Some words of wisdom? Fixing an old project to fit with a higher standard I've set.

[Scrit]

While I was still enlisted with the Navy, I began a world-building project to occupy my time and keep me (barely) sane throughout deployment. This had been ... about six years ago. Recently, I've found all my old notes, and have been feeling the itch to work on it again. Just one problem. Everything's all wrong. I could go on for minutes with harsh, slanderous, lovecraftian babel about how nothing fits, but I won't bore you with my new found and apparently unreasonable standards.

For a little background, check the spoiler below.

 

This world, originally had been set for an rpg setting (Play-by-Post), and with it came, what I found to be interesting adaptations to to solve common problems. A world with some magick, but not an abundance, where the known territories vying for power have found themselves in a period of technological advancement that we call, The Age of Sail (16th to 19th century). What this means is, Navel power is the focal point of my world. For a play-by-post rpg, to be played on a dedicated forum, I realized quickly that I would have two groups of players. Those who would abide by whatever rules I set for the world, realistic or not, and players who would look at the time frame and want the things you would expect for the era at hand -- cannons, firearms, ships of their own and for the well educated or eccentric, upgrades for their ships (like copper plating on the keel instead of black tar). Being a fantasy setting, i would also have the players wanting some kind of magick to play around with which brought about an adaptation I am rather proud of. A three pronged magick system in which, magick is incredibly powerful but limited, each spell has an intended and adverse effect (healing causes temporary blindness in the caster -- career healers suffer permanent blindness over time.) as well as the chance of an unexpected effect (it blows up in your face -- regulated by moderators) etc.

So, originally I had an archipelago world, 2 1/3 the size of earth, boasting a considerable 80% of her landmass bathed in water and three moons gracing the heavens above her -- two appearing after dark, while one lags behind, warmed and chased by the dawn. Climate, environment, hours in a day or night, seasons, etc. None of it fit. There was nothing save for the explanation of "magick" to support any of this ... and while for some, this is all fine and good, it really isn't enough for me. Especially now, when I look toward this world and would like to expand it's use to something more. SO, I decided to take the original concepts, and start from the beginning. Adopt the Asimov and (Frank) Herbert way of observing, studying and adapting real world concepts to build something new and fantastic ... and it all starts with a map.

I am going for a level of realism, partly because this stuff interests the heck out of me, and partly because I understand it will impact any world with a great many variable. The heavens and celestial bodies, while minor considerations from a player, character's or reader's perspective, will affect some important aspects of any world. Things like distance from it's star, number of moons, axial tilt, speed of rotation on it's axis, speed at which it rotates about it's star ... If you haven't guessed by now, this stuff is like crack to me. I can spend days just reading about it.
Next is the landscape itself. I am debating on generating a landscape with a program that can handle fractles, like Wilbur and edit as I go along ... My attempts to generate an acceptable landscape solely through gimp have been atrocious. The idea of an archipelago world is out and I am leaning toward something more familiar. With that done, I would move on to establishing plate tectonics, fleshing out the world from there as I determined where mountains, valleys, river basins and the like would go. From there, work on something similar to the Atlas tutorial here and try to develop a way to make a realistic wood relief effect, since the tutorial that was linked here, seems to have vanished, and I've not had much luck tracking a replacement down.

Once I have a working map, sans traditional labels (can be added as layers anyway), I would have a point in which to redevelop the predominant cultures, outline the boundaries of their empires and rework their histories in a way that was more natural to the progression of such things on Earth. Only then would I even begin to whisper the words "Magick did it", since everything else would be as near believable and immersible as possible at that point.

Big project. Lots to do, lots to learn and thankfully I love the latter. With all of the above out in the open, I would like to ask for any bits of wisdom and advice the community would have for an admittedly ambitious project that, I will update here for the sake of showing off progress and asking critiques.

Also, for those interested, and don't mind a quick wikilink, one of the minor cultures I have worked on, and thankfully will remain fully intact, were inspired in part by the Ma'dan (Marsh Arabs) of Iraq.

Quick Edit: Borrowed from a post made by jbgibson in 2012, quick organization to follow in spoiler below.

 

Requirements -- Primary: Novel Setting. Secondary: Game Setting. (Optional) Tertiary: d20 adaptations after final stage.

Specifications -- Large oceanic world; Two to three moons; Believable yet fantastic landscape (ex. China, Yunnan Stone Forest, the steam emitting solfatares near Myvatn, Iceland); G3V type star (G = White to Yellow star; 3 tenths toward yellow; V = Main Sequence/Dwarf star) approx lifespan of 10,000 Million years; 4th world from it's star; Distance from star; 120,600,000 miles (further than earth from the sun at 92,960,000 miles, closer than mars at 141,600,000); 49 degree axial tilt; Radius 9,105.7 (Earth 3,959 * 2.3 = 9,105.7 -- 2 1/3 times larger.); Ringed world; Tidally Locked moons;
Climate to be determined with the above information and when terrain is set. While a good percentage of the world will be submerged in water, there will be a need for large landmasses.

Architecture -- Novel. play-by-post rpg. Possible adaptation for d20 (home use among friends). Map to be provided for each. More may be added here.

Design -- Wilbur; Gimp 2.6; Pen and paper (landmarks) Plate Tectonics; Use above information to determine realistic climate.

Implementation -- Final drafts (map); political boarders (map); culture histories (writing);

Step one: Determining year -- Kepler's Law

1. Kepler's First Law: The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci. Find average distance in Astronomical Units (AU) from the planet to it's parent star. One AU is approximately the distance from the sun to the earth, about 93 million miles. This distance is an average, due to Kepler's first law. If one AU is 93 Millions miles, and my planet is 120,600,000 miles from the sun, this means the distance is 1.296774193548387 AU.
   
2. Kepler's Second Law: A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time Cube the average distance. If we had a planet at twice the distance of earth to the sun, we would have an average of 2.00, which becomes 8.00 when cubed. Being lazy, and sitting here at 4am, I let google do that for me, getting 2.18068571045 ... that's too many numbers for me to be bothered with. I want realism, but im not going to slam my head into a wall worrying about every single decimal. Lets round up, shall we? Our original AU was 1.296774193548387. Rounding up, we have 1.3 AU. 1.3 cubed brings us to 2.197. For the sake of simplification, round once more, giving us a nice 2.2 for our second step.
   
3. Kepler's Third Law: The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. Now we take the square root of our cubed (and rounded) average distance. This makes up for the orbital period of the planet, around it's parent star in earth years. So, 2.2 becomes 1.48323969742. Rounding up to 1.5, this would make my world's orbital period nearly one and a half times that of earth, or 547.5 days. That wasn't so bad.
   

[Hai-Etlik]

The orbital period of a planet depends on both the radius of the orbit, and the mass of the star, and the range of habitable radii depends on the luminosity of the star, which depend on its mass and age.

Also, you only needed the third law. Assume the orbits have approximately the same eccentricity, and the semimajor axes will be proportional to the mean distances. If your planet is 1.3 times as far from its primary as Earth is from Sol, and it also has an approximately circular orbit, then the semimajor axis is 1.3 times that of Earth's. In fact the semi-major axis of a near-circular orbit, is pretty close to the mean distance from the primary.

The planet is going to receive less energy that far out, so you need to make the star brighter to keep the planet from freezing, you need to raise the luminosity by the square of the change in radius to do so. So the star needs to have a luminosity 2.2 times that of Sol. If it's the same age as Sol (4.7 Ga), I think you would need an F9 class star (I'm working backwards using the star system design rules in GURPS Space at this point) which would have a mass of 1.15 solar masses.

The square of the orbital period is inversely proportional to the cube of the mass of the primary, so doing all the math: (1.297^3/1.15^3)^(1/2)=1.198, Multiply by 365.25, and we get 437.5 earth days.

I'm open to being corrected by anyone who actually knows something about Astrophysics though.

[Scrit]

The orbital period of a planet depends on both the radius of the orbit, and the mass of the star, and the range of habitable radii depends on the luminosity of the star, which depend on its mass and age.

Awesome. Somehow I overlooked this yesterday morning. Thanks for pointing it out.

Also, you only needed the third law. Assume the orbits have approximately the same eccentricity, and the semimajor axes will be proportional to the mean distances. If your planet is 1.3 times as far from its primary as Earth is from Sol, and it also has an approximately circular orbit, then the semimajor axis is 1.3 times that of Earth's. In fact the semi-major axis of a near-circular orbit, is pretty close to the mean distance from the primary.

This is good to know. I had used all three laws for the most part, to flesh out some feasible distances and work out, at the time, and before passing out, I believe an orbital eccentricity I was comfortable with, as well as a revised axial tilt to better determine believable climate and seasons. I hadn't realized, at least for the bit of work shown, that I only needed the third law. You are right in your example, whether you intended to be or not, that I would be using a near circular orbit, similar to Earth's in my model.

The planet is going to receive less energy that far out, so you need to make the star brighter to keep the planet from freezing, you need to raise the luminosity by the square of the change in radius to do so. So the star needs to have a luminosity 2.2 times that of Sol. If it's the same age as Sol (4.7 Ga), I think you would need an F9 class star (I'm working backwards using the star system design rules in GURPS Space at this point) which would have a mass of 1.15 solar masses.

The square of the orbital period is inversely proportional to the cube of the mass of the primary, so doing all the math: (1.297^3/1.15^3)^(1/2)=1.198, Multiply by 365.25, and we get 437.5 earth days.

Seems my math was way off. I blame the lack of coffee and hour of my post.
Thinking about it, you're right. One of two things come to mind. Either a more luminous star, or an atmosphere that was thicker, with more greenhouse gasses and/or stronger magnetic field ... Mars for an example, I believe had a good portion of it's atmosphere stripped away by solar wind. A stronger magnetic field could have prevented that, however the world would still be fairly cold without a semi-Venus effect going on. Another consideration could be gravitational forces playing at the very shape of the world, expanding and contracting like one of Jupiter's moons, and through that causing geothermal energy to be released on the surface, as well as causing more active tectonic activity ... I think. Even then, while it is something I will keep in mind for the time being, it is something I would like to avoid as that would provide for some drastic changes and results.

Greenhouse gasses and magnetic field. The world being larger than earth, should have a sufficiently strong magnetic field -- perhaps strong enough to allow for more frequent atmospheric phenomena, like the Aurora/St. Elmo's fire. Greenhouse gasses would give me some room to play with visual effect in writing, like subtle play of color in the sky, sunrise/set and such, but I digress, most of that information wouldn't be of much use to a player or reader unless it were a more modern setting. It would, for the most part, be information stored in my notebooks, for the sake of practice and the possibility of working out future, sci-fi settings ... which is good, I don't mind the work behind it, and will save me hours, or days in research later on, while costing me the same in this project.

I am more familiar with the DnD 3.5 system than I am with GRUPS however, I do live with my DM, and he has had experience with the system as well as a mutual friend. I'm sure I could work the GRUPS Space system (for the sake of further expanding my understanding) back into the scientific standard.

Thanks for the information and the correction, Hai-Etilk. Have some rep.

[Midgardsormr]

You may also wish to consider the effects of larger oceans on the planet's heat retention. Water tends to absorb heat, so having a higher percentage of water on the surface will increase the planet's retention of heat, and thus its ambient temperature. On the other hand, it will also produce more cloud cover, which might have the effect of reflecting more radiation into space before it has a chance to be absorbed by the surface. Some research on the term albedo might yield some useful information.