New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[David Johnston2]

I recently downloaded a freebie game Void Core that was set in a future inhabited solar system where humanity has spread from Mercury to the Kuiper Belt...with the exception of Pluto because everyone who goes there mysteriously disappears. The Mi-Go don't like visitors. Honestly I hate realistic Solar System games. But Lovecraft makes the Solar System much more interesting.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I recently downloaded a freebie game Void Core that was set in a future inhabited solar system where humanity has spread from Mercury to the Kuiper Belt...with the exception of Pluto because everyone who goes there mysteriously disappears. The Mi-Go don't like visitors. Honestly I hate realistic Solar System games. But Lovecraft makes the Solar System much more interesting.

Yay for you, comrade!

There are a quite nice assortment of alien civilizations in Lovecraft to fill out a galaxy. And the Mi-Go apparently (if Earth and Pluto/Yuggoth are any indication) like mining from world with huge satellites/double planet combos, which would be desirable real estate for humans (large moons are good asteroid blockers), making them a good adversary race for Interstellar Humanity.

Not to mention the occasional Great Old One or Elder God showing up, requiring orbital bombardment.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Since Onyx Path sent me my copy of the new Trinity-verse setting (here's the first edition) I thought of mucking around with that setting. So here goes.

Basically, in the year 2122 (the present day in the Aeon Trinity Setting) a powerful Nova (scary powerful and often mentally unstable "Superhero"-like being) Pulled out all the stops to defend Earth from the Doyen (evil aliens that mess with other lifeforms because of their paranoia and greed). No one knows what he tried to do, but there is now a second Earth in the Solar System. Many other human inhabited worlds are duplicated as well. The Trinity-verse and Transhuman Space have just collided.

The two settings aren't equal, Transhuman Space is far closer to Hard Sci Fi (yes I know THS isn't Hard Sci Fi, but it's far closer than Trinity. In many areas like AI and Bio engineering Transhuman Space is far more advanced. Meanwhile Aeon Trinity has Psi Powers and interstellar flight, and far fewer people living off Earth. Once the two worlds understood each other then the real sparks will fly.

The USA in THS is a thriving democracy, in the Trinity-verse it's a cyberpunk Plutocratic oligarchy. Simply the sheer flow of Americans escaping for the better world would be an issue. Meanwhile Africa is a series of Basket cases in THS where it's a thriving major power in the Trinity-verse. Again there will be floods of refugees. The simple fact of alternatives to the nation someone is living in, alternatives that are also home, would be massively disruptive.

The presence of the PSi Orders will cause massive paranoia on THS Earth. The fact that the telepathic order is basically an arm of the Chinese government, and a repressive anti-democracy Chinese government at that, will certainly freak out dozens of governments. The Clairsentients on Luna and the Latin American Biokinetics would soon be as scary to them.

Meanwhile, the Trinity-verse would see the settlements of THS Earth all through the solar system. The other Mars would be profoundly more advanced than their Mars. The Trinity-verse would look at THS AIs and Uploaded people and feel loathing and terror.

Added fun. Since I envision the THS people as transposed into the Trinity-verse that means all THS people have been through a massive Quantum Event. Which means that they'll all be turned into either Talents, Psis, or Novas, or the Adventure! equivalents.

More fun, the Doyen and their dupes, the Aberrants and their slaves, and the Coalition and it's genetically engineered slave castes, are all still out there.

Can you make peace among the humans before the aliens start the war?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

. . . there is now a second Earth in the Solar System. Many other human inhabited worlds are duplicated as well.

And we have an astroengineering emergency. Two Earths in the same orbit are going to start influencing each other's motions. A collision is likely within a century or so. The same goes for Mars and Mercury.

THS-level technology can do nothing whatsoever about this by any direct means. They're going to have to find or create a super with similar powers to the one who created this situation, and get them to undo it.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

And we have an astroengineering emergency. Two Earths in the same orbit are going to start influencing each other's motions. A collision is likely within a century or so. The same goes for Mars and Mercury.

THS-level technology can do nothing whatsoever about this by any direct means. They're going to have to find or create a super with similar powers to the one who created this situation, and get them to undo it.

Yes, I was remiss. These new worlds, are in there own stable orbits. As the Trinity-verse is mainly restricted to Earth, Mars, and the Moon, these are the only bodies that stay fully in that mode. Most of the rest of the solar system is simply THS.

Really, I'm slamming a Hard-ish Sci Fi world into a Space Opera/Supers world.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

These new worlds are in their own stable orbits.

Which is going to require them to be substantially colder or warmer, since they need to be significantly closer to, or further from, the Sun. So they have climate emergencies on a really major scale. Might it be easier to make three double planets?

[David Johnston2]

I'd just go with turning the solar system into a binary so each has it's own sun. The outer planets of both systems simply disappear.

[jason taylor]

Kintledge Market:


Kintledge basically means "anything that fills out holdspace". In this scenario I assume that starships lined up in berthing spaces have a series of general stores beside them to buy and sell cargo that does not fit into any other lot. Basically marked by pitching a tent or drawing a line or whatever and putting your ships' trade flag in the center.

During that time the cook will likely serve some liquor, or caffine, or standby food, play tunes and what not. The most obvious use of this is as a cozy-place-to-tell-tell-tales, or an Inn-you-all-meet-at.

In this case I am thinking of this as an adventure in itself. An unknown customer comes along with an innocent looking item (perhaps a children's toy, religious icon, whatever), and sells it. For some reason it looks like something someone at the next port would want and the cargomaster buys it.

So far, so good. What it really is, is an alien trap. It's effects are...well the GM can figure out what they are. But the ship will be trapped in jump space with it and it will not be fun.

[PTTG]

A massive asteroid struck what is now Turkmenistan in 1869, resulting in multiple years of bitter winters and cold summers. Astronomers soon discovered that the impactor was in fact merely a small piece of a massive, fractured rogue planet that had been redirected into Earth's orbit. No one name ever took hold for it; it was known as Nemesis, Eris, Lucifer, Charon, and a number of other names from the practical to the outright profane.

Further impacts were predicted about once every ten years for the foreseeable future -- and any one of those might be the core asteroid, itself over two thousand km wide. Such an impact would melt an appreciable portion of Earth's mass, and make the extinction of the dinosaurs look like a damp firecracker.

Diplomatic squabbling filled most of the next decade, but was abruptly silenced when the predictions proved true in 1878, when a second rockfall destroyed a town near Lisbon and several fireballs and terrific explosions rocked the skies over the Americas. Scientists were elevated in stature as nations saw their only path to continued survival in space, and around the world in every language, people were exhorted to work together to "save humanity," even though in most cases astronauts and planners were of privileged classes.

The 9-year repeat visit of the rogue planet and its attendant swarm of rocks continued motivating space exploration. Thousands of courageous pilots and technicians died in early attempts at spaceflight, but swiftly the technology improved. The first person to survive a trip to space was a German aviatrix in 1927, (this being long past the divergence point, she never existed in OTL), but the first person to survive re-entry was a Chinese immigrant to the United States and volunteer space pilot in 1931.

Meanwhile, the asteroid was studied closely, revealing that it was hidden from view by a combination of an unusual orbit and an incredibly dark surface material. This made it difficult to pin down its exact orbit, let alone predict when it might hit, but in 1924, astronomers tentatively gave it a 80% chance to strike earth in 1996, 2005, or 2014, with only a 10% chance to strike in 1987 or 2023. There was also about a 5% chance of impact in 1960.

With the basic technology of spaceflight established, and less than a century to evacuate billions of people, work began in earnest to flee the planet. The first nuclear-thermal propelled spacecraft were developed in 1945, as an experimental orbital propulsion method. A vessel not unlike the Sea Dragon was launched in 1955 (first from a Siberian facility and later from a series of ports built in the China Sea). With a launch failure rate of under 5%, it was seen as a cheap and reliable way to put cargo into space.

The asteroid's 1960 approach did not strike the planet, but hundreds of people were in orbit to observe it pass close enough to see through normal telescopes, A single defiant nuclear explosion a pinprick of light on its surface. Nonetheless, it reinvigorated a flagging spaceflight industry that had been reduced in urgency by three consecutive mild approaches and internal growing strife on Earth.

In the early '70s, growing arguments for social reform finally forced a change after decades of resistance. Many groups had been told for lifetimes that they needed to pull together (or otherwise to ignore their "personal troubles,") for the sake of the human race. Instead, they finally argued through protests, work stoppages and, in a few cases, violent revolt that they, too, were human, and that if it was the duty of one class of humans to work and another class to reap the benefits of surviving the end of the world, then the rights and duties must be shared equally. Lacking the time or liberty to crush these revolts, some formal steps were taken. Moreover, their persuasive argument: "Are we not human, too?" became a rallying cry around the globe. Though not as successful as civil rights movements in OTL, it was a widespread movement that continued for decades.

1980 was the first year when more than 10,000 people were in space simultaneously, marking the start of a particularly productive decade. This was due in large part to the civil rights movements of the previous decades enabling more people to work in the most demanding fields of spaceflight technology. It was also a time when biologists roved the Earth's surface, scrabbling to document as much of the fleeting existance of a wild biosphere as could be done. Seed banks and even zoos were established on the moon, though mainly they focused on preserving some small portion of the diversity of Earth's life, even as early tests of nuclear pulse propulsion rockets irradiated sections of Alaska, New Mexico, the Congo, and the Gobi.

the 1996 near approach showered the Earth with many severe asteroid impacts, but the main body once again avoided Earth, though its gravitational effects were detected influencing the orbit of the moon (very slightly, but still). Two years later, the astronomical community concluded that 2014 would be the year of impact, and recommended a crash evacuation program to flee the planet.

In these last decades, all restrictions on nuclear rockets in-atmosphere were lifted. Every conceivable method of spaceflight was attempted, and millions of people were launched, often in dreadful conditions. People soon visited everywhere from the upper atmosphere of Venus to the edges of the asteroid belt, and several nuclear-ion expeditions departed to the Jupiter and Saturn moon systems to avoid crowding out the inner system.

The destruction of Earth peppered the near side of the moon in terrestrial debris. Though about a hundred million people were alive throughout space in the immediate aftermath of the impact, only about half of them survived the next year of extreme deprivation and overcrowding.

In the decades that followed, large-scale civilization effectively vanished in the web of scattered colonies throughout the inner solar system. There were about a thousand such colonies, varying from tiny, three-man outposts in minor lunar polar craters to one of five major orbital habitats crammed with refugees. There were also at least 500 now-desolate colonies that failed at some point or another, either drifting in space or lost amid the sands of mars or the shadowed craters of Luna.

This is a diamond-hard TL~8 space game. Vessels use thermal fission rockets (with orion drives being rare, though plausible), and I recommend skipping on Spaceships and outright building vessels in Children of a Dead Earth to determine delta-v and such. The game can start at three distinct points:

A:) January 21, 2014, 9:32 GMT. The player's spaceflight authority has warned that in 24 hours, near-earth space will become too choked with debris to safely launch from Earth as the rogue planet closes with humanity's home. Impact is expected in 49 hours.

B:) January 23, 2014, 10:55 GMT. Earth has been struck.

C:) January 1, MY20D0+00:00. Happy New Year! It's been a generation since Earth was destroyed. Some of you may have hazy memories of a blue sky farther away than anything you've ever seen, except through six inches of glass. Time for a little celebration, but not too much; we have work tomorrow.

EDIT: On reflection, a few other time periods to consider:

D:) August 7, 1869. The players are their own favorite real-world ancestor and play through generations of attempting to leave the planet. Takes a lot more world-building, of course.

E:) November 14, 1996. The players are not astronauts, and have two years to become them. Less world-building than D, but more than the others.

More to follow as I construct more about the setting after the evacuation.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Technological development seems to jump forward in the 2020's on a fairly broad front. Fusion breakthroughs, solar cells become dirt cheap, rockets advance in cheapness and reliability, biotech shoots forward, and battery technology advances rapidly. In the West generally the progressives rebuild something like the New Deal/Post War consensus, living standards for working people rise dramatically. Serious progress is made of racial, sexual, gender, and other cultural issues fronts. By the 2040's society is enjoying a period reminiscent of the Gay Nineties or La Belle Epoque, or rather like these eras are/were in popular memory. That is to say a period of stable prosperity, cultural vibrancy, and a general feeling of hope.

Latin America, India, Sub Saharan Africa, and most of East and Southeast Asia, are also enjoying the good times. Musical, culinary, and fashion trends seem to come out of the global south with tons of energy and the force of a people feeling hope and excitement. All of which creates a general mood of festival and liberation.

Meanwhile, in the non-democratic parts of the world, the economy lags far behind. China grew old before they grew rich. Russia, once the oil market crashed permanently, stagnated, smothered beneath oligarchs and their corruption. The MENA lands struggle under the twin weights of dictators and religious oppression. These lands and other places and nations caught in their orbit stagnate and suffer. They refuse to blame their poverty on their rejection of democracy. They prefer to scream "IMPERIALISM!

Basically, have-not nations want war in order to both gain resources and to stop the constant images of prosperity and freedom that keep coming to them from other lands. PCs could be agents trying to stop a wide variety of attacks on the lives of ordinary people. Diplomatic games might also be interesting.