The Quick Questions About World Building Thread

Couple of questions. First, I've got a piece of Applied Phlebotinum that can instantly generate a powerful gravitic field around someone. If it were used on a human in space (wearing, for the sake of convenience, an unarmoured spacesuit), how many Gs would it have to exert in order to kill that person through acceleration alone (i.e., without causing them to bump into something)?

Second, a question about nukes. Consider a crater thirteen kilometres across (to be clear, that's a radius of fifteen kilometres) surrounded by a ridge one kilometre high. There are eight nuclear devices placed equidistantly on the outside of this ridge. All eight devices detonate simultaneously. If you want most of the people inside the ridge to survive, what is the maximum acceptable yield per device?

edited 14th Jul '13 9:01:02 AM by Iaculus

More than 10 times Earth's gravity, probably around 50.

Righty-ho. One hundred Gs it is, then.

Other than copyright/trademark frauds, is there any abuse of intellectual property by their holders? Is it believable for these acts to be illegal?

Well, it's not copyright fraud if you own the copyright in the first place.

Copyright is a tricky beast. I know a bit from studying music and how it applies there (and in mostly an Australian context). To answer your question, I'll need a bit of clarification. Are we talking about people who own the copyright/intellectual property abusing that, or people stealing other people's?

The major abuse of intellectual property in many people's eyes would be Big Pharma. As long as they have a patent for the drug, they are the only ones allowed to make it^unless...  you get a country like Brazil ready to make HIV/AIDS medicine themselves and boycott Big Pharma. So they can charge what they like for it. Also there's plenty of rumours (and I suppose some truths) of them not putting a drug into production for various reasons.

Also the US Patent office recognises patents on all life-forms bar human beings. So you can go into the rainforest, find a plant and claim it as your intellectual property. Somehow.

Another case I guess would be people taking out frivolous lawsuits for things only tangentially infringing on their copyright.

Or companies staking amazingly broad claims, like the way Cadbury has trade-marked the colour purple.

All of which are mostly legal.

edited 23rd Jul '13 6:22:28 PM by Luthen

I am referring to "people who own the copyright/intellectual property abusing that" in terms of media, but your answers do help a lot.

How would a democracy where you could get as many votes as you wanted, but each one cost a dollar, turn out?

You'd end up with plutocratic oligarchy, not a democracy.

Though the idea of unions as voting co-ops/people's credit unions just struck me.

If there's no limit to the number of votes (whether that you can buy, or the total pool), it'd become less a democracy but an auction for legal power. So the richest person could buy control of the country and tighten their hold with punitive taxes.

edited 25th Jul '13 9:07:59 PM by Luthen

I would imagine that it would reinforce the disparity between the social power of the rich and the poor, including allowing the rich to buy more votes than the poor, and prompting at least some of the poor to abstain in larger numbers for budgetary reasons.

[edit] More or less what Luthen said, I suppose, and the "union" idea seems like it could be a good one — albeit one potentially prone to corruption and vote-rigging.

edited 25th Jul '13 9:07:22 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

What are some common courses one would expect to find in a school for magic?

What kind of magic is it? What level of schooling? Is the school founded to produce mages for a specific purpose (healing, arts, just cause, military, etc.)? Are they going to have non-magic classes?

But I'd expect:

• history of magic/magi
• theoretical classes (the philosophy behind the magic system, inherent rules, legal laws, etc)
• a language course if the magic is its own language/a dead language
• a class about supernatural critters
• practical class(es) of some sort (possibly a few for each branch of magic).
• if the magi are threatened for whatever reason, a self defence class.

Feel free to raid Wizarding School for ideas, as always.

edited 26th Jul '13 5:48:04 PM by luthen

In a novel I'm writing, my wand magic is reminiscent of the green lantern, with the sorcero's stone acting as the power battery.

You're more than welcome to laugh at that.

Oh, and this is a school for witches if that helps.

edited 26th Jul '13 6:44:44 PM by Spdude48

Need a rousing, patriotic French song written before 1782, please.

I need to clear up some reasons to have mass drivers on both Pavonis Mons and Olympus Mons.(It's a for a story with martian colonies on/in those mons, Ascraeus mons, Arsia mons and in that area.)

• Redundancy: In case one breaks down/is shut down for maintenence or it gets impossible to get to one or the other from the different colonies.
• Higher throughput: There would be two of them.
• Acceleration/length: One shorter that send up hardier stuff like metals and a longer one with slower acceleration that can launch both hardier stuff and soft stuff like people.
  • orbital height: The shorter one might be able to send soft stuff to a low orbit, and is only limited to hard stuff for higher orbits.
• Power/launch mass: One might be limited to small shuttles carrying people, the other one can do that but also send a huge mass in one shot.
• Orbital angle/'tilt redundancy': The Pavonis Mons launcher would be right on the equator, the Olympus Mons launcher is ~18.4N, Mars axial tilt is 25.19°, so that would be inside the "tropic of cancer". If something needs to be launced at or near the invariable plane there would be possible to do it for a longer period of the year. The other one could send other things while it's not close enough.(Like satellites orbiting mars, instead of things that leaves mars' orbit.)
• Age: This could go both way when it come to which one is better. The older one could be smaller and worse and the newer one could be bigger and better. Or the older one had to be both capable of sending soft and hard stuff so that's the better one, the newer one only needed to be able to send the mined metals to give an higher throughput for the mined metals.
• Height of the launcher: Olympus Mons is 21.3 km high, while Olympus Mons is 'only' 14 km high, if that makes a difference.
• Different owners: American/European. American/Chinese, mixed/mixed, owned by a number of different countries/'Privately' owned, etc

Some of these can't combine with each other, so I need to figure out how they should differ and which one should be which, which one is older/newer etc. Also open for other ideas on differences/reasons for them.

edited 3rd Aug '13 2:43:35 PM by m8e

I have around.... 3 or 4 settings in total. All of them are pretty much World of Badass

But I'll start with one of them.

The setting is in a artificially created dying world, located somewhere above the surface of the planet. It has artificial atmosphere, sun, and the power distribution is handled by the government. Magically created in an effort to escape the surface of the planet that is slowly turning into a Death World but after that the inhabitants are practically cut off from the rest of the universe.

The question is... what kind of artificial magic world should it be? a World Tree ? A Star Scraper ? inside a moon-like structure like [Final Fantasy XIII Cocoon?] Which one would be "more logical"?

Oh, and the magic in this story is more of the Magitek kind.

I'm inclined to think that it would likely depend heavily on the nature, capabilities and aptitudes of the magic in question: a magic that focusses heavily on manipulating nature would likely lend itself to a World Tree, while on that manipulated space might create a bubble of folded space, for example.

Hmm... true, true....

Okay then, to the drawing board it is~

Thank you very much

@m8e I have only a general understanding of how a mass driver works, but it seems to me that none of the points that you mentioned are mutually exclusive. I would suggest that you pick what ever works for your story, and if multiple things do, well, sometimes arbitrary decision-making is called for. The only "issue" I can foresee is if you have "spaceports" on the Mons as well as mass drivers (I'm thinking of what is essentially an airport IN SPACE!, so the designated landing areas are adjacent (more or less) to the mass drivers), then a 7km difference elevation, aka 7km difference in available stopping distance, may be rather important.

Anyone have any advice on avoiding clishés or other pitfalls involving someone from our world traveling to a magical one?

I've probably asked this before, but how do I avoid the Satellite Love Interest trope in a boarding school setting?

Correct.

Why is the setting relevant? All you have to do is give the love interest a personality, motivations, and a character arc that do not revolve around their girlfriend/boyfriend/secret armadillo lover.

Would having a slightly larger number of prominent archipelago-based countries in my world be plausible for averting the Monochrome Casting in most stock fantasy settings? It wouldn't be a lot, just enough to explain my pseudo-Asian/Middle-Eastern demographic in pseudo-Ireland.

I don't just want the in-story explanation to be completely "A Wizard Did It." If anyone needs further clarification, I'm fine.

edited 5th Oct '13 5:13:59 PM by Sharysa

Why is that necessary? All you need is a sizeable immigrant population. Maybe pseudo-Ireland's economy is doing better than pseudo-Saudi Arabia's, or things went very, very bad a while back in pseudo-Arabia, and the relatively tolerant, progressive pseudo-Ireland was where a lot of the refugees ended up.

That actually sounds a lot easier, thanks. And the "things went bad" suggestion actually reminds me that Southern Asian countries tend to be a lot more vulnerable due to all the natural disasters, constant warfare, and more-powerful-countries-coming-in-to-colonize-them.

So yay, I have more specific Fantasy Counterparts now!

edited 6th Oct '13 11:04:25 AM by Sharysa

The Roma are a real life example of this kind of diversity in a Medieval setting, but I'd rather ask, if you want diversity, why are you aiming for Medieval European Fantasy at all?