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Old 11-11-2019, 11:41 AM   #1331
Astromancer
 
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

I'm reading Jack Williamson's novel Terraforming Earth. I'm not that far in but the basic problem, the Earth is rendered sterile by an asteroid strike and a human community dwelling on the Moon has to restore the ecosystem, seems epic enough.

I'd have different parameters. I'd have a thriving series of lunar towns and cities survive the impact. I'd also have the asteroid be smaller, larger than the asteroid in the Chicxulub Event, but nowhere near as large as Williamson's asteroid.

Basically, you've got a shattered Earth, but a few survivors are possible. Restoring the ecosystem would be a multi-generational struggle, not multi millennia.

An interesting variant might be the descendants, of those that survived the impact on Earth and formed a tribal group, meeting settlers from the lunar colonies trying to rebuild and old nation or community. There would be many different sources of conflict in the scenario.
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Old 11-16-2019, 12:56 PM   #1332
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Try this one...

The 2020 to 2040 period was unexpectedly good. Many useful technologies came on line, solar plummeted in price, fusion became commercially viable, biotech shot forward. The world was soon divided into two main groups. The democracies where lifespans were raising dramatically, work weeks were down to twenty-five hours (even in the States), only those making less than 20% of Median Income could be said to be struggling. No one is without necessities or the normal comforts. Inequality is becoming far rarer. Household automation means that even in homes were no one does much housework, the house does most of it's own cleaning and maintenance.

Meanwhile, nondemocratic nations aren't doing anywhere near as well. Communism and Fascism are both dead, except as pejoratives, plutocratic oligarchy is how non-democracies work. And the Oligarchs have a problem. There world is more connected than ever, so the people who live in oligarchies are aware of democracies and that life is far better in those lands.

The oligarchs can't just attack the democracies. The democracies are far richer, so even though they spend a much smaller percentage of the income on defense and military, it's far more than the oligarchs can match. However the oligarchs have allies. The rich of the democracies see the handwriting on the wall. Just as the poor become less common so do the rich. People simply don't care about the opinions of the super-rich anymore. The Retier Class is being phased out. The old money rich, and their whole social world is simply being dumped. The Rich don't like this, and they can make their displeasure known.

Basically it's a distinctive cyber-punk campaign. The world is mainly wonderful, at least among the democracies. However, the Rich are trying to take the serene world down and replace it with inequality and thus secure their wealth. However the masses know they've got a good thing going and aren't willing to let go. Sci Fi conspiracy and spies on a theme of the Classes versus the Masses.
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Old 11-16-2019, 04:31 PM   #1333
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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Try this one...

The 2020 to 2040 period was unexpectedly good. Many useful technologies came on line, solar plummeted in price, fusion became commercially viable, biotech shot forward. The world was soon divided into two main groups. The democracies were lifespans were raising dramatically, work weeks were down to twenty-five hours (even in the States), only those making less than 20% of Median Income could be said to be struggling. No one is without necessities or the normal comforts. Inequality is becoming far rarer. Household automation means that even in homes were no one does much housework, the house does most of it's own cleaning and maintenance.

Meanwhile, nondemocratic nations aren't doing anywhere near as well. Communism and Fascism are both dead, except as pejoratives, plutocratic oligarchy is how non-democracies work. And the Oligarchs have a problem. There world is more connected than ever, so the people who live in oligarchies are aware of democracies and that live is far better in those lands.
So...what's the problem? It is already the case that people in some countries know that life is better in richer countries. So what?
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Old 11-16-2019, 06:59 PM   #1334
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So...what's the problem? It is already the case that people in some countries know that life is better in richer countries. So what?
If people aren't willing to accept oligarchic rule, then oligarchs have problems. It's more or less a soopped up version of Putan's issues with the USA. He knows that his form of government makes Russia poor. He, Putan, can see no way to heal Russia that leaves him in power and/or doesn't lead to civil war. Making America look bad, making all democracies look bad, and causing chaos to show his people they need him to protect them, is all he's got.

Also this world is in most ways much better. Life in the democracies seems utopian. It isn't, but it seems that way. That's creating a crisis of rising expectations.
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Old 11-16-2019, 08:01 PM   #1335
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If people aren't willing to accept oligarchic rule, then oligarchs have problems. .
"If". I can point at a lot of history that says that people are in fact willing to accept corrupt and oppressive rule, if only because the consequences of not doing that are so dire. And given that you've described a setting where people are increasingly unnecessary, that means they're increasingly expendable if they make trouble. So the options for the disgruntled are simple. They can take off, and their oligarchs will cheerfully wave farewell to their population surplus and build more machines. They can shut up and work longer hours at lower pay to stay competitive with the machines. Or they can rise up and die.
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Old 11-16-2019, 08:11 PM   #1336
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"If". I can point at a lot of history that says that people are in fact willing to accept corrupt and oppressive rule, if only because the consequences of not doing that are so dire. And given that you've described a setting where people are increasingly unnecessary, that means they're increasingly expendable if they make trouble. So the options for the disgruntled are simple. They can take off, and their oligarchs will cheerfully wave farewell to their population surplus and build more machines. They can shut up and work longer hours at lower pay to stay competitive with the machines. Or they can rise up and die.
This has gaming possibilities too.
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Old 11-18-2019, 12:28 PM   #1337
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Try this one...

Certain people can Time Travel. Why? That confuses them too. They've got no answer.

The power comes in levels. Each level allows the traveler to move themselves and Heavy Encumbrance back or forth up to one year for five fatigue. Being able to take another person is a 40% advantage. Reducing the per year fatigue cost to 1 is a 40% advantage. Beginners can buy up to five levels or as much as their fatigue will allow which ever is less. Thus Bill with ten fatigue and needing five fatigue per year is limited to two levels. Sally has only eight fatigue, but she has the advantage of only needing one fatigue per year, so she has five levels.

Time travel has limitations in this setting. The main limitation is that history can't be changed. It might seem to change, but things snap back into place fairly quickly in most cases. Thus if a time traveler picks someone's pocket, or, after reading Wednesday's paper goes and bets on Tuesday's horse races, such details are simply wiped clean, they never happened. Similarly, no one recognizes the Time Travelers when they travel back again. If you traveled to 1949 and became friends with James Dean, as long as you remained in that time period never traveling more than a few cumulative days, he'd remember you, if he was going to remember you. But any significant time travel clears away all memories. Note: The stronger the emotions linked to the personal connections made, the more time travel needed to erase the memories.

Any one trying to hard to change history gets backlash from time. This backlash comes in levels. The odd numbered levels come with a negative reaction modifier, this modifier is -1 per odd numbered level off all reaction roles. This comes from the character seeming uncanny and somehow wrong. Most people simply interpret this as the PC is shifty or untrustworthy. Each even numbered level counts as a level of Unnatural Feature. Basically, people's perception of the PC is somehow distorted. Odd things seem to happen around them. The light isn't right or some other subtle issue. If a PC gets ten levels of distortion or more, they are no longer perceived as human. Many stories of ghosts or devils come from high distortion Time Travelers.

More Later...
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Old 11-20-2019, 05:07 PM   #1338
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
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"If". I can point at a lot of history that says that people are in fact willing to accept corrupt and oppressive rule, if only because the consequences of not doing that are so dire. And given that you've described a setting where people are increasingly unnecessary, that means they're increasingly expendable if they make trouble. So the options for the disgruntled are simple. They can take off, and their oligarchs will cheerfully wave farewell to their population surplus and build more machines. They can shut up and work longer hours at lower pay to stay competitive with the machines. Or they can rise up and die.
Also corrupt and oppressive when applied to entire systems becomes less definitive.

Suppose there is an empire where the emperor is locked up with concubines and feasting and palaces; the executive branch actually handled by the minister, and every province administered by some official every one of whom tipples and everyone knows it.

That does not prevent there being an official who is honest (think Sano Ichiro), maybe quite a few of them. Enough that the system is bearable.

And sometimes the corruption is even advantageous, as when it prevents an ostentatiously stupid decree from being carried out.
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Old 11-22-2019, 12:32 PM   #1339
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The plague wasn't even noticed at first. Pregnancies just stopped happening in 2037. The exception was in the USA, pregnancies were down 90% but there were still pregnancies. Before a war broke out the reason was discovered. A new American Flu vaccine, genetically engineered to immunize against all forms of flu, gave a weak protection against the sterility plague.

After seven years of research a medicine that allowed a small percentage of people to have children was found. Still, there was a global Birth collapse.

In 2056 a vaccine against the sterility plague was released. However, it only worked for those who hadn't yet gone through puberty. These children were rare, but the all got the vaccine.

It's now 2087, the fiftieth anniversary of the plague. The culprits were never found. The world is divided into old and middle aged people facing poverty and misery in their declining years and a small number of younger people trying to build some kind of a future for themselves and humanity.

Much of this world is empty, the old were always a minority. Many of the remaining old are bitter toward the young because they know that the young ones are to few to care for them and to busy raising large families. There are angry political divisions as well. Religious groups decry the largely secular education of the young. Many faiths see themselves as going extinct. Similarly, marginalized ethnic and racial groups see themselves as being written out of history. Were they have descendants, many of these know nothing of their ancestors' traditional ways having had to learn base line survival skills first. Rural people are especially bitter as the few young people there are around congregate almost exclusively in the cities and Vertical Farming is replacing traditional agriculture.

Basically, it's a world of conflict and paranoia. Many people still believe the US government knew something about the plague (although scholars and global leaders know better, mainly because such a secret wouldn't be something that could be hidden). Conspiracy theories lead to riots in this world.
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Old 11-26-2019, 12:07 PM   #1340
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Try this one...

The plague wars started sometime after 2040. The plague manifested as a minor bout of flu, but the virus was genetically engineered to turn the immune system against the brain. The normal pattern was a spiral into insanity and violence followed by death. Luckily for the human species some major nations had been experimenting with flu vaccines meant to work on all variants of the virus. Thus the major industrial nations survived, brutally diminished, into the 2100's.

In North America, Europe, Japan, India, Australia, Korea, Indonesia, Greater Southeast Africa, Brazil, and the Iranian & Kurdish Secular Republic, there are small islands of Tech Level Nine around selected Universities. New Zealand and Ireland are the only nations pretty much all at TL8 or better. Most towns and cities in the surviving nations are far below TL9, many struggle to hold onto TL6. Still, rebuilding goes on.

Much of the rural areas of this world are empty and dangerous. wandering mad men are a common threat. Life in the cities is also paranoid. When insanity is a plague that can strike anyone, fear slowly erodes life, hope, and dignity. Adding to the paranoia, no one knows who started the plague.

Another horror from the plague, some people seem to have gained Psionic powers from their disease. Psi is a major field of study, and psi powers are unlocked enough to allow any PC to buy Psi Talent and Psi Perks, but other than Emotion Sense Psi powers beyond the perk level can only be gained by spending experience points. And only a quarter of experience points can be spent on PSI.

Basically post-apocalyptic survival horror with espionage (who started the plagues, can they do it again?) thrown in.
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