Space Verse

[Deadpool]

IF we have a Space Verse can I recommend Frieze as one of the NPCs there? I mean, since he's a space merchant essentially I think he'd fit perfect there.

[Thaal Sinestro]

I think that the argument of the Space Verse being used more than other verses is also sort of a strange one. Yeah, we don't want Verses to have TOO much overlap as far as setting goes, because that's the point of the Verses: to provide generic settings for certain types of stories to take place. So, yeah, we don't want there to be an infinite number of planets because then you can just ignore all the other verses. Makes sense.

However, the idea that people will want to write more stories in one verse than the other isn't an inherently BAD thing. There are more stories in Corruscant than in Camelot because that's the type of setting more people want to write stories in. That's not bad. If more people want to write stories in Space than they want to write stories in Fiery Volcano-land, that's also not bad.

The primary purpose of a Verse, so far as I can tell, is to provide a place for certain kinds of stories to take place. We shouldn't be trying to arbitrate the kinds of stories people are interested in writing, we should be facilitating more stories. As of right now, there is no place to write Space Stories, so it would make sense to make a Space Verse.

So I guess the question at hand is: How do we facilitate the best type of environment for space stories without making too much overlap with other verses?

The answers we have so far to that question are:
Make all the planets too small to have overlapping terrains.

Make the planets impermanent in some way, so that you can have stories in those places without fear of them replacing traditional verses.

I'm not totally sold on either of those, because they both limit the kind of space stories lots of people want to tell.

Who has some elegant solutions for our quandary?

[Ganondorf]

I also don't mind if it's used more. I just don't want it to become a replacement for everything else we have, ya know?

At the same time, limits have been part of the Omniverse since the beginning. From limits on what sort of "flying mount" you can summon in which Verse, to the invisible boundaries of the Verses. In order to provide a uniform world and not just Gaia Online: Omniverse Edition, we set up a world with rules and restrictions. Does that limit what a writer can do? Sure. For example, Thaal wasn't able to show up with his Ring. I think you STILL don't have it. And was that a bad thing? Not from what I've been reading. Sinestro has become so much more than a Lantern as you've developed the character without his powers.

At a 50 mile diameter, each planetoid would have a surface area of around 8,000 miles. Is that huge? No. But considering out current verses are around the size of large States or small Countries (aside from the Ocean Verse), it's a reasonable size. Particularly since there are more than 1 of these Planetoids.

On the topic of space battles... unless we see a sudden rush of people summoning Space Balls 1-sized super-ships, I think the sizes would be fairly reasonable as well. I mean, what kind of story will require you to hide your ship behind a full sized planet, because your ship is longer that 50 miles from bow to stern?

I still think using planetoids is a good solution. Is it possible that SOMEONE will actually need a full planet for something? Sure. And it's something that could be approved on a case by case basis. But for 99% of our memberbase and possible memberbase, I think that we can tone down the "grand scale" of space to a more manageable level. After all, this is a Multiverse RPG, not a Star Wars one.

[Ganondorf]

@ DP: I doubt we'll have too many established NPCs there, since we already have sort of an NPC glut now. We're still considering at least an NPC for Nowhere. Other than that? Meh.

[Eleanor Lamb]

I don't have time to write up a detailed response to all of this, but I wanted to say:

Liara T'Soni for leader of the Good Guy Faction. Or the leader of a neutral faction, as Shadow Broker.

[Thaal Sinestro]

Aren't people going to be allowed to be on huge space ships? The Enterprise? Star Destroyers? We might not "own" the ships, but being on and interacting with huge space shit is half the fun of space!

If people wanna do the whole "space exploration" aspect of things, are these tiny bitty little planets gonna be able to support civilizations? Can we do Star Trek serials with that (which is my idea of "space exploration")?

I think that keeping things tiny might not be the best solution. And again, relative size is more of a measure of things than ACTUAL size for a space verse. Measuring out exactly the size of each planet or planetoid isn't really addressing the "people spending too much time on a planet" problem. If there's a tiny desert planet that persists forever, it's total square millage doesn't really matter. I don't really know the total area of the Endless Dunes, and I really don't NEED to, because my story will occur there based on the theme, not off of a map. Same can be said of any permanent planet; the story will occur regardless of the mapped, specific size.

[Thaal Sinestro]

I mean, is this really that much of an issue? Can't we just say, "write in space and don't turn a planet into a verse"? And if they do we can be like, "stop that"

[Tearen Wover]

@Thall: Preach, brother!

[Tearen Wover]

As a follow up to my nonsense, the main reason I would want a space verse is to do stuff in space. If you wanna have your space man adventure on the ground, pop him in a verse, but I really want a place to have space battles.

We could have Deep Space 9, the Death Star, even say an EVE titan as the 'villages', but the only reason to have planetoids in my opinion is to like...put anti ship guns or supply depots on them. My ideal space verse would be one where going ground side still means you have to wear a space suit, like having a venusian or lunar environment.

[Thaal Sinestro]

As a follow up to my nonsense, the main reason I would want a space verse is to do stuff in space. If you wanna have your space man adventure on the ground, pop him in a verse, but I really want a place to have space battles.

We could have Deep Space 9, the Death Star, even say an EVE titan as the 'villages', but the only reason to have planetoids in my opinion is to like...put anti ship guns or supply depots on them. My ideal space verse would be one where going ground side still means you have to wear a space suit, like having a venusian or lunar environment.

This was my initial thought too, but planetary exploration and space cultures from various stiff would be awesome too. So like, being able to go check out what's wrong on a planet or meeting with alien diplomats or whatever. The whole concept of space = unknown and getting to explore that is cool. Star Trek style.

[Ganondorf]

Don't see why they couldn't hang out on giant ships. The largest fictional space-ship I was able to find a size reference on was less than 50 miles from bow to stern. That seems reasonable for a large group thing. Just how big did you think spaceships got? I still think people will probably prefer their own 1 man to small group ships (like the Milano in Guardians of the Galaxy) to something giant, but it's not proscribed against.

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A 50 mile diameter planet COULD support a small to medium population of pretty much anything you wanted. Why you think that's "tiny", I have no idea. However, doing a bit of research into it, I feel like we should bump it up a bit. I'm thinking a 200 mile diameter planetoid would be fair, as it would have a surface area more or less half the size of Texas. That would easily support civilizations (if you really want to do that sort of thing). Small civilizations (think Namekians), but still civilizations.

More on the size thing. First, as per the Vehicle Rules, summoned mounts and vehicles have a max-speed of about 80 miles per hour. We're already likely gonna hafta have new speed rules in place for even the smallest size I could think of for the Space Verse. And that's just for travelling THROUGH space from one point to another. On the planets, I expect the speed rules to be the same as they are on the Verses.

Secondly, I like the idea of a smaller Space Verse. This is the Omniverse, not a normal world with normal rules. We're literally just trying to make a place where someone can do Space stuff, but we also don't want to just throw out something the same as every other Space roleplay around. There's not going to be super-old races out there, because it will be brand new. It won't operate on the same scale or rules as the Space we know, because it will be a Verse. Even the Oververse is, at its basest level, just another Verse to write in. Why should we adhere to the rules of a set Sci Fi setting? Or even the natural laws we know? Nothing to say we couldn't have, say, a Texas sized planet with a population on it. Omniphysics.

Lastly, every other Verse has a set-size. There's a border, or edge to every one. It may grow slightly as the Verse's affluence grows, but they're all more or less fixed areas.

I'm a firm believer in setting strict boundaries in the rules FIRST, then working towards more leniency as we see how things go. Why? Because we STILL have people who buck against the very fair rules we have now. Who'll push the letter of the law until the very edge, until turning back when they get caught. It's far easier to make things more free than to make them less. While I wish we could just be like: "Hey, don't be a chode" and people wouldn't be, from my previous experience on Staff, and what I've seen since I left... I doubt it.

There are a lot of rules already in place that place "restrictions" on what you can do. Paying OM for abilities your character has in your home source. Limits of Stats. Certain Powers not even existing. Plenty of Moves which aren't suitable for this site.

It seems weird that a full-sized universe would be such a point of contention. Like, everything else in the Omniverse is scaled down, including your own power. Why a Space Verse wouldn't be, when everything else is, seems stranger than a smaller Space Verse.

[Ganondorf]

If any of the previous seems disjointed or doesn't make sense... I apologize. I had a good... argument, for lack of a better word, in my head when I wrote it, but I think the order might have gotten jumbled.

[Thaal Sinestro]

I think the major issue is, again, in a limited sized soar system, with fixed planets, anything that's bigger than a city is functionally of an infinite size for the purpose of narrative anyways. So unsettled they're asteroids, the goal of making them too small to replace a verse isn't going to be accomplished anyways, and at the same time we remove narrative depth and options for anything that requires large planetary options.

The concept of a NOT infinite space isn't as much fun as one where people have the option of exploring. No black holes, no nebulas, no jumping to warp speed.

You can still have a Space verse that is of a finite size with infinite VARIABILITY, though. You replace physical area with CHANGING area. Again, the concept of worm holes. They go other places, they close, they suck you back

[Tearen Wover]

You would still need FTL to get around even a small solar system in any reasonable amount of time.

[Omni]

The concept of not-limitless space is baked into the Omniverse from the ground up because it facilitates both groups and not being literally un-findable from a PVP perspective. On AD it was limitless space and what happened was that people never grouped up because they could essentially just make their own planet. That's why here I basically fused a bunch of different locations together into similar biomes. That's why I'd rather stick with the "space station and asteroids"-only approach.

The fact that we are talking about ships like Star destroyers and things is one of the reasons I don't want to launch this for a while. Mechs and such are supposed to be obtainable through the system with higher-level transformations. I don't want to trivialise players.

[Tearen Wover]

The concept of not-limitless space is baked into the Omniverse from the ground up because it facilitates both groups and not being literally un-findable from a PVP perspective. On AD it was limitless space and what happened was that people never grouped up because they could essentially just make their own planet. That's why here I basically fused a bunch of different locations together into similar biomes. That's why I'd rather stick with the "space station and asteroids"-only approach.

The fact that we are talking about ships like Star destroyers and things is one of the reasons I don't want to launch this for a while. Mechs and such are supposed to be obtainable through the system with higher-level transformations. I don't want to trivialise players.

Granted, especially since building any sort of capital ship would take immense resources, I'm pretty sure the Empire would be lucky to have...one. On the flip side, fleet battles are very fun, but in the context of the Omniverse, awkward because very few primes...none that I know of...would have the authority or knowhow to command a star ship, let alone a space fleet engagement.

ON THE FLIP SIDE

I don't think we'd be having fleet engagements all the time. Something like that seems like a big-time event and would require staff involvement anyway, so the question of who is in charge might be moot. I don't feel that bug space ships would make players trivial; it only took one pilot to blow up the death star.

[Omni]

I agree with everything you said there. I just want to contextualise people's ambitions before they start building a new RPG within these hypotheticals.

[Mickey Mouse]

Granted, especially since building any sort of capital ship would take immense resources, I'm pretty sure the Empire would be lucky to have...one. On the flip side, fleet battles are very fun, but in the context of the Omniverse, awkward because very few primes...none that I know of...would have the authority or knowhow to command a star ship, let alone a space fleet engagement.

ON THE FLIP SIDE

I don't think we'd be having fleet engagements all the time. Something like that seems like a big-time event and would require staff involvement anyway, so the question of who is in charge might be moot. I don't feel that bug space ships would make players trivial; it only took one pilot to blow up the death star.

The Empire strikes me as the type to have enough resources to build several capital ships, since they've successfully colonized the biggest chunk of the Omniverse (all of Coruscant, and parts of the Deep, the Dunes, and the Nexus).

Honestly, I think that if this is going to be a thing at all, it would be best served as an addition to the top of Coruscant. Something above Tier one, like, "the Death Star and surrounding (limited) space."

However, I'm of the opinion that it isn't really very necessary since the only function that can't be worked into already active verses is the idea of spaceship battles, and I don't really know why those are especially necessary when you can have battles on big boats in the Deep and small spaceship-like vehicles in Coruscant.

[Thaal Sinestro]

I agree with everything you said there. I just want to contextualise people's ambitions before they start building a new RPG within these hypotheticals.

And Star Destroyers and crap like that would be NPC stuff, like the space station or The Town With No Name.

And again, with a wormhole system, you still have a very (relative to speed) small space. You have one small, boxed in, star system and other, alternating, small systems which will inevitably become unavailable to the players. That means that you have one small system without a ton to hide behind that people will reliably be in.

Again, the concept of a FINITE space with INFINITE variability which allows for literally every type of space exploration story a PC wants to write.