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[Soadreqm]

Maybe the reason that there are no remnants of technologically advanced civilizations on the ring is that they were salvaged for raw materials ages ago? That'd make for an interesting economy. Metals are not mined, but salvaged. You'd probably get a lot more geographic variation on metal value when you can't just dig the stuff from ground. Some places have streets paved with gold and cans made of aluminum, while others consider metal knives holy relics. Of course, that way you will have absolutely no mineral coal or oil, but those aren't really that necessary in a pre-industrial society. Let them burn wood.

Oh, and dwarves obviously can't be the stereotypical mountain-dwelling miners. Maybe something like traveling traders, if you want to retain their role as the source of valuable things.

Or maybe there are ancient ruins on the ring, but their technology is both indistinguishable from magic and worthless without a power source that no longer exists. Large, seemingly pointless structures, made of interesting materials. Carved stone monoliths in geometric patterns, with nothing telling of their original function. And you get metals by chipping these apart.

[C4lv1n]

2 things! Yay!

1. In the books the ringworld had an anti-meteor thingy that would destroy or move them before they got to close, I think I'll keep that. Some parts won't be covered, which leads into the second part.

2. I think that I like the meteor mining thing. The parts that arn't protected will likely be hard to live in, that is, unless you live underground! The dwarves will inhabit the areas that are frequently hit by meteors, and the meteors will do a couple things:

  i. Thoudands? (dunno how long the history will be) of years of meteors hitting the unprotected locations will have built up the land, and bowed out the ring material, forming mountains and giving enough space to the dwarves to dig down.

  ii. The meteors will have had ores, minerals, etc in them, so the areas the dwarves inhabit will be VERY rich in everything needed in metal production. They will be the only source of new materials in the world. Non-dwarven peoples will recycle everything they can, and will mostly be farmers (cattle, dairly, plants, etc). Both sides will trade quite a bit, as the dwarves can't really grow anything, and everyone else will need materials even with plenty of recycling. I'll probably throw in some racial tension for good measure.

  iii. Probably something that I've forgotten...

[PTTG??]

I did some math with this a while back. I assumed that the ring rotated for both gravity and day/night cycles- it rotates once per day, and faces the sun at an angle. There's even seasons and the ring changes it's exact facing over the year.

The thing is, in order to have 1G at the surface, and rotate once a day, it's diameter needs to be marginally larger than that of earth's sun.

This solves your dwarf problem. Why? Well, since we're already working with super-materials, we can say that the structural layer has infinite strength or close to it and is a band a kilometer thick, and uniform. Due to the immense size, it's safe to add, oh, let's say two thousand kilometers on top of that; one thousand that's generally air and upper atmosphere, and one thousand for whatever the ring's equivalent of tectonic crust is. From a large scale, there won't be any serious difference between a hundred-kilometer thick scrith substrate and a 2001-km thick band when the ring itself is 18 million km in radius.

Then park that puppy in the green zone orbit, slap on some weird magnetic effects- since our super-material is already generating magma-producing temperatures and holding up eight planets worth of mass, we can assume it's shielding the surface from harsh EM, too- and there you go. Oh, and since Earth's radius is a mere 6,000 km, circumference about 20k km, the ring's 113 million km circumference should make an epic journey to the other side of the world rather more epic.

One thing I've always imagined catching on in such a world are signal semaphores- bright lights, shining across the void in the center, to relay messages back and forth. Wizards and sages in such a world would be able to rather easily estimate the diameter, and from that, the speed of light.

-----

Or, if you're going for a more magic-oriented ringworld, do this:
"A wizard made the ring out of the Livinge Rocke, which even the dwarvse cannote dige throughe; bute to reache it, thee dwarvse woulde havee to dige throughe countlesse leaugese of mundane stone and the riche or'es of the deepe edge' o' thee ringe."

[Sensei]

I prefer the version where the dwarves dangerously chip away at the critical structure of the ring.

[Cthulhu]

Maybe as an epic level quest the dwarves delve too greedily and too deep, and penetrate the bottom, causing a chain reaction where that whole part of the ring is crumbling.  The players have to find a way to restore it before it splits entirely and the ring uncoils and everyone dies.

Or maybe they hit the crazy quantum fuel cell that powers the laser batteries (or whatever) protecting it from asteroids and break something in it, and meteors start hitting.

[C4lv1n]

I did some math with this a while back. I assumed that the ring rotated for both gravity and day/night cycles- it rotates once per day, and faces the sun at an angle. There's even seasons and the ring changes it's exact facing over the year.

The thing is, in order to have 1G at the surface, and rotate once a day, it's diameter needs to be marginally larger than that of earth's sun.

This solves your dwarf problem. Why? Well, since we're already working with super-materials, we can say that the structural layer has infinite strength or close to it and is a band a kilometer thick, and uniform. Due to the immense size, it's safe to add, oh, let's say two thousand kilometers on top of that; one thousand that's generally air and upper atmosphere, and one thousand for whatever the ring's equivalent of tectonic crust is. From a large scale, there won't be any serious difference between a hundred-kilometer thick scrith substrate and a 2001-km thick band when the ring itself is 18 million km in radius.

Then park that puppy in the green zone orbit, slap on some weird magnetic effects- since our super-material is already generating magma-producing temperatures and holding up eight planets worth of mass, we can assume it's shielding the surface from harsh EM, too- and there you go. Oh, and since Earth's radius is a mere 6,000 km, circumference about 20k km, the ring's 113 million km circumference should make an epic journey to the other side of the world rather more epic.

One thing I've always imagined catching on in such a world are signal semaphores- bright lights, shining across the void in the center, to relay messages back and forth. Wizards and sages in such a world would be able to rather easily estimate the diameter, and from that, the speed of light.

-----

Or, if you're going for a more magic-oriented ringworld, do this:
"A wizard made the ring out of the Livinge Rocke, which even the dwarvse cannote dige throughe; bute to reache it, thee dwarvse woulde havee to dige throughe countlesse leaugese of mundane stone and the riche or'es of the deepe edge' o' thee ringe."

There are a few things there that you kinda are not right about (assuming you're using the specs from the book, which I am).

The ring does rotate for gravity and day/night, but it only rotates about 1/12 or 1/24 of it's full rotation to change between day and night. The material (scrith is what Niven called it) is invincable, but it's only 6 meters thick (Or about close), and it's not uniform, it deforms to stay close to the topography. (Oceans, mountains) Also it's holding up way more than 6 or so earths, more like several million, and it's radius is 1 AU.

Sorry to correct you, but I don't want to confuse anyone, though the comunications across may be interesting.

[PTTG??]

I wasn't going off the Ringworld specs- still need  to read the book, in fact. I was using my own numbers. If you're going for Ringworld proportions, why not make the edge o the ring 6000 km thick with rock and really give the dwarves something to do? It would still be basically a thin ring, and it could have it's own tectonics systems, so erosion isn't a problem.