Let's build a label-less setting

Pretty much.

Like if we want Orcs using steam-powered airships, who happen to also know how genetic engineering mutants and facebook works. That's perfectly fine. As long as we have a decent enough reason behind it.

edited 23rd Aug '12 3:43:29 PM by Vyctorian

You're right, I should restrain myself.

However, most of the ideas I've come up with aren't original. Septerra Core has a floating continent planet, Dragon Star has elves and orcs with starships and other science fiction mainstays, Star Ocean is Star Trek with wizards and other fantasy mainstays, and what was the point of this again?

Label-less setting, right? I don't think that's possible anymore. The closest I can think of is the New Weird.

edited 23rd Aug '12 5:17:21 PM by Zenoseiya

Indeed, but I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion. All it means is that mix'n'match is the wrong approach to produce something original. And, if you think about it, that's really not much of a surprise. For some genuinely original material (as far as I can tell), look at what some of the others have posted in the "Worldbuilding Ecology" thread. Nothing spectacular, for the most part, just little nuggets of creativity.

edited 23rd Aug '12 5:31:11 PM by kassyopeia

Allow me to revise my idea for the world shape.

Let's start with a hollow sphere of arbitrary size. Inside the sphere are concentric shells, with habitable inner and outer surfaces and suns and moons orbiting across the "sky." In the innermost sphere, there is a dark void filled with stars, cosmic debris, and the fossilized corpses of massive creatures, forming a "planet" of countless asteroid "continents," with a glowing object at the center.

I like that idea. Alot

The Tropeless Tale: World Building Edition

I wouldn't say it's going that far.

Originality means refuting cliches, not tropes, IMHO.

Very interesting.

x6

Toss in some Alien Geometry while we're at it... localities and geographies that take the form of Mobius strips or Klein bottles or hyperbolic manifolds or any sort of non-Euclidean nonspherical geometry.

edited 28th Aug '12 10:12:26 AM by ArgentumUranium

... which could result in a world that's Bigger on the Inside, like Moebius' (the other one) Airtight Garage setting.

I like the idea of storms getting caught between the layers

I think that might get a tad confusing.

How about we try to make a Transhumanist Theotechnology Post Cyber Punk Real Robot world?

Everything's initially identical to our Earth. Then, we pull the rug out by having Judeo-Christo-Islamic angels (the kind that look freaky, not humanoid) begin invading and forcibly abducting humans for some inscrutable purpose, since they don't respond to any attempts to communicate. Modern technology, however, is able to fight them moderately decently. Like this: http://fav.me/d57k8hv

After some angels are killed or captured, mankind begins to develop new technologies by studying them, most prominently biomechanoid warmachines. Then mankind managed to "convert" a captured angel into a friendly by messing with its programming, revealing that angels are nothing more than extremely advanced Ambiguous Robots following the orders of an unknown agent. Eventually, makind manages to completely repel the invasion. Using the new "arcanotechnologies" derived from the Angels, mankind jumpstarts both their physical evolution and the colonization of nearby stars.

The ambiguity comes in when one wonders how it is possible for science and the bible to both be correct. Nothing that happened during the "Angel War" actually contradicted the teachings of the Abrahamic religions. Athiests, however, try to pass it off as simply being a random alien attack, even though the aliens match the original descriptions of angels perfectly (the only reason people recognized them as angels was because all of them had feathery or gossamer many-lobed wings, rarely insect-like wings, regardless of other features like wheels/tentacles/blades/jets/guns).

"Christian" Transhumanism begins to take off as people form new religions to make sense of events. Believers of all stripes come up with wild theories, but the most common is that the war was a test of our faith, and only by proving we could stand on equal footing with angels would we earn God's grace. The angel's technology was a gift, so that we could make the journey to God ourselves, rather than him coming to us.

Then the disagreements start, and mechs originally designed for work began being used to blow each other up and shower the sands of the frontier worlds with their blue entrails.

edited 29th Aug '12 4:33:57 PM by Zenoseiya

That reminds me of Neon genisis evangelion

edited 29th Aug '12 4:32:38 PM by eldritchseer

I guess, but the angels are more like soldiers and tanks and whatnot rather than Kaiju, and it explores the actual religious implications. And I just added "cyberpunk" as a descriptor.

EDIT: As far as the mecha are concerned, I envision them more like Husks crossed with Synths.

edited 29th Aug '12 4:55:54 PM by Zenoseiya

"Transhumanist Theotechnology Post Cyber Punk Real Robot" =/= "label-less"

Granted, once you smash that many labels together they cease to actually mean very much.

Yea that's just throwing a bunch of labels together and calling it new. Which is it's own thing but I doesn't fell like this.

Also that idea is far too close to EVA, for my tastes.

edited 29th Aug '12 6:54:21 PM by Vyctorian

A world in which everything is made of geometric shapes of various dimensions and sizes.

I guess the origin story would be so, but it also has just as much in common with Xenogears and Xenosaga, since new technology was derived from things that were presumably created by God, and Genesis Of Aquarion, since the angels came in armies, abducted humans, and were characterized by having wings. Though the "current era" is more like Battle Tech with Engels. But I guess one can't have a speculative fiction story involving technology derived from biblical angels and the resulting religious implications without being compared to NGE, even though that series as not about religion in the slightest.

That's the plot of Flatland, Sphereland, and Spaceland.

edited 29th Aug '12 8:43:34 PM by Zenoseiya

Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, But if we are going with the concentric world idea, perhaps a monarchy or empire of some sort forms a hierachy depending on how close you are to the core.

Just an idea.

edited 29th Aug '12 11:34:53 PM by eldritchseer

A structure like that is unimaginably huge. How would they rule?

Badly

I vote we keep it imaginably huge. Unimaginable settings are problematic.

Like I said, just an idea.