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!!! 
Traveller Ringworld
- Thread starter TKalbfus
- Start date
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.
So you have an abandoned "unfinished" ringworld, which means that its terraforming was never completed. Given the fact that its orbit is still stable, the ringworld's meteor defence and station-keeping systems are probably still active. Which means that there's a power source and some kind of controlling entity somewhere on the ringworld.
After your PCs have managed to penetrate the OWS blockade and then avoided getting fried by the ringworld's meteor defense, they follow their noses to the Control Center only to find it inhabited by an Ancient AI, who's gone completely insane with loneliness or maybe is still very resentful about being abandoned all this time, or maybe was just in the middle of the first really good nap it's had in centuries and is now going to sic that army of converted TL17 maintenance bots on the invaders...
Whatever you choose, there's at least fifty ways to ruin any PC's day!
mad13142000
SOC-13
I've never been there...I AM almost to the Rosette, but that's a different story...
Actually, I was thinking also of maybe a pirate band hiding out, a small group of minor aliens, or maybe an Aliens style 'haunted ruin'. It could be rusty, ancient robots wandering around like Huey, Dewey, and Louis from 'Silent Running'.
<An Excellent Movie>
I wasn't referring to actual >Ghosts<, just the feeling...
-MADDog
Actually, I was thinking also of maybe a pirate band hiding out, a small group of minor aliens, or maybe an Aliens style 'haunted ruin'. It could be rusty, ancient robots wandering around like Huey, Dewey, and Louis from 'Silent Running'.
<An Excellent Movie>
I wasn't referring to actual >Ghosts<, just the feeling...
-MADDog
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? What I'm thinking is that you could have portions of the ringworld occupied (whether by pirates or whatever). Maybe bioengineered builders that have mutated in such a way to be spooky and dangerous to humans. But if a ringworld needs be absolutely complete to hold an atmosphere, then forget that idea.
mad13142000
SOC-13
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
actually, in at least one print version of Ringworld, there is a "physics of ringworld" appendix.
Essentially, you need to have the air spin fast enough that the centrifugal force exceeds the energetic pressure of a gas with access to vaccum.
You need baffling of some kind in order to keep it at spin speeds (it will naturally be slightly slower unless your baffles are complete); you need it to flow to maintain weather AND mass ballance.
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.
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.
No domes, etc. No "Vast Girder Arrays". In order to obtain the structural integrity needed, the ring must esentially be monomolecular...
A "Planetary Ring" is more feasable... a series of linked stations in microgravity, forming a solid station after a few generations. Anchor it with a couple of beanstalks... Oh, wait... that's 2300! <GD&R>
E
EvilDrGanymede
Guest
Boy. For someone who's supposedly a roleplayer, you sure don't have an adventurous imagination, do you?
I think you put your finger on it earlier though. A complete ringworld would practically be a universe unto itself. Hell, one ringworld alone orbiting a sun-like star has more surface area than all the habitable worlds in the Imperium put together!
I suspect the writers wanted to put something that would be intriguing, but that wouldn't overwhelm the outside universe. As for what to do with an incomplete ringworld... well, ask the following questions - why is it abandoned? Were its creators destroyed? Did they leave in a hurry? Will they be back? Does the ringworld have a defence system? Was it built to keep something away from the outside universe? Has anyone moved in while its creators are gone? Are there pockets of civilisation lurking undetected somewhere in the trillions of square kilometres? Are the creators *still there*, quietly watching the outside universe?
Maybe it's a cunning trap built to lure unwary civilisations to their doom. Perhaps it's a beacon that activates if someone sufficiently smart solves a problem, that calls the Builders back to the ringworld to wipe out what could become a possible rival species.
Honestly, if you can't see the adventure and investigation possibilities inherent in millions of planets' worth of ancient technology then I think you need to read some more sci-fi books
mad13142000
SOC-13
Awww...I bet Tom doesn't think that Antarctica is the creepiest place on Earth, either...
-MADDog
-MADDog
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.
mad13142000
SOC-13
Of course Mars is creepy...as are Antarctica and the unfinished ringworld...Its not the actual aliens or monsters, its the THREAT of them that makes a setting creepy.
If I let my players know that a guy on the internet has said he has proof that the Falklands war was really fought over the diary of an SS Col., and the diary exists...That the diary was the only thing washed ashore from the Z37, a German destroyer lost in WW2, and that the patron will pay SERIOUS dollars for its recovery.
I can scare the bejesus out of the players before they ever come across the first killer penguin. It's all about the setting.
(If ya'll want to, I could keep going with the Anarctic thing...
)
Mars? How about the massive face and the pyramids on the plains of Cydonia? I throw in a labyrinth and some alien artifacts, maybe the site is boobytrapped and I don't ever have to introduce a single living thing to have the players hiding behind their character sheets, jumping at every corner...
It's not MY setting, but if I wanted to, I could turn the ringworld into a blackhole for PCs, and never have to introduce any NPCs or aliens...
Dusty rooms, strange sounds, alien junk, clues to a mystery - whether real or not, the promise of treasure, deadly traps, strange things happening on a ring in space - a billion times Earth, without a single living thing...yeah, I know as a ref I could have PCs crying before they even cracked the airlock...
-MADDog
If I let my players know that a guy on the internet has said he has proof that the Falklands war was really fought over the diary of an SS Col., and the diary exists...That the diary was the only thing washed ashore from the Z37, a German destroyer lost in WW2, and that the patron will pay SERIOUS dollars for its recovery.
I can scare the bejesus out of the players before they ever come across the first killer penguin. It's all about the setting.
(If ya'll want to, I could keep going with the Anarctic thing...
Mars? How about the massive face and the pyramids on the plains of Cydonia? I throw in a labyrinth and some alien artifacts, maybe the site is boobytrapped and I don't ever have to introduce a single living thing to have the players hiding behind their character sheets, jumping at every corner...
It's not MY setting, but if I wanted to, I could turn the ringworld into a blackhole for PCs, and never have to introduce any NPCs or aliens...
Dusty rooms, strange sounds, alien junk, clues to a mystery - whether real or not, the promise of treasure, deadly traps, strange things happening on a ring in space - a billion times Earth, without a single living thing...yeah, I know as a ref I could have PCs crying before they even cracked the airlock...
-MADDog
