Mention a random quirk of your world

One pound is worth less than one US dollar. It's been that way for several years. It's mentioned that everyone freaked out when the two currencies reached parity (a few years back); by the time the £1.50 = 1$ line was crossed, hardly anyone noticed. In the present day, the main character is shown buying a latte in a Starbucks for £9.50. People commonly quote the price of more expensive items like TV sets or SL Rs in US dollars or Communs (the name of the European Confederation's currency).

Available only to the bluest-blooded Etherans, Ambrosian Cider is legendary for its immortality-inducing properties. While its drinkers are not immune to...less natural causes of death, they are untouchable to age and illness. Curiously, nobody knows who created the Cider in the first place.

Celebrity Paradox is easily justified as all characters just happening to look like their actors.

A race I've created are the Wildkin, whose primary ability is Power Copying the traits of animals and monsters for themselves. Wildkin children are often given an Affectionate Nickname based on what creature they learned to do this with first. For example, a child who gained a cat's ability gets called "kitten", or "pup" for a dog, "little monkey" and so on.

In my girlfriend setting, gods are monothematical: that means a god is there to fullill a certein theme(Life,death.wisdom,etc).

But it IS posible to god to change their nature over time to the point they stop being a god of that thing and become a subset of it, like one god of life who become the god of transformations.

That reminds me of a series where the opposite was true, the gods were fixed into their primary trait and into their personalities in general. Loki literally could not stop being a backstabbing trickster, Zeus couldn't not cheat on his wife. Even Athena, who was actually aware of this and the problems it was causing, couldn't stop herself from acting on her vindictiveness and jealousy.

Random Quirk: Because most films on the planet Saffron are filmed in the capital, which has the same name, many off-worlders are under the impression the entire planet is one big city. They are shocked to find out most of the planet still unpopulated and even more shocked to find that the planet has snow, since it never snows in the capital.

In the near future machines exist which can pinpoint the location and number of the enemy from the sounds of their gunfire. A faction starts playing rock music extremely loudly to blind the sensors. Just imagine this baring from speakers around the battlefield.

Boomerang III can locate gunshots over the sound of nearby jet engines, you'd need ridiculously loud music to throw it off. Like, bursting people's eardrums loud.

Ah, that's a good point. How about using speakers for a "fire place" type use? Make your army look much bigger than it is with random spread out speakers playing recordings of gunfire at random intervals. The system might be fooled into thinking your army is an order of magnitude bigger than it is.

Perhaps the rock music could just be played around the clock to keep the defenders from going to sleep. If you're hearing music coming from a area you might be fooled into thinking somebody is there rather than an isolated speaker. If sound is seemingly coming from all around it could at least cover the sound of footsteps and vehicles from the ears of infantry whilst the gunshot recordings distract the sensor system.

Modern gunfire locators are very difficult to fool with recordings. They can even filter out things like fireworks, which were sometimes used to fool early models. Using suppressed weapons is your best bet, it diffuses the sound at the source.

Loud music as a psychological weapon has a long history. Here's the setup they have on the DMZ: [1]◊

In my fae-demon setting, unicorns are carnivorous pack hunters. They are especially notorious for their ambush attacks. The myth that only innocent maidens can see them stems from their preference for and special way of hunting maidens: one unicorn waits quietly in plain sight of the girl and acts all cute to lure her closer, while the others surround the area to prevent escape. When she finally comes to pet the beast, it attacks and kills her, and the whole pack shares the meat.

Also, were-unicorns are a thing, and are taken every bit as seriously as werewolves and the like.

I suppose you could put suppressors on most of the rifles to mask the sound of the guns. You wouldn't even need to hide the sound entirely, just shift it enough that it doesn't match the programming in the Boomerang system.

Perhaps some kind of modifiable suppressor so you can keep changing the sound every few battles as the Boomerang programmers keep adapting the machine?

On another note in one of my settings there's two types of bullet dodging, both are more often used for something else. One is an attack. The person moves so fast it sends out shock waves that shatter the enemy's eardrums and incapacitates them due to pain.

The other is a limited precognition due to psychic powers and being good a calculating trajectories accurately and fast. The person can detect the target's intention a fraction of a second in advance and can move out of the way. This also means they can detect people planning their next move through walls and just shoot them through the wall before they get to the point that they can take aim at the practitioner.

It's not really so much a matter of a database of sounds as it is the bow shock and report from the bullet. A bullet is a tiny piece of metal moving very fast and it creates some unique distortions in the air. [1]◊ The system looks for those, and based on the angle they hit the microphone array and their intensity it's able to determine a direction and distance.

You can see the inside of some different brands of suppressors here ([2]), and you can see how they all use baffles or different contours to break up and redirect the sound and shock waves as the bullet leaves the barrel. They're able to reduce the success of an acoustic locator because they dissipate the waves the device looks for.

If you wanted to hide fully from gunfire locators, your best bet would be shooting suppressed with subsonic ammo. You could also try ambush-style attacks, since a gunfire locator can only give a direction after a shot has been fired, and if you fire from close range and hit the person operating it where the shot came from is essentially academic at that point.

If the system doesn't have a database then fragmentation would send false positives.

The report from a gunshot is distinct from other types of explosions.

Some systems have databases to dermine the type of weapon, but the modern ones are all able to detect gunshots over things like firecrackers and car backfires due to the unique acoustic characteristics of a bullet.

The setting has several stories set at different points in the timeline. The hero's faction in one story usually becomes the dystopian government in another. A quote from alternatehistory.com sums it up well. "never forget at the end of the day that the word revolution means to go round in a circle". Also relevant is that "utopia is dystopia".

You can usually spot statues of the heros from the previous story around the nation and depending on how fast the nation goes off the rails the previous hero can appear as the villain.

The dystopian government doesn't fall because some plucky heroes rose up against it. It falls apart because it has begun to decay from within, with the new heroes deciding who the next rulers are going to be.

Well, in one of my settings you can become a Magical Girl by doing some eldritch Ritual Magic. Also when in Magical Girl form you are playing a reality warping RPG, or, to be exact, The Game Plays You. Expect a lot of Sudden Game Interfaces in the form of Holographic Terminals.

The nobility of an interstellar empire are all descendents of genetically altered humans with improved physical capabilities, enhanced senses, longer lives, and whatnot. This makes them superior fighters and allows them to lord over the common masses.

At least in theory. In practice, almost none of them kept to the exercise and dietary practices their ancestors used that were supposed to keep these enhanced capabilities in top condition. When actual fighting breaks out between the social classes, much of the nobility who tried to fight personally ended up dead.

There are lots of different species of dragons in my universe, some species are sentient, some are not. Which species become sentient depends on how much any transformed sentient beings (ahem) contribute to the gene pool. Most contributions are from sorcerors and sorceresses who transformed themselves into dragons to continue their search for power. A few contributions are from Baleful Polymorphs.

In my world, the Classes of "Knights-Mages-Rogues" are all available to everyone, with people going through the various classes to see which one suits them best, before sticking with that one.

Edited by Sebastian987 on Aug 17th 2018 at 11:02:50 AM

when someone dies their soul remains attached to the body, in a way. however this only lasts till the next new moon, during which souls rise into the sky and disappear into the gaping abyss in the sky. they are then incarnated as fish in the lake of the dead, deep in Enrh's territory.

the new moon is still a standard lunar cycle, but Enrh's very existance is reality warping, and the closer you are to her, the more often it occurs; in the nearby country of Liansi, the sudden darkening of the sky and appearance of a gaping hole in the sky is a regular occurance, though only a few people see it occur each time.

as a quirk of this nature of hers, Enrh's followers tend to migrate away from her, since the necromancy and related blessings she gives out only work with access to the soul denied by unpredictable phenomenon.

A rare mineral enables a drug that extends lifespans, but radiation from mining it prevents it from being automated and reduces the lifespans of those mining it (despite them being given the drug).

The most common drawing tool for magical arrays is actually crayon. It's waterproof, smudge resistant, can be removed with a little scrapping, and comes in a variety of colors.

In a mecha setting I'm working on, humanity had an unknown sudden jump in technological advancements. In some sort of early steampunk-time, they went from using wheels to building complex hydraulic systems and this system replaced wheels-not because it was simpler, but because there was greater potential to it.

Fast forward to society advancing and now all machines have 'limbs' and faces, not just mecha; Cars and trucks have hands/feet to walk and run on-mundane cars are more like 'turtles', but something like a police car would have cheetah or wolf legs. Boats swim like fish or frogs. Planes are build like birds with wings.