Adventures on a ringworld

[Utgardloki]

One of the things I was thinking of was making a campaign setting based on a ringworld, like that described in Larry Niven's novel. I don't care for his particular world, but I like the idea of a setting with the surface area of approximately 2,000,000 earths.

One question: what sort of adventures could the PCs have on a ringworld -- adventures that would only occur on a ringworld.

One possibility might be explorers with 20th century-level technology. (Unlike Niven's ringworld, MY ringworld would be stocked with heavy metals and other resources, including artificial coal and petroleum deposits, to development of an indigenous technology.) It could take a long time to fly 600 million miles in a biplane.

One thought: On a standard planet, elves and other wilderness races would get squeezed by expanding human empires that become more greedy for land and resources as they develope technology. However, on a ringworld, such races could find refuge across a barrier such as an ocean and hold off human (and other resource-hungry) invaders until more modern technology is invented, by which time the elves, et al, may invent more powerful magics that can counter battleships and cruise missiles.

 

[weasel_fierce]

its kind of funny, because there was a BRP Ringworld game

 

[Loz]

its kind of funny, because there was a BRP Ringworld game

I've run several Ringworld games over the years and always come up against the same problem: with so much space, it's very difficult to confine players, even with biplanes, they'd be able to shift quite long distances. You then have the mammoth task of mapping out and then shaping scenarios whilst trying to keep-up with their movement. If you ground them, then they could be stuck in a single vast realm which goes to the opposite campaign extreme.

Its by no means insurmountable, but Ringworlds pose huge challenges for GMs.

 

[soltakss]

One of the things I was thinking of was making a campaign setting based on a ringworld, like that described in Larry Niven's novel. I don't care for his particular world, but I like the idea of a setting with the surface area of approximately 2,000,000 earths.

One question: what sort of adventures could the PCs have on a ringworld -- adventures that would only occur on a ringworld.

The main one is finding out where things are.

Ringworld is just too big to make any sense to me. I liked the BRP game but hated the background and setting.

After all, the surface area of the earth is big enough for most things, what's the point of having 2 million of them? Most Sci-Fi Empires have only a few hundred planets, some have thousands, but a Ringworld counts as millions of planets. It's just too big and cumbersome.

One the other hand, you could have any cultures somewhere on the ringworld, so it would make for a very diverse game.

One thought: On a standard planet, elves and other wilderness races would get squeezed by expanding human empires that become more greedy for land and resources as they develope technology. However, on a ringworld, such races could find refuge across a barrier such as an ocean and hold off human (and other resource-hungry) invaders until more modern technology is invented, by which time the elves, et al, may invent more powerful magics that can counter battleships and cruise missiles.

On a standard human planet, perhaps.

There's no reason why non-humans can't push humans out on an alien planet, so orcs could be the dominant species in an area and humans are relegated to being hunted through hills and forests.

Many non-humans have superior technology as well. It might really suck being a human on such a world.

But, something the size of Ringworld is so big that, yes, these species could be found anywhere and humans wouldn't really make an impact on them.

 

[atgxtg]

I suppose one thing that could be unique to a ringworld would be if group A had to deal with group C, but group B was between them.

Group B could theoretically control a "slice" of the ring, and block A from C. Going around the long way just wouldn't be practical. You culd expend this for several groups making trade (and smuggling) interesting.

Toss in some differences in tehcnology, aaugmented by terrain (like a low tech society living in a jungle or in the mountains) and there are some posiblities.

One thing that would also be interesting is finding out just who made the ring any why, assuming that the PCs are from a sepcies that found an existing ring.

But, if you are going to make a ringworld, why not a Dyson Sphere?

 

[Rurik]

But, if you are going to make a ringworld, why not a Dyson Sphere?

Because that takes all the aforementioned problems of scale and multiples them a gazillionfold! :shock:

I'd started a couple games of Ringworld that kinda waffled around vaguely and aimlessly and then dying before hitting on a game that worked.

I found stranding the characters in a low tech area worked well as you could keep them from wandering too far. I had a culture that stressed Arch worship (of course) and on a clear day could see the wall in the distance. Their myths said that was a barrier to another world from which their people came, and if one could reach the wall and scale it they would get to that world, which was of course idealized as a kind of heaven. They faced being wiped out by another race and came to beleive the only way to save themselves was a quest to reach the wall (a journey wrought with danger - natch) and cross to the other side.

Their Myths of course, while based on the truth, were far from accurate. They had come on the wall transit system, though as refugees from the destruction of their original lands, and though their ancient symbols corresponded to transit symbols and could be used to find their old homeland, all that was left was waste and ruins. On the journey they would discover relics and other means to save their people, though at the cost of destroying their whole religeon/belief system. Some would view the quest party (characters) as saviours, others would hate them for tearing down their mythology.

I emphasised the things that make the ring world unique - the arch, the wall, the day night cycles (and myths behind those occasional 'long days'), but kept it localised. The low tech level with ancient artifacts of great power made it feel kind of like a Jorune game.

Unfortunately it petered out for external reasons before reaching it's conclusion, but was great fun while it lasted, and the party enjoyed it.

 

[Utgardloki]

The story so far.....

But, if you are going to make a ringworld, why not a Dyson Sphere?

Because that takes all the aforementioned problems of scale and multiples them a gazillionfold!

I guess I never really appreciated the gravity of the Dyson Sphere. On the inside, gravity cancels itself out. On the outside, gravity can be arranged to be normal, but then why not have a sphere of any arbitrary size I choose? Although it could be an interesting setting -- a world where all the warmth comes from a star inside the sphere, while the outside is in a permanent night.

But I think I'll stick with the ringworld concept. It's easier for me to conceptialize, although I am still considering making my ringworld a mobius band. That would double the surface area.

I emphasised the things that make the ring world unique - the arch, the wall, the day night cycles (and myths behind those occasional 'long days'), but kept it localised. The low tech level with ancient artifacts of great power made it feel kind of like a Jorune game.

Those are great ideas -- stress what makes living in a ringworld unique. I think in my ringworld I won't have that inner ring that provides day and night, so inhabitants live under an eternal noon and would have no concept of night, except that I've decided to have three ringworlds, so the outer two will know darkness when their orbit takes them into the shadow of an inner ring.

After all, the surface area of the earth is big enough for most things, what's the point of having 2 million of them? Most Sci-Fi Empires have only a few hundred planets, some have thousands, but a Ringworld counts as millions of planets. It's just too big and cumbersome.

I guess you won't like my idea for a ringworld empire then .... :shock:

The problem gets even worse if you consider that a world like the Earth can be divided into several "theaters" about 3000 miles across, each theater being a region equivalent to a published campaign world. I would consider the "theaters" of Earth to be the following:
1. Europe-Mediterranean
2. Sub-Saharran Africa
3. Central Asia (including the Middle East)
4. South Asia
5. East Asia
6. North America
7. Central America
8. South America
9. Antartica
10. Australia
11. Oceana (Polynesia)
12. The Arctic

And that's on a planet that is 75% water. If we consider the "average" "planet-area" to be 50% water, then a "planet-area" would have an average of 24 theaters. This means that a ringworld would have 48 million "theaters", or double that if it is a mobius ringworld or if the dark side was also occupied.

With three ringworlds connected by teleportation portals of some sort, that gives me somewhere around 300 million "theaters".

Coming up with a good set of random generation tables might help. Obviously I won't be able to map everything out beforehand.

I see this as the next step up for nonhumans. Third Edition D&D made nonhuman races into characters (although this has always been the case in Runequest). A ringworld can make nonhuman races into entire nations. There's plenty of room.

I am kind of inspired by a DC Miniseries that was published in the 1990s, called Mosaic. That miniseries was set on a planet created by aliens who made a large out of pieces of inhabited planets, to study how the inhabitants interacted.

My backstory could have a race of aliens who did the same thing, and then decided to repeat the project on a larger scale, so they built a bigger planet. Then they decided they wanted to try an even larger scale, and so built a system of three ringworlds.

(Why three ringworlds? A ringworld offers a lot of space, but it is hard to see how different climate zones could be arranged. I thought of a number of ideas, but the most elegant to me seemed to be to have three ringworlds, so that the inner and outer world have tropical and arctic climates, respectively.)

 

[d(sqrt(-1))]

I guess I never really appreciated the gravity of the Dyson Sphere. On the inside, gravity cancels itself out. On the outside, gravity can be arranged to be normal, but then why not have a sphere of any arbitrary size I choose? Although it could be an interesting setting -- a world where all the warmth comes from a star inside the sphere, while the outside is in a permanent night.

Unless you have gravity generation, your gravity will be determined by the mass of the star and the mass of the sphere, so that will fix the size of the sphere. I seem to recall that an early proposal was actually for a disc, like an LP record, with the sun in the hole, but I've never seen this idea used. If you do have gravity generation, then you can make it any size you like, but you also probably don't have to worry abut piffling small details like building it near a sun...

But I think I'll stick with the ringworld concept. It's easier for me to conceptialize, although I am still considering making my ringworld a mobius band. That would double the surface area.

err, I don't think it would - it would mean that it only had one surface and one edge, but I don't think the actual surface area will change as a result.

With three ringworlds connected by teleportation portals of some sort, that gives me somewhere around 300 million "theaters".

Coming up with a good set of random generation tables might help. Obviously I won't be able to map everything out beforehand.

Um, that's rather a lot. Unless you are operating on a VERY large campaign scale, what's the point of so many - you can't possibly deal with them all, and the PCs are never going to see even a minute fraction of them.

(Why three ringworlds? A ringworld offers a lot of space, but it is hard to see how different climate zones could be arranged. I thought of a number of ideas, but the most elegant to me seemed to be to have three ringworlds, so that the inner and outer world have tropical and arctic climates, respectively.)

You could possibly arrange climate by having the ringworld floor angled, so that the sunlight arriving is dispersed over a greater area - that's what the Earth does anyway, and we are actually nearer the sun in winter than in summer...

cheers,

Mark

 

[soltakss]

But I think I'll stick with the ringworld concept. It's easier for me to conceptialize, although I am still considering making my ringworld a mobius band. That would double the surface area.

It doesn't double the surface area, just allows people from both sides to interact. You take a doghnut, cut it, twist it and glue it back together, same surface area.

After all, the surface area of the earth is big enough for most things, what's the point of having 2 million of them? Most Sci-Fi Empires have only a few hundred planets, some have thousands, but a Ringworld counts as millions of planets. It's just too big and cumbersome.

I guess you won't like my idea for a ringworld empire then .... :shock:

No, a Ringworld Empire makes sense. If you are going to have a ringworld then you are going to have a number of empires, just because of the scale.

The ringworld concept actually has several good things going for it:

1. It is completely artificial and hence many creatures can be introduced without any thought on a back history/evolution

2. It is very big, so cultures can evolve in isolation

3. There could be many levels of technology, many species, many cultures, many empires, some having contact, some not

4. The backplot of how the ringworld was formed and whether the makers are still around can spark off a lot of gaming

5. New species can come to the ringworld at any time, unless they are actively blocked

6. You don't have to worry about interstellar travel or communication between alien cultures as they are all on the same world

7. Catastrophes in one part of the ringworld don't necessarily affect the other parts, so you could have nuclear wars and their aftermaths in one place and have other cultures blissfully unaware of this

The problem gets even worse if you consider that a world like the Earth can be divided into several "theaters" about 3000 miles across, each theater being a region equivalent to a published campaign world. I would consider the "theaters" of Earth to be the following:

I even think that those theatres are too big for normal, non-trans-world, gaming. If you have a Robin Hood game, for example, you might focus on England and maybe go to France or Scotland, but wouldn't need the rest of Europe, apart from any pesky crusades. Even Glorantha has Genertela which fits into the USA and very few campaigns even stray outside of their particular part of Genertela.

And that's on a planet that is 75% water. If we consider the "average" "planet-area" to be 50% water, then a "planet-area" would have an average of 24 theaters. This means that a ringworld would have 48 million "theaters", or double that if it is a mobius ringworld or if the dark side was also occupied.

So, with an arbitrary 10 areas in each theatre, you have nearly 500 million areas to map out. Now, even the most prolific GM can only really map out 100 areas in detail for any campaign before the campaign collapses under the weight of the background, so 500 million seems a lot.

Coming up with a good set of random generation tables might help. Obviously I won't be able to map everything out beforehand.

So, you'd have a list of species, a list of terrains, cultures, tech levels and so on and roll a D100 on each list to generate an area on the fly. It might work, especially with gates and portals between each area to cut down on travel times.

I see this as the next step up for nonhumans. Third Edition D&D made nonhuman races into characters (although this has always been the case in Runequest). A ringworld can make nonhuman races into entire nations. There's plenty of room.

That's the problem with games such as D&D. Species will always organise themselves into cultures, tribes, kingdoms, republics, empires or what-have-you. So, I think of nations of orcs, elves, giants, centaurs, klingons, mimbari, wookies or whatever are not just possible or even likely but inevitible.

I am kind of inspired by a DC Miniseries that was published in the 1990s, called Mosaic. That miniseries was set on a planet created by aliens who made a large out of pieces of inhabited planets, to study how the inhabitants interacted.

Now, that's the kind of backstory that would work for a ringworld. Imagine a RW situation where someone builds a zoo/safari park. The snakes in the reptile house would have no idea about the insects or the giraffes or the or the penguins. Each live in a microworld that is separate from the others. But, some of them interact as the zebras, giraffes and wilderbeests roam across the savanna together.

So, it sounds more and more reasonable as a setting

 

[Utgardloki]

Larry Niven's original calculations for his ringworld were for the area that was inhabited. In his ringworld, the 'dark side' was not inhabited. With a mobius strip and artificial gravity to keep the atmosphere from whooshing out the other side, the inhabited area is doubled, even though the total area is still the same.

I guess the "point" of all this space is that it is there. If I wanted a specific target, I could get any value I pleased by changing the width of the ringworld. Only a fraction of the world will ever be developed.

The concept of "theaters" is primarily a way to divide this huge space into manageable portions. You can imagine an epic adventure like Marco Polo's journeys as crossing three (or four) theaters: Europe, (the Middle East -- which I don't consider big enough to be a theater by itself), Central Asia, the Far East). A campaign does not need so much space as this. But the point of a ringworld is to "dream big".

The ringworld engineers may also have been thinking in terms like "theater" especially if their goal was to develop a managerie. ("Let's see. We'll give the trolls a couple of theaters here, and hte ducks can have a theater next to it, and we'll put three theaters of centaurs on the other side...")

More details at 11.

 

[Utgardloki]

In order to conceptialize all this space, I've come up with the following concepts that seem useful:

A "region" is an area that has a certain theme, such as "oriental adventures" or "beholder forest".

A "theater" can be defined as approximately 4 million square miles. (e.g. an area 2000 miles by 2000 miles). This is useful in planning, in that a region may be one or more theaters, or part of a theater. As an example, "Europe" would be about one theater. Eurasia would be about 5 theaters. Australia would be about 3/4 of a theater.

A "stage" is a subdivision of a theater. I figure it convenient to have 12 stages in a theater, so one stage is about 333,333 square miles (e.g. an area about 600 miles by 600 miles). England would be about 1/7 of a stage. The main uses of this concept are for random generation (e.g. a region that is smaller than a theater can be 1-12 stages) and organization of a theater into areas with a more focussed theme.

I guess the main use of these concepts is that it seems that people naturally divide large areas in theaters. Some quick research on wikipedia shows that Europe, Australia, East Asia, and the Arctic region all are approximately the same size, especially if you include surrounding water or land for context. An area isolated by geographical barriers might end up being conceptialized as a smaller area, but in general it seems that people tend to group areas into 4 million square mile chunks.

 

[atgxtg]

I wouldn't bee too concerned about the science behind Ringworlds or Dyson Spheres. I recall that MIT did a study on Niven's Ringwolrd and discovered that it wouldn't work.

Besides, any society sufficently advance to be able to build one, wouldn't need to.

So, if you are assuming that someone is capable of making a ring/sphere/etc. then you can just assume that they can work up an artificial gravity, proper radiatior shielding, etc. They would need to have that sort f technology to be able to make the thing in the first place.

In fact, they could even work it out so the two or even all four "sides" of the ring are yhabitable. So you could have two "mirror" worlds.

You could even work up a mini ringworld, especially if you used a less massive star, but dimmer, star.

Or even a very olf ring, around a dying star. The entire campaign could be focused around either escaping from the ring before the star goes nova, or finding the lost technology of the ancients that might be able to fix things.

 

[Utgardloki]

I've come up with the following ideas for adventures on a ringworld:

1. Scavenger Hunt. Sending the PCs to collect artifacts or pieces of information or anything else is always a good way to get the PCs to go where you want them to go. Sending them from one "theater" to another is a good way to show off a ringworld without having to detail the whole thing.

2. Blowing up a Published Adventure. Many published adventures have pieces that could be separated into different theaters. For example, all the locations in The Witchfire Trilogy are near the city of Corvis, but if adapting that adventure for a ringworld the Witchfire and the Temple of Cyriss could be placed in different theaters of the ring.

3. Where in the Ringworld is Carmen Sandiego? The PCs have to find an NPC, who keeps moving (or the clues keep moving). Because they need to follow her, they won't be likely to go off into areas that I haven't defined. (If they do, it's their fault if nothing happens.)

Edit: other ideas

4. Who Built This Place? This is a difficult one to do, and probably would require doing much of the adventure on the fly with only sketchy notes. The easier variant would be inhabitants of the ringworld are searching for clues about the ancient builders. This would allow the GM more control over where they go, and if their speed is limited, allows him to develop areas as they travel through them. The harder variant would have a Star Trek style campaign where the PCs beam down to the planet and have the freedom to go wherever they want and investigate whatever they want.

An aside, thinking about this, I was struck with the realization of how, with an entire planet to choose from when selecting beam-down coordinates, Captain Kirk is always able to pick the coordinates where he can create the most problems. Uncanny.

Why Not Go to a Ringworld? In this model, the PCs just happen to go to a ringworld, why not.

As an example, for another campaign I was thinking of having a portal that sends the PCs to a world dominated by gnolls. While logic says that such a place could exist, why couldn't it be this ringworld of mine, where logic says that the ringworld engineers would be likely to fill an entire continent with gnolls? This adds a few twists to the adventure, such as having the "off-world" portion take place during an eternal night illuminated with a strange arc of light (i.e., the outer ringworld, assuming the adventure takes place on the middle ringworld).

 

[atgxtg]

I've come up with the following ideas for adventures on a ringworld:



An aside, thinking about this, I was struck with the realization of how, with an entire planet to choose from when selecting beam-down coordinates, Captain Kirk is always able to pick the coordinates where he can create the most problems. Uncanny.

Not proven. Kirk is just able to cause problems anywhere. It is possible that Kirk could potentially cause even more problems in other places! Either that, or Spock has kept that impish sense of humor from early in the series and is purposely sending Kirk to where he can have the maximum effect!

 

[Krimson]

I might be inclined to make a smaller Ringworld which is still on the scale of many world but a might more manageable. Say for instance, the Engineers found their world dying, and instead of building a Ringworld around a star, decided to build it around a Jupiter sized gas giant, which is later ignited into a smaller star. The Engineers might realize there is still the problem of the original star going nova, and thus find a way to implode it into a black hole, where having the same mass, the new Star/Ringworld system could exist for millions if not billions of years.

So say for instance, you put your world out at around the orbit of Io, which is around 262000 miles radius, making the arbitrary decision of where the biozone is. In comparison to Earth's orbit, this Ringworld's radius would be 365 5/13 times smaller. So with that you would have.

Radius: 262,000 miles
Width: 2728 12/19 miles
Spill Walls: Around 2.75 miles high
Circumference: 1,646,194.55 miles
Area: 4,491,858,434 square miles ~14.17 earths

If your habitable area was about 50% then your break down would be about 561.5 Theatres, or 6738 Stages (at 12 stages per theatre) which is still massive, but far more manageable than 500 million areas to map.

On a side note, has anyone thought of trying to run an RP in Niven's Smoke Ring setting? Somewhat more akin to living in a giant airy fishbowl.

 

[Utgardloki]

If using the "Star Trek" idea, it might be a good idea to make a mini-ringworld as a more managable variant. I might also have my ringworld engineers make a mini-ringworld as a prototype version for their giant versions.

A mini-ringworld could have a manageable number of "theaters", although for my purposes there would be a danger of running out of theaters.

I think it is important to understand that all one needs to do to manage a ringworld is come up with an overall strategy for populating it, and perhaps prepare notes for a few unassigned areas so one can be ready to slap it down underneath the PCs wherever it is needed.

It's kind of like my vision of running adventures on the outer planes. The way I see it, the outer planes are each of infinite extent, so there is really no way to define the whole plane. What one can do is define areas of the plane and a general idea of what the rest of the plane looks like.

Compared to mapping the 666 layers of the Abyss, mapping out a ringworld is just a little job. :shock:

 

[Utgardloki]

Actually three things -- if I am going to start placing regions on my ringworld, I will need to determine a coordinate system for placing them. This means each ring needs a point of reference to define "0 degrees longitude".

I'm sure I'll think of something though.

 

[Krimson]

Actually three things -- if I am going to start placing regions on my ringworld, I will need to determine a coordinate system for placing them. This means each ring needs a point of reference to define "0 degrees longitude".

I'm sure I'll think of something though.

One idea is to divide the world into stations, like the zodiac signs in the sky. The Zodiac has 12 stations, of 30 degrees each. Numeration of each degree could be done spinward or anti-spinward depending on preference. You could use as many stations as you like, so long as the system makes sense to you. And then name them as you like, since it would be unlikely they would be named for the earthly western zodiac. However being able to say something is at 15 degrees, 12 minutes, 30.05 seconds Kzinti Station gives a notable reference without the need for an arbitrary 0 degrees longitude.

Likewise, latitude could be represented as either right or left of spinward, instead of designating it north or south (I can't remember if that's how Niven did it, its been a long time). Though another unit might be needed, since the width of a ringworld (based on Niven's model) is less than 0.6 degrees based on its circumference. For the sake of convenience, this works out to about 36 minutes (60 minutes in a degree). So you could have it go something along the order of 18 minutes left and 18 minutes right. This would give you a set of coordinates something like:

Kzinti 15°12'30.05" Right 9'22.3"

Of course, that's only a suggestion to add some flavor.

Also of note is that you may need finer units of measure. On a Niven sized Ringworld, One second (being 1/3600th of one degree) is about 463 miles. So one second squared would be slightly larger in area than France.

 

[AKAramis]

I've thought about running in the Smoke Ring... but never had enough players interested.

 

[Utgardloki]

I think I will use the idea of dividing the rings up into zones. Then by naming one zone to be #1, it will be easy to note a location on the ring. It would make more sense to use miles rather than degrees, since the ring is like a cylinder instead of like a sphere.

I also came up with another idea while driving home from work: what about putting the ringworlds in the Alpha Centauri system. This solves the Star Trek problem if I decided to have explorers from Earth find it, because they'd be finding it with much more primitive spacecraft and technology. Also, given that I am making the dark sides inhabitable, it just so happens that Alpha Centauri B is close enough to provide a little bit of light even if it does not provide a significant amount of heat.

If my calculations are correct, Alpha Centauri B should provide more illumination to the dark side than the full moon, but less than the sun, being magnitude -17. That's if my calculations are correct. I'm not exactly sure how much that would be -- about 64 times the light of the moon, of 1/6561 the light of the sun. Alpha Centauri B could also be seen on the light side of the rings as well.