Setting building help with intrigue and sci-fi

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

Part of my problem I think is that I’m having trouble visualizing the feel of a TL 10 world and what an average person’s life would be like.

What kind of world do you want?

If you want a realistically extrapolated TL 10 setting, then you're going to get something like Transhuman Space, something that is very alien and unfamiliar to your players (and to yourself) due to having a very high delta-W.

Or you can scrap realistic extrapolation and go for something much more familiar, much more recognizable, much lower delta-W, something more like typical written space opera settings (or movie settings), such as the Traveller RPG, Poul Andersen's Flandry/Falkayn/Van Rijn novels and novellas.

Or you can go for retro-tech, with is raising delta-W by going in the opposite direction, e.g. data storage densities is low, a few megabytes per tape casette instad of several gigabytes per tiny flat disc (on a fraction of the amount of cubic millimetres that a tape casette takes up), computing power being scarce, data transfer rates being slow (and you can only make long-distance calls from phone booths - although they might have low-rez video screens) and so forth.

This option also scraps realistic extrapolation, although you can attempt to justify either that or the previous one, through various means. If you want to. Probably (I haven't bothered justifying the retro-tech of my mildly silly space opera setting. It just is, and from its premises everything is internally consistent).



GURPS Space, either 2st or 3rd or 4th (and almost certainly also 1st although I've never read or owned that) Edition, also poses some other questions, that you'll find very useful, regarding the availability of FTL physical travel vs FTL radio, as I touch upon myself in this blog entry (but don't let that deter you from buying GURPS Space - the hardback 4E if you can find it at a good price, as the colour illustrations are unusually nice for a SJ Games publication).

GURPS Space also asks the worldbuilder questions about the abundance or scarcity of solar systems with habitable planets, and travel distances, and a few other important parameters (and it talks about why you might want to have a world featuring only feeble computers - unless that analysis was in GURPS Ultra-Tech).

GURPS Space is highly recommended. Please let me and the others in this thread know if you already own it, or plan on buying it, or won't be getting it, so that we can help you best.