New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

This was the first one I could find.

I bumped New Reality Seeds to the top for you.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I bumped New Reality Seeds to the top for you.

Thanks! [add extra characters here]

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

The 2030s looked like the world had hope. Several different nations cracked commercial fusion in the late 2020s. The US made major breakthroughs in robotics and Vertical Farming (which, because it uses 90% less water than outdoor agriculture. was needed to deal with drought). It looked as if the world had turned a corner, then the zombies showed up.

It was assumed to be something the Russians cooked up since the first reports came out of Yekaterinburg. It was assumed to be some kind of Russian military project gone wrong.

Eurasia got hit first and hardest, Tibet seems to be the only remaining nation on mainland Asia. Mainland Europe is as dead. Britain had multiple outbreaks and collapsed after a few years. Ireland and a few other nations remain.

Someone brought zombies to Argentina in 2043 and they got loose. By 2050 South America was dead. Until 2055 the US and its remaining allies maintained barriers in southern Panama. Then in 2054 gangs of drug-runners brought the zombie infection back to Nicaragua after failed attempts to recover money weapons from a mob warehouse in Columbia.

The USA and Canada, having had decades to plan their defenses, still survive in 2090. People live in fortified cities. There is limited transport between the cities, but only essential goods and personnel travel between cities.

The non-zombie population of the USA and Canada combined is about seventy million. Although Cuba, Trinidad, and Haiti/Dominican Republic all fell to Zombies, most of the rest of the Caribbean is clear of Zombies. And they are teamed up with the US Navy to keep it that way at all costs.

The world Zombie population is still high, although about 2% of zombies rot away in any given year, the remaining zombies seem to become more dangerous over time.

Some adventure ideas.

1) Although the first reports on Zombie attacks came from Yekaterinburg, which is about at the southern end of the Urals, no one knows the real origins of the Zombie plague. But learning the truth has to start at Yekaterinburg.

Just getting so far into Eurasia with the transport network collapsed is an epic adventure without Zombie hoards. But once the PCs get to Yekaterinburg the problems of working a cold case by field archeology in a wilderness full of zombies should challenge anyone.

2) In many places, Java, Ireland, Australia, Puerto Rico, for example, beach patrols constantly hunt for bodies washed up on the shore. Some of these are simply corpses, others are zombies that could start a local plague.

PCs would combine the features of a swat team, paramedics, and a rescue squad.

3) In North America and Cuba, squads of Zombie hunters are trying to clear zombies out of areas and keep those areas clear. Islands seem to be the easiest to clear and keep clear. Deserts and similar barriers do slow down zombies, but deep water seems to render zombies helpless with confusion. Although zombies don't seem to drown many "die" after prolonged periods in deep water.

Experienced zombies, most of them these days, develop Stealth and a sort of low cunning. However, almost all zombies have the Bestial disadvantage. The few who don't can be especially deadly.

More later,

[dcarson]

Clearing zombies out a island in Mediterranean as a staging base for getting needed materials from Europe might be a useful campaign.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Clearing zombies out a island in Mediterranean as a staging base for getting needed materials from Europe might be a useful campaign.

Your thoughts are solid. Malta, in the setting as I wrote it is clear, but any Mediterranean island with Zombies is worth clearing.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

The 2030s looked like the world had hope. Several different nations cracked commercial fusion in the late 2020s. The US made major breakthroughs in robotics and Vertical Farming (which, because it uses 90% less water than outdoor agriculture. was needed to deal with drought). It looked as if the world had turned a corner, then the zombies showed up.

It was assumed to be something the Russians cooked up since the first reports came out of Yekaterinburg. It was assumed to be some kind of Russian military project gone wrong.

Eurasia got hit first and hardest, Tibet seems to be the only remaining nation on mainland Asia. Mainland Europe is as dead. Britain had multiple outbreaks and collapsed after a few years. Ireland and a few other nations remain.

Someone brought zombies to Argentina in 2043 and they got loose. By 2050 South America was dead. Until 2055 the US and its remaining allies maintained barriers in southern Panama. Then in 2054 gangs of drug-runners brought the zombie infection back to Nicaragua after failed attempts to recover money weapons from a mob warehouse in Columbia.

The USA and Canada, having had decades to plan their defenses, still survive in 2090. People live in fortified cities. There is limited transport between the cities, but only essential goods and personnel travel between cities.

The non-zombie population of the USA and Canada combined is about seventy million. Although Cuba, Trinidad, and Haiti/Dominican Republic all fell to Zombies, most of the rest of the Caribbean is clear of Zombies. And they are teamed up with the US Navy to keep it that way at all costs.

The world Zombie population is still high, although about 2% of zombies rot away in any given year, the remaining zombies seem to become more dangerous over time.

The Zombies in this world are fairly hard to kill or wound. Kinetic force can kill them, but as they have No Vitals it takes enough bullets to cut a zombie in half to kill it. Explosions that rip a zombie to shreds also work. Fire and acid also destroy zombies. Poisons rarely cause them trouble, the exception seems to be those venoms that are meant to predigest the victim. So something like Sarin that is deadly enough that a droplet can kill a human does a zombie no harm. But Rattlesnake venom is a serious threat. Research has discovered that the venom of Brown Recluse Spider Venom seems to be fatal to most zombies. Basically, it starts them decaying.

Zombies seem to be killed by some sort of psychological means. But the mechanism is uncertain. Zombies can't drown but being submerged for long times in deep water seems to kill some Zombies. It's known that deepwater seems to totally disorient zombies and that seems to be the best explanation of how it kills them as experience shows that weak-willed zombies (or those assumed to be weak-willed) die fairly quickly in deepwater and the zombies that seem to be strong-willed are those most likely to survive prolonged submersion in deepwater. Similarly, threats like freezing or entombment kill weak-willed zombies far more easily than strong-willed zombies.

One possible mechanism might be to add or subtract Hit Points from Zombies according to whether they have a weak or strong will. Perhaps a Zombie's hit points equal twice their HT either minus one point for every point of will under ten or plus the square of the number by which the zombie's Will exceeds ten. Thus a HT 16 zombie with a will of 8 would have thirty hit points. While a HT 9 zombie with a will of 15 would have forty-three hit points.

In technologically advanced nations, and those receiving aid from such, drones are routinely used to hunt zombies, and bb-guns on the drones shoot pellets with Brown Recluse Spider venom on them are shot into zombies. (The venom is grown in vats of genetically tailored yeast).

This pattern to defence has led to the remaining zombies being good at stealth and staying undercover.

More later.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

In 2090 a group of biochemical researchers announces they have created "Homo Superior." The outrage was vast but basically lost in the general crisis of the late 21st early 22nd century. By the time the world renewed its focus on the "Post-Humans" in 2140, there was a population of about 1200 of them living in Northern California. The attention got back to them because the world found out the "Post-Humans" had gotten very rich.

Because America experienced several decades of governmental paralysis in the early 21st century, the USA took an especially severe beating in the world crisis of 2070-2125. The USA ended up being blackmailed to pay "reparations" to many different nations and suffered continual interference in its economy and government. It was considered poor taste to describe this interference as "Imperialism," accurate, but in poor taste. So any Americans staying let alone getting rich was a shock. People looked more closely.

The sudden collapse of the main Eurasian alliance system, combined with the USA throwing off both the burden of reparations and the imposed foreign elites that had ruled America for decades was a shock. By 2160 people had figured out that the Post-Humans had planned it and carried it off. There was now fear mixed with the world's curiosity.

Basically, mankind is facing superior beings. What's more, these superior beings want to offer anyone who wants to join them a chance for their children to become Homo Superior, or at least their grandkids. The Post-Humans are running America with the full cooperation and assent of the American people. Ordinary Americans remember their recent brutal oppression, much of it at the hand of allies so-called, and like having wealth, personal freedom, and a well-developed and run Social-Welfare state that competes in quality with any in the world.

Most societies outside North America are oligarchical. They both fear their people, especially as the USA's renewed and improved democracy looks good, very good when placed beside any other government on Earth. Also, they want the genetic and bioengineering secrets of the Post-Humans for themselves alone.

In most ways, the Post-Humans seem like Transhuman Space Parahumans. They are plus two to all stats, they have Extended Lifespan-1(Early Maturity), Empathy, Intuition,Very Fit, and the Zero point benefits of No Genetic Defects, No Mental Defects, No Unattractive, plus a few extra bells and whistles. But the real differences are big. First, all Post-Humans have Altered Timesense their brains work much faster. They can anticipate other peoples' responses far better than normal humans, so they all have Smooth Operator-6(yes normal talents top out at four, the Post-Humans aren't normal). They also have an altered awareness of their surroundings and how to act on them. Represent this as Remarkable Luck, Serendipity-2, and Illuminated. The Post-Humans don't have magic powers or mystical awareness. They simply are able to understand the environment they live in and interact with and the people in that environment in a superhuman way. It seems like a combination of luck and clairvoyance to ordinary humans.

More later

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

This takes a setting idea I've used before but works a major change on it.

Due to a botched run-in with a powerful paranormal entity (disguised as a storybook wishing fay, which prevented anyone from taking them seriously) an American citizen has gotten the USA kicked off the Earth. He managed to mitigate much of the damage for the USA, the rest of the world was a different case.

In juggling circumstances to save friends from other nations (and their nations as well) half of the US population got left in an extra-dimenional space where time was radically slowed down.

The PCs are in that group in the slow time realm. (As written, the man who got everyone into this mess, split the USA along the RED/BLUE split.
He took the Blue states and the populations of several smaller nations that would have been in serious military trouble in a world without America. But in your game, play it your way.)

Now, the PCs have been released from the slow time realm and brought to the new world America got exiled to. One hundred twenty-five years have passed since the first half of America got to the new planet. The PCs have to survive in a strange new world.

Use Transhuman Space as a model for the technological environment. Assume that social welfare conditions resemble those of the Nordic Social Market Welfare States. The PCs should be ambitious individuals that had been important movers and shakers and now find themselves irrelevant and out-of-date. The problem would to be to re-establish themselves and regain their former status and influence.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

After plagues and biowarfare, 19 out of twenty people are dead. The world is a ruin but in the ruins of the past, there are wonders. A circle of mages have teamed up with a group of biochemists and genetic engineers and created a suite of microorganisms that cleaned the environment.

But society was shattered, humanity was without hope or spirit. So the mages called out to the ancient gods. Around the world strange miracles happened, children were born when wonderous omens occurred. The children of the Gods.

Basically, it's a post-apocalyptic world but the PCs are the children of the Ancient Gods (Biological or Adopted). Mythic adventures After the End. Pick the gods you like. Zeus, Lugh, Quetzalcoatl, Xochipilli, Sun Wukong, Kali, Oshun, Oya, Brigid, Bast, Djehuty, Athena, Hermes, Geezhigo-Quae, Odin, or Hachiman, whomever you like.


Start subtle, then go high-mythic as you go along.

[AlexanderHowl]

From a distance, the Corvus system seemed worthless because it possessed no planets, just dozens of debris fields. When a scavenger spacecraft ended up stranded in the Corvus System, its crew discovered that the debris fields were exceptionally rich, as they were the remains of a planetary system that had been destroyed by some unknown cataclysm during the distant past. Their discovery would have been lost though if they had not stumbled upon ruins of an alien civilization that had inhabited the Corvus System a quarter of a billion years ago and repaired their spacecraft in one of their intact facilities.

The Corvus system is a quadruple system, with a two pairs of K2 stars. The members of each pair possess a separation of 200 AU and the two pairs are separated by 1000 AU. Each star is orbited by 18 asteroid belts, each with RVM of +5, meaning that the total carrying capacity of the system at TL10 is 2.16 trillion humans.

Despite its enormous wealth, the Corvus system is avoided by the vast majority of spaceships because the artifacts left behind by the extinct alien civilization to awaken every few years. It is not unknown for the inhabitants of the Corvus system to awaken something best left sleeping once a decade and for the next spacecraft to find that everyone in the system has disappeared, leaving behind their colonies and spacecraft without a trace of what happened to them.