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Shared world stories.
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Shared world stories.
Shared world stories.
In a sudden attack of brilliance (if I do say so myself) I had an idea: let's write shared world stories. We work together on this thread to create a world. Then we each write a story set there and post it. What think you?
Any ideas for the world?
submitted by ZNZ
(April 13, 2010 - 5:00 pm)
(April 13, 2010 - 5:00 pm)
Ooh, that sounds fun.
As to ideas, well, I think the landscape should have some logical rules, not the standard "put things where it's convenient" method of mapping (*coughPaolinicough*), but actually well thought out so that one region turns gradually into the next, and rivers don't mysteriously start/end in the middle of a plain for no apparent reason...
And perhaps a steampunk/industrialized civilization could inhabit it? Pleaseplease?
On a slightly different note, how long would the stories have to be, on average? Because, as I have mentioned before, I have trouble with the 500-word-limit thing. I mean, if they were longish we could probably break them up into seperate posts... Or if they end up really long set up a seperate thread so as not to clutter up this one.
Good idea, by the way.
(April 14, 2010 - 10:45 am)
To the top, you thread!
(April 14, 2010 - 5:32 pm)
I like it!!!
(April 14, 2010 - 7:39 pm)
You, TNÖ, have an amazing Gift: The Ability to Inspire Attacks of Utter Cluelessness in Lesser Beings such as myself. These invariably cause Elipses-Followed-by-Random-Words-Followed-by-Questionmarks.
... What is steampunk?
You're right about everything else. I figured we could post our stories on seperate threads, and then on here we would just talk about the geography and people or whatever -- orginization, you know. I wouldn't give a length limit -- I hate 'em. Just make sure your story has an end.
(April 15, 2010 - 6:28 am)
Great idea! I think the world should be kind of an alternate reality, I mean with some of the same rules that govern our society, but not all. And maybe switch up the laws of physics. Umm...It could be like TNO said, with the map, and I second ZNZ's question, what's steampunk?
(April 15, 2010 - 4:50 pm)
"Retro-style Speculative Fiction set in periods where steam power is king. Very often this will be in an Alternate Universe where the internal combustion engine never displaced the steam engine, and as a result all manner of cool steam-driven technologies have emerged, ranging from the plausible to Magitech with a Hollywood Science Hand Wave. Largely, Steampunk runs on Rule of Cool."
/c+ping from TV Tropes
Basically science fiction with machines that run on steam power, often set in a Victorian-esque era. Uh... If anyone has seen the SciFi channel's Tin Man, that's steampunk. Wicked also has elements of steampunk, what with the clockwork tech. In the later books, after Medieval Stasis is broken, Ankh-Morpork (and the rest of the Discworld, by extention) starts heading in this direction, with the Disorganizers and speaking tubes and the clacks and all of Leonard's various inventions, and so on.
Does this help at all?
(April 16, 2010 - 10:53 am)
I don't really understand what we're doing here, so would someone mind explaining? But I'd love to participate.
(April 16, 2010 - 3:40 pm)
Yes, it does help. Thanks! :-)
(April 16, 2010 - 4:14 pm)
@ Katie: We work together to create an alternate universe, and then we each write a different story that takes place in that world.
Please tell me if anything I say doesn't make sense, or just doesn't
sound like a good idea. We don't have to use any of them, and I won't be offended.
A steampunk world sounds fine to me. However, if they were to rely almost entirely on steam, and have been doing so for a long time, they would have to have found some sort of fuel that replaces itself very quickly. Or else people found some way to replenish an otherwise nonrenewable resource artificially? I prefer the latter, myself. But how long will it have been since people first discovered steam power? Come to think of it, how do the people there measure time? I don't think their system should be too different from our own, to avoid confusion, but it would be rather odd if it was exactly the same, wouldn't it?
A year would, of course, be however long it takes for the planet (as they would have to be on a planet) to revolve around the sun, but maybe their planet was faster than ours, so that years could take a bit less time? No, never mind. Let's not use that idea. It would be really difficult to keep track of all the characters' ages. However, it would be nice if the world had no leap year. Leap years are confusing.
But what about months? Instead of just randomly picking dates, like here in our world, the inhabitants could go by the amount of time the moon takes to orbit the planet, like people used to do (showing that this is natural behavior, and the way people are most likely to keep track of time, as it's easiest)—except that there could be more that one moon—6, maybe?—and a month wouldn't end until the very slowest one had circled Earth. 1 of them takes 5 days, 1 takes 10, 1 takes 15, 1 takes 20, one takes 25, and one takes 30. Each moon could have a name, and each orbital time period would have a name (like we have the words day, week, and month), which would be derived from the name for its moon (but the name would be distorted, and followed by a word that means, or has to do with, orbits, satellites, circles, etc. It's like how the days of the week are named after Norse gods. 'Friday' comes from 'Freya's day,' which sound similar, but isn;t the same.). I guess that means there's no need for months after all.
If we use the latter idea, someone else can think of the names. I'm horrible at that sort of thing.
(April 16, 2010 - 10:32 pm)
Re: Fuel source: Well, it would have to be coal or something similar, something that could be burned. And, since generally steampunk societies don't care for the environment near as much as (most) of us do today, I doubt our civilization would have a problem with extensive/damaging mining... So we have them just digging up more coal whenever they need more, and maybe some (mad) scientists looking for a method of replicating it (because it has the potential to be cheaper than mining).
As to the time, well, a reasonable amount. I dunno, a century (or equivalent thereof) or so? With, shall we say, a brief period of explosive progress followed by decades of steady advancement, or something like that.
Re: Timekeeping: I like your idea with the moons, but what if our society had a type of clock in sync with the phases of the moon(s)? So instead of being one o'clock it would be a certain alignment of the various moons.
(April 17, 2010 - 12:10 am)
Right, unless they'd been doing it for so long that they'd sort of run out. But maybe there's just too much there. Or maybe they haven't been doing it for very long. Or maybe... Oh well. Something will eventually be decided, and I'm using too many 'or maybe's.'
That's a good idea about the clocks... I'll see if I can come up with any good ideas. Hold on. *thinks* Um... Well, my mind is kind of at a blank, which means I probably won't come up with any good ideas, but I'll try anyway. Instead of hours and minutes, they could have 1 unit of time named after the fastest moon, and it could equal 4 hours. And one that was twice as long that was eight hours (for the 2nd-fastest moon), which would be 8 hours. And 1 for the 3rd-fastest moon that was 12 hrs, and so on. However, that ends up as a lot of time units, and they're also all pretty large... Wait! I have a slightly better idea. It's just like that, but the units are 1 hr, 2 hrs, 3 hrs, and so on up to 6 hrs, and then it starts over again, but 4 times instead of once. There could be pictures of moons on clocks instead of numbers, for each one that would he gone by. But that ends up with no time unit less than an hour! The ancient Egyptians lived that way, but I really don't know if anyone else would be willing. Maybe we could add in some sort of other time unit that would be smaller—but we'd probably have to have an actual reason, since there was one for every other unit of time...
Um, sorry. I'm not feeling too well at the moment, and it's rather hard for me to focus on things properly, so I apologize if that was just... *cannot think of the right word*.
(April 17, 2010 - 8:20 pm)
Oooh! This sounds fun! I think it would be cool to have 2 different peoples, one would be the city people, and one would be the advanced-tribal-clockwork wagon people. And they would both think that each other were really stupid.
(April 17, 2010 - 9:33 am)
Okay, I get it now.
As for the fuel source, might they have a very large expanse of coal, more so than Earth? Unless that's a stupid idea or won't work. I'm not good at such things.
For clocks and such, I am not sure about. Confuses my brain. But maybe they could also measure time by other planets so that we could have these periods fill in the gaps?
But perhaps not. I just thought I'd throw that out there...
(April 18, 2010 - 3:54 pm)
Maybe, on their planet, stale air turned into coal?
(April 19, 2010 - 6:45 am)
As an alternative to stale air, we could just have the world have a long history of cycling from dense foliage to something similar to our Caroniferous period, which lead to massive coal beds all over the world, much more so than on our world. So it could be sort of like our ice ages, periods of warmth and then cold, only for them it's periods of warmth/good growing weather followed by rising sea levels and great swathes of swamp land. Yeah?
Re: Time: I like the idea of the moon... hour things... but what about in the daytime, or whenever the moons were out of sight? I mean, if we go with the standard spherical world, there's going to be periods of time when all of the moons are out of sight. I suppose if we had clocks of some sort that kept time with the phases of the various moons that would solve that problem. Or perhaps time just... doesn't exist when none of the moons are visible? I don't know exactly how that'd work, though. Maybe the idea would have no practical purpose except in a religious or philosophical viewpoint? So, I don't know, if there is a widespread or even global religion then the most "holy" times could be when none of the moons are visible? Like, people still use the clocks to deterimine the time, but it's acknowledged as just a sort of illusion of time, and that really the world hangs suspended outside of time until the moon comes back?
Or, no, that sounds stupid now I look over it. Stick with the clocks, I guess. As to the planets idea, it makes sense but I, for one, would get terribly confused. Best to keep it simple, I think.
Re: Different groups: The people in the cities could have the traditional steamtech, you know, airships and lots of random machinery/gadgets apparently held together by gears and the Rule of Cool (or we could actually make an effort and "design" steam machines that would actually work, if you want), while the more... vagabond ish people... I don't know... could just have clockwork tech that doesn't run on steam, maybe because they believe steam is... evil somehow? *shrug*
(April 19, 2010 - 10:57 am)