New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Some examples of Psi Powered animals:

A tiger a large alpha male that has psionic invisibility. This is a purely instinctive thing. The tiger is as stealthy as any other adult tiger. So, even if you have the ability to detect psi powers, this cat can sneak up on you. Note: tigers bathe, but they still have a scent. Tigers also leave tracks. Also, like any other cat walking through a house, the tiger will knock things down. The basic threat, a tiger that can just walk into town unnoticed and strike at will.

In Arab folklore, hyenas are supposed to be able to call out in a copy of the voice of the last corpse they've eaten part of. In the stories, they dig up graves and after eating the corpse, go to the homes of their loved ones and lure them out to their brutal deaths. This sort of thing modeled with psionics is spooky and disturbing.

A gestalt of songbirds. These birds are carrion eaters, like crows. They've developed a psionic lure to bring animals, including humans and domestic animals into situations were they become carrion.

Well these are all terrifying. Does the colony mass produce clean underwear or have advanced laundry capabilities? Because it would need them...
It would be interesting to have offworlders encounter the unique countermeasures the colonists would have to come up with to combat animals like this. "Why is there a laser pointer rigged to play across that pressure sensor alarm?"

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Kale

Well these are all terrifying. Does the colony mass produce clean underwear or have advanced laundry capabilities? Because it would need them...
It would be interesting to have offworlders encounter the unique countermeasures the colonists would have to come up with to combat animals like this. "Why is there a laser pointer rigged to play across that pressure sensor alarm?"

Thank you for the compliment. 🤗

These are rare but not one of a kind threats. And yes, these are the kind of threats that broke most of the castaway settlements on this planet.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Kale

Well these are all terrifying. Does the colony mass produce clean underwear or have advanced laundry capabilities? Because it would need them...

Cough kilts cough

[Astromancer]

I might do more on Dione but right now I'm watching a ST:tNG episode ( season one finale). It reminds me of a simple ploy, dump the PCs in cryonic suspension. Then wake them up whenever. Cryonics or any other means of suspended animation can be a lively switch-up in any campaign.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I might do more on Dione but right now I'm watching a ST:tNG episode ( season one finale). It reminds me of a simple ploy, dump the PCs in cryonic suspension. Then wake them up whenever. Cryonics or any other means of suspended animation can be a lively switch-up in any campaign.

A few general situations for this:

Futurama - PCs are in Cryo for thousands of years; world is radically different from the way it was when they were frozen. May have gone through several cycles of societal collapse; old paradigms are gone or nearly completely unrecognizable to the cryonauts.

Demolition Man - Decades of Cryo: Society still has some recognizable features, but has changed in some unexpected ways. Not completely foreign to the PCs but there are some aspects that will be confusing and alienating.

Idiocracy - Decades of Cryo: PCs wake at the time of a pending apocalypse. Society is somewhat different and is careening towards disaster. PCs are situated due to unique traits or resources to help prevent this disaster.

Buck Rodgers - Trapped for 100s of years, but wake up to a relatively Utopian and/or awesome future. Character's unique perspectives give them an advantage in the current time.

Fallout Series - In cryo decades or 100s of years, just long enough to avoid a major war or disaster, and wake up to the post apocalyptic aftermath when things are relatively safe (shooting has ended, radiation is subsiding, plague has burned itself out, etc.)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Kale

A few general situations for this:

Futurama - PCs are in Cryo for thousands of years; world is radically different from the way it was when they were frozen. May have gone through several cycles of societal collapse; old paradigms are gone or nearly completely unrecognizable to the cryonauts.

Demolition Man - Decades of Cryo: Society still has some recognizable features, but has changed in some unexpected ways. Not completely foreign to the PCs but there are some aspects that will be confusing and alienating.

Idiocracy - Decades of Cryo: PCs wake at the time of a pending apocalypse. Society is somewhat different and is careening towards disaster. PCs are situated due to unique traits or resources to help prevent this disaster.

Buck Rodgers - Trapped for 100s of years, but wake up to a relatively Utopian and/or awesome future. Character's unique perspectives give them an advantage in the current time.

Fallout Series - In cryo decades or 100s of years, just long enough to avoid a major war or disaster, and wake up to the post apocalyptic aftermath when things are relatively safe (shooting has ended, radiation is subsiding, plague has burned itself out, etc.)

Solid analytical list Kale.

[dcarson]

Someone on these forums I think once had posts about a interstellar setting where you traveled in cryo because of STL only. The PCs had things go wrong and the party met when they all woke up in a long abandoned lost luggage storage. Came from species, cultures and times that were totally separate given the size and age of overall setting.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Kale

A few general situations for this:

<SNIP>

Interesting, gives me a strange idea:

Return of the King (Arthur): Myrddin is an alien (and possibly a limited time traveler) who uses Sufficiently Advanced Technology. The PCs are Knights of the Round Table who were put in suspended animation until some time after WWIII, when they wake up to save Britain from itself (and all the radioactive mutants and such). They have TL12 weapons and armour (and possibly robot horses and such), designed to be used by folk with mostly TL2-3 skills.

I don't currently have a copy of GURPS After The End (apart from probably Pyramid 3/03, somewhere), which I would want to have if I were going to run this. One of the other GURPS Camelot/ATE ideas that I'm thinking of is more Psi-based, with someone drawing Arthur and his knights from one or more astral domains, and having them manifest in some way (maybe the PCs are channelers, or one or more has Spirit Communication 4, or similar, or maybe they have psychotronic robots but no AI programmer).

Thinking about it, an ATE scenario where the big disaster was caused by a version of WWIII with large numbers of Strategic Psychotronic Devices could be an interesting setting by itself.

EDIT: What would a Strategic Psychotronic Device even do (apart from 'a lot more damage, but in a strange way')? Psi-Bombs (Psi-Tech pp28-29) with longer ranges are probably only the start. Lot's of possible variety, there.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Dione

Our world is named Dione the Goddess, I once heard that she was the wife of Zeus before they changed the story and made Hera Zeus's queen. That fits us, the discarded wife of a powerful bully.

A point needs to be made about how people live on this world. The average peasant farmer lives like a Roman/Persian/Chinese peasant farmer of about the second century AD. Although in a few of the more stable and prosperous areas the peasant farmers live more like 16th peasant farmers. Larger towns away from the larger cities are normally functionally TL4. Towns that are on a canal or one of the few railroads or are river ports are often TL5. At least the nicer neighborhoods are. Cities tend to have neighborhoods that function at different tech levels, although as ideas about public health begin to spread among the elites, some places are making serious efforts to bring the benefits of sanitary sewers, clean water, and public baths, to the masses. This is more about protecting the elites from plague than any respect for the masses, still the poor take the benefits anyway.

All settlements and any and all isolated houses are fortified. Not only is war endemic in most of Dione, but the local fauna also can a brutal threat. Many villages and towns prioritize safety/security over anything else. Given how mountainous the planet Dione is cliff dwellings like in the American southwest and hilltop towns as often seen in Italy or Greece, are the norm in many areas.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Kale

Demolition Man - Decades of Cryo: Society still has some recognizable features, but has changed in some unexpected ways. Not completely foreign to the PCs but there are some aspects that will be confusing and alienating.

And the characters have been given useful skills while asleep. That is one of Stalone's best movies, if only for the silly comedy.