World building poll
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Agent
Member # 4574
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written Friday, December 28 2007 09:41
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May I just say, some of the options are so close it might require a second, more brief poll between the closest (say) three. Not to mention that in a months time people could change their minds. And in regards to Ominketh-whatever-it-is Blade, in my experience it's either high magic, high tech, or some sort of balance between the two. -------------------- "I'm happy I'm the mentally disturbed person I am." -Nioca "Yes, Iffy is a demon." -Iffy The Two Universal Truthes: "All I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates "I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes Posts: 1186 | Registered: Friday, June 18 2004 07:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 12668
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written Friday, December 28 2007 15:17
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The world should be banana shaped. =) -------------------- Don't mess with Texas. Posts: 22 | Registered: Tuesday, December 18 2007 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 9906
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written Friday, December 28 2007 15:30
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quote:Yes I know, thats why I'm going for something different, unstereotypical. Posts: 301 | Registered: Tuesday, August 21 2007 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 4574
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written Friday, December 28 2007 15:35
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quote:What I'm saying is that they don't mix. Not that they haven't been mixed before. At a certain point, high technology might as well be high magic. You either fly because your enchanted, or because you have a jetpack, catch my drift? -------------------- "I'm happy I'm the mentally disturbed person I am." -Nioca "Yes, Iffy is a demon." -Iffy The Two Universal Truthes: "All I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates "I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes Posts: 1186 | Registered: Friday, June 18 2004 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 9906
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written Friday, December 28 2007 15:38
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Ah, you saying that you get the same results with two different ways, well even still, it would be awesome to have a magical spaceship battle Posts: 301 | Registered: Tuesday, August 21 2007 07:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 12668
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written Friday, December 28 2007 18:44
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The world could also be shaped like a ring. -------------------- Don't mess with Texas. Posts: 22 | Registered: Tuesday, December 18 2007 08:00 |
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Agent
Member # 4574
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written Friday, December 28 2007 18:46
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quote:Yeah, a torus disc-world. That's been discussed. And son, don't try to make this Halo, if that's what you're thinking by ring. -------------------- "I'm happy I'm the mentally disturbed person I am." -Nioca "Yes, Iffy is a demon." -Iffy The Two Universal Truthes: "All I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates "I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes Posts: 1186 | Registered: Friday, June 18 2004 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, December 28 2007 21:20
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A torus is a donut, not a ring, and ringworlds predate Halo by a lot. —Alorael, who will also add that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic and that high enough magic should resemble a sci-fi future. On the other hand, moderate magic and industrial-age technology is rather uncommon outside of Arcanum. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Tuesday, January 1 2008 05:02
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quote:Taken into consideration. As for ringworlds, the mobius strip is close enough so why not just vote for it? -------------------- Life is a neverending carneval where everyone has multiple costumes. I just hope mine are pleasing to the eye. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Agent
Member # 8030
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written Tuesday, January 1 2008 10:14
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The world should be Alpha Centauri. The mind worms and xenofungus serve as a nature side of the conflict. Technology can vary, but creating so that humans were native is also an option. -------------------- I dub thee... Posts: 1384 | Registered: Tuesday, February 6 2007 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Tuesday, January 1 2008 12:12
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Alpha Centauri is a star, not a planet. Besides, Chiron is more euphonious, although I'm sure everyone would eventually get lazy and just start calling it Planet. —Alorael, who suggests a world that is a Klein bottle. A Klein bottle made out of tiny interlocked Mobius strips. The Mobius strips should probably be made of even smaller interlocked Penrose triangles. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Tuesday, January 1 2008 22:54
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I tried imagining the world Alo described. My mind is still trying to untie itself from the mental knot it caused in my brain. About other manners, I'm wondering how big our world will be if we aim for the mobius strip. If we go roughly along the same measurements than Niven did, our world would become HUGE. -------------------- Life is a neverending carneval where everyone has multiple costumes. I just hope mine are pleasing to the eye. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, January 2 2008 08:38
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Is the Möbius strip intended to be a solid object with that shape, which people could for instance tunnel through? In that case, the tunnels would basically just be wormholes, since they would provide a shortcut to a place that you could also walk to on the surface. Or is the Möbius strip the shape of space itself? In the latter case, it's only anything interesting if you identify the two sides of the strip. In other words, the world is flat, but periodic in the x direction (say), such that the points (L,y,z) and (0,-y,z) are identified. This is a topological question, though, or at least I think it is, and there is nothing special about the plane x = L. Then, I think that circumnavigating the world should convert you into your mirror image. And here is a ghastly puzzle: at which point in that continuous process would you change from being left-handed to right handed? Gah. I have an idea what the answer is, and I don't like it. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Post Navel Trauma ^_^
Member # 67
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written Wednesday, January 2 2008 08:54
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quote:You wouldn't. You'd stay left-handed, and when you got back all the writing would look back-to-front. If the world was small enough that getting round it was easy, then seeing something looking mirror-inverted would probably be psychologically similar to seeing something from behind - nothing about it has changed, and if you want to see it properly then move yourself or it. On the other hand, if the world was large enough that history largely happened without people going all the way round, then you'd probably end up with something like timezones - locally everything is fine and nobody notices, but at some point there's an awkward and arbitrary orientation line (probably determined by the way the dominant writing system spread). [ Wednesday, January 02, 2008 08:56: Message edited by: Khoth ] -------------------- Barcoorah: I even did it to a big dorset ram. New Mac BoE Posts: 1798 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, January 3 2008 05:19
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I agree that I would still feel myself to be right-handed after walking around the world, but would be perplexed at how everything else had inverted. But what disturbs me a bit is the following realization. All my right-handed friends would have mysteriously turned into lefties while I was away; but my mysteriously inverted friends would all be insisting that I, and not they, had changed. I would retain my normal sense of right and left, I would know which hand I wrote with and which I didn't, and I would know I hadn't changed. And they would have exactly the same knowledge, that they hadn't changed. How can this paradox be resolved? In a sense it simply can't. That's just how things are in a non-orientable world. There is no absolute chirality. And you have to re-think the concept of 'change', in a subtle way that probably no-one would have imagined without this kind of example. As a further amusement along these lines: years ago I stumbled upon the following fun realization of a Klein bottle. Consider a circle of unit radius. Then consider the two dimensional space of pairs of points on the circle, labelled by separation distance and midpoint, as measured around the circle. So this 2-space is double periodic: pairs of the same separation, and midpoints 2 Pi apart, are the same. But any pair of separation 2 Pi is the same as the pair of separation 0, with midpoint half-way around the circle. So this 2-space of point pairs is a cylinder of unit radius and height 2 Pi, whose upper and lower bounding circles are identified, with an inversion. I believe this is a Klein bottle. A similar situation occurs if you consider the 3-space of circles on a sphere. This is like a spherical shell whose inner and outer surfaces are identified inversely. I'm not sure what name this space has, though. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Saturday, January 5 2008 06:53
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I was thinking about Möbius strip as a physical shape, but what you've been thinking about is interesting as well. I'm not sure I fully grasped the idea, though. On other matters, here's what I've been thinking what we should do first after I get the background done: decide what other civilized beings besides humans inhabit the world. I think we ought to do that by polling as well; all who are willing can present creatures they've come up with, and then we'll choose five or six most interesting by voting. What do you think? -------------------- Life is a neverending carneval where everyone has multiple costumes. I just hope mine are pleasing to the eye. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Tuesday, January 8 2008 10:32
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To newbies: every time you double-post, a cute puppy dies somewhere. So don't do it unless you're an amoral bastard. ME WANTS MORE ATTENTION! -------------------- Life is a neverending carneval where everyone has multiple costumes. I just hope mine are pleasing to the eye. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 6670
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written Tuesday, January 8 2008 13:47
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By FF: quote:I'll probably be more interested once this world gets populated. -------------------- Quotation confesses inferiority. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Posts: 1509 | Registered: Tuesday, January 10 2006 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Tuesday, January 8 2008 14:01
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The survivors of Magellan's great voyage in Möbius-land would be quite surprised to discover that in addition to having strange switches in handedness, all the writing left at home would be backwards. They'd either have to learn to read and write like Leonardo da Vinci or they'd have to reverse or repeat their voyage. —Alorael, who now must consider a world in which the distance between two points is dependent on the path taken so that the straight line may in fact be longer. Path integration would be a nightmare. Cartography might become immensely lucrative and secretive. A sense of direction could easily steer you wrong. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Wednesday, January 9 2008 23:59
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quote:That's one of the reasons I want people to pay attention; I want to know what your opinion is about the idea I just posited concerning the creation of civilized species. The other reason is, of course, that I still want more votes, and that's likelier to happen if this topic is booted to the top of active topics every once in a while. The poll will still run for about ten days. -------------------- Life is a neverending carneval where everyone has multiple costumes. I just hope mine are pleasing to the eye. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 9906
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written Monday, January 14 2008 12:07
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quote:Hmm, proud, agressive and utterly ruthless when in battle, I think that would be good for a population. -------------------- Vivan los Drayks! Viva Khyryk! Vivan los Serviles! Vivan los Travokites! Tastes like Bambi, delicious If you don't want to type my full name, call me Xel. People, stop insulting my signature. Posts: 301 | Registered: Tuesday, August 21 2007 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Wednesday, January 16 2008 01:25
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Currently I think I will be inserting three default species: two human and one ferret-like. The last one will probably have all the aggression you'll ever need. Rest of the species will be picked by polling. -------------------- Life is a neverending carneval where everyone has multiple costumes. I just hope mine are pleasing to the eye. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 5360
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written Wednesday, January 16 2008 11:01
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Nalyd would like to propose a more serpentine race. A little like the yuan'ti, but more snake- or lizard-like, and a lot less human-like. They can choose to be bipedal or upright, but rarely do. A fierce racial pride, a condescending but tolerant to other species. More warlike, but not so agressive. Some are poisonous, by contact or biting. No naturally magical advantages, but plenty skilled at it. Maybe some sort of werelizard function? -------------------- Fear us, mortals, but never envy, for though we burn with power, our fuel is our sorrows. Posts: 1636 | Registered: Wednesday, January 5 2005 08:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 4248
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written Wednesday, January 16 2008 23:35
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I'll start preliminary work during this week, such as creating templates, writing down general rules etc. It'll likely take me a few days after the poll is closed to make a reasonable background, after which the real work can begin. So far the world is becoming spherical (with lots of mountains) and relatively non-magical, and whatever magic there'll be will follow rules previously discussed in this topic. If some of you have differing opinions, now's the time to let 'em out. -------------------- Life is a neverending carneval where everyone has multiple costumes. I just hope mine are pleasing to the eye. Posts: 617 | Registered: Tuesday, April 13 2004 07:00 |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Thursday, January 17 2008 08:44
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A race of really long serpents, living in a small Möbius universe. That way they can encircle the world and watch in amazement as they swing their own tails left and right. -------------------- Listen carefully because some of your options may have changed. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |