There are alternatives to round worlds, like flat worlds.
Are there alternatives to space?
>>45890635
My setting is a flat world. It's suspended in the Void inside a massive glass orb filled halfway with water.
It's also a serious low-magic setting with no monsters or fantasy races besides orcs.
In the Elder Scrolls the sky is more like a ceiling and the stars are little holes to another dimension.
>>45890635
Yep. The astral plane.
>>45890941
Are the Astral Planes not an alternate dimension?
>>45890635
Spelljammer says hi
>>45891662
I have never played spelljammer. But everything I have read over the last 10 years makes it sound like just the setting that would thrive in todays gaming environment.
Why isnt it a thing? Fuck Faerun, and fuck Forgotten Realms.
A Treasure Planet setting would be awesome.
>>45890732
No, Nirn is clearly round in every depiction of the cosmology.
>>45892180
Yes, but space ends shortly after the moons doesn't it? Like, the entire world is inside a bubble? Except, I believe I saw somewhere else that all the other planes/realms were other planets also in the same bubble. So idk.
>>45892209
Yeah, and outside the bubble is Aetherius, which is basically where the gods live. The sun and stars are holes in the bubble that you can see the other side through. Magic leaks into the world through these holes.
>>45893410
Can you enter Aetherius?
>>45892209
>>45892180
Nirn is an infinite plane, but it's surrounded by another infinite plane (Oblivion), so it appears to be a sphere to mortal eye.
Same thing with Oblivion and Aetherius. And with any other plane.
>>45893410
>Aetherius, which is basically where the gods live
Wrong.
a. Gods don't live, they are dead and bound to Nirn
b. They bodies float in the Void aka Oblivion.
>>45894100
Well, the Aedra are dead. An float between Nirn/Mundus and Aetherius. The Deadra, obviously, are not.
>>45891743
Anyone got a 1080 of that pic?
>>45890635
I'm sure aether has already been mentioned, but you've also got starseas like in Disgaea and Mugen Souls. Basically, warm, breathable space.
>>45890635
Everybody lives in a yellow submarine?
>>45890635
I run a game set on a Niven ring. Adds some interesting notes to the game.
>Who made the ring?
>The sun is always straight above
>Navigation is easier. You always know which was is North, south, spinward, and anti-spinward.
>Everything is Massive on a scale only planescape can exceed.
>spaaaaaace
>If players wanted they could travel in one direction for their entire lives and never see the same thing twice. I'm actually going to add a generational caravan founded by a massively rich merchant who wished to see all of the world. They would be on around the hundredth generation or more.
> All gravity they experience is caused by centrifugal force, so the idea that large things pull on other things would be an alien concept.
>No tides
>>45890635
>Its all water, like oceans that hang in the sky
>Space is a state of non being, not wave nor particle, until it gets close to planets. Each planet has some level of of sentient that defines what its near space actually is.
>Space is the mind of the overgod, each star a neuron, each planet a dream. He has a lot of nightmares
>Its a dragon, when people awaken their kundalini, a dragon is brought to the material world.
>Space is where we, etheric beings live and awe at those disgusting coalescent vulgar forms that lumps together in the ugly and uncouth parts of existence
>Space is the agglomeration of thoughts from all livings beings with no editing or sense to made of. Not a astral plane, limbo or whatever just thoughts everywhere. When you dream of falling, you are falling from there.
>>45890732
>>45892180
>>45893410
>>45894060
Which of this is canon and which is robot God fan fiction?
>>45897137
All of them and none of them. Such is the nature of CHIM.
>>45896722
Does it have underground tunnels filled with beasts, that latch onto unknowing folks, and turn them into horribly mutated zombies?
>>45890635
How 'bout this?
>>45890635
>Are there alternatives to space?
Yes not having space
>>45897621
Now that's interesting. I could work with a setting like that.
>>45890635
The psychosphere from Perimeter.
>>45898076
Toroidal Universe works too
>>45890635
I have a fantasy setting on the interior of a sphere. There's the equivalent of a star in the middle, and three massive fragments called Nights orbit it.
>>45890635
The was a video game I saw on kickstarter with dwarves where space was rock, and astronauts were mining through it.
>>45890635
>muh celestial spheres
>muh Aether
>muh literal ceiling of the world
>muh "overplane-between-planes"
>>45899195
>celestial spheres
>Aether
?
>>45897330
Haven't explored the underdark yet, so unknown if Black Mesa, or Ravenholm can be found down there.
>>45890635
I'm working on using a concave earth in my latest game. Gotta keep things interesting. I added numbers really quickly and shittely so I could send it, no judgement on that.
>>45895927
So where do the daedric planes fit into the cosmology, are they just floating in oblivion like the corpses of the aedra and the moons?
>>45899591
Old, outdated models for what existed beyond the atmosphere.
>Celestial Spheres
Every planet (Plus the Sun and Moon) are embedded in spheres exactly thick enough to support them, each sphere nested inside the last. The planets are shoved around in fixed paths within the spheres by "Intelligences" or Angels. The last Sphere contains the Stars and beyond that is a layer of water. Beyond THAT is a realm of Purity, Light, and Fire. You guessed it, it's Heaven.
>Aether
It used to be believed that Light traveled through a medium rather than empty space, that it was carried by the Aetherial Wind. Space as a substance, not a Vaccum.
>>45900151
Sounds confusing.
>>45897137
The most sacred of inventions are anonymous.
Like the tarot
>>45894038
Sovngard, the Sands Beyond the Stars, and the Far Shores (the afterlives for the Nordic, Kajiit, and Yokudan religions respectively) are said to be located in Aetherius; the Reman dynasty who ruled from 1512-971 years before the first game used Mothships, made from the corpses of giant moths (pic related) to reach Aetherius. In the Merethic era, close to the beginning of time, there were things called sunbirds that could travel to Aetherius. They were either vehicles or giant birds, possibly both. Also some historians think that the Dwemer, a civilization that disappeared about 3500 years before the first game may have left Nirn for Aetherius
tl;dr: yes, but you would need to be dead or really old
>>45897137
None of it, or all of it, or both.probably both
>>45902108
Yes.
But not more so than your average Fantasy cosmology.
>>45898076
But what if you still want spaceships?
>>45890635
Well, I've got a few settings with cosmologies that differ from the known universe in various ways.
>Godflesh and godsouls
The universe is enclosed in an impervious spherical shell. The earth is composed of the piled-up bodies of dead gods, from the era at the beginning of time when the universe was just full of a shitton of gods warring for dominance. The stars are the souls of said gods, floated up to stick in the firmament when the god was killed. (The setting uses Aristotelian gravity, where heavy objects fall toward the center of the cosmos, and light objects float up toward the firmament, rather than modern universal gravitation of bodies with mass.)
Meteors are literally falling stars, and are seriously bad news. If a falling godsoul makes contact with godflesh (ie, the earth), it will fuse and attempt to reanimate the god. This never turns out well, due to (1) the god having been dead and deteriorating for eons, (2) most of the godflesh not being really compatible with the particular godsoul, being a mix of , and (3) the god still thinking it's the era of endless heavenly war, and thus in a very combative and destructive mindset. The result is a twisted zombie-god abomination that goes on a rampage until it falls apart on its own or is forcibly put down, along with swarms of lesser abominations likewise animated by the event. Even falling stars that don't make it all the way to ground can cause lesser monster outbreaks and calamities just by the influence of their proximity.
>>45907208
>World tree
Literally a giant-ass tree, with the various worlds essentially being like fruits on its branches. Imagine a spherical terrarium, filled ~1/3 with soil and the rest open air, with a single tall plant in the middle that pokes out a hole in the very top. That's basically what each world is like, with its own heavenly bodies in the firmament, and its own miniature world tree running through the core. If you go down along the roots of the specific world tree, you can reach various underworld realms below ground. If you climb the world tree, you can eventually (after much, much effort) make it out the top of the world, where you'll find the world tree from your world is in fact the stem of the fruit connecting you to the great World Tree. Climb up the stem and go along the branches, and you can get into other worlds by going down along the stems of their own specific world trees.
Of course, each fruit-world is a full-size world in its own right, so given the proportions involved this sort of world tree travel is no small endeavour. Most people in most worlds aren't even aware that they're just one world on the World Tree, as nobody from their world has ever managed to get to the top of their little world tree, and you can't see outside your own firmament.
>World whale
So, the world's on the back of a giant cosmic whale. What's the rest of space like?
The stars are...something. There's much debate about what exactly they are, but about the only thing known for sure is that they're what the world-whale eats. There are some who say that's a good thing, that the stars are dangerous monsters and the whale eating them protects the people of the world. There are some who say that's a bad thing, that the stars are good, angelic beings and the world is literally swallowing up all the light and beauty in the cosmos.
The stars are very most definitely NOT at all the same kind of thing as the suns. Because the suns are fireballs that fly out of the blowhole of the whale as it breathes. I say "suns", plural, because there's a new sun every day. It rises as the whale shoots it out its blowhole, arcs over the whale's back over the course of the day, and at night sinks down below the whale's tail and dissipates into nothingness in the cosmic expanse.
The moon is the abode of a goddess, who has some sort of relationship with the world-whale. The precise nature of the relationship is a matter of much religious bickering. When the whale sings (as it is known to do on rare occasions), the moon deviates from her normal pattern of spiraling up and down the length of the world to dance around the whale's head. Exactly why the whale is singing and, therefore, what the moon is doing in her response to the song is a subject of as much debate as the general relationship between the two.
Most religions agree that there is a great cosmic kraken, or perhaps even a race thereof, which will ultimately bring about the end of the world in its struggles with the whale. There are signs of such apocalyptic struggles having wiped out civilizations and caused mass extinctions in the distant past. So far the whale has apparently survived these encounters, but eventually it may succumb.
>>45899662
What's outside the earthsphere?
>>45890635
Planets are surrounded by a protective layer of plasma. On the other side of the plasma are endless tunnels of living flesh the make up the creature that lives between worlds. Each tunnel leads to a new world. There is no sunlight, only the reflections from gases expelled from the imense, fleshy being. Travel between world's is doable with the right ship but tunnels may inexplicable open and close and aggravating the tunnel walls could mean death. Space basically is the creature itself.
>>45905495
then have space.
>>45890635
Space simply being open sky, like in Treasure Planet.
For DnD/Pathfinder-esk settings, I like the idea of the Astral plane being a space alternative, with the other planes of reality being the "plane-ets" in our local plane cluster within the astral plane, itself functioning as a universe. This could be played with by having traditional Outsiders like demons and angels be aliens within our local plane-cluster, and more outlandish outsiders and aberrations coming from a foreign but nearby in proximity plane-cluster. With the right resources, enough splatbooks and time to convert races and materials from one to the other, you could probably have a pretty solid space-opera game going without actually having "space" as we understand it.
I believe some variant of this idea is what is used in spelljammer, right?
>>45900023
Yes.
>>45890635
Dragon's Dogma style, high high infinitely above the clouds is the bottom of another world with its own sun and above it another one and so forth and so forth for all eternity, worlds are also internally infinite, so without magic you cant just go up till you reach the bottom of another world, you just go into the endless blue heavens and then find yourself back where you started. Except for one tower which pierces all worlds and goes on to infinity, like the needle weaving the fabric of the universe.
