Geography that is without end (in lore)...?

Hello,

Im curious if this sounds like a good premise to start with (or if it feels convoluted)

• A Fantasy/Steam Punk world that has never been fully mapped due to the worlds immensity...a world so large (think of the size of Jupiter)
• Time line that has no certain reference of its creation, rather no one really knows how old (or few creatures really know) the planet is.Other thoughts I've had about this world:
  
  • Technology varies greatly from place to place
  • Technology has more of an archaic medieval techie feel (steam punkish)
  • Divinity has its place in the world, in some parts exclusively and in some parts void
  • Magic is rare and reserved to few known parts of the known world.
  • Kingdoms are volatile and only few remain over x years during the age of which the story takes place.
    What do you guys think of the foundation so far?
    

A world not fully mapped out, easy peasy. Just haven't really seen it implemented overly well. I actually was thinking of a Mapmaker profession where a player didn't have an in-game map until they built an atlas of various maps.

Worlds can be expanded over time, and most due through added zones, but they just don't expand on a done by the player basis usually. I know EQ and WoW have tampered with unlockable areas, but it was more dungeon oriented I think, aside from EQ's progression server.

I think it would be great to have areas of the world which are renowned for specific technologies. I know in the series The Fullmetal Alchemist, he had to travel to a certain city where automail(mechanical extremities) mechanics could be found to fix his arm/leg. Do you keep the technology from spreading by having the creative items/tools/etc in a specific area?

Having areas of a world where people can become in tune with the world around them is also plausible, but how can you do it without hurting gameplay?

To have to travel to a specific area to train/progress in your abilities is also not impossible. I remember having to travel around quite a bit in EQ on my monk, specifically the islands, to find master/grandmaster Monks.

In conclusion; Games these days seem to put everything in a very, overly so, accessible fashion. Moving around the world only becomes tedious for me when I have to go from A to B, back to A, and then back to B before returning to A again. Let the players move freely and non-repetitively and I think you are on to something.

The only repeat runs that I didn't necessarily hate was when I was exploring in Everquest, I would die, then have to go back to where I died. This made it so that while things were new to me I would have to learn my surroundings to travel safely in the future, thus getting to know the world, and becoming a part of it.

People would probably call me a person that has too much time on their hands and is probably masochistic. No, I just want a fun game that is actually... you know, challenging.

Depending on the different levels of technology it could work or it couldn't

If a civ has a decent naval and exploration tradition then the civ is likely to know how big the world is unless there simply isn't a place for them to land, explore, rest, get food... or within a years travel at Columbus' era technology... if there isn't any place to land then there is no point to having such world.


If we just take earth and bump it up to jupiter size, assuming 70% water and the land masses are about the same amount apart... to cross the atlantc it would take...11 years. With today's technology in boats it would take 2 months. In our best plains we could go around that planet in 5 days, but average current planes can do it in about a month. when plains were first invented it would take 5 and a quarter years. With a team you could fly around that world in 220 days

In other words you have the challenge of setting your civ at the mid 1900s lvl technology level or it wouldn't make sense for them to have any more done than what around them...or try to get more done...or be able to

also you have to take into account the size of game worlds...the size in miles of WoW, which is a pretty big place in game terms is only the size of a super small island...and most "large" sandbox games aren't even that

So what you're suggesting is a huge undertaking if you want to do it more realistically than not.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

F.e. The seas are in constant storm and travelling is really dangerous. No one came back just yet and the technology went in the totally different direction, focusing on land exploration
New areas could be buried deep underground -- the planet could have a ring structure like a tree, with each ring being a totally new land to explore (sounds like Planeshift now that I think about it).
Space travel could unlock new areas, like on the local 2 gazzilion moons.
Finally, some mistic magicy-techy stuff could make people move into anotehr dimension.

For all it's worth, it's not a question of how to justify, but is it trully worth it. On one side there is the room for expansion and growth, on the other imballance and people (that are end-game already) being sore about new content introduced while they are done (or new players being sore about new end-game content and nothing for the newbs).

Writing maps is a really bad idea. Trust me, I've seen it implemented -- Unless you can actually buy a pre-made map with several landmarks, players will be lost. We are used to minimaps and navigation systems -- it helps us focus on the game, not having to live in it more than is just fun. Introducing food, survival elements, harsh medieval conditions and activities seems fun to the designer/developer -- for the player it might be a bother or alltogether a put off. Why would I play a game that makes me sleep for 10 minutes each hour if I can play WoW where I get to play 24/7? Why play a game that needs me make a map of my own when there are tons of games that have a beautifull map, with points of interested marked clearly ?

Anyway, each thing you implement that is not standard nowadays needs to be considered carefully -- will the player enjoy it, will it be fun each time it is encountered and is it worth for the player to stand it?

In principle you can do pretty much whatever you want. If you know it makes no sense, it works better not to put a spotlight on it and try to rationalize it, because like Mario jumping really high, if it isn't rational, explanations will be stupid.

As well as stupid, they're also superfluous. People are happy to accept any bull crap, often even if they knew it's bull crap.

As a counter example I'd point you at the 1993 Mario movie. They couldn't just have a guy who jumps high and lives with talking shrooms. They had to have a "de-evolution" gun and rocket boots. Neither of those things made any more sense, of course, since evolution doesn't work that way, rockets don't work that way and we didn't evolve from fungis. They also didn't add anything useful since people already accept Mario at face value. This is what I mean by stupid + superfluous.

So, big big planet. If we're talking physics for a moment, the gravity is redonkulous. Jupiter has "only" 2.5 or something times Earth's gravity at its "surface" because it's a giant ball of mostly hydrogen. Earth, for contrast, is mainly iron.

You wouldn't have a terrestrial planet the size of Jupiter because they apparently do not form (though our knowledge is pretty limited), but if you did, it would be astoundingly massive and the gravity would be crushing. It would have to be dramatically more dense than Earth because of gravity compression.

If you removed that mass, the planet might disperse, though at this point I'm talking out of my black hole.

So literally if anyone asks why the planet is so big, what with the gravity ya know, the correct answer is "artistic license".

Technology varies greatly from place to place[/quote]

It does that IRL.

Many societies cannot manufacture the highest technology we use, even if they import the gizmos (or are handed them). Look at Afghanistan. They make rugs. And they have some upstart "factories" where they assemble components made elsewhere, like Chinese motorcycles. Though we're getting into semantics, they do not "have" the technology to shoot down a Hind, even if they were handed the (somewhat sophisticated) devices.

Modern countries have spacecraft. What kind of technology gap is rugs and spaceships?

But maybe you want these people to be out of contact with each other...

You might experiment with the geography of the situation. Look at Guns, Germs and Steel. Consider bumping your planet's gravity a tad over Earth's and see what that does to powered flight. Also consider that not all developing societies bother to go out and colonize anything. China sent some ships out but quickly changed their minds.

Heck, right now plenty of people don't want us doing anything in space. Valid or not? Doesn't matter. Xenophobia, fear and anti-ambition are in the human race's intellectual toolbox.

You can also introduce some plot device like armored sea monsters that keeps them apart, but your story will probably wind up being "about" that, at least in terms of plot.

[color="#1C2837"]I think it would be great to have areas of the world which are renowned for specific technologies. I know in the series The Fullmetal Alchemist, he had to travel to a certain city where automail(mechanical extremities) mechanics could be found to fix his arm/leg. Do you keep the technology from spreading by having the creative items/tools/etc in a specific area?

[color="#1C2837"]Having areas of a world where people can become in tune with the world around them is also plausible, but how can you do it without hurting gameplay?

[color="#1C2837"]
Caldenfor

[/quote]

Well the layout is like this, Technology in this world has different flavors, from odd archaic medieval looking, mystical, almost metaphysical and borderline high tech. Races will have inherent proficiency toward their own renown tech but the view/ dogma about that science will left in an artistic approach,

• Some technology is so complicated that no one can figure out how to reproduce (inherited tech from a forgotten age).
• Materials needed to make some tech are uncommon or rare
• Dogma that forbids usage or restricts manufacture
• Ancient Schematics that are left encrypted (and often lead to lack luster inventions, like a toaster! some cults/guilds refuse to invest in ancient schematic research)
• All in all technology is closely guarded to their respected Houses
• Technology and magic are feared due to its progressive history/ track record of mass destruction.
• Technology/Science advancement is constantly policed and harassed by Deities (i thought this was amusing)
• Magic is constantly harassed by Demons (magic isnt really evil, but the ripples it has made has awakened some things that should stay asleep)
• Also, minerals are a bit interesting, some of the more medieval societies have access to minerals that allow them to withstand invasion of advanced races.(some materials might include vastly superior metals that require secrets recipes to smelt properly, or was thinking of a material/object/tower that could create EMP like effects.)
  Second question:
  Game play would not be restricted, the PC could prepare going through a region but wont be necessary. Magic happy zones in effect give bonuses, not restrict them to the zone. nor is it a simple passive buff. It gives the caster the ability to unlock certain key traits that could prove, dangerous but can be worth the risk. (if a failure were to occur it wont be anything other than amusing and completely random, from a spell overloading and nuking everything to kingdom come within set random radius, Head exploding, Eyes that shoot out beams of light uncontrollably, randomly fly x direction or possession of your character for brief time.
  Some players could see this as hurting game play, i see it as artistic, and amusing. Im sure i could refine and tweak it but we'l see.
  
  

  
  
  [color="#1C2837"].....If a civ has a decent naval and exploration tradition then the civ is likely to know how big the world is unless there simply isn't a place for them to land, explore, rest, get food... or within a years travel at Columbus' era technology... if there isn't any place to land then there is no point to having such world.....
  
  [color="#1C2837"]....If we just take earth and bump it up to jupiter size, assuming 70% water and the land masses are about the same amount apart... to cross the atlantc it would take...11 years. With today's technology in boats it would take 2 months. In our best plains we could go around that planet in 5 days, but average current planes can do it in about a month. when plains were first invented it would take 5 and a quarter years. With a team you could fly around that world in 220 days
  
  [color="#1C2837"]by
  [color="#1C2837"]
  Durakken
  
  [/quote]
  
  
  The idea the world is without end is the lore, not the actually game. Granted I have toyed with having some maps being randomly generated (Frontier areas) and have it be more of an offshoot rather than the focus of the game. Same with exploration (Land/Sea) and conquest. Areas would be generated by player instances but not neccessarily limited to just that player. If a player explores the random map, and reckons he would like to capture it (for resources or etc) then he must do so with other players (guild/warband/government) and fund the outpost. Once building has started it becomes an instance created by the server in which it can be threatened by other players. controlled by player(s)
  
  
  

  
  [color="#1C2837"]F.e. The seas are in constant storm and travelling is really dangerous. No one came back just yet and the technology went in the totally different direction, focusing on land exploration
  New areas could be buried deep underground -- the planet could have a ring structure like a tree, with each ring being a totally new land to explore (sounds like Planeshift now that I think about it).
  Space travel could unlock new areas, like on the local 2 gazzilion moons.
  Finally, some mistic magicy-techy stuff could make people move into anotehr dimension.
  
  [color="#1C2837"]
  Zethariel
  
  [/quote]
  
  Well my approach is to keep flying to a minimum by throwing in fun bizarre lore restrictions:
  

  • No matter how far people seem to fly they can never seem to reach the "roof" (sky)
  • Not many flying machines have been manufactured universally by all of the races.
  • Those few flying machines owned by races not renown for flying (or for being technological) are either relics or dormant by the races.
  • The Divine have in the past, swatted them out of the sky for their own nefarious reasons.
    Regarding Sea power superiority and balancing sea minded nations:
    
    • Well the sea is even more volatile than the sky, but a heck of a lot more mysterious, think of bermuda triangle, but the entire sea is doing it..... (I just parked my dingy, and when i turned around it was gone.... wtf? It wont be that bizarre but it will definitely be worse than the sky)
      Traveling or fast traveling wont be as tedious as you think but it could cost or penalize in some ways to travel certain pathways.
      
      
      

      
      [color="#1C2837"]In principle you can do pretty much whatever you want. If you know it makes no sense, it works better [color="#1C2837"]not [color="#1C2837"]to put a spotlight on it and try to rationalize it, because like Mario jumping really high, if it isn't rational, explanations will be stupid. [color="#1C2837"]As well as stupid, they're also superfluous. People are happy to accept any bull crap, often even if they knew it's bull crap. [color="#1C2837"]As a counter example I'd point you at the 1993 Mario movie. They couldn't [color="#1C2837"]just [color="#1C2837"]have a guy who jumps high and lives with talking shrooms. They had to have a "de-evolution" gun and rocket boots. Neither of those things made any [color="#1C2837"]more [color="#1C2837"]sense, of course, since evolution doesn't work that way, rockets don't work that way and we didn't evolve from fungis. They also didn't add anything useful since people [color="#1C2837"]already accept Mario at face value[color="#1C2837"]. This is what I mean by stupid + superfluous.
      
      
      by [color="#1C2837"]
      JoeCooper
      
      [/quote]
      You made me giggle... hah Mario the Movie, great example!
      
      You illustrate a good point and i completely agree with you, artistic license is pretty much all you need to explain your world.
      
      Imo, as a player, if it looks stupid/ridiculous i wont really care for an explanation on how it works. Even if something looks neat, has an interesting premise, I still wont really care to hear elaborations of how "awesome" it must be. It just is.
      
      Though, too much reliance on artistic license can make Mr. Immersion leave the party in anger.
      
      As i see it, there is a bit of balance needed between both.
      
      
      I think some of these genres try to railroad too much, and don't leave enough room for open interpretation

I realize this might be controversial, but I wouldn't worry too much about Mr. Immersion as long as you have Mr. Internal Consistency and Mrs. Engagement shagging on screen.

"[color="#1C2837"]I think it would be great to have areas of the world which are renowned for specific technologies."

"[color="#1C2837"]Technology in this world has different flavors, from odd archaic medieval looking, mystical, almost metaphysical and borderline high tech. Races will have inherent proficiency toward their own renown tech"

[color="#1C2837"]You can totally do that. Countries design things very differently even in the real world, though it's often more subtle.

[color="#1C2837"]Like, I moved from the United States to Poland and there's little differences all over the place....

[color="#1C2837"]-Due to the different environment and resources, they design machines different. Poles have terrible roads. I see trucks with four front wheels. Houses are built with large bricks instead of wood. I don't know if I've seen a smoke detector since I've been here, but maybe they look too different. There's no air conditioning because summer isn't hot.

[color="#1C2837"]-They don't have electric clothes dryers; American houses have special wiring to support them electrically. Soviet-era houses were not built for capitalist pig-dog frills like slanted roofs. Because of this, blankets split into an internal insulation blanket and a separate covering, so that they can air dry easily, rather than the thick, single-piece blankets we use in the states.

[color="#1C2837"]See how roundabout that was? Marx's ideas about economics in the 19th century lead to different blanket design. Relatedly...

[color="#1C2837"]-Due to lack of old consumerism, milk containers still use narrower spouts that have a chugging problem that leads to spillage.

[color="#1C2837"]I could go on all day actually.
[color="#1C2837"]
[color="#1C2837"]Basically you want to come up with different styles and possibly make up reasons for those differences and explore them.
[color="#1C2837"]
[color="#1C2837"]Historical accident is a big one, but you also need barriers to proliferation.
[color="#1C2837"]
[color="#1C2837"]If magic was invented by Sir Welhelm who happened to live in Pornwall, and they keep certain details super secret, and their competitor conjures up work-alikes to compete, and another competitor adopts those work-alikes because they consider the magic blasphemous... That'd work dandy.
[color="#1C2837"]
[color="#1C2837"][size=2]A friend the other day was telling me how many chemical and glass technologies the West came up with trying to store wine, which is contraband in some societies. I don't know the details though.

Technology development would be massively slowed. Pretty much the point where competition starts to drive innovation would happen centuries later.

Language barriers become much more massive. It's no wonder why "cults" don't bother to invest into schematics, since it's just as likely to be something that is 10 years travel away rather than something useful.

When building a country it literally becomes a case of logistics and communication being the determining factor of your size country over everything else. You can't travel by air or sea, with massively slowed technology, technology "tampered" with, scattered lore(you'll literally have countries thinking empires that have been dead for centuries still exist, since when the news got to them it was "recent").

I'm sure you could get some awesome stories of where 3 "empires" think they own X town. Just don't know better.
Or playing the role of a news verifier by your empire. Travel in the direction news came from to give confirmations or not.

___________

Another factor you need to consider is that humans will after a certain level of advancement(cities ect.) will have the level of technology to fill just about any container. So you have a much much larger human population, even if it always seems like less.

So, I was sitting around thinking about world setup due to this thread and I had an idea based upon an RVR game where the PVP areas would be kept separate from that of the PVE.

I am not a great artist, but here is a quick Paint attempt.



Think of it as a small sphere or pyramid where both respective colored segments actually are connected to each other with each realm has it's own realm frontier to go along with the yellow circle for RVR areas.

This would be a massive world, maybe it doesn't have to be though, for an RVR game that would be comparable to having nine realms fighting a 3v3v3 fight. It could be a 1v1v1 fight, but I feel having three separate realm frontier areas would dilute the playerbase and spread them too thin potentially. Thus, the feeling I have that a massive world with thousands of players would be required to make it populated enough. A more simple take, which I will probably go with, is to have each branch from the yellow RVR area be a single realm's frontier area, similar to Dark Age of Camelot. I put thought into the drawing's version as I felt it would help make the PVE part of the world more believable. There wouldn't be just massive walls at the end of the world, it would lead to another entrance to the RVR part of the game.

Using a setup similar to DAoC it would be like this....


Where each realm would have a Frontier area in the space immediately surrounding the yellow circle.

Hello,

Im curious if this sounds like a good premise to start with (or if it feels convoluted)

• A Fantasy/Steam Punk world that has never been fully mapped due to the worlds immensity...a world so large (think of the size of Jupiter)
• Time line that has no certain reference of its creation, rather no one really knows how old (or few creatures really know) the planet is.
  

I know it's fantasy and all, but if you have a terrestrial planet the size of Jupiter, there's going to be some gravity problems.

Realistically though, that's not the only reason why the place might not have been entirely mapped. Most civilizations weren't able to cross large oceans until well after the year 1000 AD. Depending on where your story is being told, they might just not have explored many parts of the world. Some places like Antarctica couldn't be safely explored until quite recently due to its hostile environment.

The timeline part sounds fair to me. That's basically how things were for us in real life until quite recently (and even then we only know history until a few thousand years ago, anything past that is scientific speculation). I always found it odd that so many fantasy worlds had a four billion year old dragon or such that was there from the beginning (or a few thousand years if your planet was made by the gods, as seems archetypal of fantasy).

Other thoughts I've had about this world:

• Technology varies greatly from place to place
• Technology has more of an archaic medieval techie feel (steam punkish)
• Divinity has its place in the world, in some parts exclusively and in some parts void
• Magic is rare and reserved to few known parts of the known world.
• Kingdoms are volatile and only few remain over x years during the age of which the story takes place.
  What do you guys think of the foundation so far?
  [/quote]
  
  That mostly sounds fine to me. Technology varying from place to place is quite realistic. After all, compare the European explorers to the native Americans. The choice of a steam punk styled medieval world isn't unreasonable, but the details are a bit lacking here. If they have steam powered robots but no guns, for example, I'm going to be confused.
  
  
  Divinity and magic seem to vary tremendously among fantasy worlds, so do whatever sounds most interesting to you. I would wonder why magic is rare though. Too many fantasy stories have it so that magic is an in born trait, which makes it feel cheap to me. I like people to work for what they have. Of course, all up to you. Divinity is a similar situation. The gods can be real or fake, active or aloof, or whatever you see fit. In real life religion is tremendously varied. Most fantasy that I'm aware of have the gods as little more than background information, so I'd personally like to see one where they take a more active role.
  
  The only real point I question though is why are kingdoms so volatile? Are the people on this world prone to kingdom toppling riots? Are they xenophobic and prone to wiping each other out? This can all work, but I'd definitely find ways to work it into your story.