New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

The planet Tapio, named for a Finish forest god, has long been isolated. Most people think Earth has destroyed itself in wars and no one is coming back to reconnect with a minor colony the probably don't even have records of. Most of the planet cultural groups collapsed politically and economically. The PCs are anthropologists associated with the last fully functional University on the planet. They've been sent to reopen contact with the goverments and peoples of the main continent.

The Southern continent was both isolated from wars and easy to terraform, so the settlers got to focus on stability to a degree others couldn't. This society hung on to most technology and is TL9. The large Northern continent, were most societies settled, tends toward TL4 authoritarian societies. Although both governmental types and tech level vary widely. The local plantlife ( steal from Vorkosigan Saga and copy the plant life of Barrayar in all its dull red nastiness) is still common and trying to take the land back. As people can't escape into the wilderness, the authoritarian governments have more power than the tech levels suggest. ( The native plantlife of the southern continents and islands is now restricted to island preserves no one visits).

Basically, the PCs are exploring what to them is and exotic series of foreign lands. They want to build alliances and open diplomatic ties. The locals are paranoid and fearful.

[Astromancer]

Try this one....

"The old ones say that people didn't always live on this world. We came here from another world named "Earth" far across the sky. The sky ship went wrong and we're lost beyond the stars the sky travelers knew.

The world we live on, which the star travelers named Aeolus, is smaller than the Earth but the sky travelers said it was big enough to stay a living world with seas and skies for a long time. They also said that on this world things only had three-fifths as much weight. Stranger still, this world has more air than Earth, which is why we can fly so well.

I wonder how they ever made up such stories."

Basically, this world was terraformed by the desperate survivors of a misjumped and badly damaged colony ship. The gravity is about 0.623G and the air pressure is 23psi at sea level. The world is windy and rainy. The survivors had a social collapse about two generations after the terraforming was completed. The surviving colonists live in about fifty or so settlements at around TL4 with a few higher level technologies like radio available.

The average settlement has about a thousand or so people, although one settlement, called Mainbase has about twelve thousand people. The climate has turned out to be good for crops. Bees from Earth thrive and pollination works well.

Most transport between settlements is through the air mainly by paragliding, hang gliding and similar means. Gigantic docile bats with wings like pterasaurs act as cart horses. More conventional means of transport can't deal with the wildly mountainous terrain. Most of the planet is mountainous islands.

The population is young, poor, and poorly educated. Sexual mores are very relaxed. Since communities are small, outsiders bringing in fresh DNA are welcome, gay sex is also tolerated as a means to keep the young busy and out of trouble when their chores are done. Groups of young people going off to explore and find new farmland and pastures, as long as the planting is done and the harvest isn't here yet, is seen as a good thing. Useful land tends to be spread out all over the place.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Spring?

Some scholars call the later half of the 21st century the "Plague Wars". Others point out that no one claimed credit and no one seemed to benefit. Be that as it may there aren't many people alive and fertility is low. At least natural fertility, if you don't have kids the old fashioned way by 60 (people live longer, much longer) Your taxes go up to support society using Ectogenesis to make a replacement citizen for you. If your DNA is judged good, they will use that, and if you're seen as able to raise a child to reasonable standards (higher these days) you can raise the kid. Otherwise the state raises the kid and improves your DNA to meet standards.

The year is 2160. People live in the vast empty cities build for their great-grandparents. Fusion powers the world, but left over Carbon dioxide still over warms the world. Sea levels are 30 feet higher than in the year 2000. It looks likely they'll rise some more in the next century (maybe 15 feet more) and then slowly go down over thousands of years.

Ectogenesis is expensive, and raising kids is never cheap. The few functioning societies left (mainly those nations that were wealthy democracies in the mid 21st century) have only about 300 million people between them and don't look like that number will be doubled in the next century. The populations of these societies live in cities, populations of genetically warped "mutants" live in the countryside. These creatures can't break into the cities (although one or two have gotten in by cunning) and a thin majority have the Bestial disadvantage. Still, they make the countryside unlivable. But their numbers are becoming fewer each generation.

The cities are mainly empty, and the societies are stagnant and class ridden.

Basically, a cyberpunk setting. The major differences are...

A) Population Bust: People are few anywhere. Cities are full of empty space.

B) Social Services Work: The survival of the society requires everybody getting good medical treatment. And as good medical treatment is pretty useless without good food and a place to stay, this world is a fairly intrusive "nanny state" in order to survive.

C) Fear the Turant Officer: Education is vital to the survival of the state, and that includes college. Truancy is not tolerated. You will learn your lessons! We have ways of making you.

D) Those that co-operate get privileges, the rebellious get extra scut work.

E) Society genuinely tries to be fair. This is of course "Fair by its standards." So fair-ish, most of the time.

F) Brains, Skills, and Gifts, equal clout. Money loss its standing during the plagues and the collapse of the markets. Brains, skills, talents, ability, are the sources of wealth and standing. That's likely to change, but brainpower is clout. Just remember that Academic politics are the nastiest.

G) Not all forms of smarts are equal. Some areas of education and clout count for more. Degrees in the STEM subjects get clout quick. After that in descending order are Education, Social Sciences and History, Interdisciplinary subjects seen as useful, the Arts and Literature, finally Philosophy and most Interdisciplinary Subjects. Still, the most famous and impressive figures in any field can have clout. A Star Actor or Musician can successfully throw their weight around.

H) The environment is brutally polluted. There are no uncontaminated places on the Earth. The struggles of late 21st century society to survive deeply scared the planet. Bio-remedial organisms have been created and the work of cleaning the environment is going forward. But it will take decades. Only the water and food produced inside the cities is really safe. Consuming water or food that hasn't been purified by or raised in a city is asking for cancer and mutated children.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Spring?

Some scholars call the later half of the 21st century the "Plague Wars". Others point out that no one claimed credit and no one seemed to benefit. Be that as it may there aren't many people alive and fertility is low. At least natural fertility, if you don't have kids the old fashioned way by 60 (people live longer, much longer) Your taxes go up to support society using Ectogenesis to make a replacement citizen for you. If your DNA is judged good, they will use that, and if you're seen as able to raise a child to reasonable standards (higher these days) you can raise the kid. Otherwise the state raises the kid and improves your DNA to meet standards.

The name is to highlight the point that these people don't really know if they've made it through the worst of the crisis. Mankind's survival is not a sure thing.

Notes:

All but the oldest living city people have the following genetic upgrades. The Zero Point advantages of being Genefixed as in THS, that's No Birth Defects, No Mental Defects, and No Unattractive. Everyone also has Extended Lifespan ( Rapid Maturity) which means they grow as quickly as unmodified humans and live to be close to two hundred years old. Or will, the oldest people with this modification are in their late 90's and look like very healthy forty-somethings. Most people look young even most of the old.

All those 30 and under have plus one to all stats because of gene manipulation. Those under 17 all have Sensitive and Versatile.

Schools are pleasant places were the goal is to teach students to use their creativity and judgement. The exceptions are the schools for those convicted of serious truancy, there people are taught to obey.

Food is grown in Factories. Meat is mainly cloned. Left-over pollution makes food from outside the cities less safe. The cities dump microbes that eat the non-biodegradable pollutants. But it will be decades before the toxins are gone.

Hunting the children of the country folk, bringing them alive to the cities, healing their mental and genetic diseases and rising them to be useful citizens is seen as laudable in the cities. The country folk hate this and kill anyone snatching their kids.

Medicine and biotech are at TL 10. Robotics, computing, and civil engineering are Mature TL 9 fields. Most other technologies are early TL 9.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Spring?

Its an interesting pitch.



Ectogenesis (or as I always think of them: "wombulators", courtesy of schlock mercenary) is a miraculous technology, and a society with access to it would lean on it heavily. Pregnancy is tough, both on the body and on economic output, and its still a small portion of the cost of raising a child. That does depend on just how expensive exo-wombs are, but it doesn't take much for them to be a good deal.



I ran across a method for turning electricity into food a while back. It involves producing methane from water and CO2, then letting chemo-synthetic bacteria produce feed-stock. All steps of the process are actually doable today, and it seems like an ideal food source for this type of setting.



What sort of adventures would you run in this setting?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Its an interesting pitch.



Ectogenesis (or as I always think of them: "wombulators", courtesy of schlock mercenary) is a miraculous technology, and a society with access to it would lean on it heavily. Pregnancy is tough, both on the body and on economic output, and its still a small portion of the cost of raising a child. That does depend on just how expensive exo-wombs are, but it doesn't take much for them to be a good deal.



I ran across a method for turning electricity into food a while back. It involves producing methane from water and CO2, then letting chemo-synthetic bacteria produce feed-stock. All steps of the process are actually doable today, and it seems like an ideal food source for this type of setting.



What sort of adventures would you run in this setting?

It's cyberpunk with the emphasis on the punk. It would tend to focus on gaining cred, as in Street Cred! Hunting down the wild children and bringing them in to society would be good. As people are very focused on status, as money is temporarily not functioning, anything that has the PCs involved in the feuds and fights of the prominent is good. Escaping the man and avoiding the nastier and more boring detritus of daily life also works.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Spring?

Some scholars call the later half of the 21st century the "Plague Wars". Others point out that no one claimed credit and no one seemed to benefit. Be that as it may there aren't many people alive and fertility is low. At least natural fertility, if you don't have kids the old fashioned way by 60 (people live longer, much longer) Your taxes go up to support society using Ectogenesis to make a replacement citizen for you. If your DNA is judged good, they will use that, and if you're seen as able to raise a child to reasonable standards (higher these days) you can raise the kid. Otherwise the state raises the kid and improves your DNA to meet standards.

Some final notes.

People rarely go out in the day time. Any and all common sense about the Ozone layer departed with the plagues. Many nations (mainly in Asia, but elsewhere too) released chlorofluorocarbons into the air. Many people though it would kill the plague, it didn't. The ozone layer is messed up but still functioning. Skin Cancer is vastly more common for those who go out in the day light. Even the "Mutants" hide from the sunlight.

Many coastal cities are partially submerged. Some, like Miami, are dead. Other cities like, New York, London, New Orleans, and San Francisco, continue to function. London and San Francisco moved uphill. New Orleans built vast dikes. New York sealed off the subways and the buildings and inhabits its underwater sections. Although Central Park is surrounded by multiple layers of dikes. Many restaurants in the lower sections of Manhattan and Brooklyn rig enclosures outside of their windows to ensure interesting fish for their dinners to look at during meals.

Money power is slowly coming back. Progressives fight this any way they can. Meanwhile, would-be plutocratic oligarchs will kill if need be to bring money power back. Both sides fear democracy because, with a far better educated electorate, it would take them a long time to figure out how to control the populace and exclude them from power.

[jason taylor]

Military fantasy:

You and your squad are members of the Host of Durin in the Dwarves and Orcs war. You will use knowledge of conventional Tolkienite war as well as your own adaptations for how you are equipped, tactics to be used, etc. The campaign will include as well as mountain warfare, large scale underground conflict, sapping and all the stuff you would expect from Dwarves at war,

You can climax with the great battle where Azog was slaiin.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

You're the descendents of a group of colonists that fled the solar system after a long series of system wide wars. The planet is terraformed, that happened when your grandparents were in nanostasis. But building a new world, even when you have robots and biotech isn't easy. The settlers fought among themselves and their communities split. Now you have to both build a new society on a frontier and protect it from bitter raiders who feel you betrayed them. Just because your grandparents didn't want to be serfs or force others to be serfs.

Anarchists (in the sense of rejecting heirarchy), versus conventional Democrats, versus those that believe humanity needs to be controlled by an elite, versus theocratic dictators. There are remnants of the old high-tech around, but if you don't start building a new society soon, you'll lose that and be barely neolithic. Oh and this planet, being terraformed, had no fossil fuels. Lose technology and humanity will never have high-tech again.

[awesomenessofme1]

This isn't so much a setting seed as a few ideas for a sci-fi setting I may play a game in:

FTL travel works by tunnelling through space-time in such a way that travel is instantaneous from the perspective of an outside observer, but takes time (sometimes significant amounts of time) from the perspective of those within the ship. This is a pretty unique system that I don't remember seeing anywhere else. I think I'd make it so that it requires some sort of fuel that's fairly abundant or easy to make, but must be replenished on the way if you want to take a long journey.

There is no direct FTL communication. AI is limited enough that automated ships to carry messages are either expensive or unreliable. This means that even though messages can be carried near-instantly, it's expensive because you need to either buy an advanced AI or pay a pilot for up to a few weeks of work per load.

Humans are relative newcomers to a galactic stage that includes a handful of other major intelligent species, but they've had time to establish themselves. I'm thinking somewhere in the ballpark of 50 years.

No battlesuits. I love the idea, but I don't like the way they affect balance. The justification I'd use is that the technology doesn't quite have the combination of strength augmentation and power miniaturization to make them effective. Lasers are the common type of weapon.

Earth is still very divided. There is a unified interstellar human government, but they're only about as powerful as the UN. The exception is the armed forces. Individual nations do have fleets, but the interstellar government (which I don't have a name for) has its own military and Earth governments will usually defer to them in emergency situations.

Any comments, questions, or ideas?