New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Bussiness as Usual During Alterations

In setting the process of fading from Earth to another planet isn't unpleasant. Most people in the USA or other fading lands are simply aware of new places they can go to that they couldn't get to before. People can walk down the street to the Quickie Mart or to a wilderness.

Due to the US government being in a New Dealish/Liberal (American meaning) phase, a modification of Jefferson's systems of land sales gets uses. As with Jefferson's plans, this democratizes land ownership. As with Ladejinsky's reworkings of Jefferson's ideas on land sales and ownership the upshot is a society with a strong will toward democratic self-governance and individual liberties.

Because the land on the New Planet (Named Sally Franklin, the star it orbits is named Benjamine Franklin) is both more abundant than the Earth, land to sea ratio 30/70, and arranged to favor arable lands with mild maritime climates and broad navigatable rivers, people get somewhat spread out but not isolated from each other.

The US government invests strongly in a system of rail, marine, and aviation travel. Roads are mainly local. The new territories use proportional representation to elect representatives for their territorial legislatures. Which leads to more dynamic politics.

The opportunities and benefits of the new territories pull large numbers of people in. However, most of the moves, even if they are into a frontier, feel/seem more like moving to a new house in your own neighborhood. You can even shop in the same stores and call out for pizza or Chinese food to the same restaurants.

MORE LATER...

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Bussiness as Usual During Alterations

Campaigns dealing with this setting need to either focus on one period in depth or skip along the timeline. Although the start of the setting is a period of chaos things would settle down. The political twist would be the USA fading out politically over the thirty years is steadily changing its political status. This would alter the relative status and general behavior of all other nations.

Example: Russia and China are both aggressive and expansionist, China the far more subtly so, they have reason to be far more confident in the long run. With US power fading to nothing, both of these powers would see far less risk in open aggression. Similarly, Human Rights, important to the USA, would fade as a political priority. And as both China and Russia have historically seen Human Rights as a Western fraud used to restrict their actions, the fade out would be total.

Any nation fading out would go through the same process.

As a corollary, certain nations would become more militant. Both the EU and India would see a profound need to focus on defense. Pacifists in Europe would be bitter because without the US defense umbrella Europe would need to have a serious military that could deter Russian adventurism.

In the European case, there are other internal complications. To have an effective military the EU would need to become far more unified and centralized and deal with the democracy deficit. All over the political spectrum, this would cause pain, loss, and dislocation.

In the Islamic world, having both Europe and India suddenly get tough and scary would terrify. Add in the fact that Russia wants/traditionally believes it needs control in Iran and Turkey, and you have a recipe for vast panic and loud if delusional cries of genocide and imperialism. Of course, both China and Russia ARE imperialist, and won't care if people scream at them.

Basically, you have a world going toward World War III.

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[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Bussiness as Usual During Alterations

One possible later campaign with this idea would be set after the USA is gone. It assumes Ireland, or rather the Republic of Ireland was taken along with the USA. However, a deal was arranged with the powers that set up the whole weirdness to give the people of Northern Ireland the option to join the rest of their people on planet Sally.

This campaign would be set about 2060, ten years after the USA finished vanishing. Russia is a collapsing nation threatening all and sundry with nukes and making demands. As South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have all gone with the USA, instead of facing Chinese domination, North Korea is desperate for someone to blackmail. With no USA or Japan around, North Korea is no longer useful and still a bandit chiefdom with nukes.

The whole international system is in flux and war is everywhere. It is assumed that China and Russia will soon have a nuclear war, with India and Europe dragged in.

Large numbers of people are going to Northern Ireland to get an Irish person to take them over to planet Sally. As the Irish people of Northern Ireland can simply walk over to Planet Sally with no trouble and take people with them.

This is more involved than it seems.

First, both British and European authorities don't want a Brain Drain, especially in the STEM subjects. If the latest radical poet leaves the planet they'll live with that. There's also some worry about losing too many young people of military age.

Second, not all of the local Ulster Protestants are happy with what's going on. The rest of the Island of Ireland has disappeared (as with other countries important monuments, sites of great sentimental value, archeological sites, and similar cultural sites, somehow simply moved to Planet Sally.) Sections of Northern Ireland have also disappeared in proportion to the proportion of the population that has gone over to Planet Sally. This breeds a panicked belief that if people keep going to Planet Sally, the rest of the island will sink and they'll be homeless. Which leads to hostility toward refugees.

Third, although most people on Planet Sally either welcomes the mostly highly educated and skilled refugees or simply don't care at all, a small group is paranoid and bitter. They see the refugees as serious threats. Generally different kinds of threat depending on the pathology of the given paranoid.

This means that a simple planed stroll in Belfast could become brutally complicated.

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[Astromancer]

I'm rereading Dune, and it seemed to me that one thread of the plot could make an interesting setting on its own.

The planet Furrina was ironically named. Furrina was a goddess of springs and almost all the water on the planet Furrina is underground and staying that way. A local lifeform has vast amounts of water locked up inside of its many billion individuals.

This lifeform provides a useful export, an exotic drug of astounding properties. These properties were long ago understood and cheap synthetics have replaced the natural form of the drug and has far fewer side-effects. Still, some connoisseurs keep the drug fashionable and the raw powder the drug is made from can be refined into a spice that is a steady seller.

The local Shahrdar (petty nobles owing allegiance to a Shah/Emperor) realize their fife is in a precarious position. They seek to terraform their dominion into a far more Earthlike world. The various small communities of oasis dwellers (to the extent anyplace on Furrina could be called an oasis) favor the plan as do the city folk.

Although some of the desert tribes love the idea of a green and wet world, others, knowing they would never be forgiven their rebellions against the Shahrdar, fight the change. Variegated smugglers and pirates who use Furrina as a base/hideout prefer the desolate and impoverished world. A green and blue Furrina would have a much larger population and the resources to police their world. This would mean the Pirates and smugglers would need bases elsewhere and the options in this sector are few and poor indeed.

This is a straight up Space Opera. The planet is a fairly freeform mix of 17th century Morocco with the 17th century West Indies, and enough Arrakis to bind the mix together. Be sure to have psionic witches, preferably disguised as nuns, and weird psions, and people with exotic mental training and stranger martial arts.

If you have a copy of Dune, just use the terraforming plan from the appendix. And assume a similar timeframe.

[Astromancer]

In this setting, in 2034 a minor project working on subtle ways of scanning human brains in real time (the CIA wants to build a totally noninvasive, and unobtrusive, lie detector that really works) makes an accidental discovery. They discover the areas of the brain involved in Psi events. Using simple Biofeedback techniques they quickly achieve easily repeatable phenomena. In less than five years the CIA has a highly skilled corps of Psions.

For a while, the simple fact of all the wacko conspiracy theories focused on the CIA keeps the Psi-Corps secret. But the secret will out. Meanwhile, the Psi-corps was always going to be a weirdness magnet, just read this book.

The PCs are assigned to keep the Psi-corps under warps. Brutality is not allowed, either mental or physical, but pranks are allowed and make practical good sense. PCs will need to be Warrior-Psions with high social skills and a lively sense of humor and absurdity.

[Astromancer]

This is a throwaway but I think it is a fun one. Start with the Third Imperium from Traveller ( or whatever big Space Opera you like) and have the Cabal discover the path to this reality.

The Cabal could hide easily among the myriad local religious cults of the Third Imperium. Mind you, the Imperium's endless hunt for psis and the Zhodani's endless attempts to infiltrate the Imperium will be burdens. Also, the Ancients and Grandfather are landmines available to foul up even the most powerful lodges.

Wizards, especially as no one believes in magic, would be very powerful as background manipulators. And background manipulation is the Cabal's preferred mode of operation.

[Astromancer]

This is another throwaway,

In the period just as the Atreides were moving in on Arrakis the Baron Harkonnen dies. Basically, his suspensor belt shorted out while the Baron was floating down a staircase. Since the Baron Harkonnen, when he's in normal gravity, weights 200 kilos (440lbs), his landing on top of Piter De Vries and then knocking Feyd Rautha and several other close relatives down a long steep ceremonial staircase led to many fatalities. This led to a vicious fight breaking out among the lesser Harkonnens as to who would be head of the House. The whole plan to wipe out the Atredies simply jams to a stop.

From here you can go two ways. First you can game out the problems the book sets up for the Atreides and their allies. Building up both Arrakis' economy and their political position, remember the Emperor still hates/fears them and the other Houses aren't trustworthy. Second you can give the Atreides several years to rebuild themselves and build allies on Arrakis, then have a new Harkonnen leader strike to recover the riches of Arrakis.

[Astromancer]

Buck Gorden and Flash Rogers are two swell guys that run an interstellar freight service out in the frontier sectors near Tau Saltator (one of the new constellations that can't be seen from Earth, because of the nebula blocking it). They have some Alliance mail contracts and resupply several local scout bases, as well as run a tramp starliner in the sector. Well, Buck told Flash that he meant to make an honest man of him, and Flash accepted. Those two are off on their honeymoon. They've ordered a baby from StorksRUS(they're blending their DNA but getting improvements). Now all they need a few new pilots to take over some of the trickier runs while they're bonding with their new child (they've decided to let their child pick their own sex and sexual orientation later on when the kid knows their own mind better).

Basically, the PCs are newbie space pilots in an area of recent human exploration and anomalous older settlements. Many of these strange older settlements seem to be pragmaclapses leftover pieces of vanished histories. The people are human or human descended and live in a variety of older cultures and odd societies that seem like thought experiments set up and left running when the experimenters lost interest. The PCs would be making rounds of pickups and deliveries and side trips to off the path worlds for various errands including delivering anthropologists and archeologists to new worlds.

The atmosphere is a cross between golden age sci fi and pulp adventure stories set in the south seas with some Casablanca, the Arabian Nights, Gulliver's Travels and Mandeville's Travels, tossed in. Cinematic Adventures, Northwest Smith meets Indiana Jones at Rick's American Cafe.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

This is a throwaway but I think it is a fun one. Start with the Third Imperium from Traveller ( or whatever big Space Opera you like) and have the Cabal discover the path to this reality.

The Cabal could hide easily among the myriad local religious cults of the Third Imperium. Mind you, the Imperium's endless hunt for psis and the Zhodani's endless attempts to infiltrate the Imperium will be burdens. Also, the Ancients and Grandfather are landmines available to foul up even the most powerful lodges.

Wizards, especially as no one believes in magic, would be very powerful as background manipulators. And background manipulation is the Cabal's preferred mode of operation.

The Imperium would likely invoke Clarke's Law when encountering magic ie this is some super advanced tech they didn't understand or the product of higher dimensional beings. Of course things like Quantum Mechanics would "explain" any "spirit" based magic. Think the technomages of Babylon 5 or Korob and Sylvia of Star Trek and you get an idea of how the Imperium views magic.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Wizards, especially as no one believes in magic, would be very powerful as background manipulators. And background manipulation is the Cabal's preferred mode of operation.

And the whole operation was going well, until one of the Lodge Masters became especially suspicious his rivals were corrupting his minions, used his divination techniques to reveal their "ultimate loyalty" and discovered 25% of everybody who had ever been to this world now had that set to "The Manipulation Club of Gurrean"....