Single-Biome Planet: Difference between revisions

 

== [[Fanfic]] ==

 

 

** Serra's realm from the Urza's block is a cloud world. You can even see it on ''Urza's Saga'' plains. By contrast, Phyrexia is a [[Death World]], to the point that everything in Phyrexia is a carnivore.

** Mirrodin only looks this way because of how alien the whole metal-and-flesh blend theme is. The place has at least as wide a range of climates as the real world, it just doesn't seem that way.

** It's noted that City Planets, if cut off by a Warp storm are essentially screwed since it prevents food from being transported in, unless they are lucky enough to have an agricultural world in-system - hive worlds (see below) may well have a problem even if they do.

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

* 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.

** [[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.

** 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.

* ''[[Spore]]''... technically counts, just because there's no biomes in the first place. Either a planet is an ice planet, a lava planet, or (varying levels of) lush and green.

* According to the supplemental material, the planet of Kharak in ''[[Homeworld]]'' is a subversion that's gradually becoming a straight example; the huge equatorial deserts have been slowly expanding to cover more and more of the surface for tens of thousand of years at least, with the remaining temperate regions screened only by mountains. Since the planet is reaching the end of its geological activity, said mountains will eventually be eroded flat and reduce Kharak to a true Desert Planet. {{spoiler|Except that the deranged ruler of a vast interstellar Empire orders it carpet-bombed with thermobaric weapons for no particularly sensible reason and it ends up being a Black Glass Planet instead.}}

** However, to be fair, Korhal was blasted very thoroughly by the Confederacy fleet and pretty much all the Terran planets except for Tarsonis seem to have been undergoing terraforming (and no one is seen without life support systems, except for the Zerg).

** Desert: Xil. Meinhoff and Mar Sara also lean in this direction.

** Jungle: Bel'shir, Aiur.

* ''[[Dragon Quest]] [[Dragon Quest Monsters|Monsters 2]]'' has this: A desert world, an ocean world, an ice world, a cloud world, and [[Mordor]]. Also, all the "optional" worlds.

* ''[[Populous]]'' goes nuts: There are plains worlds, desert worlds, ice worlds, volcano worlds, [[Computer World|computer worlds]], alien worlds, worlds made of cake, worlds where everyone's a pig, worlds where everyone's French, worlds where everyone's Japanese...The architecture reflects this, as do the inhabitants, but on plains, desert, ice, and volcano worlds, they'll always be toga-clad humans who are promoted to medieval knights, with the religious center being either an ankh or a skull.

* ''[[Minecraft]]'' heavily averts this: there are several biomes available, with varying degrees of probability. If you start in an arctic biome and don't like it, just keeping walking until you find a biome you do like (note: may take a ''very'' long walk).

** It should be noted, however, that most of the biomes look alike. A grass block in one biome looks exactly like another in a different biome, only a different shade of green. Except for deserts, all biomes have grass; it is only the kinds and amounts of trees which separates them. And, since you can plant your own trees wherever you feel, you can create this in a limited area.

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Space Does Not Work That Way]]