Re: Phlogiston rivers, portals and sphere isolation - Was: Whatever happened to the 3.5e conversions to the Spelljammer Spells?

In <URL:news:local.spelljam> on Thu 30 Mar, David Shepheard wrote:
> This is a new subject branched off from the Locate Portal conversion
> subject. I've repeated the last couple of lines for context:
> 
> [snip-snip-snip-new subject]
> >> >> > Dreamer wrote:
> > Spheres where the river doesn't deliver you near a portal, and
> > there are only a few portals on the surface...
> 
> I don't think Spelljammer ever explained what made phlogiston rivers flow.
[snip]

I like this "portals make rivers" idea, but feel that it may well
change the way that DMs wish to run their campaigns. For example,
a mysterious sphere which has portals moving around on its
surface, or where you have to create your own, or the portals
only open with a special key, might arguably not have any rivers
flowing to or from it.

It sounds like fun, but I'd suggest that it might be presented as
an option for DMs, that want to tie the spheres in their SJ
campaign together in more detail.

The idea of having a list of permanent portals, though, and where
they are on the inside of a sphere, does not depend on any
"portals make rivers" logic.

I think this sort of detail would be fun, and allows interesting
tactics and strategy for DMs interested in that sort of game, for
example based on pirates being based within reasonable striking
distance of an important portal, or cyclic inter-racial wars.

Though, you might want to keep track of astronomical movements
within the sphere to see how this would change over time.


Maybe someone has a Java applet that you could feed planetary
details: orbital distance, shape, starting position (colour?);
a date, and crystal sphere diameter and portal locations, and get
a 2-D image of a solar system? [grin]

(I'm assuming here that most planets and portals will be in the
same 2-D plane - though there might be some fun in having a North
Star portal at the 'top' of the sphere, and maybe another at the
'bottom'.)


> David Shepheard

-- 
Dreamer
dreamer@??????.?????.??.uk
http://www.romsys.demon.co.uk/