Sometimes the tavern just won't cut it and sometimes your question is just a little bit too small to warrant its own thread. So where do you take this little question? Here of course!
I propose a FAQ format of a sort where questions are preceded by Qn and answers by An where n is the number of the question. So you post questions (preferably with some vague connection to your setting/gaming work) and other people post answers.
Q1: What aspect ratios are used for maps? Just 1:2*pi straight, or does the transformation from sphere to plane screw it up somehow?
Q2: Would a person be able to eat with a slit chin? (think the Joker/the general from Pans Labyrinth)
Q3: In a grim urban campaign, what would be a better villain: a telekinetic killer who flays his victims or a telepathic killer who forces witnesses to watch and then suppresses the memories.
A2: If I remember *any* of my Biology classes rightly, then it should not be a major problem. I seem to recall that most of the muscles responsible for chewing were further back on the jaw; cheeks were mostly just connecting tissue I thought. Depending on how well it healed though, it could certainly cause pain, even as a healed scar. And you might, err, leak food and drink until the wound healed.
A3a. Depends on what is "Better". I, personally, favor the former. The telekinetic killer has two things going for him or her. 1: Lesser evidence. Depending on the proximity required for the telekinetic ability, it is possible that the killer can avoid leaving any meaningful evidence on his or her victims, thus making it harder to convict them, even if they are arrested. 2. Torturing witnesses is still leaving witnesses. It is a very egotistical thing to lay your secrecy on the hope that none of those witnesses gets their memory back. It's wiser to just not have any.
A3b. The latter could work better as a device in a horror novel, however, especially one told through the perspective of one of the witnesses whose memory was suppressed. Aside from that, my vote is still on the first option.
Q3: What would an empire named after a man called (Marius) Volge (soft g) be called? (a la Napoleonic Empire)
Volgedeborrean Empire? Volgeriad Empire? Volgic Empire?
The empire has vague russian/east europaean subtones.
Ah, I had forgotten this existed.
A4: I personally like the sound of the Volgic Empire, especially with the soft g. The others seem a little too wordy for my tastes.
Q5: What would be the next best thing for a world to use as a timekeeping device (i.e. months) if it didn't have a moon?
EDIT: I do not mean to override SC's question with my own - please feel free to answer either his and/or my question.
A4: Volgeid Empire would work if he started a dynasty (which would be called "the Volgeids") and the empire itself was named after the ruling dynasty.
A5: Seasons might work if you stick to the subarctic/temperate/subtropical climate zones. In the tropics proper, the four seasons are no longer observable (though you may instead observe a rainy season and a dry season). also, seasons are the opposite for northern and southern hemispheres (when it's summertime in northern hemisphere, it's wintertime in southern hemisphere, and vice versa.)
If you want a system that would still make sense for a civilization that spans from the temperate to the tropics, or even from northern temperate to southern temperate zones, it would be better to look to the celestial bodies for a natural "clock". The sun would give you 4 obvious points of significance (2 solstices and 2 equinoxes) which could mark the passing from one "month" to the next. Or perhaps there could be something like a flock of asteroids on an eccentric orbit around the planet. They would appear on the sky (that is, come close by) at regular periods, perhaps causing minor meteor showers. I'm not sure how realistic or stable this kind of scenario would be though, I'm not that knowledgeable on astrophysics.
Q6: How would a free-running sleep cycle affect society at large? Mare Eternus has no suns and so nothing that can direct circadian rhythms. From what I have gotten from research regarding blind people and those living north of the arctic circle with its many month long days and nights the standard result of a lack of a day/night cycle is a free-running sleep schedule.
I imagine that businesses, restaurants, and bars would never close.
A5: Would be neat to keep time by watching the migratory patterns of animals.
That's a cool idea.
Do aquatic creatures have sleep cycles as we understand them? If your playable species don't really sleep ~8 hours every ~24, and if there's no diurnal light cycle, you might not even necessarily have the concept of a "day" at all.
Quote from: Luminous CrayonThat's a cool idea.
Do aquatic creatures have sleep cycles as we understand them? If your playable species don't really sleep ~8 hours every ~24, and if there's no diurnal light cycle, you might not even necessarily have the concept of a "day" at all.
That is a very good point. You might have short periods of time (measured from heartbeats or drips of water or something like that) and then just have longer time periods extended from that. If I keep the drips/heartbeats/whatever the same as a second then it would still keep the base amount of time so that I could tell people that something was x minutes/hours away. They might have some analog for a day though for synchronizing schedules though I'm not sure how I'd do that.
Maybe there could be a regular rhythm to the flow of watery streams?
Quote from: GhostmanMaybe there could be a regular rhythm to the flow of watery streams?
I've looked into things like that but they seem to artificial and forced. Perhaps the clockwork itself might provide queues that affect how time is measured.
A5 continued: Instead of developing the pendulum to measure a specific span of time, timekeeping could have been developed to fit the periodic oscillations of a standardized pendulum. Essentially, your world would develop spatial units first (length, weight) and extrapolate a temporal unit from that. 1 time unit = the time it takes for one arc of a pendulum weighing 1 weight unit using a 1 length unit string.
Q4: continued. Volgic seems very short on the other hand? I was considering Volgorod, but that sounds more like a city.
Quote from: Superfluous CrowQ4: continued. Volgic seems very short on the other hand? I was considering Volgorod, but that sounds more like a city.
[OFFTOPIC]
That's because
gord/
gorod/
grad(e) is a slavic word meaning a fortified settlement. Which is why it is found in several modern city names, such as Belgrade. There is actually a Russian city named Volgograd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volgograd), on the Volga.
[/OFFTOPIC]
Quote from: Superfluous CrowA5: Would be neat to keep time by watching the migratory patterns of animals.
That is actually a very cool idea that I had not considered. I have a semi-biopunk feel going for the setting I'm working on, so that would fit right in nicely. I've been designing a lot of unique and original animals to fit the theme of the world, so having a timekeeping
animal would be really fun to create and build a mythos around. However...
Quote from: the time it takes for one arc of a pendulum weighing 1 weight unit using a 1 length unit string.[/quoteQ4: continued. Volgic seems very short on the other hand? I was considering Volgorod, but that sounds more like a city.
How about the Volgeidic Empire?
Hey guys, I have a new question.
What would be the impact of a single industry dominating a market? Like, say, Wal-Mart takes over entirely. Is that a plausible possibility, or is it something that would exist only in fiction (in which case, all the better!). I have a situation in which a particular industry in my setting has reason to be far ahead of others at its time, and logically I would assume it would dominate the market entirely. As a person with little to no experience or knowledge of businesses and their inner machinations, I must kindly ask you guys for advice.
Assuming it is a possibility, what do you think the biggest impact would be on the company, people, or life in general?
Just to make sure, by industry you mean company, right?
Assuming so, then that's not just a plausible possibility, it's historical fact. Oh sure, other companies existed, but throughout histories certain companies have had near total domination (though I can't think of a good example off the top of my head). If you take it to its extreme where it was the /only/ company providing that particular good or service, that would be very interesting - and have some huge impacts. However, to do the exact impact calculus, I'd need one vital piece of information - what market/industry/good/service is this company completely in charge of?
Wikipedia has an excellent page on monopolies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly). Usually, market forces either dissolve a monopoly or else a government steps in to break them up, though in some historic cases (the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, and others) governments actually created monopolies intentionally.
Governments themselves can also be and create monopolies. Command Economies (like the USSR) often promote government-led monopoly industries.
Monopolies can be of three forms: 1. Private Company controls; 2. ISI Import Substitution Industries (either gvt. controlled or semi-gvt controlled... like in S. America in the 1970s or potentially the mercantilism of the East India Company-I am not as familiar with the E.I. Co.; 3-Government monopolies [of which there are two types; natural monopolies and Command Economy Monopolies] (e.g. Utility monopolies for electricity have long been considered 'natural monopolies'; taken to extreme you get things like one state company in the Soviet Union that produces all the shoes, for example.).
Monopolies in all forms are horribly inefficient. Although there is something to be said for natural monopolies when the government has regulatory systems that can be flexible and that can respond to market signals.
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If you are talking about an industry instead of a company, there is also historical evidence for an industry taking over. Eg. Casette Tapes v. 8-Trac; VCR v. Betamax; BluRay; Cars v. Horse Carriages, etc.