

  3. #3

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    Oh lovely. I managed to typo in the title. But that aside some things I plan to hand wave as the will of the gods and such. I want as much as possible to make sense but some things are going to be a bit flexible to keep the setting interesting and hopefully somewhat unique. I could simply say the world is such and such and only do a large flat region. I want to do a basic planet so that it will be a little easier to expand logically into other areas and make it possible for some truly epic adventurers to manage to travel all the way around it over the course of years, probably decades, or some such.

    I am hoping to set up for easy expansion on the surface of the world without it ending up disjointed out of proportion nonsense.

  4. #4

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    Making the planet's surface area 10 times that of earth, results in a volume of more than 30 times that of earth. Assuming it's density is unchanged, the mass would be increased by as much.

    As a solution I would recommend making it a hollow planet. That'll take care of the excess mass in addition to giving you even more lands to be explored.

  5. #5

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    The olde but goodie of the Dyson Sphere could be a way also of getting the size you want.

  6. #6
    Administrator Facebook Connected Diamond's Avatar
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    Silverberg's Majipoor is a classic example of this kind of world. Not only was it much less dense, but it was very scarce in metals. Could be an interesting challenge to either use organic materials to take the place of metal objects or come up with completely new technologies.

  7. #7

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    Hmm. I want to allow for metal to be fairly plentiful with the rarities similar to what we know. The surface and underground near the surface of the planet, no mater how large I make it in the end, will have similar gravity to our own. Whatever makes this possible is going to be far enough beneath the surface that they can't reach it. The up side to being the god and creator of this little fictional existence. There are some good points and suggestions but the hopefully interesting and unique factors of my setting will be elsewhere and I don't want to over complicate things for myself just yet.

    My focus and concern is making surface and near surface geography that makes some form of sense and doing it in as reasonable amount of time as possible.

  8. #8

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    I like that point of view Diamond.
    Roh - I think that Diamond's point could offer you a lot of originality to this concept.
    It would require you to think it through further but there's a lot you could do with that.
    Loads of cool and interesting organic tools and weaponry can be devised with some tweaks to certain plant life.
    And if you have magic in the mix, or some interesting chemistry or alchemy one could get plant matter to a nice hardened state useful for tools, machines, and weaponry.
    I think it's worth thinking about. And it would lend more credence to the overly large planet not having ridiculous gravity due to mass.

    And... there's loads of fun cool stuff that can be done with stone.

  9. #9
    Guild Expert rdanhenry's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roh View Post
    Civilization will be confined to very large, walled city states surrounded by wilderness that simply will not be tamed. So likely travel distances in a life time will be limited.
    So, if this were the case, why would the world need to be so huge in the first place? By limiting travel you've made the world "endless" without increasing the size.

    Large cities surrounded by untamed wilderness starve. Cities provide just about everything else, but the farmlands provide the food for the cities. You can magic this problem away, but if you're doing that, I wouldn't worry about little things like natural mountain layouts or planet densities. If the world is magical enough, it's kind of pointless to get fiddly with such things.

    Even trying to do such a world realistically, I wouldn't bother with much beyond the River Police. Water falls downward is basic enough to stick, but plate tectonics are right out. The most plausible set-up would be an artificial planet, with a hollow center surrounded by a superstrong artificial material sphere that can hold up under the weight of the planetary surface.

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