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Old 03-16-2020, 11:16 AM   #1521
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

No. Just no.

Project Gilgamesh: The characters are a group of morally flexible operatives with occasional guest star scientists who work for a mysterious patron that sends them out on odd fringe sciencey missions that include:

1. Investigating a "haunted house" that turns out to be "thin spot in time".

2. Tracking down the source of a hit squad of remarkable capable teenage assassins who all look virtually identical. Your patron wants you to secure the cloning technology.

3. Looking for the legendary "Fountain of Youth"

4. Industrial espionage on a high security lab working on extending telomeres.

5. Investigating rumours of a "ghost on the net", a person who somehow uploaded a copy of himself and is now seeking revenge on an extremely long list of people he thinks did him dirt in life.

6. Travelling deep into the Amazon jungle for samples of a certain fungus, and running into zombified people.

7. Travelling to Antarctica to hunt down a polymorphic blob and get a sample of it.

8. Hunting a vampire (with pseudo-science justifications) in order to capture him or at least bring back his remains.
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Old 03-17-2020, 08:40 AM   #1522
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Try this one...

If being the servants of the Enlightened Imperidium of the Rightly Guided Lords has no appeal, why not be their foes?

After landing in the year 2021 and spreading the mold which acted as a counter agent to the Russian grain blight of 2033, (and making sure it would be quickly found when the blight struck) we refocused our efforts onto introducing new technologies slowly and carefully in order to redirect this society in healthy directions. Our problem is that even our intensive training in 21st century American culture is deeply inadequate. We are seen as pleasant Cloudcukoolanders and easy marks. The second is bitterly true.

Basically, the PCs are benevolent aliens (humans from a distant future) trying to divert the USA, and by extension, planet Earth, from a dangerous course to a stable and prosperous one. You have Technology! with the advantage of it covering all Tech Levels from five through twelve. You've got capital, or at least you have nanotech devices that create fine gems you can sell. You have some fairly flexible Psi powers. But your social skills especially anything like Streetwise aren't there. Now save the world.
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Old 03-18-2020, 09:27 AM   #1523
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Try this one...

Back in the 2030's a new type of encephalitis was discovered. It seemed to be very common and those with higher amounts of the organism tended to have problems like various forms of autism, schizophrenia, mental retardation, and cerebral palsy. Luckily a new method of making vaccines had been discovered an a highly effective one and done vaccine was made.

Due to anti-biotech agitation and anti-vaxer hysteria, the vaccine wasn't widely used. Only Ireland, New Zealand, France, the US states of California, Massachusetts, and West Virginia,Wales in the UK, and the Canadian Maritime Provinces (including Newfoundland and the Turks and Caicos Islands, gave the vaccine to all school children. In much of the world, like Russia, the vaccine simply wasn't available. In many countries like the UK, the USA, or Canada, only sections of the nation got the vaccine. In most other nations only a few people, generally richer and better connected got the vaccine.

Within a few years people began to notice things. Children whose mothers had had the vaccine gained immunity to the encephalitis from their mothers (whether this will pass on through the daughters of these women to their children is unknown) and these children were extraordinary.

By the time the oldest children born to vaccinated mothers were 15 it was settled, the encephalitis had been with humanity for millennia doing serious brain damage to all human beings. People like Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Aristotle, were simply born less effected by the disease. People like Gene Kelly or Jackie Chan, simply had less damage to their motor control centers than other people.

The average encephalitis-free human seems to have GURPS IQs and DXs of twenty. Because of their healthier brains and nervous systems they tend to have higher levels of ST and HT as well. All known encephalitis-free children display Empathy, Versatility and strong intuition (although maybe not the GURPS type if you don't like that advantage.

Clearly, a wonderful new future awaits humanity. But the problem will be getting there. Dictatorships and other hierarchical societies want to seriously restrict who gets the vaccine. They don't want a population of uncontrollable geniuses. In many other societies the power structures are getting violently upended.

In those nations and large areas were all children got the vaccine from the start the older generations are in a panic, as are those just a few years older than the encephalitis-free children. What future can they have?

Elsewhere, regionalism flares up wildly because some areas embraced the vaccine and some banned it.

The PCs should play people only about five to ten years older than the encephalitis-free children, college kids and young professionals who find their futures questionable at best. This is a horror campaign where the monsters are sweet, kind, generous, and are still going to destroy your life.

Alternately, PCs can be agents sent into nations that refused the vaccine for religious and similar reasons. The agents of nations could be trying to aide these nations in stability, or if that hope is lost, seeking to collapse these nations with as little harm to others as possible. Other types of agent may be smuggling vaccine to the ambitious.
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Old 03-19-2020, 10:21 AM   #1524
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Try this one...

In 2025 Aliens show up in Earth orbit and contact humanity. They explain "We bought the Solar System and everything in it. Yes, we know we didn't ask you. Frankly, as a culture not yet fully capable of settling off planet, or at least you haven't proved you can, you have no rights in the Galactic Union." They further explain that they could simply bombard the planet from orbit if any nation fails to surrender. They demonstrate their fire power by causally turning a million square miles of the lunar surface into black glass. Then they locked force fields together and shut out all sunlight from the Earth for a quarter of an hour. Humanity was forced to surrender.

The aliens make it clear we can retain our own governments although they think they'll enforce certain UN charters of Human Rights. They're mainly interested in humanity as a client species. They mean to "Upgrade" humanity. They intend to try several different types of upgrades to see what works best. They explain they mean to be fair but firm masters, but masters they will be. However, after a few dozen millennia humanity should get full equal status.

Basically a reworking of Brin's Uplift setting. With humanity as a client species to be uplifted by mild but determined Masters. Note: there is a GURPS treatment of this setting here.
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Old 03-19-2020, 05:28 PM   #1525
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Also the setting for John Ringo's Troy Rising series.
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Old 03-19-2020, 06:00 PM   #1526
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ronwit View Post
Also the setting for John Ringo's Troy Rising series.
I didn't know that.
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Old 03-20-2020, 09:50 AM   #1527
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The plague hit hard and stayed around for a few decades. They say that before the plague the USA had more than 300 million people. We lost fewer people to the plague than most, and that by a long mile, but we only have about ten million people tops.

The plague wars seem to have started in the 2050's and either they stopped in the 2130's or the immune were all that were left by then. In most of the world they think 99 people out of every hundred died. As no one knows who started the plagues the USA and the few other governments still around aren't looking for vengeance. Sure lots of folks want vengeance, but with no guilty party (and yes they showed the plagues were designed), why bother?

Around the commercial Fusion plants, built in the 2040-2050 period, civilization goes on. Away from these areas and the few other stable sources of electric power technology has collapsed to medieval levels if the people were lucky.

Added to that, although carbon emissions have plunged, and spreading forests are soaking up carbon, the residual effects of high Carbon Dioxide levels are still warming the planet. Although scientists say that these effects will begin to slowly reverse themselves by the end of the century there are droughts, floods, and chaotic weather to deal with now. The few surviving cities must struggle to sustain themselves and civilization.

The PCs are young people in the reclamation scouts. Their job is to go out and find resources and cultural artifacts in the dead cities of America and where ever else they're sent to. So, go out into the chaotic and dangerous wilds, find useful stuff (treasure) and bring it back home.
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Old 03-23-2020, 12:40 PM   #1528
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When I went to sleep it was 2027, my pal here says he remembers going camping in 1997, the guy over there says he was in a mental hospital because of a head injury, so doesn't know when they got him.

Yeah, it's weird waking up in the wrong body. Mine you, this body is younger and stronger than mine was. Nice not to have a face full of acne scars. The nine foot long prehensile tail and feet shaped like giant hands were a shock, I said something about actually being a monkey's uncle. Looking in my pants and seeing I'm a hermaphrodite was by far the biggest shock.


The PCs all went to sleep something between 1985 and 2030. They all seem to come from the most technologically advanced societies, whether or not they had much of anything to do with tech. Everyone was either working class or was some kind of drop out by their will or not (mental patients, drifters, long term unemployed), and all had a limited circle of friends and family.

When they woke up they were changed and not on Earth. Their seems to be no way to get to a window and look outside but most folks are convinced that they are in space. As the gravity is clearly less than Earth normal at what they assume are the lower decks, and, as you climb the stairs to what seems to be the center of a rotating cylinder, it fades away to what seems like nothing.

Everything is like a series of tests and rewards like a maze for rats I read about in psychology class at community college. They seem to be training us to be maintenance workers for a starship or something. Two things scare me. What if we fail the test? Worse. What if we pass?

Every now and then the food machines seem to drug the food. This generally leads to merry drunkenness and waking up embarrassed with unexpected company the next morning. Some of the captives are now pregnant. The men really hate this.

Basically it a mystery setting. Once the Players get tired of being in a puzzle box, have then arrive somewhere and change the whole nature of their adventures.
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Old 03-25-2020, 03:15 PM   #1529
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Dawn?

"They say that the technology of the cities used to be everywhere. It was normal for country folk to go to school and some went to universities and the like. But that was before the Great Death when the cities let people in freely.

My grandfather told me that his great grandma just left her home in someplace called Alabama and without any money or people trying to stop her went and lived by the Western Ocean for ten years. After that she married my great grandpa and came to live here just before the Great Death. Imagine that. One lone girl doing that and living. And she called it a fun adventure!

Now, you go everywhere armed and you aren't allowed to stay without good reason. The city folk buy children. They have plenty of their own kids. Ours they use as servants, though their kids can be citizens, though that isn't everywhere. Many farmers just want slaves. So being in a trade caravan isn't an easy or safe job, but it's the only one that lets you see America.


Basically a post-apocalyptic blend between Connan and Sinbad. But you're in a wagon train the cities are impoverished TL nine enclaves powered by fusion generators or other stable safe renewables. They are slowly rebuilding America. The large numbers of hostile barbarian descendents of the rest of the population don't make this easy. Mainly because the cities want either egalitarian democracies (generally socialist) or republics (generally market capitalist) and most of the powers in the countryside want their local oligrachies left intact and/or made rich and more powerful. As there is no unified view of the goal, little progress is being made towards it. Most other nations are worse off or fanatically isolationist.

The PCs are young post-apocalyptic rural people looking for a better less restrictive life.
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Old 03-25-2020, 05:11 PM   #1530
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Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

System X was the site of a series of battles in the recent war. The cease-fire left it disputed territory (cosmotory?). People are just moving in to rebuild but violence has not ceased. Most of the settlements are small towns. There are a few starports but many urban centers are wrecked by bombardment. Numerous political factions are struggling to get to power but no one is really in charge and many are happy that way. Scavengers are preying on the wrecks and each other. Oh yes and some wrecked starships have automatic security programs that automatically fire on anyone who gets near.

This is kind of like Mad Max in space.
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