Space Campaign, revisited

[combatmedic]

A while back, I did some work on a GURPS Space campaign setting. I set that aside to work on other projects, and am now ready to return to it.

I'm going to sart by laying out a basic set of guidelines. This is intended to have some retro elements.

Time? Not sure, but far enough in the future for there to be multiple colony worlds, some settled for at least a couple of centuries.

Technology: The dominant human civilization[s] = TL 10, leaning towards safetech. I don't want to emphasize transhumanist stuff, although bionic limbs and the like will exist. No nanofacs/replicators. No contragrav. No reactionless drives. FTL travel is via a web of interconnected jumplines, using a jump drive. No FTL radio, so courier ships are used instead. Only limited superscience, mainly in the form of FTL.

Aliens- Multiple species, several of which are not humanoid. Life on most planets shares certain fundamental similiarites to life on Earth- suggestive of a common origin. Some people explain this in scientific terms, others turn to religion for answers.

Magic, Psi, etc- Nope. Danger sense or luck is fine, telepathy and TK are right out. That doesn't mean there aren't people who believe in this stuff, of course.

[combatmedic]

Big Assumption # 1

Folks in the future will still be human beings as we understand them. Technology will solve some problems and create others. Basic human needs won't change. There is no 'singularity'.
This does not necessarily mean the setting is full of people with early 21st century European or American cultural and political values.

[combatmedic]

Other ideas-

One thing I've noticed is the negative spin a lot of SF puts on religion [yes, I am well aware there are exceptions to this]. I think I'll flip that around in my setting by having a prominent religious order operating across the starlanes whose members help out spacers and colonists alike. They might be like the Franciscan friars- heck, they might be Franciscans!

Gun, guns,guns! I like guns. Not so fond of blasters and such. While I won't ban beam weapons entirely, I think slugthrowers and needlers will be pretty common in this setting. Maybe lasers are military weapons, and off limits to civilians in many star systems? Maybe the power cells for beam weapons are bulky and heavy?

[combatmedic]

As in Traveller, communications are limited to the speed of the fastest ship. This means merchants, travelers, space bums, etc are also newsmen and letter carriers -even bards. Dirtsiders look forward to the arrival of a new ship because it brings news, rumors, 'new' movies,etc.

[Apache]

I think your biggest decision will be

A) How efficient are my spaceships reaction drives?

Are you going to track fuel usage religiously, or just handwave most of it?

Also, how fast does it take said spaceship to get to jump distance?

That will affect speed of communications, obviously, altho you might have 'Pony Express' stations ala the old Starfire game, where somebody would send a radio/lightspeed message to the Warp Point, and a station (manned or automated) orbitting said Warp Point would send a ship/courier drone thru the point and begin transmitting the message ASAP to another relay/dispatch station, if necessary.

[combatmedic]

Well, I'm thinking of using 'torch' drives, probably fusion powered. It might be a little rubbery, but my players won't care. These would be powerful and fuel efficient, but not really capable of approaching light speed [not planet busters].

-There will be other manuever drives, of course. Different TL societies and different alien species may have their own approaches to space travel.

[combatmedic]

That Pony Express system sounds good. It doesn't negate all the things I said about merchants and travelers, so I'll probably use it. Thanks.

[combatmedic]

Jump point travel: instantaneous or slow???

Fuel use? I dunno how strict I'm going to be. Things may move at the ''speed of plot'', or I may be more stringent. I'll have to consider the players- if none of them care, I'm not going to waste a lot of time on technical details. If someone enjoys resource management, it'll be there.

[combatmedic]

Note about jumplines:

These are naturally occuring features of space [as far as anyone knows]. They are alway linked to another jumpoint. Often , there is only one jumpoint near a given star. Some point lead to a sister point in deep space. Sometimes points appear in clusters, making a natural crossroads of space travel. Most jumplines run both ways, but not all. Some are erratic, but most charted points are reliable enough.

This all leads to trade routes, the possibility of space pirates, and all that good stuff. Charted but secret points exist.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

This all leads to trade routes, the possibility of space pirates,

Though jumppoints also are natural chokepoints that can be comparatively easily patroled, defended and controlled. I would think that a warpdrive creates more possibilities for pirates, as they can intercept everywhere along the way.