New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Daigoro]

The aliens just have to pick up an old TV broadcast of When Harry Met Sally.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Visitation

The Carribean is also a war zone, although the Lurjahri only settled in Cuba. The Cuban Lurjahri are mainly Occultist and deeply hostile. The pirate bases maintained by some groups of Lurjahri have little or no ideology and pay off the Occultist Lurjahri, and sometimes serve as a naval reserve for the Occultist Lurjahri. Most of the Lurjahri live at TL5, the local humans live TL 4 or 5. Some of the Occultist Lurjahri have access to TL8 items and techniques.

The nation of Haiti is in chaos because of ecological collapse and class warfare combined with a total lack of both trade and aide. Germ warfare attacks from the Occultist Lurjahri makes it far worse. The Dominican Republic is in constant trouble because of large inflows of desperate people fleeing Haiti, brutal pirate attacks, and Occultist Lurjahri biowarfare. They are also unable to have any substantial trade. However, they do get a little aid from the Federal Union of America. Mainly genetically engineered crops and some improved vaccines to resist the biowarfare. Haiti is at TL4. The Dominican Republic is at TL5, mainly because they have less chaos, and

Peurto Rico is stable and allied with the Federal Union of America. They still suffer from both Pirate attacks and Biowarfare attacks, they are a harder target though. Peurto Rico is at TL6 with access to TL8 items and techniques. As the aid from the FUA has time to work, they haven't been able to give that much aid until recently, they will go up to TL7 and then TL8, slowly.

Jamaica is fighting to force the Lurjahri pirate bases to leave their island. The fighting is fierce and bitter, but as the Pirates aren't nearly as closeminded and rigidly ideological as most other Lurjahri, real peace is possible. Jamaica is mainly at TL4 though there are some TL5 strongholds. The Pirates are mainly TL5 because of aid from the Occultist Lurjahri of Cuba. The Human Jamaicans get aid from Peurto Rico and the FUA and have limited access to high tech levels.

Trinidad and Tobago are stable and independent. They suffer fewer biowarfare attacks than Peurto Rico but more piracy, both human and Lurjahri. But they maintain trade on a fairly steady basis with several South American and African ports. They are TL6 with limited access to TL8 items.

The smaller islands tend to be either empty or have people living in primitive conditions. Many of these people are forced to pay tribute and fear/loathe outsiders. Tech levels are low but unpredictable.

(more later)

[Astromancer]

This is a Supers setting. Start in the late 1930's. Have all the usual suspects show up, equivalents of figures like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Human Torch, Aquaman, Submariner, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Bullet Man, Plastic Man, etc, and also Starman and Hawkman.

During a period of recuperation in the autumn of 1942, at a rest home set up by Zatara the Magician, Starman (Ted Knight), Hawkman (Carter Hall), Bullet Man (Jim Barr), and several other technology minded supers started talking to each other. The result was a fleet of flying saucers in March of 1943. These saucers could only just leave the atmosphere, and they had issues with maneuverability, but they were as large as an ocean liner and were the fastest things around at the time (also they used very little fuel).

After a shorter WWII, and Stalin having to withdraw from Poland. Improvements were made to the saucers and by 1948 the Anglo-American moon flight had touched down. A French woman (one Barbarella Browningwell ) won the ship's lottery and was the first human to stand on the moon. She recited Walt Whitman, in French of course, as her first words.

The Current year is 2030, interstellar flight is commonplace, but travel out of the solar system is about as exotic as traveling to Asia in the 1920s. There are multiple human colony worlds out in the galaxy and they are about as lively as 1920s Australia is shown to be in the Miss Fisher Murder Mysters. Mars is also settled (picture a cross between the Martian Chronicles and Lovecraft's New England). Friendly and less so aliens have been contacted. Some are very friendly (that may or may not be good).

This takes 1930's pulp, 1940s American Comics, and the French Sci Fi comics of the 1960s, and blends them. This setting is about adventure and glamour. This is a setting were Northwest Smith and Barbarella, working for the Wayne Foundation, explore the ruins of lost planets. They know to give the Blue Phone Box a wide berth.

PCs would be either low level supers (think a 1940s Black Condor, Captain America, Hawkman, Green Arrow) or pulp heroes that have no problems keeping up with them. The PCs are on the endless frontier and journeying in exotic worlds beyond the stars.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Aliens came in the 2020s an announced we were being moved. They considered humanity a sort of semi-evolved species that wasn't going to make it on this planet. There was some attempt at resistance, it fizzled comically. The aliens said they were glad we got that out of our systems. They also explained that we were undeveloped in their eyes. The Aliens stated that they saw us as like a pot-bound plant. We needed more room. We were getting it like it or not.

The Aliens divided humanity into 70 groups of roughly 100 million people. One group was left on Earth. The others were distributed to terraformed planets in several galaxies.

The Aliens set each human group up with basic infrastructure. All humans aged beyond brain maturity (Roughly 23-25 years old) were brought back to brain maturity. Those whose minds were deemed flexible enough were put through the basics of running and maintaining the infrastructure and a human level explanation of theories involved. Each population starts out in perfect health, extra education according to the ability to absorb it, and plenty of tools and infrastructure (including fusion power generators and railroads connecting the various human communities on a given settlement world). The downside is human stubbornness.

Individuals that would tend to be hidebound, stubborn, or rigid, tend to be less able to absorb the teaching machine lessons. Dreamy, imaginative, empathetic, self-disciplined, curious, playful, or experimental types gain more from the machines. This creates a serious cultural divide right off the bat and a strong tendency for the two sides not to listen to each other. Note: When figuring out whether someone has a hard or easy time with the teaching machines do traits as positives and negatives. A stubborn person who is self-disciplined and curious would logically do better than an imaginative person who is rigid.

The Aliens announced, as they left, they weren't from this universe and they aren't our babysitters. If we blow this chance that's it.

The PCs are young and healthy, but they could have a lifetime of experience behind them. The Zero point Traits from THS (No Genetic Defects, No Mental Defects, No Unattractive) are universal. The tech level is eight plus the Fusors and a few other bits according to circumstances. Attitudes aren't changed, a 102 year old Ku Kluxer or a 95 year old SS recruit, or a 70 year old KGB agent is now young, strong, and nasty. Cultural groups are more mixed up than in the Riverworld. A group could contain people from every human group on Earth. People from China and India are each 20% of any group. Everyone is starting out the same, so if your character was a British Duke who spent his life in merry dissipation for eighty years of vacation on the accumulated wealth of his family, that's gone. Advantages and disadvantages based on wealth don't exist at the start of play, and might not be possible in the players' lifespans. Status based advantages and disadvantages aren't likely to sustain themselves very well either.

The world the PCs are on is a blank slate in a way that the Real Old West wasn't but the west of movies and fiction often was. Of course, each PC brings their own history to the setting and the histories and fantasies of others will be a burden on the PCs. Example: Many third world dictators blame America for all their problems. Some of their people believe them and want vengeance.

Start the PCs either as normal adventures or give them bonus skill points for being older. Picture a group of 98 year old WWII vets newly returned to being 23 years old and ready to cut loose and explore their new world. They'd have more points in several areas.

[Astromancer]

Humanity in this setting gets two visitors. First, in 2021 an alien spacecraft crashed in farmland near a major port city. The only living things to survive the crash were microbes. These were a type of Proteus Virus. The plague ripped through the world causing madness and chaos. About 15 percent of humanity died. One in twenty went insane and about the same number suddenly developed psionic powers and abilities. In the next generation, which was smaller because of reduced fertility, almost all children developed psi perks around puberty, some before some after.

This phenomenon leads to the next set of visitors. These were Aliens. They explained that they only just learned that we had been contaminated. They were here to deal with the mess. The microbes were designed for humans that had been taken off Earth in the distant past. The Aliens said the oceans were about four hundred feet lower when they last visited. The microbes were to unlock psionic powers. Problem, these powers lead to the formation of a hive-minds that weren't stable.

The humans tested ended up dead in mass waves of insanity. Humanity would need to monitor its new powers or die horribly.

The aliens left and the words seem to be true but understated. Hive-minds are easily formed and almost always go insane. Still, a few hive minds didn't go insane. These stable, sane, and ethical gestalts are humanity's only hope of survival. These stable, sane, and ethical hive-minds fight the insane hive-minds and the unethical ones as well. Plus various rogue psions that stay out of gestalts.

Some support the stable, sane, and ethical hive-minds. Others say psionics are a snare of Satan! Others say that the gestalts are all either fronts for or dupes or the aliens. Still, others say that insanity is the true path to oneness with God.

The PCs with have much to do.

[Astromancer]

This world is pretty normal until 2018AD. In the spring of 2019 beings from other realities show up at the U.N. in the General Assembly Hall. They announce that they are Storm Knights. They prove they have superhuman powers and explain that the game "TROG" was planted in this world in order to prevent or delay the invasion described. However, to block the attack of the High Lords (Vampires that eat worlds would be a fair description) drastic measures were needed. Basically, all of this Earth must be turned into Mixed Zones in order to make it so the High Lords can never feed on this Earth.

That was thirty years ago. Everywhere on Earth realities overlap. The Nordic Countries, the British Isles, New Zealand, the Canadian Maritimes, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Florida from Orlando south, the Eastern third of Cuba, and the Eastern Caribbean from the Leewards and Windwards north to the Bahamas, are blended with a Tolkienesque Fantasy world.

France, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Southern Germany, Austria, Quebec, and large areas of Eastern Brazil, are blended with a strange reality mixing Cyberpunk, Noir, and witchcraft.

Large areas of Canada, the United States, Mexico, and the Amazon jungle have dinosaurs and weird shamanic events.

Throughout the Andes, the West Coasts of Mexico, the U.S., and Canada, are areas of hyper-technology, generally with a biotech theme, psionics, and contacts with friendly aliens. LA and Bogata have spaceports.

Egypt, Sudan, much of the Near East from the Mediterranean to the borders of Pakistan, and most of the northeast quadrant of Africa, along with areas of the southern and western Caribbean, is now blended with a pulp adventure reality.

Japan, Korea, Eastern China, the Philippines, enclaves on the West Coast of the U.S., and the cities of Cape Town and Buenos Aires with the surrounding areas are influenced by a high-tech and conspiratorial reality.

Much of Southeast Asia, northern Australia, and western Russia and many small areas and out of the way corners are blended with Victorian Gothic reality.

The rest of the world either has rarer realities of shifting mixtures of the main seven. Example: Hawaii is a blend of the influence of the Tolkienesque fantasy reality and the Andean Hyper-technology and psionics reality. Meanwhile, Greece and certain nearby areas are blended with the influence of the Greek Gods. Tibet has a pulp reality flavor but with a much stronger spirituality.

(More Later)

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

North Korea, annoyed that China isn't being cooperative and is beginning to see North Korea as a liability, decides to launch a biowarfare attack on China. The North Korean scientists tasked with the attack believe in the myth of an ethno-specific plague. They really thought they could create a plague that could burn through the Chinese population and wouldn't affect anyone else.

They were wrong. Asia collapsed hard, the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand were able to establish a viable quarantine. Russia never really had a chance to form a quarantine. Europe had mixed success in stopping the plague. Eastern Europe taking the brunt of the horror. North Africa was brutalized as was Southwest Asia with Israel as an Island of effective quarantine. Africa was somewhat spared because of economic collapse. The plague was seriously slowed down by total economic collapse. Sadly the economic collapse killed many as well.

It's now the year 2030. The plague has been isolated and effective vaccines produced. Still, the economy is in chaos, trade is dead, populations are reduced from forty to eighty percent in the areas were the plague hit hardest, and international relations have collapsed.

However, several new technologies are giving real hope of rebuilding the world. First, Thorium based power generation systems bring cheap safe electricity. 3D printing, genetically improved crops, and quantum computing are also changing things radically.

But not everybody wants change. Many people want either no change or to go back to an imagined past. The very things that can restore their societies are fearful to them.

The PCs are basically trying to defend the rights of shattered communities to have a future they want against bitter minorities that will kill anyone that challenges their dreams and fantasies.

[doctorevilbrain]

I have a hard time believing that there wouldn't be enough surviving military pilots who would completely destroyed North Korea. I have a hard believing China wouldn't be able to tell who sent the disease.

[AlexanderHowl]

Having done more than a little research into thorium-based nuclear power, there are a few reasons why it has not taken off. First, it does not produce useful radioactives as a byproduct, so it cannot be developed along with a weapon program. Second, it requires a neutron source to salt the thorium, either a particle accelerator targeting the thorium fuel before it enters the reaction chamber or plutonium blended into the thorium fuel, and it just adds a step that increases the complexity and expense of thorium fuels. Third, uranium is cheap and plentiful, so there is no real economic need for thorium-based nuclear power. Fourth, fusion is better, and a society is probably going to develop commercial fusion before they need to develop commercial thorium.

In an alternate world where Gore received the presidency after the 2000 election, the USA got serious about fusion, and succeeded in building the first commercially viable reactor in 2010. With its control over fusion technology, and the savings from paying down its national debt, the USA was able to afford to expand into the Solar System using fusion rockets, returning to the moon in 2015 and sending the first mission to Mars in 2020. Now it is 2050, and the USA has established bases and/or colonies from Mercury to Saturn, and it is the lead builder of space colonies. Not all is peaceful though, as China and Russia, long tired of being eclipsed by the USA, have joined together as a military alliance, and have invaded the nations of Central Asia, destabilizing the long peace that existed since the end of the Cold War.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain

I have a hard time believing that there wouldn't be enough surviving military pilots who would completely destroyed North Korea. I have a hard believing China wouldn't be able to tell who sent the disease.

North Korea was punished. And remember, there is no such thing as an ethno-specific plague. North Korea was both ravaged by plague and bombed by China. Neither action made the plague less brutal.