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Old 03-07-2020, 06:12 PM   #1511
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
It sounds like a good bug hunt to me. Like Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2 color me confused. Were they looking for a detective game or something involving social manuvers?
I think they mostly wanted fantasy, at the time.

Also, that campaign would've had a lot in common with military sci-fi, and two of them hadn't been out of the military for very long. The characters also wouldn't have had the autonomy I know they liked.

Heck, in the GURPS:Harn campaign, they seriously resented (at first) the clandestine control the White Hand kept over the use of magic, nor did they like the idea that the church of Save-K'nor should lock down knowledge so thoroughly.

So, I think the idea of doing as ordered -- even in their own small scout ship -- lacked appeal.

No matter how cool the GM thinks the premise, the players need to want to play the game. It was just the wrong group, for that campaign idea.
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Old 03-07-2020, 06:17 PM   #1512
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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OMG! Does this mean I might have to sit through (or worse, GM) Highlander 2, the Sleezening? :)
Not all bad movies make for good games, and that one is pretty unsalvageable. :p
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Old 03-07-2020, 06:18 PM   #1513
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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I think my lot might be interested. If I ever run something similar, I'll let you know how it goes.
I'd definitely like to hear about it. :)
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Old 03-08-2020, 02:39 PM   #1514
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Following the aftermath of Ncov-19, many people felt that it had been overblown or politicized. When, only three years later, a new novel Coronavirus emerged (this time in a Singaporean port city,) virologists despaired as many of the hard-learned lessons went ignored.

In part due to precaution exhaustion, in part to a serious political failure, and in part due to misconceptions as to the similarity of the two diseases, Ncov-22 spread farther and faster. It was very similar to the 2019 variant, but it was of a notably higher fatality rate along with a tendency to make asymptomatic carriers. It spiked rapidly around the world, leading to an overwhelming wave of hospitalizations.

It was a massive catastrophe, and people demanded changes to prevent new diseases from going pandemic again.

Locales -- from neighborhoods to cities, counties, and states or provinces -- began putting up permanent quarantines. The world was compartmentalized, and by 2030, travel between any two places was usually incredibly time-consuming and dangerous. The isolation tended to make novel variants of influenza, cornoaviruses, and other diseases, meaning that those travelers who had been confirmed "clean" still had to subject themselves to the risk of the novel diseases at their destinations. In other cases, vaccines had enabled local eradication of coronaviruses (and influenza), and these places are even more paranoid about letting a new variant in.

The internet is the only connection isolated communities have to one another, but it has also not weathered the plagues easily. Without physical travel to other places being an option for most, rumor and disinformation spread just like sickness. Messages can be sent, but most people just don't trust anything they see on the internet at all. Some see this as a joyous return to local community... but it is also a return to paranoia, xenophobia, and superstition.

PC can be the leaders of a community that needs to negotiate with former neighbors turned rivals (pick your local town!). They could be investigators, emergency services, or regular people who need to leave the cordons in search of some greater quest and therefore interact with familiar people turned strange. Or they could be traders and other outlanders from the rural regions that were too sparsely populated to tell the difference between quarantine and business as usual, forced by lack of critical supplies to head to civilization and see what's become of it.
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Old 03-08-2020, 05:30 PM   #1515
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Some communities would have an easier time isolating themselves than others. If you look at the east coast of south Florida, for example, you basically have what looks like a single urban and suburban sprawl from Tequesta to Florida City.
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Old 03-09-2020, 08:59 AM   #1516
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Try this one...

This world had superheroes in the 20th century, they seemed to come in pulses, right now, except for some elderly and/or unaging supers, no one with impressive powers is really around. However, a villainous gadgeteer (think Syndrome), convinced by a group of supers that his inventions could give him infinitely more glory than any superhero could get, and the glory will last longer, has released a powerful invention, a Zero-Point Power Generator! Suddenly energy is cheap, cars, ships, planes, etc. come with sealed engines that never need refueling.

The Gadgateer, reveling is the glory of being the "savior of civilization," (the supers working on reforming this ex-villain being skilled at PR) decides to be the man who eliminates poverty and drudgery as well. So he releases many of his robot plans. Suddenly power and labor are cheap as dirt and totally unlimited. With easy flight to the asteroids (a space oriented super having boosted the space program back in the day) vital resources aren't hard to get.

The problem is quite simple. All present power structures, other than the actual governments, are based on scarcity. Control of resources was the basis of power. And even governments are shaped and supported by scarcity. Thus, a post scarcity (or very close to it) society would need very different means to order itself. As it is, all forms of government, as practiced in the modern world, are as archaic as stone knives or bone needles.

This leads to chaos. The role of the state in society is suddenly in flux. People tend to dismiss the state but read what the people who lived through the rise of the state said about it. Almost universally they proclaimed that individual freedom could only be protected and made workable by the state. Personal freedom could never be respected by "tribes" or any other system were families and groups counted for more than any individual.

So, you have a world of incredible wealth degenerating into a war of each against all. Meanwhile, affiliation groups (Faiths, Political Parties, etc.) are demanding power and dominance, at any cost! There should be adventures in that.
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Old 03-13-2020, 08:16 AM   #1517
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

In the year 2035 there was a bright flash of light from just beyond the orbit of Neptune. Shortly there after a large fleet of spaceships enter Earth's orbit.

It seems that Earth had a broken jumpgate. The flash of light (all over the night side of Earth it was twice as bright as day for three minuets) was the Jumpgate finally opening after centuries in orbit. Galactic civilization wants to say hello, and maybe do some business.

Normally worlds are contacted long before they enter into anything like industrialization let alone spaceflight. Basically to overawe the locals and fit them into the galactic hierarchy at the bottom (and make sure they stay there). It's clear from the start, Earth won't fit the mold.

Different groups of aliens (use which ever ones you like, GURPS: ALIENS, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, whatever) seek alliances with different Earth groups. Some aliens are doing a divide and rule strategy, others really want allies, most have mixed motives. Most of the aliens have a "Civilizing Mission" and will feel no shame in telling Earthfolk how disgusting and barbaric they are. And they will expect changes to be made in conformity with their ideals.

Basically, this is colonialism from the point of view of the colonized. Human resistance can't be to straight forward, the aliens are very powerful. Also, the aliens have lots of tech goodies. Many dictators would willingly take all of the tech the aliens will give and use it to conquer neighbors, an old tactic to the aliens, it makes one nation your debtor and the other your slave. So all nations have to get some alien tech or end up enslaved either to the aliens or to hostile humans.

This is a multilevel diplomacy and espionage campaign setting.

Any good?
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Old 03-13-2020, 09:08 AM   #1518
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

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Any good?
Noice. Nothing like a bit of infighting, with bystanders throwing in the occasional splash of gasoline...
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Old 03-13-2020, 09:49 AM   #1519
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Noice. Nothing like a bit of infighting, with bystanders throwing in the occasional splash of gasoline...
Your insight is clear.
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Old 03-16-2020, 09:35 AM   #1520
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Try this one..

The time patrol headquarters, which is in a interstitial dimensional space just outside of mainline reality, is now cut off form any and all outside contact! The last message in was..

Warning, they've set a trap! any new agents will land decades late and enforce the observer effect on a larger period of time. Time raiders, clearly hostile the the Enlightened Imperidium of the Rightly Guided Lords have massively diverted 21st century history. They seem to have protected the USA and Canada from the great grain blight of the 2030's and 40's and led researchers to a cure for the blight within three years. Thus preventing the collapse of Western Civilization.

They've also introduced key technologies and even got this world commercially viable fusion. The Time Raiders seem to have also used advanced Memetics to alter this society. The whole of American culture has been made radically more egalitarian and democratic. Science, technology, progress, and hope, are the key buzz words. There seems to be a Renaissance going on. Art, science, philosophy, and political culture are all being transformed.

They seem to have arrived within five years give or take of 2020 and used what must be stolen time patrol tech to force the next set of time travelers to land about forty years after them.

We will try to apprehend and ....(transmission breaks off here)


Basically, the PCs are from a distant future were Western Civilization died in the 21st century (or that's what they say). They've landed in a clearly altered 21st century America in the year 2060. This is a wealthy and stable TL9 society. In many ways this America resembles North European Social Market societies, but then that model is rapidly becoming dominant worldwide. In other ways this America resembles mid-20th Century America in its Artistic and social ferment. There are moonbases and asteroid bases. They're starting to build a space elevator in Kenya (USA, EU, Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan, S. Korea, Brazil, join project with The Southeast African Federation as partners). Cities are being built in the sea. The ecology is being healed. And the PCs have to find who is responsible, stop them, and erase all the good they've done. Or the future the PCs came from will never exist.

Note: All members of the time patrol have Fanaticism ( Serve the Enlightened Imperidium of the Rightly Guided Lords ) .
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