DShomshak

Ah -- to put it in brief, Winter is Kilvn's Interference, because it's implemented as a modification of the Integral Tree. It also trespasses a bit on Liminus' domain of Time by defining what a year is in this world without a sun, but that's secondary. I hope Csyphrett will enjoy the image of the Integral Tree creating winter through big blossoms of ice. Maybe this is how the Tree cre4ates all the seasons, each season with its own flower. And these do not need to be limited to the seasons we have on Earth! Dean Shomshak

Isn't that the God of Evil's line? Anyway, a little thought and a bit of writing persuade me I have something Pariah might not find too unworthy of Kylvn. Sociotard: If you want to make Frost Elves anyway, I don't object. If it's okay with Death Tribble as administrator of this Superdraft, it's okay with me. ------------ Kylvn speaks seldom at the banquets of the Gods. Thus some were surprised when he rose and spake: Attend, my holy siblings, friends and foes: An aspect of the World I now ordain. To some an interference cutting deep (Thou seest what I did, Inscissivus!) And yet it may become a gift to all. With thee, O Liminus, I interfere: A span of time I claim, in which My chill Pervadest all the turnings of the World. Recurring cyclical in such a way That all shall feel its shiver many times; And “Winter” I decree shall be its name; A time of dearth for mortals, hunger, fear; And yet a time of comfort by the fire For those who plan and their provisions store. But this my gift to you, O Liminus: In care shall mortals count thy passing days, From winter’s start to winter’s start, that they Might thus prepare; and this, my greater span I do propose that We should call a “Year.” And thee, Volcanis, also meddlest I, Thy weather to become My vehicle: With snow and driving hail on bitter winds, And yet the billows on Thy seas be stilled And silent for a season, ‘neath the ice. But greater still My meddling! For the Tree Integral shall be herald of my time When it put forth great blossoms all of ice From whence as perfume doth My winter come! And yet you may some consolation find, For though My winter comest without fail, Still Thou decidest where the blizzard falls. And as I workest through Thy sacred Tree, The precedent is set and order giv’n: So must the other Gods, if They as well Their seasons would define within the Year. And to you other Gods these gifts I give, That Winter may be pleasing to you all: Inscissivus, the Seasons honor Thee By Time dividing into different spans. And mortals in their combats may discern That Winter is a weapon for the wise To wield against an over-reckless foe. Let Nogram be assured that Winter brings To mortals care for weight and measure, that Day by cautious day they calculate Their provender, that they may have enough To last the unforgiving Winter through. And if by carelessness or unkind chance They find their sums made wrong… Then, Eternus, Their lives do pass unto Thine empery. To Tasha and to Shayol, I confess, I often cannot tell you two apart. Yet both may find in Winter something dear: For in this time of hardship mortals shall Their choices make and characters define. Perhaps they shall be generous, show love, And place the morsel in another’s mouth Despite their belly’s ache and selfish growl. Or callousness display with sumptuous feast While hungering neighbors shiver by the door. To Andrea, I offer only this: That in a time of hard reality, A dream may be the only comfort left And so its preciousness be made more great. To the Fair Star, alas, I little give. My inspiration fails; I have but this: The Cave Elves, living underground, Shall Winter never know: I make no claim Upon their subterranean demesne. And last to Fox, whom I know skulketh near, Unseen, yet seen with Reason’s inner eye, I offer this — a simple gift for one Of simple tastes — Which You shall understand When next you see a mortal strive to walk Upon My ice — and I need say no more! Dean Shomshak

I had intended merely to be a spectator (and occasional kibitzer), but I had in idea for something to do with the God of Cold. I'll let you know in a few hours if I'm able to assume Pariah's duties as the god's developer. Dean Shomshak

If you haven't seen it already, you (and anyone else interested in geologically plausible worlds) may be interested in the Paleomap Project of geologist Chris Scotese. Reconstructed geographies of Earth going back hundreds of millions of years -- and a few speculations about plausible future positions of the continents. Add a Savage Earth-style tilt and you could get some highly realistic, yet nigh-unrecognizalle, unearthly Earths. http://www.scotese.com/ My "Magozoic" D&D settng uses Pangea Ultima, the Earth of 250 million years in the future. Dean Shomshak

I've visited a little bit of British Columbia: a wonderful beach called Kye Bay on Vancouver Island. Nearest town was, IIRC, Comox. The family used to vacation there when I was young. Once a week, the motel owner did an excellent pancake breakfast. I wonder what happened to that place. OTOH all I remember from the passing through Vancouver, BC is a maze of one-way streets and forced turns designed by a deranged sadist. Dean Shomshak

Playing "Who's the expy?" can get complicated when you look at characters from more than one angle. Take Superman for example. A Superman homage in the CU could be... -- A character who has a similar power level and powerset; -- A character who has a similar origin story (subtypes: alien raised on Earth, or last survivor of deastroyed planet); or -- A character who shows a similar personality or mythic role: a living embodiment of the goodness of the common man. Maybe other angles, too. Dean Shomshak

An excellent bit of research! May I add a note or two? As an addendum to the Vandaleur entry, you might mention the other occult dynasties of the CU. The Sylvestri clan of Satanists is comparable in size and power, and detailed in CV2. All known super-powered members are v illains (it comes with the family background), but it is conceivable that a Sylvestri might turn against their heritage while retaining their aptitude for magic. (Though I would not be surprised if they'd been retroactively edited out of Champions Online to make the setting more "family friendly": This is a *very* dark concept and group of villains.) Other dynasties were mentioned in The Mystic World. The Chunhu, a clan of therianthropes, hold a powerful place in the mystic subculture of the Far East: One, "Tiger-Man, acts as a hero in Hong Kong but AFAIK has never been written up. The Kayvanzadi dynasty still flourishes in the Middle East, especially their native Iran. The Magambo of central Africa remain mysterious: The group seems to be made of some sort of vampire, but what sort is not defined, and their name is an ordinary Central African name. It's like being told to beware of the dark power of the Johnsons. I can also add a few *completely unofficial* personal details to the Zodiac Working. This was my first essay into Shared Origins for my own campaigns, though the PCs only met two villains derived from it (Frag and a fellow called Hotspur who wielded a flaming sword). I wrote up a villain team of Zodiac Working progeny called the Demonic Convergence, but never got a chance to use them. But I offer the concept for anyone who wants to make the Working an important part of their CU campaign. Finally, Pagan is my own PC from a friend's campaign. A 4th ed writeup appears in Ultimate Super-Mage under the name Morningstar. As this was a friend's campaign, not mine, his siring was not part of some greater plan (I left open who arranged his conception, but my friend never developed this.) By the time Steve Long ported much of my USM material into the official CU, there was already a Morningstar, so I changed the name to Pagan to prevent confusion. Not that I would expect anyone to buy the .pdf of USM from the HERO store just to get that obsolete writeup. Dean Shomshak

My jaw has dropped twice so far. Well done. Dean Shomshak

And people who are not acting from sincere concerns about livelihoods, or even from frayed nerves. In case I didn't mention it before, another ep of The Daily reported on efforts to trace who's organizing the protests. Keeps going back to groups like the Koch Brothers-funded Freedom Works, or a law firm that has former RNC chair (and former Trump chief of staff) Reince Priebus as a partner, or similar lobbying and activist groups. There is as yet no single piece of documentation tying it together as a concerted effort by the Trump reelection campaign, or by right-wing billionaires upset that too many peons are staying home instead of risking their lives for corporate profits. But wow, it sure looks that way. Dean Shomshak

If anyone's interested, a few days back The Daily (With Michael Barbaro) interviewed both Gov. Whitmer and one of the protesters, giving them both a chance to make their points. Which they did, quite reasonably. This particular protester, however, talked about the business of which his is VP,, which does animal and pest control. He is quite sure the work can be done without an employee coming anywhere near other people. He said he was not happy to find various wackadoodles also showing up the protest. Gov. Whitmer, OTOH, talked about the dangers of *anyone* going *anywhere* -- her example was the gas pump handle everybody touches and so could pass the virus from person to person. I can't say either of them was flat-out wrong. But Mister Pest Control was only responsible for a small group of employees, whereas Whitmer is responsible for everyone in Michigan -- and must make decisions based on a significant fraction of those people being complete idiots. Dean Shomshak

In my newspaper today: A study of more than 600 sunlike stars, using data from Kepler, suggests the Sun might in fact be very unusual. Most stars of its mass, temperature, luminosity, age, rotation and chemical composition seem to have much higher sunspot activity -- Kepler is sensitive enough to changes in stellar brightness that it can tell. Why this matters? Lots more sunspots means lots more magnetic activity producing solar flares and coronal mass ejections to blow away the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets. We may be a "Rare Earth" after all. The story did not address why the Sun might have such an unusually quiet magnetic field. OTOH it did suggest the possibility that the Sun is simply in an unusually quiet few centuries. After all, there was the Maunder minimum -- several decades from the 17th-18th centuries when the Sun apparently had no sunspots at all. Maybe stellar magnetic fields have longer-term variations we don't know about, in which case the higher magnetic activity of other stars is no impediment to sustaining life. Dean Shomshak

In my newspaper today: A study of more than 600 sunlike stars, using data from Kepler, suggests the Sun might in fact be very unusual. Most stars of its mass, temperature, luminosity, age, rotation and chemical composition seem to have much higher sunspot activity -- Kepler is sensitive enough to changes in stellar brightness that it can tell. Why this matters? Lots more sunspots means lots more magnetic activity producing solar flares and coronal mass ejections to blow away the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets. We may be a "Rare Earth" after all. The story did not address why the Sun might have such an unusually quiet magnetic field. OTOH it did suggest the possibility that the Sun is simply in an unusually quiet few centuries. After all, there was the Maunder minimum -- several decades from the 17th-18th centuries when the Sun apparently had no sunspots at all. Maybe stellar magnetic fields have longer-term variations we don't know about, in which case the higher magnetic activity of other stars is no impediment to sustaining life. Dean Shomshak

Thanks, Scott, how could I have forgotten the Discworld? Though the theme here is, "This world is a joke." Sometimes a well-done joke: I have sometimes enjoyed Pratchett's satire or been moved by his characters. But still a joke. Dean Shomshak

In discussing this, Marketplace noted that most of the workers at the plant it examined are Hispanic migrants or African refugees. So... Force brown people to work at a job that will kill them off? Presumably they can still quit, if they don't mind losing their income, but this is starting to look really ugly. Dean Shomshak

Re: Kulthea: I have a map of the continent of Jaiman, in the single Rolemaster product I ever bought. (The Iron Wind, if anyone's interested. I wasn't impressed.) The world as a whole seems to be an Earthlike round planet; though Jaiman (and the little bit of Emer seen at the edge of the map) shows a high fractal number, with lots of long, narrow peninsulas trailing off into island chains, and large bays and inland seas. Sort of like Europe or Southeast Asia, but more so, with no areas of comparatively "un-squiggly" coastline such as one sees in Africa or Australia. In a sense, a "good bits" version of geography. Subtly non-naturalistic, suggesting a world shaped by cataclysm instead of plate tectonics. One could strengthen the theme of fragmentation, though, by creating a setting that is literally a cluster of mini-worlds, such as that in Michael Reeves' The Shattered World and The Burning Realm. In this Fantasy duet, a cataclysm literally broke the world a thousand years ago, but magical runestones on the fragments preserved life, atmosphere and gravity, while both preventing the fragments from either colliding or drifting away. There were ways of traveling between fragments. I don't remember much of the story. Though there was a fairly heterogeneous set of protagonists working sometimes at cross purposes (all I remember are a sorceress and a werebear thief), I don't remember great fragmentation of culture. If I were to build a setting like this, I'd probably go for a profusion of different intelligent species (or at least offshoot subspecies) and Vancian diversity and eccentricity of cultures. One plot might be a threat that can be overcome only by a lityeral or metaphorical coming together of fragmented peoples, such as a treasure hunt for the MacGuffin of Seven Parts, or a ritual that must be performed simultaneously on several fragments whose peoples don't like each other. Or conversely, the people of one fragment might be trying to conquer the rest and so force a reunion and homogeneity, and the challenge is to preserve the chaotic diversity. Dean Shomshak

I can't watch online videos because of my slow connection. What is the "new evidence"? Then... how credible is the sourcing? Given the initial lack of evidence found by the NYTimes, I'd want new evidence checked with extreme care. For one thing, Russian intelligence has meddled in US elections before, backing Trump, and hoaxing is a favorite technique. So if, say, any supporting documents suddenly appeared I would want them closely examined to make sure they aren't forgeries, or any gaps in their provenance. While law enforcement and the media investigate Tara Reade's allegations, I hope they also investigate Tara Reade. Paranoid? Maybe. Perilously close to conspiracy-theorizing, I know. But we live in strange times, with known hidden actors and limits that once seemed uncrossable being crossed weekly. Dean Shomshak

I thought of another example: the geography of Dante's Divine Comedy. The none circles of hell in Inferno are a geographical metaphor of descent, seeing greater and greater evil. Then the mountain of Purgatorio reverses the image, until Dante is ready to ascend into Heaven for the Paradisio. Though as one of my professors pointed out, there's another level. Dante's visionary journey is essentially a straight line: Mount Purgatory is on the opposite side of the world, so even as he descends Hell, he is still moving toward God. So, taking God as the "highest point," he's going upward the whole way. Dean Shomshak

That's a really good example of what I'm talking about, LL. It's Earth, but... not, everything drasticallyt changed and redefined. It reminds me of an excellent websight by a fellow who's worked out several "alternate Earths", the World Dream Bank Planetocopia: http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PLANETS.HTM Dean Shomshak

In his now little-known book Daedalus: Or, Science and the Future, biologist J. B. S. Haldane offered an interesting argument about technological change. The moral virtues (though not the intellictual virtues) are essentially means between extremes. What we think we should do is conditioned by what we can do. Technological advance changes what we can do. As a result, social structures and attitudes that were once in some way functional become untenable. Institutions collapse. Actions which had been good become bad. Perhaps pertinently, "Our knowledge of hygiene has transformed resignation and inaction in the face of epidemic disease from a religious virtue to a justly punishable offense. We have improved our armaments, and patriotism, which was once a flame upon the altar, has become a world-devouring conflagration." The internet vastly magnifies our ability to communicate and access information... and misinformation. It brought us live tweeting from Tahrir Square, and Russian troll farms spinning out hoaxes. I don't know where this leads. But Haldane offers some qualified hope: "I think then that the tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man whom all the prophets and poets could not move, turns at last and extinguishes the evil at its source." But it will be a rough ride until then. Dean Shomshak

I need to start taking notes when I listen to the radio. Last year, I *think* it was On the Media that aired a story about the Great Republican State House Sweep of 2010. Conservatives present this as a great public rejection of the Obama administration's overreach. This story said: Not so much. A conservative activist/strategist (I want to say the same one who came up with the scheme for a citizenship question for the 2020 census, but I can't remember well enough) noticed that state house races involved small vote totals and not much money. So he nationalized them. It didn't take much money -- maybe $10,000 per candidate -- but suddenly Joe Dem faces a blitz of ads and mailings saying he's an evil socialist who hates the flag and wants an Obama Death Panel to kill your grandmother! Of *course* lots of Republicans won. It wasn't a case of Dems bringing a knife to a gunfight: Dems weren't fighting at all. I tried to find the episode to check the source and post a link, but for 20 minutes every attempt to access On the Media's website resulted in nothing for several minutes, then an error message that AOHell had timed out. The World Wide Web is not kind to poor people stuck with dial-up. Sorry, I tried. Maybe someone else can confirm or deny the claim. Dean Shomshak

<Sigh> As usual, I wish I had a sufficiently fast and reliable internet connection to participate. But I don't, so I won't. Heck, I never found time to read all the first World Creation Superdraft... though what I saw looked amazing. Mad props for Cancer's sentient octopoids and Old Man's Aleph, but those were only the most memorable of the creations. Dean Shomshak

Judging from the news programs I follow, within 24 hours just about every doctor in the world said, "DEAR GOD, NO! DON'T DO THIS!!" Or words to this effect. See? Donald Trump does know how to bring people together! <ow, ow, ow my head> Dean Shomshak

Next is the Dualistic World. Many stories are built around conflicts between opposites. A world can be built to reflect that opposition: Good vs Evil, Light vs Darkness, Order vs Chaos, Land vs Water, Science vs Magic, etc. Maybe the world is split into halves that are at war. I’ve read a couple of Fantasy novels set in worlds like this. Mark Geston’s Seige of Wonder is set in a world split between science and magic. Paul Zimmer’s The Stolen Prince (and sequel, IIRC, but I’m blanking on the name) has a world split into light/dark, good/evil sides, with a magical force barrier between them. Back when toys were being turned into comic books right and left, Marvel produced a Crystar series set in a world split between Order/Crystal and Chaos/Magma. There were two rival brother princes, Crystar and Moltar, who’d chosen opposite sides. I only know of this from an issue I bought out of a sale bin as reference on How To Draw People Made Of Crystal, so I can’t venture any opinion on the quality of the world-building or how well the theme of duality was handled. Can you think of other thematic world designs? Dean Shomshak

Philip Jose Farmer’s World of Tiers has a similar design. The world built and ruled by Jadawin is like a ziggurat, with different countries on the various levels. In the first book of the series, the protagonist starts on the bottom level and heads for the top/center. So maybe this world is actually more linear, Start/Finish, than Center/Periphery. Farmer’s Riverworld is even more linear. A world that is entirely one gigantic river valley. Through several books, characters head for the source of the river, which they believe holds the answers to the many mysteries of this world. (And when they get there, I am told, the series turns to crap because the story is over but Farmer keeps writing.) Dean Shomshak

This thread is about using the geography of a setting, on its largest scale, to reflect and enhance the theme of a campaign or story. These worlds are often explicitly not naturalistic. I have a few examples, and I wonder if people can think of more. First consider Creation, the setting for the game Exalted. Creation is flat. At the center is the Blessed Isle (though it’s a good-sized continent), with the Elemental Pole of Earth in the middle – the axis of the world that provides stability to all things. Through most of history, the Blessed Isle has ruled the rest of Creation. The current Scarlet Empire still dominates the Threshold, though its power has recently suffered a check. Around it are the other lands and seas of the hreshold, which fade and fray into the Wyld (you can tell this is a White Wolf game), ultimately dissolving into primal chaos. Four more Elemental Poles – Air, Water, Fire and Wood – set the character of the four quarters of the Threshold, but they don’t matter as much for purposes of this discussion. Creation itself is the cusp where other realms of existence meet: the realm of the high gods, Yu-Shan; the demon realm of Malfeas; and the Underworld of the dead. The Wyld, Malfeas and the Underworld are sources of deadly peril to Creation. The design of the world gives a strong directional quality to campaigns. The bog-standard Exalted campaign begins in the Threshold. From there, PCs can confront major threats from outside while trying to avoid the tyranny of the Scarlet Empire. Ultimately, PCs head for the center and try to conquer the Scarlet Empire because it holds the setting’s Win Button. Capturing the center ends the game. So, the design of the world is essentially a set of concentric circles. The dominant theme is the tension between Center and Periphery. Dean Shomshak