I recently finished Ringworld and I can't get it out of my head how perfect it would be for a fantasy setting.
>an endless world full of countless stories
>countless homid races that range from humans to giants to dwarves and halflings to eleves...
>high tech artifacts that everyone regards as magic
>alien monsters to slay
I've been wanting to use a Ringworld for my setting too, although probably sci-fi over fantasy. I'd make my own stuff for the Ringworld's inhabitants, but definitely base the construct itself on Niven's ideas.
>>47406087
That's what I was thinking.
I have this habit of coming up with science fiction rationalizations of every fantasy setting I immerse myself. The countless races of hominid in Niven's Ringworld setting is particularly interesting for explaining many fantasy-esque races evolving alongside one another.
I don't know how casted magic would work aside from maybe nanomachines or machinery that only reacts to specific genes.
>>47405967
Most campaigns never really go far enough to have their maps anything bigger then maybe Europe and Asia at the most.
The idea of the world forever arching skywards would be little more then window dressing really. That is unless this actually became important, plot wise.
I've played a campaign based in a craft that was pulling four Dyson spheres once.
We were cowboys using Savage Worlds rules, the sheriff was killed by lighting shot from a strange gun no one had ever seen before and we were the posse out to bring the crook to justice.
He had set up his inside a mountain and as the campaign continued we saw stranger and stranger weapons and gear, magic being preformed and many of the gang didn't actually want to fight, claiming they'd literally seen hell and didn't want to return.
Long story short, under the mountain was the entrance to the ship itself and among robotic crew we found a few odd communities of people.
It's a shame the campaign died as half the group ended up getting jobs, as this was just after we had finished high school, but the story was really just starting to ramble and lose focus. Years later the DM admitted he was making everything up on the fly and had no real plan past what was meant to be Cowboys and Space-Magic Indians.
>>47405967
Have you read the sequels? They're pretty good as well.
I once played a game of Dawn of Worlds in which we created a Ringworld. The Ring was actually a serpent god encased in rock by the Great Stone Dragon of the Dwarves. The Serpent was moral enemies of the evil Sun God and were constantly trying to attack each other, but the efforts of the other god kept the two at bay.
The moon gods repulsed the sun and ring away from each other and the Stone Dragon kept the Snake God locked in place.
Meanwhile, a Tree god created a habitable surface on the belly of the Snake and it was home to many environments included blightlands created by the sun blasting the land sterile.
A game based on the setting we made never materialized because one or two players got butthurt from losing wars in the Third Age and quit suddenly.
It was a game with /tg/ and it's not surprising that they made horrible characters that barely fit the setting we had spent days creating together.
I won't be hosting any games with /tg/ anymore since then.
>>47406332I'm reading Engineers right now and it's super relevant to the discussion but I didn't want to risk spoilers for the last half of the book.
I was considering running a game set on a Halo-style ringworld for a while, but In the end I just opted for a normal planet instead. I kinda want to bring that idea back some time.
>>47406393
Just use the spoilers s you are right now. Just use all caps at the beginning saying that there are spoilers ahead. Use individual spoiler tags for each paragraph
>>47407068
Pure old fashioned science fiction or fantasy esque?
>>47407197
It was a near-future modern setting actually, but with the substructures of the ring essentially being dungeons and with guardian drones instead of monsters.
Basically kinda like Megaman Legends, but without the airships and with normal guns instead of energy weapons.
there was a Ringworld RPG that had a lot of interesting tidbits in it
i'd love to do a "love story" between two beings that are almost opposite of arch of each other
they communicate with signal mirrors and telescopes
the adventure would be getting them together
>>47407441
I hope you are talking about a halo sized ringworld instead of a RINGWORLD ringworld, because it would take some huge ass telesceopes and huge ass fields of mirrorsmaybe you sunflowers?to get a message across the other side of the solar system.
I'd love to run a huge ringworld-based hexcrawl game. I'd use magic or gods to make the Ringworld seem more like a functioning world rather than an artificial construct tho.
>>47405967
The game I run in 5e is set on a ring world. The origin story is that the ancient galactic empire collapsed after a scientific experiment resulted in the release of magic. The campaign takes place on one of the ring worlds built to house the vast population. magic transformed it into a full world. deep enough for mining, salt in the seas, etc...
>>47409337
AI gods?
>>47406277
>Most campaigns never really go far enough to have their maps anything bigger then maybe Europe and Asia at the most.
Fair enough. What I was getting at was the shear size of the world makes it plausible that something akin to a fantasy setting could play out.
The ring is unstable.
>>47414491
It has Bussard ramjets for that, tanj it.
>>47407441
Is there a scan of this?
>>47415405
What is the thing on the right?
>>47415812
Should be the fist of god, a very tall mountain.
>>47415887
Oh, that is supposed to be a desert?
Also I imagined Fist of God being less steep. Like a forty-five degree angle at most.
![ringworld2a[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/LYIE0Vi.jpg "ringworld2a[1].jpg")
>>47405967
So, okay, I've seen a few Ring World's before and something has always bothered me:
Can you fall off of a ring world?
Like, if for whatever reason you get over the "ledges" on the world do you just fucking fall? Do you fall into space or up into space? What happens?
Are the birds safe in a ring world?
>>47415956
Ungodly tall rims keep the atmosphere in on the sides. If you made it to the top of the rims and jumped off into the void, you would be flung away by centrifugal force.
>>47415956
As I understand it most of what we'd classify as gravity on a ringworld comes from centrifugal force. picture the entire system, atmosphere and all as a flat disk spinning around a central star. If you go off the edge you'd probably just float more or less in parallel with the edge since at the time you stepped off you were moving with the same angular momentum as the edge.
You'd have a tough time getting back though with nothing to either pull yourself back on or bump you back towards the edge. I'm not sure how the atmosphere would respond around the edges either.
Birds would be fine I'd imagine. Atmosphere is subject to the same centrifugal effect as anything on the ring allowing things such as air pressure and all the conditions needed for atmospheric flight to exist.
>>47415956
With the original Ringworld by Niven, he includes 1000 ft high rim walls to keep the air in.
In the next book, he includes the Spill Mountains to combat the natural erosion the Ringworld would experience from soil getting stuck in the ocean.
There are pipes from the bottom of the ocean than transplant the much to the rim walls where mountains eventually formed.
These mountains are so far apart that even if you hot-air ballooned to the next travelling with the wind, you would never return home since the air currents don't go both ways, if I remember correctly.
>>47415928
I suppose it is a bit of artist rendition, but Fist of God is supposed to be huge and imposing.
>>47416078
>If you go off the edge you'd probably just float more or less in parallel with the edge since at the time you stepped off you were moving with the same angular momentum as the edge.
That is incorrect. If there is a feeling of gravity on the interior of the ring then the ring is spinning faster than an orbit would would otherwise require at that distance from the sun and you would be flung away from the center of the ring in the same way if you were spinning a ball on a string it would fly off if you cut the string.
>>47416125
>1000 ft
That can't be right. That is ridiculously short. All the atmosphere would immediately fall off the edges. 1000 ft isn't even a mile.
>>47416158
it's 1000km
>>47416166
That's more like it.
>>47416158
my bad it's 1000 miles!
>>47416166
or 1600km
![House_sparrow04[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qAoTzVN.jpg "House_sparrow04[1].jpg")
>>47415997
>>47416078
>>47416125
>>47416131
>>47416158
>>47416166
>>47416179
So what you're saying is the Birds are okay?
>>47416194
Yes, except when they are flying over the hole or a sunflower field.
>>47412810
I don't think you fully understand how goddamn huge the Ringworld is. It's THREE MILLION times the surface area of the whole Earth.
You can have EVERY setting take place on it, nearly simultaneously. Evolution will run rampant. You think Australia or Madagascar bred some weird shit? Separate two breeding populations by three Earth diameters and see what the fuck happens.
It's mind-bogglingly, staggeringly, nigh incomprehensibly huge. Every tech level, every story, every variant of damn near everything, is all there.
In fact it's SO big that any individual story that's not blatantly overpowered is so small in proportion as to be irrelevant. Think of how hard it's been, how many real-world empires have tried to conquer the world. Or even just a continent. Or a nation.
Now imagine the folly of trying to expand that. By THREE MILLION TIMES.
Not just conquering Russia once, but millions of times.
That's a Ringworld.
>>47415928
It's not a natural mountain, it's an artificially distorted puncture pressed into magically durable metal. It can support a MUCH steeper angle, no problem.
>>47416230
I don't understand what that has to do with my post.
>>47416230
Ringworld is a form not a size. You can have a small ring.
>>47416245
Obviously I've read the book, else I wouldn't have said I imagined it any way.
>>47416186
That map doesn't seem right to me. I thought the oceans took up like tens of degrees of Ringworld's circumference.
>>47416267
I was actually agreeing with you. It's not just plausible to have a fantasy setting there, it's, idk, "hyper-plausible". Almost inevitable, even. (leaving the existence of magic aside, of course).
>>47416273
it still has to surround a star at a safe distance for life
>>47416475
When you fudge material strong enough to hold a ringworld together, you can fudge the energy output of a star. At least for me it is fair game. Beside you can have a orbiting ring like Halo.
>>47416475
>>47416531
Wat? You just place the ring in the Goldilocks zone. It doesn't have to surround the star.
>>47406332
Ringworld's Ghouls look way nicer than I thought.
>>47416619
Would you?
And would /tg/ a Kzinti?
>>47416716
Their breath can't be that much worse than mine. Would rish.
>>47416778
Their women aren't even sapient. That goes beyond rishtara. That's bestiality.
>>47416619
>>47416795
>>47416716
>G-grass giant sempai...
>>47416307
I think this comes from the Ringworld RPG so it might have some flaws. The Sunflower field in particular looks really tiny on this map.
>>47416194
Flying animals would be fine but would probably avoid the Eye Storm created by Fist of God.
>>47416849
>Eye Storm created by Fist of God.
There was no eye storm created by the Fist of God. The Fist of God is so high that very little air escapes through the hole at the top. The Eye Storm is from an impact that hit from the opposite direction.
>>47416876
There are multiple Eye Storms of vary severity.
However, the Fist of God is unique, and it's too tall for atmosphere to leak through it.
>>47416876
Oh that's right! Even though I re-read the series every few years it starts to blend together you know?
>>47416920
Are the all caused by punctures and
SPOILERwere the punctures repaired by protectors?
>>47416945
I honestly have no idea whether Eye Storms had to be manually repairedby the Protectorsor if there was an automatic system in placesimilar to the stabilizing jets before the Puppeteers fucked everything up.
Who is the most attractive Ringworld hominid?
>>47417295
Vampires no doubt
>>47417332
Pheremones don't count.
>>47417332
>>47417350
The City Builders will give you a fetish for widow's peaks.
>>47416475
Or you could have it orbit the sun like a planet instead and have a much smaller ring that rotates to produce a day-night cycle, like the Orbitals in Iain Banks' Culture series.
>>47417455
How is the Culture series? I tried reading the Foundation series but it was pretty boring.
>>47406277
Funny coincidence, the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman was a fantasy setting with four dyson spheres. I felt like they didn't really do much with the unutterably vast scope of the world they'd described though.
>>47417510
I've only read about half of it, but haven't been overly impressed. There are some fun ideas, but I keep getting this feeling that Banks was aiming for something more "literary" than science fiction, which is not how I like my sci-fi.
Use of Weapons and Excession were especially bad in that respect. Player of Games was probably my favorite of what I've read, but I'm told that Matter is one of the best in multiple ways.
I actually enjoyed the Foundation series a bit more, but I've never minded slow series.
>>47416803
The one in that picture (or at least, the short story that picture was cover for) is. Got abducted by... Outsiders, maybe? several millenia ago when kzin hadn't managed to breed them dumb yet.
>>47417550
>I felt like they didn't really do much with the unutterably vast scope of the world they'd described though.
How could you? That's just so absurdly huge. x4.
>>47417843
>>47416803
The Kzin royal family also still has intelligent females but they're a state secret.
>>47416988Protectorsdon't bother much with computers or AI
>>47417350
pheromones aside, they looked like wild/savage/unkempt albino humans. they were small. maybe you have a thing for wo/manlet
>>47415405
yes, it's 82.6 mb
>>47418008
Didn't know that. Must be a tough game keeping a breeding population secret.
What book?
>>47418190
One of the Man-Kzin Wars book about the prince of the royal bloodline. He has a sister who is intelligent and she helps him avoid assassination.
The King's rival wages war against him using Jotok-bred beasts of war that are effectively bioweapons that are against the honorable traditions of kzin-on-kzin warfare so the prince and his sister escape into the wilderness to reorganize with a secret tribe of kzin that have intelligent females. I think a human woman is also a main character and tags along with the prince.
>>47418246
Bizarre. Neat.
>>47415405
It is on the pdf thread
>>47421460
PDF thread?
>>47422814
In this one >>47281791 presumably, although I haven't found it yet.
>>47423244
>>47415405
Here it is:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/z4azhkghg858qrd/Ringworld+Boxed+Set+with+Companion.pdf
>>47424987
God bless you anonthe captcha said select all pies but I thought it said select all piss
>>47424987
Nice! Thank you so much. I've been looking for this for awhile and I think this might be the first time it has been shared on /tg/
>>47425680
>>47425076
np, I didn't put it online, I only copied the exact link from the archive pdf
Has anyone read the Smoke Ring books? Millions of cubic kilometers full of sky, an ecosystem that evolved in microgravity, footbow wielding tribals who fly on artificial wings, a navy of steam rockets made of old piping and giant coconuts. Cool stuff.
>>47425929
I read Integral Trees.
>>47426065
Huh, I didn't realize there was another star. I just thought the energy for life came from the neutron star itself.
>>47425929
>>47426022
Integral Trees and Smoke Ring are both really good. I find it humorous what Smoke Ring folk call dwarves are just genetic throwbacks to original humans.
>>47426157
I think the neutron star alone wouldn't be bright enough.
But speaking of neutron stars, has anyone read Dragon's Egg? Apparently, it's about life forms ON a neutron star.
>>47426220
>I think the neutron star alone wouldn't be bright enough.
That depends on how close you are.
>>47426220
Huh, that book looks interesting.
Sundiver by David Brin also deals with lifeforms living within a star and the crew of humans and aliens that investigate them. It takes place in the Uplift universe.
>>47426332
If you get too close you're going to get some nasty tidal forces, though.
>>47426406
You don't have to get that close though. Neutron stars can be very hot.
Since we are recommending books, I recommend Stephen Baxter's Vacuum Diagrams. It's many short stories describing a lot of creatively exotic forms of life ranging from trans-neptunian sentient spiders, sentient parasites living in the bodies of fish in pockets of water at Mercury's pole, and even feudal societies made up of being of neutronium strings within neutron stars.
>>47414491
Also Niven realized that an industrial civilization could develop using alcohol.
>>47429434
A herbivore race that is cautious and fearful to a fault is an interesting concept and I love how Niven explores it.
>>47429434
>>47429546
I really like this redesign by Abiogenesis
>>47430291
Meh. I read the novel having already seen >>47429434 so that's how I pictured them. Plus I'm pretty sure they are described as having nubs on their lips for handling stuff, not spikes.
Reading the RPG right now. I can't help but think the rules were designed by math majors.
>>47430577
It's not supposed to be anatomically correct to the letter, hence a "redesign" rather than a straight depiction.
>>47431487
THE RULEBOOK IS UNSTABLE
bump with ancient psionic precursor species
>>47434317
Are those the slavers?
>>47434410
Yes they are.
They conquered the galaxy but before they lost control of it they destroyed all intelligent life in the galaxy with a psychic killswitch except forBandersnatch and the nonsapient Pak breeders.
Have gods ever been explained as AIs in a fantasy setting?
>>47434826
The Book of Swords setting features a world turned fantastic after a nuclear apocalypse. The Empire of the East series describes how this happened, but I haven't read that series yet.
Around 3000AD a intelligent supercomputer ARDNEH that was originally a nuclear response system that initiated the Change which brought gods and magic into the world and turned the nuclear fallout into a race of malevolent demons.
50,000 years later, Ardneh is long dead but worshiped as a god of healing, but doesn't actually exist like the other gods in the setting.
>>47435111
Huh, nothing quite fits the bill for what I am imagining.
One of these days maybe I should put some more thought into a story about a newly terraformed planet that devolves into a pre-industrial setting where various genetically engineered races live side by side, technological artifacts are seen as magic, and caretaker AIs are worshipped as gods.
I blame Dragonriders of Pern for this.
>>47407617
They could be using some non-fried communication tech that survived the plague?
>>47436583
That seems unlikely since Ringworld used superconducters everywhere and only used the one type of superconductor.
However, the night panels have high resolution cameras that could make out small large roads and the wakes of boats, like a low resolution google maps image. Those can be used by functioning map rooms on ringworld, which are a thing. You could use two people controlling both map rooms and patches of mirrors to communicate across the ringworld. Language might be a problem though since they are communicating in binary. But I suppose if they are both city builders they may share a similar root language.
>>47416125
Uhm what's the diameter of this Ringworld(its the original one right) ?
>>47416186
Holy shit 1600km?? That's pretty humongous...
>>47439961
That island of Earth is a 1:1 scale reconstruction of the continents.
The idea of advanced technology being magic is old.
But I have never seen it done well in D&D/fantasy terms.
a handgun doesn't really resemble a magic wand. what technolgocial items could pass as fantasy items?
>>47440346
Depends on how obvious you want to be and how reduced the design of the items is.
Laser sword
Taser
Flashlight
Vehicles
Remote control (doors, screens, drones...)
Drones themselves
Medicine
Purification tablets
Night vision goggles
Riot shield (because it's translucent)
Cell phone, Datapad etc.
Holograms
Smoke detectors, security systems
PH-test strips and other chemical indicators
Pregnancy test
any electric light
Grenades
Freezer
>>47440670
Longarms can resemble a wand
Artillery
Rockets
Toys (moving dolls, simon says, battleship)
Any material that can't be reproduced
Vibro-blades
Monofilament Blades
hologram cards
credit cards
key cards
CDs
One-way mirrors
>>47426065
>>47426157
I don't even get what is going on there.
>>47440229
The map of earth thing?
>>47440670
holy hell, that's what a tasp looks like? I pictured it totally different
>>47441673
It's from the rpg. It doesn't have to look that way.
>>47441673
all sci-fi gadgets also double as sex toys
>>47441834
The Tasp is close to being a sex toy.
>>47442718
The tasp is a weaponized sex toy
>>47444549
Weaponised, yes.
I dunno if "under the wire" counts as sex, though.
>>47445595
Forgot to add: more like super heroin.
>>47445595
Isn't wireheading supposed to be better than sex?
>>47425929
My favorite part of those books was the ships computer which ran on tapes. Niven was great with creating compelling stories that worked on contemporary speculative fiction, but man, he couldn't guess for shit technological development.
>>47439916
Roughly 2 AU.
>>47445760
Much better. It's pleasure, pure and simple. It makes you feel utterly satisfied with everything.
>>47426220
I have. It's fantastic. I recommend it to anyone who is enjoying this thread.
>>47441019
I read the book and it still took me awhile to fully comprehend. I'll do you the favour of breaking it down for you.
>Neutron stars rotate, and can emit beams of electromagnetic radiation that are detected as pulsars.
>The radiation from pulsars is thought to be primarily ejected from regions near their magnetic poles.
Alright, you've got a neutron star that's spitting out the really deadly radiation at its poles. There's some heat and light coming off it elsewhere but not near the same rate as most stars.
Around it's equator you've got a close orbiting gas ring. This could be the leftovers of planets or gas giants that broke up and got swallowed by the star. I don't remember.
The neutron star's gravity prevents the gas from simply escaping out into open space.
Jupiter has gas toruses generated by Io (green) and Europa (blue), so we know this could theoretically work.
Because the areas around the neutron star not in front of the jets at the poles are much cooler than normal a Goldilocks zone could form inside the gas torus. If the gas had appropriate density and composition at particular altitudes people could live there.
As the torus is made up of gas if you were in it you'd be orbiting in the same direction around the star so you'd be in perpetual free fall.
Hope I haven't made too many glaring errors with that explanation.
