New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

"The world is a hollow sphere, there are legends of a vast black cave with beautiful lights called stars deep below the ground we stand on. There are heretical legends that say people came from outside the world. But heresy brings death by fire."

The spheres seem to be a strange sport of a Tech Level 12^ society. Each sphere is close to 1,800 kilometers in radius. The inside of each working sphere has a biosphere composed of life forms that seem to originate from the Earth. The ancestral life forms seem to have been taken from the Earth in the Pleistocene or Placenzian periods. Humans and humanoids have been found within the spheres.

There seems to be an artificial gravity field. The direction of acceleration of free falling bodies (down) is out from the center of the spheres. The "Gravity" in the spheres is 0.897G. The air pressure at "Ground Level" is 18psi. There is a luminous effect at the center of each sphere which seems to be a hologram like thing. These are the source of light and warmth inside the spheres. They have cycles in the production of light and heat creating Day/Night and Seasonal cycles. They're also a major focus of study by scientists exploring the spheres.

None of the cultures in the spheres have a Tech Level above three. There are no fossil fuel deposits. Psi phenomena are far more common among the populations in the spheres than in the general human population. Another source of serious study.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

The past changed, and the PCs were somehow left behind. Multiple factions are at war, the present dominant faction (The True and Secret Kings) rules through corporate states. They have a form of fascism that uses the structures of corporations in place of the state. The state is also the Capitalist and owns the church as well.

The reason the rulers spend so much energy on control is that they know that other factions could bring back the old reality. A vast democratic society that sprawled across most of the Galaxy and allowed the citizens the freedom to shape their lives to their own dreams. But in a world of Freedom and Fairness with society organized as networks of equals had no place for secret kings.

Still, the far smaller more controllable human society the Kings rule has vastly fewer people, tens of billions rather than uncounted trillions, and a lower level of technology (TL10^ rather than TL12^). This means the weight of all those souls cut off from their lives and reality weakens the new reality of the True and Secret Kings. Thus the Kings must rule with an iron fist and secretly. They must also limit human potential. Only the True Kings and their loyal servants may use the true art. Even the idea of Magic must be forbidden! Poverty among the masses, strict censorship, rules and control for their own sake, a cold, prudish, rigid puritanism, all help to limit the people and their souls.

This is a Secret Magic Campaign set in a dystopian future dominated by interstellar corporations. Think of it as Mage: The Ascenion meets The Sun Makers. With a generous side of Madness Dossier. Start the PCs as desperate outcastes or malcontents in the dystopian interstellar state, then let them know they were wizards and star wandering heroes. And that's what they are being hunted for.

[Astromancer]

Rifting off the Madnesss Dossier again, this time blending it with THS.

There were other histories, a nuclear war, one where the Nazis won, one where the old kings never fell and joined their crowns with the church and the corporations, worlds where things simply withered and collapse, sometimes from climate change, sometimes form simple despair. Poison hellwords that want to come back.

The chance of these worlds returning involves Pragmaclasts. Items left over from other world paths and futures lost. The agency has one job, to find and destroy pragmaclasts. Beware, a certain type of person, someone who hates the world and loves the hell the pragmaclast is linked to will fight to get enough pragmaclasts together to crack reality. Neo-Nazis still fighting for the Fuhrer, would be masters of the universe, fools hungry to be barbarian warlords, and idiots who think they are of the lineage of Christ and the True Merovingians. You must in secret fight these mad fools and their dark cults of nihilism and slavery.

These alternate realities aren't as real as our world, they need to leach off our reality. Each pragmaclast allows a little of our world to be bled away. If more than a few pragmaclasts are gathered together then reality quakes can bring people and things from other realities to our own. Some of these know how to pop our reality like a soap bubble.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Rifting off the Madnesss Dossier again, this time blending it with THS

(SNIP)

I've got one campaign going and will likely play in another starting this year, so I'll not start up a third, any time soon.

However, this goes on the prospectus, when I do. This is a great campaign concept, although I might set it sooner than the dawn of the 22nd Century. That might be too much.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I've got one campaign going and will likely play in another starting this year, so I 'll not start up a third, any time soon.

However, this goes on the prospectus, when I do. This is a great campaign concept, although I might set it sooner than the dawn of the 22nd Century. That might be too much.

This is very high praise.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

The second half of the 21st century was looking good. Big breakthroughs in fusion and high temperature superconductors (some of these superconductors worked up to 150 degrees Celius) led to a new industrial revolution. Advances in fields like robotics (especially Agricultural Robotics), vertical farming, material science, batteries, and supercapacitors, made optimistic views of the future fashionable even among serious intellectuals. Then the caldera went up.

The Caldera was in southern Siberia in a less studied area. China took the first hit and collapsed hard and fast. Then, the masses of sulfur-dioxide and fine ash particles caused dramatic global cooling, more dramatic than 1816 and scientists say it could last for decades. Frost and snow have collapsed outdoor agriculture in the temperate zone and brutal drought is collapsing the tropics.

Because of fashions in food production, the USA, Korea, Israel, Japan, Canada, Australia, Iceland, and New Zealand, all went into vertical agriculture. They still experienced food shortages, but no mass starvation. In most of the rest of the world, the passion for organic farming led to crisis and violence from massive crop failure. What little food aid the USA, Canada, Australia, and NZ, could manage, they gave. The crisis prevented either those receiving the aid from understanding there was little to give or those giving the aid from understanding why the receivers couldn't be understanding.

The local year is 2065. The tech level is nine with some technologies that normal GURPS Ultra-Tech counts as superscience. Humanity is struggling to survive. Wars and rumors of wars are everywhere in spite of the simple fact that it's a logistical nightmare to move an army in this weather and with massive food and equipment shortages. The economy has gone from boom to collapse (famine will do that, especially if it lasts).

The PCs could be diplomats trying to prevent war or gain food aid. They could be building vertical farming facilities in Europe and trying not to be killed in food riots for withholding food they haven't grown yet. The PCs could be escorting food trucks in gang held territory for desperate communities on the edge of starvation.

PCs could be enhanced with either cyber-gear or Bio-mods. Especially if they are agents or need to run for their lives frequently.

[Astromancer]

It strikes me that you could create a lively and interesting "Twenty Minutes into the Future" setting with cheap High Temperature Superconductors that superconduct up to 300 degrees Celius. You'd be in a sort of TL8+1 setting. There would be so many things that a TL9 society could do that this society couldn't do, but you'd have levitating cars. How so many technologies work would change quickly, there would be an economic boom and a burst of utopianism. At the same time, many people who don't see the world moving their way would be in a screaming fury.

If nothing else you can cross Ray Gun Gothic with cyberpunk and leave the PCs guessing about what kind of future they've stumbled into.

[Astromancer]

They were watching Independence Day at my place this morning. A truly brainless film that runs on its perverse charm. I never saw the sequel, which my sister, a big fan of the first film, found charmless and dull. Moreover, a rematch strikes me as dull but try this idea...

The aliens struck ten years ago back in the 2040s. The scientists that survived said they were technologically retrograde. To me, that is further proof the aliens were as dumb as a sack of hammers. They're dead, they never seem to have read H.G.Wells or studied bacteriology. The creeps did wipe out the Earth's cities and most of the people. Still, more survives than you'd think.

Basically, a society in transition from TL8 to TL9 gets nearly wiped out by the degenerate remnants of an alien fleet, The shattered remnants are trying to put the world back together.

The aliens seem to have seen China as the center of Earth civilization. So the alien attack hit there first and hardest. Europe, as the second most urbanized area on Earth, was also brutalized. The USA, although hit hard, was less totally torn up than either of the first two areas. Also, a decade and a half of trying to revitalize rural areas meant the USA's infrastructure was far less centralized than most other industrial nations.

Fun wild card. The aliens seem to have been telepathic. Many victims of their telepathic attacks seem to have gained a crude control of psi powers they never knew they had. Thanks to TL9 brain mapping techniques humanity is now beginning to awaken their mental powers.

The PCs could have many roles. Aid workers rebuilding...well anything. PCs as law enforcement agents or soldiers trying to keep the peace or protect those rebuilding society would work too. Diplomatic games either between or within nations seems like a viable option too.

[Astromancer]

This one starts in the past but it is Sci Fi.

Basically, in the early 1960s aliens showed up and announced that the Sun was going to be destroyed and you folks (the human species) were to be moved to safety. There were attempts at resistance, they weren't important because no one could do anything that seemed to affect the aliens or their machines and devices.

The population of the world where the PCs ancestors were taken, generally with their whole communities, including buildings and streets, intact, was drawn mainly from Europe, North America, North Africa, the West Indes, Indonesia, East Asia, and India. After a period of confusion, a stable democracy was formed. Limited contacts from other colony worlds were allowed for a few decades.

After the aliens deemed Humanity was settled, or as settled as they were going to be, they informed Humanity that were from a different universe. Humanity wasn't alone in this universe but the other races of this universe were very far away from both humanity and each other. The various human worlds were within reach of each other if people developed the right technologies.

That was the last the Aliens communicated to Humanity that the PCs know of.

Humanity had been divided into fifty groups and spread to as many different worlds. Each world seems to have been terraformed into something at least as good as Earth, if not in some ways better. The few tens of millions on each world grew their populations quickly, at least while the contact was maintained.

But that period was long ago in the late 1900s and early 2000s. It is now the year 2538. The people of the PCs world have achieved FTL drive. An exploratory fleet has been built to look for the other worlds of Humanity.

This is a TL12^ world with psionics. The style is Raygun Gothic blended with just enough New Wave to make things uneasy.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

They were watching Independence Day at my place this morning. A truly brainless film that runs on its perverse charm. I never saw the sequel, which my sister, a big fan of the first film, found charmless and dull. Moreover, a rematch strikes me as dull but try this idea...

The aliens struck ten years ago back in the 2040s. The scientists that survived said they were technologically retrograde. To me, that is further proof the aliens were as dumb as a sack of hammers. They're dead, they never seem to have read H.G.Wells or studied bacteriology. The creeps did wipe out the Earth's cities and most of the people. Still, more survives than you'd think.

Basically, a society in transition from TL8 to TL9 gets nearly wiped out by the degenerate remnants of an alien fleet, The shattered remnants are trying to put the world back together.

I like the idea overall. But what happened to the aliens? Did they nuke and leave, are they still around, or were they destroyed?