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Old 04-17-2021, 04:02 PM   #2212
jason taylor
 
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Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
Default Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Try this one...

This is similar to one I've done before but it goes in a different direction. The town of Cashel is the Government and academic center of the planet Emain Ablach a terraformed colony world. It's the first real city on a moderately isolated colony world,

To touch on what that means, Cashel is the only place with a live music scene, a restaurant culture, theatre troops, or an active cultural life for several months travel. Cashel has high society (well a party scene with pretentions), a fashion scene, night spots. There is a publishing industry at Cashel, and films are being made. Cashel has the kind of energy and vibrancy associated with cities.

Cashel also has the political energy of a city. Emain Ablach is a democracy on paper, but the rural society is generally dominated either by conservative religious groups or powerful landowning families. Cashel is the first city on this colony world, but everyone can see it won't be alone for long. Both the religious reactionaries and the powerful landowning families can see the way things are going and how they will lose power. They also know that if the cities don't rise on Emain Ablach, then cities elsewhere will rule their world from afar.

This is a political game with the goals being power and freedom. the themes are the interrelationship between power and freedom (the powerless are rarely free) and the conflicts between power and freedom (because going for one will generally threaten the other). PCs could be power players, activists, or agents.
At first glance it sounds to stereotyped. It can be done but it should have more rounded characters both in the rural and the city. Maybe some of the city can be bigots and some of the hidebound rural aristocrats honorable and genuinely paternalistic just to throw a loop? Make it a complicated shades of grey thing.
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