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Old 12-23-2017, 11:09 AM   #1
Astromancer
 
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Default New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

This is like the Alternate Reality Seeds Thread but it's for futures out in space or Sci Fi concepts that don't fit in the Infinite Worlds setting.

If you're strictly cannon, neither time travel nor FTL travel have any place in the Infinite Worlds setting. So this is for the infinities that setting can't contain.
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Old 12-23-2017, 11:26 AM   #2
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

The planet Astraeus, named for the Titan of Dusk and the spouse of the dawn, orbits a star hidden from Earth by a minor dust cloud. Although reachable by the jump links, it's to far from Earth to reach by Skip-Warp.

The planet wasn't slated for terraformation but some one accidently, or so they claim, spilled blue-green algae into a stream leading to the nearby ocean.

Once they decided that it was hopeless trying to clean up the spill, large amounts of terraforming organisms were dumped into the planet's ecosystem.

Astraeus did have a fragile ecosystem. None of the planet's original ecosystem is now known to survive. Many groups cry foul, others seek to stake claims on a new planet which is a blank slate.

Three main groups contend to dominate the planet.

A) A large Anglophone group mainly from North America. These folks are social democrats seeking to build a good life for themselves and their descendants.

B) A Chinese group. Utopians seeking to achieve a viable form of Communism balancing Marxist ideas with Taoism and Ren.

C) A group founded on the ideas of Hayek and Rand. They seek a true pure capitalism.

There are other groups on the planet. Mainly religious in nature.

Various "Green" groups, bitter about the destruction of the planet's ecosystem, want the colonies punished. They maintain constant harassment campaigns.

The ratio of land to sea is somewhat lower on Astraeus than on Earth. 21 percent land. However, the landmasses are arranged differently and there is 40 percent more arable land than on Earth.

There are no continents on Astraeus. The largest landmass is only a little bigger than Madagascar. There are no large arid areas or sandy wastelands. The largest uninhabitable areas are in the polar regions.

The tech-level of this campaign is nine. FTL drives and Anti-gravs for getting to orbit are supertech. Otherwise this setting is straight TL9.



More Later....
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Old 12-24-2017, 11:59 AM   #3
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

This world is linked to a supers setting. I'll try to make it fit a variety of settings.

The planet was named New Avalon by the mid 19th century Wizard that built the link to it. He pulled a Mars sized world out of its orbit around a gas giant to be a moon for New Avalon. He named this moon Ophir.

He used Alchemy and a limited knowledge of biology to bring both worlds to life.

In the early years of the 20th century a Wizard who traveled the world righting wrongs and fighting off demons found the portal to New Avalon and a community the older wizard had created on the planet. After chasing off a diabolic threat to the settlement the Wizard took the portal under his care and brought it to New York City so the settlers could reconect with the modern world.

In the late 1920s the remnants of Mars' dying civilizations tried to invade Earth to survive the death of their world. The wizard controling the portal, and his allies, a group of masked mystery men and women, many with strange powers, persuaded the Martians to settle on Ophir instead.

Over the decades this band of heroes remained active, many groups chose to pass though the portal to New Avalon. The planet was home to many strange and wonderful communities. Then, when the headquarters of the band of heroes who protected the portal was destroyed, the portal was lost.

Now, after the defeat of a powerful Warlock, the portal has been rediscovered.

Careful examination shows that while the portal had been lost for twenty years Earth time, New Avalon and Ophir had seen the passage of eight hundred years.

What will the heros find on the far side of the portal?
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Old 12-24-2017, 01:07 PM   #4
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Were the colonies in place before the spill? If so, why, on a barren world? If not, why are they getting blamed? Surely the Green groups have something better to do with their money. Maybe personalities have become involved?
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Old 12-24-2017, 03:16 PM   #5
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

What do wizards have to do with science fiction? Why can't we keep this in science fiction? Why does everything have to turn into the same old fantasy garbage? I'm so sick of it.
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Old 12-24-2017, 03:48 PM   #6
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain View Post
What do wizards have to do with science fiction? Why can't we keep this in science fiction? Why does everything have to turn into the same old fantasy garbage? I'm so sick of it.
Because the title is misleading: this appears to be meant for worlds in Infinite Worlds that break one of the major setting premises: no FTL or interstellar empires. Pieces of IW get used for all sorts of projects that are similar but not quite the same.

The ironic thing is that fantasy has a lot more space to explore than science fiction, but people usually don't usually put much thought into actually exploring it, falling back on the old staples.
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Old 12-24-2017, 04:02 PM   #7
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain View Post
What do wizards have to do with science fiction? Why can't we keep this in science fiction? Why does everything have to turn into the same old fantasy garbage? I'm so sick of it.
I agree with the sentiment, though I probably wouldn't have used this wording.

I think there's room for fantasy-inspired sci-fi setting seeds, but magic should be replaced by psionics in those settings. (*coughortheforcecough*)



But getting back on target:

Ukufinyelela Okude (Zulu for "The Far Reaches") is a sednoid in the Sigma Draconis system which is noted for being a source of a chemical that is easily and cheaply refined into fuel, though the fuel itself tends to wreak havoc on ship engines and reactors that use it for sustained periods. However, the chemical tends to explode at high temperatures; thanks to an incident several years back, Ukufinyelela Okude now has a major crater reaching down into the middle mantle, and a new ring composed of rock and ices the explosion knocked into orbit - yeah, it was that big an explosion.

Mining now takes place in the asteroid ring surrounding the sednoid; the usual mining base has about a hundred miners and three times that many drone robots, using low-tech mining tools such as jackhammers and diamond-tipped drills rather than the plasma cutters most other mining facilities use.

However, the largest mining station has gone silent. What happened?
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Old 12-24-2017, 08:28 PM   #8
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain View Post
What do wizards have to do with science fiction? Why can't we keep this in science fiction? Why does everything have to turn into the same old fantasy garbage? I'm so sick of it.
New Avalon is a supers setting. Supers setting routinely mix sci fi and magic. I'll love seeing your Hard Sci Fi colony worlds.
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Old 12-24-2017, 08:25 PM   #9
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Were the colonies in place before the spill? If so, why, on a barren world? If not, why are they getting blamed? Surely the Green groups have something better to do with their money. Maybe personalities have become involved?
There was a research base. It was supposed to remain only a base.

And yes, getting personalities involved is a great idea.
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Old 01-07-2018, 03:31 PM   #10
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

This simply assumes that the Transhuman Space setting's version of Earth is forced to leave the solar system in the year 2150. Choose your reason for leaving the point of this setting is humanity in a set of vast spaceships much like the Norman Spinrad novella Riding the Torch.

The PCs would be in the middle of a long flight. Neither they nor their grandparents would have seen the Earth. Their destination, or probable destination, is a few generations away. Humanity is basically contained within one vast city. All of humanity's conflicts and struggles are in this one city-fleet.
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