Making a Fantasy Game (PhoneLobster, please stay out)

[Parthenon]

Apparently golems can see. I suggest golems on floatstone platforms using semaphore if magical communication is not used.

I like that idea. Since golems don't have to be humanoid I can imagine a floatstone with some scaffolding around it with a couple of semaphore golems on top and some spider golems making repairs.

Does this mean that it only works during the day though?

Alternatively, some kind of golem pairing ritual that enables them to act as a unidirectional, or bidirectional remote scribe system may be sufficiently infrastructure heavy that long range communication is costly and, hence, only going to serve metropoli and military infrastructure.

Interesting... could be something like a pantograph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantograph so you can put a form in front of a golem and it copies it to another golem somewhere else. This would also make copies at either end. Like a really slow fax machine.

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If you allow skymages to know precise locations of a particular floatstone, that alone allows for communication across vast distances; just move the rock like some kind of morse code signal. This would require a skymage at the rock to convey the message, but it would allow dissemination of information at incredible speed.
...

This is a nice idea, but I'm not sure how it would work. Especially when communicating with a skyship. You would need 3-4 skymages per communication bridge to run it in shifts and in case of accidents/illness. Each skymage would only really be able to deal with one bridge at a time or would get confused if there are multiple messages at one time.
Then there is the problem of finding the particular floatstone a long way off. You would either have to be able to 'see' a far away floatstone or to be able to keep track of it for weeks on end including during sleep.

I strongly suspect that ciphers would become a booming business in Redarhkan politics.

I agree, especially if semaphore is used. Heh, I can imagine a quest where some researchers have lost an Enigma machine and need you to find it before its secrets are disseminated to the world.

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Heres my suggestion.

There are four main forms of communication.

1: Mail. Standard mail and small packages are stored together then sent off as a batch every couple of days. A letter may take a week or two to arrive.

2: Courier. Takes a single document or package to a certain place. Could take a couple of days.

3: Pantograph faxing using twinned golems. Copies precisely a black and white page. Takes 30 minutes for a basic page of writing, or a couple of hours for a technical drawing.

4: Semaphore telegraphs. Small messages of a sentence or two. Takes up to 10 minutes to get to another island, 15 minutes if ciphered. Then messengered by hand/golem, taking up to an hour or two.

Each one in turn is more expensive but takes less time. Semaphore is mostly used for communication between rulers or public announcements to be made.

[virgil]

This is a nice idea, but I'm not sure how it would work. Especially when communicating with a skyship. You would need 3-4 skymages per communication bridge to run it in shifts and in case of accidents/illness. Each skymage would only really be able to deal with one bridge at a time or would get confused if there are multiple messages at one time.
Then there is the problem of finding the particular floatstone a long way off. You would either have to be able to 'see' a far away floatstone or to be able to keep track of it for weeks on end including during sleep.

From what Frank mentioned, detecting a stone wasn't like a radar detecting all stones in the area. Instead, it was knowing what stone to look for and then know its coordinates.

If you land the ship, the fact it hangs from its floatstone means you can use its own 'engine' as the message delivery service. This makes the pilot able to fill the same role as message delivery; though having an 'emergency' engine and more than one skymage allows the backup stone to be used primarily if messages are sent mid-flight. It's even easier if the pilot can maintain concentration to move a ship and 'watch' the central message stone (ideally giving an ID code).

[MartinHarper]

That's just an unavoidable result of stones supporting their own mass.

If floatstones are flat disks, or if they are hollow solids, then this isn't a problem.

[Beth_Naught]

I like golem semaphore and mica telegraphy quite a bit - mimeography, though, is going to ensure that important people don't use couriers much and is kind of a paradigm shift (if you'll excuse the jargon). The skymages' tablets of Enlil probably cover telegraphy already, as they receive positional information in real time. It'd be like honeybee dancing, except a gigantic levitating rock is dancing somewhere over the horizon.

I'd also like not founding all Redarkhan magic on floatstone, especially ironwork (since that's going to be happening mostly in the scrap heap and Hive Acatl anyway).

In any case, cities are more like traditional uprooted islands and less like this

?

(Zdzisław Beksiński)

This isn't a particularly useful post, sorry. I'm still trying to assemble the large number of contradictory threads into some coherent system

[zeruslord]

Redharkan is a specific culture. The iron guys are, as you said, the Scrap Heap and Hive Acatl. The world's magic is not based on floatstones, but the Redharkan's is essentially all stone-based.

[Beth_Naught]

Redharkan's is essentially all stone-based.

Yes. But not exclusively floatstone based

There doesn't seem to be any particular reason why a PC from Redarkhan would necessarily have one of those attention gobblers.

[IGTN]

You still have to know exactly what effects these stones (and their other powers) have on their society. If they're that awesome, that's important.

[Parthenon]

mimeography, though, is going to ensure that important people don't use couriers much and is kind of a paradigm shift (if you'll excuse the jargon).

Hmmm... I see what you mean. I put forward the idea mostly to be able to move records about easily. There are a huge amount of records created every day and it would probably be a good idea to have a centralised data store, so I was giving suggestions to do that.

In any case, cities are more like traditional uprooted islands and less like this

(Zdzisław Beksiński)

While that is awesome, I get what you mean. My problem is that having the float stones in the middle of the island (whether in one place or dotted about the island) will cause the bottom of the island to fall away, but having the entire bottom of the island being floatstone is stupid. Unless there was some sort of magical tectonic bullshit that caused large sections of the ground to become float stones and rise up into the sky. Which would cause there to be too much float stone. Aaaaand I'm rambling again.

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I really don't like using the stones themselves as communication.

First of all, there is the problem of the sculptor having to actively perceive a distant stone. This would require either knowledge of individual stones or having each stone be unique and identifiable. (whether with "ID codes" or having runes in them making them unique or whatever). Then there is the timing issue- unless you repeat the message over and over or it is really easy to concentrate on lots of stones at once you are likely to miss the message.

Secondly, to make the stones movement noticeable and perceivable it will have to move a noticeable amount. This could have a really bad effect if you are trying to move your engine around a lot. Now, this would vary depending on whether your knowledge of its position is relative to you or absolute. If it is relative to you then it would be difficult to notice small movements in the same way as it is difficult to make out fine detail on far way objects. Knowledge of the absolute position could become very confusing (training could overcome this I guess).

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Now, the knowledge of the position could be overcome by having it be relative position to another f-stone. How I'd imagine this is to have some sort of box with one flone of about 2cm kept still and another of about 2cm moving. Sort of like a ouiji board but in 3D, and the sculptor controlling the stoat.

(Sorry, trying out different variations on shortenings of floatstone. None seem to work unfortunately)

However, this means that when flying the sculptor has to control 3 stones instead of one.

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I think the main issue is how far away a sculptor can sense or change stones, and how much they can concentrate or change at once. The more and the further away, the better this would work.

Hmmm.... looking back over the threads:

Navigation is handled relative to Redarkhan - kind of like the Astromicon from 40K. The Earthshapers can detect some special detectable rock there, and they make distance and direction calculations relative to that.

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Navigators are, with sufficient concentration capable of finding virtually any stone anywhere in the world. So ingrained upon the Tower are they during training that every Navigator is constantly aware of its precise location relative to themselves, even while asleep.

This says that the Navigators can detect this material within Redharkan. Sort of like Redharkan is magnetic North. This probably means that detecting stones would be done relative to Redharkan, so if you are 1,000 miles away moving the stone back and forth a centimetre or so is not noticeable. Or maybe I'm making this more complex than it actually is.

Okay, lets say that hypothetically a Navigator can find and notice a 1m cube over 100 miles away wiggling 2cm back and forth at 3hz in a morse code. Every single day there are 50-100 skyships bringing hundreds of tonnes of food to each city (I went back and reestimated the number), a mail ship or two, some couriers, some tourists, diplomats, etc, etc. If there are 100 or so stones in the air, how can they differentiate between them? Air traffic codes at the beginning of each message? It would be like an air traffic control building with hundreds of Navigators and Sculptors carefully organising everything.

Computers make everything so much easier...

[NoDot]

OK, I know it's associated with Iron, but question: what does Void Magic do?

[zeruslord]

If I remember correctly, Void Magic is metamagic in the broadest sense - magic about magic.

[virgil]

Oh, if you make detection of a stone with a sufficiently large margin of error, then sending messages via oscillation would be way too much effort; especially if you strength of signal inversely proportional to distance (less strength = more concentration to find) and require triangulation to be able to put its location down on a map.

It's established that the Auditors can maintain an electronic banking system. This alone implies at least some level of remote information distribution, though the exact nature depends on how those clay tablet credit cards work.

There needs to be something significant with the navigators besides being the people you use for stolen ships, because they're as significant to the culture as the people who move the ships and maintain credit. Utilizing their stone sensing powers to coordinate information with the other two guilds seems like a sufficiently powerful role to maintain order in a large city.

As for city construction, someone mentioned the bottom of the city having many cathedral-like arches, which I think would look cool enough to do, as that allows for the concentration of quite a bit of weight onto a small point. Throw in 'random' pieces of floatstone on the surface with great chains to pull up on parts of the city, and things should look sufficiently fantastical. This does bring in a personal opinion on the supposed strength of bronze chains, as I was under the impression it took iron to make them strong enough to be of any use beyond jewelry.

[name_here]

It's like vacuum for magic, i think. Only less extreme

[zeruslord]

You need a Navigator in order to not get lost over the hundreds of miles of trackless solid jungle on the Redarkhan peninsula.

There was some discussion about having temporary floatstones. It might resolve some of the problems with moving around communication floatstones, but it might have practical problems.

Moving somewhat away from Redarkhan, what do we see being the archetypal party or characters from each culture? I assume Atayala is not going to be part of it, but we have about a dozen potential adventurer archetypes just in the culture series.

[Beth_Naught]

...sending messages via oscillation would be way too much effort...

Hee. I thought that was a feature, honestly. A few short movement patterns with predefined meanings allow for business and status reports but don't allow real time reconnoitering or love letters. And for what it's worth, having only two reference points (your pet rock and Skymage Academy) gives you enough information to calculate distances but not enough to calculate position, so triangulation and a third reference point are needed.

Anyway, without some kind of limitation, long distance communication inevitably becomes cell phones, and those change the world vastly more than a city which isn't earthbound.

Quantum entangled sand trays and Enigma Code breaking adventures are sufficiently cool to be worth including, though. And they do make the Auditors fearsome - even an accountant becomes scary if they have access to the Panopticon.

While that is awesome, I get what you mean. My problem is that having the float stones in the middle of the island (whether in one place or dotted about the island) will cause the bottom of the island to fall away, but having the entire bottom of the island being floatstone is stupid.

I prefer the Beksiński myself I just don't want to natter on the one point when there's so much left to do.

Manipulating the gross physical properties of earth, however, is something that people have to be able to do regardless of how the islets are engineered. Stones supporting an arch have nowhere to distribute force; stones embedded in the islet need to not drill themselves out as though you'd tried to hang an eighteen wheeler from a brass tack; stones attached to cables need strong anchors and elastics both; stone spread out to cover a surface is paper thin and would shatter after it's been rained upon. And while Skymage Academy itself may be a singular project that can't be repeated anymore, most folks can probably gradually soften rock to putty, pour it into a mold, and reharden it - so Redarkhan has the world's finest pottery for export (if you can afford it), and the Transmute: Basalt -> French Onion Soup followed by Transmute: French Onion Soup -> Basalt combo comes on line pretty early.

I dunno. Reverse engineering necessary properties of the magic system from fluff tends to yield unspecific results

[virgil]

I thought that was a feature, honestly. A few short movement patterns with predefined meanings allow for business and status reports but don't allow real time reconnoitering or love letters. And for what it's worth, having only two reference points (your pet rock and Skymage Academy) gives you enough information to calculate distances but not enough to calculate position, so triangulation and a third reference point are needed.

Using gross physical displacement instead of making everyone on board seasick by jiggling sounds like a good compromise for 'simple' message delivery without turning it into cell phones. Didn't quite think about that.

Wait, what's the problem with having arches on the bottom of your city? You set up numerous stone pillars, buttress out the space between them, and then lay out your 'ground' over this. I'm not sure what kind of ground we want for the city states, but I think a form of 'minor' floatstones that can be more easily applied at the cost of lifting power (their own weight, at best) sounds like a good idea for foundation material to start slapping buildings atop of.

[JonSetanta]

I prefer the Beksiński myself I just don't want to natter on the one point when there's so much left to do.

Yeah, he practically abused the concept of "random creepy floating structure" in his works.

[Username17]

It's established that the Auditors can maintain an electronic banking system. This alone implies at least some level of remote information distribution, though the exact nature depends on how those clay tablet credit cards work.

There needs to be something significant with the navigators besides being the people you use for stolen ships, because they're as significant to the culture as the people who move the ships and maintain credit. Utilizing their stone sensing powers to coordinate information with the other two guilds seems like a sufficiently powerful role to maintain order in a large city.

That's I think what I was going for, yeah.

As for city construction, someone mentioned the bottom of the city having many cathedral-like arches, which I think would look cool enough to do, as that allows for the concentration of quite a bit of weight onto a small point. Throw in 'random' pieces of floatstone on the surface with great chains to pull up on parts of the city, and things should look sufficiently fantastical.

Yeah, sounds very cool actually. Especially if for whatever the stones actually supporting things are cubes on their points. Then you'd get these weird three pronged arches supporting the platforms that I think could look pretty cool.

This does bring in a personal opinion on the supposed strength of bronze chains, as I was under the impression it took iron to make them strong enough to be of any use beyond jewelry.

The Ultimate Tensile Strength of Cast Iron is 276 MPa, and the Ultimate Tensile Strength of Bronze is 255 MPa. At least, according to MatWeb (the Materials Property Database). Really, those numbers seem pretty similar to me. If you had to make your bronze links twice as thick (which as far as I can tell, you wouldn't, but probably should anyway because super thick chains look awesome), you could still be well ahead of the weight game if Iron drained the powers of the stones much more than its own weight. Bronze is only 23% heavier than cast iron on a "per cubic centimeter" basis.

Quantum entangled sand trays and Enigma Code breaking adventures are sufficiently cool to be worth including, though. And they do make the Auditors fearsome - even an accountant becomes scary if they have access to the Panopticon.

There's an idea. In general, rapid communication undermines fantasy plots and society much less than rapid travel does. No one complains that D&D society is brought down by sending, but how often do you see people wax poetic about how much they hate teleport? The advantage of the quantum entanglement sandbox, is that it doesn't even get rid of the idea of unexplored islands or lost tribes, because it only connects points where the sandboxes have been physically moved to. So any other crazy fantasy stuff can still be around. Heck, you can easily have whole lost villages inside Redarkhan at that rate - because anything that doesn't have access to a comm unit and isn't under a trade route could seriously be overlooked for a century or more.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

'Captain, I'm picking up a strange warp signature.'

[virgil]

Floatstones work as a large scale tack in the sky that only Sculptors can move around at limited speeds, and too much force/weight pulls them out of place (falling normally until a Sculptor 'repins')? Add on top of this, iron weighs noticeably more for floatstone lift.

Sculptors fly the ships and make the air city, Navigators map things out & hunt rogue airships and run the comm units (sand trays, floatstone mapping or oscillating?), while Auditors do all of the bureaucratic things (including designing ciphers) that keep everything running smoothly?

The large size islands have cathedral archways below them (good spot for airships to dock to raise into the city), with floating boulders attached to varying points by chains to lighten their load?

Redarkhan is known for airships, trade, banking, & golems.

Have I left out anything important for gameplay awareness, barring nitty gritty character abilities?

[name_here]

Crossposted from the other thread.

Now is probably as good a time as any to talk about airship combat. Airship combat is kind of like navel combat, except that sinking works differently and there is a third dimension. Basically, being above your enemy relative to your gravity is generally better than being below or next to, because you can drop things on them. How much better depends on gravity, and it might roll over to worse if you can't shoot down well and they've got upward armament that can be used on things over them. Range is also a factor, but the person on top HAS the range advantage unless ammo has independent flight of some form and then the person on top hits sooner, which only matters at longish distances when there's a multi-round flight time.

The other thing to remember is that there's no beating ranged weaponry by better tactics unless you're the hunted or you can hide against the sun. In the clouds would work, but only if the other airship flies close enough to them to be surprised. Higher speed beats ranged weaponry, but you can't force them to attempt to board you. Also, ramming only works if you hit whatever in the setting is providing lift, as it doesn't do much damage to parts of the ship you don't hit.

A battle will generally go like this:

1. Ship A, which has better ranged weapons, sees ship B, which has worse ranged weapons but (they hope) better boarders.
2. Ship A moves to gain altitude. Ship B moves to keep Ship A from getting the altitude advantage so they don't get totally owned by rocks fired from the lower weaponry and to close the range. Generally, the remainder of the battle is a formality if Ship A outruns Ship B and range is long enough that the sudden reverse trick can't get Ship B close enough to board
3. They get in range of each other, and one of them may be higher than the other. If it is Ship A, Ship A drops things on Ship B while cackling madly. If it is Ship B, Ship A will try to get directly under and hope their balistae or whatever can prove good enough to beat Ship B's downward balistae and portholes of dropping things. If these are floatstone ships, the upper ship will try targeting the pilots if they can, until they win the lower ship's floatstones provide defense because the skymages can reset the base point if it is moved too much and they're pretty much impossible to destroy enough to break the magic.
4. If neither is higher, Ship A runs like hell with Ship B chasing while both shoot. Unless Ship B doesn't think this will work out for them, in which case they run for clouds or toward a cave the crew can hide in.
5. At some point, the ships get in effective bow range of each other and archers add to the fire going back and forth.
6. FINALLY, there is a boarding action. Unless Ship B outruns Ship A a lot, Ship B may well be too beat up for them to win.

The thing is, ranged weaponry is pretty much king. There's no real cover for skyships in places other skyships need to go, so only speed can force a boarding action. Also, war ships aren't going to be like galleys, since they don't need rowers. Some of them might be like man-of-war ships, but you can't do that with catapults, only balistae.

EDIT: The hard part is locating the gravity bands. The actual mechanics aren't hard. It's actually perfectly acceptable to me to have simple mechanics for what any band does.

[zeruslord]

Do we really need airship combat rules? I was assuming that to the extent that there are airship fights, the rules consist of "Tower Wins!" If PCs are expected to have an airship and either turn to piracy or hunt down pirates, this will matter, but if it is not specifically important, I'd just as soon assume that the RN shows up and wins. I have some suggestions, but it's probably more important to examine the Jarbah or Hive Acatl in depth than to dig too deeply into airship combat.

Actually, what I'm really interested in is the Hydrophobe guys. Is there a Culture Focus for them?

[name_here]

Really, you don't need specific airship combat rules, because the various situations that can otherwise come up combine to include dropping things from airships, trying to board airships, and shooting seige weapons at airships. But yeah, the whole stealth water vessal mention has me curious.

[Username17]

Actually, what I'm really interested in is the Hydrophobe guys. Is there a Culture Focus for them?

There is now.

Hive Moskitia. Kind of a mix between Vikings and Malay pirates. As an Ormigan Hive.

-Username17

[Tsuzua]

The Ultimate Tensile Strength of Cast Iron is 276 MPa, and the Ultimate Tensile Strength of Bronze is 255 MPa. At least, according to MatWeb (the Materials Property Database). Really, those numbers seem pretty similar to me. If you had to make your bronze links twice as thick (which as far as I can tell, you wouldn't, but probably should anyway because super thick chains look awesome), you could still be well ahead of the weight game if Iron drained the powers of the stones much more than its own weight. Bronze is only 23% heavier than cast iron on a "per cubic centimeter" basis.

In addition of being awesome, they'll also make thick chains for massive over-engineering. You really don't want those things breaking at the links after all and people usually heavily over-engineered big important stuff before there was good modeling (such as the Brooklyn Bridge and various ancient monuments).

[virgil]

How does water sculpting work? Is it some kind of non-melting ice, what happens when it breaks, does it respond to heat or liquid water in any fashion, does iron discorporate it or go through it like water, can it be used with any liquid or only pure water, can it be used as a purification process, how small & precisely can it be made (can you make machines with it), how heavy is it, how long do they last, can temporary models work, what's the upper limit on hardness?

As for their Life magic, does their magic only really deal with expediting plant growth & health?

A larger question. Is all of this magic just a skill anybody can be taught, and is it on the order of years of dedication to get the good stuff, making multidisciplinary magicians very rare and very deadly (renegade Atayala Air Mage learning Ormigan Fire Magic, for example). Heck, are there rare techniques that only work through combined mastery/use of two or more magical styles?