Our solar system

[GeraintElberion]

Earth is part of the Golarion universe.
That's established beyond any doubt in Reign of Winter.

Will Starfinder players be able to visit Future Earth?

[Tom Kalbfus]

Is it our Earth or a parallel Earth where magic exists? Is it the Earth from D20 Modern where magic is hidden by shadow? That is if an Orc were to walk among us, ordinary people would see a rather ugly human instead?

[GeraintElberion]

It's the earth from Rasputin Must Die.

Magic exists but history appears to closely parallel our own. The breadth of magic use is not revealed.

[Neongelion]

For me anyway, I'd just up and say that Earth was completely taken over by the Dominion of the Black, with Cthulhu as a source of energy that they harvest. Humanity finally began to expand out to other planets somewhere in the 22nd century but for one reason or another was annihilated by the Dominion. Baba Yaga, in essence, becomes the last human to have originated from Earth in the entire multiverse.

Thousands of years later, it's just another planet-wide fleshfarm with its continents completely re-arranged and its oceans long drained, with the only indication that it's Earth being the fact that Cthulhu still lives on it.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Not the Earth from Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos?

[Bullo Dagmawi]

GeraintElberion wrote:

Earth is part of the Golarion universe.

That's established beyond any doubt in Reign of Winter.

Will Starfinder players be able to visit Future Earth?

Isn't earth accessible through dimension travel rather than interplanetary travel in the Adventure Path? Or, am I mistaken on that?

If it is accessible only through a particular portal on Golarion then Golarion disappearing might eliminate the possibility.

Of course, creator caveat- future earth is accessible because the Starfinder creators want it to be accessible- is always possible.

[thejeff]

Bullo Dagmawi wrote:

GeraintElberion wrote:

Earth is part of the Golarion universe.

That's established beyond any doubt in Reign of Winter.

Will Starfinder players be able to visit Future Earth?

Isn't earth accessible through dimension travel rather than interplanetary travel in the Adventure Path? Or, am I mistaken on that?

If it is accessible only through a particular portal on Golarion then Golarion disappearing might eliminate the possibility.

Of course, creator caveat- future earth is accessible because the Starfinder creators want it to be accessible- is always possible.

It's accessible through the Baba Yaga's Hut. It might not be clear to the players, but the Hut travels in space and doesn't take them to other dimensions.

The Hut can be assumed to have survived Golarion's disappearance. The Baba Yaga is unlikely to be bothered by such trivialities.

But yeah, it's accessible if they want to set another adventure there, otherwise, it's an arbitrary distance away and there's no in character reason to seek it out.

[Vutava]

thejeff wrote:

Bullo Dagmawi wrote:

GeraintElberion wrote:

Earth is part of the Golarion universe.

That's established beyond any doubt in Reign of Winter.

Will Starfinder players be able to visit Future Earth?

Isn't earth accessible through dimension travel rather than interplanetary travel in the Adventure Path? Or, am I mistaken on that?

If it is accessible only through a particular portal on Golarion then Golarion disappearing might eliminate the possibility.

Of course, creator caveat- future earth is accessible because the Starfinder creators want it to be accessible- is always possible.

It's accessible through the Baba Yaga's Hut. It might not be clear to the players, but the Hut travels in space and doesn't take them to other dimensions.

The Hut can be assumed to have survived Golarion's disappearance. The Baba Yaga is unlikely to be bothered by such trivialities.

But yeah, it's accessible if they want to set another adventure there, otherwise, it's an arbitrary distance away and there's no in character reason to seek it out.

There's some evidence that Golarion is not in the Milky Way, so without some manner of shortcut, Earth is almost unreachable.

[Torbyne]

What evidence is that? Just because there are lightsabers does not mean it is in a galaxy far, far, away.

[Matthew Shelton]

Vutava wrote:

There's some evidence that Golarion is not in the Milky Way, so without some manner of shortcut, Earth is almost unreachable.

What about the Drift?

[Archmage Variel]

Matthew Shelton wrote:

Vutava wrote:

There's some evidence that Golarion is not in the Milky Way, so without some manner of shortcut, Earth is almost unreachable.

What about the Drift?

According to the way the drift has been described. I'm doubtful that traveling to another galaxy is possible, let alone plausible.

[Tom Kalbfus]

How has the drift been described? What if one just teleports to another galaxy? There is nothing in the spell description that says you can't!

[Tom Kalbfus]

Vutava wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Bullo Dagmawi wrote:

GeraintElberion wrote:

Earth is part of the Golarion universe.

That's established beyond any doubt in Reign of Winter.

Will Starfinder players be able to visit Future Earth?

Isn't earth accessible through dimension travel rather than interplanetary travel in the Adventure Path? Or, am I mistaken on that?

If it is accessible only through a particular portal on Golarion then Golarion disappearing might eliminate the possibility.

Of course, creator caveat- future earth is accessible because the Starfinder creators want it to be accessible- is always possible.

It's accessible through the Baba Yaga's Hut. It might not be clear to the players, but the Hut travels in space and doesn't take them to other dimensions.

The Hut can be assumed to have survived Golarion's disappearance. The Baba Yaga is unlikely to be bothered by such trivialities.

But yeah, it's accessible if they want to set another adventure there, otherwise, it's an arbitrary distance away and there's no in character reason to seek it out.

There's some evidence that Golarion is not in the Milky Way, so without some manner of shortcut, Earth is almost unreachable.

Isn't it just as easy to put Earth in another prime material plane of existence instead of putting it in the same plane and saying its too far away to reach? I've proposed a version of Earth on the surface of a ringworld. Residents of Earth have their own gap, they suffer some memory loss and they wake up on the surface of this Earth. Everything except GPS and satellites works as it did on the original Earth. This fake Earth is planted equidistant from the retaining walls of the ringworld, so access to space is about 500,000 miles away in either direction over land and water, that is in my setting anyway. My idea is the player characters find a well of many Worlds to travel to the Starfinder setting, the ringworld is somewhere within it inside a nebula so no one has thus far spotted it from outside, and it orbits a larger red supergiant, that I have labeled Terranore. This massive star is nearing the end of its life and is set to go supernova at any time. A supernova is sort of a big deal, its blast would endanger any inhabited worlds within 30 astronomical units, of course the blast wave would only travel outwards at the speed of light, so there would be time to do something about it when it occurs.

[Orfamay Quest]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Isn't it just as easy to put Earth in another prime material plane of existence instead of putting it in the same plane and saying its too far away to reach?

Perhaps, but that's not what the Pathfinder Design Team did, possibly because they didn't want the Hut to be capable of planar travel. If the PDT wants Earth to be accessible in Starfinder, it will be. If they don't want it to be accessible, it won't be.

The nice thing about fiction is you can write it however you want, without really worrying about ease or even plausibility.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Magic is not plausible, since there are a lot of god running around, they can do the stuff that normally a super-civilization would do in a more conventional science fiction setting. Instead of having a civilization that is so advanced they are like gods, you could use actual gods to do these things, such as constructing megastructures such as a ringworld. The magic of levitation or a giant wall of force does the trick of holding it together as it spins, which in hard sciences fiction requires the bonding force of an atomic nuclii. Spelljammer had a world called "Nivel" it was basically a ringworld build in wild space. A crystal sphere is a kind of Dyson sphere in that setting. Since many of the gods have origin's in Earth mythology, it would be no big surprise I they included a map of Earth on its ringworld, Larry Niven had to work hard to justify why aliens would build it, make a ringworld that was habitable for humans and had native humans on it, so to make it more plausible, it didn't have quite the same spin gravity as Earth, it was a little less, its radius was 95 million miles instead of 93 million, a turn of his ringworld was 10 Earth days instead of 9, and his days were 30 hours long, with periods of 8 hours of night. I decided to go the whole hog, make 24 hour days with 12 hours of night, it is an odd coincidence that the rate of spin you need for a ring world 1 AU in radius is almost exactly 9 days!. The sun is always directly overhead, but to produce season and climates other than the tropics, I use active refrigeration, heat is pumped out of the ringworld and radiated through radiator fins on the underside and this is powered with solar power. By increasing refrigeration, winter is produced. So on my map of Earth on the ringworld, the areas around the poles are engineered to be cold through refrigeration.

[thejeff]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Isn't it just as easy to put Earth in another prime material plane of existence instead of putting it in the same plane and saying its too far away to reach?

Perhaps, but that's not what the Pathfinder Design Team did, possibly because they didn't want the Hut to be capable of planar travel. If the PDT wants Earth to be accessible in Starfinder, it will be. If they don't want it to be accessible, it won't be.

The nice thing about fiction is you can write it however you want, without really worrying about ease or even plausibility.

More than that I think. If I understand correctly, the Pathfinder setting doesn't have multiple prime material planes, preferring to simply spread different worlds out on a single (nigh?) infinite material plane.

Design choice. Not one I agree with necessarily, but the one they went with.

And of course, if you want Earth to be accessible in your home game, go for it. Through the Drift, planar travel, interstellar teleport, faster FTL drives, whatever.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Well the Universe is pretty big, something in another Galaxy might as well be in another plane of existence, there is just one nettle, how did humans get here? they could have been abducted from the Earth during the stone ages since that would not affect its history. Also did the gods create man or did man create the gods? If we got one shared universe, the humans in the Starfiner setting were either transported here somehow or perhaps copied by the gods from those on Earth, two theories. Evolution does not run in parallel.

[thejeff]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Well the Universe is pretty big, something in another Galaxy might as well be in another plane of existence, there is just one nettle, how did humans get here? they could have been abducted from the Earth during the stone ages since that would not affect its history. Also did the gods create man or did man create the gods? If we got one shared universe, the humans in the Starfiner setting were either transported here somehow or perhaps copied by the gods from those on Earth, two theories. Evolution does not run in parallel.

Canonically, Golarion humans were created by the Aboleths, though it's always possible they abducted breeding stock from Earth. Along with all the recognizable animals, including the ones extinct on Earth. Let's not be humano-centric here.

OTOH, it's pretty clear that in PF/Golarion, the laws of evolution (along with many other scientific laws) only really apply when convenient. Not surprising, in a setting with magic and active deities.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Why would Aboleths create humans? You would think a human would not be the first thing these alien monsters would create.

[thejeff]

I take it back actually. I thought they created humans, but they apparently only taught them enough to raise them from barbarism to civilization, to be more useful slaves, I assume. Needed someone to handle the out-of-water work, I guess.

[Orfamay Quest]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Well the Universe is pretty big, something in another Galaxy might as well be in another plane of existence

... which, in turn, suggests that there is no need for other material planes. Occam's razor and all that, yes?

Quote:

Also did the gods create man or did man create the gods?

Men did not create the gods. The gods preceded men; in particular, Zon-Kuthon dates to "the beginning of time."

Quote:

Evolution does not run in parallel.

Why not? Bearing in mind that Gods exist, they can interfere with the natural randomness of evolution as much as they like.

[GeraintElberion]

If only there were still 9th level spells

[thejeff]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Well the Universe is pretty big, something in another Galaxy might as well be in another plane of existence

... which, in turn, suggests that there is no need for other material planes. Occam's razor and all that, yes?

Quote:

Evolution does not run in parallel.

Why not? Bearing in mind that Gods exist, they can interfere with the natural randomness of evolution as much as they like.

Also, unless we're postulating Golarion as an alternate earth, split off in a branching timeline at some point after man evolved, parallel evolution makes no more sense in an alternate prime material plane than in a different place in the same plane.

[Tom Kalbfus]

If the gods interfered, it is not evolution. Evolution occurs without anyone's direction, doesn't mean they didn't get their ideas for creating humans from somewhere. if we put Earth in the same universe as Golarion, we have to explain this somehow. We also have to explain why there is apparently no magic on Earth, if there is magic, then its either not our Earth, or the magic is very hidden and secret, and most people there don't believe in it. Also it has to be determined whether it is present day Earth of future Earth that exists there. Maybe there is a dead magic zone, similar to the ones found in the Forgotten Realms but much larger. Also do Earth's gods exist?

[Orfamay Quest]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

If the gods interfered, it is not evolution.

Yes, it is. The technical definition of evolution is simply the change of allele frequency over time. And "theistic evolution" is well-recognized as a viable philosophical alternative (or even adjunct) to "evolution by natural selection." The only issue that the "theistic" part fails Occam's razor as well.

I'm afraid you just failed high school biology.

Quote:

We also have to explain why there is apparently no magic on Earth,

No, we don't.

Quote:

Also do Earth's gods exist?

"Reply hazy. Ask again later."

[Tom Kalbfus]

thejeff wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Well the Universe is pretty big, something in another Galaxy might as well be in another plane of existence

... which, in turn, suggests that there is no need for other material planes. Occam's razor and all that, yes?

Quote:

Evolution does not run in parallel.

Why not? Bearing in mind that Gods exist, they can interfere with the natural randomness of evolution as much as they like.

Also, unless we're postulating Golarion as an alternate earth, split off in a branching timeline at some point after man evolved, parallel evolution makes no more sense in an alternate prime material plane than in a different place in the same plane.

There may have at one time been gates between worlds where the flora and fauna including humans could have crossed over. If these gates existed for millions of years, and creatures could cross over freely, then it would appear on each planet that humans evolved there, as they could be evolving as they moved from place to place.

[Tom Kalbfus]

GeraintElberion wrote:

If only there were still 9th level spells

Magic items from the time there were Ninth level spells might still exist. A ring of three wishes for instance can duplicate the effects of any spell up to ninth level, there could be spell scrolls still in existence that people can read with a read magic spell, some of those scrolls could contain spells that are higher than 6th level.

[thejeff]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

If the gods interfered, it is not evolution. Evolution occurs without anyone's direction, doesn't mean they didn't get their ideas for creating humans from somewhere. if we put Earth in the same universe as Golarion, we have to explain this somehow. We also have to explain why there is apparently no magic on Earth, if there is magic, then its either not our Earth, or the magic is very hidden and secret, and most people there don't believe in it. Also it has to be determined whether it is present day Earth of future Earth that exists there. Maybe there is a dead magic zone, similar to the ones found in the Forgotten Realms but much larger. Also do Earth's gods exist?

According to info in RoW, current PF Golarion time corresponds to early 1920s Earth (1918 when RoW came out, IIRC). Starfinder would thus be well in our future.

Also, from the same source, magic once existed on Earth and our myths and legends are based on those times, but it has since faded and isn't accessible. The details are not clear.

As for evolution, while directed evolution is certainly possible, it's clear from all sorts of evidence that even without direct obvious magic, natural laws as we know them are more like suggestions on Golarion. The Square Cube Law for example mostly just sits in the corner and sulks as the giants walk by.
And again, another universe does no more to explain parallel evolution of humans and other animals than another planet does.

[Vutava]

Torbyne wrote:

What evidence is that? Just because there are lightsabers does not mean it is in a galaxy far, far, away.

People of the Stars wrote:

Galaxies: These collections of many millions of solar systems are almost unimaginably vast, but so distant that only a few distinct ones are visible from Golarion via telescope. Much like constellations, these galaxies are often named for their shapes or observable qualities, such as the ruby-tinged Dragon Galaxy, the pinchered Crab, the Milk Spiral*, and the two-armed Swirling Eye. Golarion’s own galaxy is observable with the naked eye as a dense band of bright stars slightly offset from the plane of the ecliptic, and bears a wide variety of names among different cultures, including the Sun Road, the Moontail, the Godsea, Desna’s Path, and the Valley of Heaven, to name just a few.

*emphasis mine

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Well the Universe is pretty big, something in another Galaxy might as well be in another plane of existence, there is just one nettle, how did humans get here? they could have been abducted from the Earth during the stone ages since that would not affect its history. Also did the gods create man or did man create the gods? If we got one shared universe, the humans in the Starfiner setting were either transported here somehow or perhaps copied by the gods from those on Earth, two theories. Evolution does not run in parallel.

You know the Androffans (the people who made the Divinity) were human as well, right? They were from a planet in another galaxy.

[Tom Kalbfus]

if they weren't human, why would they make Androids that is robots that look human. Logically if they wanted robots to look like something, they'd make them to look human, therefore they were flesh and blood human, maybe they uploaded into android bodies.

[Matthew Shelton]

The humanoid body plan is an effective one. Two- and four-footed variants are all over the place in the animal kingdom. The six-legged body plan of insects works too, such as with cockroaches and ants, as does the many-legged body plan of centipedes and millipedes. Body plans that don't work so well, don't survive so well.

[Captain collateral damage]

I'm to lazy to read what everyone wrote on this thread, but here's some stuff.
Humans are found on Golarion, Androffa, and Earth. We don't really know why this is, as all three of those planets seem to be pretty far away. We don't really know if the aboleth created humans or just genetically upgraded them to the Azlanti.
One of the other galaxies mentioned in People of the Stars is the "Milk Spiral"... So yeah.
There's a time difference between the current time and the time we play in on Golarion. Rasputin Must Die takes place in 4713 AR, and is 1918 AD on Earth, and Golarion and Earth's orbits are basically the same, (Golarion only has a leap year every 8 years) so the difference is 95 years. What this means is probably just that the author wanted to do an adventure in 1918, but maybe Golarion is 95 light years away?

[Archmage Variel]

Captain collateral damage wrote:

I'm to lazy to read what everyone wrote on this thread, but here's some stuff.

Humans are found on Golarion, Androffa, and Earth. We don't really know why this is, as all three of those planets seem to be pretty far away. We don't really know if the aboleth created humans or just genetically upgraded them to the Azlanti.
One of the other galaxies mentioned in People of the Stars is the "Milk Spiral"... So yeah.
There's a time difference between the current time and the time we play in on Golarion. Rasputin Must Die takes place in 4713 AR, and is 1918 AD on Earth, and Golarion and Earth's orbits are basically the same, (Golarion only has a leap year every 8 years) so the difference is 95 years. What this means is probably just that the author wanted to do an adventure in 1918, but maybe Golarion is 95 light years away?

Humans are also found naturally in golarions solar system. On Aballon can be found humans from other worlds. Humans with red skin can be found on the surface of Akiton. The humanoid species that eventually became the current undead natives of Eox are theorized by some to be the ancestors of today's humans. Humanoid (and possibly the human) species are implied to exist within...

spoiler:

the cambers of Apostae, possibly implying that many of golarions humanoid species which do not have extraplanar origins (unlike gnomes for example) may be from another world entirely.

This would heavily imply that the aboleth did not create humanity, although there is no doubt that they shaped the development of human society on golarion.

[Torbyne]

Interesting stuff coming up in this thread, Starfinder seems like it is going to heavily feature exploring the unknown and being out on your own to make those discoveries but really the galaxy could have been mapped several times over by the start of Starfinder thanks to galaxy spanning explorers from tens of thousands of years past.

... Do you think that when the gods create a new planet they open a pop up menu with pre-generated species to use before they get to a create your own option? I bet those menus have a lot of slider bars to play with too...

[Tom Kalbfus]

I kind of think planets create themselves. Gods may create other things, such as ringworlds, but all a planet needs is gravity and time. Gods might terraform planets they find, they might be the reason humans and other races are found all over the galaxy.

[TheMountain]

I always liked the idea that humans are the descendants of the titans. Could explain why they are so wide spread.

I also like the idea that they could descend from titans who were cursed into having small, mortal forms by the gods, because they choose to stay neutral in the war between the thanatonic and the elysian titans.

[Torbyne]

Something else to consider is that the Humans of Androffa had inter-galactic travel something like 9800 years prior to the current year in Pathfinder which itself is the far distant past of Starfinder... Its probable that the Androffans were not the earliest civilization as they encountered the Dominion of the Black when the Dominion was already a power to be reckoned with so where ever Humans first appeared they could have used any number of magical, divine or technological means of spreading out to the stars before various enclaves lost those means and had to start over. Who knows how many ships like the Divinity have been created before, traveling across the Prime Material Plane and seeding the same plants, animals and sentient species across untold worlds.

[Tom Kalbfus]

Actually I like the idea of Titans descending from humans, because that way at least evolution is making progress. I science fiction there are "Gods" as well, usually they are civilizations and beings who have evolved and advanced technologically to the point where they are indistinguishable from gods. Gods in a science fantasy setting are very similar I think, instead of having a portfolio, such as one being the goddess of Love, and the other being the god of War or Weather, we have scientific laws that take care of these things, instead we have super-powerful beings that wield magic and sometimes fight with each other and control territory. So I put to you this question: What is the difference between a magical god seen in fantasy and a technological god seen in science fiction?

You ever seen the movie "When the Earth Stood Still", the remake?

[Matthew Shelton]

Star Trek had a lot of techno-gods and godlings: The Borg Queen, Trelane, Ardra, the Gamesters of Triskelion, the Edo god, Vaal, Landru, the Guardian, the Yonada Oracle, the Caretaker, and Apollo's race. Then there were beings with godlike power whose source was less clear, probably psionics, or inherently part of the process of evolving into an energy life form: Melkotians, Excalabians, Metrons, the Beta XII-A entity, Nagilum, the Organians, the Sha-Ka-Ree entity, the Thasians, the Prophets, and of course the Q.

[Torbyne]

Kes, Q and a Prophet are the new core deities on a planet in the setting. what kind of society develops?

[Tom Kalbfus]

The kind of "Deities" that evolve from technological advancement are the same as the ones that evolve out of people's belief systems to explain the way the world works to the primitive mind. The ancients didn't have meteorology, seismology or psychology, instead they had gods like Zeus, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite to explain those things.

[Orfamay Quest]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

I kind of think planets create themselves.

Planets can create themselves. That doesn't mean that they do. Similarly, there are lots of ways for a piece of paper to end up on the floor; it might fall there by natural processes (such as being blown off a table by the breeze), but it might also be placed there deliberately by a sentient agency. A glass of water can evaporate naturally, but I can also pick it up and empty it.

This is the same mistake you're making with respect to theistic evolution. Just because something can happen without the intervention of gods doesn't mean that the gods are somehow not allowed to cause it to happen.

In our world, where the existence of gods is at best an open question, it's reasonable to apply Occam's razor to any supposed demonstration of the existence of gods --- if the Earth could have arisen from natural processes, then the Earth's existence doesn't demonstrate the existence of Gods. But in Starfinder, the existence of gods is not an open question; it's a postulated fact, so Occam's razor doesn't apply. Given that gods exist, there's no particular reason to believe that any given object or event is not the result of deific action.

[Tom Kalbfus]

I'd say "unnatural" planets are created by gods, a "space island" asteroid with a planar gravity field, similar to the type usually encountered in the Spelljammer setting, would be the sort of world created by a god. You would need magic t create the gravity and retain the atmosphere around the asteroid. Natural planets simply occur in nature and don't require divine intervention to create. I would assume deities would not expend their resources unnecessarily to create planets which could otherwise just exist in nature. Building a natural planet just requires putting a lot of matter in one spot so it can b held together by gravity. in a Universe where there are plenty of planets occurring naturally, there is no reason for a deity to expend resources in creating them. They could alter existing planets to make them more habitable however. Let me give you an example. Lets suppose there is a magical analog to Our Solar System where magic exists.

Here is a Solar System Map I did for Spelljammer, it can be used for Starfinder if we get rid of the Crystal Sphere surrounding it, and here we have two orbits. Lets assume the Roman Gods exist, and were unhappy about being excluded from the Real Solar System, so they created another Solar System to their liking. The Earth is a carbon copy of the real Earth, it was created by a Greater Titan, otherwise a goddess for all practically considerations, named Terra. The other goddess Venus, didn't like the Pressure Cooker Oven of a planet she inherited, so she placed it in another orbit to give it spin. Mercury, just loving to be near such a beautiful goddess, decided to make his world a Moon, is is otherwise the god of Thieves and Travellers. Luna orbits Terra, she is the Goddess of the hunt, and her version of the Moon has real seas and oceans instead of the lava fields of our Moon. Jupiter has a breathable upper atmosphere, the hydrogen at lower level is held below a certain altitude with magical forc fields s it won't mix with the Oxygen, it is also larger that are Jupiter to make the gravity equal to Earth Normal. Neptune orbits Jupiter, and is an Ocean World and home to the god of the sea. In the outer orbits are the planet Mars, Saturn, home of the father of Jupiter and a Greater Titan himself, on the other part of this orbit is Uranus, Saturn's father the god of the Sky.

[Lord Mhoram]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

I would assume deities would not expend their resources unnecessarily to create planets which could otherwise just exist in nature.

Why build a table when you can buy one. Why write a game supplement when you can buy them. Why paint a room yourself when you can hire painters.

Lots of reasons a deity could want to build a world from scratch. Maybe the deity is OCD and has to have everything "just so"

[Tom Kalbfus]

I just don't think it would be a planet. Planets give very little surface area to live on considering the amount of material you need to build one, most of that material just goes to create the gravity needed to hold onto an atmosphere. It is much easier to spin a vessel for gravity.

[Matthew Shelton]

What you're talking about is basically a demiplane built using a "mod" of the standard rules of the universe, but the artificial world or star system is still on the same plane geographically as the rest of the setting.

For a pathfinder-in-space setting I've been worldbuilding for some time, what we call the Prime Material plane has been destroyed (along with most of the outer planes). There are bits and pieces of the Prime Material which were rescued by immortals and brought over to the Astral Plane as pocket demiplanes which have almost fully merged with the Astral Plane itself. These 'island universes' run the gamut from a single star system to an entire cluster of galaxies.

Because each material demiplane directly infringes upon the space of the Astral Plane, each demiplane's border area has become 'encrusted' with spontaneously-created raw elemental energy which has coalesced into vast mountain ranges and planes of pure gemstones, lakes of water, and screaming hurricanes of air, and volcanoes of scorching fire. There is no gravity here in these 'outer limits' of each realm, only pure elemental energy.

[Tom Kalbfus]

I am just explaining that a planet is a ball of matter held together by gravity, I am not talking about extra dimensions or parallel universes, simply a world within a universe. I don't think human beings would build a planet even if they could, one issue is that if you formed a planet it would take tens of thousands of years for its surface to cool down enough to live on it, much as the Earth did when it was formed. if humans wouldn't build such a thing, why would gods? Gods are intelligent beings, so you got to question why they would go to the trouble of building something at great expense, that already exists in multiple places in the universe. You ever hear of a bishop ring? How about a Bank's orbital or a full fledged ringworld? These would be truly the works of gods. A Banks orbital takes as much material as a planet but it has the same surface area as up to 500 planets out of the material of just one. A ringworld has the mass of Jupiter but the surface area of 3 million Earths, and it doesn't have the cooling problems of forming a ball of matter in space. Gods would make something that nature couldn't, or simply alter a planet that nature provided, but they wouldn't try and build a solid ball planet, and then wait ten thousand years for it to cool when they could build an artificial world with the same surface area much more quickly.

[Lord Mhoram]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

I am just explaining that a planet is a ball of matter held together by gravity, I am not talking about extra dimensions or parallel universes, simply a world within a universe. I don't think human beings would build a planet even if they could, one issue is that if you formed a planet it would take tens of thousands of years for its surface to cool down enough to live on it, much as the Earth did when it was formed. if humans wouldn't build such a thing, why would gods?

Thing is, Gods don't even have a stat block. Maybe creating a planet is as simple as taking an hour to concentrate on it. Maybe a god really liked a planet that got destroyed, and recreated it. Maybe he wanted to test his skills to see if the planet could be the same as a natural one. Maybe it's a trickster god who created a planet in the same orbit halfway around the sun - just to mess with people.

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

and then wait ten thousand years for it to cool when they could build an artificial world with the same surface area much more quickly.

Physics means the world takes so long to cool, but in a world with magic and gods - it could be ready to inhabit the minute that the god in question felt like it, minutes after it was created. They are gods and magic exists, no reason that couldn't adjust physics. This is a science fantasy setting after all, not science fiction.

Yeah, ringworlds and dysonspheres are more epic, but there isn't any reason a god couldn't (or wouldn't) create a planet.

[Orfamay Quest]

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

if you formed a planet it would take tens of thousands of years for its surface to cool down enough to live on it, much as the Earth did when it was formed.

If you formed a planet, yes. That's because you're bound by physical laws like the conservation of mass-energy. Of course, in {Path,Star}Finder, even an ordinary mortal spellcaster is not bound by physical laws.

And gods? They are, by design, bound by nothing but plot. So if a god formed a planet, it would take exactly as long to become habitable as the plot required -- no more, no less.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

GeraintElberion wrote:

Earth is part of the Golarion universe.

That's established beyond any doubt in Reign of Winter.

Will Starfinder players be able to visit Future Earth?

That just establishes Earth as part of an AP, not part of the core continuity.