New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Elysium 2.0

Basically we start much like the film with a brutally overpopulated post disaster Earth and a vast hyperluxury space habitat. Then we have the leaders of Elysium (why change the name?) get smart. They build more habitats.

This is basically a political game. As each habitat gets built the process of building the habitats gets easier and the infrastructure and population above low orbit gets larger and more able to build new habitats. Though ten habitats at a time is a pragmatic limit for many reasons. As more habitats get built a wider group of people get taken up to live in luxury and security. Once the planetary elites who want to go and those with vital technical educations are up as well, lotteries for places in the Luxury Sky Island Paradises fill in the numbers. It's understood that people with special gifts and talents have a better chance to win, in fact it is advertised that way. Also, except for when they decide to take a small nation up in its entirety, those running the lottery make it plain they mean to spread their winners around the globe fairly evenly.

Each habitat can take a population of five million. Two hundred habitats thus takes a billion people. Twenty-five hundred habitats would be enough for all humanity to live in security and refined luxury.

There are objections.

First, many people reject the selection criteria as unfair and unjust. The idea that the powerful and the technical elites go first is rejected completely. Many demand that the most deserving should go first. Others that understand both politics and the issues involved in building projects on this scale moderate their demands and ask for a large quota of the most deserving.

Second, many racists, hyper-nationalists, and cultural reactionaries object to either taking people away from their homelands or cultural, racial, and religious, mixing in the habitats. As the habitats are culturally much like a very ritzy California suburb only with far less pollution, crime, traffic, and stress, and far better social services and social safety nets, many cultural and religious conservatives fear assimilation into one vast America!

Third, many of the rich and powerful fear an erosion of class status and privilege. Remembering the Gilbert and Sullivan song line that "when everyone is somebody/ no one's anybody." They fear their champagne won't taste right if everybody can have fine champagne too!

Fourth, many local elites fear that if everybody that wants to go to the Sky Islands leaves, who will they be ruling? As the Dictator's Handbook makes it clear, a dictator's subjects are an important resource in and of themselves. Power itself is an addictive luxury. If all the little people run off to utopia, or a semi-reasonable facsimile thereof, where does that leave the power hierarchy?

Fifth, those that reject either luxury, technology, or both, can only be sickened at the thought of the sky islands. All their visions would be kicked aside. Many philosophers proclaim comfort itself man's greatest foe. And the sky islands are comfort itself.

Thus any one working to build these lifeboats for humanity will have bitter foes and strange alliances lined up against them.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

New Phoenix

The city of New Phoenix(formally Survival base Alpha 27 Green) was founded in the mid-2050's to research the effects of isolation on communities as a preliminary to building bases on Triton and Kuiper Belt bodies. Later on in the 2070's as the Cold War between China and India grew hot it became one of the survival bases, although its older functions were continued and it was the largest and most diverse of the survival bases and the most like a normal town. Maybe that's why, after the Plague and Fire Wars, New Phoenix survived when the other communities failed, or at least stopped answering when called.

Basically, New Phoenix is a survival from the earlier world now coming out of isolation to explore the post-apocalyptic world. As written I assume that the future wars hinted at in GURPS:Bio-Tech 3e came to past and the present year is 2250 AD. Of course you can also pull out your old copies of Gamma World or consult your favorite post-apocalyptic novel or comic from After London to Kamandi just as you please.

If the PCs are only drawn from the city of New Phoenix pick a parahuman template that grants the PCs high stats, longevity, and disease resistance and give then an extra couple of hundred points above the template to build adventurers. If PCs can also include the people of the post-apocalyptic wastelands as well, either give them equal points or mutant powers to balance out the game. "Sure Mary is a hunchback with bad hearing but her Telekinetic powers are way useful!"

This campaign is envisioned as exploration and first contact. Remember the PCs have been in an enclosed city all their lives and that city has been closed off for more than a century. The PCs aren't likely to be cosmopolitan and broad minded Even if their society stressed these as values. The PCs are very likely to be both very well educated and naive. Role-play it!

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

The city of New Phoenix(formally Survival base Alpha 27 Green) was founded in the mid-2050's to research the effects of isolation on communities as a preliminary to building bases on Triton and Kuiper Belt bodies. Later on in the 2070's as the Cold War between China and India grew hot it became one of the survival bases, although its older functions were continued and it was the largest and most diverse of the survival bases and the most like a normal town. Maybe that's why, after the Plague and Fire Wars, New Phoenix survived when the other communities failed, or at least stopped answering when called.

Basically, New Phoenix is a survival from the earlier world now coming out of isolation to explore the post-apocalyptic world. As written I assume that the future wars hinted at in GURPS:Bio-Tech 3e came to past and the present year is 2250 AD. Of course you can also pull out your old copies of Gamma World or consult your favorite post-apocalyptic novel or comic from After London to Kamandi just as you please.

If the PCs are only drawn from the city of New Phoenix pick a parahuman template that grants the PCs high stats, longevity, and disease resistance and give then an extra couple of hundred points above the template to build adventurers. If PCs can also include the people of the post-apocalyptic wastelands as well, either give them equal points or mutant powers to balance out the game. "Sure Mary is a hunchback with bad hearing but her Telekinetic powers are way useful!"

This campaign is envisioned as exploration and first contact. Remember the PCs have been in an enclosed city all their lives and that city has been closed off for more than a century. The PCs aren't likely to be cosmopolitan and broad minded Even if their society stressed these as values. The PCs are very likely to be both very well educated and naive. Role-play it!

American RPG players have to role-play being both educated and naive?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

American RPG players have to role-play being both educated and naive?

Well...would you believe technically skilled and genre blind?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Well...would you believe technically skilled and genre blind?

That too...

[jason taylor]

The PCs are the security staff of a luxury liner full of the galaxies rich and powerful. One of the passengers is found murdered. It is their job to find out who did it..

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

New Phoenix


If the PCs are only drawn from the city of New Phoenix pick a parahuman template that grants the PCs high stats, longevity, and disease resistance and give then an extra couple of hundred points above the template to build adventurers.

To suggest some alternative Parahuman types.

A) You could make the city parahumans high stats with lots of advantages but throw in the Extra Life-Support disadvantage (which would be likely). After all, if all the PCs are taller, stronger, tougher, faster, and more agile, than baseline humans, they'll naturally burn more calories and need more water. Even if you only give them radically enhanced brain power that would count too. Our brains require large amounts of calories to run. Herbivores are generally less intelligent than carnivores because their diet is to low in calories to support larger brains (there may be exceptions to this general rule).

These guys will need generous extrapoints.

B) The city folk could be Psions. The mismatch between psions from a Crystal Spires and Togas society and post-apocalyptic barbarians is a genre classic. Just don't throw giant flying anti-sex heads and warriors in red dippers at them.

Make sure their psi powers can keep them alive if they're tricky.

C) The city folk might have multiple phenotypes or use bio-mods that they can change regularly. They might be optimal for their environments after a few disasters.

Give these folks few extra character points. Let them learn to customize themselves to the challenges they face.

[Astromancer]

While over on the Onyx Path Forums I read the thread on the Null Manifesto. Now the importance of the Manifesto isn't in the thing itself (it's a weird piece of Victorian claptrap with lashings of Futurism, Nietzsche, and the "philosophy" of Julius Evola, all while pretending to be woke), the importance is the idea that if you had large numbers of superpowered beings that they might constitute a new species. Where the X-Men looks at the supers being persecuted, the Null Manifesto asks if humans and superhumans can fit into the same legal system. The question is posed stupidly and with lots of 19th German hugger-mugger but it isn't a bad question. If you have demi-gods, does a legal system designed for normal humans fit them? It's clear from basic morality that some laws must cover all people, but should all laws apply to all people?

We recognize that some people are to frail/damaged to be covered by the normal function of the laws. If a child with severe mental limitations were to come across a loaded gun and to pick it up and shoot it (just like in the movies) liability for their actions, including deaths caused, would rest with their caregivers who left the child unsupervised and whoever left a dangerous weapon were just anyone could put their hands on it. But would there be cases where the simple fact of an individual being superhuman would mean they were outside of the scope of some laws?

Try this one...

Supers show up in the 1930's and 40's as in our world. The vast overwhelming majority in the USA. The first generation has about a thousand supers divided into two main groups Metahumans (they seem to be simply normal humans with greater physical and mental gifts than most people, Batman, Green Arrow, and the Blond Phantom, being examples) and Hyperhumans (which have superpowers, with or without being Metahuman). Metahumans in the first generation were 80% of supers

The next generation of supers shows up in the 50's through the 70's. There are about 10,000 of these. The USA still has the majority of the supers, but it is less of a majority. Each generation is an order of magnitude larger.

Thus, in 2045, the fifth generation is about a million supers. All Hyperhumans have full metahuman traits plus superpowers. Metahumans of the fifth generation have minimum stats of 18, with traits like Perfect Balance, Rapid Healing, Longevity, and other advantages as well. Plus most Metahumans are at least Handsome/Beautiful. The proportion of Metahumans to Hyperhumans is now 40%/60% with the Hyperhumans being dominant. America still has a larger than normal proportion of Supers about five times what chance would suggest. American supers tend to be more powerful as well.

It seems certain that at this rate supers will out number ordinary human in four generations. This means that baseline humans will be mentally retarded by the standards of the larger society. Even baseline humans that are Olympic level athletes will be weaker, slower, clumsier, and frailer, than ordinary supers. At what point does the society fall apart?

[tshiggins]

It seems certain that at this rate supers will out number ordinary human in four generations. This means that baseline humans will be mentally retarded by the standards of the larger society. Even baseline humans that are Olympic level athletes will be weaker, slower, clumsier, and frailer, than ordinary supers. At what point does the society fall apart?

I'm not sure that it does fall apart.

If supers are incredibly powerful and indestructible -- say, Clark Kent or Jean Gray -- and are few in number, and have no interest in adherence to law, then society has a problem. How does one bind Superman?

However, if there are many superheroes, society probably doesn't fall apart. It just becomes their society.

I mean, if Jean Grey goes all dark and peckish, it's only a problem if Kent, Carol Danvers and Thor aren't around. If they are, then it's just another day, only with a pretty light show in the ionosphere, and Grey winds up catatonic in a cell on Luna with the other "natural disaster" class supers.

All else being equal, sociopaths are the designated losers when surrounded by properly socialized people with similar capabilities.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I'm not sure that it does fall apart.

If supers are incredibly powerful and indestructible -- say, Clark Kent or Jean Gray -- and are few in number, and have no interest in adherence to law, then society has a problem. How does one bind Superman?

However, if there are many superheroes, society probably doesn't fall apart. It just becomes their society.

I mean, if Jean Grey goes all dark and peckish, it's only a problem if Kent, Carol Danvers and Thor aren't around. If they are, then it's just another day, only with a pretty light show in the ionosphere, and Grey winds up catatonic in a cell on the Luna with the other "natural disaster" class supers.

All else being equal, sociopaths are the designated losers when surrounded by properly socialized people with similar capabilities.

You're good at being sane. I like that. However, the transition would be rough, transitions involving transphers of power away from people not yet ready to give it up aways are. And that would be the campaign.