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Old 02-15-2019, 04:08 PM   #931
ronwit
 
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
woke up on A planet other than the Earth.
Or woke up on several planets other than the Earth. With the long term result of the campaign being them running into each other, later.
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Old 02-15-2019, 04:57 PM   #932
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On January 1st, 2030 the people of the United States of America, Canada, and Indonesia (plus a cluster of other nations equaling one tenth of Earth's population, give or take a few million) woke up on a planet other than the Earth.

After a period of disorientation, people figured out the following.

1) They were on a terraformed planet.

2) They didn't know what star system they were in probably because they were at least 75,000 lyrs away from Earth if not much further.

3) Everyone older than 25 was now 25 again. Also, everybody was in perfect health and knew how to use their new healthy bodies. I.e. people who had been born without legs now knew how to walk and run. Etc.

4) They were now surrounded by highly advanced technology (TL12^) and knew how to use and maintain it and the principles the tech worked by.

5) All humans were now telepathic and also had TK (anti-social and violent individuals excluded). Everybody, even those lacking other psi powers, has Mind Shield powers.

The people now wanted answers. Why? Where are the other Humans? And where is Earth?
Clearly they were all abducted by ASB Santa Claus. Personally I'd never be that nice to my PCs.
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Old 02-15-2019, 06:22 PM   #933
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Or woke up on several planets other than the Earth. With the long term result of the campaign being them running into each other, later.
Exactly. But to quote an old Doctor Who episode "The Quest is the Quest."
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Old 02-15-2019, 06:23 PM   #934
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Clearly they were all abducted by ASB Santa Claus. Personally I'd never be that nice to my PCs.
You don't have to be. It is your game, I just offer ideas.
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Old 02-17-2019, 10:50 AM   #935
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Basically, this setting takes inspiration from Kingdom Come and Aberrant as well as the grotesque depiction of the USA in the game Aeon.

In this world, superheroes show up in the eastern USA and Canada in the late 1930s and are prominent in the 1940s. After a fallow period in the early 1950s, there was a second period of stronger more versatile supers in the 1960s. This time supers were from the whole of the North American Continent and Western Europe, The 1970s were a less active period for supers, but the 1980s had more supers and of a wider variety than before. This time they were found throughout the Americas, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and maritime Northeast Asia. The period from 1990 to 2020 was relatively less active but starting in 2020 there were about twenty times more supers than ever before and they were far more widely spread. Supers come from everywhere on the Earth, although they are more common from those areas from which they have come from for the longest time.

The behavior of the large numbers of powerful supers in the 2020s was generally a disaster. Militias of poor farmers from Latin America, fed on decades of Anti-American propaganda, raided the US regularly. Bandits from throughout the third world caused Chaos. Routine super fights reduced Israel to rubble and cost millions of lives. Ulster Unionists attempted to wipeout all Catholics in the North and the whole Republic of Ireland. With hellish results. Terrorists empowered finally crushed democracy and rejoiced in the vast slaughter. This led to the reaction.

A small group of the most powerful supers allied with the surviving governments planned and achieved a crackdown. Many supers died, and the guilty weren't alone. Supers who had acted honorably and many nonsupers who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time or inconvenient to the powerful also died. Many supers fled to the stars.

Many of the older supers still active, the Otherworldly Champion, the Warrior Woman, the Ringwielder and his Children, the God Blessed and Empowered Twins, the Super Soldier, the Speedster, the Stormwielder, and her alliance, the Thunder God, the Stage Magician with Real Powers, and the Sorcerer Supreme, formed an alliance with others to preserve Justice, Fairness, Freedom, and Democracy. They were betrayed by the Dark Detective and the British Street Wizard. Crushing all opposition to the new elites. Only the magicians, with the aid of the Sea King, escaped.

It is now 2120, the Sino-Western Hegemony rules the world. Most people are Third Class citizens, they are regulated and trained to serve. Second Class citizens they are the middle managers they are regulated tightly and trained to run the Third Class citizens for the Elites. The First Class citizens are enfranchised, one vote for every ten-thousand credits in taxes. Corporations are very much people in this world and have votes on the same system. Elites are drawn from the 1st Class Citizens. Like the Mandarins they see themselves as proven worthy and superior.

This world is very careful to detect as many supers as possible in the womb or early childhood to have them raised by and as members of the elites. Those detected as older children or teenagers are drafted into the defense forces and tamed to serve the elites. Those that gain superpowers later are like other disruptive elements simply imprisoned in labor camps or executed.

But the wizards that escaped with the alliance of the few surviving Atlanteans and other similar hidden peoples had settled distant worlds. Some of those supers and others that fled to the stars joined them to build a just, fair and free world. Others, the arrogant, the bigoted, those with incompatible visions went elsewhere.

The World that the Wizards and their allies built soon became lovely and had many comfortable cities but few people. The Stage Magician with real powers had become the Sorceress Supreme and wed the Ward of the Sea King, a mighty wizard in his own right. With her increased powers and the aide of her husband and her children, she has started to search the Earth and find people who would make good citizens of her world. With her powers, it isn't hard to bring them to her world.

She has been doing this for decades. She now has built an underground of supers and others opposed to the Hegemony and its tyranny. They are constantly hunted by the Order of Harmony (the secret police). The elites are slowly realizing that new powers that could challenge the Hegemony are growing out among the stars.

The PCs in this campaign are either freedom fighters against a World dominating fascist Cyberpunk-style Corporate state with Superpowered agents. Or those agents desperate to prevent the return of chaos and terror.
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Last edited by Astromancer; 02-18-2019 at 01:23 PM.
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Old 02-17-2019, 12:15 PM   #936
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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You don't have to be. It is your game, I just offer ideas.
Yeah but what's the game there? There are no bad guys, no environmental threats, no serious problems except the challenge of organizing a government from scratch, a challenge that is largely negated by the worst elements having been neutered. There's a minor mystery but it isn't actually important if they never figure it out.
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Old 02-17-2019, 06:41 PM   #937
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Yeah but what's the game there? There are no bad guys, no environmental threats, no serious problems except the challenge of organizing a government from scratch, a challenge that is largely negated by the worst elements having been neutered. There's a minor mystery but it isn't actually important if they never figure it out.
Organizing governments from scratch, especially when the power relationships of society have been upended, is no small thing. As for the mysteries, they are quests of mythic character and epic scope. Sure many people would ignore them. PCs are the kinds of people that wouldn't ignore these mysteries.
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Old 02-18-2019, 12:09 PM   #938
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Percy Fawcett really does find the Lost City of Z and it is an LZ for alien explorers. The party leaves with them. Begin from there.

The PCs are a party who go to find Percy Fawcett and find something more exciting happened to him then dying of fever like almost every unlucky explorer.
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Old 02-19-2019, 05:50 PM   #939
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

This is more for a book then an RPG and I probably already mentioned it before but it is a sci fi setting seed.

It is a starport "Tales of a Wayside Inn". During a relaxing weekend all over the city people are telling tales on the net. The collection is your book.

Other things more gameworthy can be done over the internet. A contact with a spy can be made. So can a negotiation with a rival faction. A super space-stuxnet makes a great Macguffin.
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Old 02-19-2019, 05:54 PM   #940
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

A ship has appeared in port from planet X with all it's crew dead from an undiscovered disease. The PCs are members of the local equiv of the Coast Guard or the CDC or such like. Some superior who no doubt has the highest affection for you has decided that you have to get samples.
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