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Mr.Sandman
2013-12-29, 11:31 AM
I have heard it said that a world run on 3.5 D&D, probably Pathfinder too, mechanics would naturally turn towards a Tippyverse type existence. Is this true of most systems? And how would one change the outcome to more of an OOTS style world. The only solution I can think of is Roleplaying XP, as at earlier levels it would be easier and safer, though slower, to level up through that than by killing monsters, and thus stories would take precedence over min maxing and exploitation of the rules in the lives of the majority of the world. Anyone have any other ideas or thoughts?

Brookshw
2013-12-29, 12:21 PM
There's a whole thread going on about this in the 3.5 subforum.

Mr.Sandman
2013-12-29, 12:42 PM
This one ( http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322041) riight? I read the first page and it seemed more about building a new, unexploitable system based on 3.5. I was thinking more along the lines of keeping the same rules, and every inhabitant of the world knows the rules, why would they not exploit them, and I did not want to turn the discussion away from its original purpose. If it is still felt to be too similar, a mod can feel free to delete this.

LibraryOgre
2013-12-29, 12:53 PM
It's not true of most systems. Heck, it's not even true of earlier editions of D&D.

One of the differences between 3.x and earlier editions was the removal of a lot of restrictions on magic. Magic items, even big ones, were a lot less costly to make (a little bit of XP in 3.x, points of constitution in 2e). A wizard who blew his full load of spells would take DAYS to rememorize them (10 minutes per spell level; at 18th level, about 23 hours and 40 minutes); in 3.x, it's an hour, no matter what level.

These conditions, combined with spells that can do anything and never wear out, mean that the Tippyverse becomes a likelihood, even without abusing the trap rules. If someone a thousand years ago made a "create food" item, then they feed at least 15 people a day without effort... and that assumes its only a single use item. If someone makes one of those every generation (keep in mind, it takes only a single 5th level cleric with Craft Wondrous Item), then these items will keep providing a food benefit every day.

Now, you can theoretically do this in earlier editions, too. But creating magical items (a key component of the Tippyverse) had a higher level requirement (meaning fewer could achieve it) and a higher cost (meaning fewer would be created), so expansion of this kind would be slower.

And that's just D&D. Other games have their own characteristics that enable or disable a Tippyverse.

Frozen_Feet
2013-12-29, 12:53 PM
I have heard it said that a world run on 3.5 D&D, probably Pathfinder too, mechanics would naturally turn towards a Tippyverse type existence ... Is this true of most systems?

No.

It's probably not true of even other editions of D&D. I'm fairly sure AD&D doesn't have easily exploitable teleportation circles, and it certainly doesn't have easily-reproduced, infite-charge magic traps. Item crafting in general is far more expensive and several ways to share around XP don't exist. OD&D and BECMI definitely lack many key spells, though Immortals allow by default for a slightly similar setting. 4th Ed reigns in magic hard, thus preventing Tippyverse.

Praedor doesn't allow Wizards as player characters. Ironically, the default setting is otherwise a post-apocalyptic Tippyverse, that collapsed due to overuse of teleportation circles and planar gates.

Noitahovi doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps, plus summoning gets you SCREWED.

LoTR doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps.

Rolemaster doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps.

MERP doesn't allow...

Really, it's a setting very particular to D&D 3.x. Even when the rough outline is possible to implement, the details aren't - Shadesteel golems or the like don't exist in most games.

Avoiding Tippyverse has jack-squat to do with handing out roleplaying XP or the like. Such metagame elements are mostly coincidental to the setting. If you want to avoid Tippyverse, you simply need to:

a) ban permanent teleportation circles.
b) ban self-repeating magical traps.
c) ban miracle, wish, reality revision and their lesser version.
d) make crafting permanent magic items impossible or very costly.

erikun
2013-12-29, 12:57 PM
Most game systems do not have natural Trippyverse tendencies. Even other versions of D&D generally do not. The big components of Trippyverse involve using magic on a society-wide scale to change how the world works: auto-resetting traps, infinite wishes, and similar methods. Other versions of D&D to have characters who can become incredibly individually powerful, possibly even becoming unkillable through similar methods as Trippyverse mages. But that is not the same as having entire kingdoms with infinite free food, free healing, infinite amounts of any material good, endless magical items, endless undead and golem soldiers, or endless armies of angels capable of casting any epic spell or fighting on your behalf.

Most other systems do not get as powerful as your standard 20th level D&D character either, and so simply don't have the point when this is even possible.

Rhynn
2013-12-29, 01:14 PM
It's probably not true of even other editions of D&D. I'm fairly sure AD&D doesn't have easily exploitable teleportation circles, and it certainly doesn't have easily-reproduced, infite-charge magic traps. Item crafting in general is far more expensive and several ways to share around XP don't exist. OD&D and BECMI definitely lack many key spells, though Immortals allow by default for a slightly similar setting. 4th Ed reigns in magic hard, thus preventing Tippyverse.

Yeah, this. ACKS also introduces some specific limitations: there are no "freely permanent" spells without an expensive Permanency ritual: continual light and similar spells have a limit: a spellcaster can only maintain one per level.

There's plenty of other easy limitations. For instance, the Tippyverse pretty much assumes that magic is common or can be easily taught; in my D&D settings, wizardry is an inborn gift, and divine magic is only "granted" to a select few (basically, 90+% of clergy are just 0-level humans or fighters). It helps, of course, when you're playing a D&D edition where classes are "for life" ...

There are even games/settings where magic is far more common than in D&D 3.5, yet Tippyverse does not result. In RuneQuest's/HeroQuest's Glorantha, every common farmer knows charms or prayers to help small injuries heal and to make their work easier, but such low-level magic is subtler than D&D magic; and the obvious higher-level magic isn't as blatantly powerful.

Yora
2013-12-29, 01:19 PM
In the end it comes down to not allowing magic to create something from nothing.

Also, magic that allows you to increase the power of other magic should not exist either.

BWR
2013-12-29, 04:46 PM
Tippyverse won't happen in R&K (L5R, LBS, 7S), Ars Magica, CoC, tribe 8, Laundry Files, The Everlasting (IIRC, it's been a while since I read through those books), WoD, Kult.

Devils_Advocate
2013-12-29, 10:21 PM
keeping the same rules, and every inhabitant of the world knows the rules, why would they not exploit them
Generally, the ways in which a fictional setting departs from reality exist to serve the story, not vice versa. Often, the writer, GM, players, and/or whatever do not particularly care about making the story plausible. Various implications of various details are simply utterly disregarded. This is only a particular concern for a story about the implications of a difference from the real world.

As a rule, there is no established "in-universe" explanation for how a society with widespread use of magic just happens to look close to medieval Europe, or why humanity would develop faster-than-light travel before artificial intelligence or nanotechnology, or whatever implausible state of affairs it is that we're asked to suspend our disbelief about. This isn't peculiar to roleplaying games; it's a staple of science fiction and fantasy in general. (See: Medieval Stasis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis), Reed Richards Is Useless (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUseless), etc.)

If you're seriously asking "Why would the inhabitants of a setting plausibly act in an implausible fashion?", then... well, okay, I think I'm up to the challenge of answering what one could be forgiven for assuming is an unanswerable question.

If we start with the assumption that a story describes a possible world, then obviously we are only given some information about that world, since plainly the story does not provide a complete description of the world. As such, there are many details unknown to us. Just as obviously, there will be reasons why things don't have the effects we would expect, because otherwise they would have those effects, now wouldn't they? These reasons are simply contained in the substantial amount of information about the world that we aren't given.

Now, on the surface, this might look like trading one type of implausibility for another. And indeed, it's implausible that a randomly selected alternate world's differences would mostly cancel each other out, thereby leaving a world meaningfully different from ours in only a handful of ways. But no one said that this alternate world was selected randomly! Rather, this world has been non-randomly selected from the set of all possible worlds in order to tell a story with relatively few meaningful differences from our world, because such a story is easier to tell, relate to, etc.

Now, if you want us to make up specific reasons why specific things in a specific setting or type of setting don't have the effects one would expect... well, that's particular to the setting in question. Unless you're inviting each of us to select an RPG we're familiar with and address the setting questions we see that RPG as raising.

Was that your intent?

Rakaydos
2013-12-30, 12:38 AM
I could argue that in 4E, Tippyverse should be MORE likely.

Sure, you dont have infini-traps or wish cycling, but Teleportation Circle is castable at 5th level, not 17th level. And while you have to pay a component cost, 50gp to go any distance to another circle compares favorably with ships and caravans over large distances.

shadow_archmagi
2013-12-30, 12:57 AM
I have heard it said that a world run on 3.5 D&D, probably Pathfinder too, mechanics would naturally turn towards a Tippyverse type existence. Is this true of most systems? And how would one change the outcome to more of an OOTS style world. The only solution I can think of is Roleplaying XP, as at earlier levels it would be easier and safer, though slower, to level up through that than by killing monsters, and thus stories would take precedence over min maxing and exploitation of the rules in the lives of the majority of the world. Anyone have any other ideas or thoughts?

Answer: No, not really. I'm assuming that by "prone to Tippyverse" you mean "The rules encourage/demand a drastically different socioeconomic organization than the one presented by the setting."

So the answer is no. Some systems align well with their settings.

Rhynn
2013-12-30, 01:02 AM
So the answer is no. Some systems align well with their settings.

Indeed, some games actually have rules actually built to produce their setting; for instance, HarnMaster has quite carefully realistic rules, and Adventurer Conqueror King has rules that work on multiple levels (economy, domain income, XP gains, etc.) to produce a setting that's both fairly realistic and follows its own internal logic well.

NichG
2013-12-30, 02:23 AM
Older editions of D&D are actually probably much worse. There was more silly, idiosyncratic stuff to exploit, and spells tended to be a lot more 'absolute' in their function - for instance, Stoneskin making you outright immune to a certain number of 'attacks'. One of the famous silly tricks was using a certain interpretation of Stoneskin to 'core a dragon in flight' since a collision was an attack and the immunity could be read to apply to being forcibly moved.

Not to mention 2d has far more splatbook material than 3ed has to draw from. 3ed has Spell Compendium. 2ed's equivalent is a 4-volume set.

I don't really know how extensive AD&D's set was, but I do remember the magic items in particular having a lot of 'absolute' effects like that. There were boots that gave you 100% chance of hiding, such that it was literally impossible to detect you by any available mechanic, for example. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some item combos that could do Tippy-esque things (and 1ed does have rules for making your own items, kinda - you actually get xp for doing it).

Rhynn
2013-12-30, 03:17 AM
Older editions of D&D are actually probably much worse.

Your examples don't really have anything to do with the Tippyverse, though; that involves magic-as-common-technology. AD&D is much closer to 3E, but good luck trying to construct it in OD&D, B/X, or BECM. (I guess you might have some success in Immortals, since you're playing cosmic supergods.)

Edit: 1E and 2E have basically the same magic item creation rules. In 2E, you get XP for it (if using individual XP awards), but I'm not sure about 1E; the XP values for magic items are for finding (and keeping) them, but I guess might also be awarded for creating them.

Good luck exploiting those magic item creation rules, though - they just boil down to "DM decides what happens."

Magic item creation rules don't really have anything to do with Tippyverse in themselves, though; ACKS has much more rigorous rules than AD&D, and they're never going to lead to a Tippyverse.

NichG
2013-12-30, 03:20 AM
Your examples don't really have anything to do with the Tippyverse, though; that involves magic-as-common-technology. AD&D is much closer to 3E, but good luck trying to construct it in OD&D, B/X, or BECM. (I guess you might have some success in Immortals, since you're playing cosmic supergods.)

My point is, all it takes is for some easily-accessible spell to have compounding consequences and you can build a Tippyverse-like world. It doesn't necessarily have to be resetting traps or teleportation circles, it could be some other interaction that does it.

The more material you have to search for effects, the higher chance you find something that results in a 'rules singularity' leading to infinite access to this or that.

Rhynn
2013-12-30, 03:21 AM
My point is, all it takes is for some easily-accessible spell to have compounding consequences and you can build a Tippyverse-like world. It doesn't necessarily have to be resetting traps or teleportation circles, it could be some other interaction that does it.

The more material you have to search for effects, the higher chance you find something that results in a 'rules singularity' leading to infinite access to this or that.

"Probably but I don't know how" is a pretty poor answer to "can it happen in this game?" ...

Zavoniki
2013-12-30, 03:31 AM
I suppose if you don't want the Tippyverse you wouldn't like Eclipse Phase as while you don't have easy access to teleportation, everything else is pretty free. Of course there's people charging you for it anyway and mecha-Cthulu's waiting around to upload your mind and eat your face with your face.

In general giving free access to resources/abilities let's people chain those abilities into something, then turn that something into something, and so on and so forth. That can create Tippyverse like scenarios.

Rhynn
2013-12-30, 03:33 AM
I suppose if you don't want the Tippyverse you wouldn't like Eclipse Phase as while you don't have easy access to teleportation, everything else is pretty free. Of course there's people charging you for it anyway and mecha-Cthulu's waiting around to upload your mind and eat your face with your face.

I think the central issue is that D&D 3.X has a giant dissonance between the setting presented and the setting the rules lead to. I really don't think that's the case with Eclipse Phase.

NichG
2013-12-30, 04:11 AM
"Probably but I don't know how" is a pretty poor answer to "can it happen in this game?" ...

Yes, but 'I don't know how to make it happen in this edition of D&D, so it should be impossible' is a poor answer to 'I want to avoid a Tippyverse', which was the OP's question.

The idea that 3ed is the only edition of D&D to have runaway RAW exploits is manifestly false. The exploits for older editions are just less well-known on these forums since its not played as often here, but that certainly doesn't mean they don't exist.

BWR
2013-12-30, 04:20 AM
Not to mention 2d has far more splatbook material than 3ed has to draw from. 3ed has Spell Compendium. 2ed's equivalent is a 4-volume set.


Seven, actually. Four for Wizard spells, three for cleric. And they drew from 1E and DRagon/Dungeon as well, but not BECMI.
And four volumes for magic items.

erikun
2013-12-30, 02:53 PM
Older editions of D&D are actually probably much worse. There was more silly, idiosyncratic stuff to exploit, and spells tended to be a lot more 'absolute' in their function - for instance, Stoneskin making you outright immune to a certain number of 'attacks'. One of the famous silly tricks was using a certain interpretation of Stoneskin to 'core a dragon in flight' since a collision was an attack and the immunity could be read to apply to being forcibly moved.
Trippyverse is far more than simply becoming an invincible killing machine. Pretty much every version of D&D allows you to do that. Many other games, including Exalted and most of World of Darkness, allow you to do that.

Rather, creating the Trippyverse means changing the entire world so that it operates differently. One high-level AD&D wizard, regardless of how much they work at it, cannot produce enough magical items to give millions of people access to quick and easy magic - regardless of how powerful they are, they are still limited in scope. I single mid-level D&D3e wizard, though, can easily provide unlimited magic to entire communities with only a few days of his time. This is the difference that makes Trippyverse possible in D&D3e.

Morty
2013-12-30, 06:24 PM
Tippyverse is getting really blown out of proportion to hilarious levels these days. It's a specific setting that comes as a result of drawing the 3.5 D&D magic rules to their absolute logical conclusion, people. Not some pervasive problem plaguing all fantasy tabletop games. Heck, it's not even a problem in 3.5 D&D, unless some people in a group want it and others don't.

LibraryOgre
2013-12-30, 06:36 PM
Tippyverse is getting really blown out of proportion these days. It's a specific setting that comes as a result of drawing the 3.5 D&D magic rules to their absolute logical conclusion, people. Not some pervasive problem plaguing all fantasy tabletop games. Heck, it's not even a problem in 3.5 D&D, unless some people in a group want it and others don't.

Which I think is part of it... Tippyverse is the result of the unintended consequences of taking game mechanics to their logical place. Gamist decisions resulting in a failure of the world as written to reflect the reality of the rules as written. In 3.x, this results in rampant magic item production and abuse leading to a radically redefined world. But this creates a new world, with its own consequences.

An example comes from Rifts. In Rifts Earth, no one can get off the planet. There's a lot of reasons given for this, most of which are kinda stupid given the technology involved (either a debris field which shreds any launching spaceship, but would require a couple planets to fuel, or woefully underpowered and under-ranged space-based lasers which shoot things out of the sky, but lack the actual capability to do that). However, even those things fail before the simple fact that the Splugorth possess both a developed space based technology AND the ability to teleport quite simply. The only reason the Splugorth don't own space is because they don't want to, if you look at the technology and magic they have on hand.

You might also look at Steven Brust's Viscount of Adrilankha, published as The Paths of the Dead, Lord of Castle Black, and Sethra Lavode. It begins in a time (about 250 years... not long for Dragaerans, but long enough that a generation came to adulthood without it) when the usual magic does not work. When it comes back, it comes back a lot stronger, and things that were previously impossible (teleportation, reviving the not-too-dead) are now relatively commonplace so, by the time of Vlad Taltos, assassinating someone is a way of sending a message to that person, because chances are they're going to come back to life to learn the message. The radical shift in technology makes some careers (like highway robbery) unprofitable, because everyone with money can simply avoid the roads entirely.

Frozen_Feet
2013-12-30, 06:37 PM
Yeah, I've not even understood what makes people despise TippyVerse that much. It's not a bad setting at all. It is not even as far from standard fantasy fare than people think. Seriously, heavily fortified, self-sufficient magitek cities are Old. News. I could list half-dozen other RPG or videogame settings that bear strong similarity to TippyVerse in their rough outline.

People seem to forget even TippyVerse still has the Wilds. You know, the vast majority of land that is not heavily fortified, self-sufficient magitek cities. It stills has barbarian kingdoms, small hamlets, and various monsters roaming the countryside. It's not all about high-level wizards, not anymore than Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance are. (*cough*Elminster*cough*RaistlinMajere*cough*)

CombatOwl
2013-12-30, 06:42 PM
No.

It's probably not true of even other editions of D&D. I'm fairly sure AD&D doesn't have easily exploitable teleportation circles, and it certainly doesn't have easily-reproduced, infite-charge magic traps. Item crafting in general is far more expensive and several ways to share around XP don't exist. OD&D and BECMI definitely lack many key spells, though Immortals allow by default for a slightly similar setting. 4th Ed reigns in magic hard, thus preventing Tippyverse.

Praedor doesn't allow Wizards as player characters. Ironically, the default setting is otherwise a post-apocalyptic Tippyverse, that collapsed due to overuse of teleportation circles and planar gates.

Noitahovi doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps, plus summoning gets you SCREWED.

LoTR doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps.

Rolemaster doesn't allow for easy teleportation or magic traps.

MERP doesn't allow...

Really, it's a setting very particular to D&D 3.x. Even when the rough outline is possible to implement, the details aren't - Shadesteel golems or the like don't exist in most games.

Avoiding Tippyverse has jack-squat to do with handing out roleplaying XP or the like. Such metagame elements are mostly coincidental to the setting. If you want to avoid Tippyverse, you simply need to:

a) ban permanent teleportation circles.
b) ban self-repeating magical traps.
c) ban miracle, wish, reality revision and their lesser version.
d) make crafting permanent magic items impossible or very costly.

The answer is actually a lot easier. There are active gods in the setting. There you go, tippyverse broken.

The God of Famine is likely to be a mite upset by your infinite food traps. The God of Death is probably going to do something about people living forever. The God of Battle will probably empower superhuman DMM clerics to do battle with those golem armies simply to promote his own portfolio. Etc, etc.

Morty
2013-12-30, 06:44 PM
Which I think is part of it... Tippyverse is the result of the unintended consequences of taking game mechanics to their logical place. Gamist decisions resulting in a failure of the world as written to reflect the reality of the rules as written. In 3.x, this results in rampant magic item production and abuse leading to a radically redefined world. But this creates a new world, with its own consequences.



Yeah, I've not even understood what makes people despise TippyVerse that much. It's not a bad setting at all. It is not even as far from standard fantasy fare than people think. Seriously, heavily fortified, self-sufficient magitek cities are Old. News. I could list half-dozen other RPG or videogame settings that bear strong similarity to TippyVerse in their rough outline.

People seem to forget even TippyVerse still has the Wilds. You know, the vast majority of land that is not heavily fortified, self-sufficient magitek cities. It stills has barbarian kingdoms, small hamlets, and various monsters roaming the countryside. It's not all about high-level wizards, not anymore than Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance are. (*cough*Elminster*cough*RaistlinMajere*cough*)

Yes, quite. The Tippyverse thought experiment is a symptom of the rules of magic in D&D 3.5 being incompatible with what the setting the game is supposed to create. The problem isn't that D&D 3e supports a setting with powerful spellcasters creating self-sufficient magical cities or whatever - the problem is that it's not at all what the rulebooks tell you the game's world is meant to look like.

One way or the other, it's unique to D&D 3e. Other settings and systems either have better designed magic frameworks that aren't so easily abused, or they're meant to produce a magic-saturated environment where spells effortlessly solve a lot of basic necessities.

Tyndmyr
2013-12-30, 06:48 PM
I have heard it said that a world run on 3.5 D&D, probably Pathfinder too, mechanics would naturally turn towards a Tippyverse type existence. Is this true of most systems? And how would one change the outcome to more of an OOTS style world. The only solution I can think of is Roleplaying XP, as at earlier levels it would be easier and safer, though slower, to level up through that than by killing monsters, and thus stories would take precedence over min maxing and exploitation of the rules in the lives of the majority of the world. Anyone have any other ideas or thoughts?

You will note that this is because of the "3.5 D&D" in there. That's because 3.5 has a whole bunch of rules that interact with each other. The larger the space for interaction, the greater the chance of exploitable stuff. In 3.5, the space is very large indeed, and thus, a great many potentially interesting interactions occur.

Smaller games tend not to share this tendency unless they are exceptionally poorly designed. Consider CoC. It will not become a tippyverse. Gods, no. First off, the ruleset is fairly small. You're just not going to find many gamebreaking stuff. Secondly, a *lot* of those rules are dedicated to things that are threats, rather than strictly player powers. Finding an unexpectedly lethal combination of monsters does little to create a world of endless power and optimization.

And yes, I also don't understand why people hate the Tippyverse. I feel like many of them have not actually read any of the primary information about it. high magic, crazy wilds full of lethality, no boring travel scenes? Yes, please.

NichG
2013-12-30, 07:21 PM
The problem with the Tippyverse in terms of gameplay is that its story is basically over. Its a post-scarcity world run by god-wizards who can't actually be threatened by anything internal or external, and if you could threaten it, you'd basically be destroying a utopia for giggles.

Its hard to be heroic in a world where there are no threats or dangers.

Just look at the problems people have with Faerun and Elminster being there to solve any problem 'but letting the PCs do it because they need the experience' or because he's 'too busy to save the world from such a minor threat'. Now amplify that by 20 million.

If Tippyverse has wilds, its not because they're dangerous borders where civilization has yet to learn to survive - its just because the wizards haven't bothered to conquer them yet. Which, I would argue, actually goes against the spirit of the Tippyverse - if you can do something to further order the world, then it has been done.

Its also much harder to run accurately than pretty much anything else in D&D. If a PC shoplifts, they should be apprehended 1 week ago by the Ice Assassin of a God of Commerce in the Tippy Future Crime Division. But if you don't know about the Ice Assassin a Deity for future sight trick, you wouldn't know how to properly DM that interaction.

Mr.Sandman
2013-12-30, 08:23 PM
Thanks for the feedback everybody. I don't dislike the Tippyverse, but I couldn't see much room for comedy in an OOTS like world run on it. Using a simpler system like most of you say will make it easier for me to remember the rules as well as the world s NPCs too. Thank you.

BeerMug Paladin
2013-12-31, 11:32 AM
I've seen mentions of the Tippyverse before, but never really read up on it until now. It's kind of funny, I am preparing to run a Pathfinder game in the near future with a very similar world, only with a few minor components to differentiate it. There's so many magic items pretty much everyone owns at least one, virtually no farming, and teleportation to get anywhere you'd like. (Airships and other forms of travel exist only for adventurers that want to explore the wilds.)

The world is flat, and endless in all directions. The sun is an immensely huge artifact, created by a god, that sails through the sky at ludicrous speed and actually travels up out of the ground from a specific point in the eastern desert, and down into a chasm in the western ocean. That is where these directions come from. There is a moon that does the same thing, from roughly north to south.

There's two reasons why this isn't exactly a 'mages rule everything' setting in my mind. Good wizards are curious wizards, and lot of the really powerful people explore around once they gain confidence in their abilities. It's because of this that people know what the sun and the moon are, and a lot of adventuring groups dream of finding the next-amazing-thing out in the endless wilds. There's vacation resorts (buildings immune to fire damage) out at the edges where the sun rises and sets, for example.

Because the world is literally endless, a lot of higher level people just travel too far and get lost with no way to return. (You can do an eternal random walk on an infinite plane and never return to the start.) If you're careful, or find your way back, you may have discovered something amazing out in the endless expanses. And perhaps build a career out of their discovery. This is the easiest way for an adventurer to gain wealth and fame.

Secondly, there's a spell I created for the setting I made with a range of about a mile, can be made permanent, and funnels all teleportation effects to a specific area if it targets any specific place within that area. Pretty much all cities in the world have lots of these focused on fortified positions in their city, mitigating the harms, but not the benefits of teleportation.

The easy way to make sure that no specific world ends up like this is simply nobody in the history of the setting has thought to make these innovations. Widespread access to higher levels of magic may be relatively new for people in the setting. It could be the result of a golden age of prosperity, that people have the luxury of access to higher level magic. This is usually how I picture most settings in this rules system.

It's interesting to me that when I thought to make a more 'realistic' setting where the world has a long history of using spells like fabricate, teleportation, and create food and water, that I wound up with something similar. It pretty much demonstrates that a Tippyverse is a consequence that the rules of this specific system enables.

Eric Tolle
2013-12-31, 05:32 PM
The Tippyverse honestly isn't as bad as the Wraithapocalypse or the Shadowpocalypse. Really, if you paid high-level liches that hate all life, then you have to Thomson why they haven't simply killed all the living with one spell.

Talakeal
2013-12-31, 10:13 PM
It's interesting to me that when I thought to make a more 'realistic' setting where the world has a long history of using spells like fabricate, teleportation, and create food and water, that I wound up with something similar. It pretty much demonstrates that a Tippyverse is a consequence that the rules of this specific system enables.

There's nothing "realistic" about ignoring thermodynamics or infinite loops. Everything has to come from somewhere.

That being said, your campaign setting sounds awesome! I am really curious though, how far apart are the locations where the sun rises and sets? That seems to kind of set a boundary for the endless world, as part a certain point you will just get a lifeless wasteland of eternal cold and darkness, won't you?

BeerMug Paladin
2014-01-01, 01:23 AM
There's nothing "realistic" about ignoring thermodynamics or infinite loops. Everything has to come from somewhere.

That being said, your campaign setting sounds awesome! I am really curious though, how far apart are the locations where the sun rises and sets? That seems to kind of set a boundary for the endless world, as part a certain point you will just get a lifeless wasteland of eternal cold and darkness, won't you?

Sure it's realistic. Science performed in the setting just proves thermodynamics wrong consistently. The theory is admirable, but any wizard would laugh at how primitive and backwards such an idea is.

Also, there are other objects of light out there, like a floating, dim orb way off to the south-ish, approximately, further than the moon's setting point in the distance, but relatively close to the surface and with similar properties to the sun in this world. It just floats there, twinkling slightly, heating and lighting the section of ocean it hangs above. There's a few other areas like that around, beyond the sun's range. But they're uncommon, odd and not very good places; the nearby ones were easy to find for obvious reasons.

But apart from those exceptions, yes, there's an endless amount of lifeless wasteland of eternal, frozen wastes outside the sun and moon's general area. Sure, the landscape goes on. You can still travel, but things tend to be stranger the further out you travel. And all sorts of madness exists out there, strange cities populated by aberrations, and unique magical effects, etc...

I haven't nailed down a precise size for the general gap between the sunrise and sunset, but I figure it's going to be something like 4,000 miles. Probably anywhere closer than 100 miles from the point it emerges is deadly to be within. Probably some of the area outside that general circle is going to be habitable too, but maybe only a few hundred miles or so.

Basically, I wanted to give high level magic casters a good incentive to explore and discover, but also a plausible reason as for why some may simply disappear. In a lot of regards, my idea is like a slightly toned-down tippyverse, as established high-level magic is common, but actual high-level magic users are fairly uncommon, since they're (mostly) all doing other things.

In regards to the forum topic, though, it seems that Tippyverse in 3.5/Pathfinder is inevitable, unless you do some houseruling, some everyone-duh-by-fiat, or you decide that all the high level magic users are busy... Doing... Something...