Airship and Floating Island General

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Which is best?

>>48922442
>Does anyone else get supremely bothered by floating islands with huge waterfalls that will clearly run out of water way quicker than they could ever replenish?
You think that's bad, Skies of Arcadia has a floating island with a volcano on it. What heats the lava?

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>>48922475
Oh jesus that sounds terrible

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Why are airships so comfy?

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>>48922467
What about rock powered designs?

>>48922442
>get supremely bothered by floating islands with huge waterfalls
I do, actually!
As well as very small floating islands holding up large towers.
Do they naturally hold infinite weight, and if so, how small a fragment of a floating island can be removed while keeping this property?
If there's a limit, does the magic making them float have to be reinforced as people build on top of them? Does the tower's bricks have to be carved out of other floating rock?
But I usually don't bring it up because I know this board will say "magic exists in the setting so anything goes and the rules don't have to be consistent", which I find boring. They're literally telling me not to think.

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>>48922639
How do the rocks work, exactly?

>>48922442
I figure there's a portal inside the island that the water flows through.

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>>48923029
That sounds neat. I could get behind that. Maybe there's one at the center of every major sky island as part of the magical center that keeps everything floating.

>>48922752
iirc they are naturally buoyant, with the buoyancy being effected by temperature. It's been a while since I read the edge chronicles, but I've been wanting to run something in the setting so I should probably go back through them.

>>48923541
I like that. Heat = height. Nice and simple. Get too high and the cool air makes it take more fuel, too.

Orizon has a mix of different flight magics working together. https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Sailing_(Orizon_Supplement)

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Dumping airships and related art.

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>>48924001
I'll join you.

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How about an airship that's ALSO a floating island?

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What is the optimal crew size for a comfy adventure?

>>48922677
Nothing you're talking about has to do with consistency.

>>48924410
5, with 2 PCs.

>>48923541
>>48923683
That's the case.

Hot rock sinks, cool rock rises.

Teegee did make a system for the Edge Chronicles because it's a top tier setting.

>>48922442
Don't call it a general, that's cancerous. Just make a thread.

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>>48925324
Why?

>>48924687
>Hot rock sinks, cool rock rises.
wouldnt this just cause rocks of a certain height to rise indefinitely?

>>48925413
Jesus Christ, how horrifying

>Flying in the sky
>Things going well
>Suddenly a furnace problem
>No way to make heat
>Instead of gently gliding down and maybe surviving the crash, you rise forever

>>48925324

You're cancerous.

If I were an english teacher I would say ELIMINATE UNNECESSARY WORDS but as a channer it looks like you're pushing one of those
silly memetic taboos which derail threads for no reason. The difference between "Robots General" and "Thread About Robots" isn't really important.

>>48922442
>>48922677

Every setting needs to think about why the islands are floating. Even if the whole POINT is that it's magic and there is no "why", you still have to figure out why, because it is a thing that players will interact with and you need to be able to make it behave consistently.

That said, those reasons can be varied and complex, and you should keep that in mind when you claim that something is inconsistent.

The ponds aren't always full, but when it rains hard it takes a little while for them to fully drain out (especially if some of the land masses are made of soil instead of rock, they would hold water like a sponge and slowly drip out the bottom) and that's when you see the waterfalls.

-The islands are so high that they collect vapor (especially in the morning), which runs off of them as liquid water, and then turns back into clouds before it hits the ground.

-Some islands magically create water and are responsible for rainforests far below them.

-Some islands intersect with polydimensional waterways (just like magically creating water except that the ponds are portals and might actually lead somewhere)

-Yes, the islands can theoretically hold infinite weight, they don't suspend gravity but they do magically counteract it in such a way that weight isn't a factor, that's how you get tons and tons of flying rock in the first place.

-No, they don't hold infinite weight. That tiny island with the huge tower was floating a lot higher in the atmosphere before the tower was built, but he did the math and knew it wasn't enough weight to crash it.

-The islands don't float at ally, they're anchored to their place in the sky. Specific mineral deposits act as the anchor, the rest of the island slowly crumbles away over time, so the smallest islands are actually the most stable because they've been reduced to just the anchor-mineral.

-You can't mine the mineral, it's immovable (or, you can, and that's what immovable rods are made out of).

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>>48926522
My floating Islands are formed naturally at places that intersect with the Elemental Plane of Air

>>48926522
>You can't mine the mineral, it's immovable (or, you can, and that's what immovable rods are made out of).

Specifically, the naturally occurring mineral is an ore, and it can be smelted and refined. This is easier than one would suspect, because the buoyancy is near zero when in molten, liquid form. As the resulting metal cools, its buoyancy is restored.

The metal's maximum buoyancy is relative to its volume. A single small piece will have some buoyancy, enough to stay in place. However, as the more pieces are pushed together, the greater the buoyancy becomes.

The airchitects are quite capable of building free-floating buildings at any height desired, however there is a limitation in size due to building materials not being able to take the weight of very large constructions.

Floating cities are, in fact, individual buildings connected via floating pathways, and can be reconfigured as needed to accommodate newer buildings, or the removal of older buildings.

There have been attempts at making vehicles that utilize this buoyant metal, but the lack of propulsion has limited any developments beyond replacing the wheels of wagons and carts.

>>48922442
Not a fan of airships or floating islands, I prefer more grounded settings.

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>>48929986
>grounded

Reminder of the most comfy airships setting.

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Skylands

Guys I'm preperring a fiction of my own - based on the island in the skys and what not - can anyone point me to collected resoruces for this ? Like what authors acctualy did that before - what rpg setting it exist in and so on ?

>>48922639
>not powered by rock music
i am disappoint

>>48925413
>>48925472
Yeah.

That was the issue with Sanctaphrax, a city built on a massive floating rock. It needed giant chains and crystallized lighting that weighed hundreds of tons when in complete darkness to stay down. And when it was hit by a massive coldfront, they burned massive braziers to keep it from flying away.