Pimp my tropes.

[Loch Belthadd]

I understand why you keep mentioning these things, but the way you make war out to be it seems that no setting with this level of technology should ever survive, portals or no.

Well the higher your tech the more devastating the wepons get. And the more devastating they are, the more crazy militaristic types are going to want to use them.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Well the higher your tech the more devastating the wepons get. And the more devastating they are, the more crazy militaristic types are going to want to use them.

So how do you keep the place from going all post-apocalypse?

[Superfluous Crow]

[ooc]Why the hell did i say quests before? Not even sure what i wanted to say...[/ooc]
And sorry i missed the point about the portals being natural. It's never any fun when people don't read one's material properly :)
What shape do the portals take? Holes in the world, shimmering sheets of silver, invisible?
Could you lift the curtain slightly on your "schools" of magic? I love alternative ideas for magic so can't wait to hear what you've come up with :)

[Loch Belthadd]

[spoiler=maybe]have some sort of super orginization that is sanctioned by many governments that uses any and all methods to control these weapons.(Insert PC's as low-level members.)[/spoiler]

[Superfluous Crow]

And as to how you could avoid massive damage to your world, you can just produce counter-technologies. Anti-biological warfare in the form of nanobots, Missile shields to prevent nukes, and sufficient protective clothing to avoid chemical weapons.

[Nomadic]

[spoiler=A Note on Magic]
This is how my magic works, I am of course not expecting you to use it but I think that perhaps it might just give you some ideas...

First off, magic is not called magic in my world. Magic implies something extraordinary and undoable by mortals. My magic can be done by just about anything with life in it. What it is called of course depends on the person and the groups they belong to. How it operates is fairly straight forward. Life energy, known as Aether to many scholars, is what powers all living things. Like other sources of energy these things bleed off the excess which drifts off, sometimes converting into other energies, sometimes not. This life energy is just like any other energy, it can be used to power things and it can be converted into other forms of energy. One important fact, certain electrical frequencies can affect the aether in a user's local vicinity. The brain of many animals is capable of generating this frequency. Depending on the frequency and how it's used one could cause a piece of wood to burst into flame, or a bolt of lightning to shoot from their hand, or many other different effects. The aether though of course has it's limits. A body cannot continue to channel it forever as it can only take so much energy passing through it before damage occurs. It also is in limited supply as it is generated by living things. A user can draw off their own supply even in an empty wasteland, but they will run out of a usable supply much sooner than if they were in a vibrant city.
[/spoiler]

As to the military thing... yes war is going to be less common. However, it will happen, and when it does it is going to be extremely brutal and quick. Bombs thrown through portals, shock troopers, and surprise invasions. The attacker is going to want to secure the portal and then begin pumping an army through. In the meantime they will probably send out strike forces to find and secure all other planetary portals so as to cut them off from allies. The defender of course is going to try to stop them, to push them back or to shut off the portal and wipe out those still on this side. And note that these would truly be lightning wars. A successful attacker wouldn't even let the other side know they were going to attack until the first gas grenades had been tossed through the portal. This is not to say that there will be war everywhere. I think most places will get along fine, or at worst be in a state of cold war. You will though have a few nasty ones though as well as the standard conflicting interests escalating thing from time to time.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

What shape do the portals take? Holes in the world, shimmering sheets of silver, invisible?
Could you lift the curtain slightly on your "schools" of magic? I love alternative ideas for magic so can't wait to hear what you've come up with :)

I'll answer both those questions, but you're going to have to give me some time.  I'm a little drained at the moment.

have some sort of super orginization that is sanctioned by many governments that uses any and all methods to control these weapons.(Insert PC's as low-level members.)

And as to how you could avoid massive damage to your world, you can just produce counter-technologies. Anti-biological warfare in the form of nanobots, Missile shields to prevent nukes, and sufficient protective clothing to avoid chemical weapons.

Both of these are very good ideas.  I actually had said something in an earlier response to Scholar that if the methods had been used before there were going to be countermeasures developed.

Truly, though, I'm going to avoid needing to think much about this.  Getting into the heads of the people who do that'¦'¦'¦'¦it's very uncomfortable.  Scary.  My mental health gets much better results from things like Bond villains.

As to the military thing... yes war is going to be less common. However, it will happen, and when it does it is going to be extremely brutal and quick. Bombs thrown through portals, shock troopers, and surprise invasions. The attacker is going to want to secure the portal and then begin pumping an army through. In the meantime they will probably send out strike forces to find and secure all other planetary portals so as to cut them off from allies. The defender of course is going to try to stop them, to push them back or to shut off the portal and wipe out those still on this side. And note that these would truly be lightning wars. A successful attacker wouldn't even let the other side know they were going to attack until the first gas grenades had been tossed through the portal. This is not to say that there will be war everywhere. I think most places will get along fine, or at worst be in a state of cold war. You will though have a few nasty ones though as well as the standard conflicting interests escalating thing from time to time.

I can live with this.  As I said in an earlier post there's always a limit to how often you can get away with the WMDs before neighbors decide to cut you down to protect themselves.  If you don't use that method but just attack quickly in a more normal manner they won't have a special reason to jump in (just any normal ones).  Espionage/influence would be much more effective.

[Nomadic]

It would also be fun for players to play one of those strike squads trying to shut down the planet's portals (or play the opposite end, a squad trying to take out a strike squad).

[Ghostman]

Why does there seem to be this assumption that political states cover entire planets or even multiple planets? How are such enormous super-states able to form in the first place, and what prevents them from fragmenting?

When I first read the listed ideas, I was thinking more in terms of our world - a large number of political states existing just among a single species on a single planet. The very idea of the whole thing being under the sway of only one government is obviously unrealistic.

So, what makes mankind (or non-human species) so different in the portal universe? The presense of portals certainly wouldn't be it; making the world bigger isn't likely to promote political unity. Perhaps the answer could be found in technology or magic?

Or, if the world(s) actually are divided to many competing states as is our world, then you should consider that:
A ) Not all states will have portals in their territory, and most probably won't have many. Those who control a portal may end up holding monopoly over traffic to a particular world, which they can exploit for great deal of profit and influence (but only IF the portal actually leads to some useful location rather than an inhospitable backwater, and the location can't be easily reached via other portals on that planet).
B ) The importance of portals to international trade will be restricted because said traffic will still have to cross many national borders when going overland (or by sea, air) from the portal to a destination point on a planet. From the point of view of a minor state without it's own portals, is there really any difference between importing stuff from another planet, going through a portal in some distant land's territory, and importing stuff from the other side of the globe on their own planet? Simply having some portal scattered around a planet's surface won't reduce the cost of imports unless you're lucky enough to be near one, or if the items to be imported would be much more expensive to produce on the home planet (or impossible for that matter).
C ) As far as wars and the like go, a successful invasion through a portal wouldn't be so different from a conventional invasion from a political point of view (though probably more difficult from military point of view). No matter the fact that you're crossing from one planet to another, it's still state A invading state B. NOT to be read as "Planet 1 invading Planet 2", when both planets are divided into many states, some of them supporting, some opposing and many neutral regarding the conflict.

You might want to think about environmental factors here, too. Suppose that a portal connects planets X and Y. On X, the portal is located on a good, convenient place where civilization is well established. The other side, on Planet Y, OTOH is located on a desert, glacier or some other inhospitable place that just plain cannot support a dense population. Under such circumstances, the area around the portal on Planet Y will probably become a colony of what ever state controls the portal on Planet X. This is because the natives of Planet Y would be unable to support a settlement anywhere near the portal, whereas the colonists coming through from X will be able to provide essential supplies (food, water, etc) through the portal. This can lead to interesting scenarios over time when changes in climate or improvements on technology or magic come to enable easier crossing of the environmental barriers. The colony of the X-natives might fall to attack by the Y-natives, or the colonists might use their portal-town as a base to expand further on Planet Y.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

When I first read the listed ideas, I was thinking more in terms of our world - a large number of political states existing just among a single species on a single planet. The very idea of the whole thing being under the sway of only one government is obviously unrealistic.

Did I give an indication that giant mono-governments existed?

Or, if the world(s) actually are divided to many competing states as is our world, then you should consider that:
A ) Not all states will have portals in their territory, and most probably won't have many. Those who control a portal may end up holding monopoly over traffic to a particular world, which they can exploit for great deal of profit and influence (but only IF the portal actually leads to some useful location rather than an inhospitable backwater, and the location can't be easily reached via other portals on that planet).

That's a distinct possibility.

B ) The importance of portals to international trade will be restricted because said traffic will still have to cross many national borders when going overland (or by sea, air) from the portal to a destination point on a planet. From the point of view of a minor state without it's own portals, is there really any difference between importing stuff from another planet, going through a portal in some distant land's territory, and importing stuff from the other side of the globe on their own planet? Simply having some portal scattered around a planet's surface won't reduce the cost of imports unless you're lucky enough to be near one, or if the items to be imported would be much more expensive to produce on the home planet (or impossible for that matter).
C ) As far as wars and the like go, a successful invasion through a portal wouldn't be so different from a conventional invasion from a political point of view (though probably more difficult from military point of view). No matter the fact that you're crossing from one planet to another, it's still state A invading state B. NOT to be read as "Planet 1 invading Planet 2", when both planets are divided into many states, some of them supporting, some opposing and many neutral regarding the conflict.

Sorry, I'm a little confused as to what point you're trying to make with these.

[Nomadic]

Why does there seem to be this assumption that political states cover entire planets or even multiple planets? How are such enormous super-states able to form in the first place, and what prevents them from fragmenting?

There isn't an assumption, at least not from me. The term planet vs planet is to differentiate between state vs state (which could be confused with war between two nations on the same world). There's nothing against having multiple nations on a world, but that is getting more complex then we need to worry about just yet. Right now most talk is just dealing with hoe portals will work on a planetary scale. Though the nation state possibility can slightly modify how civilization spreads between worlds.

Additionally, a portal being in a hostile environment won't be a guaranteed stopper to large expansion. If the area has valuable resources then the city is going to expand through the portal. Remember that this isn't two cities separated by great distance, this is one super city with a choke point in the center. In the case of a hostile but useful planet the city on the safe side would be pretty normal while on the hostile side you would have something akin to a giant industrial sector. However nothing stops the industrial side from getting huge since residents can easily just hop on over to the other side for a bit of relaxation, they don't have to 'live' there.

[Ariel Hapzid]

I think your best defense against a powerful enemy is peace.

Sure you could lob a nuclear weapon into a portal and call it good, but remember that your enemies could do likewise.

What I wanted to do with my Portal setting was have one very technologically advanced society, and several less advanced societies.

Another thought, My people are going to build upon and within the portals. The portals are not going to just be sitting in a field in Vancouver (like Stargate)

Instead, when a portal is discovered, a building is erected around it, basically an Airport (but for portals not airplanes). This airport has similar security measures as our airports, things such as Customs, Passports, etc. etc. Certain parts of the day are for civilian travelers, and certain parts are for traders.

When you walk through the portal, which feels just like walking through a door from one room to the other, you appear in another Airport millions of light years away, with similar defenses against attacks. It's safe, and it takes away a little bit of the danger.

Now, these portals are controlled by the powerful Portal Guild who maintain and protect the portals. There is such a thing as undiscovered portals, which the PCs might be apart of discovering. As far as wars go, I do have a way to carry that out.

We have Planet A, who have discovered a doorway into Planet C. Planet C is rich in natural resources and uninhabited. However, Planet B, a very warlike society Planet A has not had contact with before is interested in the resources too, and will kill for them.

SO you have your war, but it's very insulated. Like Having the United States and Russia duke it out in Australia.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Actually it's more like having Canada and Mexico duking it out in the US: there is no distance separating the two countries fighting from the place they are fighting in, only the distance within what they are fighting.

[Nomadic]

Actually it's more like having Canada and Mexico duking it out in the US: there is no distance separating the two countries fighting from the place they are fighting in, only the distance within what they are fighting.

Poor canada and mexico

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

While I'm remembering, would some unrealistic things really be that bad?  What is your personal point at which I'd loose your interest for having unrealistic stuff going on?