Other worlds

[Shinizak]

I'm looking to run a world hopping adventure, but I wanted it to have the "main" types of possible alternate worlds. I already have an idea of an island only world, a high tech world, an all fantasy trope world, etc.

I want to be able to drop the players into various settings at the drop of a hat. But I only want a set number of worlds. Any ideas? Any planet genre tropes to drop?

[Mr.Sandman]

A Stargate type thing would probably work for this style of game.

[GunDragon]

Maybe give the players a magical/high-tech handheld device with buttons on it. Press the right button, teleports you and your friends to the world that corresponds with that button.
Maybe have an interesting and dramatic moment where they get trapped on one of your worlds, and the device breaks down, and they have to figure out a way to fix it before they can escape, meanwhile their enemies are closing in on them.
You could call the device a DHD or, "Dial Home Device"
I think that name is ripping off the Stargate series somehow, but it has been so long since I've watched it I just don't even remember.

[Millstone85]

* Fantasy world: Perhaps with geomagnetic-field-bound magic.
* Gaia world: The planet is a thinking being, and she is disappointed.
* High-tech world: With social tensions over androids and cyborgs.
* Hub world: Anything from a portal station to a ragtag spacefleet.
* Island world: Spaceships are cool, but so are regular ships and submarines.
* Monolith world: Who built this place? To what end? So mysterious!
* Night-and-day world: One side always facing the sun, the other never.
* Occupied world: We come in peace, they said.
* Post-apocalyptic world: Options include nuclear fallout and zombies.
* Starfish world: The really alien biosphere, perhaps a bit Lovecraftian too.

[Shinizak]

* Fantasy world: Perhaps with geomagnetic-field-bound magic.
* Gaia world: The planet is a thinking being, and she is disappointed.
* High-tech world: With social tensions over androids and cyborgs.
* Hub world: Anything from a portal station to a ragtag spacefleet.
* Island world: Spaceships are cool, but so are regular ships and submarines.
* Monolith world: Who built this place? To what end? So mysterious!
* Night-and-day world: One side always facing the sun, the other never.
* Occupied world: We come in peace, they said.
* Post-apocalyptic world: Options include nuclear fallout and zombies.
* Starfish world: The really alien biosphere, perhaps a bit Lovecraftian too.

❤❤❤❤❤

I absolutely love these. This is exactly what I'm looking for!!!

Any more is appreciated!

[Knaight]

I'm a little fuzzy on what exactly you're going for, so this list is a bit of a mix of genre tropes from different genres and sci-fi planets in general. I'd expect at most half of it to be useful, and I couldn't even split it into two expected halves.

• Pulp World: Dinosaurs, the occult, mad scientists, secret societies, and just general pulp action are all found in abundance here. Probably 1920-1930ish as a baseline, plus pulp elements.
• Ending World: This world is, on arrival, a few hours away from a world ending catastrophe. Ways out are limited at best, the world is already a broken remnant of its former self, and that former self is so glorious that it provides a lot of reasons to come here.
• Low-Tech World: Exactly what anomaly is happening varies, but for whatever reason certain types of sophisticated technology just fail here. Intelligent species can be found, but their technology is intrinsically limited.
• Double World: There's two worlds here, each a reflection of the other, occupying essentially the same space but somehow shifted. There's also some way of going between them, which may or may not be under any real control.
• Orbital Ruins World: The surface of the world varies, but what's consistent is local orbits full of entirely too many satellites run amok. There's the war satellites that seem to bombard the surface at random, the crashes inevitable with the sheer amount of orbiting objects, the constant rain of debris, so on and so forth.
• Gothic World: The world is perpetually gloomy in weather, always seeming to have some mix of overcast sky, night time, heavy rain, and nasty winds. It's a wilderness dotted with castles and small villages, with the very occasional town that is inevitably miserable. It's also all haunted, with the set of creatures one would expect for the milieu - werewolves, vampires, ghosts, their ilk.
• Forge World: There is no plant life on this world. The surface is mostly barren, with distinguishing features of mountains, barrens, pit mines and mountain mines, and of course lots and lots of lava. Then there's the heavy industry, crucibles and forges, great piles of smoke forever going into the perpetual smoke cloud and choking smog that passes for a sky.
• Ocean World (Fantasy): The world is an ocean, with maybe a couple of islands and surface reaching reefs. It's populated by sea monsters plus a few notable aquatic civilizations (merpeople, tritons, naga), all of whom use comparatively primitive technology and magic.
• Ocean World (Sci-Fi): The world is an ocean, with maybe a couple of islands and surface reaching reefs. It's also home to thriving alien ecosystems, potentially including a technological civilization based near the surface, or one based on the surface in artificial structures. The depths are terrifying, as are the storms at and near the surface.

[Anonymouswizard]

Bare in mind that a tidally locked works I going to be mostly uninhabitable due to extreme hot and cold. Only a small band of perpetual twilight will be able to support earth-mind life.

The question really is how different do you want the worlds to be? I'm assuming that you want serious, in which case the largest proportion of alternate worlds will have Starfish Ecosystems. But for a couple of other ideas:

Dead World: nothing alive here. Bare the bacteria the characters bring with them, of course.

Plant World: animal Life never developed. Why? Who knows! Just a world covered by immobile plants and banana trees.

Prehistory World: humanity never made it out of the hunter-gather stage.

[Berenger]

I found you a map! :D

https://www.maproomblog.com/2017/04/...ull-ever-need/

[Shinizak]

Bare in mind that a tidally locked works I going to be mostly uninhabitable due to extreme hot and cold. Only a small band of perpetual twilight will be able to support earth-mind life.

The question really is how different do you want the worlds to be? I'm assuming that you want serious, in which case the largest proportion of alternate worlds will have Starfish Ecosystems. But for a couple of other ideas:

Dead World: nothing alive here. Bare the bacteria the characters bring with them, of course.

Plant World: animal Life never developed. Why? Who knows! Just a world covered by immobile plants and banana trees.

Prehistory World: humanity never made it out of the hunter-gather stage.

I want them to be various "experimental worlds" created by a now non present super advanced race. But that's just a cheap meta explanation, it's just an excuse to be able to switch settings at the drop of a hat.

[Quertus]

The obviously a giant city planet - yes, this whole planet is one big city. Or, alternately, one giant machine.

The not so obviously a giant city - the city / machine is underground. The surface is a "park" - all green and wild.

The planet in a planet - a Dyson Sphere, with two completely different worlds to explore.

[AceOfFools]

Haunted world a world overrun with ghosts and undead, where the living must hide behind blessed barriers whenever the sun isn't out to drive the ghosts away.

Cloud World Where there is no ground, but humans eke out a living on the backs of giant flying beasts, and the airships they make from their bones. (Like a gas giant, but with less horrifically oppressive gravity).

Cyber World The transhumanist ideal, where upgrades in cybernetics have lead to humanity unbound by biology, and the vast quantity of bandwidth makes even everyday tasks augmented reality experiences.

The miniverse A world of tiny planets, each only a few dozen miles across floating in large, shared atmosphere. The planets are close enough to one another, and gravity hand-waved enough, that all you really need to get from one to another is a catapult, a parachute, good aim, and patience.

If this sounds like it's inspired by Super Mario Galaxy planet hopping, that's because it is (although I haven't ever played, so maybe I don't have a great understanding of how the game actually works).

[Cealocanth]

The Perpetual Frontier - The Space West was settled by a single lone spacemann on his space-horse with no name with a space-gun. Beware of Space Indians.
The Garbage Planet of Garbage People - A sister world of Tattoine and Jakku. This world was used as a garbage dump by an ancient space empire, and, since all that garbage is there already, people still use it like that. Native planet of the Space Roaches.
The Cybernexus - This world can only be reached by use of cybernetic implants and simulation technology that brings you into a digitized universe in the space-internet.
THE DARK WORLD OF DARKNESS - A world made almost entirely out of crystalized evil, the dark world of datrkness lives beyond sane space and is the home of the eldritch entities that go bump in the night. Come visit the town of New Stygia and visit our Lovecraft-themed gift shop.
Volcanus - A world that couldn't be closer to its home star if it tried, this world is highly volcanic, covered in a thick lead-melting atmosphere, and is home to warring tribes of lava people and fire people, who have been natural enemies for centuries, which is a timespan that's about an earth-month long considering how short their year is. (Also extend this idea to other elemental worlds if you like)

[Calthropstu]

Didn't Weis and Hickman write a series like this? Death gate if I recall.

[Vogie]

You could have a single world that just acts as the transition, such as:

• Sakaar, from the MCU, with portals to various other places
• The junkyard asteroid that House, Uncle, Auntie, & Nephew live on, from "The Doctor's Wife" episode of Doctor Who
• The Neitherlands, from The Magicians series, with fountains that go to each world
• The Wood between the Worlds, from CS Lewis' The Magician's Nephew, which likely inspired some or all of the above.

That way you don't have to worry so much about the characters having devices or abilities to portal themselves out of problems, because there's only one portal (usually) in each world that only goes back to the in-between world.

[redwizard007]

Has no one suggested an arboreal world? Giant, mile high trees cover the planet. Different layers of the canopy house different ecosystems getting progressively more Savage as you descend towards the surface. Bonus points if you continue to the root system, potentially with a civilization. Multiple civs could spring up on different levels.

A garden planet where a peaceful culture excels at all types of art and lives in a Utopia. Secondary civilization or society of oppressed peoples is optional.

An empire of telepathic space squids ruling over planets of dominated aliens and using them as soldiers of conquest.

The "bugs" from Starship Troopers.

[Cosi]

MtG and Spelljammer seem like the obvious meta-settings for something like this. MtG also has a bunch of reasonably well developed Planet of Hats type setups, as well as some decent (if somewhat cliched) multi-world villains.

[Drakeburn]

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned a Shattered World yet.

Shattered World: Something catastrophic happened that caused to world to be shattered to pieces, with the chunks of land floating in the air. Maybe there is nothing but emptiness deep below, or maybe there is another world far below the floating continents.

[Beneath]

The way you get really interesting worlds is to combine multiple of these ideas into one (like pick a random physical setup and a random social setup and mash them up)

A world in permanent darkness, with geothermal or magical heat sources + an enormously strong greenhouse effect keeping it warm and generating weather and life and stuff

A world where the terrain features are living plants and animals on a long time scale. One mountain might be a giant turtle, snail, or beetle, another an enormous tree. The one is devouring the other.

An abandoned world, whole cities ripped out of the ground either onto spaceships or magically flung to other worlds. Something terrible happened since, but it's gone now, mostly.

A world ruled by an otherworldly interloper, the previous social institutions buckling under the strain of being reworked to accommodate the new ruler's desires

Worlds where the people don't look like what you'd expect. Plantoid or jellyfishoid or something like that

A world which has switched in the recent past between themes. Perhaps a formerly scifi world where the destruction of the colony ship and the loss of ties with the homeworld caused a reversion first in technology (to what could be produced on-world with what they brought down, i.e. not super-advanced stuff), then in worldview, and then finally the (re-)discovery of magical ability. Or vice versa, a world where magic is fading as it begins to industrialize

A world in a glass jar. Perhaps it resembles a snow globe, or a ship-in-a-bottle