starting off, some questions about the planet itself

first. a name. we need a common name for the planet perhaps. every culture can call it different things, but imagining a common language exists, should we even have a name? or just call it earth? i don't wanna do something obvious, like using “earth” in another language. (i will not be calling this planet “terra” anything. <.<)

second. Moon(s). a few options here. and the mythologies will develop very differently depending on how we go with this.

one moon: pretty normal, easy to use, we are used to it so most of the same rules apply.

two moons: my personal limit for multiple moons. it would make interesting tides when the moons aligned. Also, we can play with the colors which could be fun. was talking to j about maybe one light moon and one darker moon… could lead to some fun symbolism, the whole ying and yang elements and such…

no moons: would be very weird… we'd lose any ‘tidal’ systems which i think would be the real tragedy with this system. however, nights would be very dark, myths could be a lot of fun with this system. might can even have a star that sits a lot closer to this planet (not like a second sun, just a particularly bright star in the night sky, and maybe bright enough to see during the day too)

Third. Rings. my personal feeling is just ‘no’. if for no other reason then the need to constantly be aware of east and west so you can put them in the sky of any drawing. i feel like its really too different for us to do well, as it would play a huge part in any myth and cultural practice i'd think… any thoughts?

fourth. Rotation. I say we retain all the literary bonuses we get from your basic ‘east’ rising sun, ‘west’ setting sun. it's just so ingrained into our minds that we'd likely make reference to the rising or setting suns in this way that we might as well keep it. simply put, i don't see any creative advantage to changing it up.

fifth. Gravity. The planet is smaller than earth by a few thousand miles. so it follows that gravity is a little less (depending on what materials its made up of… if there are higher quantities of heavier metals, gravity could be higher then earth's). i do not think it's enough to change the general way we will deal with it. (it's not so very different that it'll change physics much… we aren't dealing with moon jumping physics) i think where we will see the most benefit from lighter gravity is on the large scale. taller trees, larger flying creatures, larger creatures… in the mechanical department, taller buildings are possible, larger flying machines will work, less power to get into orbit, though for all extents and purposes, the changes should not be obvious enough to worry about. i guess things would fall a little slower, so one could survive falls from greater heights… (though, their bodies might simply have weaker bones and there would be no significant difference)

sixth. other planets in the solar system. i'm bringing this up only because it was brought up at work. this planet is not the moon of some other planet. if you can even see the other planets, they'll appear only as stars (like venus to us) i do not feel we need to worry about mapping out a solar system at the moment. just no point really, except when we start working on stone carvings of orbital trajectories and things like that. and even then, i could see such carvings leaving out planets that are too small to place a significant gravitational force on a ship of any kind. so really, we can put this one off forever. might be fun to have some names to use as a ‘solar’ calender, or to apply to gods and goddesses for cultures. that does bring up another point though.

seventh. constellations. these, i can see being rather important for culture building. i think we can fake it and make it up as we go. for starters, lets work on this planets version of the north star, southern cross, and zodiacs. the rest we can add as our stories need them.

i think that the first and second bits are the most important, the rest i'm putting out there for discussion. if you have any ideas or problems with any of the details here, feel free to voice them. we still have a lot of foundation work to lay and this is the thread to do it in.

another point we can be thinking on.

When and how to start this thing off basically, i feel like we are nearing that place where we can start officially putting things up for public view. the question is where and how. i believe there is a way to link html pages from a drunkduck comic… so we could use this sight as the starter, learn a little html and then buy a real sight. while the feedback on this sight is limited at best, it might offer a bit of encouragement at the start. then we can focus on a proper forum and things like that (looking at proboards.com but i'm not sure if you can lock parts of the forums for personal use)

at any rate, it would work like this. we claim copyright on everything, we maybe hint at our big plan to allow everyone to use the world, but to start, we don't open it up to public use just yet. we can put up comic pages or profile pictures and maps and things, and have links to narratives and such that go along with the world. plus have a new drunkduck forum for public use. the idea would be to update something at least once a week (so, one article, comic, narrative, from each of us once a month) not too tight a schedule but it would set deadlines for ourselves. if anyone feels they cannot produce one thing a month at this time, let me know. (say 1000-1500 words for a narrative, or a picture and 200 word description, or a comic page… things like that)

ideas on this front? do some research on forums and websites and such, see if you find anything better to start with.

before we start there are a few things i'd like finished before we start the official postings and things.
1. names for the two main continents we have so far
2. more names of places on the map
3. a nice breakdown of the technical details of the world (rotation, moons, maybe the name of the planet?)
4. proof of copyright (mostly applies to text, images we can prove with original copies and high rez computer copies) see if there is a better method then sending it in the mail or whatever the poor man's copyright is…

anything else we can think of?