Mystaraspace
by Charles TaylorOk, first a brief bit of history:
Gravity in Mystaraspace
If my memory servers, the first rules for gravity in space were published in a Voyage of the Princess Ark article in Dragon magazine (and were re-printed in Champions of Mystara) these rules resembled Jeff Grubb's Spelljammer gravity rules, but had one major difference, the gravity on one side of the 'gravity plane' was of reversed polarity, so an object falling on that side of the gravity plane would fall away from the ship (or whatever)!
Actually, the article is on VoP, here
This had the problem that for a typical spelljamming ship, most of the air envelope would 'fall off' (just leaving any air trapped in the bottom of the hull, assuming the hull is airtight.
Bruce's revised gravity rules (which I liked to earlier) switched to a spherical gravity field, and then had ships designed with a large mass positioned well below their main hull to give an approximately 'normal' gravity field.
However, again from memory, I don't think there would be any narrative problems with just simply switching to Grubbian gravity - travel beyond the skyshield doesn't happen very often.
Now something dredged from my memory:
Worlds of Mystaraspace
Well, we do need to decide if we are using pre- or post Damocles blowing up - and there's a discussion on just this subject on the Mystara forum ATM.
I agree that we should name the planets for Mystara immortals - many years ago (I think about the time the Gazetteer's were being published) I had some ideas on 'fleshing out' the Mystara solar system and I used such a scheme - but ATM I remember few details (I'll have to see if I can find my notes).
OTH, there are a few Mystaraspace write-ups on VoP here;
Håvard's The Mystaran Solar System
From memory his ideas for 'Venus' resemble my own ideas, but I made the enviroment slightly acidic as well (enough to be an annoyance for off-worlders, but not lethally so). I disagree with the idea that Old Alphatia was in the same solar system though.
Cab Davidson's Summary of the Mystaran Solar System
Giovanni Paniccia's Mystaraspace
From memory, my own interpretation was pre-Damocles explosion, as follows:
Sun a.k.a Ixion - large, very hot (IIRC in Five Coins for a Kingdom the PCs can visit a Sun - I don't recall if it is Mystara's sun though - I'll have a look when I get home) fire world.
Planet 1: Valerias - Pulp Venus inspired, with a bit of 'real universe' based stuff as well - thick atmosphere, permanent cloud cover, hot, acidic (off-world equipment tends to corrode). Most animals are reptiles or dinosaurs, most dragons are black or onyx. Hollow, insides actually a lot more temperate than outside, polar openings much smaller.
Planet 2: Mystra/Urt
*Moon 1: Patera - I had the outer moon airless and barren, as described, but the interior was sponge-like with many passageways and voids, and had air, and was inhabided by insectile creatures, with hivebrood as the dominant species. - Inspired by H. G. Well's First Men on the Moon.
Planet 3: Vanya - Pulp Mars - IIRC I had bits of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds - if I'd developed it further it would have probably ended up like Larry Niven's Rainbow Mars (which had pretty much evey pulp mars combined into one).
Planet 5: I'm not sure I ever decided what to call this world - I remember it was an Air world with a large 'floating continent' (a.k.a. "The Great Red Spot" or "The Eye of whatever immortal I named this world after". The other details I remember:
Moon: 'Europa' - water world
Moon: 'io' - very volcanic world, inhabited by fire giants, sollux, red, ruby, gold & brown dragons, and other firey or fire-loving creatures.
The rest of them I just don't remember much, although I must have done something with 'Saturn's' rings! and I did have an 'inspired by pulp space opera' concept going on.