The Campaign Builder's Guild

As it stands now, yes. Minus the occasional weird 4th rim world. At least, that's the way i understood this. Otherwise the whole microworld concept would be kinda ruined if everything requires interstellar travel wouldn't it? Of course, we could build around that, but still.

Wouldn't it get a bit crowded if we had only 1 solar system? Of course everyone's worlds are micro, so perhaps it would work... Hmm, what if the Solar system were populated by massive Gas Giants and orbiting each were our little Spheres?

Personally I'd much prefer a more abstract version of the cosmology than a "hard" solar system.  It seems that if you're keeping the "infinite on the inside/finite on the outside" idea, or making that a possibility, then it doesn't make sense (or strikes me as inelegant) to make the spheres act as planets orbiting stars/gas giants.

Does this mean we have settled on the "rims" idea? I like that one, myself. I think there is still room for the ancient people that traveled, too, at least on some worlds.

I think the Rims Idea has won out, its just how the rims are viewed conceptually that is being debated now.

This is probably too early in the development process of the whole shared worlds thing to share my idea, but however you guys work it, it sounds like there's room for high tech in some corner of the universe.

This is a concept that I was originally developing partly with the idea of a comic book drawn by either my brother or his friend as part of the end result.  For some reason I decided that the potential characters for this series ought to be statted up in Mekton Z terms and mostly be professionals with detailed lifepaths.

The basic concept involved a ship that was the human race's first test ship for some kind of captured alien technology space-fold/ space-ward/ jump drive/ hyper space translation drive/ thingamajiggy. I think my idea originally involved the ship full of mecha and fighter planes and such like ending up on a planet of the kaiju.

I think with this metaframework, what I would do instead is say they made a jump from their high tech low magic home sphere to a low tech high magic sphere.  The tech they ahve with them will keep working as long as the batteries last but long-term they will have real problems.

Hmm, although i made some assumptions about it before i'm not sure the liquid->air thing will work out that well. It will make the universe somewhat compartmentalized. In addition, i don't think we should try and fit infinite worlds onto small world-spheres: that will just screw up the internal logic too quickly. Instead, we could use a combination of planes/parallel world (that are large, (in)finite, strange, and often more general than detailed (this is a microworld setting after all)) and one (or more) rim universes. I say we make space non-lethal, but decidedly dangerous (especially in the outer rims); this essentially makes all types of transportation viable, although at different levels of comfort. If anybody wants to have planets with shared, comfortable atmospheres and air travel between they should be free to do that. Magic and technology shouldn't be limited by external factors; only by culture. And we can have all manners of schools of magic that we want. Magic and technology are equally viable for transportation.
Come on, isn't this close enough to what everybody wants? Really, with planes added, anything can fit into this while the microworld retains some external logic.  

If magic isn't limited by location, what would be the point of planes / rims?

Well, magic has to be learned by a culture for it to be of any use, in *theory* we could have "magic" in our world; maybe we just haven't discovered it yet. So even in a place where magic isn't limited by location we might have an intensely magical civilization next to a high tech one. It could of course also depend on race. Some races might have reservoirs of celestial energy in their bodies or special brain waves that can alter physical reality (or whatever). Planes on the other hand allow for worlds that defy common sense and don't fit easily into the rim-world frame; e.g. infinite plains, rains of meteors, a plane that constantly assembles and disassembles itself, a dream realm, etc. I think this division is both more intuitive than the aforementioned, is more flexible, and keeps the rim-world from turning into a useless mish-mash of the real and the unreal. (yes, a campaign could be built around a mish-mash of the real and unreal, but if we really want to put no limits on peoples' creativity this shouldn't be the case here as a "real world" will be forced to deal with the very unreal aspects of the rest of the world that it might not want to have anything to do with.)
By the way, Rim-world would be a nice name. has anybody used that yet?

I support the idea of having planes/parallel dimensions.  Some concepts just aren't going to work a planets of any kind.  I don't think it detracts anything from the setting: so many fantasy worlds (probably ripping off D&D) have alternate reality planes for storing their metaphysical concepts.  If we say those alternate planes are connected to all the worlds in one universe that would mean we'd have some of us designing the cosmology and some the material world.  I think we could achieve some interesting results.

@Ninja D! Forgot to answer your question as to rims: they aren't really needed in that version of the universe, but it goes without saying that places not in the "temperate band" are somewhat more hostile, and therefore might result in more hardy mutations/development of life-sustaining magic. Or maybe magicians just settled down there to get privacy. Makes sense.

What if every World-Sphere was a shimmering golden bubble. Each Bubble was finite on the outside but varied on in size on the inside. The Solar System is composed of 2 distinct areas, the first area appears like the sky, complete with clouds and birds. In the sky area, the World-Spheres float, like hanging Christmas tree ornaments. The sky is completely breathable and allows for ship travel. The second area is the void. This is the area outside creation, as it were. This area is slowly being formed and molded, it does not follow the typical laws that the Sky-Area does.

Essentially, yjis is breaking it down into 2 areas, the core area where certain rules will apply and then the hinterland where only a scant few rules for creation will apply.

Okay, not to needlessly propagate my "own" idea, but do we really want a world composed of shimmering golden bubbles (i know that was just a suggestion, but still)? With the concept i proposed we get exactly as much freedom, and without sacrificing external and interal logic and credibility, and without having to create a dozen ad hoc rules. I don't know about you, but the idea of travelling around between a couple of hundred golden bubbles just ruins this concept for me, even though i like the idea of this project. I say finite go in one of the Rim-worlds (we can have more) and infinite go into a plane. If you want, you can always make a planar rift or something so your plane is a constant part of a Rim-world. On the other hand, i agree that some of the areas between worlds should have breathable air, a point i also made before. I don't think we should make suffocation a danger unless you move extremely far away from the sun.

I'm not one for the Golden Bubbles either but it seemed appropriate if we didn't do Planes...

I have to say the idea of making the weird concepts extra dimensional planes of existence is growing on me. It keeps them separate and distant yet accessible. I think we should go with these planes.

What if the Solar System was Geocentric, orbiting around a ball from which all magic is drawn. Think of it like a Purple sun, it glows ominously and has strands ripping off of it and heading to where the magic is needed. Around this Purple Sun, and out until you reach the orbit of the Yellow (i.e. real) Sun would be breathable Sky. Beyond the orbit of the Yellow Sun would be void, much like real space. Travel outside the Yellow Suns's Orbit (ie Rim 2) would hostile and require more space ship like technology than in the Sky area (ie Rim 1).

We should really make a call on this.

So we have the Purple Sun concept of the Rims (and planes), the more normal Solar System with Rims (and planes) and finally we have the basic Rim idea which would not correspond to a solar system.