Sci-fi, Psychic Powers, and Setting Design

Territan · 09-25-2022, 07:11 AM

I'll just go ahead and ask what the literary agent within me is asking:

"Where's the main conflict? Is it the bright-and-hopeful space operatic vibe of millions of cultures dancing the galactic dance versus the atrocities that those cultures had to rely upon to get there? Is it the tension of living in an otherwise harmonious society while trying to hide the screaming psychic monster within you and keep the populace around you from seeing all the other screaming psychic monsters around them? (I'll admit that one has a certain Æon vibe to it; let's pin it and keep going.)"

Balor Patch · 09-25-2022, 07:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Territan

I'll just go ahead and ask what the literary agent within me is asking:

"Where's the main conflict? Is it the bright-and-hopeful space operatic vibe of millions of cultures dancing the galactic dance versus the atrocities that those cultures had to rely upon to get there? Is it the tension of living in an otherwise harmonious society while trying to hide the screaming psychic monster within you and keep the populace around you from seeing all the other screaming psychic monsters around them? (I'll admit that one has a certain Æon vibe to it; let's pin it and keep going.)"

The Saga of the Pliocene Exile is what it says on the tin: criminals, including some very high powered psychics, get exiled to the Pliocene with a surprising twist. Julian May is a good writer.

I'm having trouble remembering the other set (it's been 30+ years): Family saga about exiling those very high powered psychics? Maybe?

Territan · 09-25-2022, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

The Saga of the Pliocene Exile is what it says on the tin: criminals, including some very high powered psychics, get exiled to the Pliocene with a surprising twist. Julian May is a good writer.

I'm having trouble remembering the other set (it's been 30+ years): Family saga about exiling those very high powered psychics? Maybe?

The "literary agent" questions were more directed at the original thread rather than the books, but those are very good to know about too. I'll want to look up at least one of those to read up on that twist.

Agemegos · 09-25-2022, 06:27 PM

What is the template adventure for player characters in RPG campaigns set in this universe?

That is: what adventures do PCs usually have? What do they do on those adventures?

Arith Winterfell · 09-26-2022, 02:00 PM

Some really great thoughts and questions. Indeed, I've actually wondered if I should have started with questions rather than statements. XD

I've been thinking about two broad angles in terms of general setup for characters.

1) PC's work for for a patron, The Whitesun Institute which researches and works to protect psionically gifted individuals. This also involves exploration of psionically interesting locales (alien ruins, secrets held by a corporation, etc).

2) Alternatively, PC's are outlaws due to their actions, abilities, or just for being from a society where their gifts were feared. So they deal with fleeing or fighting bounty hunters, etc.

Or combine both to a degree.

The conflict being those gifted with psionic abilities are often sought after by others, sometimes this is valid employment, problem is its often outlawed in many societies (telepaths invading privacy, etc) and this makes them outlaws in many societies. That said even tyrants seek them as they are useful for ferreting out rebellions or traitors, and they are often sought after as part of spy vs. spy conflicts.

So things get multi-layers with one groups outlaws being another groups patriots.

Also blend in body-horror of gruesome experiments by ruthless corporations, and resulting insanity for poor victims.

Agemegos · 09-26-2022, 04:11 PM

It sounds as though the adventures you have in mind are going to involve fairly small stakes, with the lives and safety of only a few people involved in each one. You want local social and political conditions to be important, with only weak overall authority and only a very basic interstellar culture, with a lot of local differences. You don’t want a lot of important stuff happening at high level and on an large interstellar scope that will distract players’ attention, make them feel that their adventures are unimportant, and take up much mind-share in describing and learning about your setting. You probably want worlds to be numerous enough that you can slip new ones in with strange exotic cultures and politics with it remaining plausible that that PCs haven’t heard about them before.

My solution for a similar specification turned out to be to have about a thousand inhabited worlds, and for that I needed a sphere of settlement 170 light-years in radius. I made interstellar travel cheap-ish (so that there would be people travelling for low-stakes purposes, and passenger liners for them to travel on) but slow (so that there wouldn’t be a lot of tourists and expatriate workers spreading culture). A speed of 1,000 c worked out right for me (1 parsec per day would have done as well), and the costs and capacities of starships built using GURPS Spaceships with no FTL fuel requirement worked out about right. I ended up with the economics of travel being about like ocean-liner travel in late Victorian times and before air travel in the early 20th century. I needed cheap travel between planetary surfaces and orbit. TL 10 winged shuttles with limited-superscience fusion torch drives using water for their propellent worked out to be well and truly cheap enough, and let me keep the superscience limited (which might not be an objective for you). I decided to have no FTL detection or signalling, partly to make interstellar administration impractical, partly so that PCs would not have HQ riding their backs, and partly to limit the culturally-homogenising effects of mass media.

That doesn’t get you space opera, though. It gets you intrigue and adventure on planets, with small stakes and local scope. Not starship operations in space, with the fate of planets and whole civilisations at stake, and significant interstellar travel during adventures. It puts the emphasis on (the stats of) concealable body armour and smallarms suitable for everyday carry, not on spaceships and their weapon mounts.

Arith Winterfell · 09-26-2022, 06:40 PM

Yes, those are good observations about my current ideas.

I had a general idea that while jumps by warping space work, but don't really allow for FTL communications other than courier ship. I figured this would limit spread of homogenizing culture, but also makes carrying media and culture between worlds means the arrival of ships with news about other worlds and their cultures would be cultural novelties. Basically starting the latest trends and such.

I figure then that star travel would consisted of jumps, followed by resting periods out in interstellar space, rebuilding energy for the next jump. With each jump going a limited distance.

Another idea for the setting I've had is the nature of first wave colonists. That humans set out from earth in large colony founding ships moving at sub-light speeds taking centuries to get to their destinations, settling, then diverging from baseline humanity via genetic engineering. Hence "alien" civilizations. All the truly alien civilizations that pre-date humanity left mysterious ruins, but no living species (at least not yet found). But the divergence of the first wave colonists makes for interesting aliens.

For example, the Drayloth were originally humans in the first wave colonists who upon arriving at the new world they would settle set about transforming their colony ship into a space station, while limiting colonists settling on the world. This was because they wanted to avoid ecological damage to the world's native life. They also combined their DNA with that of certain native life to allow them to eat locale plant-like species and animal-like species rather than introducing invasive species and do ecological damage to force their introduction to the native ecosystems.

This, of course changed the settlers in various ways making them a lot closer to the native life. Then disaster struck and the colony ship in orbit was destroyed killing most aboard. So the survivors on the planet had to make do with what they had, falling back into earlier TL, and eventually coming to believe they were native species themselves.

This eventually over centuries developed a culture that by now is deeply divided between Rationalist Enlightenment factions vs. Conservative Religious nature religion that believes they are expressions of their world's spirit.

Then contact is made with the arrival of "Terran Humans" from Earth exacerbating the divide with Rationalists welcoming fellow intelligent life, while religious conservative groups rejecting "humans" as demons from the outer dark.

So that gives you an idea I've had for one world. Others would be different.

09-25-2022, 07:11 AM	#1
Territan Join Date: Sep 2004	Re: Sci-fi, Psychic Powers, and Setting Design I'll just go ahead and ask what the literary agent within me is asking: "Where's the main conflict? Is it the bright-and-hopeful space operatic vibe of millions of cultures dancing the galactic dance versus the atrocities that those cultures had to rely upon to get there? Is it the tension of living in an otherwise harmonious society while trying to hide the screaming psychic monster within you and keep the populace around you from seeing all the other screaming psychic monsters around them? (I'll admit that one has a certain Æon vibe to it; let's pin it and keep going.)"

09-25-2022, 06:27 PM	#4
Agemegos Join Date: May 2005 Location: Oz	Re: Sci-fi, Psychic Powers, and Setting Design What is the template adventure for player characters in RPG campaigns set in this universe? That is: what adventures do PCs usually have? What do they do on those adventures? __________________ Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 09-25-2022 at 06:36 PM.

09-26-2022, 02:00 PM	#5
Arith Winterfell Join Date: May 2014 Location: Indiana, United States	Re: Sci-fi, Psychic Powers, and Setting Design Some really great thoughts and questions. Indeed, I've actually wondered if I should have started with questions rather than statements. XD I've been thinking about two broad angles in terms of general setup for characters. 1) PC's work for for a patron, The Whitesun Institute which researches and works to protect psionically gifted individuals. This also involves exploration of psionically interesting locales (alien ruins, secrets held by a corporation, etc). 2) Alternatively, PC's are outlaws due to their actions, abilities, or just for being from a society where their gifts were feared. So they deal with fleeing or fighting bounty hunters, etc. Or combine both to a degree. The conflict being those gifted with psionic abilities are often sought after by others, sometimes this is valid employment, problem is its often outlawed in many societies (telepaths invading privacy, etc) and this makes them outlaws in many societies. That said even tyrants seek them as they are useful for ferreting out rebellions or traitors, and they are often sought after as part of spy vs. spy conflicts. So things get multi-layers with one groups outlaws being another groups patriots. Also blend in body-horror of gruesome experiments by ruthless corporations, and resulting insanity for poor victims.

09-26-2022, 04:11 PM	#6
Agemegos Join Date: May 2005 Location: Oz	Re: Sci-fi, Psychic Powers, and Setting Design It sounds as though the adventures you have in mind are going to involve fairly small stakes, with the lives and safety of only a few people involved in each one. You want local social and political conditions to be important, with only weak overall authority and only a very basic interstellar culture, with a lot of local differences. You don’t want a lot of important stuff happening at high level and on an large interstellar scope that will distract players’ attention, make them feel that their adventures are unimportant, and take up much mind-share in describing and learning about your setting. You probably want worlds to be numerous enough that you can slip new ones in with strange exotic cultures and politics with it remaining plausible that that PCs haven’t heard about them before. My solution for a similar specification turned out to be to have about a thousand inhabited worlds, and for that I needed a sphere of settlement 170 light-years in radius. I made interstellar travel cheap-ish (so that there would be people travelling for low-stakes purposes, and passenger liners for them to travel on) but slow (so that there wouldn’t be a lot of tourists and expatriate workers spreading culture). A speed of 1,000 c worked out right for me (1 parsec per day would have done as well), and the costs and capacities of starships built using GURPS Spaceships with no FTL fuel requirement worked out about right. I ended up with the economics of travel being about like ocean-liner travel in late Victorian times and before air travel in the early 20th century. I needed cheap travel between planetary surfaces and orbit. TL 10 winged shuttles with limited-superscience fusion torch drives using water for their propellent worked out to be well and truly cheap enough, and let me keep the superscience limited (which might not be an objective for you). I decided to have no FTL detection or signalling, partly to make interstellar administration impractical, partly so that PCs would not have HQ riding their backs, and partly to limit the culturally-homogenising effects of mass media. That doesn’t get you space opera, though. It gets you intrigue and adventure on planets, with small stakes and local scope. Not starship operations in space, with the fate of planets and whole civilisations at stake, and significant interstellar travel during adventures. It puts the emphasis on (the stats of) concealable body armour and smallarms suitable for everyday carry, not on spaceships and their weapon mounts. __________________ Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 09-27-2022 at 02:31 AM.

09-26-2022, 06:40 PM	#7
Arith Winterfell Join Date: May 2014 Location: Indiana, United States	Re: Sci-fi, Psychic Powers, and Setting Design Yes, those are good observations about my current ideas. I had a general idea that while jumps by warping space work, but don't really allow for FTL communications other than courier ship. I figured this would limit spread of homogenizing culture, but also makes carrying media and culture between worlds means the arrival of ships with news about other worlds and their cultures would be cultural novelties. Basically starting the latest trends and such. I figure then that star travel would consisted of jumps, followed by resting periods out in interstellar space, rebuilding energy for the next jump. With each jump going a limited distance. Another idea for the setting I've had is the nature of first wave colonists. That humans set out from earth in large colony founding ships moving at sub-light speeds taking centuries to get to their destinations, settling, then diverging from baseline humanity via genetic engineering. Hence "alien" civilizations. All the truly alien civilizations that pre-date humanity left mysterious ruins, but no living species (at least not yet found). But the divergence of the first wave colonists makes for interesting aliens. For example, the Drayloth were originally humans in the first wave colonists who upon arriving at the new world they would settle set about transforming their colony ship into a space station, while limiting colonists settling on the world. This was because they wanted to avoid ecological damage to the world's native life. They also combined their DNA with that of certain native life to allow them to eat locale plant-like species and animal-like species rather than introducing invasive species and do ecological damage to force their introduction to the native ecosystems. This, of course changed the settlers in various ways making them a lot closer to the native life. Then disaster struck and the colony ship in orbit was destroyed killing most aboard. So the survivors on the planet had to make do with what they had, falling back into earlier TL, and eventually coming to believe they were native species themselves. This eventually over centuries developed a culture that by now is deeply divided between Rationalist Enlightenment factions vs. Conservative Religious nature religion that believes they are expressions of their world's spirit. Then contact is made with the arrival of "Terran Humans" from Earth exacerbating the divide with Rationalists welcoming fellow intelligent life, while religious conservative groups rejecting "humans" as demons from the outer dark. So that gives you an idea I've had for one world. Others would be different.