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Old 02-19-2019, 07:59 PM   #941
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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A ship has appeared in port from planet X with all it's crew dead from an undiscovered disease. The PCs are members of the local equiv of the Coast Guard or the CDC or such like. Some superior who no doubt has the highest affection for you has decided that you have to get samples.
Quality idea, it could be dropped into so many futures with few changes. That's elegant.
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Old 02-19-2019, 08:08 PM   #942
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Quality idea, it could be dropped into so many futures with few changes. That's elegant.
Thank you...

Actually I got it from Nortons Plague Ship.
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Old 02-20-2019, 03:56 PM   #943
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The Library Acquistion Squad!!!

This idea rifts off of the Aeon setting. Basically, groups of Psions fighting off aliens and insane supers. However, in this Campaign, the PCs are sane supers.

Basically, there were superheroes from 1938 to 2057 when a supervillain finally won and drove most of the Earth's superheroes violently insane with his Madness Field. The small numbers of sane Superheroes allied with certain mages and the saner supervillains barely managed to rescue the Earth, barely.

Now, two centuries after the "Days of Madness" Earth, ruled by the Hegemony of Order, strives to survive the attacks of the insane supers and their warped offspring. It is an automatic death penalty for a non-psion super to visit Earth. Supers are largely barred from the solar system by warrior psions organized in brutally effective armies.

However, not all descendants of the superheroes are mad. Some were always immune to the Madness Field and their children overwhelmingly inherited the trait. Many sane supers either died in the struggle or died alone in exile or prison. Some supers met a different fate, they built colonies in deep space. Some of these have thrived.

The PCs are from a World called New Avalon. This lovely largely Earthlike world is thriving. It was founded by a group of US and Canadian supers who brought large groups of people from post-apocalyptic Earth. The planet now has a population of 120 million people living at TL8+2^ (Earth itself is TL10^, the technologies have diverged and recombining them would lead to rapid advances). Compared to Earth which suffers under an expensive military dictatorship, the people of New Avalon are Comfortable were most Earth people are Struggling. New Avalon is a socialist representative democracy, the head of government is the Premier who leads a proportionally elected unicameral legislature, the head of state, a largely honorary post, is the President.

Although the people of New Avalon are prosperous, they feel the lack of certain things. Relatively few books, films, CDs or works of art were brought along with the original colonists, they were refugees fleeing disaster after all. It's not like Earth would sell them these things. If Earth knew where they where they'd try to exterminate them. So they have to get sneaky.

The PCs are in the Library Acquisition Squad, a group of tough sneaky superhuman Geeks and Nerds out to buy books and other cultural items. But remember noble geeks and nerds, the Psi Legions are hunting for you. Oh, pick me up some LeGuin and some Bradbury, please.
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Old 02-21-2019, 04:38 PM   #944
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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The Library Acquistion Squad!!!
Note: In the flight from Earth in 2057 one of the more powerful supers grabbed the Library (I mean the collection) of a small Midwestern university. The school was closed and going into receivership because of financial shenanigans which had nothing to do with the general crisis.

In other words, they have literature, history, and other liberal arts materials to whet appetites.
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Old 02-23-2019, 03:26 PM   #945
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Watching this on YouTube inspired me.

As the brain healing gel became better accepted pediatricians started using it on young children who had experienced head traumas. Follow ups on such children showed heightened intelligence, dramatically heightened intelligence. Other indicators of radically improved brain function like improved coordination and social skills were also noted. Once solid data was in, by 2023 Doctors were injecting the gel into the brains of any child with any kind of neurological issues. China began injecting healthy children soon after birth to see if they could radically improve the functions of normal brains.

Once the Chinese news got out things got crazy, by 2025 all children in the developed countries were injected with brain gel soon after birth. By 2043 the downside slowly began to show up. Children injected in infancy with brain gel develop powerful psionic abilities but with no skill or control. The effects are trivial until just before fully brain maturity when the psi powers switch on fully and don't shut off.

Stray thought is no longer a metaphor, vast numbers of young people are forming a group mind with little or no control. The fears, anxieties, and desires are being manifested as living beings and conscious forces.

The PCs are a group of kids who were taking a mental conditioning course designed to give one fuller control over their own mind. They've developed low levels of Mind Shield and some ability to prevent or end psionic fugues which can cause death and destruction.

Basically, the PCs are supersmart scoobies with no Buffy or Giles up against hoards of big-bads.
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Old 02-24-2019, 02:26 PM   #946
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A Reality Quake in 2020 shakes up the world. The event seems to be an echo of an event like the Torg Reality Wars elsewhere in the multiverse. There are three main effects.

1) North America east of the Mississippi from South Florida to the Canadian Shield, New Zealand, and Africa below 10 degrees south, all experienced a "Tech Surge" from TL8 to a mature TL10.

2) In the British Isles, especially Ireland and Wales, Southern Italy, Sicily, and Greece, Sri Lanka, and Java and Bali, suddenly large numbers of people know Magic and Alchemy. Schools of Occult arts suddenly are real and functional. The world is now normal manna and Magery can be learned.

3)Around the world large numbers of humans...change. Over 100 million people mainly of either Celtic, Nordic, Baltic, Finnish, or Czech, heritage, transform into rather Tolkienesque elves. In both South Asia and East Asia, similar events transform similar numbers of people in those areas into equivalent beings from local myths. Even in Iran, more than three million people are turned into Peris. Many Iranian men are profoundly embarrassed to be MALE peris, in defiance of stereotypes to the contrary.

The year is now 2050 a generation since the transformation. The world is now on the edge of TL11^. There are settlements on Luna, Mars, and the major asteroids. Starships with FTL drives are preparing to visit several nearby star systems. Magic is a highly fashionable profession (the New Agers are out in Force). The new demihumans are both admired and feared and a few thousand children every year all around the world transform into demihumans of all kinds.

All of these transformations haven't reduced tensions. Although Carbon emissions have been radically reduced, climate change is still happening. Much less drastically because of the radical reduction of Carbon emissions but it is still causing brutal damage. Both sorcery and demihumans offend conservative religious groups.

Still, this is a prosperous exciting world full of hope.
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Old 02-26-2019, 02:16 PM   #947
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In this world, global temperatures raised by an average of 4 degrees Celius by 2100 and sea level, because of the collapse of Western Antartica, has jumped 20 feet. There is chaos.

Meanwhile, in spite of disasters elsewhere, the USA experienced a democratic renewal, abet one constantly under threat from both the right and the left. The USA's positive transformation is largely ignored because of fairly tight restrictions on immigration. Given the vast floods of refugees in this world, many nations are furious with any nation that won't take refugees although most nations are deeply hypocritical on the point.

Fusion is standard and the USA is leading the way on Vertical Farming and other means of producing vast amounts of food without large carbon footprints. This deeply offends people dedicated to traditional agriculture. Although global warming is rapidly destroying that anyway.

This is a TL9 society. WMDs are cheap to build, but the infrastructure and resources are expensive. This is also a violent society. China and Russia are at war over Siberia. There are wars throughout Africa and Asia over water rights. Radically advanced robotics has made a generation of workers obsolete.

The international markets are largely dead. Biowarfare attacks including the reintroduction of smallpox have closed borders and collapsed trade worldwide. This has caused vast famines because food shipments can't get to large numbers of nations. Between climate change ruining cropland and genetically engineered blights, large areas of the world can't grow food. Many bioterrorists are known to have starved either their nations or themselves (often both) to death in attempting to cripple the West.

The PCs are American agents whose job is to track down bioterrorists before they can strike. This is hard nasty work. Large areas of the Earth are no longer part of the global trade and banking networks. Xenophobia is running rampant. For not looking or sounding like the locals the PCs can face summary execution in much of the world. Because the USA has built and maintained Space habitats, Lunar, and Martian settlements, and bases in the asteroids, bitter conspiracy theories fly around the US space programme resembling many older conspiracy theories. Americans are often presumed to be slave traders even by human traffickers of the most brutal types.
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Old 02-28-2019, 02:34 PM   #948
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Bussiness as Usual During Alterations

I've done variants of this idea before, but this is an interesting twist. The basic idea is that a large influential nation (when I do it a pick the USA) disappears from the Earth and reappears on a distant planet. In this variant, the disappearance is taking place slowly over thirty years. Everyone on Earth is aware that the disappearance is happening and a certain number of other countries will have the option of going with the USA ( this knowledge is granted by paranormal means, basically everybody just knows). Once the USA and any nation that goes with them is gone their landmass will disappear and be replaced with shallow (450 to 800 ft) banks with rich fishing.

The main strangeness for the PCs would be the shifting power relationships and status. If it was known tomorrow that the USA was going to slowly fade from planet Earth and reappear on a very mineral rich garden world, A) chaos would rule in the financial markets, B) there would be chaos in foreign affairs worldwide, and C) large numbers of people would be determined to either go with the USA or get their nation or ethnic group chosen to be taken along.

If we assume the process starts in the year 2020, Russia and China would be playing for world dominance. China, because they have the strongest hand, would play a long slow game. Russia would look for advantage to shrike. Iran would be in a complex mess. Sure Saudi Arabia would be weakened and the need to be submissive to Russia would fade, which would mean greatly increased regional power. But, without the USA to balance Russia, Iran would have to fear Russia's traditional desire to rule Iran and absorb Iran into the Russian state.

Further messing up of international relationships would come from various nations lobbying to go with the USA. If a nation might disappear in your region it will alter power relationships both between and within nations. Example: If the Kurds disappear, leaving a large bay connecting Syria, Iraq, and Iran to the Black Sea, then the whole Middle East's power relationships change. Starting with the Sunni/Shia power balance.

MORE LATER...
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Old 02-28-2019, 07:04 PM   #949
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

You'd see lots of people moving i'd expect. If you are rich and powerful going to a new empty planet would almost certainly be a step down. So lots of major companies and their owners relocating out of the US. Either moving actual factories as companies or just moving assets as individuals.
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Old 02-28-2019, 08:12 PM   #950
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You'd see lots of people moving i'd expect. If you are rich and powerful going to a new empty planet would almost certainly be a step down. So lots of major companies and their owners relocating out of the US. Either moving actual factories as companies or just moving assets as individuals.
True, and others would move to the USA for the same reason, they seek better opportunities.
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