Settlement building game

[RyanW]

I'm going to be running a game of building a steampunk colony on a Lowellian Mars. Anyone have any advice or pointers to useful material for building up a settlement from scratch?

[tshiggins]

This will probably kick-start some ideas, for you. It's a great thread, and (E) did a good job.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...hlight=farming

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, the first thing that a settlement needs is water, especially in a cold desert like a steampunk Mars, which probably means the victimization of native Martians (since every water source on Mars should be exploited). Alternatively, you could bring water from the ice mines of Ceres, but it would be easier and cheaper to victimize native Martians.

The next thing that you need is shelter. If you victimize native Martians, you can steal their shelter while they are building your settlement. If not, you can build functional shelters from mud bricks if you have water, even in the weak sun of Mars. Alternatively, you can use stone.

After shelter, you need food and fuel. If you victimize native Martians, you can just have them provide them until you discover or grow your own sources. If not, you need supplies of food and fuel until your food crops and fuel crops start producing (a minimum of a year of supplies is needed, but five years would be best).

[Phantasm]

Ah, good old fashioned Martian Canals. Plenty of irrigation from the ice caps - which are likely proper ice in such a setting rather than the carbon dioxide dry ice of real life. I don't think a source of water will be hard to come by.

True, it'll be a Martian desert crisscrossed by irrigation canals and much wider ones for travel across the planet between cities, but that just adds flavor to the setting. :)

[ericthered]

I'm running a game where the players run the leaders of a bane-stormed roman town. If town management is what you're looking for, I've got some experience.

I've made decent use of City Stats but more use of City Management. Its complicated enough that I made this chart to help me understand what I was tracking. The most important non-obvious fact is that you roll monthly to keep the city running, like a job roll. Except that failures don't result in personal loss, but major consequences for the community!

Mailanka's "Orphan of the Stars" is a good read for this sort of thing as well. The biggest take away I use from that series is to let the players pile on the complementary rolls to the central monthly rolls. At the end of each in-game month we go over big notable events that effect the city's economy, and the players involved in the event roll to see if it helps or hurts. Some extreme events can only hurt, and the players roll to see if the penalty is -1 or 0, and some can only be good (+0 or +1, or even +2).

[(E)]

Historically you could take a look at the first English settlements of Australia, there are some interesting bits there, like getting the seasons back to front during the planning stages.

Martian farming aside from the obvious water and microbial issues has heavy metals in the soils to content with. So maybe have the soil "Cleaned" before it is fully Earth compatible. But according to studies some crops are viable regardless of the metal content.

The first step would be deciding what the scouts are looking for (granted in steam punk this could be "Sullivan's family owns lots of farms he'll know what to look for")

Are there any valuable resources to extract/harvest?

A key thing to keep track of (I think) would be "What skills are present in the community"

Feel free to get me to have a look at the farming in detail.

The example I wrote up for "Lass' bend" in the AtE farming thread deals with cool and dry.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by (E)

Martian farming aside from the obvious water and microbial issues has heavy metals in the soils to content with. So maybe have the soil "Cleaned" before it is fully Earth compatible. But according to studies some crops are viable regardless of the metal content.

That issue might not arise on a steampunk Mars, though. If the atmosphere is thin but breathable, and there are canals with liquid water, there may also be more Earthlike soil, at least along the canals.

[hal]

If you ever get your hands on WORLD TAMER'S HANDBOOK by GDW, you might find it useful for your needs - as Traveller's rules are for worlds of diverse technological capabilities and such. Don't know if it would be your cup of tea however. Note that although the book it out of print, you can get a copy of it via Far Future Enterprises as a PDF.

[SteamBub]

Off the top of my head, Low-Tech Companion 3, City Management from P54, At Play in the Fields from P33, and Lord of the Manor from P52. I haven't read any of these yet so I couldn't say how useful they are, but it's would be the first place I would look into.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by SteamBub

Off the top of my head, Low-Tech Companion 3, City Management from P54, At Play in the Fields from P33, and Lord of the Manor from P52. I haven't read any of these yet so I couldn't say how useful they are, but it's would be the first place I would look into.

All highly useful, and of course, all written by Matt Riggsby.