Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

This is a Supers idea. Basically, a powerful super decides that crimefighting is not their cup of tea. They look for other ways to aide the world. They discover that they don't fully understand their own powers and decide to learn what they can really do in order to see if it provides any real opportunities to help.

A) The Super in question discovers they've got the power to create Nexial Gates. They set up an agency in New York City and offer refugees and would be colonists easy passage to other worlds. Colonists pay low rates, refugees get their passage free. it is the year 2050 and humanity lives on over 150 planets. Large national groups like the Kurds or the Pashtuns migrate to safety and independence. The third world loses ethnic diversity, especially in the Near East and Africa.

B) The Super learns why his gageteering abilities didn't lead to his really being able to make reproducible inventions. Now he can create functional tech. Tech Level 12 technology and skills are now availible. The USA transitions to TL12^ quickly as does East Asia and the West generally, the rest of the world is massively disrupted. The Asteroids are a scene of conflict as major powers prefer to mine the asteroids than interfere in Third World politics. China, the USA, India, and the EU, struggle over lunar territories. The UN demands limits on interstellar flight and colonization.

C) The Super learns to speak to the gods. She's stunned but seeks the aid of the Gods for humanity. With miracles granted by friendly deities, she heals ecology of the Earth and provides excellent weather for all the planet's agriculture. She also renews mineral resources, raises lands threatened by the seas higher, and cures plagues. She also grants new sources of inspiration in the arts and sciences to all those seeking it.

The fact that this superheroine is channeling the old gods and performing their miracles to save the Earth is causing riots around the planet. The amazing renewal of the arts and humanities, as well as the leap forward in the sciences, is also disrupting the planet and inspiring people to transform their lives. With the masses liberated to seek their own destinies, the elites are in terror and panic. How can they retain power if the Gods give the power to the people, the eternal true owners of the power?

War, what is it good for? Keeping the power elites in power! That's what it's good for.

I hope those there were all fun and useful.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Basically, this is a Ringworld campaign. The PCs are descended from the survivors of a crashed Starship. Assume the meteor defense system brought the ship down decades before Louis Wu was born and about 85 degrees spinward of were Wu visited.

The community the PCs come from know of the fact they aren't from the Ringworld. They've little idea of what a planet is like. The community's basic tech level is 4, with some higher tech level ideas remembered. Because of invasions of other humanoids, the PCs have been sent out as a scouting party both to learn about why the other peoples are moving and to check out rumors of people from beyond the stars.

All the PCs will be suitable either as wilderness scouts, merchant/trader types, or diplomats, best they should be a little of each.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Um, I'm not sure you've appreciated the ludicrous size of the Ringworld. 85 degrees away is about 140 million miles, or 5,600 circumnavigations of the Earth. There is no way to travel such a distance with TL4 methods within a human lifetime.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Who said the rumors would lead to Louis Wu? Or that they are even true? The whole point is neo-primitive Earth humans wandering around an alien landscape. Adventures could involve exploring ruined cities, contacting aliens, either next door neighbors or creatures from distant stars, fighting monsters, etc.

Another twist is simply make their adventures happen long after the events of the Ringworld novels. Have Louis Wu come by in a Sky Castle and rescue the PCs and recruit them as agents working for him.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Dawn and Dusk

Here's a twist on a post-apocalyptic setting.

The PCs are part of a tribe of mutants living in the American Southwest, or as they call it Merca's mountains. They've long had conflicts with a group of people they call the witchfolk. The "witchfolk" are the residents of an enclave of technologically advanced survivors of the disasters and wars that caused the apocalypse. The residents of the enclave aren't just technologically advanced, they're culturally sophisticated and have developed psionic powers. The "witchfolk" bitterly resent the raids of the mutants on their cattle and installations. The Mutants regularly raid various "witchfolk" installations for metal and glass.

Recently the "witchfolk" have changed. Unknown to the tribes around them, the "witchfolk" have reopened a subterranean railroad connection to the city of San Francisco. The once isolated enclave is connected to a trade network. The "witchfolk" town has become a college town (people come to study both psionics and the excellent surviving library) and a trade nexus.

This means that the mutants are in a bind. The local area is becoming settled, a new version of the Western frontier. The mutants aren't even seen as the Indians in this scenario, the surviving Native American tribes are allying with the people of the enclave and embracing the return of trade and technology. The tribes of mutants are seen as somewhere between bandits and coyotes.

How can the tribes negotiate or carve out a place for themselves as their world begins to desert them? How can they stay tribal raiders when the culture around them has no space for archaic warrior tribesmen?

Basically, your post-apocalyptic Connan wannabees are up against a rapidly modernising environment.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Sounds like a cross between Genesis II and Horseclans.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Genesis II is in the mix. The "witchfolk" are the double bellybutton people without the brutality or corruption.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

So you play people who have absolutely nothing going for them and are doomed?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Yes. Remember they had a place in their world but that place is going away. The PCs are in a place much like tribal peoples faced with a rapidly expanding modern or modernizing society.

Note: The PCs are mutants in a conventional post-apocalyptic setting. So they could have superpowers.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

So you play thieves?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

But you've already ruled out psychic powers as belonging to the enemy along with all the technology. So what players are going to sign up for a "Your characters are villains who have no hope and are going to get their butts kicked until they all die out" campaign?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

To be fair, people play Paranoia, Call of Cthulhu, and (both RPGs and) wargames set in the Warhammer Universe (Fantasy and 40K). Those universes are very grim - the latter two specifically point out that humanity is doomed.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

If you want. Your tribe could also seek to move away from "civilization" or try to join up. Think about real world barbarians, tribespeople, pirates, Cossacks, and other marginal or marginalized groups. What did they do to adapt? What could they have done?

Plus mutant powers. Think of your tribes mutant powers as useful but Professor X won't be recruiting any of your group. Your powers are definitely low key and weak. But still useful!

Also remember that your tribe is successful at raiding, rustling, and robbery. Your tribe isn't helpless. But you are in serious trouble.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

No. The "witchfolk" have no monopoly on psi powers. They're simply better at such than your tribe. Plus your tribe labels anyone with "gifts of power" from outside your tribe "witches."

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Dawn and Dusk

The people who the tribespeople (ie the PCs) call the witchfolk, call their town Aurora, after the goddess of the dawn. At first, their community had an alphanumeric designation as a homeland security base, they gave it a name when they realized they'd become a community. The people of the town of Aurora call themselves the Aurorans.

The Aurorans refer to the tribe the PCs belong to as "the raiders" or sometimes the Buzzard Creek raiders. The name Buzzard Creek is the old US map designation for the otherwise nameless creek near where the PCs live.

The Aurorans are rapidly integrating into the new trade networks and feel a new security. The people of this community are parahumans, among the very few groups of parahumans that have survived since the wars that ended the old civilization. They have many advantages but the serious problem of needing twice as much food as normal humans and a higher percentage of that as protein. Thus the raids the PCs' tribes made on their cattle and farms were brutally threatening to the Aurorans.

Trade has allowed the Aurorans to take practical steps to make their food supplies more secure. Mainly using indoor farming and piping water to the tops of isolated and defensible mesas to create grazing lands for their dairy cattle. The tribes still raids the Aurorans' beef cattle and hogs, which causes great bitterness.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Those lifestyles are incompatible. If you rustle a militarily superior people you have to be able to leave in a hurry.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The PCs are rapidly becoming aware of this. As of yet the Aurorans haven't gotten a sufficiently forceful military to drive out the tribe, they had other problems. However, the elders of the tribe know they're on borrowed time.

Other tribal peoples have faced similar problems. The game would be about the PCs tribe adapting or failing to. Either way you've got a story.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I'm going to give random bits and pieces to support the setting.

First This setting takes inspiration from Genesis II, Andre Norton's post-apocalyptic novels, World Without End, Westerns, and the historical experience of indigenous peoples and peasants in rapidly modernizing areas. The thing that started the mental ball rolling was wondering about the fate of the mutants driven out and split off from their tribes in the film "World Without End" how did they feel. Some of the worldviews of the Aurorans was distantly suggested by Planet of Exile. Mainly the feeling of being a fragile island of civilization threatened on all sides.

Second The Aurorans are attractive healthy looking people, most of them would, in our time period, would get Attractive to Handsome/Beautiful in GURPS terms. However, because of the plagues that collapsed the old civilization, plagues that caused genetic damage, most people in the setting aren't good looking. The Aurorans are very rare in their healthy good looks. Thus they effectively have the Very Handsome/Very Beautiful advantage simply because their good looks are so rare/extraordinary.

Third The Tribespeople the PCs are part of call themselves "The Cartrights." The place where the tribe of "Cartright" lives was once a "Bonanza" themed campground called "The Ponderosa." The campground was a good place for a group to survive during the crisis. It was isolated and had good wells and its own source of hydropower from a small nearby creek. The power generation is long gone, however, the site still has excellent wells and a good defensive position.

The Cartright clans believe that they are descended from Ben Cartright. They believe Ben Cartright had three sons Adam, Hoss, and Elvis, and a daughter Morgan. Morgan was so beautiful that she was said to be a fairy princess, Morgan the Fairy. They believe that Jesus appeared to Ben Cartright after he invented the lightning rod and told him to marry Betsy Ross and move to the far West after he helped George Washington defeat his evil twin brother George the Three.

Jesus led Ben to the Ponderosa and gave Ben magical birthrights to give to his worthiest Child. Adam and Morgan became lovers and Ben drove them away for their sins. Hoss simply left and married into the Native Tribes (which particular tribe tends to switch according to the politics of the day). Elvis was to get the Birthrights but Adam and Morgan tricked Ben and Betsy into giving them most of the Birthrights. The "Witchfolk" are the Children of Adam and Morgan. The Cartrights are the children of Elvis and his bride Cinderella.

In the Cartright version of Cinderella, Morgan is the Fairy Godmother. She knew Cinderella was Elvis' fated bride. So she planned to get the woman married off to a powerful Prince in order to prevent her marrying Elvis. Elvis still wins Cinderella's heart and they run away from the Prince. The tribe uses this story to explain why a certain group hates/despises them, sour grapes because they're still bitter about their Prince's humiliation.

Fourth The Subshuttle system isn't fully operational. Most of North America north of Guadalajara and south of Alaska can be reached. There are links to Hawaii, Puerto Rico, New Zealand and Ireland, but further access is blocked mainly for unknown reasons. But also for simple deterioration of the tunnel system.

Fifth The Aurorans have developed new systems of pedagogy. They simply know more about teaching than any past group of human beings. This is becoming more and more obvious to the other people in the trade network. The town of Aurora is becoming the site of the first new University since the crisis that caused the collapse.

Among the GURPS advantages the Aurorans can teach are Versitile, Language Talent, Ambidexterous, Intuition, Sensitive, Empathy, Intuitive Mathimatician, Musical Talent, Mathmatical Talent, and Voice. Add others if they fit your campaign.

The library the Aurorans have was created as a backup for the University libraries of the United States of America. One of several such repositories and by far the most accessible one still in existence.

Sixth I envision this setting as being somewhere near or within the Four Corners region. This is both inspired by the Roddenberry TV movie and the complexity and grandeur of the area. The local environment is built up of radically distinct microclimates. Areas of woodlands or even swamps can be next to harsh and dangerous deserts. Snowy mountains and tropical valleys are within a few miles of each other. I see this as adding to the drama of the setting and giving the GM more ways to build stories and adventures.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I do love mangled modern mythology.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Dawn and Dusk

The reason this setting is called Dawn and Dusk, rather than the more normal pattern among post-apocalyptic stories of the title ending with the light of a new day, is that it is about the fate of those who are losing out or just don't get to be among the winners. Neither the Aurorans nor the Cartrights are evil. Both groups have been competing with each other and other local groups and tribes for survival. The Aurorans certainly have more advantages in the struggle to survive, but the Cartrights were an ongoing threat.

Now the Aurorans have done the equivalent of winning the lottery and they're bringing most of the neighborhood along with them into a bright new tomorrow. The Cartrights aren't singled out for vengeance or anything, they are simply seen as bandits in a setting that will have less and less tolerance for them as the economy improves and the local governments modernize.

One way this setting draws on Westerns are stories of people who can't stop being part of the Wild West even as the modern world starts coming in. The Cartrights are in an especially bad fix. Their home was a good place to survive the collapse mainly because it had a secure water supply, was very isolated, and was in the rainshadow of some mountains, and thus shielded from certain problems. The water supply, for both the creek and the wells, came from a rain fed aquifer, which is why a valley in the rainshadow of some mountains had a good water supply. The Aurorans, causing themselves trouble without knowing it, helped the Navahos drill into the aquifer in order to gain more irrigation water. This has diverted most of the water away from the Buzzard Creek area. Which means the tribe will need to leave or find another way to live.

In many ways, the Conan stories were about a displaced tribesman trying to survive without his tribe or the traditional context of their culture. The whole Cartright clan is in Conan's basic fix. They need to survive in a society that sees them as barbarians with little to offer but a knack for violence and maybe some scouting skills. This might not be so bad for the tribe's healthy young men, but women with children and elders are in huge trouble. Keeping the tribe alive would be a serious problem.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The characters are part of a diaspora that has gained control of large parts of the economy in several parts of space. They have their own neighborhoods in several starports and their own local rules. Sometimes they are even given vassal status by the local planetary authorities.

Possibilities: The locals persecute them with the collaboration or indifference of the authorities. It is necessary to form an underground army.

It is decided to form a state of their own.

An internal cabal of some kind is a criminal racket trying to dominate the community.

The characters go on an escort mission for pilgrims to the mythical lost home of your people.

A tyrant is persecuting your people and fugitives are crowded into a starport. Everyone goes to a nightclub to gamble away their sorrows(OK the classics work for a reason).

This at first glance sounds like Space Jews. But it could just as easily be Space Tongs, Space Italians, etc.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Praise from a person of your talents is doubly welcomed.

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I love this, take the group normally seen as the threating outsiders and make a story about how they struggle to survive.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I Promised to add a Magical addendum to the Farfarers setting, here goes. I'll give it in bits and pieces.

On a base of GURPS: Mage the Ascension I add three new Spheres, Society, Information, and Reality. Each works in the normal way.

Perception:The first level of the Society sphere lets you see/understand the social connections between people and between and within groups. At a glance, you know the difference between an undercover cop, a discrete drug dealer, and a mere derelict.

Manipulation:The second level lets you manipulate social bonds or sever them. An old friendship can go cold or become intense. The nature of the bond can't be changed, but its strength can be.

Control:The third level lets you create social bonds and rework them. Strangers can become close allies, friends can become foes. The nature of bonds can be changed. Friendship could be turned into romantic love, hate could be changed into a pragmatic business relationship, the bigger the change, the harder it is to pull off and to make last.


Command: Higher levels allow the reworking and redefinition of social bonds on a wide level. To make stable lasting changes would require Prime element.

Mastery: A Master of the Sphere of Society could create nations and faiths by ritual incantations.

Perception:The first level of Information allows one to see at a glance what is or isn't actually information. You can know what's a meaningless scribble on the wall, mere graffiti, and what is a secret code hidden in plain sight.

Manipulation: The second level of Information allows the Signal to Noise ratio to be altered. Information can be made plain or hidden in plain sight. (more later).

The sphere of Reality allows the Mage to alter the basic laws of reality and to travel to other realities. The main use in the setting is manipulating the jump gates.

Perception:Level one of the Sphere of Reality allows the mage to see distortions in the fabric of reality. Jump Gates are massive reworkings of the fabric of reality. Even the level one Sphere of Reality mage can see things about the Jump Gates others can't know. Those mages with astrogation skills can even change where their ship's passage through the gate can take them. Which is dangerous. The First level sphere workers can also see why a closed gate is closed. Seeing at a glance whether the Gate is unfinished, sealed, or simply broken. They can also "read" the seal to see if the seal says why it was sealed.

Manipulation:Second level users of the Sphere of Reality can simply choose to have the ship they are piloting to come out where they please of a variety of options. They can also take the ship they are piloting through Sealed Jump Portals. (More later.)

I'll need to rewrite this post alot.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

(This is a reposting to put certain info in an easier place to find.)

Jump Points around any star that has them (and no one knows why more than 85% of the stars have them) tend to come in set patterns that seem to be based on the simple solids. Tetrahedron patterns with jump points on each of the four points make of about fifty percent of the stellar populations jump points. Cubes, with eight jump points, make up another 30% of the stellar population. Octahedrons, with six jump points, are about 15% of the stellar population. Earth has one of the rare dodecahedron patterns, with twenty jump points. It is assumed that icosahedrons with 12 jump points are out there somewhere.

Why the jump points are arranged as they are confounds scientists and keeps mystics employed.

Tetrahedrons generally have gates that lead the furthest afield. Both of the known jump points to the Small Magellanic Cloud are from tetrahedron pattern jump gates. The normal rule of jump gates is, "The more Jump Gates the less distance traveled."

Some jump gates aren't open. Tests show they're there, but not available. Better technologies generally allow access to more jump gates. Some jump gates aren't stable in where they come out. Some are totally random, others seem to shift between different set points. Some are one way passages. Some are mysteries with no one coming back period.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The plot point that occurs to me is twofold. One is the problem of calculating jump points (which can be a bother if one is trying to get out of the system with the Green Slimy People Eaters on one's tail). Another related one is whether the network lands you in a part of the system you are not headed for, or whether you have to enter system in a dangerous place or whatever.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The idea was partly inspired by the book I plan to read, "Sons of the Yellow Emperor" which should arrive tomorrow, according to the update. It also comes from several wiki articles about Kongsis and Tongs and organizations named "-ong". It was also helped by my own ideas I already had which themselves were helped by several other sources.

One possible variation is that Earth was conquered by aliens a long time ago. And humans are a scattered race.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The jump points are well known in most settled areas. And most of the gates go to one place only (unless you use the magic addendum, which will incude Alchemical Time Lords.) It isn't hard to find jump points in an unexplored star system, it will take time.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Time will be a bother if the Green Slimy People Eaters are chasing you.

In any case there can always be ways to arrange for the jump point to deposit you at an inconvenient spot.

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Vaguely similar to the first half of the movie Titan A.E.
In that, humans are the homeless outsiders after the destruction of the Earth.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I thought the plot must have been around somewhere.

I believe Andre Norton has something like it too.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Your game your rules. Have evil fun.

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After Doomsday by Poul Anderson from 1961 has Earth destroyed and one of the surviving groups becoming mercenaries to get publicity so other surviving groups of humans can find and join them.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Some leftover details.

First: The default Tech Level of this setting is TL4. Poverty and lack of resources often leads to a functionally lower tech level. Black Powder weapons are a nearly universal technology in the setting. Printing, even though it is the signature TL4 technology is rare, mainly because of a limited demand for books and the expense of making paper.

The Aurorans had access to TL9^ technology. Before the recent changes that came with reopening the Subshuttle, they functioned day to day at around TL6 or 7, in some limited areas 8. The supertechnology the Aurorans had access to was a room temperature superconductor. The room temperature superconductor is the base technology of the Subshuttle system and woven through most of the Auroran technology.

The Cartrights are competent gunsmiths and are securely TL4 in weapons technology, in most other things, poverty and ignorance bring them down to TL2.

Second: There were roads through this area before the disaster, including a two-lane highway that passed by the Ponderosa Campground. However, early in the crisis that led to the collapse, most of the local bridges were destroyed to prevent the use of the highways.

Some of these bridges have recently been rebuilt by either the Navahos or the Aurorans to promote local trade. The local roads, neglected for centuries, are still very poor, but far better than nothing.

Third: The Psionic powers of the Cartrights are generally narrowly based. For example, instead of pyrokinesis, an individual Cartright might be able to cause black powder to ignite by will. One of the Cartright clairvoyants effectively had 360 Degree Vision but no other ESP abilities. One Cartright could control the lightning strikes during a storm, but could not cause them nor had any other psi powers. Any and all their Psionic abilities are narrow and quirky.

The Aurorans have a science of practical psionics, their abilities tend to be general. A Cartright's power might be very potent, but narrow in focus. The Aurorans are generalists. Also, the Aurorans generally have several different Psionic powers. Where, in GURPS mechanical terms, a Cartright might at most have 75 points in one or two narrow abilities, an Auroran normally will have 125 points in several general abilities.

Fourth: The Aurorans live longer than baseline humans. They have both Extended Lifespan and Longevity, as well as TL9 medical care. The Cartrights, being random mutants, and having only TL2 medical care, live shorter lives. The Aurorans have often tried offers of medical aid as a way to manipulate/control the Cartrights. The idea has had variable results.

Fifth: There are within the scope of the PCs (who are assumed to be Cartrights) no functional states. Tribes, communities, strongholds, and that sort of thing, yes, no real states. The fact that condition is changing is part of the game setting.

Meanwhile, the Aurorans are aware of several states. The Pacific Alliance, which is made up of city-states in a confederation with members in Hawaii, Baja California, California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, is something they are looking to join. New Zealand, New England and the Canadian Maritimes, Putro Rico, and Ireland are all the basis of friendly states. There are hostile states in the Mississippi valley and the old US southeast. Groups of pirates may be forming states in Central America and the Carribean. There are multiple groups trying to form a state in central Mexico. This has led to an endemic state of civil war. The different factions are looking for mercenaries.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The local language is Mercan or rather several variants of Mercan. Mercan evolved out of English and a native speaker of English would start with a Feeble understanding of Mercan, but once they got used to Mercan, they'd be at Accented. In the Four Corners Area (where all of this is assumed to be happening) Mercan has many Spanish loan words. In the Northeast, near Quebec, or near the Cajun areas, French influence is notable.

To the South in Mexco, the local language will be some form of Span, which has the same relationship to Spanish as Mercan does to English. The Aurorans speak English as their native language, but almost all of them know the local languages as well.

Global warming helped bring on the crisis that destroyed civilization, but the fall of civilization caused the CO2 level to decline. Still, Sea Level has risen 30 feet or nine meters. The Imperial Valley is a lagoon and the monsoon rains in the southwest are vastly stronger and the flooding more dangerous.

The dry season is also drier. Which when combined with the stronger monsoon makes life harder.

The local area has many small communities. There are other bandit groups like the Cartrights, but few so stable. There are many small towns, clusters of farms, strongholds, etc. Some are friendly to outsiders, some hostile, the Aurorans and the Cartrights both get mixed reactions. The Cartrights aren't the only ones to see the Aurorans as witchy and strange. Even some of those who eagerly trade with them and ally with them against the Cartrights see the Aurorans as weird and threatening. Meanwhile, the Cartrights are bandits and rustlers, so the reputation is fairly poor and more people dislike/despise them.

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This idea draws on the magic kitbash I'm less than halfway through adding to this setting. Basically, a powerful archmage exploring the shadows of Earth's history decides to project some of those shadows to overwrite whole star systems in a poorly explored section of the Milkyway Galaxy. He opens/ repairs several jump gates, which had previously been broken, to connect to this area of the Milkyway. The paradox backlash erased the Archmage from existence. Still, there are about seventy worlds based on alternate histories of the Earth out there. All kinds of explorers, archeologists, treasure hunters, and other weirdos, are looking for them.

Among the discovered alternates are...

A world where Anthony and Cleopatra won at Actium. It's now thirty years later and Ceasarion and Cleopatra Selene (Cleopatra's daughter by Anthony) are in a violent struggle to take over Rome.

A world where the Julian the Apostate conquered most of Persia and Byzantium is a thriving pagan empire in 1487. The introduction of printing is radically up ending the politics of the Eastern Mediterranian.

A world where Justinian II dies at sea during his escape and Tiberos III and the dynasty descended from him, successfully drive back any and all Islamic invasions of Anatolia for centuries. Christian Byzantium is still surviving in 1812. Napoleon has invaded Byzantium and is demanding the Imperial crown.

A world where the Space Race lasted into the 1990's and the 21st century USA has bases on Mars, the Moon, and the Asteroids. The ruins of an ancient Martian civilization has been found. Bizaar Lovecraft type secrets are being found in the ruins.

See the alternate history thread for more fun.

Basically, think of those Parallel Earths from 1960's Star Trek, and have silly fun. "We are spacemen from Earth!" "No, you can't be this is Earth." "An Earth, we are from the real Earth." No, we are the real Earth." "Well, we took out a trademark!"

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{Super toys last all Summer!"}


Try this idea, one type of supertechnolgy is added into an otherwise normal 2018 Tech Level Eight world (if 2018 and normal can be allowed in the same sentence). The reference to the sci-fi story is only in the idea of the new tech transforming the world.

Basically, in 2009 a young chemist sees something odd in his results. In most worlds the financial crisis ruins his career and he never gets to go back and check out the anomaly. In this reality, there was a much larger stimulus package because of a more accurate estimate of the problem. The economy righted itself faster and the young chemist stayed in school to get his Ph.D.

The anomaly led to a new understanding of superconductors and superconductivity. By 2013 there was a mass-produced superconductor that was superconductive to 350 degrees Celius ( 662 degrees Fahrenheit).

They've already paved a road with this Superconductor in the asphalt. Cars levitate a few feet over the roadway. They move at 100 miles per hour for less energy than it takes to run an electric fan.

Every aspect of technology in this TL8 world is undergoing rapid change. Many nations fear these changes. Russia is looking at a collapse of the oil market and an inability to keep up. Most of the Near Eastern nations see themselves being sidelined and left as a backwater. China is looking at a massive revival of the West and a boom in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India, and Southeast Asia.

Many nations are looking at the new suborbital flying discs, designed by the USA, and asking if the future of transit is going to be high altitude to the point that the sea lanes and rail links no longer matter. And if the US military is 90 minutes from anywhere on Earth and can't be blocked, are they really independent anymore.

The power balance is gone. So what will the powers do? Note: Trump is unlikely to be in office in this world. The basic premise would eliminate his campaign in several different ways.

Further info, polywell fusors are being mass produced in this world. Superconductivity resolves they're technical issues. All other forms of power generation are rapidly headed toward obsolescence.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Some revisions.

First, I'm moving the discovery of the Anomaly to 1989. Clinton, at Gore's suggestion, will jump on the opportunities of the Superconductors and Gingrich, ever the technophile will slack off his attacks looking for a greater advantage later. Polywell Fusors with Bussard in charge of figuring out the fine points, show up quickly.

Second, the desire of the Clinton and then Gore administrations (Gore was slightly more popular going into the 2000 election and got Florida by a small margin) to revive US manufacturing was opposed by the financial interests in a way that soured both men on a continued alliance. Reforms pushed by both administrations, and the fact that Glass-Stegall was never gutted in this world, means no 2008 financial panic .

As his opponents were behind the curve, and Obama was pushing reviving the Blue Collar economy in both his elections, the mainstream GOP is in tatters. Ted Cruz was the nominee of the GOP in 2016. An out of left (and I do mean LEFT) field candidate grabbed the Democratic nomination and narrowly beat Cruz.

More than seventy-nine percent of US highways are now maglev roads, and more than half of state and local roads are similarly treated. Cheap power cables based on carbon nanofiber superconductors have reduced power loss in electrical transmission massively. Power companies have slashed their costs and even at lower prices are making higher profits.

Fusor powered maglev saucers flying in suborbital paths are out competing both jetliners and many types of cargo ship. It's predicted that ocean-going cargo ships will be obsolete in a few years as prices fall.

The US space program is in full bloom and both the moonbase and the Cislunar Space Habitats are doing fine. A large O'Neill cylinder has been set on a Hohmann Transfer Orbit to Mars. Ion rockets will meet it in Mars Orbit and they will prepare the first human landing.

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Europe, Canada, Japan, and South Korea, are booming. The fusors, by radically lowering energy costs, have made most goods cheaper while keeping wages solid. The USA plunked down for reviving the Blue Collar Economy because Clinton and Gore felt the financial sector stabbed them in the back. Europe, because the financial sector is still favored over manufacturing isn't doing as well as the USA. The fact that the USA is adopting many European style social programs is undermining many traditional arguments used by the conservatives to justify favoring finance. This leaves many powerful people unsure and bitter.

Russia is doing poorly in this 2018. Oil prices have been depressed for two decades. Putin is struggling to find a way to keep the people in line and the oligarchs happy.

As the Western Democracies are stable and prosperous in this world, China is unhappy. Worse, the mercantilist strategy they used in our world got sidelined. Once the Clinton/Gore alliance with Wall Street was gone and reviving the US manufacturing sector was the plan, tolerance for Chinese protectionism was gone. China has still grown well, but far more slowly. The recent announcement that term limits were gone and that Xi Jinping was effectively leader for life, didn't happen in this China. The Party is worried about it long term future.

In the Middle East, the oil slump has weakened all authoritarian governments. The simple disinterest in Middle East politics is crashing moral in most of the Islamic lands. People are becoming aware that once the oil is either gone or worthless, the Middle Eastern nations won't be able to feed their people. As with Yemen in our world, many Middle Eastern lands won't even have viable sources of water. Vast numbers of people are looking to leave but no one wants them.

More later...

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Did Gore follow up on a few leads from Clinton-era antiterrorism efforts, leading to some quiet new standards in airline cockpit door locks that hasn't really made the news aside from a senator or two complaining about the increased regulatory burden?

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What happened was that a minor Saudi official, who in our world saw it as strictly an American problem, noticed certain things that suggested trouble. As in this scenario, he felt the Saudis needed any and all American goodwill, as oil prices plunged, he passed his data on to the FBI and CIA. Ben Ladin's crew were caught in July. In our world, we had some hints about 9/11, but in this world, the extra data from the Saudi official tied up several loose threads that couldn't have been tied in any other way.

So no Afgan or Iraqi wars, the oil price plunge made them irrelevant and the Middle East a backwater by 2010.

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A non-spacecraft alternate method (Stargate is the ur-example, but it could also be parachronics) is discovered (probably via remains of Alien Space Bats) to travel to other planets/timelines/worlds in time for the Space Race to be scrapped.

Personally I always get stuck focusing on trying to think how the popular media changes: how much Star Trek/Wars/gate influences how modern people (at least in the US) see things.

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You might want to fix that link.

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Agreed. But I can't fix it from my phone so it needs to wait a day or two.

Revision! The repairman was here today and I can fix this today, and did so.

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Try this idea, powerful aliens have simply announced that the Solar System is going to be rendered uninhabitable. They have absolutely proved this. Normally we, as a species incapable of starflight, would be left behind just another sad loss in evolutions games. However, the fairies were real and they seem to have evolved on Earth. So it is assumed we're worth study.

Earth's peoples will be moved to other inhabitable worlds. Certain groups will be moved to their own worlds by themselves, India and China. Simply as a matter of population. The other planets will receive equal shares of the remaining population. The people of Earth to decide who goes to which of the five other planets.

Basically, there are two ways to work this. First is playing diplomats seeking the best neighbors. To survive, Germany is going to be on a planet with around 915 million non-Germans. Who do you think the Germans would want for neighbors? Who would they seek to avoid? The USA and Russia would be glad not to be neighbors, or so Americans would think. Maybe Russia sees the USA as an easy mark? South Korea wouldn't want anything to do with North Korea, and yet they pity the miseries of their kinfolk.

The diplomatic conference would be a fascinating game.

Finding out about the "Fairies" would be a major thing too. This world starts out with as little credence given to the existence of fairies as ours does. Now the reality of fairies is what save humanity. Questions must be answered.

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Someone on a writers how to book said they had written a story where aliens had found out that the core of the galaxy had exploded ages ago and the wave of the explosion would reach Earth soon. They dropped by to try to evacuate Earth.

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Does it even matter? If the aliens are planning to dump a billion people randomly into uncharted wilderness, most of them are going to die, and by the time the neighbors matter to the survivors, none of them are going to have much continuity with the current governments of Earth and their policies. If they are going to provide more infrastructure and information than that, then the thing to be aiming for is the places with the best of that infrastructure or the best resources, exactly who gets the less desirable parts of the best world on offer isn't terribly important.

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It's not important to them.

If the US Navy is doing a rush job cleanup after a hurricane in a Third World country it does not care in the slightest about the petty differences between the natives (the word is unfashionable anymore but the sentiment remains and under the circumstances can't help but do so) because that gets in the way of efficiency. The petty differences between the natives sure as heck matter to them because they always have. Likewise if aliens come to evacuate us whether out of benevolent reasons or blue and orange morality they won't care about the difference between country A and country B but countries A and B will.

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My point though is if countries A and B have no agency here there's nothing to negotiate over - the aliens are going to pick them up and drop them at random no matter what deals they have with each other. And if they do have some sort of control over where they go, there are factors a whole lot more important to selecting a destination than who else is going to the same planet.

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In general though, an alien civilization has no reason to save humanity and every reason not to save humanity. The cost to relocate nearly eight billion sapient with enough species for an ecosystem large enough to support them would be beyond comprehension. Allowing humanity to die out and then claiming the Sol System for themselves after the smoke clears would cost an alien civilization nothing.

Even if an alien civilization was compassionate enough and wealthy enough to save humanity, human biology is probably incompatible with the biology of the life of every other planet in the galaxy, meaning that the alien civilization would have to terraform planets for humanity. Now, an alien civilization might split the difference and just create an ark for the life of the Earth, and they would include a small population of humans in the ark. After the cataclysm, the aliens could reseed the Earth with the life from the ark.

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Why should an alien civilization have so few numbers as to consider Earth's paltry billions "Huge"? Also, the time scale is not mentioned. Its entirely possibly they have 100 years to ferry people back and forth between the safe locations, and to establish working infrastructure as well.



I have larger doubts about them just having five suitably terraformed planets lying around. If they're from earth, they might terraform worlds to be habitable enough, and even with the same biochemistry as ours. Its odd that they would no immediately start using them though: even if they're running a HUGE surplus of planets, its likely some fairy has claimed this one and been using it as a resort, wildlife refuge, or golf course. The former use of world could be an interesting theme.



Alternatively, they'll quickly set up domed habitats to cram people in and either supply us with food or give us the cheapest hydroponics they know how to set up. If you're going to bother to move them, there is no point killing them, but no need to be lavish either. The worlds given will be left overs, as will the equipment. Which is not to say that it will be aweful: the cheap technology of the 21st century would be wonderful to a farmer in the 10th century BC.

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They're powerful aliens. Their reasons can be as inscrutable as the GM likes, and don't need to be explained. Would we be having the same discussion if the alien in question was the Q Continuum?

Anyway, clearly the best way to game this one out is as a bottle scenario - the aliens have decided for their own inscrutable reasons that the best way for the primitive humans to negotiate things out is with a one year deadline, with delegates from each nation kept under basically house arrest. The "house" in question is of course a luxury resort centered around super-villain style maps of the Earth and the destination worlds. Regular social events lubricate negotiations. There will, of course, be no underhanded deals, business, murders, affairs, betrayals, or surprises... Y'know. Big Brother: Fate of the World edition.

Edit: The destination could be a Ringworld that's recently been vacated by a species that Ascended, and per their wishes is to be used as a nature preserve.

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I had that rough idea a few years ago. I presumed they put people into stasis and dropped them off on a ring-world with little prep; this was because the aliens were actually a kind of Von Neumman good Samaritan. Its ability to understand human society was limited.

Its approach to rescuing humanity was in essence similar to Clippy's approach to writing a paper.

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It is the year 2300 AD, and the Earth has been turned into a biological reserve by the Sol Federation while 10 billion humans live in space habitats throughout the Sol System. With a population of only 200 million people, primarily hospitality staff for environmental tourism and scientific staff to maintain the environment, the Earth is the literal backwater of the Sol System, as its primary role to provide biological resources to renew the life support systems of the space habitats of the Sol System. While plenty of people have been calling for the terraforming of Mars and Venus over the centuries, it is just cheaper for the Sol Federation to maintain space habitats than spend hundreds of trillions of credits a year to create inferior versions of the Earth.

Since the Earth was abandoned in 2100 so that its biosphere could be repaired, there has been a resettlement movement pushing for the recolonization of Earth, though the majority of the citizens of the Sol Federation fear that such a movement would lead to the end of human civilization. If too many people lived within a friendly environment without having to be concerned about the constant need for maintenance and upkeep, the common perspective is that they will relive the horrors and the tragedies of the 20th century. Better that only a small population be allowed to live permanently on the Earth rather than to risk the return of the mistakes of the 20th century.

Over the previous century, the Sol Federation has been using its vast wealth to construct interstellar colony fleets in the Kuiper Belt. Each interstellar colony fleet is designed to carry a population of 100 million humans, plus sufficient terraforming materials, in nanostasis for its long journey to a star system dozens of light-years from the Sol System. When they reach their destination, the colonists will spend the majority of the time in nanostasis while their new home is terraformed over the course of a thousand years.

The first interstellar colony fleet is now finished and will leave the Kuiper Belt in a decade after it loads its cargo and passengers for the long journey to Epsilon Eridani to colonize an exoplanet orbiting that star. One interstellar colony fleet will leave every decade for the next thousand years, when the Sol Federation will have sent colonies to every terraformable world within 100 light years of the Sol System. Unfortunately, extremists among the people who support recolonizing the Earth are mobilizing to cripple or destroy the interstellar colony fleets, as they believe that the only home for humanity is the Earth.

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If in fact the Third Imperium in Traveller heard that an alien world was about to be destroyed it would gather tremendous resources to conduct an evacuation and write off the sunk cost as good propaganda. That is a human majority civilizations. And it probably has enough places to dump DPs that may not be pleasant but at least are not being sucked by a black hole. Why should not at least some aliens do the same for the same reasons?

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Aliens would be alien. They could act or not act for reasons that make zero sense to us.
They could feel guilty for either being directly responsible or indirectly by way of not paying attention to the threat leading to the destruction of the solar system.
They could find humans or even dogs cute, and saving humans is just the collateral goal.
They could have ideological hatred for global extinctions regardless of how "unworthy" any particular species may seem.
They could feel nostalgia to their past primitive nature, or suffer from a form of the noble savage myth.
They could simply be using us as a lucky excuse to use their technology or predictive computations on moving ecosystems to terraformed worlds.

Those are just off the top of my head that makes sense to my human sensibilities.

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I stole that idea and sold an article to Pyramid (the older webzine) rifting off that idea. "...And I Feel Fine." was the title.

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The aliens are providing infrastructure help and allowing groups to go ahead and prepare for their people's arrival. I never said everything is happening next week. I assumed that you'd set up a reasonable timeframe because the aliens want humanity to survive.

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Your game is different than mine. I assume that if the aliens want us to die, simply leaving us alone achieves that. As they want us to live, they'll make the effort to achieve that. The worlds in question have been prepped. They were seeded with Earth life and made ready. In your game you can decide how long this took and how finished it is.

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A lovely way to play the scenario. Yes, the focus is meant to be on the humans with a gun to their collective heads. "Big Brother!FATE of the WORLD Edition" is a wonderful way of looking at the thing. I love being understood and solid improvements offered.

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Steal everything that isn't nailed down from Transhuman Space and you've got a basic set up for a thousand games. Just pure beauty Alexander.

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Certainly. But the assumption that aliens would need any more reason to rescue us from a black hole than the US Navy needs to clean up a hurricane on Haiti is flawed. Certainly as you point out it is possible they have motives we cannot comprehend. But it is not necessary. Come to think of it much largesse whether done publicly or privately is motivated by scoring points with the Almighty, or making oneself feel less guilty about-whatever. Or looking good, or feeling good or basically something that has only indirect concern with those who are supposed to benefit. If in fact a rich or powerful person actually does benefit someone by such things it really doesn't matter does it?

The reasons you gave really are not to different then those of real philanthropists. It's true that some people do go over into the back country and end up scarred with disease and shaking with PTSD. Or sometimes murdered by bandits and not coming back at all but having an inspiring movie made about them. I have plenty of admiration for all the Raoul Wallenbergs and Father Damiens of the world; I just have no ambitions to be one. It is also true that many of us just fork over money and say,"Aren't I special". And what does that really matter? All that is not to be cynical: we are hardly being bad, when we act like that, we are just being us.

Does Bill Gates really care about people without water? I am willing to bet that he cares about them theoretically. He can't care about them like his children: they are just numbers to him. But he is interested in well-digging. Does that matter to someone who gets a well? Are his motives different from the ones you attributed to aliens?

The point is not that aliens may not have impenetrable motives. The point is that you have not given any ("aren't humans cute" really does not differ much from "aren't starving foreign children cute"). For the obvious reason that if the motives are really impenetrable you cannot give them but that is beside the point. It is not a certainty that they will not have comprehensible motives any more than it is a certainty that they will not have similar physical organs. We after all do not assume that aliens have no desire to survive, ingest, reproduce, or whatever do we?

They may have impenetrable motives. They may have motives we recognize. They may have both. Maybe the last is most likely.

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You play people in a transhuman future who meet up in custom shells based off 20th/21st century pop culture characters to have pretend adventures.

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You have a Holodeck Malfunction of course.

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Thank you, Astromancer.

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Or a SAW style manipulator intentionally removing safety features while trapping the players in "the game".

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The third imperium displays the planet conundrum quite well: They're got oodles of resources, and tons of space, but would be hard pressed to find five empty garden planets. They'd end up distributing refuges into hundreds (or thousands, or Millions) of little camps all over the galaxy, in close proximity to their existing population.

I think my PC's at least would be willing to play this out strait. Or attempt to.

Finding them a home gets much easier if you allow artificial habitats. You could play an interesting game as the first people dropped off and charged with preparing the big new habitat for everyone else.

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I gave the aliens a motive. They see us as worthy of study because we are linked to the "Faeries." The prevailing assumption on this Earth is that the use of the term is some kind of a misnomer. They, the aliens, are assumed to believe that we use the term "Faeries" to talk about/name the entities they are concerned with. Figuring out the motives of the Aliens and just what the "Faeries" are that the Aliens are talking about are also part of the game.

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I wondered if "...And I Feel Fine." was involved somehow. I love that article by the way. What if the aliens are really only interested in the "fairies", like the cetaceans from David Brin's GURPS:Uplift. Somebody says, shouldn't we move the humans too? This way we aren't the center of this but an afterthought. If this is being done by a coalition of aliens it could justify anything from one colony being given Clarkean "magic tech", to being dropped off with the contents of your pockets or having weird or horrifying experiments done to you before being dropped off. All at the same time.

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Experiments could be done to "improve" humanity to be more like the fairies seeing as how they come from the same planet and thus are related somehow. This is of course regardless of what the humans feel.

It could be like rescuing chimps and "uplfiting" them along with saving humans, in the aliens' minds at least.

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You have lots of juicy ideas. My article was only very slightly involved, humanity leaving Earth with Aliens as Deus ex Machina is one of my tropes. Yes, you can freely play with how important the "Faeries" are to the whole thing. And also play with what the "faeries" are and/or their relationship to Earth/humanity. Similarly, the nature of the trip and the support once there can be played with to create a variety of play styles. As written, I assume that the trip is dull but not soul-crushing and that the infrastructure and support are good. That sets up further games as humanity moves out into space to meet the neighbors and find our lost relatives.

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You could play that for everything from comedy to horror and strange blasphemous mixtures of the two.

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Maybe it's even a feature: some players got so bored with the predictability that they illegally hacked the holodeck systems to cause it to spit out a random malfunction every time they sign up. Not only do the PCs have to deal with this week's curveball but they have to keep the "captain" from finding out what they're doing.
It's interesting to think about this in the context of a "everyone has backups" transhuman future whether this would be considered legitimately horrifying or more on the lines of a Scooby-Doo mystery.

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{The Far Argosy}


A vast generation starship is built, humanity is seeking to flee a dying Earth and sun. The twist is that the sci-fi setting has a Clark Ashton Smith/Olaf Stapledon/Cordwainer Smith buzz to it.

The ship is truly vast and from a distance looks like a thin reed with a cobweb covered in dew drops wrapped around it. The dewdrops are vast habitat domes back to back, these spheres are one hundred kilometers in radius, and thus the surface area of the two "floors" of each sphere are roughly half again the size of Wales. The domes and corridors of the ship have more surface area than the Earth. And where the Earth had vast oceans, ice fields, and deserts, much more of the ship is habitable. Exploring the now lost and derelict ship carrying the remnants of humanity is going to be as challenging as exploring the Earth itself would have been for the ancients.

Many of those who built the ships had Pulp Fiction style superpowers. Men of steel, no go, try Bronze instead. Pcs are basically Cliffhanger-style low level supers exploring the ship ala The Starlost, but with much more of a lost world sort of feel.

Because of violence at the time of the shipbuilding, psionic straight jackets were developed. These were used by the crew to keep the populations in the spheres from destroying the ship or each other. What good is any ark if war turns it into a hearse?

These psionic straight jackets basically prevented the sphere populations from realizing there was an outside or engaging in warfare. They often had other effects as well to limit technological growth or habitat destruction. In addition, many promoted certain delusions that benefited the local cultures in different ways.

Inspired individuals( basically, PCs with powers of some kind, whatever the GM deems will grant immunity ) are immune to these influences. However, the mobs that might come after them and the local individuals they might rely on, are still under control and may act in hard to predict ways because the psionic straight jackets are still trying to protect their charges and restrain people from destroying the ship.

As set up, no culture extends beyond its half of a habitat dome or other limited territory. In an alternate game, various groups could extend to multiple areas. Remnants of the ship's medical or police services could still function. A secret brotherhood of repairmen and janitors, eternally struggling to keep the ship alive might be fun patrons.

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One interesting thing to do with the Psionic straight jackets is to ask what was the person who set up the psionic equipment like. Afterall their mind is impressed onto the psionic field that restrains the populace. Their quirks and hobby-horses would slowly sink into the minds of the people under the Psionic straight jacket's influence. Picture an obsessive-compulsive programmed the psi field. Now picture a whole society of obsessive-compulsives. Picture the playful (to quirk level) musically talented guy with a very new age-y romantic fascination with Irish culture, history, and myth. Can you say stereotypes?

By assuming the Psionic straight jackets all are sorely in need of being reset or turned off, you got tons of adventures.

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That's a pretty cute explanation for the Planet of Hats phenomenon. I like it.

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This idea is more Science Fantasy. Certain ancient pantheons (I chose the Irish, Greek, Norse, and Egyptian pantheons, but that's me) become aware of the modern world. Assume a cyberpunk setting about forty to fifty years forward of today. Climate change is causing chaos, the corporate elites are doing all they can to prevent a resurgence of democracy, dictators are striving to enrich themselves and their allies and doing so by impoverish and weakening those outside of their ally groups, and the ecosystem is dying.

Each of the pantheons seeks to save the world. The Gods of Egypt see a world that has lost Maat. They seek to bring a new unity to mankind. A Pharaonic lord to heal the chaos. The Norse gods see a world without true freedom, they seek paths from Libertarianism to anarchy to restore freedom. The Irish gods see a world without true community, they seek to restore this wonderful thing they have heard of, democracy. And this time the gods will make sure that it gets a real chance. Meanwhile, the Greeks see humanity as limited and blame themselves. They made humanity incomplete, they feel the Transhumanists might have the answer.

Basically a Cyberpunk world with a behind the scenes Godswar.

Looking back at this from a few years later each pantheon I chose has a key idea.

Egyptian Gods: Justice and Order

Norse Gods: Freedom and Equality

Irish Gods: Democracy and Fairness

Greek Gods: Redemption and Healing

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While watching a video on the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction Event, specifically the Asteroid impact theory, it occurred to me, their scenario is a useful apocalypse. Basically, the sky around the whole world become a broiler set at 1200 degrees F, because of an asteroid impact.

A larger number of humans survive than dinosaurs, but with the mass destruction of crops, stored food, cattle, etc, famine stalks the land and wipes out many who survived the heat. One community survived intact. They were underground. And experimental station isolated in a group of caverns. They were basically working on life support systems for space stations in the Oort cloud. They were largely sealed and could grow their own food and manufacture most of the things they needed.

It is now the year 3047, a thousand years since the asteroid came suddenly out of the light of the sun and crashed into the Earth. The known Human population of the Earth is about five million people. The Republic, the government of those humans, is sending out explorers for the first time in centuries. What will they find?

Basically, I'm rifting off Xenozoic Tales, good old Gulliver, and post-apocalyptic fiction generally. I assume all those empty ecological niches will allow for rapid evolution. In this setting, I go hyper-cinematic and assume wild new life forms evolved from the surviving animals. If you can get the book After Man, steal their best stuff.

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Push the impact out fifty years from now, say that spaceflight stagnated (or caused the impact, for traditional science-fiction hubritical flavoring), and give the scattered enclaves advanced genetic engineering. Get your Moreau on.

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Even for small short life span animals, 1k years is very short to make new species that would look really different to non-biologists.
But with high cinema, one could just make the meteorite contain mysterious debris that causes "rapid evolution".

Though this is starting to sound like Fallout but with a big sky rock rather than nuclear armageddon.