New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If they're this powerful, what's the point in opposing them?

Perhaps the PCs are simply stubborn. Or maybe things aren't what they look like.

An element of the setting I didn't mention. Rifting off Riverworld these aliens have recorded humanity for millennia. In fact billions (by one estimate around 26 billion by 1970) of humans were recorded, and these records were used to create the populations of many of the other worlds.

I'd have a long dead relative of one of the PCs contact them. some of the PCs, as in GURPS:Riverworld, could themselves be recreations of long dead people.

By the way, the referenced to Riverworld, were most of the PCs don't know if the makers of the Riverworld can be opposed by mere mortals, and the Madness Dossier, were the Red Kings are ancient gods also have the PCs up against incredible odds.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If they're this powerful, what's the point in opposing them?

Because that's what pc's do!

[ronwit]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Rifting off Riverworld .

Perhaps there are aliens who oppose what is happening and are trying to undo at least part of it. Or (from Flight 13) experimentalists who just want to see what happens. Also from Flight 13, the implanted memories could start to break down leaving them both set of memories. How do the PCs react to those close to them who don't remember them at all or were only close due to the fake memories?

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Rifting off bad climate change films with Dennis Quade in them, sudden climate change. There was a book in the 90's that claimed a hemisphere wide superstorm, lasting several weeks, would accompany climate change. The book, the title of which eludes me, depicted a more northernly area of ice ( the sudden cooling being, as in the film, a reaction to the sudden warming) than Quade's film. So the possibility that the American Southwest becomes more fertile (which is the normal pattern in ice ages) is high.

If we set the game in 2029 four years after the storm, refugees from the Northern US are still moving south. Southern society is radically transformed by both the new populations and the on going emergency measures. The USA is internally focused.

The population of Russia was driven south and conquered Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and all of the Arabian peninsula. Holding these territories is a nightmare. The monsoon system has stopped and India is in the fifth year of a mega- drought. The people of Europe have fled either to North Africa or Latin America. The North Africans put up with the Europeans as a means to keep the Russians out.

China is a mass of civil wars. Korea is worse. Once it was understood they could not use blackmail anymore, Kim ordered an invasion of the South. The South won, but there was no nation left. The survivors were taken to America. Japan's population mainly fled to Latin America.

Most of the rest of the world is in economic chaos. The US government is set up in San Diego.

PCs could be aid workers trying to bring order to chaos. Salvage parties sent to bring valuable materials from frozen areas. Diplomats trying to head off crisis. Or ordinary people trying to survive.

[Astromancer]

Try this one..

You are among the people on one of the twenty or so Generation Ships that escaped the solar system after the last wars. After many long and fruitless centuries the Singing Soaring Lark and it's crew have found a terraformable world. Tests show that the local life forms, all primitive single celled organisms, will be wiped out by bringing in Earthlife forms (yes some say it's wrong, the vast majority say microbes have no rights).

Now a new struggle begins, what will be the form of the new society?

Basically, it's a remix of Alphacentauri. With the weight towards Social engineering.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

In our actual history, some people expected to find mammoths and dinosaurs in the interior of the Americas and Africa. They still are looking for a dinosaur in the Congo. That's were Connan Doyle got Lost World and all those African and Asian even Antarctic "lost world's" came from.

Well, let someone find dinosaurs in Borneo or South America. We're is not the issue, it's all about which critters get lose and cause chaos. Introduce a raptor into modern Africa, Latin America, or large areas of Asia, and you'll have chaos and terror. This would be a gritty monster hunt.

[Astromancer]

One good variant would be to have a triceratops- like dinosaur be discovered. Something halfway between an elephant and a rhino in size would do. These creatures are discovered to be delicious. Far better than reports of the flavor of the Galapagos Giant Turtles. Because these creatures are herbivores and grow very quickly they make good candidates for food herd beasts. Problem they're cantankerous as hell and like to wonder freely.

Hilarity ensues.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

One good variant wood to have a triceratops- like dinosaur be discovered. Something halfway between an elephant and a rhino in size would do. These creatures are discovered to be delicious. Far better than reports of the flavor of the Galapagos Giant Turtles. Because these creatures are herbivores and grow very quickly they make good candidates for food herd beasts. Problem they're cantankerous as hell and like to wonder freely.

Hilarity ensues.

Better yet, also make them able to be domesticated (if pretty stupid and sometimes ill-tempered) and willing to take riders and act as draft animals.

Suddenly, much of the huge advantage held by Europeans disappears, because the American Indians had available to them a source of tremendous animal muscle power, for thousands of years.

Agriculture is far more advanced, widespread and productive (even though somewhat hamstrung by the north-south orientation of the topography of the New World, if Jared Diamond's hypothesis is used), and construction and mining, as well as military capabilities, increase tremendously.

Throw in some diseases that manage to jump from dino to humans, against which Europeans have no immunity, and the sudden contact between the two biomes unleashes chaos, worldwide.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Well, let someone find dinosaurs in Borneo or South America. We're is not the issue, it's all about which critters get lose and cause chaos. Introduce a raptor into modern Africa, Latin America, or large areas of Asia, and you'll have chaos and terror. This would be a gritty monster hunt.

Would you?

For 65 million years these things have been confined to this remote refuge area so well no species of them has gotten out and been successful enough to leave traces in the fossil record anywhere. This is a long time for any isolation mechanism to hold up, even if it's an *ocean*, never mind a barrier confining something to [part] of a continent or island. For that matter it's time enough for a mammal lineage to evolve to fly. This suggests the dinosaurs that did get out must have be really bad at surviving the outside ecosystem. That sort of made sense with the old conception of dinosaur extinction, where they reason they all died out was being outcompeted by mammals, though the barrier holding up well enough to keep the mammals [out] then becomes the logic problem. It doesn't hold up so well when their doom is mostly a random result of a mass extinction, but I suppose it somehow has to be true if you actually find a refuge population.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Better yet, also make them able to be domesticated (if pretty stupid and sometimes ill-tempered) and willing to take riders and act as draft animals.

Suddenly, much of the huge advantage held by Europeans disappears, because the American Indians had available to them a source of tremendous animal muscle power, for thousands of years.

Agriculture is far more advanced, widespread and productive (even though somewhat hamstrung by the north-south orientation of the topography of the New World, if Jared Diamond's hypothesis is used), and construction and mining, as well as military capabilities, increase tremendously.

Throw in some diseases that manage to jump from dino to humans, against which Europeans have no immunity, and the sudden contact between the two biomes unleashes chaos, worldwide.

This is a grand idea, but it belongs on the Alternate world's thread so that you can get the love you deserve.