Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

A tramp freighter would need to keep costs down. Why bother with an expensive drive for exploring the stars when you can use a cheap drive to jump right to the stars you want?

I need to do more thinking on the last two questions.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

If you have FTL radio, you don't have independent, small merchants who haul speculative adventure cargoes -- at least, not for long. So, the question is, what sorts of campaigns would you want to encourage?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

That would depend on the effective range. FTL communications limited to inside a solar system wouldn't have the same effect as interstellar range FTL communications.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I generally detest FTL communications/sensors. I prefer to have my PCs depend on news brought by courier spacecraft. Of course, I also like having it that strong AI cannot survive FTL travel, so FTL travel depends on living creatures (AI plagues are restricted to STL travel).

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}


Riffing off LeGuin some more for my space setting, I plan to introduce Cetian Mathematics, though I'll give it another name. In LeGuin's Hainish novels, the Cetians are a human group that was settled on a planet called Centaurus. They developed a form of mathematics that surpasses any Terran mathematics the same way the Hindu-Arabic numbers surpass Roman numerals. Thus with their mathematics Mathematics is a mental hard skill rather than a mental very hard skill. It's simply easier to do and think math using Cetian mathematics.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Was there a reason it wasn't developed prior to the Celtians? Just no one had thought of it?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I also have a dislike for FTL communications and sensors. In my own space opera setting, FTL drives operate off a hyperdrive model, with specialized exploration/S&R/SWACS spacecraft for long-range sensors. FTL radio does exist, but is nowhere near as fast as the slowest courier ships out there; at most, it'll eliminate communications lag in a star system, but a message from, say, Earth to Alpha Centauri will still take several weeks (a courier could make the trip in a matter of hours taking it easy, or minutes if he's in a rush and doesn't mind suffering a bout of hyperspace compression sickness).

I can somewhat justify FTL radios using my setting's "advanced" physics and the "hyperspace onion" model I'm using, but I can't really justify Star Trek-esque realtime FTL sensors.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I read a novel by Charles Stross in which he used quantum entanglement devices for FTL communication.

They had limited capacity (measured in bits, each entangled particle being one bit), the bits were not reusable and you had to physical separate the paired devices at STL travel speeds. Oh and they were probably grotesquely expensive but I don't remember.

So they were rare, communication capacity was limited and you had to get the device to a given destination in order to use it.

Apparently it's not a workable method anyway but seems like it would allow limited FTL communication in a sci-fi setting.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

The Cetians seem to simply have developed the best mathematics. The Greeks were brilliant, but would you want to use their number system to balance your checkbook?

In LeGuin's Hainish novels, some human groups invent certain elements of culture, others don't. One character in VASTER THAN EMPIRES AND MORE SLOW is said to come from a world where they never invented either the wheel or chasity.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I'm pretty sure the price is not mentioned, but given who the limited number of people who have them work for, you can be sure it's eye-watering.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

How do you feel about this style of FTL comms from Mass Effect:
Essentially if a ship wants to report something, it first has to find a buoy to plug into. And there is always the danger of the local buoy network getting destroyed during attacks and thus cutting off the area until it is repaired.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I do not like it because it is instantaneous. I like the games, but one of the reasons that I like Andromeda better than everything in the series but the first Mass Effect is because you are not connected to a Galactic Internet. I prefer that communications depend on people (and the trade in information also gives a reason for interstellar travel).

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Yeah there they have to carry messages Pony Express style because they haven't set up buoys yet. And, IIRC, their QECs were also down.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

I'm rereading LeGuin just now, how do you guys feel about Ansibles? They basically a FTL drone that flies through a type of hyperspace no lifeform can pass through and live.

You have a much faster form of comunication, but it would be involved in ways radios just aren't. The whole of the end of her first novel involved sneaking onto an Ansible and setting it to take a message to the lead character's home base, and then getting away before the ansible drones with the H-Bombs show up.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Once again, I do not like any FTL technology that can be automated, as I want a reason for biological humans to be involved.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I can see it being somewhat useful in my own setting, though not so much for communications as for long-range preliminary scouting of star systems along the frontier. We're talking the FTL equivalent of the Pioneer, Voyager, and New Horizons probes, though, not the Juno or Cassini probes that pop into orbit around a planet. Pop in, take pictures and other readings on a fast pass through the system, and pop out and back home so that the exploration agencies can see the data.

The reason for this is in my own setting hyperspace travel has an adverse effect on biological systems; it'll still affect electronic ones in the long run, but the electronics can get deeper into the hyperspace onion - and hence go faster - than people can dare to go.

Detailed exploration - and the potential to get into trouble - will still be handled by people, because the game is about people.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Is that the only reason? My biggest problem with Transhuman Space is that there's no reason for organics to be used for anything interesting except that the PCs are probably mostly organic.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Well, my own space opera setting is rather SafeTech when it comes to transhumanist technologies such as brain uploads/emulations and non-humanoid full-body cyborg conversions. In some cases, such things are just not possible; in others, the technology was never fully developed due to socioeconomic, political, and/or religious reasons. It's also lacking in nanotech (despite being TL11^) and the high-biotech areas have stalled out at mature TL9. Think more Star Wars Original Trilogy, Guardians of the Galaxy, or similar rather than Transhuman Space Plus FTL.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

You know what I wonder, why not just have transhumanistic tech without the brain uploading and all?

Sarah Newton of Mindjammer Press mentioned this regarding brain uploading:
And It's a central premise of her RPG that despite there being transhumanistic tech, it actually isn't possible to truly upload a mind. At most you have something that is based off, but actually isn't, you.

Not all aspects of transhumanism are really as game changing as that.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Yeah but that's pretty much beside the point. Is there a reason why the detailed exploration can't just be done with robot probes that move so much faster than people?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Time constraints (the probes don't have sixteen to thirty years to spend in a system mapping each planet encountered before returning home, as they are unable to send the results back in anything resembling realtime; remember, it took us months to get all the data New Horizons recorded over a few days' flyby past Pluto, and now factor in "no FTL radio" over dozens of lightyears), coupled with a lack of truly volitional AI (in this setting, volitional AI essentially must be "grown" rather than "programmed" and that takes time, and is generally reserved for the one race of sentient robots with TL12 computers, though the occasional droid may develop into one) for the probes. At best, you've got non-volitional AI with pre-programmed responses ("if it's a threat[list of threats], spin, engage thruster to reverse course, and enter hyperspace headed to [these coordinates]", etc). And in no case can the on-board computer interpret the data.

Plus, while they are faster in hyperspace, the probes themselves may not be moving at speeds that can match those reached by manned craft; you're more likely to have basic maneuvering thrusters and a limited delta-v on a probe than you are a full-fledged reactionless engine like those mounted on a hyperspace-capable SWACS craft. Probes are supposed to be fairly cheap; reactionless thrusters aren't.

Clear as mud?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

How fast is FTL travel in your setting?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

The millitaries of this setting do have jump drives. However, although there are plenty of practical reasons for the military to have jump drives, there are few practical reasons for nonmillitary groups, other than explorers and those seeking total isolation, to have skimmer warps. More millitary ships are likely to be jump drives but the majority of skimmer warp drives are millitary or scouts.

Edit, I've changed my mind.

Skimmer Warps (SWDs) are more expensive. Most trade and commerce uses the jump points. However, there are plenty of "Tramp Steamer" types that ply the less profitable but still vital routes. Also some jump routes are involved. They pass through dangerous territory were trade can't safely go. SWDs take trade around these chokeholds.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

Now the various groups drawn from Earth are at different tech levels. Some worlds weren't conducive to agriculture. They were brutally limited in development. Interestingly parahumans designed to be psions were normally dumped on these worlds. Perhaps a limiter in case of trouble.

Some worlds lacked accessible metalic ores, a serious limit on tech. Other worlds had more subtle geographical limitations to them. Worlds where all the arable land was in the tropics or where geography favored Gunpowder Empires in all major cultural areas. However some worlds are as advanced as Earth.

You can either go with Traveller's Earth conquers by disease senario or say that many worlds faced diseases and all post TL7 societies understand antisepsis or collapse in pandemics. I prefer the latter.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

If that refers to me, jump drives going through jump points are instantaneous and skimmer warps generally don't go faster than 125 times the speed of light. However getting to jump points with non FTL drives takes time. Meanwhile skimmer warps can travel for a week or two at 512 times the speed of light, but it will need expensive maintenance within a couple of months afterward. Speeds of 1000 times the speed of light aren't practical for more than a day or two and require more costly maintenance more quickly.

Note, the Skimmer Warp Drives (hereafter SWDs) work fairly well within a Solar System. There's a point, the exact reasons aren't understood, were it fails, mainly because it's too close to the gravity well of a star, or so it's generally thought. In Earth's system, the SWDs work to the orbit of Jupiter. In some systems, mainly dual or multiple stars, the SWDs can get as close as the Zone of Habitability. In star systems only mad men run their SWDs at more than 8 times the speed of light.

The great advantages of Jump Drives (hereafter JDs) are, cheapness of construction and maintenance, the ability to travel truly vast distances, and the likelihood of meeting other species at trading hubs and making profitable commercial and diplomatic contacts. The JDs will always be popular.

Does this help?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Assuming the six month travel rule from center to border, 125c is sufficient to support an interstellar state with a radius of 62.5 light-years (with exploration occurring within a radius of 125 light-years). While it might not seem like a lot, there are 3,900 stars with 62.5 light-years of the Earth and 31,000 stars within 125 light-years. With 90% of them probably having planets and 90% of the ones with planets probably having life, that is a lot of stuff to explore (even if there is no evidence of existent TL6+ civilizations). The jump drive is actually unnecessary unless there is an outside civilization with much faster drives threatening the central civilization.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

While a few historical empires sort of operated with a few bits separated by year long communications delays ("if death came from Spain we should all be immortal"), it's debatable these were really a single "state". The largest ancient empires managed four to six weeks from capital to peripheral provinces (Rome to Mesopotamia or Beijing to Tibet). Six months is more like "we're pretty sure it's a real place" or "I think I met someone who'd been there once" than "part of our state".

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Six months relates to the largest empires, like early 14th century Mongolian Empire, early 17th century Spain, or early 19th century Britain. It took around six months for communication to go from Britain to Australia (making an exchange of communication a year long process). Anyway, since the skip warp can be boosted to 500c for a few weeks, you could use special relays to cut an exchange of communications to 13 weeks ago.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Now let's condense this a bit. Say two months for up to 20 lys from Earth, making it four months to cross the sector, barring successes on a Navigation (Hyperspace) roll condensing that by a minor percentage (say, -5% time for each margin of success of 2; an MoS of 4 would be -10%, an MoS of 6 would be -15%, etc.), with a frontier of 50 to 75 ly that hasn't been fully charted so navigational surprises ("this rogue planet that pulled us out wasn't on the charts!") can still happen.

One issue I had with my setting in-play was trying to answer just how fast a standard hyperdrive could go.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The real question is what prevents people from going beyond the frontier? With 125c as their velocity, they could travel for eight years and be 1,000 ly from the Earth, well beyond the reach of a central government, and they could target some of the worlds discover by the Kepler probe. In fact, you could have a large number of failed colonies resulting from such an expansion, where groups of pioneers decided to travel for a decade from the Earth so that their light would not reach the edge of human space for a thousand years and ran into something that killed them.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

This sounds like a great logical reason for lost colonies all over the place. Other than the threat of meeting hostile forces or unknown dangers, nothing prevents people from just up and "lighting out for the territories." in Huck Finn's words.

I'm setting up generic stuff spun out of Star Trek and LeGuin's Hainish novels. So limiters aren't in the mix yet. Heck I haven't even tossed out my Time Lords crossed with M:tA and The Roads of Heaven kitbash yet.

Being magick, yes I'll use a "K" if I like, it's even more optional than the rest of it!

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Question! Should I dump the notion of incompatible star drives? It has some interesting tactical and strategic features, but it seems to be a limitation that adds little fun or drama. And RPGs ought to be about fun and drama.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Well other than the fact it takes a long time to get there.

The way I thought about it is like this. Decide on the distance/flight time to the third closest attractive looking colonizable world/system - to rule out odd density effects, or the close by star or two you picked because they're traditional. That gives you a "typical" distance. It would be an odd "interstellar" setting where that was more than months

At ten times that flight time it still makes some sense to worry about Earth - there will "only" be a thousand or so nice worlds in that volume, some Solarian government might be able to afford a few thousand warships to try to police them all. Ten times months is a year or two maximum.

At a hundred times that distance (that decade or so) you are far enough to be "lost" forever - nobody can keep up to date on *millions* good worlds - no decision-maker on Earth, even a collective one, will ever be aware of more than fraction of them, let alone in enough detail to make decisions concerning them. You can go further than that, but there's not much point unless you have a specific target, and absent such a specific attraction to draw another exploration nobody on Earth is ever going to know what happened to you until you send somebody back (Earth, the human homeworld, being the specific attraction generating the contact in that case)

Note that for sufficiently relatively dense goodworlds, that doesn't necessarily mean long trips. It's the information load of keeping track/number of hulls needed to check everywhere that cause you to drop out of sight, not the fact you've gone a long way. You can get lost in a crowd before you get over the horizon.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

In my own setting, there are hundreds if not thousands of slow sleeper colony ships still plodding along at lightspeed or just barely over it (these were developed about 150-200 years before the setting's ~2500CE date, so are at least one TL behind the rest of the setting). So yeah, there's a possibility of plenty of "lost colonies" in and beyond the frontier, some of them intentionally "lost", ala Pern. Many of them may still be en route to their intended destinations.

In many cases, in my setting, "the frontier" is "we've explored this area and opened it to colonization, but the exploration isn't complete". With any luck, you may be able to get help from the Colonial Defense Force on a 'timely' basis (that'd be like Fort Laramie sending out the cavalry; sometimes help arrives too late). "Going beyond the frontier" is possible, and perhaps even desirable for some folks, but help from any kind of authority is pretty much non-existent.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I have a collection of planets each of which is inspired by the work of a particular author.

Summanus: A T-Type moon orbiting a gas giant (known as the Eye) which orbits a very old red star. It's low gravity which helps explain why all the truly native life is invertebrate or arthropod. Most of the human population lives on the farside of Summanus because living under the Eye has odd psychological effects that include nightmares, and the occasional psychotic break. The planet's atmosphere is organically polluted with fungal spores so that in the tropics one must wear filter masks or suffer lung infections. The planet is volcanically dead but kept alive by gigantic burrowing worms that, at the end of their lives dig upwards to die on the surface, transporting essential minerals back to the surface in the process. Parahuman races with mysterious origins now live on the world, including ones adapted for oceanic life, a nocturnal version who eat carrion, one, one that lives in symbiosis with fungus, one that has shrunk down and become less intelligent, and one that has gone all the way into becoming a quadrupedal predator. The planet is balkanized with only one actual city, near the planet's spaceport. The city is ruled by an aristocratic oligarchy who never let anyone outside their family see their faces, which are always concealed behind their opaque filter masks.

Morana: An ocean world with large oceans and high vulcanism. Between the tidal waves, volcanoes and earthquakes and the fact that the air is suffocating, almost everyone lives in a single overcrowed arcology located in the most geologically stable spot on the planet. However it's extremely rich in minerals with the mining and farming being mostly handled by robotic labour. Morana exports refined minerals, and their locally manufactured robots, the most advanced in the sector. However they have strict laws against making military robots and their robots are famous for their safety with hardwired restrictions against endangering any human and enough intelligence to avoid accidents.

NeoVirginia: An airless small world inhabited by the descendants of a cult founded by a leader who preached abandonment of sexual taboos. They have a terrible reputation among the other worlds of the sector because it's well known that they have no incest taboo, and it is imagined that sibling and parental incest is more common than it actually is. They are, however quite inbred mostly through cousin marriages, with the resulting genetic problems having been handled by the most advanced gene therapy research institution in the sector. It doesn't help their reputation with their neighbours that NeoVirginia has only three punishments for crime, the first being corporal punishment, the second being exile, and the third being execution. Thus the neighbouring worlds tend to only see criminals from NeoVirginia. NeoVirginians are fairly easy to identify offworld since they are all Off The Shelf attractive pale-skinned red-heads. It is not generally known that they have all been genetically modified to have the longest lives possible.

Harmonia: Once by far the most habitable and generally advanced world in the sector, Harmonia experienced a catastrophe that wiped out virtually all of it's population, the precise nature of which is unclear to the other worlds in the sector. However any computer system that comes into contact with the still operating computer network of Harmonia will be reconfigured to do anything it can to kill any humans it is aware of. The fact that virtually the entire population of Harmonia had brain implant computers in constant communication with the network indicates what happened to them.

Enlightenment: Another volcanic world but one with a more or less breathable atmosphere, Enlightenment was colonized by the followers of a self-improvement program that became more or less cult-like. They use a memory editing technology to remove or alter memories deemed to be deleterious to their happiness and productivity. This includes of course anything about being unhappy as members of the Way of Enlightenment.

Serendipity: An exotic planet that appears to have once had very advanced natives who disappeared, leaving only archaeological traces like the barely perceptible foundations of long gone buildings and curious-seeming circles and mazes formed by crystalline monoliths that grow out of masses of interconnected crystal that lace the planet's crust. The monoliths appear to have the ability to defend themselves with people who attempt to take samples suffering mishaps like equipment failure, electrocution, coma and psychotic breaks. But the bits of crystal that sometime calve off by themselves are a highly valuable export. Also rumour has it that some people have gained psionic powers from contact with the monoliths.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

What is meant by "T-type moon"? I'm unfamiliar with that kind of classification, save the "M-type planet" phrase used to describe Earth in Star Trek.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Terrestrial. I meant it was nearly Earth sized. I should have just said garden world.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Morana sounds like the ideal place to run a variation on Doctor Who's Robots of Death storyline.

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Morana sounds almost like a hive world from Warhammer 40,000 with the massive arcology that is incredibly densely packed and all. Along with it being a manufacturing center.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I generally think that 40k levels of interstellar trade makes no economic sense (the cost of shipping any agricultural or manufactured good across interstellar distances probably exceeds any possible profit). It does make sense politically though, as making manufacturing worlds dependent on agrarian worlds (and visa versa) allows central governments potential leverage from the threat of blockades. An agrarian world without manufactured goods is nearly as screwed as a manufacturing world without food products.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

No, Morana has sufficient farmland to support the population...at least with a vegetarian diet although it imports meat as a luxury good. And while Morana has lower class neighbourhoods with rather more crime. it doesn't have any areas where the cops have completely lost control. The gangs fight with fists, clubs and blades because the city has a monitoring system that alerts them if it detects gunshots or energy discharges. It's an opportunity for PCs with martial arts skills to shine.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The gradual development of the scientific method changed the way that most of humanity thought and came to understand the world. Suppose that a future development -- perhaps developed as a surprise spinoff of computer neural network development -- provides a similar leap forward in salience and utility in thought?

People would not think faster, but rather better. They would less frequently make decisions that turn out to be foolish. Though hard to simulate, it might function as giving people who use this new mental technology access to something like Common Sense, perhaps paired with a bonus on self-control rolls when the consequences of failure are serious.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I can't see that having any real use in games.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I think that it might justify a 'scientific' explanation for the development of the 'softer' Psionic Powers (ESP and Telepathy). Other than that, I do not see it as being much more different than what philosophers have been attempting to do for the last 2500 years. It might justify a higher average IQ (perhaps the beneficiaries gain +2 IQ), but higher intelligence does not really seem to do much against the real world.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Might not have a use in games, but it’s the kind of thing that catapults a society beyond its peers lacking the ability.

I suspect the society where everyone is more sensible and responsible looks like a mystery from the outside. It’s like in ST:TNG when they say they’ve outgrown some human failing. Everything just works better. They’re not a culture of financial wizards, but there’s a lot of “millionaire next door” types because they save and don’t play the lottery. They’re not particularly conformist, but the impulse and petty crime rates are low. These people aren’t Klingons, but they follow through on assault, hold the line on defense, and are more likely to avoid fantasies of general officers. They’re no more or less inventive, but less VC money is wasted and more of their inventors follow through.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

Myself, I like what LeGuin does in the Hainish novels, simply says we learned Psi from others.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

This remains me, partially because I'm rereading her stuff, of LeGuin's Cetian Mathematics. The Cetians were humans whose ancestors had been seeded on a different world that Earth. Their number system was simply better than anyone else's. Just like the Arabic numerals are better than Roman numerals, and easier to learn and use, Cetian Mathematics are simply better. Because more people can learn mathematics and learn them more fully, society is changed. I think other skills were also learned form alien cultures too.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Mutual bigotry between the enthusiasts of the new method and the skeptics? Sure it's an old plot but, it is worth noticing.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

This has the Title {The Lanterns}

This is a near future setting I've posted it elsewhere, but I'll post it here for anyone who likes this thread.

About the middle of the 21st century two major biotech projects come to fruition at about the same time. First, a joint project between the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, to develop a new type of vaccine. Normal flu vaccines attack the "teeth" of a protrusion on the virus. These "teeth" are the most genetically active part of the flu genome. This new vaccine attacked the "shaft" of the protrusion, the most genetically stable aspect of the flu. This vaccine would give long term universal protection against the flu. The process of attacking viruses were they're vulnerable through genetic engineering was the new thing. It's also why this vaccine was widely rejected outside of the nations it was designed in. Scotland, far more autonomous than in todays UK, was the only substantial exception.

The other major project was a set of superflus and vaccines developed in central Asia to wipe out the infidels once and for all. The small group of fanatics dismissed the "American Candy" as many people called the new vaccine, as a mere hoax and perhaps poisoned. After all, most of the world press denounced the genetically engineered vaccine as a fraud, so why bother with it.

The Superflu project was not that well run and ten stains of superflu got into the ventilation system and out into a city's streets. Within a few days people were dying, in a few months most of the world's nations had lost 95% of their population. Sadly, most of the vaccines developed by the superflu developers weren't that good. The designers were wiped out, the last survivor set the compound on fire to prevent anyone from finding details of the superflu genomes which might save lives.

Unknown to the superflu designers, a subset of their group was designing and enhanced supermumps virus. They sought to simply sterilize the infidels, thus giving them time to convert and be saved, but still leaving their group to take over the world. This super-mumps virus got out and soon was called Shrivel by the survivors.

The "American Candy" was fully effective against all the superflus. Of the nations were the new vaccine was widely used, only those populations that promoted antiVaxer beliefs were hit by the superflus. In practice, this meant only the USA, were antiVaxers were important in the right-wing, had serious disease outbreaks.

The massive loss of life caused a world economic meltdown that no one avoided. The collapse of trade seriously slowed down the spread of Shrivel. Thus preventing the near total sterilization of humanity.

More next post...

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Lanterns}


It's now thirty years after the outbreak. Shrivel has spread slowly around the world and caused panic and isolationism and prevented both economic recovery in most of the world, and population recovery in large areas.

Society is TL8 in the cities and fallen back to lower tech levels in the countryside in most of the world. The West was on the edge of TL9 when the plagues hit, and the Pentalpha Nations are now early TL9. The Pentalpha Nations are America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and The United Republic of Ireland and Scotland (URIS). If Wales joins, they'll become the United Celtic Republic (UCR).

The Pentalpha Nations are trying to both wipe out Shrivel and restore trade. However, although the Pentalpha Nations have a vaccine for Shrivel, they don't have any cheap and practical way of undoing the effects of Shrivel on its victims. With lots of expensive surgery and TL9 biotech some people can be helped, but it's way too expensive and labor intensive to be a practical cure for the millions of victims. Fertile adults are few compared to normal population and children are too few. Large numbers of people who were infected with Shrivel young simply never went through puberty. Restoring fertility, and otherwise undoing the effects of Shrivel is a massive medical problem.

Paradoxically the plagues have promoted a great fear of medicine and doctors. Thus any medical aid is highly controversial among those receiving it!

Most of the Earth looks post-apocalyptic after thirty years of hard depression and a massive depopulation. The exceptions are mainly the Pentalpha Nations and those cities that attracted the survivors of large rural areas and desolate cities. Example: London, Paris, Rome, Jerusalem, and Mumbai, all gained replacement populations and are near their pre-outbreak populations. This does mean many areas are deserted and empty.

More later.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Uh most anti-vaxxers in the US are rich types in places like California and such. And they're not that "right-wing" at all from what I remember.

Also, France has the highest percentage of anti-vaxxers from what I remember as well.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Anti-vaxxers are conspiracy theorists. That is its own form of ideology unrelated to "wings" or general political bend.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I know. I I just remember that most American anti-vaxxers are the more the wealthy coastal types, who' use claims about vaccines being full of chemicals and not being "natural" as their excuse.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I have known more than a few religious conservatives in the South who believe that vaccines are part of a government conspiracy to sterilize their children (or to implant the Sign of the Beast or to give Christians terminal cancer, depending on who you talk to). When you stop trusting science, it is not much of a step to stop trusting medicine.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I wouldn't count on that memory.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

That phrasing is rather suspicious. Saying parents should have final say on medical choices for their kids is a very different issue than whether vaccines are necessary for most people.

But real world politics is getting afield of the thread topic.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Lanterns}


Besides, I specified a time about thirty years in the future, about midcentury. I now specify the year 2052 CE. Which sets the campaign in 2082CE.

This is basically a post-apocalyptic setting with a couple of major premises reversed. Example: most post-apocalyptic settings hit the USA hardest or turn the USA or whichever country survives into a fascist dictatorship. In this setting the USA is less disrupted than most of the world. Also the USA, and this is a point I haven't touched yet, the USA has gone though democratic renewal.

The antiVaxers explain in setting why the American right-wing, which would totally reject a Wilsonian foreign policy, put up with it. Having the American right-wing suddenly eclipsed durring a crisis, which is seen as well handled by the surviving left-wing, would cause a long term political shift. To maintain a basically Wilsonian policy for more than thirty years, such a major shift would be necessary.

It's all part of the setting.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Lanterns}


The Pentalpha Nations have, like some isolated regions, avoided outbreaks of Shrivel. They have finally developed a strong vaccine against the disease and they are now getting the vaccine distributed. But the plague and the long brutal aftermath have left much of the world phobically afraid of medicine. Also many people, remembering past social service systems, demand full medical systems and not just vaccines. Between those terrified of medicine, and willing to kill to prevent new plagues, and those demanding a world health system, and both unable and unwilling to contribute to such, yet fully willing to take hostages to enforce their demands, visiting nurse is a job that comes with combat pay.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Here's a summary of survey data. In short, it's not a political binary, but it's not exactly neutral.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Conspiracy theorists in general tend to cluster towards the loopy right in my experience. Anti-vaxx is a conspiracy theory that seems to have an appeal to the loopy left as well, I think because it fits a certain type of hippy/naturalism mindset.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I found that quite interesting, and it provides at least some validation of my view that extremists of all sorts function largely on emotion, and not reason. That's what makes them so difficult to deal with.

After all, how does one reason with someone who doesn't value reason? How can one persuade, when the person one wants to persuade values "gut feelings," Instead of facts?

When people operate on emotion, the decisions they make are frequently irrational, and that helps explain the OP's setting. The inhabitants of that world have been utterly terrified, and aren't thinking straight.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

People on both extremes have had science tell them they are wrong on some part of their beliefs. Since then know they are RIGHT science must not be trustworthy.

So the superflus would hit both far wings although it would hit the right more, the number who believe vaccines are dangerous are about the same but the number who believe that parents can decide to not vaccinate even if required is higher. So more survivors on the left but highest among moderates.

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At the risk of putting the thread back on-topic:

Humanity has spread to the stars, all but forgetting their homeworld, save in long-dead tales. The Diaspora, as it has been called, has resulted in many human offshoots as they adapted to other worlds. In the past, a Galactic Republic existed which evolved into a Galactic Empire, but a disaster in the galactic core, near the supergiant black hole Sagittarius-A*, disrupted the jump gate network that held the Empire together.

It is now several centuries since the disaster, and worlds are finally reconnecting with each other as the jump gate network is finally being remapped.

And in a long-forgotten corner of the galaxy, a planet has been discovered around a growing red giant which shows hints of having been inhabited by humans at one point, but no record of such a planet exists....

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Conspiracy theorists tend to perform this horrible kind of pseudo-science, where they start with the premise and then look for 'facts' that support their position.

You can watch it happening in real time every time there is some kind of mass-shooting tragedy. They start with the premise that these events are organised by the government in order to steal their guns. Then they scan all available footage in order to locate 'hired actors', undercover government agents, organised surveillance and any possible inconsistency in 'the official story'.

So for example, if there's an armed sherriff in the crowd, that's a government plant. If pictures of suspects at different times show different clothing, that's a flaw on the part of the conspiracists. If a bereaved parent seems insufficiently tearful at any given moment, it's because they are a paid actor. And so on.

After only a few days, they will have basically finished their fake narrative, complete with reams and reams of pictures, diagrams and references. It's impressive in a deeply sad kind of way.

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All human decisions are made through emotions though. When humans are incapable of feeling emotions, they are incapable of making decisions because they do not have any attachment to any of the choices (http://bigthink.com/experts-corner/d...ecision-making). The key of logic is to examine the emotional weight that you give each decision and to objectively evaluate whether or not you want that particular emotion associated with that decision. Through self-reflection, you can change your emotional weights and therefore manipulate your own decision making (propaganda and memetic theory just does the same thing for other people).

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A transhuman dystopia. 99% of humanity is now unemployable in any legitimate way because robotics are just that good, so they live on a government provided Guaranteed Income that provides them with what would be the necessities of life and a bit more except between the huge numbers of drug addicts preying on them to feed their habits and the straight up mobsters collecting "rent" they live in post-scarcity desperate poverty.

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Who's buying the stuff the robots are producing?

You can do an underclass in *relative* poverty in a robot economy, but not a vast majority in *desperate* poverty. And it's not just for the lack of purchasers of the robots production, but also because if the robots aren't producing stuff so cheap a lot of the people can buy more stuff than they could ever make themselves, they aren't cheaper than hiring people to make it and therefore don't make people unemployable.

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A contracting economy doesn't generate new jobs.

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To back up your idea why not rift off The Midas Plague vast real wealth and
psychological poverty. A world of class divisions and petty vicious humiliations. After all it's the petty cruelty that makes this dystopia a rosy apple filled with poisoned worms.

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A robotic economy only works in a leisure society, and only if the society pays everyone a wage for creative work. Of course, that means that you end up with a lot of trash, but it is better than having everyone revolt and destroy the infrastructure.

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It doesn't generate capital investment to buy new robots either.

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Mist: Strange impenetrable mists have been appearing around the world. Initially in unpopulated areas but that's changed recently.
When the mist dissipates all life but human are gone. No bodies or sign of violence. Just gone.

What makes this sci fi rather than horror is the cause. It's interdimensional entities wishing to save earth life from an oncoming planet-killing disaster. But they have decided that humanity is too dangerous, not worth the effort, etc.

What happens when mistakes are made and a few humans are taken?

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The sad thing is, most people do something like this, it's just that conspiracy theorists work harder at it. Scientists try to avoid cognitive bias when they notice it in themselves, because they know how dangerous it is, but humans in general still tend to be more likely to notice facts that seem to agree with what they already 'know to be true,' or think is probably true, and to interpret facts in ways that agree with same. Conspiracy theorists, whether pro-gun, anti-gun, or 'don't care about guns, but look at how the aliens are blah blah blah,' have raised this to what could almost be called an art form (if you're a psychology student, you could write a doctoral thesis on it), even if it's some pretty sad art. People with phobias also do this, though with far less enthusiasm (and usually putting in far less effort, unless one is trying to prove that one's fear is totally rational).


Speaking of aliens, though: Shortly after Apollo XIII suffers a fault that contributes 'evidence' to trideskaphobes, the mated craft encounter a large, glowing, saucer-shaped vehicle, which catches them in a tractor beam, and returns them to Cape Kennedy within about an hour. The aliens make no attempts to communicate, nor do they respond to same, and the saucer leaves once the vehicles are safely on the ground. The landing is viewed by far too many people to cover it up.

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Seed: A UN observer team investigating accusations of the use of chemical weapons in Syria (they may be exceeding their purview depending on the story agreement between players and GM) instead discover something far more serious: The gas bombings are instead actually devices forcing people into the Outer Astral Planes (Psionic Powers p27).

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Why do you need a traditional economy in the proposed post-scarcity-sufficiently-advanced-robots setting?

If the robots can do everything (mine for resource, run power plants, produce robots, luxuries for the robot magnates, bread and circuses for the masses, etc) then can't the masses also be excluded from the robot economy?

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Your ideas have merit. The setting would in some ways have to resemble Robots of Death. Luxury and an air of decadence. Speciall talents like the Captain's or Dask, would be the only way from the crowd to the elites.

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A dystopian future where immortal ducks secretly battle each other in the shadows.

The winners take the loser's heads and a portion of their knowledge and power.

This is called... the "quackening".

I'll show myself out....

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The finalists cannot be named Huey, Dewey, Louie, Donald, Daisy, Daffy, or Howard.

Howard would win, being a master of Quack Fu. :)

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The Ducklander 2 may barely qualify as Sci Fi, but the first one is solidly fantasy.

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The fundamental problem is if the robots don't produce more stuff for the masses in aggregate than they could make themselves without the robots, they don't actually put the masses out of work. Lots of people can still be "poor" of course, because humans are really good at redefining poor. People living at the poverty line in modern industrial economies tend to live lives of luxury compared to even most of the wealthy a millennium ago.

In a way the extreme separate robot economy that excludes them entirely simply makes that point clearer. That could be the case *right now* with a completely robotic economy somewhere failing to put humans out of work because it doesn't ship anything to Earth. An entirely separate economy (robotic or not) located on Earth might want to keep the resources for itself and not share them with humans, but that's an interspecies war setting, not an economic transition one.