New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[adm]

Originally Posted by PTTG

The gate is 100km wide. Nukes (and other defenses) are not really adequate at those ranges in space.

Do they have to destroy the entire gate? If all it takes is a section, that gives Earth forces hope that they can salvage enough alien tech to build more, later.

Originally Posted by PTTG

Plus, the Lethrani are not naïve of diplomacy. They deal with the two smaller enclaves and a number of independent states, and realize that being too hasty would only ruin this chance and lead to destruction. So, they are trying to establish space control through diplomatic means.

Sensible, but I would expect Earth side to maintain their own forces on Luna. Although a divided response from US, Russian, Chinese, EU, and whoever else* forces may make it there should give the Lethrani an advantage.

*India, Japan, Israel, Brazil, or someone we would not expect now.

Originally Posted by PTTG

Finally, when it comes to a shooting war, their TL advantage (they are a mature TL9 in fields the GM feels are relevant) comes into play. Taken together, we can assume they have significant defenses on the Earth side of the gate (said gate survived at least 10,000 years of disuse on the lunar surface, so it's probably pretty tough), when the war starts. The plucky heroes might need to cross the lunar terrain in buggies and on foot to disable these!

A fun game idea, get to the gate, find out what happened to who we had there, time permitting, blow gate.

Originally Posted by PTTG

No doubt some factions would attempt to modify existing nuclear missiles to have the delta-v to reach the moon and back, but that would take a lot of time and work on its own.

In ten years we may have enough moon rockets on tap*, to simple try and mount a MIRV on one.

*Artemis, Space X, Blue Horizon, China's rockets, and possibly others.

Originally Posted by PTTG

It should be noted that their technology is a bit backwards in two fields: medicine and computing. Their medicine is actually early TL-8 at best, due to a general fatalism. The computing tech is incompatible with Earth tech, but not much more powerful, despite the generally higher tech of Lethra Koas. This is probably due to less focus on consumer electronics to drive costs down.

Interesting, poorer computing power ought to degrade their targeting abilities, stealth might just be somewhat effective.

[Apollonian]

Fun twist, if you like: Partway through the conflict, evidence surfaces that the original Lethrani were modern-day humans, cast back in time and space after losing the current war. Whether this evidence is true or simply propaganda is up to the GM, but it'll definitely change up the campaign.

[PTTG]

Considering that a hard-science interpretation of wormholes implies the existence of time-travel, that's not a bad idea. I'd imagine that it would be one of many hypothesises. The advanced aliens that created the portals and established a human population on Lethra Koas could themselves be Lethrani remnants from the far future.

[PTTG]

Circa 2100, humanity finally receives confirmation of alien intelligence. Namely, a series of high-relativistic impactors launched at nearly every significant inhabited rock in the solar system. A few survivors fled in generation ships into the dark depths of interstellar space, where they encountered a curiously vibrant population of hidden alien habitats gathering resources from chthonic rogue planets. There, they discover that the solution to the Fermi paradox is that every multi-planetary species is attacked by the same berzerker swarm suffusing the Milky Way Galaxy -- or at least the nearest several thousand light-years. The only place to hide is inside frozen rocks far from stars; it appears that the berzerkers ignore small vessels and planets between stars by accident or design.

Centuries later, humanity is still a refugee species like so many others, knocked down never to quite recover. The most common sophont in the local cluster has been space-faring and in the region for about 90,000 years -- a starfish-shaped multicellular organism that communicates and reproduces by sharing neuron-equivalent cells. They (along with a plurality of other species, 30%) happen to rely on a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere not unlike humans' native air, so their dominance in the region is an advantage for us, at least.

Adventures revolve around encountering the remaining human population in a vastly alien series of environments. Given the omnipresent advanced alien technology, and the lack of communication from rock to rock, cultures at any TL are possible, from humans serving as pampered pets of TL12 masters to TL0 human savages in the plumbing systems of some vast, abandoned megastructure.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

The Coalition Space Fleet Scouting ship made a discovery in the new sector they were in no way prepared for...the United States of America! They were mildly confused to say the least.

Once they had a chance to understand the story offered by the "Americans," they reported that it appeared that some ninety-five years earlier (by the old calendar 2847 CE) a large section of the planet Earth was duplicated. This section contained all of the North American continent from Jalisco north, all the inhabited islands of the Caribbean, and all the inhabited islands of Polynesia including New Zealand. To the locals the event happened in late September 1941. During the event the locals that experienced it were told they were being moved into deep space as was everyone else on Earth to save humanity. And that they would have the duty of getting into space and finding everyone else.

The planet the North Americans, Polynesians, New Zealanders, and Caribbean Islanders found themselves on was basically Earthlike. The gavity was just noticeably less that Earth normal (0.94 G). The day was only three minuets longer. The geography of the planet beyond the duplicated areas was wildly unearthlike although all the lifeforms on the planet seemed to be Earth animals and plants, many long extinct on Earth. Animals from Andrewsarchus to Chalicotheres to Quagga keep showing up and causing confusion or worse.

By what the locals consider to be the year 2036 this Earth is TL8 across the board and advanced in space travel and material science. No threat to a TL12^ society like the Coalition but possibly a new ally or member. Since the discovery of New America,other worlds with past cultures placed on them have been found. Ming China, Imperial Rome, the pre-Roman conquest Celts, three separate African Empires, 17th century Europe with Russia to the Urals, the Caribbean, and North America to the Alleghenies, the Islamic Empires from Spain to the Fergana Valley, and many other culturally rich and lively slices of Earth history. All of these worlds believe they were transferred to their "New World" at roughly the same time as the first world they discovered.

This setting has two major themes/possibilities. First crossover games, your space heroes can deal with all sorts of alternative histories. Second, finding out who created these New Earths and why.

[awesomenessofme1]

Here's an idea that just popped into my head earlier today.

Teleportation technology is both advanced and ubiquitous, but it is never used on humans. This could be an actual quirk of the tech, but my initial thoughts were that it would be self-imposed due to concerns over continuity of consciousness (and the soul, for the religious). I think this would make things develop along interesting lines. It would allow information and goods to be transported across any distance, but standard vehicles would still be necessary for moving people around. Depending on how advanced you wanted to make the tech, you could even have manned space missions that didn't need to bring along much in the way of supplies, because they could be restocked from Earth at any point.

[PTTG]

Originally Posted by awesomenessofme1

Here's an idea that just popped into my head earlier today.

Teleportation technology is both advanced and ubiquitous, but it is never used on humans. This could be an actual quirk of the tech, but my initial thoughts were that it would be self-imposed due to concerns over continuity of consciousness (and the soul, for the religious). I think this would make things develop along interesting lines. It would allow information and goods to be transported across any distance, but standard vehicles would still be necessary for moving people around. Depending on how advanced you wanted to make the tech, you could even have manned space missions that didn't need to bring along much in the way of supplies, because they could be restocked from Earth at any point.

They could have incredible performance because fuel could be teleported continuously.

What happens if someone stumbles through a teleporter accidentally (or intentionally)?

[awesomenessofme1]

Originally Posted by PTTG

They could have incredible performance because fuel could be teleported continuously.

What happens if someone stumbles through a teleporter accidentally (or intentionally)?

I was thinking that there would be built-in failsafes. But if one malfunctioned or was deliberately reprogrammed, it would seem to an outside observer that they were able to teleport normally. You can't tell if a person with an identical body and mind is the same person and/or still has their soul in the right place just by observing them.

[dcarson]

There will also be people that don't care as long as the problem isn't visible. Human traffickers for example. Refugees might also be desperate enough in cases to take the risk.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by dcarson

There will also be people that don't care as long as the problem isn't visible. Human traffickers for example. Refugees might also be desperate enough in cases to take the risk.

I think in the long term if you can't prove a negative effect, this sort of taboo is going to be unsustainable.

There are just too many cases where people are going to do it anyway and then go on to live decades in the community without obviously suffering for it. We could save his life if we could teleport him to the hospital *right now*, if only we could use the teleporter we could evacuate from this death trap before it's too late, if we teleport in a company they could hold this critical position long enough to bring up the real reinforcements.... And once you've done a few of those sorts of life and death choices it's an easy slope to "if we teleport an expert from the engineering department over right now they could shut down the process before we lose this 200 million dollar plant - anybody want to volunteer for a million dollar bonus check"