Single-Biome Planet: Difference between revisions

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** The homeworld of the Vespid is an interesting one - an entire world of stone islands floating in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.

** It also has a Single Biome Planet that doesn't technically fit. Hive Worlds are worlds where, for various reasons, humans have been forced to live into massive city-buildings that can house billions of people, usually because the rest of the planet has been rendered uninhabitable by untold eons of industrialization and rampant pollution. The most atypical Hive World is [[Necromunda]]; about ten thousand skyscraper-based Hives scattered amidst an endless desert of ancient ash and chemical dust, but there are many others. Valhalla, for example, suffered a cosmic collision that knocked it out of orbit, rendering it an Ice World- huge subterranean cities were promptly bored into the heart of the planet and the depths of the glaciers in order to escape the cold. ''Earth'' is a Hive World, with no remaining recognisable features.

** ''[[Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay]]'' has local variations spelled out more often. Also, there's random generator in ''Stars of Inequity'' with 1-5 Territories (each with its own Base Terrain, Traits and Landmarks... and an inner sea counts as a Landmark) on an average planet and up to 10 on a particularly large and lively one.

* Classic ''[[Traveller]]'' had desert planets (hydrographic % = 0), ocean planets (hydrographic % = 100, called "water worlds" long before the Kevin Costner movie), and ice planets (such as Mithril in Double Adventure 2 Mission on Mithril).

* ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'' supplement ''Curse of the Chthonians'', adventure "The City Without A Name". If the investigators are very unlucky they can go through a Gate to the home planet of the Chthonians, which is a "monstrous violent world of volcanic upheavals and earthquakes", i.e. a Volcano Planet.

* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''

** [[Planescape]] ~~setting~~ solved this by splitting planes into layers and realms, each of which is easy to describe, because the areas that stand out would rather form a separate layer. E.g. [http://images.yuku.com/image/pjpeg/45536ba641a897edcc85536f05a293fe97906a7c.jpg The Nine Hells of Baator] - the whole place is [[Death World]], and most layers are quite uniform, but the whole gets more diverse the further "down" you go - the only constant being that it gets considerably more horrible with each level. The surface Avernus is along the lines of a volcanic wasteland under dark red skies, the second layer is the iron city of Dis where petitioners are slaves raising and tearing down structures with bare hands, and it's scalding hot there; the third is Minauros - a foul bog with ridges of volcanic glass scoured with razor-sharp hail and corrosive rain; then there's fiery Phlegetos, frozen sea of Stygia, endless pile of rocks Malbolge, Maladomini - land of ruins, mine pits and so on, glacier mountains of Cania, and finally Nessus - the place of extremes: a plain shattered with botomless rifts, with fires and ice and everything.

** ''[[Planescape]]'' solved this by splitting planes into layers and realms, each of which is easy to describe, because the areas that stand out would rather form a separate layer. E.g. [http://images.yuku.com/image/pjpeg/45536ba641a897edcc85536f05a293fe97906a7c.jpg The Nine Hells of Baator] - the whole place is [[Death World]], and most layers are quite uniform, but the whole gets more diverse the further "down" you go - the only constant being that it gets considerably more horrible with each level. The surface Avernus is along the lines of a volcanic wasteland under dark red skies, the second layer is the iron city of Dis where petitioners are slaves raising and tearing down structures with bare hands, and it's scalding hot there; the third is Minauros - a foul bog with ridges of volcanic glass scoured with razor-sharp hail and corrosive rain; then there's fiery Phlegetos, frozen sea of Stygia, endless pile of rocks Malbolge, Maladomini - land of ruins, mine pits and so on, glacier mountains of Cania, and finally Nessus - the place of extremes: a plain shattered with botomless rifts, with fires and ice and everything.

** ~~The~~ [[Spelljammer]] setting featured a number of Single Biome Planets. At least, in "at a glance" supplements; detailed ones tend to give more details - e.g. Anadia is [[Forgotten Realms|Realmspace]] equivalent of Venus with breathable air, thus while two little areas (where a more hospitable world would have icecaps) are habitable for typical humanoids - and even then, only halflings actually live there - the rest of surface is not.

** ''[[Spelljammer]]'' setting featured a number of Single Biome Planets. At least, in "at a glance" supplements; detailed ones tend to give more details - e.g. Anadia is [[Forgotten Realms|Realmspace]] equivalent of Venus with breathable air, thus while two little areas (where a more hospitable world would have icecaps) are habitable for typical humanoids - and even then, only halflings actually live there - the rest of surface is not.

* Mongoose Publishing

** ''[[Starship Troopers]] RPG''

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* [http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2009/pr200924.html GJ 1214b] appears to be a prime candidate for an ocean planet. It's estimated that the ocean on its surface would be roughly three to four ''thousand'' miles deep. Yes, the ocean depth is a large percentage of the total radius of the planet. Additionally, because the planet is definitely hotter than boiling point, the ocean doesn't have a defined surface. Instead the atmosphere just gets thicker and thicker as you go down until it becomes as dense as water, which can't compress anymore, meaning the ocean and atmosphere just blend together.

* Today, Earth is the ''only'' aversion in the solar system. In the very early stages of formation, Earth was a lava planet, and if the [[wikipedia:Giant impact hypothesis|Giant Impact Hypothesis]] of the Moon's origin is correct, the Earth and the Moon were balls of magma for a while after the impact. It was probably a kind of ice planet at various points in the [[wikipedia:Cryogenian|Cryogenian]] era (850-625 million years ago), particularly during the Marinoan Glaciation. This hypothesis is called ([[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|fittingly]]) "[[wikipedia:Snowball Earth|Snowball Earth]]". During Earth's Pangaea period, it was largely one huge desert surrounded with one gigantic ocean. Later, There was a period when the entire planet was a warm, moist planet covered with jungles - ''even Antarctica''. This is how most of our coal reserves were created, by the way. Possibly the closest fit to the above archetypes would be an Ocean World, as the surface is over 70% water.

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: As for the other planets...

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As for the other planets...

** Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere that distributes heat very efficiently around the planet, so its [[Death World|surface of volcanoes and sulfuric acid]] is hot enough to melt lead from equator to pole and through the 60-Earth-day ''night''.

** Mars is basically a desert world. A very cold desert world. It does have polar glaciers though—made of frozen ''carbon dioxide''.