trader jim
SOC-14 1K
I just reread Ring World....sure wouldnt want to be hit by a "Drill Bit" and have it lay eggs in you!!!... what a way to go..eaten up...SLOWLY!!! ![Eek! :eek: :eek:](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Then what do you do for ghosts?No, I think the 'haunted ruins' add atmosphere to the setting. It's important to remind players from time to time that they are VERY tiny, and QUITE young in relation to the rest of the cosmos...An unfinished ringworld adds this needed reminder...
-MADDog
I don't know about you, but the thought of mucking about in the airless vastness of an empty ringworld would seem creepy enough for me.Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Then what do you do for ghosts?
Neither. The entire ringworld would go flying off into interstellar space. You can't have a partial ringworld that's rotating enough to provide gravity.Originally posted by Mythmere:
Engineering question. If the ringworld is complete along part of its length (rather than unfinished all the way around) and is already revolving around the star, fast, would the atmosphere be trapped by the centrifugal force in the unfinished portion and stay in the unfinished section, or would it slide out and leave the ringworld lifeless?
Well, as long as it's balanced you could have segments of ring. If you want to hold atmosphere you'll need some very high walls on the edges of each section (something like a thousand miles should do the job), but there's nothing preventing a section from being walled on all sides, not just the edges of the ring.Originally posted by MADDog:
Maybe he's thinking that the bones were built, but not the interior decorating...
That's how I read it. The actual ring is there, with all it's associated engineering, but there is no mountains, rivers, air, water...that sort of thing...Maybe there is an atmosphere inside the engineering spaces inside the ring where our 'ghosts' are living, while the outside is still a vacuum...
Less interesting than even mucking around on a vacuum world, at least it has terrain. An incomplete ringworld would have a vast featureless plain. Perhaps a robot or two, but vwery little else to encounter. A complete ringworld would have all of that plus more. Why would you want to settle for a lesser version?I don't know about you, but the thought of mucking about in the airless vastness of an empty ringworld would seem creepy enough for me.
Rockballs just happen. Ringworlds are made! If an artifact of that immensity, unfinished or not, doesn't inspire awe in my PCs, then I'm not doing my job.Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Why would you want to settle for a lesser version?
Perhaps you think that a completed ringworld would be too much of a distraction from the OTU? With an incomplete ringworld, there may be a few robots to kill, artifacts to collect, then you move on to the next planet. That's probably why the Dyson Sphere in Star Trek, The Next Generation was empty and lifeless. To do a Ringworld Justice you'd need a completely different Traveller setting, one without any FTL travel of any sort. Characters are born on the ringworld and spend their whole lifetime traveling along it's surface, encountering new creatures and civilizations and perhaps learning something about the original builders of the ringworld. The surface area of a ringworld is so vast that it represents its own setting separate from the rest of the galaxy. The ringworld builders are the Ancients in this setting. There is no FTL because there doesn't need to be any. Everything of interest, all types of aliens, creatures, robots etc. live on the ringworld. Its kind of like a "Future Earth" setting. The Sun you see in the sky is Earth's Sun 1 million years in the future. All of the planets and the Earth itself were disassembled to build the ringworld because faster than light travel was impossible and their was no economic alternative. There were explorers who left Earth 1 million years ago in slower than light star ships and then returned to find the Earth gone and in its place a ringworld. (Thanks to the magic of relativistic time dialation) These explorers don't know when the ringworld was build since they weren't there, but since they are explorers and it turned out that the Galaxy was a largely lifeless and empty place, the only place of interest left to explore was this Ringworld obviously built by humans or perhaps some other Earth Creature. The most advanced lifeforms they discovered on other planets were microbes, so now they turn their attention to the ringworld and they find alot of the adventure here that they didn't find on other planets.Rockballs just happen. Ringworlds are made! If an artifact of that immensity, unfinished or not, doesn't inspire awe in my PCs, then I'm not doing my job.
I just gave you an empty mansion and a ghost story. Sorry you can't see the possibilities.
The big problem with an "open topped ring" is that, unless you have terrain, you have the atmosphere slowing down... and then it begins to escape. You NEED the mountains to move air. Which is why Niven's version has them as features of the design...Originally posted by MADDog:
Maybe he's thinking that the bones were built, but not the interior decorating...
That's how I read it. The actual ring is there, with all it's associated engineering, but there is no mountains, rivers, air, water...that sort of thing...Maybe there is an atmosphere inside the engineering spaces inside the ring where our 'ghosts' are living, while the outside is still a vacuum...
-MADDog
I love people who know this sort of thing! And it gives an excellent potential middle ground between the "dead ringworld is boring" crowd and the "ghostly and magnificent" crowd. If portions of the ringworld were finished and segmented off to house engineers (perhaps millions of them) and over time SOMETHING happened, the ringworld was not completed, the air bled away in the engineer sections, leaving only ruins and the mystery of the ringworld.....what an archaeological adventure! Maybe robots are left; maybe a few domes with the descendants of the engineers...plus the pirates and the belters hiding out in the vast spiderweb of girders that circle the star.The big problem with an "open topped ring" is that, unless you have terrain, you have the atmosphere slowing down... and then it begins to escape. You NEED the mountains to move air. Which is why Niven's version has them as features of the design...
actually, in at least one print version of Ringworld, there is a "physics of ringworld" appendix.Originally posted by Mythmere:
I love people who know this sort of thing! And it gives an excellent potential middle ground between the "dead ringworld is boring" crowd and the "ghostly and magnificent" crowd.
Segmenting it off (transverse baffles) is counter-productive past a point; the air mass itself must be kept ballanced. Spin-flow is good for that.
If portions of the ringworld were finished and segmented off to house engineers (perhaps millions of them) and over time SOMETHING happened, the ringworld was not completed, the air bled away in the engineer sections, leaving only ruins and the mystery of the ringworld.....what an archaeological adventure!
A Niven-style ringworld is a U-shapped trench, which happens to be a ring, with the trench inward. The Mountains, etc, are partial height to provide for weather, and to "slow" surface flow (Actually, it speeds up the air, but from the standpoint of the surface, it reduces the relative speed of the airflow)... So wheather always blows in from the spin... Niven's ringworld also uses shadow squares... these provide night and day. by using slightly different sizes, one can then generate weather differentials.Maybe robots are left; maybe a few domes with the descendants of the engineers...plus the pirates and the belters hiding out in the vast spiderweb of girders that circle the star.
Boy. For someone who's supposedly a roleplayer, you sure don't have an adventurous imagination, do you?Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
So tell me, how does an incomplete ringworld have more than a complete one? If you want spooky, well most "haunted houses" are complete, they are not half finished and abandoned, they are finished, occupied for a time and then abandoned. An unfinished ringworld is more like a construction site. I've got to hand it to the fellow who thought this one up, he sure has a flair for the semi-dramatic. As for a pirate base, don't you think that if pirates were based here, they'd spend more time scavanging than raiding commerce. Obviously, whats on the ringworld has got to be more valuable that what can be plundered from a passing ship. If fact those passing ships would make what could be scavanged more valuable since they would form a customer base for things the pirates could sell. The pirates would certainly not want to harass them.
Is Mars Creepy? Remember the movie Alien, the heroes explore a wrecked starship, if there were no alien larvae onboard how long can the GM get by on creepiness alone? Now typically a planet is only as interesting as whats on it. An incomplete ringworld would naturally have less on it that a complete one, your encounter rate would be diminished since there would be less things crawling on its surface.Awww...I bet Tom doesn't think that Antarctica is the creepiest place on Earth, either...
-MADDog