Steve Jackson Games Forums

Steve Jackson Games Forums (http://forums.sjgames.com/index.php)

- GURPS (http://forums.sjgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=13)

- - Mars 1917 (http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=81058)

The Martians probably had lunar bases (on Earth's Moon as well as their own 2 satellites).

Unless there was something already there, of course.

:)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apache (Post 1206196)

The Martians probably had lunar bases (on Earth's Moon as well as their own 2 satellites).

Unless there was something already there, of course.

:)

True, the same automated ships could have put jump stations on the Moon, too.

Regarding Phobos and Deimos, it's likely enough that the ancient Martians would have put something interesting on them...

Their big, main base for Earth would probably be on Earth proper, though, where there's a viable biosphere and atmosphere. Much easier to manage and much more pleasant.

The question would be 'where'? The Germans probably would not discover the main base, it would make better story sense for them to have found one of the subsidiary stations. So the main base could be in some remote, dangerous, exotic part of the world, some place exotic even by the standards of the men who ended up on Mars...

The teleport system I describe could have gotten the Martians all the way to Mercury by stepping-stone method, but reaching outward past the asteroids would be a bitch, Mars never gets all that close to Jupiter, and the orbital periods of the asteroids aren't helpful.\

Maybe that's What Happened. The Martians were building a super-duper jump station that could send a party to Callisto or Ganymede. Their robot ships had built the receiving base, but when they turned it on it Blew Up Good and wrecked Mars.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 (Post 1206198)

Regarding Phobos and Deimos, it's likely enough that the ancient Martians would have put something interesting on them...

<snip>

Maybe that's What Happened. The Martians were building a super-duper jump station that could send a party to Callisto or Ganymede. Their robot ships had built the receiving base, but when they turned it on it Blew Up Good and wrecked Mars.

Phobos and Deimos were once one, rather larger moon but a big chunk of it got teleported to Ganymede and the feedback wrecked large quantities of Martian tech - perhaps Earth was shadowed by Mars and so the "E"MP was attenuated enough that Martian tech on Earth survived.

Martians could then, potentially, be ancient astronauts if you feel like pushing contact that far back - the surviving members of the Earth transfer station, who as far as they knew were all that remained of their civilisation, put some effort into developing the protohumans but perhaps had too small a gene pool and died out.

So what happened to the colonists on Venus? Once your PCs have worked out the background, that may be a self-hooking adventure...

The Himalayas for the main station. The air pressure and temperature are more homelike for them. Can even throw in Shangri-La for a later adventure. Are yeti Martian apes?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 (Post 1205942)

True...but not really well-suited to the planetary-romance version of Mars, IMHO. For this purpose I'd go with the Lowell/Schiaparelli map. If you want canals, for ex, drawing water southward on Real Mars means that you're sending it uphill in most directions. That implies some serious pumping technology and strains WSOD in a 'decaying Mars' setting.

Water would 'start' already uphill/south through the evaporation/precipitation cycle, and then drain down/northward through channels and aquifers (mostly below the resolution scale of the maps we're looking at here).

Quote:

Originally Posted by dcarson (Post 1206266)

Are yeti Martian apes?

Are they Martians?

Quote:

Originally Posted by isf (Post 1202099)

This past weekend, my group just started making characters for a Steampunk Mars game set in 1889. I'm basing it on Stirling's "The Court of the Crimson Kings" as much as "A Princess of Mars".

I got The Courts of the Crimson Kings through the inter-library loans service, and have just finished it. I enjoyed it a great deal. Thank you for recommending it to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Colonel (Post 1206245)

Martians could then, potentially, be ancient astronauts if you feel like pushing contact that far back - the surviving members of the Earth transfer station, who as far as they knew were all that remained of their civilisation, put some effort into developing the protohumans but perhaps had too small a gene pool and died out.

Interesting idea. The OP did mention that the Martians are human enough for sexual/romantic ties to develop between them and Terrans. If we're cross-fertile, then some modern Terrans might have Martian blood, and that might be a factor in whether the jump stations work or not.

That is, the still-operation jump stations won't switch on for a Terran unless he knows how to turn them on the manual way, or if he has some Martian ancestry, in which case the machine may kick in on its own. There might be other subtle advantages and disadvantages to Martian ancestry, too, as plot hooks.

For ex, if as somebody suggested Yeti (and Bigfoot and its ilk) are Martian creatures or biomachines, someone with Martian ancestry might be ignored by them while a pureblood Terran might be in grave danger.

It probably shouldn't be at all obvious, at first, why some people can use the jump stations and some can't, or why some could control the yeti and others can't. A mystery to be solved.

If you want some really neat maps of Mars go to the USGS website and search for map I-2782. There are actually two maps, and they are very detailed and can be dowloaded as PDFs for free. Then you can use Photoshop or Gimp to add an ocean at whatever contour you like.

Ah, here it is:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i2782/

There are a lot of quadrangle maps of Mars, too.

(I'm kind of a Mars fanboy.)