what planet do we live on?

[Drakenred®™©]

Belive it or not we live on

Chikyuu
Elohi
Zamin
Zem
kiwanja

And all of this from asking the people on my street what they themselves called the planet we currently live on.

Interesting how on one street no one could agree that we currently live on earth. No wonder the survivors in the splicerverse dont know. . . .

Just an observation. . .

[Mike Taylor]

What if the Librarians, or at least most of them, genuinely don't know? Only the Machine would know for sure, and she isn't talking.

[Mike Taylor]

Only the Scarecrow is directly dependent on the Librarian. The others, not so much. In fact, if a Librarian gets too far out of line, they can find themselves waxed by the local Warlord and his followers. All the rest of the Splicers need are the Engineers and the Gene Pools.

[Tinker Dragoon]

Librarians know a lot, but even they are ignorant of some things. In another topic Carmen mentioned a group called the Bookworms who hoard old knowledge in order to keep it out of the wrong hands (Librarians especially). Apparently this faction and the associated O.C.C were cut from the first book for space, but will hopefully make it into a Splicers sourcebook.

[Drakenred®™©]

lets throw another wrinkle into the pot

Books

Go into just about any bookstore and most of the books in their are fiction,(and a fairly larg chunk of "current events" biographys and petty bickering about how history actualy happend and or "alternat history" books) and a fair chunk of that is fantasy and or Sci fi. in fact your as lickly to see find technical manual for the Starship enterprise as a technical manual for a computer.

[cornholioprime]

Belive it or not we live on

Chikyuu
Elohi
Zamin
Zem
kiwanja

And all of this from asking the people on my street what they themselves called the planet we currently live on.

Interesting how on one street no one could agree that we currently live on earth. No wonder the survivors in the splicerverse dont know. . . .

Not quite sure what you mean by people not agreeing that the Planet we live on is 'Earth.'

People absolutely believe that we live on the "third planet from the Sun," but that does not 'force' them to believe that we live on a world named "Earth." The name used is not the same as what it stands for. The Japanese 'disagree' with you about their Homeland (They usually call their Homeland "Honshu"), the Germans usually call their home "Deutschland," the Egyptians called where they lived "Kemet," and so on. Heck, WE didn't even use the term "Earth" originally; we apparently got the name from an old Norse/Germanic phrase that meant something like "ground and land" (eorde) "of the Middle Realm" (middendgard). Those people on the Street that you were talking about were probably saying words that mean the same thing as 'Earth,' even if calling it by different names. What the Author was trying to say about the Humans of the Splicers is that they don't know if they started here or if they were colonists from somewhere else beacuse of the missing records. However, we (who are not Splicers Humans and have information that they don't) can PROBABLY assume that the Splicers are NOT on Rifts Earth (for two reasons:

A]]The Earth of Rifts has been weak to magical energy for a very long time, but has NEVER been hostile to Mages and Psychics as this Planet is, suggesting that this might be a different Planet altogether. It may even be part of, or at least one Planet, in a 'No Magic Dimension' (see Rifts: Megaverse Builder for details). Not even Wormwood, which is very, very weak in Mystic Energy, actually hampers Mages and Psychics.

and

B]]The planet is spoken of as having only ONE Ocean, even before the Machine started its Terraforming of the Continents.

Doubtless, given time, if the inhabitants of this Planet develop Archaelogy and Anthropology, or the Machine tells them of the past, or even if they can locate long lost Historical texts, they will be able to one day see if they originated here, or if they came from somewhere else. it would be virtually impossible to know where they are or where they (possibly) came from otherwise.....

[cornholioprime]

Third planet of the Sol system. =P

Personally, I'd wonder if the Librarians are keeping the masses ignorant of where they are.

Maybe the Librarians are in fact keeping knowledge if where Splicers Humans came from, but I personally can't see how that would do ya a whole heck of a lotta good when A]] You're six gazillion feet under the Planetary Crust, constantly on the run from Killer Robots, and B]] Incapable of achieving Space Flight anyways, given that almost no one has access to knowledge of Spacship Engineering; and even if they did, there are no Star Charts to tell you where to go.....

[cornholioprime]

Not that it matters a whole lot... but actually it would be pretty easy to figure out figure out what planet everyone was on. Just take a look up at the night sky and look for our friend the moon.

The moon is pretty distinctive and has features that can be seen with the naked eye. Of course this assumes that people have a picture of the moon handy somewhere and bother to make the comparison.

I'm no astronomy major, but from what I understand the moon also has other rather unique features. For example one side is constantly facing us. And lets not forget those monthly lunar phases.

I'm guessing that the author wanted to leave the setting vague so that GMs could tailor campaigns to their liking (colony planet or future Earth). Perhaps it might have been better to mention this from the begining.

In my case I'm using the future Earth setting. But I have too many players that are rules-lawyers and love pointing out errors. It would certainly be irritating to have future material released that contradicts my established setting. Not to mention items that would have be reworked to properly fit.

Believe me I'm not complaining. I like the game, I might even say I loved it. Providing us with clear options would be be best. But just can the hazy maybes... give it to us straight. We can take it. Just a suggestion from a pleased reader.

There's only ONE problem, but a VERY big one: Nobody knows. Believe it or not, we're in roughly the same position. We have NO knowledge that we are the only Carbon-Based Lifeforms in the Universe; there's no way for us to know until some Alien Artifact or Alien Knowledge is made available to us. Likewise, the Splicers can't turn to the Moon because they don't have any INFO about the Moon.

I'll ask you a Question roughly analagous with the Question the Splicers face:

Without true, irrefutable knowledge of our Earth's (biological) Distant Past, how do we know that life on Earth wasn't seeded here 3+ billion years ago by Someone from Somewhere else??

Besides, I have already pointed out that the Librarians speak of the time BEFORE the Machine started her Terraforming Program. They describe this particular Planet as having only ONE Continent.....therefore, it is NOT likely to be Planet Earth