New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

And the characters have been given useful skills while asleep. That is one of Stalone's best movies, if only for the silly comedy.

Stalone was never given his due as a comic.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Dione

Our world is named Dione the Goddess, I once heard that she was the wife of Zeus before they changed the story and made Hera Zeus's queen. That fits us, the discarded wife of a powerful bully.

Dione's lower gravity and greater air pressure have several effects. For one thing, flying creatures can be substantially larger than on Earth. As this is combined with a slightly larger partial pressure of oxygen, insects can be dramatically larger. On earth, giant hornets are the size of a large grape, on Dione, giant hornets are the size of a large mouse.

There are condor-like birds the size of Pelagornis, there are smaller raptors, like eagles larger than that ever lived on Earth that have no issues preying on humans.

There are also bats, called wolfbats, that hunt in packs. They aren't as dangerous as a wolf pack, but they have the element of surprise.

There are also gigantic bat creatures genetically engineered to be flying pack animals. These bats can carry as much as a large camel as fast as a bat can fly. They can fly for hours without rest.

Another aspect of the thicker atmosphere is that UV light is much weaker at sea level. On our own Earth, it's supposed to be extremely hard/rare to get a sunburn at the shores of the Dead Sea. And the air pressure on Dione's surface is more than 20% greater at planetary sea level on Dione than at the shore of the Dead Sea. Thus people who wear clothing that completely covers their bodies don't get enough sunlight for good health.

The only people who really need to cover up are those that either ride the giant bats or those that pilot airships.

Another aspect of the thicker atmosphere is that more of the planet is temperate. This includes mountains being more temperate at higher altitudes.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Someone on these forums I think once had posts about a interstellar setting where you traveled in cryo because of STL only. The PCs had things go wrong and the party met when they all woke up in a long abandoned lost luggage storage. Came from species, cultures and times that were totally separate given the size and age of overall setting.

That's a good hook for a campaign that lets the players run a very, very diverse group of PCs. The trick would be giving them motivation to work together depending on how different the characters were.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Dione

Our world is named Dione the Goddess, I once heard that she was the wife of Zeus before they changed the story and made Hera Zeus's queen. That fits us, the discarded wife of a powerful bully.

One way technology is controlled on Dione, and the elites are fanatical in wanting to control technology and products of technology, is strict licensing. If someone outside of the elites or the military and security forces is caught with restricted technology, they're generally fined and mutilated. Chopped ears and cut off noses being most common. Gelding and other genital mutilations are less common but not rare. As labor is valuable, chopping off hands or feet and blinding are rare last resort punishments.

The law is brutal in most of the planet's cultures, the old Chinese saying "When dead stay out of Hell when living stay out of Law Courts." is highly applicable on Dione. The Hegemonic Order is a partial exception to this. Lawyers are allowed and there are public defenders (informal and a charity). Still, Judicial Murder (framing a foe for a capital crime and getting them executed) is a common recreation of the elites. In all societies on Dione, slavery or sentences at hard labor are a common punishment and/or the consequence of not paying fines, damages, or court costs.

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Bootleg Biotech is common in the more technologically advanced cities of Dione. The rich and elite get bio-mods and life extension treatments. Some elites have their heirs designed for success. Many of the poor seek bootleg biotech to gain an advantage to climb out of poverty and low status. Those mutilated by the legal system seek the restoration of their bodies and faces. Still, others come to radically change their appearances in order to begin new lives.

These bootleg biotech labs are also places were exotic mutilations are inflicted on the helpless to make designer slaves. These are mainly for brothels or entertainments.

[Anders]

ATLANTIS

A devastating nuclear war has thrown the world into a new Ice Age. The surface is uninhabitable - a nuclear desert. But humanity still survives... on the Abyssal Plains of the Earth's oceans. Deep underwater there are habitats, powered by giant fusion reactors. And the war still continues - partly for resources but mostly to settle old scores.

[Astromancer]

Another way to do "Atlantis Nouveau" would be the settlement of a stormy violent ocean world with rich and vital resources. An earthlike world with three extra miles of ocean depth, which ought to be common enough, with something like Star Trek's Dilithium Crystals to drive settlement and exploration. Either different human communities or alien societies could be in competition for local resources.

The main benefits are, less worry about explaining why the radiation doesn't seep down into the oceans (radioactive dust would get down). And if the surface is just a seared desert not radioactive, why don't they just live in floating cities near the surface just under the layers that would be agitated in a storm?

[thorr-kan]

Originally Posted by Anders

ATLANTIS

A devastating nuclear war has thrown the world into a new Ice Age. The surface is uninhabitable - a nuclear desert. But humanity still survives... on the Abyssal Plains of the Earth's oceans. Deep underwater there are habitats, powered by giant fusion reactors. And the war still continues - partly for resources but mostly to settle old scores.

David Drake had two stories in Seas of Venus (https://www.baen.com/seas-of-venus.html and available as a free download) that might be good setting fodder. They're early Drake, so they're pretty grim.

The stories are in homage to "The Venus Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore described in Clash by Night and Fury", which I have not read.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

We know they aren't the faeries or the old gods either, but we've no other name for them but "Tuatha de Danann". And truth to tell we knew less of them than we ever did of the real "Gentry."

They seem to be gone now. We've no way of knowing if that's good or bad news.

They left us in this strange land. I suppose the lands we came from generations ago were the sun crossed the sky each day and night was a time and not a place, and the night had beautiful lights called stars and a great silver wonder called the moon, would seem strange to us.


Basically, the PCs are descendants of people(in my version Irish but whoever you like) brought to a tide-locked world by aliens. It was part of a breeding experiment to produce a stable crop of human psis to harvest for brains (the aliens could have gotten the results they desired by genetic engineering far more quickly, but religious taboos prevented it).

But now the "Tuatha" are gone and the humans are free to explore the world that was left to them.

Assume a TL4 is the norm although TL5 concepts are understood. Some scholars have deduced they're on a tide-locked world. But, the local humans lack the resources and knowledge to have an industrial revolution.

Psi powers are fairly common but quirky and limited. Powers based on ESP, Telepathy, Healing, Psi-Vampirism, or Probability Control, are fairly common. Anything else requires an Unusual Background advantage.

The PCs should be a group of gifted young people sent out to explore the world beyond their communities and to find useful things like fresh supplies of timber or peat or maybe even a place to mine metals. Anything left by the "Tuatha" that might be useful could be explored too.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

In 2025 Earth is contacted by Aliens, they explain that Earth is in a disputed border area and is just barely considered to decide which of three political groups to join. As the USA (being the only nation to land citizens on another world) is the only nation that qualifies as "civilized" in the alien's eyes, they are given the choice, much to the bitter chagrin of the rest of the planet.

As the first group was a monarchy looking for vassals and serfs and the second was a theocracy looking for converts to serve as serfs the sleazy mercantile alliance looking for junior partners seemed best. Not a good deal, just the least bad one.

Basically, the PCs are near contemporary humans hired by alien businessmen for some job or other, generally an unpleasant one. This frame is basically about taking contemporary people into Sci-Fi settings and Sci-Fi characters and tropes to near-contemporary Earth.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

In 2025 Earth is contacted by Aliens, they explain that Earth is in a disputed border area and is just barely considered to decide which of three political groups to join. As the USA (being the only nation to land citizens on another world) is the only nation that qualifies as "civilized" in the alien's eyes, they are given the choice, much to the bitter chagrin of the rest of the planet.

As the first group was a monarchy looking for vassals and serfs and the second was a theocracy looking for converts to serve as serfs the sleazy mercantile alliance looking for...

...debt slaves to ruthlessly exploit. I mean come on. Sleazy mercantilists dealing with technologically less advanced peoples? They'll be buying and selling humans in no time. I hear we make great pets.

Honestly it's not terribly plausible that either of the others would offer those terms while simultaneously having enough respect for us to let the natives choose. What's more likely and eminently precedented in Earth history is that all three of them would come in to sent missionaries, traders and make deals with the local kings, chieftains and warlords as they would see it. So the United States would make a trade deal with sleazy mercantilists, China would agree to adopt the theocrat's religion as their new state religion, Putin would agree to be crowned Grand Duke of Russia under the monarchy's king and so forth.