How does that mesh with a spherical world?
Would putting it in a gyroscope work?
For a time.
It’s like an Excalibur that fucks with rotational symmetries, GR tensors ‘n’ shit!
Put it on a giant clock face and see if humans can adapt.
Keep it slightly tilted just to fuck with people.
You can just put it on the ground. Since it always points up, gravity will always go straight down through its center, so it will be self balancing. You just need some one to guard it.
The wind would make it rotate
Imagine how much fun such a thing would be attached to a windmill on a stormy day.
Yes. It’s magic though :)
Have a statue commissioned that will forever hold the sword is from then on a new religion lol
It’s all fun ,and games, until one day
a child with no parentsa protagonist approaches…
Now explain this observation with the globe earth model.
Checkmate atheist
Maybe gravity still affects the sword, so when they pointed it right, “up” went right for everyone along a curve.
These hairy balls suggest otherwise
The sword of surface normal vector
Easy: 2/3 of the planet is now devoid of life.
The earth is flat, but its flat in spherical spacetime. Checkmate atheists
Limited range
Pretty cool concept if you’re an outside observer
- a football kicked from outside of the range would suddenly gain horizontal speed within the range, and then exit the range at freefall speed into the goal.
- a nun walking from outside of the range would suddenly glide like a dark screaming angel of death across the field within the range, only to then end in a series of fantastic rolls after leaving it
- a man on a pogo stick would do a super massive horizontal jump across the field, and the use that potential energy to one final massive jump after leaving the range
If you like this concept, read Influx by Daniel Suarez.
Stormlight Archive also has a magic similar to this (Lashings)
starred comment, thanks for the recommendation
Limited range could still have a gradual transition
well that’s less exciting, but I’ll allow it
Thanks
Still contradicts the common concept of gravity where “down” is determined by mass, not by an arrow. A flat earth with arbitrary downs and ups explains this much better. Occam’s razor is clear on this.
Have you considered the part where this is both magic and completely fictional?
No
Skill issue
you fool, you’ve doomed us all!
Sorry, I didn’t intended that
Admit it. You did.
Maybe the sword controls gravitons.
Maybe it doesn’t.
So everyone on the other side of the planet has already been flung out into space
Nah, it’s a disc planet resting on 4 elephants standing on a giant turtle. They good fam.
Another point in favor of a flat world!
It’s AOE
Abracadabra!
Dig a hole as deep as you can, bury it oriented correctly, hide the burial site as best you can. Sooner or later a landslide or earthquake or flood or something might move it, but hey, if we get really lucky, we might have bought a few million years!
Nah, just make a religous cult out of it
Just put it in space. Space has never had an up before, might could use one.
New rule: If nobody is holding the sword, there’s no longer any “up”, and everything just floats about
The support Djin told me the enchantment is written on Read-Only-Magic runes. We can’t patch it in, and no one knows the rumplestiltskin recovery key, so we can’t disable the indestructability enchantment either to disintegrate it. Honestly, it’ll take a hard reboot of the material plane, but Xanathar is online right now and I’m told it’s pretty important stuff, and he has the reboot button anyway so take it up with him.
That’s just classic sales-wizard razzle-dazzle. It had to be programmed somehow and there’s likely a service rune on the side for debugging. Read-Only runes can be overpowered with the right equipment
Classic Xanathar, holdin up reboots
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻)
… does the person have to be alive?
Asking the important questions.
nah just leave it in the fridge next to vegetable drawer. No one will touch it
In the meantime, find a way to unenchant it.
hmmm.
As DM, I’m always looking for ways of creating the potential for highly improbable but incredibly humorous TPKs.
And I think I just found a new toy.
Best part is, the Murder Hobo is going to love it. At least, until, eh, we’ll they’ll just have to find out.
Give it a quick spin and if you’re fast enough, it’ll just shake everything a bit but everyone around is going to puke.
Brace your back against a tree and just point at an enemy. They’ll fall into the sword.
That’s how you end up with a 200lb missile smashing your guts out
Or they cast featherfall and start dropping things on you
How can they drop things on you when you just point the sword the other way?
If you point it the other way, you’re not braced anymore and start falling.
You just brace on the other side of the tree at the same time. Swing your arm right and the tree will move around you.
Sure. And imagine trying to swing it at something or stabbing someone with it. They’d get sucked into the sword, sorta.
But.
Interactions with the sword of down is going to be interesting.
Also, there’s shield of upside-down causes it to reverse when it successfully blocks.
Also, there’s a small chance it’ll break at a really inopportune moment.
Don’t forget the sheathes that reverse the blades polarity when they’re angry with the user
You couldn’t even hold the sword of down due to the shape.
Sounds like chaos to me.
Make it have an insanely high damage, like 50, 000 dps but since he soon learns a sword is useless if you can’t swing it. Bonus points if he gives up his primary weapon to get the up sword so when he learns it’s useless he has no weapon
DPS? Do you play your ttrpgs in real time?
I play by mail so it’s damage by strike…do you have another meaning?
DPS commonly means ‘damage per second’ mostly for RPG video games
Yes… That’s the joke. I doubt anyone plays a rpg by mail either…
Ah mb, I just assumed mail was just an acronym or something I wasnt aware of
Sounds like a potentially great gameplay mechanic for a puzzle platformer.
VVVVVV did something like this, but if I remember correctly you could only change between up and down.
Locoroco from the old PSP had a really nice mechanic of turning the world to affect the direction of gravity to move the creatures. Real fun game too.
Finally, that I know of, the most recent implementation of the mechanic is in the game called Limbo which is quite nice too.
How the hell did I forget that that was a thing in Limbo?
I shall whip myself, and play three levels of Braid and five levels of super meat boy for penitence.
I was going to say, no need to punish yourself for forgetting something… But if that’s the punishment I want to be punished too.
Gravity rush? I don’t know though, never played or saw it. I just remember the mechanic where you decide which way gravity is.
Oooh I’d never heard of it, that looks cool! I’ll check whether it can easily run on a pc.
It’s playstation only, i think you can emulate the vita but the 2nd game is ps4 which i’m not sure has emulation
Immortals Fenyx Rising has a similar game mechanic is I remember correctly.
This is how lashings work in Brandon Sandersons Stormlight Archive.
It would be if you can find an elegant control scheme. Problem is, it has to be mapped to something, so you either can’t move or can’t use any buttons while altering it
VR game. I can feel the motion sickness already
First-person platformer with portals. It’s set on a cruise ship in a storm.
The movements consist mostly of backflips and power slides.
…is this a flat plane of existence? Or a globe?
Maybe it’s localized.
Neither, its sword-shaped.
Just cement it into the ground or something…now which way is the ground?
Imagine that thing being real and you point it sideways and the whole planet’s center of gravity shifts 6700 kilometrrs under you and the whole mass off the planet starts to crumble in that direction
spin the planet!
Largest game of Spin The Bottle evah!
Wouldn’t the way he is holding it already kill a good chunk of the population? People on the other side of the planet would just fall into space along with the athmosphere loose matter and water.
I guess it must be the direction relative to the direction from the earth’s center.
That little tilt he did definitely killed a few hundred millions from the tidal waves alone unless the effect of the sword is local to an area.
It must be localized somehow. Otherwise, other planets…
How do you think earth got its rotation?
