New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Aliens came long ago. They said that humanity was like a pot-bound plant, we needed to be moved to someplace roomier. Someplace where we could spread out. The old ones said the horizon on our old world went down. A ship sailing away from you sank below the horizon. How strange the old world was.

In this setting, humanity was removed from the Earth several centuries ago. For a long time, people had trouble keeping track of time. It can be difficult to judge the time on a Ringworld. So the date humanity was first taken, June 3, 1914, was the last date everyone agreed on.

Humanity is very spread out. The English were placed on an island 15,000 miles away from the Irish. Not that the Irish had any complaints. Some cultural groups are so far away they haven't been recontacted.

Lack of resources slowed down technological development. Many places regressed to TL4 or further. The United States, or the republic based on the old USA, is a solid TL4+3. The PCs are explorers seeking lost nations like China, India, Tibet, or Australia. The explorers are using a TL4+3 Clipper Ship to sail oceans far vaster than Earth's to rediscover the wonders of humanity.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...

This is only part of a setting, but a good place to set adventures. I think that most successful sci-fi and/or fantasy TV shows then to be built around either a place or group that goes everywhere (Star Trek's Enterprise, Doctor Who's Tardis) or a place that everyone comes to (The Babylon5 station in Babylon5, Sunnydale in BtVS). What this setting is built around is the latter. The setting is the orbital end of Earth's Beanstalk.

By its nature, the setting is the point of contact between Earth and the Solar System. I see this as being in a setting like THS or something similar. Earth is the center of the Human Universe. If interstellar travel exists, extrasolar worlds are frontiers or exotic and alien in the same way China was in Marco Polo's day.

in some ways, this setting would be like 19th century Hong Kong, Jakarta, or Singapore, or 18th Century Nagasaki, the gate into an exotic and ancient world. Like 19th century New Orleans, St. Louis, or Melbourne, the gate to the frontier. It depends on which direction the PC is traveling. If you think of Robert Louis Stevenson idea of London as "Baghdad on the Thames!" then you've got an idea of what to go for.

Pcs could also play staff or residents of the station. Dealing with all the opportunities and problems such a gateway local would bring.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...

On the planet Tethys human settlers were involuntary. They were mutants or mutant sympathizers judged to be disruptive to society's attempts to rebuild after the wars. However, once it looked likely that there was going to be another series of wars (and that the emergency government was never going away anyway) people volunteered to go to the space colonies. Mutants that had long been hidden went to the rocket bases to emigrate to the stars.

Tethys received less help from the Earth than the other colonies, On the other claw, they were far less Supervised as well.

This is basically a Golden Age Sci Fi setting. There has been a nuclear war, the mutants were treated as a moral and spiritual pollution, as were those who defended the civil liberties of the mutants. So far so typical for a large number of Sci Fi narratives circa 1950-1960. The twist is that the mutants and their sympathizers have been sent to a space colony.

Assume that the general setting is Tech Level 7+2^. This is meant to represent the kind of tech they talk about in period Sci-Fi.

Another setting assumption is that Tethys is suitable for human habitation in the same way as the majority of "Class M" planets in an old Star Trek: OS episode. You can eat the exotic fruit and if there were alien Space Babes around they could mate with humans and have healthy babies.

The war scare was justified. Earth is now dead. Earth's colonies are surviving, in a few generations, they might thrive. Tethys is the poorest and least populated of the colonies, but they aren't destitute.

There have been no new colonists from Earth to Tethys for three generations. Given that Tethys has lower background radiation than Earth, no new genetic damage is being done to the colonists. The normal course of events has been weeding out the more severe mutations. At least bigotry and violence aren't major sources of death.

Psionics are a major part of the setting. PCs can take one of the 25-point packages from GURPS Psis with no Unusual Background. GMs should limit how many points PCs place in Psi powers.

This is setting is a Sci-Fi Western set after a nuclear war. Like the 19th century American West this is a poorer more isolated version of the society these people left behind. There are a few university towns which have a full range of available technologies and services. But poverty and isolation created by underdeveloped transport systems mean the majority of the colonists live at lower Tech Levels.

Although as written, this setting had no aliens native to Tethys, having humanoid aliens of the Star Trek type, i.e. humans that look odd, would fit the genre conventions.

[Astromancer]

The world is dying. A botched scientific project (dealer's choice) that ignored all safety advice and warnings is going to render the Earth uninhabitable. There is a highly developed extraplanetary infrastructure including Lunar cities, Mars settlements, Space habitats from the orbit of Mercury to the orbit of Neptune, and interstellar colonies and FTL drives. Problem: the means of getting off the Earth aren't up to the task of evacuating the Earth. Mind you, if you could get everyone off there would only places/resources for a few millions if you could distribute the people perfectly. Before the ecological/environmental collapse caused by the botched project makes the world uninhabitable without sealed environments with the ability to produce their own oxygen.

This is a survival game, survival horror really. Zombies are replaced with desperate hoards of terrified people fighting for survival (nastier and more deadly than zombies any day of the week). Less than one Earth person in a thousand will be alive in this setting in two years. Will your PCs be among them?

Alternate goal, you and your group/allies have built a shelter that is sealed from the environment and can produce oxygen and food as well as other basic needs. Problem, keep your safe base secret and secure while getting the last few necessities from a city filled with desperate doomed people.

[Astromancer]

{The Farfarers}

The planet Apedemak is a fairly dry world. Only about 53% oceans and the continents arranged in such a way as to have large areas of desert relative to total surface area. There are fertile areas and enough plantlife worldwide to maintain enough oxygen in the atmosphere for Earth lifeforms.

During the period when Earth decided that shipping the poor to colonies out in the galaxy was THE ANSWER! to both poverty and social injustice, the planet Apedemak was picked to be the dump {err} reservation planet for the unassimilated tribal peoples of Northeast Africa and nearby areas of Southwest Asia. Many others from the area, mainly the poor and those who wanted to turn back the clock, emigrated to this world as well. most of the local communities resemble the Arab lands in the Middle Ages, only poorer.

There is a large scout base on the planet. A major city has grown up around the base which is at the mouth of one of the larger rivers.

Certain aliens, likewise desert dwelling people who wish to "get back to basics" have also settled on this world.

Some groups of equatorial islands have a wet tropical climate. These islands grow spices and incense from many different worlds.

This setting is basically a cross between the Arabian Nights, Casablanca and similar melodramas, Northwest Smith, and Flash Gordon. If your setting has Psi or Magic, sprinkle in some Dune. Useful as a campaign setting on a change of pace one-off.

[AlexanderHowl]

In the distance future, human civilization has carved itself out a niche by being willing and able to exploit the resources of the plentiful rogue objects that drift between the stars in the Orion Arm. While other species squabble over the limited resources available to each star system, there are an average of 100,000 rogue planets per star in interstellar space, though they are primarily rogue dwarf planets orbited by debris clouds (effectively asteroid belts rather than planets). Even so, human civilization has settled billions of rogue planets throughout the Orion Arm and, while they individually only support an average population of few billion, human civilization is the largest and wealthiest in the Orion Arm.

While each rogue planet is an independent polity, they are members of the Human Alliance, which represents human civilization. Few other alien species understand the sheer size and wealth of human civilization, and the Human Alliance would like to maintain that ignorance. The Human Alliance also maintains thousands of terraformed biological preserves orbiting stars that it uses to renew the genetic material of the human polities.

Recently, the Human Alliance has noticed several hundred human polities disappearing every year. While they were small polities, no more than a few million resident each, no evidence remains to point to the fate of the polities, just space colonies hollowed out by something. The public is starting to notice something odd though, and immigration from smaller polities to large polities has reached an all time high as humans seek safety in numbers.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The world is dying. A botched scientific project (dealer's choice) that ignored all safety advice and warnings is going to render the Earth uninhabitable. There is a highly developed extraplanetary infrastructure including Lunar cities, Mars settlements, Space habitats from the orbit of Mercury to the orbit of Neptune, and interstellar colonies and FTL drives. Problem: the means of getting off the Earth aren't up to the task of evacuating the Earth. Mind you, if you could get everyone off there would only places/resources for a few millions if you could distribute the people perfectly. Before the ecological/environmental collapse caused by the botched project makes the world uninhabitable without sealed environments with the ability to produce their own oxygen.

Depending on how many nukes they have left, and how many they can build, one way to get a lot of people (and other lifeforms) off the Earth is through 'Old Boom-Boom' - that is to say, the Orion drive, an open, pulsed nuclear propulsion system. In this scenario, the environmental impact of using nuclear bombs to produce thrust is irrelevant.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Depending on how many nukes they have left, and how many they can build, one way to get a lot of people (and other lifeforms) off the Earth is through 'Old Boom-Boom' - that is to say, the Orion drive, an open, pulsed nuclear propulsion system. In this scenario, the environmental impact of using nuclear bombs to produce thrust is irrelevant.

Maybe there are a few bombs left. But if you ever read When Worlds Collide or saw the film, building a spaceship is easier than keeping it if you're found out. Floods of desperate people want your ride.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Escaping a nuclear war, small bands of human survivors have used time travel to build a base in the Pleistocene epoch, when Vega was the North Star. On an island that is only above water because of the lowered sea levels. Of course, the people who built the base named it Atlantis.

The base was built first as a scientific research base but as the nuclear loomed and seemed inescapable it was changed into an escape plan. About half the population at the time of the war was from the USA and fits the normal demographics of people who've been to college in the USA. The other half of the population was drawn from close allies of the USA or foreign experts and scholars who were rushed to the time machine before fallout poisoned the Earth.

In the decades since the war, the base has grown to a few hundred thousand people. The Tech Level is on the border between eight and nine. Although economic restraints make life less comfortable than that would suggest.

The goal of the base is to build a FTL drive and take the remnants of Humanity out of the solar system. The theory of the Time Machine implied for a FTL drive and anti-gravity. It is really just a matter of engineering and building an industrial infrastructure and the drives.

The problem is that there is a growing group that feels that instead of fleeing to the stars, they should rewrite history. This group is small and divided, but vocal and passionate. Humanity beyond the island is vulnerable, history is fragile. Can your PCs preserve the past, or are you determined to shatter it?

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The problem is that there is a growing group that feels that instead of fleeing to the stars, they should rewrite history.

Well, the viability of that probably depends on how likely that would cause a time paradox.