New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[thorr-kan]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Nabbed! Sounds like a very fun book.

It's a very Baen book, though in the Flint/Freer sense, not the Ringo/Weber/Drake sense.

And it is very fun.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

It's believed that the greatest discovery of the ages has been made. The way back to Earth is now known! Problem, it was always known that the lost colony fleet was sucked back into the distant past by the spacial anomaly. But how far past was never truly known. Now they can figure it out, because the Earth they've found is the one they left only a few months later!

Basically, TL12^ humans (think The Culture) has found THS Earth. PCs will be starship heroes exploring a cyberpunk world, their own past!

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

The 2020's saw massive improvements in robotics, biotechnology, commercial fusion power generation, superconductors, nanotechnology, and all forms of computing. By 2030 it seemed like a century of progress had been made, the world in GURPS terms was tech level 10!

The rapid advances put the world on the edge of a crisis, how to the economy going when almost everybody over the ages of 32 has an obsolete education! They're TL8 people in a TL10 world. Then in comes Direct to Brain Knowledge Transfers! Simply download needed skills. Soon education is training to use your creativity and judgement, tech skills, languages, ect, that stuff you download!

Soon the download process is hacked and reversed. People can up-load themselves to new bodies. Most people have chips installed that constantly record all their memories, along with the personality. A brain tape. Most people buy insurance that allows for back-up chips updated regularly and extra bodies in case the old one is destroyed. People are now functionally immortal, at least the rich are.

The world has become a struggle between the Haves and the Have-Nots. Meanwhile the Haves struggle against each other to control a larger share of the pie. Few powerful people are gracious losers in this world. Murdering your rivals is so much harder these days. Luckily their are assassins ready to take the job.

Basically, this is a cyberpunk corporate feud setting. The Expanse meets Dollhouse. Minds and bodies are infinitely malleable, if you have money. It's wetwork in a world that looks sweet and wholesome. But the pretty apple is full of worms.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

The 2020's saw massive improvements in robotics, biotechnology, commercial fusion power generation, superconductors, nanotechnology, and all forms of computing. By 2030 it seemed like a century of progress had been made, the world in GURPS terms was tech level 10!

The rapid advances put the world on the edge of a crisis, how to the economy going when almost everybody over the ages of 32 has an obsolete education! They're TL8 people in a TL10 world. Then in comes Direct to Brain Knowledge Transfers! Simply download needed skills. Soon education is training to use your creativity and judgement, tech skills, languages, ect, that stuff you download!

Soon the download process is hacked and reversed. People can up-load themselves to new bodies. Most people have chips installed that constantly record all their memories, along with the personality. A brain tape. Most people buy insurance that allows for back-up chips updated regularly and extra bodies in case the old one is destroyed. People are now functionally immortal, at least the rich are.

The world has become a struggle between the Haves and the Have-Nots. Meanwhile the Haves struggle against each other to control a larger share of the pie. Few powerful people are gracious losers in this world. Murdering your rivals is so much harder these days. Luckily their are assassins ready to take the job.

Basically, this is a cyberpunk corporate feud setting. The Expanse meets Altered Carbon, meets Dollhouse. Minds and bodies are infinitely malleable, if you have money. It's wetwork in a world that looks sweet and wholesome. But the pretty apple is full of worms.

I slipped up and need to make changes. Added the Altered Carbon reference.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Basically, this is a cyberpunk corporate feud setting. The Expanse meets Altered Carbon, meets Dollhouse. Minds and bodies are infinitely malleable, if you have money. It's wetwork in a world that looks sweet and wholesome. But the pretty apple is full of worms.

Sounds like Elysium on steroids!

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

Sounds like Elysium on steroids!

Elysium can be in the mix. But try a different tack. TV Tropes talks about crapsaccharine worlds. Worlds that seem okay or even utopian on the surface but are sick underneath. Like pretty apples filed with worms, these worlds entice but are vile in substance. A world that looked like a poplux raygun gothic wonderland( gee whiz we've got immortality and space flight!) but was in fact a cubical land corperate hell filled with constant violent intrigue and feuding is the original idea. But the idea of a false utopia using another utopia ( false or otherwise) as a carrot to balance their many sticks, is solid.

The malliblity of minds in this setting is and arditional trap for most people. It promises liberation at the cost of your freedom and enlightenment at the cost of your soul. Imagine working at a corporation that gets to sculpt your personality and beliefs to their agendas. To say there'd be abuses is abusing understatement.

The PCs would need to be the kind of people who can stay unowned.

[Astromancer]

Anyone that had the old RingWorld game will remember the flying cities. My idea takes those cities and the Ringworld millennia after Louis Wu and friends rediscovered it. Vast population of humans, Kzin and other outside species now live on the ring.

The city's name is Damhsa Féileacán. The city's towers look like jewels, blossoms, Christmas tree ornaments, or butterflies. The city is older than any Earth city of the present day. It's luxurious, beautiful, and more decadent than any Earth city ever has been. At least to this day, picture a sci fi Lankhmar with more elaborate protocol. The bright streets of Damhsa Féileacán host constant carnivals and masquerades. The bright games cover constant deadly intrigue.

Meanwhile the city drifts on over jungles, deserts. mountains, forests, and vast empty plains. The city is taking a slow scenic loop around the RingWorld. This will take millennia to finish. But no one's in a rush.

Basically, the PCs are cityfolk from a sort of Lankhmar, Gormenghast, Viriconium blend. While a couple of thousand feet below you is a planetary romance style wilderness with dinosaurs, primitive humans, barbarian kingdoms, and all other sources of adventure past by.

PCs can move from urban fantasy to pulp adventure and back between lunch and dinners. Plots from Wodehouse can take place above plots from Burroughs with the same PCs involved.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

In February of 2025 spaceships land in Washington DC. They're time travelers from an alternate history. After a day or two CNN understands what that means and astronomers have checked the other news. An asteroid roughly twice the size of Ceres is heading toward the Earth. It will arrive in early 2040 and wipe out all Earth life either by direct collision or by breaking up and showering the Earth with enough asteroid fragments to wipe out all life anyway.

However the Time Travelers came back with a purpose. They were the remnants of Earth's peoples fled to the stars because monster AI created for conquest and gone mad and sterilized the solar system. They wanted to take all of humanity, or at least all that would come with them, to their future.

Basically, project what you see yourself being in seven years and then go off to a TL 12^ society in interstellar space. Everybody who is willing to go gets to go. So you're in deep space, and so is your old girlfriend or boyfriend, maybe your third grade teacher. Most older people are rejuvenated with TL 12^ medical science and are young and active.

Some people find themselves considered Probationary Personalities mainly the violent and the fanatics, some others, they're placed of low tech terraformed planets. Some stay at the rehabilitation camps, hoping to get to leave by reforming their character. These camps are lovely to look at and as comfortable as world class resorts, but they are rehabilitation camps. And rehabilitation is hard work. Beyond the camps the prisoners are allowed to build their own societies, many do, most of these are pretty brutal.

Most people are joyfully living the sci fi dream and living it large though.

More later.

[Astromancer]

Crocus


The plague wars really don't have a true beginning day. The whole point of bio weapons is covert attack. Still, the total collapse of international trade in 2035, generally provides the starting point of the Plague Wars. With 2097, the period when no NEW exotic plagues had been reported for twenty years generally held to be the close of the period.

No major nations were unscathed, and many nations simply collapsed. Physical isolation, advanced medical services, and interior lines of supply all benefited the USA. The development of commercial fusion power generation in the 2020's also helped. America managed to evolve from a trading nation to economic autonomy. There were costs, but the quarantine was vital.

Much of North America is desperately poor, if doing well compared to other places.. But there are effective social services. Society is vital to everyone's survival. Medicine has become TL9 (without this the people would all be dead) but most areas of the USA function at TL6 or lower. TV broadcasts are gone. However, radio and the internet still exist. Most people can't have at home computers, but radios are cheap. The US population is around 60 million. Which seems like a unusually high percentage compared to most other nations.

The US and Canadian governments are teamed up and work together. Greenland is abandoned. Most of the Caribbean is deserted or a North American Protectorate. Northern Mexico is a Protectorate slowly becoming a a partner. Southern Mexico is a big unknown as are South and Central America. Europe, Asia, and Australia, maintain only rare and fleeting contact.

The PCs will be young people with unusually good immune systems (Immunity to Disease is a requirement for this campaign), exploring the backwaters of Canada and the USA, looking for isolated survivors that might need medicine, food, or other assistance. They could also be sent to exotic lands like England! To restore diplomatic ties.

This setting is named Crocus because that flower blooms in early spring when winter storms can still destroy it. This world is in the earliest stages of recovery trying to avoid a Dark Age.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The plague wars really don't have a true beginning day. The whole point of bio weapons is covert attack. Still, the total collapse of international trade in 2035, generally provides the starting point of the Plague Wars. With 2097, the period when no NEW exotic plagues had been reported for twenty years generally held to be the close of the period.

(SNIP)

The PCs will be young people with unusually good immune systems (Immunity to Disease is a requirement for this campaign), exploring the backwaters of Canada and the USA, looking for isolated survivors that might need medicine, food, or other assistance. They could also be sent to exotic lands like England! To resort diplomatic ties.

I might play in this one, but I'd definitely want a long talk with the GM about the type of campaign he or she wants to run.