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I'm working on a homebrew that takes place in a fantasy world that takes inspiration from late 19th century imperialism and the tensions leading up to the first world war. Essentially steampunk but not shitty. It's a very grounded campaign with little to no magic, outside of deeply arcane eldritch shit that your average person wouldn't know about.
There's only one thing "magical" I'd like to do, and that's to have a flat earth. I'm fine with ships not sinking over the horizon or whatever. I wanted my map to just more or less be a big circle, where the closer you got to the center, the warmer the biome. So the central areas of the world would be rainforests and societies of antiquity, and the further out you got the colder it became. The problem is that no matter how I slice it there's no easy way to make a flat earth that behaves at least a little bit like the real world. The Flat Earth Model that you see thrown around the most just looks dumb to me, with the sun going around in a big circle. But a stationary sun hovering over the middle of the world is just as dumb, because shadows would always be cast in the same location, leading to places where walking into the shade would be freezing cold.
tl;dr, what's a good fantasy model for a flat earth?
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>>51390686
I love tinkering with world models.
How about your sun circles the disc in an elliptical orbit (orange). Perihelion is over the center of the disc (red axis). When the sun moves towards the horizon its distance increases, negating any greater would be warmth gain from proximity. The disc (blue) rotates slowly around its axis to make seasons. The resulting summer (yellow) area is likewise elliptical. Center has perpetual summer (pink).
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>>51390930
holy shit, i like this. it took me a minute to realize that the sun was going UNDER the disk.
I like this model, but I had this idea of the "edge" of the world being an infinite icy ocean. I suppose this could add to the eldritch element though
>Where does the sun go at night? We just don't know. Explorers have spent hundreds of years trying to pinpoint where the sun sinks into the outer ice. Many natural philosophers believe that the sun could be an illusion, a catch of the eye.
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>>51391035
Why didn't they use parallax principle to calculate the distance to the sun? Why is it warm in the middle? Why do you even want a flat earth, it's there any reason for that?
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>>51391082
Honestly, since I'm excluding Fantasy from the setting and making it relatively grounded, I wanted there to be a good "fantastic" hook that will still keep people interested and see it as a universe that is still very separate from our own. Like TES and the whole Kalpa/godhead thing. And ASOIAF and it's crazy season thing. I thought having a Flat Earth would add some interesting elements and mechanics to it. "Hey, this guy has the most powerful telescope in the world, we can use it to see almost any ship at sea assuming the visibility is good enough!" "Hey, let's go explore the edge of the world and see how far we can get!" idk cool shit like that
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>>51391118
*excluding MAGIC from the setting
sorry, it's late
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>>51391082
>Why is it warm in the middle?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance
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Just a thought but did you consider combining a heliocentric model with flat earth?
Don't know how it would work exactly, but maybe a disc circling the sun while spinning around itself like a coin?
I have no idea, just thought I'd throw it out
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>>51391131
If the sun flies over the disc it will be right above every point of a line across the disc for equal amount of time. This line should be warmer then and not one point on it. And that is if the sun flies really low, otherwise the difference would be negligible. This leads us again to the question of why didn't they calculate the distance to the sun?
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>>51390686
>>51390930
>>51391035
>>51391082
>>51391118
>>51391122
>>51391131
>>51391157
>We never heard about Alderson Disk: The Thread
The concept is over 40 years old now, it really takes to be special kind of dense to never heard about it.
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>>51391157
Who says they haven't? They can still be intrigued by the sun going under the world. They don't automatically get there just by walking.
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>>51391186
OP doesn't want shadows that always are in the same direction. This disqualifies the Alderson disc, mister smug.
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>>51391146
Still no idea if this would even work, but had another idea and thought I'd expand
The disc circles the sun in an elliptical route and completes a full round in a single day instead of a year, at stage 1 it's midnight on the disc, the sun is "below" it and at this stage the disc is closest to the sun, it heats the "bottom" of the disc creating geothermal energy or some shit
Stage 2 is dawn, the disc is at a peak of the ellipsis, farthest away from the sun except for the dusk which is the same distance on the opposing side
3 is midday, the disc is further away from the sun than it is at midnight, from the perspective on someone on the surface it's directly above the disc
Then 4 is dusk and it's just the same as dawn but the other away
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>>51390686
I think that what needs to be said is that a flat earth either wouldn't have an age of exploration, or it would be incredibly early in human history. Whatever nation arises near the center can easily construct a tower from which they can see the entire planet (given a strong enough lens). They'd know where everything is and be able to map out the world pretty accurately.
What prevented Yurop from going West for a long time was that they had no idea exactly how big the ocean was and how long it'd take to get to the other side (that urban legend about Columbus' crew being on the verge of mutiny? It most likely was about of fears of running out of supplies: if the earth was actually as big as it really is and America didn't exist, they'd run out of supplies before reaching land).
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>>51391197
Alderson disc has a variation with the star moving, thus the lights changes.
Check mate, boyo
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>>51391300
Bobbing up and down, which only changes length of shadow. It is still always the same direction.
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>>51391146
>>51391237
This is basically changing the reference point.
The problem with using a proper star is, at realistic distances you eliminate seasons.
With the small, near lightbulb you retain the meaningful difference in insulation (red>orange>blue) for a flat plane.
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>>51391435
This picture made me wonder why aren't there climate zones in Blackreach in Skyrim.
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>>51391463
Scale mostly. The air bubble is so small that it gets heated to one relatively universal temperature.
It is more like a garden or greenhouse with good and bad spots for plants. So it be microbiome zones.
Thread posts: 19
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