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Old 03-17-2018, 04:40 PM   #241
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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I wouldn't put it past ideological holdouts to remain in the snow fields, supporting small populations through scavenging and cobbled-together heaters and food supplies.
If the fusors (fusion power generators) are cheap enough they might not need to cobble all that much. And there could be other practical means of power generation in different areas. Tidal power wouldn't be stopped by the cold. Wind power might be magnified under some conditions.

Isolationist communities might make interesting story hooks.
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Old 03-17-2018, 05:54 PM   #242
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Note: California and Morocco are amoung the only places on Earth that are wetter than they used to be. Morocco is warm and wet and is covered with greenery. California is cooler than it was but the southernmost areas are still subtropical.

The American Southwest is also cooler with about the same precipitation. This means that it's generally greener too.
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Old 03-23-2018, 08:44 AM   #243
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I've done variants of this idea before but try this. Something monstrous tries to invades our reality. A hero, more by luck than pluck, manages to defeat the invasion. To forestall any follow up invasion, because he knows he won't be lucky twice, he plans to alter our reality. The act of altering our reality will prevent any further invasion by making our reality unreachable to the threating entity. Much like getting an unlisted phone number prevents crank calls. The main difference being that this "phone number" would be simply un-dial-able for the entity.

Of the changes he could impose with the tools he's got (a bazaar mystic artifact) he picks magically moving the world's technology forward (much like a Torg reality shift, specifically the Tech-surge that created the Cyberpapacy) as the least oppressive choice.

During the transformation our hero faints. Both the simple fact of his being exhausted and seriously injured in the previous fight, and the stress of his actions, knocked him out before he got very far. Thus the Techsurge is limited only to a few areas.

Because the hero strongly identified himself with his nation, the USA (the man is a patriot but left-wing in his politics) the techsurge was strongest in the USA. It happened mainly in US cities and population centers. Rural areas were often untouched. Canadian cities and the cities of Northern Mexico as far south as Guadalajara are also transformed. Bermuda, the Bahamas, and a few other Caribbean islands were also changed.

Both in the world community and within the nations touched by the transformation life is changed not only by the new tech but by the new power relationships and the fact that the techsurge was accompanied by other changes our hero did not intend. Mainly in the transformed areas everybody's personality and minds were also altered. Everybody in the main transformation areas gained IQ if theirs was less than GURPS IQ 15. They also gained technology and science skills suited to their new tech level. Everybody in the main transformation areas is now bisexual, politically left-wing, pro-science, technophilic, but also embraces mysticism, in other words, he made them more like himself. He's upset by this last, he feels he may have stolen part of their human free will!

Drama in this setting comes from several angles. The Hero is wanted by people around the planet for questioning. They also want the artifact that changed the world. Said artifact is reduced to ashes, it blew out when the hero fainted. The Hero has superpowers (think a across between Professor X and Captain America, who can also fly and teleport) he's made himself scarce.

Those nations that didn't get the techsurge want all the tech gains those nations got. Spying and kidnapping are only the start of their drive to gain the tech.

Many people are appalled at the transformations. Rural people in the nations most changed by the techsurge are the most upset. In Mexico the change is regional and threatens to rip the nation in half. In the USA the rural populations feel betrayed and surrounded. Many of their own leaders and politicians, because they were in civic centers and cities when the techsurge hit, no longer share values with them. Despair and hopelessness lead to lashing out.

For technology in this setting use Transhuman Space. The tech is interesting and alienating to those looking in from outside.

Note: the transformations of the techsurge left the USA and Canada with space fleets, Moonbases, and a highly developed circumlunar infrastructure, their are Mexican space assets as well. The USA has bases in the asteroids and on Mars.
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Old 04-01-2018, 12:26 PM   #244
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{The Farfarers}

A recently terraformed planet (Garradh Ros) with a low population allied to several strong planets is strategically located next to an unstable Empire (The Empire of the Green Scimitar, hereafter EGS). One of the reasons for the instability of the EGS is the high disease rates coming for having settled in alien ecosystems. The population of the EGS keeps being blindsided by alien diseases and parasites.

The EGS wants Garradh Ros as a breeding world for troops, Royals, and Noble Houses. The highly democratic, egalitarian, socialist, and decidedly liberal (in the sense of strong support of civil liberties), culture that terraformed the planet isn't useful to imperial plans. Well, not useful except for the simple fact they'll need them to keep the terraforming stable. As taking Garradh Ros would give the EGS a strong strategic position and a chance to stabilize, and thus both consolidate its past conquests and make new ones, none of the powers in the local stellar neighborhood will allow the conquest.

Basically this is a game of war and diplomacy. If you fail at the latter, you'll get the former. The Empire of the Green Scimitar is large and has plenty of resources. Compare it to the USSR of the 1940s or the 16th century Ottoman Empire. If its opponents get time to grow, they'll be vastly more powerful. Plus the basic instability of the EGS means it needs to act soon or collapse. Can you contain the threat?
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Old 04-06-2018, 12:26 PM   #245
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Stealing from Star Trek, why not, have the Andorians discover Earth and make contact in the year 2013. The Andorians decide they like the humans and that they could be made into good allies to keep the Vulcans out of their business. The Andorians pick the USA, NATO, and the West for Allies. The Vulcans discovering what the Andorians have done decide that the Earth folks aren't without potential. Seeing that the Adorians got the pick of the litter, the Vulcans decide that China, in spite of its problems, also has potential. The Betazoids show up to and begin to seek alliances in Europe outside of NATO and in Latin America. Expand the list according to taste.

Basically Earth is in the middle of a serious spat. Sure, we've got fusion and are jumping to TL10, but we could end up in a proxy war.
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Old 04-06-2018, 12:56 PM   #246
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Oh, I LIKE this idea.

It's a reasonable twist on the alien invasion idea. Obviously the aliens don't want any particular resources from Earth, but that doesn't mean we can't have a political role to play, and specifically to be an ideological battleground.

I see this as playing out as a secret war of covert operations.
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Old 04-06-2018, 02:05 PM   #247
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Oh, I LIKE this idea.

It's a reasonable twist on the alien invasion idea. Obviously the aliens don't want any particular resources from Earth, but that doesn't mean we can't have a political role to play, and specifically to be an ideological battleground.

I see this as playing out as a secret war of covert operations.
I like it, too. Imagine what the various human colonies sponsored by the three powers would look like. It also makes for a neat alternate history for the Federation...
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Old 04-08-2018, 06:17 PM   #248
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

The Empire has suddenly collapsed and The Federation has, naturally enough dealt out governor-generalships to favorites. Which is all very well. But The Federation's military is being drastically downsized, and unfortunately there is not enough transport to get every former servicemember home.

The PCs are a group stranded in this manner. What do they do to survive? They all have their retirement bonuses; there is surplus equipment available at low prices from the war. Will they go home, set up on their own, or what?
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Old 04-14-2018, 10:52 AM   #249
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Basically this world had superheroes pretty much like the comic books in the 1940s and 1960s. In both periods some of the inventors built functional spaceships and set up colonies both in this solar system and beyond. Supers seem to come in pulses, but right now they're rare and few, and not all that powerful. However, transit to outer space is still around. Several extrasolar colonies are thriving and Mars has several cities and a couple of territories looking to become US states. (Because the populations of these Martian territories are overwhelmingly urban, they tend to vote Democratic, so the GOP won't allow statehood.)

Other than some anomalous left-over supertech this is our world. Spaceflight is also a leftover anomaly. However, it's a functional anomaly, highly functional. An oracle, a leftover hippy-psychedelic superhero, has predicted the next wave of supers won't show up until the 2060s, mainly because the 1980s wave took out the main threat to humanity the supers were fated to defend Earth against in the early 21st century.

So basically our world with Planetary style mysteries. Leftover super relics on Earth and Mars, ancient alien archeological sites off Earth.
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Old 04-14-2018, 12:41 PM   #250
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Discoveries in information science reveal that matter and its states are in fact correlations of information -- an advanced form of the holographic theory of reality.

This has the practical spinoff that since spacetime is a product of information correlation, it's possible to jump straight to infinite-distance teleportation with arbitrary precision. This allows relativistic time travel of a sort, but a quirk of the mathematics means that local time travel is impossible.

This even has a built-in search function, if you will. You can try to find environmental coordinates that are similar to earth and you'll find planets with similar gravity and atmospheric conditions.

The teleporters are more like computers than anything exotic, and they require only tiny amounts of energy to operate (it's actually cheaper to go long distance than to teleport around one planet).

The result of all this is that location becomes almost irrellevant. Humans are rapidly scattering over the countless inhabitable earthlike worlds of the cosmos, finding alien life and occasionally new civilizations.
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