[RPGs that time forgot] Bill Coffin's Septimus

cnath.rm · March 23, 2013, 06:55:07 PM

I'll have to take a look, while I don't know that I was still buying Pal. books while he was there, I used to enjoy his writing/conversation on a Pal. Fantasy email list way back when.

RPGPundit · March 25, 2013, 01:56:10 AM

Quote from: everloss;639553Just read the setting material in the core book and I was not impressed. The 7th empire, that's lasted 7 centuries, and fought a 7 front war... blegh.

Seriously?!

RPGPundit

everloss · March 25, 2013, 10:42:35 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit;640015Seriously?!

RPGPundit

Yup. There is possibly more things related to the number 7, but I stopped reading.

Joey2k · March 25, 2013, 11:49:20 AM

I like D6, but this game never clicked with me, I think because, despite having looked it up several times, I just can't comprehend exactly what a Dyson Sphere is.

One Horse Town · March 25, 2013, 11:52:13 AM

Quote from: Technomancer;640086despite having looked it up several times, I just can't comprehend exactly what a Dyson Sphere is.

Something to do with vacuum cleaners?

Novastar · March 25, 2013, 03:02:57 PM

Quote from: Technomancer;640086I like D6, but this game never clicked with me, I think because, despite having looked it up several times, I just can't comprehend exactly what a Dyson Sphere is.

Theoretically, it's a giant sphere encircling a star, with the inner plane a habitable zone.

To give an idea of size differences, the total surface area of the Earth is about 510,072,000 km^2. The total surface area of a Dyson Sphere in rough Earth orbit is 271x10^15 km^2, or roughly 500 million Earths.

There's also problems with "eternal sunlight" and radiation buildup, in my opinion, but it's sci-fi, so we can engage in Handwavium, to fix those problems.

But there-in lies the problem with Dyson Spheres, in my opinion; they're a scale the human mind cannot logically follow, where the only geographical features are completely man-made and artificial, with a great deal of problems enveloping a star within its' hull.

everloss · March 25, 2013, 03:27:36 PM

There was a Star Trek: TNG episode involving a Dyson Sphere. It also had the return of Scotty, I believe.

The novel series, The Death Gate Cycle also has a Dyson Sphere; the world of Pryan.

Piestrio · March 25, 2013, 03:58:54 PM

Basically a hallow earth except nobody lives on the outside.

And it's all artificial.

And it's a real star on the inside.

And it probably has fewer dinosaurs and mole-people.

Joey2k · March 25, 2013, 04:50:39 PM

It seems like a ridiculous concept. A giant man-made sphere several orders of magnitude larger than a star?

Piestrio · March 25, 2013, 05:47:05 PM

Quote from: Technomancer;640151It seems like a ridiculous concept. A giant man-made sphere several orders of magnitude larger than a star?

Yup. The upshot is that you get to collect 100% of the energy from the star.

Novastar · March 25, 2013, 07:02:41 PM

Quote from: Piestrio;640159Yup. The upshot is that you get to collect 100% of the energy from the star.

The downside? You get 100% of the energy from a star, including flare activity.

Premier · March 25, 2013, 07:55:52 PM

Technically, a real Dyson sphere, as proposed by Freeman Dyson, is a vast swarm of solar collectors orbiting a star, so many of them (assumably arranged in layers) that virtually 100% of the star's light is captured.

The sci-fi Dyson sphere, which would more accurately be called a Dyson Shell, is the rigid megastructure described by others. I don't mind when sci-fi authors or fans borrow concepts from real science and modify it for their own purposes, but than they should also change the name.

cnath.rm · March 25, 2013, 09:38:30 PM

There is also the ring world version, same concept (more or less) as a sphere, but easier to manage.

RPGPundit · March 26, 2013, 05:25:51 PM

Quote from: Technomancer;640151It seems like a ridiculous concept. A giant man-made sphere several orders of magnitude larger than a star?

It presumes a vastly advanced civilization, that could know how to deal with all of the problems inherent in the engineering that people have described.

RPGPundit

cnath.rm · March 26, 2013, 05:48:11 PM

Quote from: RPGPundit;640467It presumes a vastly advanced civilization, that could know how to deal with all of the problems inherent in the engineering that people have described.

and at least in Niven's take on it, in the case building one in our solar system, it would be assumed that the entire asteroid belt, along with at least a couple of planets, would be destroyed and used to build the whole thing...