# Planet names of Settings



## Red Viper (Mar 28, 2005)

I was wondering what all the Planet names of the different settings were, the name and number of moons and suns, or any other spoace objects that are around the planet.

Forgotten Realms/Kara Tur/Al Quadim/Maztica: Toril, 1 moon (name?), 1 sun(name), 
Dragonlance: 3 moons (can't thik of th enames at the moment)
Grey Hawk: Oerth
Dark Sun: Athas
Ravenloft:
Oriental:
Birthright:
Kingdoms of Kalamar:
Ebberon:
Mystra:
Planescape:
Spelljammer:

Feel free to add any other settings that I am forgetting.


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## Voadam (Mar 28, 2005)

Dragonlance is Krynn, the moons are the three aligned gods of magic (I forget them too Solinari, lunitari, nuitari?)
Greyhawk is Oerth
Ravenloft is not a world but a shifting demiplane
Spelljammer has tons of worlds in it including all the 2e standard ones from tsr

I think Scarred Lands is called Scarn.
Oathbound is a planet called the Forge it has two suns.


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## MaxKaladin (Mar 28, 2005)

Red Viper said:
			
		

> Forgotten Realms/Kara Tur/Al Quadim/Maztica: 1 moon (name?):



As I recall, the moon in the FR is known as Selune like the goddess and there are some little asteroid type things near it that are known as "Selune's Tears")



			
				Red Viper said:
			
		

> Kingdoms of Kalamar:



Isn't this one Tellene?


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## Southern Oracle (Mar 28, 2005)

Technically, the name for the planet on which the Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and Maztica campaign settings take place is Abeir-Toril.

Voadam is correct -- the moon's of Krynn are called Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari.

The planet for the Eberron campaign setting is called Eberron.  Their mythology says it's formed from the body of Eberron, the Dragon Between, who broke up a fight between Siberys, the Dragon Above (who forms the ring around the planet) and Khyber, the Dragon Below (who embodies the planet's interior).

The Spelljammer cosmology for Greyspace is as follows:
Oerth -- the planet for the Greyhawk campaign setting
Kule -- the smaller moon orbiting Oerth (called Celene by the Oerthans), settled by drow and illithids
Raenei -- the larger moon orbiting Oerth (called Luna by the Oerthans), with no indigenous sentients (although it has settlements from Oerth and one from Krynn)
Liga -- the sun, settled by fire elementals with small outposts of water elementals
The Moth -- a planetoid orbiting Liga (Greyspace is geocentric, meaning all the heavenly bodies orbit Oerth, including Liga), completely lifeless
The Grinder -- asteroid sphere
Edill -- air planet populated by dragons
Gnibile -- air planet populated by undead
Conatha -- water planet populated by sahuagin and merfolk
Ginsel -- crescent-shaped planet populated by standard sentient races
Borka -- cluster planet populated by goblinoids
Greela -- cluster planet populated by humans and elves
The Spectre -- disk planet populated by standard sentient races


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Mar 28, 2005)

I'll fill in what I know ...  

Forgotten Realms/Kara Tur/Al Quadim/Maztica:

The main planet is Toril.  The moon is called Selune (the same as the main moon-goddess), and it is followed by small planetoids called "Selune's Tears."  There are several other planets, including Coliar (halfling desert-world), a lizard-man planet, a couple gas giants, a giant floating plant ...  The names largely escape me now, however.  

Dragonlance:

The planet is Krynn, and the moons are Solinari (Good), Lunitari (Neutral), and Nuitari (Evil).

Ravenloft:  Not so much a planet as ... something else.  

Ebberon:  Eberron (check your spelling!  ) is the name of the planet.  It has 12 moons, one for each month: Zarantyr, Olarune, Therendor, Eyre, Dravago, Nymm, Lharvion, Barrakas, Rhaan, Sypheros, Aryth, and Vult.

Mystara:  It's called the "Known World," as near as I can tell.

Planescape / Spelljammer:  All of them?


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## Tonguez (Mar 28, 2005)

Just am additional question - are all the above named planets spheres?


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## Mark Plemmons (Mar 28, 2005)

_Technically,_ in the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting, Tellene is a continent, though its inhabitants believe it encompasses the entirety of the planet.   Tellene has a warm-to-temperate climate. The southernmost tip of Tellene lies at roughly 20º latitude, while the northernmost explored areas rest at about 54º latitude.  The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

So Tellene is the name for the continent and the name for the planet.

Orbiting Tellene are three moons:  Diadolai (Elven Moon), Pelselond (Big Star) and Veshemo (Mother Above).  Diadolai is the smallest of the three moons and is reddish-pink in color.  It is on an 80 day cycle from full moon to full moon.  For most of the 80 day period, however, Diadolai does not appear in the nighttime sky.  Because of its size (about 1/3 the size of Veshemo), Diadolai does not give off much light, even when full.  The elves believe Diadolai to be the home of the gods.

Pelselond is a small moon as well, appearing only slightly larger than Diadolai.  Pelselond’s full moon cycle is approximately 34 days and it usually appears white or off-white in color.  Pelselond has an elliptic orbit and therefore, appears to be moving at varying speeds across the sky.  

Veshemo is the largest of the three moons and occasionally eclipses the other moons from view.  It is on a 28 day cycle, which is the basis for the calendar that most of Tellene uses.  On the 14th of every month Veshemo is full; but being pale yellow in color, Veshemo gives off only slightly more light than Pelselond.  

Every 280 years the three moons are aligned and full simultaneously.  This event is recognized, but not necessarily celebrated, by almost every religion on Tellene.  Veshemo and Diadolai are full together on various days in a 20 year cycle.  Veshemo and Pelselond as well as Pelselond and Diadolai are full together at least once per year.  Veshemo, Pelselond and Diadolai align or are full concurrently once every few years in a 40 year cycle.  Two of the moons are in alignment several times a year.

The Brightstar: Another star exists only about half a light year away from Tellene’s.  It is a double star with its twin being a black hole.  The two rotate around each other so this very bright star slowly disappears and then reappears.  Some hold that the two stars influence good and evil.  While the Brightstar shines goodwill prospers, but when it dims, evil reigns supreme.


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## twofalls (Mar 28, 2005)

Kingdoms of Kalmar : Tellene
Scarred Lands: Scarn
GURPS Fantasy World: Yth
Oriental: Kara Tur (this reffers to the eastern FR Continent, not sure if they ever mentioned the oriental version of Toril)
Sovergien Stone : Loerem
Midnight: Eredane
2e Ravenloft didn't have a world name, it was merely known as the Demiplane of Dread with different domains within. Not sure about 3e.


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## MaxKaladin (Mar 28, 2005)

twofalls said:
			
		

> GURPS Fantasy World: Yth



Yrth, actually.  Unless they've changed it for 4th edition.


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## Steverooo (Mar 28, 2005)

For the world of Greyhawk, I believe that the solar system is analgous to ours, although the worlds have different names, drawn from the GH mythology.  IIRC, the name of the Jupiter-analog is Rao...


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Mar 28, 2005)

Tonguez said:
			
		

> Just am additional question - are all the above named planets spheres?




Nope.  All of the planets in the Forgotten Realms universe are in the same crystal sphere.

Eberron doesn't touch any other setting's cosmology.  It's got its own, unique one.


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## Varianor Abroad (Mar 28, 2005)

Planescape doesn't have a "planet", though Sigil is essentially the central point for the setting.

The Land of the Diamond Throne (Arcana Evolved setting) has the world of Serran.

The Polyhedron Spelljammer mini-game rewrote the SJ cosmology a bit, creating the world of Quelya circling the Pyre.


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## DMH (Mar 28, 2005)

Voadam said:
			
		

> .
> Oathbound is a planet called the Forge it has two suns.




The two suns are Crux (large yellow) and Storm (small red) and the moons are Anahita (water, same orbit as Storm) and Zadkiel (rust, polar orbit).

Broncosaurus Rex is on Cretasus which is Jupiter sized for some reason (with 2 unnamed moons)

Iron Kingdoms has Caen with 3 moons- Calder, Laris and Artis


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## twofalls (Mar 28, 2005)

MaxKaladin said:
			
		

> Yrth, actually.  Unless they've changed it for 4th edition.




My typo stands corrected.


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## Ambrus (Mar 28, 2005)

> Technically, the name for the planet on which the Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and Maztica campaign settings take place is Abeir-Toril




I believe it means "craddle of life" in some ancient language.



> The moon is called Selune (the same as the main moon-goddess), and it is followed by small planetoids called "Selune's Tears."




That's what it's called by the inhabitants of Toril at least. A little known fact though is that the human and elven inhabitants of the moon themselves call their world "Leira", the name of the now deceased Forgotten Realms goddess of illusion and trickery. Long story there. The "Tears of Selune" are a cluster of asteroids.



> There are several other planets, including Coliar (halfling desert-world), a lizard-man planet, a couple gas giants, a giant floating plant ... The names largely escape me now, however.




They are, in order, out from the sun:

• Anadia (Sperical earth planet with Umber Hulks and polar halflings inhabitants)
• Coliar (Spherical gas planet w/ floating earth islands, aarakocra and lizardmen inhabitants)
• Abeir-Toril (Spherical earth planet)
• Karpri (Spherical water planet inhabited by aquatic elves and giant insects)
• Chandos (Spherical water planet inhabited by humans, dwarves and orcs)
• Glyth (Spherical earth planet w/ rings with mind flayer and humanoid slave inhabitants)
• Garden (A cluster of asteroids held together by a huge living plant called Yggdrasil's child)
• H'Catha (A flat water world with a single mountain on both sides; inhabited by beholders)

Asside from those celestial bodies, some of the planets have their own moons, most notably Garden which has twelve of its own (including it's own mini-sun/moon), a few comets, a handful of artificial satellites and some nebulae. Elminster also keeps a secret hideout at Coliar's core which houses his portals to his tower in Shadowdale, to the Island of Evermeet, to Yellowstone National park in the year 1894, a portal to Ed Greenwood's study in Ontario Canada in the present day as well as his closet full of gems and his stash of german beer. (I kid you not. Could I make this stuff up?!?)


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## Voadam (Mar 28, 2005)

Ambrus said:
			
		

> I believe it means "craddle of life" in some ancient language.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I guess I need to get realmspace.


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## Ambrus (Mar 28, 2005)

> Posted by *Voadam*
> I guess I need to get realmspace.




It's, ah... illuminating.


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## Patryn of Elvenshae (Mar 28, 2005)

Thanks for the corrections, Ambrus!

It's been awhile since I played _Pirates of Realmspace._


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## arscott (Mar 28, 2005)

Tonguez said:
			
		

> Just am additional question - are all the above named planets spheres?



I think Mystara's a tube, with the hollow world on the inside.  It may just be a hollowed out sphere with holes at the poles, though.  I've seen it depicted both ways.


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## Henry (Mar 28, 2005)

The Hollow World Campaign Setting (which is supposed to be that "inside" of Mystara is "hollowed out sphere" if I remember correctly.


And Dark Sun's world of Athas - I think the name for their sun was just "the sun" wasn't it?


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## BOZ (Mar 28, 2005)

Birthright... ah, i know i've heard it before... was it Cerilia or was that a country?


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## Staffan (Mar 28, 2005)

Southern Oracle said:
			
		

> Technically, the name for the planet on which the Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim, Kara-Tur, and Maztica campaign settings take place is Abeir-Toril.



Among the northern barbarians, perhaps. In civilized regions, it's called *Al-*Toril.

Mystara was also mentioned, which is the name of that planet. IIRC, the continent on which things are centered is called Brun, and the Known World is the eastern part of that continent (east of Hule, south of Wendar).

As for Dark Sun, the only information given about its solar system is that it has two moons, Ral and Guthay, and that the crystal sphere surrounding the system is portal-less. Oh, and there's a comet called the Messenger that appears every now and then - it was supposed to appear something like 5 years after the release of the original box set, but didn't.


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## fusangite (Mar 28, 2005)

I'm not very interested in published setting materials but this thread I'm finding really interesting. I can't believe what a huge proportion of the worlds/universes in published materials are or contain planets. 

It seems really weird to me that given all the possibilities, that so many designers would choose to conceptualize the place in which adventures take place as planets. After all, none of the standard cosmological systems like the Great Wheel require any of the worlds within them to be planets. 

Do people have any thoughts on why designers tend to make the worlds they describe into planets?


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## Hawklord (Mar 28, 2005)

There are 11 "planetary" bodies in the Greyhawk system (or crystal sphere).
This is all from the Greyspace book for Spelljammer so how much of this is still canon in third edition who knows!

Oerth (standard Greyhawk setting) which all the others orbit round.
Kule - one of Oerth's moons (airles moon with drow mind-flayer and kuo-toa underground)
Raeni - oerthlike atmosphere various settlers and monsters
Liga - Oerth's sun inhabited by various fire-based creatures
The Grinder - basically an asteroid belt with lots of undead
Edill - an "air world" mostly inhabited by dragons
Gnibile - another "air world" with flying rocks inhabited by undead
Conatha - a "water body" inhabited by various sahuagin mermen etc.
Ginsel - A crescent shaped body inhabited mostly by humans
Borka - a cluster of thousands of rocks inhabited by gobiloids and orcs
Greela - another "cluster body" inhabited by humans and elves
The Spectre - a "disk world" inhabited by various races


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## Ambrus (Mar 28, 2005)

> Do people have any thoughts on why designers tend to make the worlds they describe into planets?




The main settings; Greyhawk, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms were all detailed in planetary terms during the second edition so that they could be used in conjunction with the Spelljammer setting which was in full production at the time. It simply hasn't been changed or updated since then. The planetary status of other settings for that period; such as Dark Sun and Ravenloft were likewise clarified to clear up how they did or didn't match up with the Spelljammer setting: Athas (Dark Sun) had no portals through which Spelljamming vessels could pass to enter its crystal sphere while Ravenloft didn't actually have any space in which a spelljammer could fly (that was clarified in a Sage Advice IIRC: if you flew high enough above the ground in Ravenloft you'd eventually encounter the mists and come out somewhere else in the Domain). I suspect the last two clarifications were made to help preserve the flavour of the two settings and to help keep them distinct from other Campaign Settings. They didn't want PCs trying to set up an intestellar iron trade on Athas or PCs escaping the Domains of Dread by Spelljammer.

The big exception to the campaign setting = planet rule is, of course, Ravenloft. The Domains of Dread are all part of a demiplane rather than a planet. It's unclear what the sun, the moon and the stars in the skies of Ravenloft actually are though it seems likely that they aren't celestial bodies in the sense we're used to thinking of them. Perhaps they are the homes of the Dark Powers or the Dark Powers themselves or simply illusions created by the Dark Powers. Who knows?

I suspect the reason that designers usually make campaing settings on planets is because it's easier for them to imagine them the way we're all used to thinking of worlds. That, and because some PCs would innevitably try to attack and kill the giant turtle supporting the world on its back if they could find it. Imagine the XP... *drools*


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## fusangite (Mar 29, 2005)

Ambrus said:
			
		

> The main settings; Greyhawk, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms were all detailed in planetary terms during the second edition so that they could be used in conjunction with the Spelljammer setting which was in full production at the time. It simply hasn't been changed or updated since then. The planetary status of other settings for that period; such as Dark Sun and Ravenloft were likewise clarified to clear up how they did or didn't match up with the Spelljammer setting:... etc.



Thanks for this. I had no idea about any of this stuff. It does sort of put things in context.







> I suspect the reason that designers usually make campaing settings on planets is because it's easier for them to imagine them the way we're all used to thinking of worlds.



That seems strange to me for some reason. These guys are creative fellows; it just seems odd, given the prevalence of worldviews in the past that didn't think in these terms. It just seems to me that if you're writing about a world full of gods and magic that planetary systems would hardly be the first thing you would think of. But maybe it's just further evidence that I'm weird.







> That, and because some PCs would innevitably try to attack and kill the giant turtle supporting the world on its back if they could find it. Imagine the XP... *drools*



Again and again, no less; after all, it's turtles all the way down.


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## Hawklord (Mar 29, 2005)

BOZ said:
			
		

> Birthright... ah, i know i've heard it before... was it Cerilia or was that a country?



 Cerilia was the main continent the action took place on.. I think the planet was called Aebrynis.


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## Aristotle (Mar 29, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> These guys are creative fellows; it just seems odd, given the prevalence of worldviews in the past that didn't think in these terms. It just seems to me that if you're writing about a world full of gods and magic that planetary systems would hardly be the first thing you would think of.




I think (and I believe I've read this in a book somewhere) it has less to do with the creativity of those involved in the creation and more to do with the ability of those reading/playing the setting to visualize or conceptualize it. If you stick with what your readers/players know, they will be more easily able to properly visualize the setting and be able to interact with it with less hesitation. This, as I understand it, is why most worlds are round, most skies are blue, and most plants are generally thought of as being mostly green.

One could argue that it is taking the easy way out, I suppose. I personally prefer a round world filled with biomes that at least partially resemble those I might be able to visit in the real world.


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## Alzrius (Mar 29, 2005)

The planetary system for Krynnspace (the _Dragonlance_ solar system) is as follows, from the center outwards:

The Sun
Sirrion
Reorx
Krynn (moons are Solinari, Lunitari, and Nuitari)
Chislev
Zivilyn (moons are Gilean, Shinare, Takhisis, Sargonnas, Morgion, Chemosh, Zeboim, Hiddukel, Mishakal, Paladine, Kiri-Jolith, and Majrere)
Nehzmyth
The Stellar Islands

Not nearly as much is known about the Eberron planetary system. The sun appears to just be called The Sun. The planet itself is Eberron, and it has a ring around the world called Siberys. It has twelve moons (one for each month) named Zarantyr, Olarune, Therendor, Eyre, Dravago, Nymm, Lharvion, Barrakas, Rhaan, Sypheros, Aryth, and Vult. There was once a thirteenth moon, as there was a thirteenth dragonmark, but after its holders were eradicated in the War of the Mark, this moon (apparently) vanished. There are also eleven constellations, one for each dragon deity (described in _Draconomicon_).

Mystara itself is a hollow planet. The interior has the atmosphere only hugging the outer edges. In the exact center is a space-like void in which its sun hangs. Mystara has two moons, Matera (which is like our moon), and Patera (which is invisible to most viewing, and where the Mystaran Immortals congregate). Mystara has what's known as the Skyshield around its atmosphere, keeping the planet's atmosphere from being lost, since its hollow nature means it doesn't have enough gravity to retain a normal atmosphere. The World Shield, the material deep in the earth that divides the surface world from the Hollow World, also adds gravity. Note that there are gaping holes to the Hollow World (hundreds of miles across) at each pole of the planet.

Athas's sun is, apparently, also just called The Sun. It has two moons. The larger one, golden in color, is called Guthay. The smaller, silver one is called Ral. Athas did see the periodic orbit of a comet called the Messenger, but lately it hasn't appeared.

Information on the planetary system of the _Birthright_ setting is virtually nil. The planet is called Aebrynis, and that's about all we know (it's assumed to have a sun and a moon).

And just to recap, here's the information for the previously mentioned campaigns:



			
				Hawklord said:
			
		

> There are 11 "planetary" bodies in the Greyhawk system (or crystal sphere).
> This is all from the Greyspace book for Spelljammer so how much of this is still canon in third edition who knows!
> 
> Oerth (standard Greyhawk setting) which all the others orbit round.
> ...




For Realmspace:


			
				Amrbus said:
			
		

> They are, in order, out from the sun:
> 
> • Anadia (Sperical earth planet with Umber Hulks and polar halflings inhabitants)
> • Coliar (Spherical gas planet w/ floating earth islands, aarakocra and lizardmen inhabitants)
> ...






			
				Mark Plemmons said:
			
		

> _Technically_, in the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting, Tellene is a continent, though its inhabitants believe it encompasses the entirety of the planet. Tellene has a warm-to-temperate climate. The southernmost tip of Tellene lies at roughly 20º latitude, while the northernmost explored areas rest at about 54º latitude. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
> 
> So Tellene is the name for the continent and the name for the planet.
> 
> ...


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## Voadam (Mar 29, 2005)

Ravenloft has different celestial bodies depending on which domain you are in. Soth's domain of Sithicus was taken/based from Dragonlance and has only one moon, Nuitari IIRC. Nova Vassa had something like seven moons in one of the products featuring the domain (though it is the domain with the most changes from product to product).

This caused a little reality glitch as when the mists and domain lords don't keep the borders separated they are physically connected but could have different astronomical features as you crossed the invisible domain borders.


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## Alzrius (Mar 29, 2005)

Voadam said:
			
		

> Ravenloft has different celestial bodies depending on which domain you are in. Soth's domain of Sithicus was taken/based from Dragonlance and has only one moon, Nuitari IIRC.




Since _Spectre of the Black Rose_, and, more recently, _Ravenloft Gazetteer IV_, the disparity of Sithicus's moon from that of the rest of the Core has been resolved somewhat.

Prior to the Hour of Screaming Shadows, Nuitari was the only moon in Sithicus (it functioned the same as it did on Krynn). However, in the days leading up to the HoSS, Solinari appeared, and Lunitari did also with a few hours to spare. After the Hour of Screaming Shadows ended, the moon was now a tripartite moon of white, black, and red. 

According to Gaz IV (as I understand it anyway, it's not completely clear from the wording) the new Nuitari looks normal (like the moon elsewhere) except to creatures with supernatural or spell-like abilities (I assume the ability to cast spells must be there somewhere also). For them, neutral creatures see a rose-like design on the moon, and evil creatures see more horrendous things (no mention of good creatures). Of course, the unnatural shadows it casts on the landscape are visible to everyone.

As before, Nuitari's waxing and waning affects the power of (only) arcane spellcasters. However, it now follows a full-month cycle, instead of just eight days. Also, it's bonuses and penalties are reversed from what they were (as happened to much of Sithicus).



> _Nova Vassa had something like seven moons in one of the products featuring the domain (though it is the domain with the most changes from product to product)._




I vaguely recall this, and while it never had any official errata or retraction, everyone pretty much ignores it (especially since this domain is supposed to be from Toril, which has one moon).


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## fusangite (Mar 29, 2005)

Aristotle said:
			
		

> I think (and I believe I've read this in a book somewhere) it has less to do with the creativity of those involved in the creation and more to do with the ability of those reading/playing the setting to visualize or conceptualize it. If you stick with what your readers/players know, they will be more easily able to properly visualize the setting and be able to interact with it with less hesitation. This, as I understand it, is why most worlds are round, most skies are blue, and most plants are generally thought of as being mostly green.



Living in a world that isn't round isn't jarring like a pink sky or unrecognizeable foliage; it's totally consistent with many pre-modern people's lived experience of _this_ world. Ancient Hebrews imagined the world to be a flat disc. Ancient Chinese also imagined a flat world, etc. The day to day experience of living on a flat world is not different than this one, provided you have an alternate explanation for the horizon. To many pre-modern people, the flat earth was a self-evident truth that described and explained their day to day lived experience. 

Even pre-moderns who understood the world to be round (most Europeans, North Africans and West Asians before the 16th century) didn't see it as a planet. The day to day experience of living on a round world that is not a planet is absolutely indistinguishable from from the lived experience of being on a round world that is a planet. 

So I just don't buy that it would be hard to figure out how to act in a world that is just like this one in terms of all day to day experience that doesn't involve space travel or complex kinematics equations (which I hope are not mainstays of any standard D&D campaign using a setting like Greyhawk). What would be different?







> One could argue that it is taking the easy way out, I suppose. I personally prefer a round world filled with biomes that at least partially resemble those I might be able to visit in the real world.



You can have all that without the world being a planet. And you can have all but one of those things without the world being round.


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## Angel Tarragon (Mar 29, 2005)

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
			
		

> Forgotten Realms/Kara Tur/Al Quadim/Maztica:
> 
> The main planet is Toril.



Abeir-Toril, actually!


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## mac1504 (Mar 29, 2005)

twofalls said:
			
		

> Midnight: Eredane




IIRC (and I have been known to be wrong before...) Eredane is the continent in which Midnight is set. Aryth is the planet, as there is another continent that the Sarcosans and Dorns have come from named Pelluria.


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## Gez (Mar 29, 2005)

Any world created by Gygax will have a planet name ending in -rth, with two vowels before. Oerth, Aerth, Eurth, Eirth, Airth, Eerth, Oarth, etc. are all perfectly valid Gygaxian world names. 

Funny thing is, in its French version of Greyhawk (setting name is unchanged, but the city becomes Faucongris), Oerth is named Taerre (since Terre=Earth). I expect the German version to be something like Orde (Erde=Earth).

Trivia: The Forgotten Realms' world was named Toril, copying Jeff Grubb's homebrew's name. But Toril starts with a T, which means it wasn't at the top of the index. So, Abeir was tacked on before, just so that Abeir-Toril would be the first entry in the index.


My homebrew's solar system works like this:

*Prime* is the name of the sun. It's what people can expect for such a thing: a mind-boggingly big sphere of fire, heat, light, and raw energy.
*Limiole* is the first planet. A hot place, rich in metals and crystals, with intense telluric activity. It's the homeworld of azers and genies. All life here is either supernatural, in order to resist to the intense heat and bright, or very primitive -- vermins and oozes. Its color in the night sky is bright gold.
*Parele* is Limiole's moon. Its orbit, which doesn't bother itself with real-world astrophysics, put it constantly in the shadow of its "mother-planet," shielding it from Prime's fiery rays. As a result, Parele is a white world of ice and snow. It's as bright and dazzling as Limiole, but cold. The exiled genies known as Qorrash lives there, and it is very possible their magic could explain Parele's quirky orbit.
*Peline* is the second planet. Inhabited by fey, animals and magical beasts, Peline is a beautiful, if wild and harsh, world, that seems perpetually in autumn. With the exception of a couple tiny seas and a few mountaintops, the whole landmass is covered by forests. Peline is a russet world.
Peline has no moon but it has a ring *Lourane*, that orbits it lowly enough to be within its atmosphere. Lourane is the home of mighty elemental nobles, as well as genie outcasts from Limiole or the most powerful and excentric amongst Peline's inhabitants.
*Edhel* is the third planet. Unless the third planet is *Rhane*. Together they are called *Erdelane* and forgotten legends tell in the past, it was a single planet. Now it's two twin planets of the same size. Edhel is inhabited by just about everything, as it is the campaign world. Rhane is inhabited by the gods from the people of the surface, and by petitioners and servants of the gods.
Edhel's core is missing. Instead, the hollowness in its heart, that resulted from its separation with its twin, has been filled by an infection of fiends, like worms within an apple. This fiendish cancer is made up of three parts. The uppermost is the _Cataract_, an inverted world where the ground is a ceiling and there is no bottom. There, daemons live. Buidings hang or dangle from the ceiling rock, tunnels and caves are dug within said ceiling, weakening it. Sometimes, huge chunk of rocks break off, falling into the void, bringing daemons, buildings, monsters, visitors, and whatnot into the _Abysm_, a foggy haze pulsating with malevolent, nauseating light. Demons live within that haze, teleporting or jumping from rock to rock, wrecking havoc. Theirs is a world of endlessly falling, tumbling, colliding meteors. There they destroy and kill things, and when nothing's left to destroy or kill, they create monstruosities for the sole purpose of destroying them. Sometimes, they are destroyed instead. But even infinities have an end, and at the end of the fall, the rocks conglomerate into _Hell_, where devils are using all those material to build a new planet. One day, maybe, Edhel will implode, its surface inhabitants plumetting to their hellish doom through the Abysmal fog, and a new fiendish world will be born. Everytime the daemons trick one more soul into evil, one more rock fall from the Cataract into the Abysm. For the fiendish core is nothing but the physical symptom of a spiritual disease.
*Duedrac*, the fourth planet, is an enigmatic world. Constantly surrounded by thick, impenetrable green clouds, nobody ever came back from it. [Fact is, said green clouds negate all magic. It's not easy to leave a world if you can't use _planeshift_, _teleport_, or even _fly_.] Duedrac is thus associated to its moon, *Meravone*, home of formians, fungi, and various other insectile or quasi-vegetal lifeforms.
*Lerebre*, the fifth and last planet, is a grim place indeed. Too far from Prime to get enough heat and light, it is a dark and cold place. The weather is harsh, full of storms, and lightning is for most lifeforms the only sufficient source of energy. The vegetation there use metallic spines so as to better gather the precious electrical energy, just like vegetation on other worlds use chlorophylian leaves so as to better "harvest" sunlight. It's a world where the undead, unhampered by the lack of light and of heat, proliferate. The native world of a strange, faceless folk (the Changeling from MM3) ruled by enigmatic and cruel monsters (Encephalon Gorger from TOH2) is deadlocked in a constant war between the living and the dead.
Its two moons, *Apobre* and *Obrodon*, are even worse. These two small worlds are desolate wastelands. Temperature is higher than on Lerebre thanks to intense volcanic activity, but this doesn't improve the landscape. The birthplaces of kytons and night hags, who turned these two moons into giant charnel houses to fuel their necromantic experiments. Demodand arose from one of them, and they are in turn the progenitors of all other fiends. Now their servants steal corpses from other planets (and especially the nearby Lerebre) in order to keep their labs well stocked. They're partly responsable for the undead invasion of Lerebre --  and don't give a damn, of course.


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## Dirigible (Mar 29, 2005)

The only clarification I cano offer to the many and various answers above is that the planet of Birthright is known as both Aebrynis or Aubrynis, depending on which suppliment you're reading. I'm not sure which is correct, but I prefer Au- myself.


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## Kae'Yoss (Mar 29, 2005)

Oriental:

The old Oriental Adventures was Kara-Tur. The new one has the implied Campaign Setting of Rokugan (though it isn't necessary to play in rokugan, it's just the big example, not even using all races and classes). AFAIK, nothing is known about the Planet Rokugan is located on, or if it is a planet at all. The Emerald Empire (another name for Rokugan) is a very isolated realm. The direct neighbours are known, more or less, but nothing beyond that. It may be a planet, or a flat world, or something else. It just doesn't matter for the Campaign Setting. And AFAIK it doesn't connect with the other D&D worlds in any official way.


Forgotten Realms:
As we have heard, it's Abeir-Toril, or just Toril, with the main action going on on and around the continent of Faerûn. It's moon is called Selûne, and is the manifestation of the goddess Selûne, one of the two oldest deities of Realmspace. The planet itself is the manifestation of the goddess Chauntea. The Sun is simply a big pile of rock that has been inflamed by Selûne, using a connection to the elemental plane of fire. Though there was a sungod once, the Netherese deity Amaunator. There is a cult that claims that Lathander is the reincarnation of Amaunator, and that he soon will reach his zenith and claim his rightful place as the ruler of the gods. Lathander himself has neither denied nor confirmed that, but has dubbed said followers as legitimite Lathanderites, probably to keep them and "normal" Lathanderites from fighting over their divergent faith.


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## Staffan (Mar 29, 2005)

Frukathka said:
			
		

> Abeir-Toril, actually!



*Al-*Toril!
Stupid northern barbarians...


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## Gez (Mar 29, 2005)

Staffan said:
			
		

> *Al-*Toril!



Al-Toril wouldn't be the first entry of the index.


			
				Staffan said:
			
		

> Stupid northern barbarians...



Best Swedish quote of the day!


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## Estlor (Mar 29, 2005)

arscott said:
			
		

> I think Mystara's a tube, with the hollow world on the inside. It may just be a hollowed out sphere with holes at the poles, though. I've seen it depicted both ways.




First, the planetary name of the Mystara (or Known World, if you prefer) setting IS Mystara. It is a sphere, slightly smaller than our own Earth, with openings at either magnetic pole to permit travel into the hollow inside. The planet is surrounded by a "Sky Shield" that keeps the atmosphere inside. I believe the Sky Shield only extends above the inner crust of the Hollow World a few thousand miles, meaning the planet is like a hollow globe with the void of space around and in it.  (Of course, there is also a World Shield that runs down the middle of the planet to give it gravity.  This results in some funky gravity feats if you walk right in the area of the World Shield) If you could look down at Mystara from above the north pole, and if the large clouds of fog and mist that cover the poles were not present, you could see clear through to the other opening with a tiny red sun that never moves or sets in the middle.

Mystara has two moons, known to Mystarans proper as Patera and Matera. Patera is like our own moon; a desert-like wasteland save for the pocket plane anchored to it that contains Pandius, the city of the Immortals. Matera cannot be seen by the naked eye outside its atmosphere, rendering it invisible. The inhabitants of the moon - oriental rakasata - call it Myoshima.  And yes, unlike the poster above said, Patera is visible, Matera is not.  You can't see Pandius, however, because its in a different planar space.

As for the rest of Mystara's planetary cosmology, it isn't really defined. The old gold box Immortal Rules used standard Earth planets (minus, IIRC, Mercury and Pluto, plus Damocles, a doomed planet that exists in the location of the current astroid belt near Mars, and Charon, a far distant, cold world further away than Pluto will be when Damocles explodes and portions of it become Pluto and Mercury). Since "Earth" was present and not Mystara, its unlikely that planetary cosmology was carried over into the final revision of OD&D or AD&D. What IS known, however, is in 2e sense Mystara was part of a different dimension separate from all other AD&D worlds because 1) it had Immortals instead of gods and 2) it did not support the Great Wheel planar cosmology of the multiverse.


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## RSKennan (Mar 29, 2005)

Morningstar is a binary world; The larger of the two is where most of the action currently takes place. 

The Larger world is called Thraxis, and its sister is called Arril.  The larger world is about 3 times the size of earth, and the smaller one is bit bigger than mars-sized. 

It's fantasy, so the flows and pools of magic keep the planets from ripping completely apart - for now.


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## Nellisir (Mar 29, 2005)

My homebrew IS a flat, infinite plane. It's surrounded by Nothing, which slowly resolves into the Rim, or the Outer Realms. The Elemental Realms lie between the Rim and the Prime, and at the heart of the Prime is the Well Between Worlds. The whole affair is known simply as "the Wyrld".

Regions in the Prime have their own names; i.e. Shadowood / Shadowend, Winterfall, Dranamar, & Amk'hilur.

There are two moons and one sun; all are more akin to artifacts than planetary bodies, and have been borne or guided by different deities over the Ages.

There are lots and lots of stars; what they are depends on who you ask.

It's hypothesized that the Shadowrealm is the underside of the Prime, and you can get there if you go deep enough into the Wyrld.

Cheers
Nell.


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## Voadam (Mar 29, 2005)

I believe Lankhmar's planet is called Erehwon.


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## Steverooo (Mar 30, 2005)

Voadam said:
			
		

> I believe Lankhmar's planet is called Erehwon.




Nehwon, actually ("Nowhen", not "Nowhere").


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## Alzrius (Mar 30, 2005)

Estlor said:
			
		

> Mystara has two moons, known to Mystarans proper as Patera and Matera. Patera is like our own moon; a desert-like wasteland save for the pocket plane anchored to it that contains Pandius, the city of the Immortals. Matera cannot be seen by the naked eye outside its atmosphere, rendering it invisible. The inhabitants of the moon - oriental rakasata - call it Myoshima.  And yes, unlike the poster above said, Patera is visible, Matera is not.  You can't see Pandius, however, because its in a different planar space.




I'm 99.99% certain you've got these backwards (I'd be 100% if I could dig out my copy of the _Poor Wizard's Almanac_). Matera is the visible moon that's like ours, and Patera is the one called Myoshima by the natives, and has the city of Pandius.



> _What IS known, however, is in 2e sense Mystara was part of a different dimension separate from all other AD&D worlds because 1) it had Immortals instead of gods and 2) it did not support the Great Wheel planar cosmology of the multiverse._




There are multiple points of evidence that contradict this, and say that Mystara was part of the 2E Great Wheel cosmology and had deities.

_The Planewalker's Handbook_, a _Planescape_ supplement, talks about Mystara when it mentions notable worlds of the Prime Material Plane, right there in the same context as Toril, Oerth, Athas, and others.

_The Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix_, the 2E incarnation, listed multiple monsters (such as the diaboli) as being from the "Demiplane of Nightmares", which is clearly them moving the old Mystara cosmology into the Great Wheel.

In _Warriors of Heaven_, Table 11 at the back of the book has a listing of good and neutral deities that celestials can serve. It lists their divine rank (demigod, lesser, etc.), and their home plane and realm on the Great Wheel. Right in beside the various other AD&D deities are the Immortals from Mystara - except they aren't Immortals there; they're gods, listed in terms of being deities (Rad, for instance, is an Intermediate deity who lives on the Quasielemental Plane of Radiance).

Before 2E reached its end, Mystara was quite clearly part of the Great Wheel cosmology, and had gods, not Immortals.

3(.5)E remains in keeping with the 2E version of Mystara. For example, both Atzenteotl and Ka are listed as being greater deities (in _Dragon_ issues #315 and #318, respectively). Likewise, the diaboli are (in _Dragon_ #327) said to still be from the "Demiplane of Nightmares", which is now listed as being coterminous with the Region of Dreams and the Ethereal Plane, and a relative closeness to the Far Realm.

Admittedly, the 3(.5)E cosmology doesn't have the Region of Dreams (and the article on the diaboli doesn't seem to indicate if it was referring to the Border Ethereal for the Prime, or the Deep Ethereal, which isn't part of the core cosmology any longer), but the Color Curtain separating the Deep and Border Ethereal in 2E was effectively the same thing. Likewise, the Far Realm was part of the 2E planar structure (albeit outside of it, but it was there), since it was introduced in the 2E module _The Gates of Firestorm Peak_.


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## yogipsu (Apr 3, 2005)

> Cerilia was the main continent the action took place on.. I think the planet was called Aebrynis.




It was.  Other continents included Aduria to the north and the cold, arctic Thaele, populated by giants.  I think there's also a Basarji homeland somewhere, too, but it's been a long time since I read through the Birthright stuff.  (Funny, BR - my favorite setting, one where I own all the supplements, and the one that I never got to game in even once   ).


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## BOZ (Apr 4, 2005)

it was also one of the shortest-lived settings...


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## dead (Apr 4, 2005)

Ya, but what's the planet of the Warhammer RPG called???

Thanks.


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## Desdichado (Apr 4, 2005)

I actually wonder what the value of naming the "planet" of a fantasy setting has, other than for convenience of us, I suppose.  As near as I can tell, our own planet has never had, and still doesn't have, a proper name at all.  "Earth" or "Dirt" not being my idea of a proper name for a planet, that is.  

What I particularly don't like are simple perversions of the word Earth to make it "fantastical sounding" like Yrth or Oerth.  Those are just silly, IMO.


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## dungeon blaster (Apr 4, 2005)

Here's a planet question for you.

Let's say you had a binary star system with a yellow sun like ours revolving with a black hole.  Then you had a planet revolving around the both of them.  First, is this physically possible?  Would the planet be forced into a highly elliptical orbit?  What would it look like from the planet inhabitants point of view if the the sun and black hole rotated?  Would the sun and black hole need to be of equal mass (and therefore hole would need to be quite small)?

Also, I would like to hear some of the names of your homebrew worlds and kingdoms.  I need to come up with about 12 or so new kingdoms.


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## Gez (Apr 4, 2005)

dungeon blaster said:
			
		

> Also, I would like to hear some of the names of your homebrew worlds and kingdoms.  I need to come up with about 12 or so new kingdoms.




In addition to the names in my post above, there are three country names IMC -- Barengar, Chandrale and Massanie (would be Massania in English, I suppose). Other countries span several regions and are named "Empire" or "Confederacy" and thus haven't very exotic names.

I've a whole lot of region names I could dig up, especially given that some are variants. In their Common (language) name, most region names end in -in, e.g.: Lorsin, Chandrin (the region corresponding to the Chandrale country), Vivainin, etc. That was just me trying to get some sort of pseudolinguistical consistency.


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## Desdichado (Apr 4, 2005)

dungeon blaster said:
			
		

> Let's say you had a binary star system with a yellow sun like ours revolving with a black hole.  Then you had a planet revolving around the both of them.  First, is this physically possible?  Would the planet be forced into a highly elliptical orbit?  What would it look like from the planet inhabitants point of view if the the sun and black hole rotated?  Would the sun and black hole need to be of equal mass (and therefore hole would need to be quite small)?



Physically, yes, it's possible, but it has a number of problems.

To maintain a reasonably normal orbit around the common center of gravity, it would have to maintain a pretty good distance from the star; probably enough so that it would be frozen and lifeless.
Stars that are partnered with black holes have short life-spans.  The black hole usually sucks material from its stellar partner like a vacuum cleaner.  A side effect of this is also a disk of supercharged material that is slowly spiralling into the black hole which end up being some of the strongest sources of x-rays we know of.  Again, the radiation from this system would probably render any planets lifeless.
Black holes are the cores left over from massive stars that go supernova.  If the black hole was always part of the system, it would already have blasted any planets lifeless, if indeed, any planets could maintain an orbit following a supernova.  Of course, the planet coul have been captured after the fact, which is probably the only option.  But that beggars the question; where did the planet come from and how did life appear on it?
If the black hole is a migrant into the system, it would have perturbed the orbits of any planetary bodies on it's entry into becoming the star's companion.
There's some potentially interesting answers to the questions raised by the last few points there, but that first few points are difficult.  You're better off having it not be a yellow, sun-like star, but rather a more massive A or F class star, which will burn hotter, and thus potentially heat a planet at a farther distance.  Have the planet be the latest migrant into the system, to explain how it has a stable orbit at a safe distance, give it one hell of a magnetic field to protect against radiation, and an intriguing backstory of alien (or godly, depending on if you want to lean more towards sci-fi or fantasy) intervention on the development of life, and you're more or less good to go.

They don't have to be the same mass, and in fact, I'd find it odd that they would be.  A black hole has a minimum mass to even form, and a star like the sun can't do it.  

Both would rotate around a common center of gravity.  You wouldn't actually see the black hole, but you'd see the big disk of gas, which would probably obscure, although be illuminated by, the stellar companion.  The old movie _The Black Hole_ is oddly enough fairly accurate, but make it brighter, have it be out during the day.  Heck, given the mass that the planet has to orbit, it's also possible that the planet would be tidally locked; i.e., only one side would ever face the black hole and sun duo, so you'd have a permanent dayside and nightside.  That's potentially interesting too, IMO.

The disk of gas and dust can actually be bigger than the orbit of the planet, so the night sky might well be lit by a kind of ambient glow from the lit gas particles all over the system.  In fact, and I'm getting myself interesting in this idea now, this could be pretty cool.  The gas and dust would probably also obscure the sun during the day; maybe "day" and "night" would be relatively light and dark variations on twilight, without really truly deep darkness or bright day either one due to the ambient glow of the gas in the system.


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## Alzrius (Apr 4, 2005)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I actually wonder what the value of naming the "planet" of a fantasy setting has, other than for convenience of us, I suppose.  As near as I can tell, our own planet has never had, and still doesn't have, a proper name at all.  "Earth" or "Dirt" not being my idea of a proper name for a planet, that is.




You know, back in college I once went around and tried to find the proper name of this planet, as well as our orbiting satellite and the star this world revolves around; this was based on the idea making proper nouns out of common nouns wasn't really a name.

It was an incredibly frustrating experiment. As it turns out, there is no official body for naming celestial objects. The nearest I could find was some sort of International Astronomical Union, but any authority they have is purely de facto.

As such, it seems they really are just called Earth, the Moon, and the Sun.


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## DMH (Apr 5, 2005)

Earth can be called Terra or Sol 3.

The Moon (which isn't a moon, but rather part of a binary planet) can be called Luna.

The Sun is Solaris (sp?).


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## Desdichado (Apr 5, 2005)

DMH said:
			
		

> Earth can be called Terra or Sol 3.
> 
> The Moon (which isn't a moon, but rather part of a binary planet) can be called Luna.
> 
> The Sun is Solaris (sp?).



Errr, yeah, I kinda figured this was coming, so I should have addressed it upfront.

Terra is the Latin word for earth (and also for land, for that matter), Luna is the Latin word for moon, and Sol is the Latin word for Sun, so those aren't formal names, just translations of the same English words we use.  Solaris is the name of Sun Microsystem's Unix OS, as well as a novel by a Russian (?) science fiction writer.  As to whether or not the Moon is, in fact, a moon, saying that it isn't is a bit forward, since what a moon is is defined by the Moon.  The definitions of what is a moon, planet or planetoid are under attack on more than one front (many will now tell you that Pluto is not a planet, but a binary Kuiper Belt Object in 3:2 resonance with Neptune, which seperates it from the more distant "mainstream" Kuiper Belt.)  Technically all multiple systems are just that: systems, not just "planet and it's moons."  After all, many of the "moons" are quite a bit bigger than other planets like Mercury or Pluto, including all of the Gallilean satellites of Jupiter, Titan, Triton, and our own moon.  Personally, I don't think there's much to be gained from saying the Moon isn't a moon because we're a double planet system, since saying so doesn't really imply anything very different about our situation other than the fact that our own is quite massive relative to it's planet than most of the other such systems in our solar system.


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## dungeon blaster (Apr 5, 2005)

The way I feel about it is if our moon is not a moon, then whatever IS a moon needs to have a different name to call itself.  Moon is already taken by whatever our moon IS.


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## cignus_pfaccari (Apr 5, 2005)

yogipsu said:
			
		

> It was.  Other continents included Aduria to the north and the cold, arctic Thaele, populated by giants.  I think there's also a Basarji homeland somewhere, too, but it's been a long time since I read through the Birthright stuff.  (Funny, BR - my favorite setting, one where I own all the supplements, and the one that I never got to game in even once   ).




Dang, I love maps.  One nice thing about the Birthright setting is that the terrain seems fairly realistic; mountains look like they could be in the right places for plate boundaries, etc.  Amusingly, the Anuirean areas where there's heavy Cuiracaen (CG storm and war god) worship mostly seem to be those that would suffer from tornadoes.  

Aduria was actually to the SE, and was the original home of humanity.  I have a vague memory of the northern peninsula (the one that terminates in Mieres) just jutting north, out of a vaguely South America-shaped continent.  At least, I got the idea that the Adurian coastline extends a ways out to the east, off the southern edge of the map.  That probably comes from someone's campaign website, as I can't find anything to suggest that in particular in the box set.

Thaele is to the NNW of the Rjurik lands.  There are a few Rjurik colonies, but nothing major.   It's cold, snowy, and produces firs and furs (heh) by the boatload.  Sort of Alaska-like, really.

The Khinasi get the good stuff; their obscure items are well-mapped in the Cities of the Sun box set.  There're the Dragon Isles a bit more than 300 miles east of Suirene (SE corner of Khinasi), the Golden Archipelago is a bit over 300 miles south of the Serpent's Island, and Djapar (which may be an actual continent) is (wait for it) about 300 miles ESE of the easternmost island of the Golden Archipelago.  Unfortunately, there's precious little written about those; I couldn't find anything.  One can assume there's some sort of trade, and it's likely that the Basarji came from Djapar (the Basarji migration routes depicted in the Atlas of Cerilia are from the SE), but I can't find anything official that actually states that.

There's also mention of Anuirean colonies across the Sea of Storms (Atlas of Cerilia, from the main box).  There's a reasonable chance that Thaele is actually that continent, just extending farther SW.

I don't recall any astronomical details, other than that the world was named Aebrynis, and it and its moon were roughly in proportion to the Earth-Moon system.  And, given that it's 11, I haven't made lunch for tomorrow, and I'm sick, I don't feel like looking through all the sourcebooks to see if I missed anything.  

Brad


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## cignus_pfaccari (Apr 5, 2005)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Have the planet be the latest migrant into the system, to explain how it has a stable orbit at a safe distance, give it one hell of a magnetic field to protect against radiation.




Adamantine's ferrous, right?

Perhaps the liquid adamantine core of the planet is responsible for the massive magnetic field?

IIRC, a tide-locked world wouldn't be particularly pleasant.  While there'd be a thin strip around the terminator that wouldn't be boiling or freezing, you'd get hellacious weather from the movements of the hot air on the side pointing toward the star.  If you were far enough out, the part that was stuck towards the star might not be too hot, but then the dark side'd be even colder, barring some other source of energy (super-geothermal activity?  A big gas giant?

Brad


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## reanjr (Apr 5, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Thanks for this. I had no idea about any of this stuff. It does sort of put things in context.That seems strange to me for some reason. These guys are creative fellows; it just seems odd, given the prevalence of worldviews in the past that didn't think in these terms. It just seems to me that if you're writing about a world full of gods and magic that planetary systems would hardly be the first thing you would think of. But maybe it's just further evidence that I'm weird.Again and again, no less; after all, it's turtles all the way down.




Whether or not the world views of ancient people thought the world rested on the back of a turtle, it doesn't change the fact that they lived on a planet.  So putting a setting on a planet makes most sense.  It doesn't change any world view or really affect them in any way.  Not to mention, different cultures in the same setting may have different views on what their world is like.


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## reanjr (Apr 5, 2005)

Voadam said:
			
		

> Ravenloft has different celestial bodies depending on which domain you are in. Soth's domain of Sithicus was taken/based from Dragonlance and has only one moon, Nuitari IIRC. Nova Vassa had something like seven moons in one of the products featuring the domain (though it is the domain with the most changes from product to product).
> 
> This caused a little reality glitch as when the mists and domain lords don't keep the borders separated they are physically connected but could have different astronomical features as you crossed the invisible domain borders.




I could be wrong, but I think all the core domains now have a single, shared moon.  Any domains that previously did not were either shuffled off to their own clusters or islands or changed (sor instance, I think Sithicus changed after Soth left).


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## DMH (Apr 5, 2005)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> As to whether or not the Moon is, in fact, a moon, saying that it isn't is a bit forward, since what a moon is is defined by the Moon...Personally, I don't think there's much to be gained from saying the Moon isn't a moon because we're a double planet system, since saying so doesn't really imply anything very different about our situation other than the fact that our own is quite massive relative to it's planet than most of the other such systems in our solar system.




But we are different from all the other planets in this system. All other satellites in the system have a gravitational center in the middle of the body they orbit. Luna does not- it and Earth revolve around a point within Earth's outer core. If you look at Earth's orbit around the sun, it looks like a sine wave because it does (weakly) revolve around Luna. That is why Luna is not a moon but rather a small planet.


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## Desdichado (Apr 5, 2005)

DMH said:
			
		

> All other satellites in the system have a gravitational center in the middle of the body they orbit. Luna does not- it and Earth revolve around a point within Earth's outer core.



Pluto and Charon do the same, to an even greater extent than the Earth moon, since they are closer in size to each other.  There are even asteroids identified with "moons."  And actually, all bodies rotate around a common center of gravity, it's just that with the greater mass of most planets relative to their moons, the center of gravity is deep within the planet itself.  This off-center (relative to the main body) center of gravity phenomena is what has allowed us to to detect the rash of extrasolar planets that have been discovered in recent years; because the center of gravity of the star and its satellites (planets) is not the same as the actual center of the star, it causes it to "wobble."


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## fusangite (Apr 5, 2005)

reanjr said:
			
		

> Whether or not the world views of ancient people thought the world rested on the back of a turtle, it doesn't change the fact that they lived on a planet.  So putting a setting on a planet makes most sense.  It doesn't change any world view or really affect them in any way.  Not to mention, different cultures in the same setting may have different views on what their world is like.



I guess my point is that cosmological systems that included magic almost never made the earth a planet whereas cosmological systems that did not include magic almost always made the earth a planet. So it just seems strange that D&D would represent a worldview in which Newtonian/Einsteinian physics were in effect when an a priori assumption of the rules is that they are not.


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## Desdichado (Apr 5, 2005)

Since when does Newtonian/Einsteinian physics preclude magic?  Or are you not saying that?


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## Gez (Apr 5, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> I guess my point is that cosmological systems that included magic almost never made the earth a planet whereas cosmological systems that did not include magic almost always made the earth a planet. So it just seems strange that D&D would represent a worldview in which Newtonian/Einsteinian physics were in effect when an a priori assumption of the rules is that they are not.




It's not strange at all. D&D is, was, has always been, and will stay firmly pulp fantasy rather than heroic fantasy or sword & sorcery fantasy.

In everyone's mind, a world and a planet are the same thing. We're too accustomed to the idea we live on a giant space marble to instinctively adopt a flat world assumption, or think about cosmic turtles and elephants anymore.

The notion of planet was even more popularized by science fiction, of course -- all those space opera pulp -- and sci-fi pulp are as big an influence on D&D as  fantasy pulp is. Look at the Derro (a.k.a. Dero, detrimental robots, google for the Chandler mysteries), the mindflayer, the beholder, the xill and displacer beast (ixtl and couerl from _Voyage of the Space Beagle_), the loxxo (the aliens in _Footfall_), the gelatinous cube and other oozes (variation on the Blob theme), and so on.

This mixing of genres was common at the time -- people will remember that the first Ultima games featured laser swords, starfighters, and time-travel machine, before those elements were expurged to get a pure medieval fantasy setting.


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## Desdichado (Apr 5, 2005)

Gez said:
			
		

> This mixing of genres was common at the time -- people will remember that the first Ultima games featured laser swords, starfighters, and time-travel machine, before those elements were expurged to get a pure medieval fantasy setting.



Did they?  I know the Might & Magic games did, all the way up until 3DO went belly-up.


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## Gez (Apr 5, 2005)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Did they?  I know the Might & Magic games did, all the way up until 3DO went belly-up.




Oh yes they did. You even battled TIE Fighters in Ultima 1.

Look!

Also in Ultima 2

It's in Ultima 3 that the overtly sci-fi elements disappeared. Though in Ultima 7, you have a crashed Kilrathi ship in a field near Britain (totally useless and could as well just be a big rock), and in Ultima Underworld 2, you meat telepathic felines named Trilkhai that are linked to Kilrathi if you read between the lines (they task you with enquiring on their past).


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## Desdichado (Apr 5, 2005)

Eww.  Anyway, your point is well-taken.  After all, the first D&D setting ever was Blackmoor.  I don't mind medieval fantasy, but I don't like the apparent insistence of many fans that fantasy _must_ be medieval.  I thought the whole point of fantasy was to be fantastic and creative, not medieval.  Medieval's just one outlet for fantasy. (And not trying to imply that fusangite is one such insister, just commenting in general.)

Of course, as a guy who grew up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, I'm much more tolerant than many about "non-traditional" elements in my fantasy to the point where I almost prefer them nowadays.  Although maybe that's just a knee-jerk reaction to too many Tolkien, Arthurian and Norse or Celtic mythology rip-offs over my fantasy literature reading career.


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## The_Warlock (Apr 5, 2005)

Gez said:
			
		

> It's in Ultima 3 that the overtly sci-fi elements disappeared.




To be fair, the sci-fi elements were in Ultima 3, you just had to look 
harder for them, and your final enemy, Exodus, was a supercomputer that was generating the monstrous waves and villainy affecting Sosaria. 

Oh my...I think I just made myself feel REALLY old....


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## Voadam (Apr 5, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> I guess my point is that cosmological systems that included magic almost never made the earth a planet whereas cosmological systems that did not include magic almost always made the earth a planet. So it just seems strange that D&D would represent a worldview in which Newtonian/Einsteinian physics were in effect when an a priori assumption of the rules is that they are not.




It was an ancient greek who calculated the size of the round earth. So while not an example of newtonian/einsteinian, it is an example of a pythagorean/aristotelean physcial world view at the same time as cosmology including nymphs, fauns, and shapeshifting gods.


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## Orius (Apr 5, 2005)

Gez said:
			
		

> It's in Ultima 3 that the overtly sci-fi elements disappeared.




If I'm not mistaken, wasn't the final boss in Ultima III a computer?


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## Orius (Apr 5, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Thanks for this. I had no idea about any of this stuff. It does sort of put things in context.That seems strange to me for some reason. These guys are creative fellows; it just seems odd, given the prevalence of worldviews in the past that didn't think in these terms. It just seems to me that if you're writing about a world full of gods and magic that planetary systems would hardly be the first thing you would think of. But maybe it's just further evidence that I'm weird.Again and again, no less; after all, it's turtles all the way down.




Maybe because it's easier to use a "normal" planet as a baseline.  I have a campaign that is a flat world with a sun and a moon, and I can't figure out for the life of me how to explain how day and night works, how the climate bands work, how the seasons work, and so on, besides "The gods will it so."  And there's additional wonkiness involved in the flat world.  For example, if the world is flat, is it always the same time everywhere on the surface of the world at once?  Granted, the will of the gods works fine enough in a fantasy campaign, and most players won't notice these major details in a typical campaign anyway.


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## Gez (Apr 5, 2005)

Orius said:
			
		

> If I'm not mistaken, wasn't the final boss in Ultima III a computer?




Yes. Forgot about him. And you could prevent his return in Ultima 7, if you had the Forge of Virtue add-on.


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## Faraer (Apr 5, 2005)

dead said:
			
		

> Ya, but what's the planet of the Warhammer RPG called???



The Warhammer world doesn't have a planetary name.







			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> What I particularly don't like are simple perversions of the word Earth to make it "fantastical sounding" like Yrth or Oerth. Those are just silly, IMO.



Oerth and Ærth are part of a series of parallel Earths with different metaphysics and levels of magic (see "Why Gargoyles Don't Have Wings..." in _Polyhedron_ #21). Oerth is apparently not pronounced the same as Earth, though I'd assumed it was.

The planet of which Faerûn is a continent was only named "Abeir-Toril" for the 1987 _Forgotten Realms Campaign Set_; "Toril" is from Jeff Grubb's world.

As an exercise in science-fictional worldbuilding, planets make sense, but as a setting for stories that set-up has no particular privilege, since worlds for stories have to speak to the imagination and what people care about. I don't know how Gez distinguishes sword & sorcery from "pulp fantasy" (all sorts of fantasy were published in the pulps, the non-contemporary stuff being mostly sword & sorcery), but part of Gary Gygax's reason for making the World of Greyhawk a planet may well have been his love of Burroughsian planetary romance.


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## Gez (Apr 5, 2005)

Well, by pulp fantasy I meant more things like Pellucidar and other E.R. Burroughsism. While by sword & sorcery I mean things grittier, with less sci-fi or quasi-sci-fi elements in them like Leiber or Howard.


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## fusangite (Apr 6, 2005)

Voadam said:
			
		

> It was an ancient greek who calculated the size of the round earth. So while not an example of newtonian/einsteinian, it is an example of a pythagorean/aristotelean physcial world view at the same time as cosmology including nymphs, fauns, and shapeshifting gods.



The earth was round. It was not a planet; the sun and moon were planets in many round earth systems but the earth never was. The idea of a heliocentric system in which Earth was just another planet and, therefore, the other planets might be worlds is either a marginalized or non-existent view until the re-emergence of the hermetic texts in the 15th century. 

Earth=sphere and earth=planet are very different realizations and in most such systems planet did not equal sphere. Most earth=sphere systems emphatically denied the earth=planet position. Ptolmaic astronomy was premised on the idea that the earth was round but was not a planet. Thus, one mainstream pagan explanations of planets was that they were divinities. In most geocentric systems, planets, the moon and sun were all in the same class or similar classes and totally distinct from earth which constituted the stationary centre of the universe. 

I'm not objecting to the sphere thing. I credit that in a game with teleportation, non-spherical worlds can be inconvenient; I am just suggesting that there are a lot of ways for worlds to be easy to GM without having to be planets.







			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Since when does Newtonian/Einsteinian physics preclude magic? Or are you not saying that?



I guess we could get into some kind of weird debate about the definition of "magic" but I think you know what I mean here. And even thought I don't mind your logical extension of my statement, provided you apply it only to Einsteinian physics not to Newtonian physics, no, that was not what I was saying. What I was saying was that in D&D, there are four elements; the existence of the four terrestrial elements is an immediate indication that we are not using post-Newtonian physics (or arguably even post-Paracelsian physics).


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## Voadam (Apr 6, 2005)

Well for most of the spelljammer stuff it added planetary bodies as planets, I think in most CS's they don't define them to that level. But since in Spelljammer you could fly your ship to the planets it made sense to define them as new worlds you could explore. That said I think in Greyspace the sphere is terrocentric with Oerth at the center and all the planets, the moon, and the sun revolving around it.

And we have plenty of real world mythology in D&D supplements so for instance the egyptian mythology settings do have Ra journeying across the sky during the day and norse ones have the seven worlds where the sky is Ymir's skull and the sun is a horse pursued by a wolf, etc. So if you are looking for different astrophysics in D&D settings it is not too hard to find. And then there are the planes as well, where the land is usually infinite layers without planets.


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## Gez (Apr 6, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> The idea of a heliocentric system in which Earth was just another planet and, therefore, the other planets might be worlds is either a marginalized or non-existent view until the re-emergence of the hermetic texts in the 15th century.




True, etymologically, planet means "wandering star" and in a geocentric view of the universe, the Earth is not wandering, everything else is.

The existence of other worlds akin to Earth was a heresy and one of the reason Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600.


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## fusangite (Apr 6, 2005)

Gez said:
			
		

> The existence of other worlds akin to Earth was a heresy and one of the reason Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600.



Exactly my point. This view arose from the re-emergence of the hermetic texts in the 15th century -- the same texts that inspired Copernicus to produce his model. Only when you switch to a heliocentric model do you begin to conceive of the wandering stars as peers of earth.







			
				Voadam said:
			
		

> And we have plenty of real world mythology in D&D supplements so for instance the egyptian mythology settings do have Ra journeying across the sky during the day and norse ones have the seven worlds where the sky is Ymir's skull and the sun is a horse pursued by a wolf, etc. So if you are looking for different astrophysics in D&D settings it is not too hard to find. And then there are the planes as well, where the land is usually infinite layers without planets.



Glad to see we're on the same page. This is why I found it so weird that published settings would all make the game worlds a planet; as you illustrate, there are so many accessible alternatives.


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## Voadam (Apr 6, 2005)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Exactly my point. This view arose from the re-emergence of the hermetic texts in the 15th century -- the same texts that inspired Copernicus to produce his model. Only when you switch to a heliocentric model do you begin to conceive of the wandering stars as peers of earth.




The stars in spelljammer are often different things, in some crystal spheres they are holes/clear panes in the crystal sphere that light from the phlogiston comes through, in others they are portals to the plane of radiance or fire, and of course in dragonlance they are actually the gods themselves (except the ones of magic which are the moons).


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## dungeon blaster (Apr 6, 2005)

Here's two reasons why my homebrew world is a planet:

1) It's simply easier this way.  I don't have to figure out how physics would work with a flat (or otherwise non-spherical) world and I don't want the gods to "will it so".

2) It makes the world more like our planet and therefore brings a certain level of realism to the world, which I feel helps the players suspend disbelief.

Simple as that.


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## fusangite (Apr 6, 2005)

dungeon blaster said:
			
		

> Here's two reasons why my homebrew world is a planet:
> 
> 1) It's simply easier this way.  I don't have to figure out how physics would work with a flat (or otherwise non-spherical) world and I don't want the gods to "will it so".
> 
> ...



I hope people aren't seeing my comments as critical of individual decisions to make game worlds planets. They were borne out of shock that the planet idea is so universal. I'm not saying people shouldn't set up their universe that way; I'm just expressing surprise at the universality of this practice.


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## MaxKaladin (Apr 6, 2005)

I call my homebrew's planet "Caenum".  How did I come up with that name.  I looked "Dirt" up in an English/Latin dictionary and used the coolest sounding word that wasn't going to be recognizable.


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## Gomez (Apr 6, 2005)

Empire of the Petal Throne = Tékumel


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## Remathilis (Apr 6, 2005)

Most of the questions have been answered, so I'll leave you all with one...

Rokugan. Planet name?


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## Kae'Yoss (Apr 6, 2005)

Remathilis said:
			
		

> Rokugan. Planet name?




As far as I know, it is never mentioned, nor is it mentioned whether it is a planet, or just a flat world. And it doesn't matter, either. Legend of the Five Rings takes place within Rokugan. The rest of the world is irrelevant (well, that's not 100% true - ask any Unicorn or Scorpion - but close enough).


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