Dear RingworldRPG Group,

Wow! A response! More than one!

I am blessed. Thank you all. Some great ideas there, and some really
evil ones. I particuarly like the WMD idea, as well as the
accompanying mental picture.

Mr Gordon, you asked if there were any more ideas out there.

(Looks at ground and shuffles feet guiltily) I do have a lot of notes
on the Map of Earth setting. I really ought to write all this up
anyway, for reasons which will become apparent if you read below, so
expect to see something from me soon :-)

Some explanation, for those who asked:

What started me off on the "Map of Earth" was this: when I was reading
"Ringworld Engineers" a few years ago, I came across a comment which
Louis Wu made whilst looking at the map from high altitude, thinking
that the Atlantic looked wider on the map of earth, and attributing it
to continental drift: therefore the map must be a few million years old.

Well, that startled me. I had just been reading a book about dinosaurs
that I'd found in the attic (from when I was a wee boy) that showed
the progress of continental drift. THAT book told me that for the
Atlantic to appear wider from that distance, the Map would have to be
in the region of 60 million years old.

So Louis Wu is guessing wildly, as per usual. Honestly, that man is
the most unreliable witness in the history of Space Tourism :-).

Even worse, Louis never, once, in four books, sets foot on the Map of
Earth. He relies on "Traveller's Tales" - Teela's story (which, if you
read "Children", is shown to be a tissue of lies through and through)
and Acolyte's stories (which are likely to be distorted out of
politeness to the monkey-man). Finally, not having learned from his
experience with Teela, Louis talks to a Mk 1 protector about Map of
Earth - and believes every word she says!

So, lots and lots of potential on that evocative Map, and we can
discount pretty much everything and anything which Louis Wu thinks he
knows about the place.

My first challenge was working out what the map REALLY looked like,
and why it's shape confused Louis - which I did (I have the graphic,
and the reasoning behind it, somewhere at home.)

Then I decided that I wanted intelligent hominid inhabitants -
descended from our direct ancestors - twisted by Kzinti breeding
programs. I divided the resultant Animals (a direct translation from
the Kzinti - don't blame me!) into various groups:

1) "mock-Kzinti" - taking the Nora Argementine(sp?) concept to it's
logical conclusion and (initially at least) giving the kzinti a
custom-made "priestly" class.

2) Prey Animals, who are bred for speed, stealth, cunning or ferocity
and used in hunts

3) Utility Animals, who can do things which kzinti can't (like fit in
small spaces, or fly, etc.)

Finally there are the Feral Wolflings.. unmodified homo sap.

Given that all this lot can interbreed, up to a point, some really
interesting combos can be dreamt up. Also, unlike Ringworld Hominids,
there is no need to work out diet, environment, how culture evolves
from nature. These creatures are half-ornamental and half-mad.

Then I invented a rough history, a social order, and thought about
what the cities might look like. That is all pretty sketchy. It badly
needs expanding on before I can get properly started on the next round
of the game :-), so any ideas welcome, as always!

The 'brone turned up as the solution to a problem or two.

Problem number one was how to give the players a nasty fright. They
were cruising around in their lovel UN-issue atmospheric shuttle,
nicely immune to anything a hostile native could do, and happy as
larry in their ability to fly away from _anything_. They'd all read
Ringworld, and knew to not exceed certain speeds. They were wary of
_everything_.

So I had some gorilla(sic) fighters ambush them. With bazookas.

"Not a problem!" the players laughed merrily, until the scrith
shrapnel packing out the nose of the shells holed their ship and
forced them down.

Problem Two is a "locked room" mystery. Take a cone of scrith the size
of a mountain. Sit it on the ringworld floor. Call it "a mountain".
Who could tell the difference?

Put a protector facility inside it, on standby. Give it an invitingly
open door on a plateau about halfway up. Complete the base with
mechanical and biological mechanisms designed to protect, guard and
hold it ready for the first hominid hardy enough to reach it and
venture in.

... and introduce a party of players.

Picture, if you will, the following scene:
"Oh, where's Conner?"
"He went into that room back there, full of dark glossy bushes..."

Since we only want one Protector at a time, we evict any monkeys left
inside. Now THEY are outside, and the putative protector is INSIDE,
surrounded by Scrith.

(Alan, who played Conner, was leaving our group for another city and
wanted a good death-scene. To be honest, it was a bit more dramatic
than what I just wrote, involving mad computers, fire-breathing
psychic dragons and the life or death of five hundred kzinti... but
you'd never believe any of that.)

Now our players have rather desperate need of a 'brone.

At which point we reveal that the Patriarch's own Tool of Penetration
lies over yonder ocean.

I might let them use their shuttle for this one. Or not. Depending
upon how tough we can make these Kzinti with their 'brone-powered
technology. Hence the question.

-- DF