Re: My corner of the universe. Shield Space 1 of many

----- Original Message -----
From: "Clint Whelly" <Clint.Whelly@?????????.ca>
Subject: [SPELLJAMMER] My corner of the universe. Shield Space 1 of many

This is my second reply to this.

> Aside from suns, planets, and whatnot, most Crystal Spheres are also filled
> with some sort of "gas" referred to as Ether.  Ether may well not be gas,
> perhaps plasma, perhaps something else.  It is non-reactive chemically,
> extremely thin and has no real effect on vision or movement.
> Ether does not or cannot exist within a gravity well, (up to six times the
> radius of a planetary body or within the air envelope of a ship or object.)

The Concordance actually says that the inside of crystal spheres is vacuum, but if you
want to have your own variant that is ok. However, I'd advise against calling it ether
because it will get mixed up with the ethereal plane. If you write up your campaign
setting for BtM or another Spelljammer website, it would be good if you could separate
this background bit from the rest. Firstly it isn't necessary for people that already know
the setting and secondly your variant rules might not match what other people want to do.

I have to say that apart from your concept of the ether, so far this is very close to the
general background to the Spelljammer Campaign Setting. If you put your setting out to
existing players it might be more convenient for them if you separated the general
background and your variant rules. That way they could jump straight to your variant rules
(like the ether) and not have to wade through stuff they already know to find them.

>  Ether seems to transmit or control temperature within a Sphere where it
> exists, thus the temperature of surrounding space is not necessarily the
> same as a planet.  A planet could be of a higher or lower temperature
> depending on a number of factors.

You are using the ether to explain the temperature of the sphere. I assume that it
conducts the heat from the sun in your rules. Don't forget that you don't need to provide
a scientific explanation for the temperature of a sphere. The properties of individual
spheres can vary greatly just like stars vary. Some spheres could have very cold wildspace
containing frosty clouds and frozen ice and other spheres could have wildspace that is so
warm that things like rubber begin to melt. There might even be spheres that are so hot or
cold that prolonged travel in them is dangerous to a crew. One sphere could be so cold
that metal items freeze to skin and gloves must be worn when handling them. Another sphere
could be so hot that crew members need to drink double the normal amount of water and
there is a chance of spontaneous outbreaks of fire on wooden ships.

> Though thin, Ether does create some drag
> or resistance to movement.  The effects are immeasurable at low speeds but
> increase exponentially, thus only slow-moving objects can "drift" through
> space with no loss of speed.  (Slow being defined as Tactical speed 1 or 100
> Miles per hour or less)  This does not seem to be an effect of friction, as
> there seems to be no correlation between cross section of a ship and
> required power to move at a given speed and streamlining has no effect on an
> object's movement as well.  Mass does play a part of this drag phenomenon
> however, thus small vessels can go substantially faster than big ones given
> the same type of SpellJammer helm as mass vs. power plays a major part of
> sustainable speed.

This drag concept is a different subject to temperature so should really be a new
paragraph. If you are going to use the ether to explain spelljamming speed then you also
need to explain what tactical speed is at some point.

The standard explanation puts both of these speeds down to the way that the magic of
spelljamming helms interact. When something is close to a helm it can not accelerate a
ship it automatically drops to tactical speed. If you really need an explanation you could
say that nearby gravity wells disrupt the helm slightly. When nothing is near to a
spelljamming ship it goes at spelljamming speed. This is the spelljammer equivalent of the
speed of sound or the speed of light and in my opinion doesn't really need a full
explanation to make sense.

Mind you trying to explain things, like spelljammer speed, that are effectively based on
nonsense can easily lead you into a logical trap, if you are not careful. Take my
comparison with spelljamming speed and the speed of sound. Sound travels through different
mediums at different speeds (so does light), so if you tell people that they will wonder
if a ship travels at different speeds through the phlogiston, wildspace and air. Because
they do, people might wonder if they can work out the relative density of all three of
these mediums. That sort of thing is too far involved in my opinion.

Variations in spelljammer speeds for different ships (and I presume different helms and
helmsmen) is an interesting rules variant. I think it could be done without the ether as
well if anyone likes this but doesn't want to use the rest of your ether idea.

However, it is another level of numbers to crunch and that *might* slow down a game a bit.
You could also paint yourself into a corner. For example if the players were in a ship
that could only travel at three quarters of the speed of an enemy ship, there would be no
way to escape. It might be better off to stand and fight to the death than to run several
times, keep getting caught up and have someone keep shooting you in the back until you are
all dead.

> In addition, Ether reacts with the passage of any powered body in space by
> creating a visible wake behind a ship that can last for hours.

Interesting idea. It would probably make piracy a lot easier as pirates could use fast
spelljammer ships to track the wakes of slow spelljammer ships. Again this has a change on
game balance that some people would love and some people wouldn't.

> The faster the speed, the bigger and brighter the wake,
> all ships at SpellJamming speeds produce this wake as a ship at SpellJamming
> speeds needs to be under constant thrust to maintain its given speed.

This doesn't scan right. It looks like two ideas crunched together. I think you should use
two sentences instead.

By the way the idea of a ship needing to be under constant thrust to maintain its given
speed does not fit in with scientific principles for the conservation of momentum.
According to those a body keeps going at the same speed until another force acts on it.

What you could do is make the ether only act to slow down things that travel faster than
tactical speed. That way a helm would need to be powered to make a ship get to spelljammer
speed and anything that interrupted the magic (including meeting another ship or a planet
or the helmsman getting off of the helm or being knocked out) would drop the ship down to
tactical speed immediately.

I personally don't think that science mixes very well with fantasy. I suggest that you
either stick with the canon Spelljammer fantasy rules or make sure you double check
anything that you want to base on science.

> Ether, just like a planetary air envelope, can manifest events referred to
> as weather.  Examples include areas where the Ether is of a substantially
> higher concentration creating true drag effects in these localized regions
> affecting a ships speed and is referred to as a high-pressure system.
>
> Currents can exist and disturbances referred to as Ether storms.  Ether
> storms can be extremely large and powerful sometimes lasting for weeks or
> even years and have been known to create vortices that are strong enough to
> trap some ships and collect enough assorted mass to prevent strategic
> SpellJamming speeds.

Too many uses of the words "referred to" are in these paragraphs. It makes them look odd.

The concept of currents in the ether might cause players to confuse the ether with the
phlogiston as that also has currents. You might need to clarify the differences between
the two to new players if you are going to have both types in your game.

By the way if someone wanted to use your space weather idea without your ether idea they
could use gas clouds float away from planetary air envelopes. Ships that hit these
relatively large air envelopes could be slowed to tactical speed. They could maybe have a
mass of 100 or 200 tons if people want to work out stuff like air exchange. If a large
envelope got broken up into smaller bits a ship could repeatedly accelerate and slow down
as it passed through the region and impacted against each cloud in turn. Not only would
this be very similar to your drag idea it would also seem very similar to a sargasso and
would scare the hell out of players that had read up on the rules for sargassos! LOL

Gas clouds that are destabilised by passing ships that hit the outside, could also
presumably go into a spin and form an invisible tornado that is so strong the helmsman has
trouble getting out of it. If you wanted to be mean, you could even make one hit the ship
so hard that it could create a ship shaken or spelljammer shock critical hit. If you could
knock out the helm the space storm could drag deck crew off of the top deck and throw them
overboard.

Another way to vary spelljammer speed is to say that, rather than being universal, it is a
local property of the wildspace in the sphere that a ship is travelling through. One
sphere could then be faster or slower than other spheres permanently or could even change
at will of the local gods or by using spells. Spelljammer already has sargassos and wild
magic areas and both of these can also be used to change the speed of a ship. Mind you DMs
might want to not use wild magic areas as they might end up having to teleport anvils into
the air above a ship every round! LOL

>  This is a rare event and usually takes a long time to build up, allowing
> ample time to leave the area.  These weather effects seem to be reduced by
> the presence of mass and the more mass in a given area, the less chance of
> Ether phenomenon. As well, enough collected mass will calm or even subdue
> such a storm.  Planetary regions and asteroid fields do not experience any
> of these effects at all.

The ether is a very interesting idea, but I think that you can do most of the things
without it. As I prefer having vacuum, I'd be tempted to use mysterious areas with several
of the properties that you mention instead. However, this is *your* sphere and your game,
so unless you want to explain the official rules, ignore me and enjoy using it. Don't
forget to go though all the Spelljammer rules that mention vacuum and come up with a
replacement rule that substitutes ether. For example:

"Non magical fire does not work in the ether. Anything that is on fire that leave a ships
envelope will be go out after it uses up the air that it takes with it. A magical fireball
will detonate in the ether, but because the ether can not be set on fire it will instantly
go out."

You will also have to make it crystal clear that ether is displaced by a ships air
envelope and surrounds that envelope. This is assuming that you want the ether to do
everything that vacuum does and not penetrate air envelopes the way that phlogiston does.

> Gravity works differently as it only exerts an influence for a distance of
> up to six times the radius of a planetary body.

An interesting variation on the normal air envelope rule. Why did you pick six times? Have
you worked out if the typical moon in a spelljammer setting falls into that zone?

> Nothing beyond that point
> will be pulled down unless it drifts or moves into this limit.  Within this
> limit though, Gravity works just as you know it.

I assume that your rules variation allows captains to put their ships into orbit, turn off
the helm and stay in that orbit.

> Moreover, things that fall
> too fast will toast quite nicely coming through an atmosphere.

The words "toast quite nicely " do not seem to fit in with the relative formality of the
previous work, although you do become more informal later on. I think that it would be
better to keep to one level of formality for an entire section. You can have all of it
being formal or all of it being informal, but if you switch it stands out. If you want to
change styles then I suppose you could do the Planescape thing and have NPCs narrate
informal sections but provide the main rules bits with a  more formal third person style.
I'm not very good at doing that Planescape thing myself, but I think it is very effective
if you know how to do it. The switch in content, if done well, also provides the brain
with a change and stops people getting bored by the large infodump. Mind you if you do it
wrong, it looks corny, so don't do it unless you know how.

By the way, how fast is too fast? I believe that under normal Spelljammer rules anything
that falls into an air envelope without power will accelerate until it starts to take
damage from air friction.

> Gravity
> manifests itself as a binary fixed value.

Huh? Do you mean that you either have gravity or you don't? This sounds like a line of
techno-bable from Star Trek. It would be better to say it in plain English, if you want
people to actually understand what you mean.

> All gravity fields are exactly
> the same force (10 meters per second squared), referred to as 1G.  The only
> exceptions are suns that seem to all have 10G fields, thus a rock 100 feet
> across or a planet 10,000 miles across both manifest the same gravity.  A
> body exerting a 1 G field will exert this exact value at the surface of the
> body or at its edge of effect with no drop off due to distance except at the
> end of its effect where the field simply stops.  There is no transition,
> There is a 1 (or 10) G field or not.

I get the gravity to the edge of the gravity field idea but why have it fixed at 1G or
10G? Isn't there a spelljammer monster that can make a gravity attack by creating gravity
variations. If you fix gravity, then I would presume that you would need to avoid using
this monster.

Also a 10G sun gravity stops people from travelling to a sun as the gravity would squash
everyone onto the deck. If you don't want people to travel to your sun, then you could
make it have a local gravity variation of 10G, but if you don't make this universal it
might help you in the future if you want to run the Crystal Spheres adventure or use the
inhabited fire bodies from Practical Planetology.

By the way if gravity is either off or 1G or 10G then you can't really describe it as
binary, because you are giving it *three* states.

Personally, I would prefer to make most things (including suns, planets and ships) have
gravity of 1G, but make certain items special cases that can either have more or less
gravity. The crystal sphere and stars are one special case of items that normally have no
gravity. Gravity wells (as used in Astromundi) are an example of things that might have
excessive gravity.

> Light is not as fast as in our universe with photons having true mass
> (though slight) moving at about 30,000 KPS or 1/10 normal if you will.  This
> works out to 67 million miles per hour.  For comparison, SpellJammer's move
> at about one million miles per hour at strategic speeds.

Do you really need to explain the speed of light to your players? Do spells travel at the
speed of light? Do people teleport at the speed of light? If nothing actually *happens* at
the speed of light I think it would not actually affect game play.

> This may be one of the reasons why chemical reactions, electrical
> generation, explosions, gunpowder, etc work less than perfectly here -
> because the photon has mass, and it takes energy to create this mass
> (E=MC2), hence the energy available as directive force (i.e.: blast force)
> is less.

E=MC2 only *really* comes into nuclear reactions that actually convert mass into energy.
Chemical reactions, gunpowder, conventional explosions, and electricity are not affected
by this equation as they do not destroy or create matter. If you want to limit all energy
exchange then perhaps you should come up with another explanation.

I assume that you are going to come up with a special energy rule for your sphere.
Something like: "All damage from energy effects within the sphere is halved (with any
fractions rounded up)." You might need to come up with a list of example effects and/or a
quick reference table with the new damage caused by them.

This is getting long again. So I'll write a third email.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://virtualeclipse.aboho.com/