New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[tshiggins]

(...continued)

Regional groupings with some chance at stability:

Denver-Boulder-Adams County
-Highly educated populations with solid records of economic success and governing competence.
-Would control a major, modern airport.
-Would control the crossroads of I-70, I-25 and I-76.
-Adams County provides a motivated blue-collar workforce with a history of success as small business owners -- and mild (by many standards) but chronic political corruption.
-Dependent allies could include Estes Park, other cities in Boulder County, and northern Aurora.
-Good supply of potable water controlled by the communities, themselves.

Colorado Springs and Eastern Plains
-Population in the Springs has a fair number of educated people, even though it lacks the concentration of the Denver-Boulder area.
-Large population of active duty military and former military personnel.
-Lots of available military equipment -- including armor and aircraft -- and people trained to use them.
-Considered much more culturally compatible by most of the rural farm communities.
-Not nearly as affluent as Denver-Boulder, and a significant fraction of its economy disappears when military expenditures dry up.
-Much more willing to make deals with the Lurjahri than most other places in Colorado.

Pueblo and Southern Colorado
-Colorado's only major "heavy industry" city, many of the old steel millls are empty and abandoned, but a few still operate -- mostly recycling scrap metal.
-Strong economic and cultural ties to the farm communities along the Arkansas River to the east and the San Luis Valley (SLV)to the west.
-Mountains between Pueblo and the SLV still have plenty of coal and iron ore, but the mines closed for economic reasons.
-Population is about 44 percent Hispanic (hence the cultural ties), which have a hard-working blue-collar culture.
-Population is not well-educated, and closure of the steel mills 35 years ago put many families on public assistance, where about one in three remain.

Grand Junction and the Western Slope
-Large enough to enjoy specialization of effort, but small enough to easily manage.
-Produces consistent and reliable large agricultural surpluses of produce with high market values.
-Fossil fuels available in large quantities -- but at the risk of potential damage to the agriculture sector.
-Aging community that lacks the concentration of highly-educated workers of the Front Range cities.
-Fairly conservative, politically, but no record of support for extremism of any sort.
-Isolated and probably very stable.
-Attempts to exercise greater control of the Colorado River could create conflicts with downstream communities -- especially the Ute, Hopi and Navaho Indian nations.

However, since drama requires conflict, and RPGs exist to tell stories, how do we mix this up enough to make for a good campaign.

I'd probably make Colorado Springs drive much of the conflict. The sudden loss of affluence from the collapse of the U.S. government, combined with a reactionary population already distressed at what they consider unacceptable cultural changes, combined with a high concentration of trained military personnel who have access to heavy weapon systems, makes for a toxic combination.

Making things worse is the knowledge that, lacking the supply chain for fuel, ammunition and replacement parts, as well as a huge population of young soldiers and airmen who now don't get paid, means Colorado Springs has to use its assets quickly.

The obvious choice would be to take control of Pueblo, quickly, probably through political pressure backed by the threat of military force. It's the low-hanging fruit, really, but the difficulty El Paso County has traditionally had with tolerance of diversity would make for persistent friction between the Springs and the Hispanic population of southern Colorado.

That gives the "City State of Colorado Springs" an industrial base and helps secure its food supplies. However, most of the fuel supplies in the Front Range are in the northeast corner of the state.

The transportation routes (including the major railroads, as well as the highways) flow through Denver, and the northern part of the city has most of the refineries, and all of the largest. The Denver-Boulder Alliance also has traditionally generated and controlled the greatest concentrations of the wealth in the entire Rocky Mountain West (not just the state)

The alliance also features a population in its two loci that simply would not accept domination by Colorado Springs, although the southern suburbs might welcome the sense of stability and control. The combined population of Denver and Boulder also outnumber Colorado Springs, considerably, which means any attempt to control the area through overt military force would result in a quagmire of constant insurrection generally supported by much of the population.

Dials:

Denver-Boulder Relatively Stable:
Oddly enough, the fact that Colorado is surrounded by states so much more conservative proved an asset in the initial collapse. Resistant to the influx of "them people" from the eastern states, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and the Dakotas closed their borders as long as they could. After they collapsed, local communities took direct control of food and fuel supplies.

That meant refugees from the South and the Midwest had to try to cross more than a thousand miles of prairie with little in the way of food and gasoline. The further west they got, the more the territory resembled something out of Mad Max -- isolated, fortified towns with no patience for outsiders barely keeping control of nearby farmlands, facing constant raids by people driven by banditry by desperation.

The few who made it past the gauntlets trickled in at a rate that Denver could control, although with some difficulty. It helped when Boulder decided to exercise the compassion needed to keep the homeless and hungry in Denver's parks and alleys, and provided financial and logistical assistance.

None of this would have been possible if the business and financial leaders in Denver and Boulder hadn't made a smart choice, early on. They chose to treat the U.S. dollar as valid currency for all debts, even though the U.S. government had collapsed. The U.S. Mint, in Denver, agreed to play along, and announced it would coin any silver or copper brought in as jewelry or ingots, and began to discuss the possibility of doing so with gold.

That gave Denver and Boulder a currency system backed by the illusion of stability (all money is fiat money, and metals only have value because people think they do), which meant it really did have stability (because people believed it), which gave Denver and Boulder viable market economies.

Colorado Springs remains a constant threat, especially since it seized Pueblo, but the military dictatorship, there, hesitates to attack the economic colossus to the north. For its part, the Denver-Boulder Alliance has no desire to take on Colorado Springs, militarily and is content to play the long game. They know they can win by slow strangulation, as they control the fuel supplies and Pueblo grows increasingly resentful.

For its part, the Colorado Springs junta has worked to foment insurrection in Denver and Boulder's former suburbs, especially those to the south of those two cities. This has met with some success, and Colorado Springs effectively controls all territory south of Lincoln Avenue. Greenwood Village is a center of pro-Springs activity, and Denver barely manages to retain control of Centennial, with it's large, general aviation airport.

Grand Junction and Fort Collins-Greeley are content to sell to both sides -- which means they mostly do business with Denver and Boulder. This is key to the stability of that alliance, since most of the farms on the Eastern Plains have a history of resentment of Denver's economic and political dominance of Colorado, and look to Colorado Springs as a favored alternative.

Strategists in Colorado Springs realize the situation is untenable for them, in the long term, and warhawks have urged the junta to assault its rival to the north. Better to risk everything on a gamble that might win, they argue, than to wait for Denver and Boulder to inevitably strangle them while Southern Colorado Hispanics knife them in the back.

(continued...)

[tshiggins]

(...continued)

Colorado Springs Early Assault
In this scenario, more refugees made it across the high prairie to Denver and Boulder, and the leaders, there, didn't deal with the problem nearly so well. As the economy entered general collapse and Denver's administration crumbled, refugees began to stream south toward Colorado Springs.

Wishing to avoid falling as the next domino, the military commanders effectively took control of Colorado Springs. They left the city administration in place to provide a civilian "face" to what was, basically, a junta.

The junta decided they'd rather stop the refugees as far away as possible, and drove north on I-25. They seized Centennial Airport quickly -- and then stopped, not wishing to enter Denver proper, with its hostile population.

Centennial Airport now serves as the bastion of Colorado Springs' northern border. Beyond it, panic and mismanagement reduced Denver to violent chaos, and the city's population has become a mass of starving refugees spreading to the north and east (although some have crossed the mountains to Grand Junction).

The wave of refugees caused the collapse of Boulder, Fort Collins and Greeley, although some of the rural areas to the north and east of them managed to hang on. A couple of groups of enterprising refugees took control of the refineries, early on, and now sell the stored fuel, there, to Colorado Springs (they also sometimes manage to turn the power on, long enough, to refine additional supplies from the stored crude oil).

The push to the north means Colorado Springs lacked the manpower to take Pueblo, outright, and dominates Southern Colorado through bluster, backed somewhat by valid threat. Pueblo, shielded by Colorado Springs from the refugee flood, is barely hanging together.

For its part, Grand Junction has mostly turned inwards and concentrates on keeping its people fed. Some produce trickles through the mountains, but not nearly enough to feed all the hungry mouths on the Front Range and Eastern Plains. The members of the junta and the civilian leaders of Colorado Springs eat pretty well, though.

Except for the occasional tanker truck caravan or semi of food from Grand Junction, little traffic moves on the roads leading to Colorado Springs. The junta preserves its strength, carefully, and much of the armor serves in gun positions that cover approaches to the city. They only use the fuel needed to keep the batteries charged.

The Springs has some aircraft in combat-ready status, although the number declines, every month. Still, they do sometimes put up a two-jet or four-jet sortie to cow any potential opposition with fly-overs, or the occasional ground-attack mission on any large group of approaching refugees. The junta always claims those groups are armed, of course.

This situation gets much more stable for Colorado Springs, and much for dystopian for everybody else, if C. Springs successfully creates trade agreements with the Lurjahri. That said, I'm not really sure what Colorado Springs has to offer that the Lurjahri might want.


Troubled Oasis
In this scenario, refugee floods, poor administration and inter-city conflict caused the entire Front Range of Colorado to collapse into chaos. Isolated communities may manage to keep themselves together and fend off raiders, but for the most part, everything between the foothills of the Rockies and Kansas City is a bandit-ridden wasteland.

However, over on the Western Slope, Grand Junction remains (mostly) intact and (mostly) functional. Early in the collapse, the people of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, decided to dynamite I-70 at the head of Glenwood Canyon, just southwest of Dotsero, in an attempt to keep refugees out of their town.

While this earned them the lasting hostility of the people of Dotsero, the plan did work. That left State Highway 82 as the only real way reach Glenwood Springs from the Front Range, and that road is much more rugged and controllable.

(State Highway 40, to the north, which runs from Boulder through Craig, where it meets Highway 13 south to I-70, is similarly difficult).

The relative isolation of Grand Junction allowed the city administration to remain intact, and while times are very difficult, there, the Grand Valley did not collapse into chaos. A barter economy remains intact, and many of the people in the city trade their labor for sustenance at the large number of surrounding farms and orchards. The city is slowly emptying as people move to the surrounding towns to take jobs they can get.

However, the collapse has proven devastating to Grand Junction's large population of elderly residents. Many former Front Range residents retired to Grand Junction due to its lower cost of living and ease of access for their families, who remained in the cities east of the mountains. Unable to work, and reliant on medical technology no longer available, the retirees have died in droves.

The main issue faced by Grand Junction is a lack of manufactured goods (including medicines), and the proximity of two Ute Reservations full of people who've struggled in the nearly 150 years since the United States took their lands from them. Reasonably well-armed (albeit with more well-kept hunting rifles than tricked-out AR-15 or AK-47 knock-offs used by right-wing militias) the young radicals in the Ute Rezzes have called for their tribal elders to "take back" the lands that "rightfully belong to the Ute people."

The fact that it would give the Utes control of much of the only source of reliable water on Western Slope, as well as the well-irrigated orchards and farms of the Grand Valley, has caused some members of the tribal governments to give the "Braves" a more respectful hearing than they would have received, in the past.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by joppeknol

Needless to say that energy weapons with an efficiency above 50% are proven to be impossible (one of the ground rules of modern physics).

And what ground rule of modern physics is this? I ask as a professional physicist with a hobby interest in laser weaponry, and know of no such rule.

Notably, from
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/...uns-are-coming

Originally Posted by IEEE Spectrum

... in 2016, IPG Photonics reported converting just over half of the electric power to light in the lab, ...

(regarding a fiber laser, the sort being used for modern laser weapons), which appears to be a counter-example to the claimed rule.

Luke

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

And what ground rule of modern physics is this? I ask as a professional physicist with a hobby interest in laser weaponry, and know of no such rule.

Notably, from
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/...uns-are-coming

(regarding a fiber laser, the sort being used for modern laser weapons), which appears to be a counter-example to the claimed rule.

Luke

That's the problem with 21st-century science-fiction writing; how to write about fancy future-tech before it gets to the shelf at Wal-mart.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

And what ground rule of modern physics is this? I ask as a professional physicist with a hobby interest in laser weaponry, and know of no such rule.

Notably, from
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/...uns-are-coming

(regarding a fiber laser, the sort being used for modern laser weapons), which appears to be a counter-example to the claimed rule.

Luke

Yes, I agree. Laser diodes can reach 70% efficiency without that much difficulty, so there does not seem to be any particular rule of physics that forbids it. Of course, high energy lasers tend to be blast furnaces that create coherent light as a byproduct (my fiance works at a laser fusion facility, so I hear all about it), but that is probably due to the primitive nature of our technology rather than any inherent law of physics.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by PTTG

Superpowers of some kind start springing up around the planet. A team of educators and first-gen supers (who aren't practical for field work) are assembled to operate a school for new pubescent supers.

Play it soft and light by having PCs be students at a somewhat more diverse and modern Hogwarts.

Play is hard and dark by having PCs be teachers at an enclave with questionable political ties.

Is Charles or Erik in charge?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Denver would probably at least start out pretty strong. We have a robust economy and took advantage of the economic downturn to approve a bunch of bond issues to improve the city's infrastructure.

That said, those assets would make it an attractive destination for refugees, and a lot of the other communities in Colorado are pretty reactionary and didn't make some of the smart moves.

Colorado Springs could turn into a pest-hole, pretty fast. A significant fraction of its economy depends on federal government transfer payments in the form of military expenditures.

If that dries up, C. Springs winds up with a whole lot of people who are already upset at the state of the world, and now have no money.

Denver sounds like a human stronghold while Colorado Springs, which wouldn't have become a city if it didn't have some resources, might get taken by the Lurjahri. Probably the Ritualists.

Pueblo, as the poorest community large enough to qualify as a city would suffer a lot, too. It just doesn't have wealth or the educated workforce to survive, and with no markets for its steel mills (at least, in the short term), Pueblans would get pretty desperate, pretty fast.

Probably also a focus for the Ritualist Lurjahri.

Boulder almost has the opposite problem. One of the most affluent cities in the region, regularly ranked as one of the top cities in the nation for scientists, technology workers, artists and outdoorsy types, it's also one of the most peaceful and most liberal.

It is the home of the University of Colorado, which has a reputation as a "party school." While somewhat true, that overlooks the fact that the university regularly produces significant numbers aerospace engineers and rocket scientists (no kidding), software engineers, doctors, nurses, and litigation attorneys, in addition to more usual batch of college grads.

(People in some of Colorado's more conservative areas -- especially those in Colorado Springs -- formerly sneered at the college town and referred to it as "The People's Republic of Boulder." In response, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce adopted the term and used it as the heart of a tremendously successful advertising campaign.)

That center of knowledge with its incredibly successful economy would have a tough time adjusting to the new reality. That said, the smart move would be to "team up" with Denver's more pragmatic liberalism and, if the two cities did that, the combination would be pretty strong -- especially if they made common cause with Adams County's hard-working, increasingly Hispanic blue-collar population.

Sounds like the makings of a strong society. The Unionists on the East coast would want to ally with them.

That said, part of southern Boulder County became so disenchanted with domination by the People's Republic they split off and formed their own county of Broomfield, so they could give tax breaks to bring in a huge shopping center and business parks. Also, many of Denver's suburbs (especially to the south) are far more conservative than the city, itself -- and so are the farming areas.

Hostile humans make good foes/problems.

Fort Collins is also a college town and fairly liberal, but not nearly so much as Boulder. It's also the center of what was the Colorado Agricultural & Technical College, now Colorado State University, so it has strong ties to the Eastern Plains and Western Slope agricultural communities.

Colorado State University has a history of excellence in agricultural biology and farm economics, and has slowly started to add expertise in biotechnology research

It's also located not far from Greeley, which has an economy dominated by support for farmers, ranchers and feed-lot operators, fossil fuel extraction and the construction industry. The University of Northern Colorado also produces a fair number of nurses and teachers, and has very close ties to the Eastern Plains farming areas.

Over on the Western Slope, there is one community of consequence, and that's Grand Junction. Located in the Grand Valley at the junction of the Colorado River and the Gunnison River, it sits in the center of a rich agricultural region that focuses on orchard fruits and (increasingly) vineyards.

The surrounding area also has a robust (if frequently environmentally problematic) natural gas production industry. It also had a number of nearby coal mines, but most of those shut down long ago as uneconomical. It's a long, long way to anywhere from Grand Junction, and transportation costs for bulk coal were murder.

The agricultural economy in Grand Junction will remain solid and stable as long as the Grand Mesa continues to stand, That's because engineers in the area have spent much of the past 150 years transforming the vast, flat-topped mountain into a sophisticated network of water catch-basins that provide water for simple, robust gravity-fed irrigation systems throughout the area.

(continued...)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

That's the problem with 21st-century science-fiction writing; how to write about fancy future-tech before it gets to the shelf at Wal-mart.

The comedy potential of transmats and ray guns at Wal-Mart is good sci fi too.

[joppeknol]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Yes, I agree. Laser diodes can reach 70% efficiency without that much difficulty, so there does not seem to be any particular rule of physics that forbids it. Of course, high energy lasers tend to be blast furnaces that create coherent light as a byproduct (my fiance works at a laser fusion facility, so I hear all about it), but that is probably due to the primitive nature of our technology rather than any inherent law of physics.

Sorry about the misunderstanding. I don't claim any knowledge about this. My idea was that the technology of the Sshihhirr defies any logical explanation just as their need for something completely trivial like certain analog recordings.

Like the cthulhu mythos, it assumes that everything we know about how the world works, is an illusion. All known scientific laws are arbitrary and analog recordings of certain female orgasms are, for some reason, very valuable and non-reproducable.

That's why their language and appearance make every human/ai insane and their technology cannot be understood and can do things that are provably impossible.

I think it would make a nice adventure/campaign. Especially, because introducing female orgasm recordings might suggest the campaign will be fun/erotic, while the essence would be horror.

[AlexanderHowl]

Can you imagine the difficulty associated with figuring out what the aliens would trade for? Presumably, a TL 10+ human civilization will primarily use digital recordings, with analog recordings being reserved for collectors and eccentrics, and most of those analog recordings would have likely been converted from digital recordings. The only way that the aliens could have likely figured it out is if they stumbled upon one or more female humans engaged in such activities. Imagine the reaction of the human government when their negotiators find out what the aliens want and imagine the difficulty of putting in an infrastructure to create and transport such recordings.

A single spacecraft could require one recording or one million, depending on the quality, and the humans would have to depend on the aliens to determine the value of individual recordings. While humans could duplicate the most valuable recordings from a master, they could trigger inflation, and the aliens might insist on the master (they might be able to tell the difference between a master and a copy, as there are quality differences). Imagine being a captain hired to transport one million masters to pay for a spacecraft.