u/MarsMaterial

Connecting a setting to the real world is almost ubiquitous in science fiction, even something as fantasy-adjacent as Star Wars takes place "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" relative to Earth. This is not as common with fantasy though, and I'm curious if anyone here has made a world that's the exception.

I'm mostly a sci-fi worldbuilder myself, but I have a mostly-fantasy setting (with many sci-fi elements) for a tabletop RPG I'm working on and that one does have a connection to the real world. It takes place 240,000 years in the future around a distant star located within the Milky Way Galaxy. The various human-like fantasy races are almost all distant descendants of humanity, who have evolved a bit since the modern day. Society has collapsed and been rebuilt without yet reaching the heights that allowed humanity to cross the stars, Earth is nothing more than a disputed myth in the eyes of most people. Even the magic system is explained in a way that accounts for why modern humanity doesn't know about it.

There was another world I build for a D&D campaign, where the flat fantasy world full of magic was a simulation that was constructed in our universe which was deep into the throes of heat death. The simulation was a refuge for humanity's last remnants in a dying universe, and it had existed for so long that its denizens had forgotten what they were. This was a reality that the player characters eventually discovered and had to grapple with.

Maybe I'm just too sci-fi brained, but I have trouble suspending my disbelief about the idea that a human (or something approximating a human) can ever exist truly causally disconnected from Earth. And my worldbuilding reflects this.

I'm curious how common this is. Does your fantasy world have a defined place in space and time relative to modern Earth?

My younger brother has a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics. Any time he brings this fact up, most people respond by explaining why they could have never done what he did and why his success must be due to his innate genius. “I’ve always sucked at math, you must be very smart”, that sort of thing. But as someone who watched him grow up, I saw the way he became the math genius he is through an incredible amount of initiative and hard work. He once sucked at math too.

I’m a rather skilled speedcuber, I can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 20 seconds quite reliably. When someone sees me do this, the most common response is for them to explain how they could have never done that and how I must be a very special genius who was born smart to pull it off. But I didn’t emerge from the womb with full-CFOP knowledge a sub-20 ao100. I spent over a year regularly learning, practicing, and memorizing techniques and algs. Anyone could learn to do this, I just actually spent the time to do it.

My theory here is that people feel insecure when they are forced to confront the fact that they don’t have a skill, even if it’s something silly and useless like speedcubing, and they deal with that insecurity by believing that the skill was never in the cards for them to begin with anyway. Because if self-improvement is possible, the fact that they haven’t done it reflects on their choices and priorities. But if this kind of self-improvement was never possible to begin with, the fact that they haven’t attempted it is just an efficient use of their time.

I see this a lot from AI art bros. They love to rattle on about how they have no choice but to use AI to make art because they weren’t born with artistic talent. Motherfucker, neither were the rest of us. Talents are built, not inherited. Even from the other side, I’ve seen the sentiment “why try when AI can do it better” depressingly often. As if effort and knowledge aren’t intrinsically valuable. I fear that AI is making this problem way worse.

I have autism, and it’s not mild autism either. It’s moderate level-2 ASD, bad enough that I can’t work full time and I’m eligible for disability. I used to have extremely debilitating sensory overload issues, but working in retail for a couple years helped me build up more of a tolerance that lets me be in public for longer now. If I relied on noise-canceling headphones too much and avoided the discomfort altogether, I’d still be dependent on headphones to leave the house to this day. My condition does come with significant limitations, but it’s not as bad as the limitations I’d be imposing on myself if I used it as an excuse not to improve myself or try my hardest.

I truly believe that people who can resist learned helplessness will increasingly be the superhumans of this increasingly helpless and dependent world. Lean on your own strength and brain as much as you can, because that is how you become stronger and smarter. Even if you are disabled, you can still always become better than you are now.

Every time we make progress on the galactic war, something happens that sets us back. The enemies get new abilities (developed by Arrowhead), and any overpowered weapons and exploits we find get nerfed (again by Arrowhead).

It’s almost like they are trying to sabotage the galactic war, to make Super Earth lose or perhaps even to make the war last forever. It’s like they don’t want us to win. Don’t they know that innocent Super Earth citizens die by the millions every day in this horrible war??

I can’t believe they would do this. I feel so betrayed. Arrowhead is the real villain of this game, they have been all along.

Demographic collapse is a looming threat to the world. Many studies have failed to correlate birth rate decline on a national scale with any specific policies or national-scale socioeconomic conditions, but this study here finds a huge correlation between owning a smart phone and having way fewer kids. This despite the study controlling for variables such as wealth, race, and education.

Overall, this study finds that smart phone ownership accounts for 33%-52% of birth rate decline in women 15-44 in the time period they studied between 2007 and 2011. This implies that smart phones are one of the largest factors (if not the largest factor) in causing population collapse.

This is a concept that I've had a lot of fun thinking about recently. The game Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak features a rover that's basically a rover aircraft carrier, and it's a concept that really stuck with me because it's undeniably extremely cool. While it may not be very realistic, it raises the question: what kinds of land vehicles that aren't practical on Earth would become practical on other planets?

On Earth, our biggest vehicles are boats which of course rely on oceans to work. We also use a lot of trains and aircraft, which is great when you have lots of infrastructure between destinations and a thick atmosphere that provides you with free oxidizer. Most of our land vehicles on Earth are limited by the road construction standards we use, and those that aren't are mostly limited by the capacity of the ground to handle their weight. These limitations wouldn't exist on some newly colonized world though, at least not in the same way. No roads, no worries about the ecological harm of crushing your way through a natural environment, lower gravity makes weight less of a problem. And on top of that you probably have minimal infrastructure, little to no atmosphere, no oceans, and using rockets to get around is impractical for most use cases.

Rovers would be super practical on places like the Moon and Mars. The most practical way to get people between locations on the surface, transport cargo, conduct scientific expeditions, and do military deployments will be through specialized rovers designed to embark on journeys that last for many days. And between the length of these journeys and the lack of an oxygen atmosphere to pull oxidizer from, using fuel to power these rovers might not be practical. You'd probably need either solar power or nuclear power (and the fact that most other worlds are already lifeless and irradiated makes the safety issues of fission power less of a concern). I would imagine that solar power would be better suited for small vehicles in the inner solar system (perhaps relying on frequent stops to deploy lots of solar panels and recharge), and nuclear power becomes better for huge rovers.

All that being said, here are a few of the interesting ideas I came up with for rovers that would be practical on the Moon or Mars that we don't see on Earth:

• Land Train. A massive nuclear powered locomotive designed to pull many trailers in a line along compacted regolish highways. Great for bulk shipping between two fixed locations.
• Land Battleship. A nuclear powered military transport rover that's designed to engage in battle if necessary, with anti-armor turrets and anti-personnel machine guns. Inside it has all the amenities needed to support a crew of soldiers for weeks at a time in a pressurized environment. Capable of engaging in battle directly, or just running transport logistics with the ability to defend itself if necessary.
• Commuter Rover. A multi-decker bus of sorts with an internal layout that's closer to a sleeper train than a conventional bus. Cheaper versions may just have reclining seats that you need to sleep in, more expensive versions may give passengers a small suite. Meals are served by the crew of the rover, and passengers need to sleep for some of the multi-day journey. It could be either nuclear or solar depending on the size of the rover and how well the passengers are paying.
• Personal Rover. A small solar powered rover with an internal layout comparable to an RV. Designed to carry a small crew long-distances with amenities for sleeping, hygiene, food preparation, and entertainment. It's not the fastest, but it's yours. Rovers like this could be used for many things. Personal transport, scientific research, prospecting, etc.

I'm curious what other ideas people can come up with.

I have the skillset needed to make mods, and I am thinking of making one for Factorio: Space Age.

It always bugged me how the game ends when you “prove that it’s possible to return home”, but you never actually return home. I want to make a mod that moves the victory condition a little further forward, to make you actually get to Earth before the game is complete.

The version of this idea that’s true to the original game would be a little boring, just make a new space route that any ship capable of reaching the Solar System Edge can traverse, but it’s extremely long so you need to wait a long time to travel that far. But you could make this more interesting.

(I know that Space Exploration already does this, the idea here is to do it with the Space Age framework.)

The idea that I think is more interesting is to make the player build and dispatch a large expeditionary fleet (that the engineer must be on) to complete a long journey home full of twists and turns, supported by the research capabilities of your factory back in the starting star system. I’d like to make this mod around the upcoming 2.1 mechanics that will allow for logistic transfers between space platforms orbiting the same celestial body, justifying the use of an entire fleet of space platforms that can actually support each other. The expeditionary fleet would never need to directly exchange resources with the factory after it departs, but the two would still work in tandem to complete research which lets the fleet push ever further into space and overcome more challenges. The fleet will need to evolve to overcome new unexpected obstacles and integrate new technologies, and the factory back home will need to expand to utilize Promethium and new types of science packs to support the fleet. The fleet may need to stay in orbit of one celestial body for extended periods, allowing them to work together as one cohesive factory with logistic transfers between them.

I still need to come up with the challenges that the fleet will face and the technologies that will overcome them. Perhaps I’ll add the ability to launch new space platforms from a space platform, allowing your platforms to be entirely self-replicating. Perhaps I’ll add technologies based on antimatter. Perhaps you’ll need to overcome black holes, long voids full of nothing (no asteroids to make fuel from), clouds of space junk, and maybe even space battles. Perhaps you’ll come across small celestial bodies that you must build temporary factories on before the fleet can advance.

Eventually, at the end of it all, the fleet will arrive at Earth. And the game will be complete, this time with a more satisfying conclusion that feels like a really long journey.

My main purpose in posting about this is to gauge if there is any interest in such a mod, and to ask what else people would want to see from it. Any ideas are welcome.