New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[joppeknol]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Fails to explain why those who are blinded later seem to be OK, or why indirect sight (which presumably covers anything from accurate paintings to mirrors) causes insanity.

It feels like a cthulhu mythos to me. Everything we know about science, logic and the world is wrong, considering these aliens and their use for analog recording of female orgasms. Never to try to offer fake orgasms, digital, or copied resources. When asked why they want it, their answer is inexplicable. Building, destroying universe, energy source?.... No one understands.

Needless to say that energy weapons with an efficiency above 50% are proven to be impossible (one of the ground rules of modern physics).

Nice!

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by joppeknol

It feels like a cthulhu mythos to me. ... aliens and their use for analog recording of female orgasms.

This has distinct echoes of Spinrad's The Void Captain's Tale.

Building, destroying universe, energy source?.... No one understands.

Or maybe they're just into audio-voyeurism?

[AlexanderHowl]

I am a big believer in the idea of the limits of human cognition. If and when we leave our little island in the oceans of night, I believe that we will encounter beings that defy our limited understanding of the universe. In the case of hyper efficient energy weapons, I do not feel that there is any particular law of physics that prevents lasers from reaching 90%, it is just that we are incapable of creating such a thing with the limits of our cognition. Since AI are programs created by humans, they will likely have similar cognitive limitations (the old saying of 'garbage in, garbage out' applies to AI as well as other programs).

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This has distinct echoes of Spinrad's The Void Captain's Tale.

Or maybe they're just into audio-voyeurism?

Yeah, that aspect seems the most understandable of the setting.
If they wanted audio recordings of sunsets. And they somehow could tell good ones from boring and fake despite the fact that sunsets obviously don't produce sound. Now that would be weird and alien.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I am a big believer in the idea of the limits of human cognition. If and when we leave our little island in the oceans of night, I believe that we will encounter beings that defy our limited understanding of the universe. In the case of hyper efficient energy weapons, I do not feel that there is any particular law of physics that prevents lasers from reaching 90%, it is just that we are incapable of creating such a thing with the limits of our cognition. Since AI are programs created by humans, they will likely have similar cognitive limitations (the old saying of 'garbage in, garbage out' applies to AI as well as other programs).

While I personally strongly disagree with real world physics being that rubbery, it is a downright assumption for nearly every science fiction setting that I know of.
For games, it's all a matter of what the players and GMs expect and need for sci fi fun.
Though unless the GM makes it clear that such "mysteries" are not solvable, I would assume they're meant to be explored and explained logically by the PCs. Even if that explanation is Lovecraftian spookiness.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by joppeknol

It feels like a cthulhu mythos to me. Everything we know about science, logic and the world is wrong, considering these aliens and their use for analog recording of female orgasms. Never to try to offer fake orgasms, digital, or copied resources. When asked why they want it, their answer is inexplicable. Building, destroying universe, energy source?.... No one understands.

The thing that typically challenges my disbelieve suspenders for these sorts of things is often how does anybody learn that?

Contact with these things drives almost anyone crazy, but somehow people keep trying despite that, and not only manage to not only figure out they have something we want, but that they will trade it for something nobody would consider offering them in the first place, in a format humans don't actually produce anymore even. How?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Contact with these things drives almost anyone crazy, but somehow people keep trying despite that, and not only manage to not only figure out they have something we want, but that they will trade it for something nobody would consider offering them in the first place, in a format humans don't actually produce anymore even. How?

Well, if they turn up with a sign saying:

"Please do not look at us, it will drive you insane. We found that out the hard way. Please give all this gold to the family of the person identified by this wallet."

If that wallet has ID that leads to someone who vanished six months ago, and the 25lb of gold is real, it's kind of convincing.

[Flyndaran]

Wouldn't that sound more like the start of a horror movie? Monstrous predators enticing prey with wealth all the while creating a story for why people will sometimes "disappear".
This scenario would probably work rather nicely for a more local Monster Hunters game.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Rocky Mountain West, Western Canada beyond Manitoba, and the Pacific Coast from Baja to Alaska are a series of loose confederations and warring states. Refugees from other lands went to the Western USA in search of survival. The Lurjahri, liking neither mountains nor arid lands attacked only California. They got wiped out but the floods of desperate refugees collapsed the economy and the society.

(SNIP)

(more later)

Denver would probably at least start out pretty strong. We have a robust economy and took advantage of the economic downturn to approve a bunch of bond issues to improve the city's infrastructure.

That said, those assets would make it an attractive destination for refugees, and a lot of the other communities in Colorado are pretty reactionary and didn't make some of the smart moves.

Colorado Springs could turn into a pest-hole, pretty fast. A significant fraction of its economy depends on federal government transfer payments in the form of military expenditures.

If that dries up, C. Springs winds up with a whole lot of people who are already upset at the state of the world, and now have no money.

Pueblo, as the poorest community large enough to qualify as a city would suffer a lot, too. It just doesn't have wealth or the educated workforce to survive, and with no markets for its steel mills (at least, in the short term), Pueblans would get pretty desperate, pretty fast.

Boulder almost has the opposite problem. One of the most affluent cities in the region, regularly ranked as one of the top cities in the nation for scientists, technology workers, artists and outdoorsy types, it's also one of the most peaceful and most liberal.

It is the home of the University of Colorado, which has a reputation as a "party school." While somewhat true, that overlooks the fact that the university regularly produces significant numbers aerospace engineers and rocket scientists (no kidding), software engineers, doctors, nurses, and litigation attorneys, in addition to more usual batch of college grads.

(People in some of Colorado's more conservative areas -- especially those in Colorado Springs -- formerly sneered at the college town and referred to it as "The People's Republic of Boulder." In response, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce adopted the term and used it as the heart of a tremendously successful advertising campaign.)

That center of knowledge with its incredibly successful economy would have a tough time adjusting to the new reality. That said, the smart move would be to "team up" with Denver's more pragmatic liberalism and, if the two cities did that, the combination would be pretty strong -- especially if they made common cause with Adams County's hard-working, increasingly Hispanic blue-collar population.

That said, part of southern Boulder County became so disenchanted with domination by the People's Republic they split off and formed their own county of Broomfield, so they could give tax breaks to bring in a huge shopping center and business parks. Also, many of Denver's suburbs (especially to the south) are far more conservative than the city, itself -- and so are the farming areas.

Fort Collins is also a college town and fairly liberal, but not nearly so much as Boulder. It's also the center of what was the Colorado Agricultural & Technical College, now Colorado State University, so it has strong ties to the Eastern Plains and Western Slope agricultural communities.

Colorado State University has a history of excellence in agricultural biology and farm economics, and has slowly started to add expertise in biotechnology research

It's also located not far from Greeley, which has an economy dominated by support for farmers, ranchers and feed-lot operators, fossil fuel extraction and the construction industry. The University of Northern Colorado also produces a fair number of nurses and teachers, and has very close ties to the Eastern Plains farming areas.

Over on the Western Slope, there is one community of consequence, and that's Grand Junction. Located in the Grand Valley at the junction of the Colorado River and the Gunnison River, it sits in the center of a rich agricultural region that focuses on orchard fruits and (increasingly) vineyards.

The surrounding area also has a robust (if frequently environmentally problematic) natural gas production industry. It also had a number of nearby coal mines, but most of those shut down long ago as uneconomical. It's a long, long way to anywhere from Grand Junction, and transportation costs for bulk coal were murder.

The agricultural economy in Grand Junction will remain solid and stable as long as the Grand Mesa continues to stand, That's because engineers in the area have spent much of the past 150 years transforming the vast, flat-topped mountain into a sophisticated network of water catch-basins that provide water for simple, robust gravity-fed irrigation systems throughout the area.

(continued...)

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Wouldn't that sound more like the start of a horror movie? Monstrous predators enticing prey with wealth all the while creating a story for why people will sometimes "disappear".
This scenario would probably work rather nicely for a more local Monster Hunters game.

Well, an interstellar polity comprised of such entities would act as effective Forbidden Space. Dozens of human spacecraft would disappear because their crews would go insane trying to communicate with the aliens and AIs intelligent enough for diplomacy would likewise suffer difficulties. Even radio transmissions would be initially be difficult, as the temptation would be to translate the alien language.

Imagine a scenario where such a species controls a region of the Orion Arm that was 500 ly in radius and contained 2 million stars. Humans would run into the polity through natural exploration, but they would find it to be a hard limit to their expansion as even photos of the aliens would cause humans to go suicidal in order to purge the sight from their memories. In essence, such a polity would be a good reason for humans to explore in the other direction.