Any era
Planets, moons and stations
Other worlds reached by ship in science fiction: their truths, flying there, and how they're drawn.
Other worlds, by ship
In a science-fiction world, a realm can be a planet, a moon or a station. It's reached by ship, never through a gate: a jump ship flies between the world and its other worlds, and a shuttle hops up to a station or moon in orbit. Engine
Each one's truths
A planet, moon or station has four truths, a sentence each: its sky, its gravity, its air and its hazards. In every scene there, the storyteller is told them first. For example, Rosla, a moon in Ismada: Storyteller
| Rosla | |
|---|---|
| Sky | A black sky full of stars, with Trag hanging huge overhead, brown and cloud-streaked. |
| Gravity | A sixth of home weight: a step carries you ten metres, a dropped wrench drifts. |
| Air | None. Outside a dome or a suit there is vacuum and killing cold. |
| Hazards | Vacuum, rock-falls in the cuttings, old mines from the war along the ceasefire line. |
Flying there
On the play map, "Ships to other worlds" lists each one with where a ship sets down, its time and fare; take one and the map switches to that world. In the story, say you fly there and the engine moves you, charging the fare and the hours. A scene that carries you off-world without a flight is caught and sent back to commit it.
What they look like
A planet or moon has a whole world's shape of its own; a station is a ring of decks around the starfield. A world without a map of its own lands you at its port.
Present-day worlds
A present-day world has no other worlds by default. It can still have a supernatural realm behind a gate (urban supernatural), as fantasy worlds do.
In the Codex
Planets, moons and stations get their own chapter, "Other worlds", with their truths as facts.