GURPS Space campaign setting

[combatmedic]

My players have requested a space based campaign. This is supposed to feel like a classic 'thinking man's space opera'. Think H Beam Piper or Robert Heinlein and you'll get the idea. The PCs will be a crew of merchant explorers. I've decided to post a very rough outline of my universe thus far, for general criticism and comments:

History


During the early period of human expansion the solar system was thouroughly explored and colonized. Terraforming technolology was developed. STL colony ships carried humanity to other star systems [sleeper, generation, and clone ships all used at different times]. Contact between star systems was very limited, due to constraints of time and distance at relativistic speeds. Colonies diverged culturally and technologically during the long period of semi-isolation.

At some point, there was a civil war in the solar system and Terran civilization took a devastating blow. Recovery was long and slow, and the far flung colonies were even more on their own than before.

After many years passed, one of the worlds developed an experimental FTL drive. The technology spread and regular contact opened up between star systems. Further improvements in travel and communication followed, speeding the advance of commerce and colonization, but also bringing on the first interstellar wars.

The campaign will begin about two generations after FTL was developed. The age of colonization and exploration is in full swing. Star nations have formed, but a great many worlds remain independent. Merchant princes, grasping corporations, ambitious conquerers- it's all here.




Technology:

TL varies by world, but the most advanced worlds are TL 10. Many worlds are only TL 9 or lower.

FTL drive is a space fold[warp] drive. FTL communications is either slow FTL 'radio'[telegraph stage] or based on courier ships [pony express stage]. Not sure which of those two options fits best.

Gravitics is a fairly recent development. It's limited to larger ships, planetoids, space bases, etc. By no means do all worlds have access to this technology.

I'm going to downplay the transhumanist stuff. This is mostly a safetech [or perhaps retrotech] setting. Of course, it's a big universe and there is room for exceptions.

Note about weapons: old fashioned chemical slugthrowers are cheap and plentiful on many worlds. They are often sold as trade goods, military surplus, hunting arms, and self defense weapons for civilians. Beam weapons are usually more restricted, being reserved for the military on a number of worlds.



Source material: GURPS Space 3rd ed. , GURPS Space 4th ed., Ultratech, Biotech[ but not too much], the Space Atlas series, Behind the Claw, and whatever I can dig up online or write on my own before the campaign starts.

Aliens: This is a human dominated universe, but I do want to include some aliens. I am avoiding races that are too similiar to humans, as well as anthropomorphic races. I will use the memer & saret from GURPS aliens[ vacuum adapted arthropods with barnacle-like symbiotes]. I will probably include the pachekki, also from GURPS Aliens. Not sure about other races yet...

Psionics/Magic/etc: None of this stuff. No telepathic races. No psychic healing. No Force.

[Sanity]

Sounds nice ;) Can we have more details?

[Knartz]

Have you decided on some main story planets?
What about the mentality and sociology of their populations?

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

FTL communications is either slow FTL 'radio'[telegraph stage] or based on courier ships [pony express stage]. Not sure which of those two options fits best.

I like to combine them. Telegraphs as something huge and terribly expensive and only available on major worlds and the most advanced super-dreadnought flagships, pony express everywhere else.

[Archangel Beth]

If you haven't found them yet:
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/characters/Racial/
(Most of the ones that are not *-marked are ones that I wrote, and most of those are from our Space game. The Siffle aren't. And are... mechanically complex, but probably not very anthropomorphic in practice.)

[Bandii]

I like the setting; I use the Pachekki and Memer in my own setting (with a few modifications, of course). Others I've found useful have the been the Bwaps (comedy gold), Archangel Beth's Hive Beetles, the Hivers and a few others.

What is the basis for the Telegraph? Does it overcome the whole in-system light-lag problem?

-Mike

[combatmedic]

Originally posted by Pomphis:
I like to combine them. Telegraphs as something huge and terribly expensive and only available on major worlds and the most advanced super-dreadnought flagships, pony express everywhere else.

Sounds about right to me. I'll go with that assumption.

I am not sure about how FTL communication will actually work. Any suggestions?


Thanks for the link to the races list, Archangel Beth. And thanks to everyone posting for ideas and comments. :)

[Greystar]

Do the Colonies remember Earth? I didn't see any mention of that, I know you said that there was some kind of contact...

Sounds like a cool idea though and since the Universe is a big place it could be currently Human dominated until "First Contact" which knowning human being will probably result in War unless those contacted comes to us and is able to communicate in a non-hostile way.

[David Johnston]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Sounds about right to me. I'll go with that assumption.

I am not sure about how FTL communication will actually work. Any suggestions?

)

The "telegraph" equivalent could be created by having FTL radio, but one with limited effective range, maybe just a tenth of a lightyear. Therefore in order to actually create a communication link between systems you need 40 to 100 "repeater stations", each of them full of eminently destroyable (and perhaps plunderable) hardware. The expense, and need to defend the communications lines, means they only connect up the wealthier, more populous systems and less important inhabited systems that happen to be on the way between them.




f you are using a jump drive then they could actually be a large jump engine with a cavity in the center that teleports objects over interstellar distances longer than any ship can manage (but without the precision, safety or capacity required to be used as a practical means of transporting people. Instead it just jumps radio transmitters that then transmit their messages the rest of the way.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Sounds about right to me. I'll go with that assumption.

I am not sure about how FTL communication will actually work. Any suggestions?

Rather than literal telegraph, FTL comunication is a sort of semaphore. A packet of enrgetic plasma is contianed in a warp field and aimed at a sun. Anything smaller is too small to be aimed at.

The packet of plasma drops out of warp at whatever distance limit there is and makes a visible flash. You use a simple interval code to encode info. You can't make it very dense though.

You also have limits on how many messages can be coming in from the same side of the galaxy. Too many flashes and they run together.

Messages will look like old-fashioned telegrams. Security is handled by use of codebooks. You send an identifier and the code group "glops". What "glops" means is then looked up in the reciever's codebook. Maybe it's "buy titanium at any price under 100 credits/lb" and maybe it's "Alien invasion" or whatever other meaning was prearranged.

Carrying new codebooks is an important job for secure couriers and stealing codebooks looks highly profitable. Forget about throwing teams of nerds with gigacomputers at the problem though. There shouldn't be enough for them to work with.

Fred Brackin