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Old 10-14-2019, 12:19 PM   #1281
Astromancer
 
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Try this one...

Technological advances in the next ten years make space flight far cheaper and the USA, the EU, China, and India, all see cultural and political reasons to invest in space. Japan, South Korea, South Africa, and Indonesia, club in with the EU. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil, club in with the USA. Russia, going through hard times stays out.

By 2050 there are stable self-sustaining cities of the Moon, Cylinders and other space habitats as far out as the asteroid belt. The project to create a backup archive of all human knowledge on the Dark Side of the moon is nearing completion. All known books and other documents in English, Chinese, French, and thirty other languages is functionally complete and only requires regular updating. All known films and audio recordings from before 2048 are already archived for all languages. The peace park was all set to be officially opened.

Then the plagues struck. Dozens of plagues, so many plagues at once had to be a planed attack. A quarantine slammed down the links between Earth and Space. Several orbitals already had plague and were soon derelicts, maned only by ghosts.

It is now Dec. 17th 2051. All radio signals from Earth have stopped. There are no signs of human life on Earth visible from low Earth orbit. If there are survivors, including whoever created the plague, they might as well be dead for all the difference it makes.

The space based communities must now govern themselves and build a working peace in the skies.

This setting has the needed food, fiber, clean water, and information. Most problems of Space Medicine are being dealt with at TL9. There are colleges on the Moon founded by both the USA and the EU (the Indians are sanguine about this, the Chinese less so). It will take work and co-operation to survive.
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Last edited by Astromancer; 05-30-2022 at 03:57 PM.
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Old 10-14-2019, 12:35 PM   #1282
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

I see two exciting points in this timeline: at the height of the collapse, when people may still be trying to prove who's responsible and how to retaliate while also preparing for and avoiding the the disasters of the plagues; and then decades later, when specialized skills are rare but spaceships are super-common.

In this later period, pirates are not only plausible by likely. They would hide in derelict ghost stations or act as privateers, striking out to capture prisoners to ransom and to sell as slaves. Heroic figures would also need to perform judicious space combat in order to avoid destroying enemy ships laden with innocents, making boarding actions the game.
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Old 10-14-2019, 12:49 PM   #1283
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I see two exciting points in this timeline: at the height of the collapse, when people may still be trying to prove who's responsible and how to retaliate while also preparing for and avoiding the the disasters of the plagues; and then decades later, when specialized skills are rare but spaceships are super-common.

In this later period, pirates are not only plausible by likely. They would hide in derelict ghost stations or act as privateers, striking out to capture prisoners to ransom and to sell as slaves. Heroic figures would also need to perform judicious space combat in order to avoid destroying enemy ships laden with innocents, making boarding actions the game.
Have I said I like how you think? If so let me say it again.

Transhuman Pirates should be a lively game.
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Old 10-14-2019, 08:02 PM   #1284
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Minor note: the Dark Side Institution that was built to be a universal repository of all human knowledge is a great excuse to add PCs and NPCs from anywhere into this setting. Literally anyone with knowledge or information might have a good reason to be there. From shamans to neuro physiologists, from Tibetan Abbotts to FBI profilers, anyone.
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Old 10-16-2019, 06:44 PM   #1285
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Try this one...

Fusion becomes commercially viable at stunning speed. By 2025 fusion is generating 10 percent of US power. By 2030 it's 55 percent. The rest of the world is only a little behind the USA.

As the fusors are very low radiation, most ocean going ships convert to fusion power. Fusion powered airships for cargo and passengers become commonplace. Oil prices plunge.

This last point is the source of conflict. Nations like Russia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi-Arabia, Venezuela, and Nigeria, all lose massive revenues. Many of these nations have large militaries and unstable governments. Russia, Iran, and Saudi-Arabia combine these traits with both a strong cultural sense of destiny and a deep cultural insecurity ( or at least that seems to be a common consensus).

Russia has long wanted a warm water port and free access to the sea. They are allied with Shiite Iran. Iran is unfriendly with Sunni Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan. Both Russia and Pakistan have nukes as does Saudi-Arabia's new friend Israel. Desperate nations striking out under unbearable pressure would make a good techno-thriller setting. Some points of my setting might fail your plausibility test, still, it's the world of only a dozen years from now and a great setting for spies and covert operations.
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Old 10-16-2019, 07:58 PM   #1286
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It could also deal with Brexit negotiations!
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Old 10-17-2019, 03:16 AM   #1287
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It could also deal with Brexit negotiations!
That's way to scary.
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Old 10-17-2019, 07:09 AM   #1288
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Try this one...

Fusion becomes commercially viable at stunning speed.

<snip>

...it's the world of only a dozen years from now and a great setting for spies and covert operations.
Thanks muchly. You just hand waved an issue I had in my nascent near future AtE campaign setting.
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Old 10-17-2019, 12:45 PM   #1289
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Thanks muchly. You just hand waved an issue I had in my nascent near future AtE campaign setting.
Let me guess.

You needed a way for the world to end, and it works pretty well to use a nuclear war triggered by toddler temper-tantrums from a bunch of so-called "leaders" of single-commodity extraction-economy nations suddenly deprived of wealth to which they feel entitled?

Works for me. :)

(I'm so tired of waiting for commercially viable fusion. It's been a promise, my whole life.)
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Old 10-17-2019, 12:58 PM   #1290
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Let me guess.

You needed a way for the world to end, and it works pretty well to use a nuclear war triggered by toddler temper-tantrums from a bunch of so-called "leaders" of single-commodity extraction-economy nations suddenly deprived of wealth to which they feel entitled?

Works for me. :)

(I'm so tired of waiting for commercially viable fusion. It's been a promise, my whole life.)
Yeah. We've been either 'ten years away from...' or 'twenty years away from...' a number of cool things that aren't commercially viable yet since the 1950s or so, maybe even earlier, and fusion power is one of them.

We could in theory have flying cars now, but given the average driver, neither flying cars nor jetpacking to work are good ideas for reasons other than technology. We don't have cities on the Moon for economic and technological reasons. Fusion power is just something that we don't get for purely technological reasons, which doesn't make it less frustrating when someone once again says that we're 'only' twenty years away from it.
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