Adventures in Utopia?

[whswhs]

The basic question for any campaign is, what kind of conflict do you want to have? Utopia limits the range of possible conflicts.

* Man versus society: Right out; a utopia's inhabitants are all morally committed to their society's ideals, and their society is able to live up to them.

* Man versus man: Most utopias manage to eliminate this, but there can be exceptions; even in a perfect society, two men may love the same woman, or two women may both want a job that can only hire one. There can also be rare crimes, frauds, or other unethical acts by the minority of people who don't live by utopian values. Think about how your utopia works.

* Man versus God: Many utopias are godless; those that have gods usually are morally committed to the ethics their gods support.

* Man versus self: Most utopias have inhabitants with superb psychological insight that frees them of conflicts; but someone with dystopian impulses might have to struggle with them.

* Man versus nature: The obvious topic. Heroic engineering is an obvious theme, but you can also have exploration, the pursuit of abstract knowledge, or even the creation of a new enterprise or community.

Bill Stoddard

[Stoob]

Stoob: The idea presented is an interesting one... The difficulty is in how the prophet came to her knowledge....

The interesting twist about your campaign is that by playing in before-the-humans-came time is that the players actually KNOW what happens in the future, because they've played in the campaign setting (in the future) before. This is unavoidable.

By having an ememy (this cult prophet) who actually somewhat-accurately predicts the future begs the question...how does the prophet know.

But what if the prophet DOESNT know? What if the prophet is crazy and just totally made up a compelling gloom-and-doom story, and there is no evidence that the prophet actually knows the future at all? It's just by chance that the prophecy sort of reflects the future, that only the players know is actually true. The PCs will be obliged to try to eliminate the cult and the prophet because there is no truth to it, not in the game world at least. The players (as PCs) will explain why the humans weren't attacked by the Selk when the humans first arrived, cause no one ever had any idea that this prophecy was true and the PCs stamped out the cult. The PCs will make history (in a weird way) and do their part to create the campaign setting as it exists...a big and important job!

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Trachmyr

But eventually the last of the original selk died, and since then there has been no contact. If contact was to resume, some form of communications device would have to be delivered to the selk.

Where are the bodies of the ancestor Selk?
Where are the neural interfaces they used?
Could they be dusted off and re-activated?

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Just remember that one person's heaven is another's hell. Any Utopia will have dissenters who think things could be better. (Example: The wealthy in the 1920's and 1930's lived in a sort of Utopia. However, many of them were swept up in the Fascist movement, which led to their Utopia being destroyed.)

[Trachmyr]

• @whswhs: Traditionally I run Man vs. Society games with a side helping of Man vs. man. This is probably the reason I'm scratching my head trying to come up with ideas... the ones I'm most experienced with are pretty much not available.
  While I could focus on a Selk vs. Selk game if the conflict is on the individual level, or on a Selk vs. Self game, it's not really possible except in a solo game.
  For the Selk spirituality (God) and society are pretty much the same. And in my experience Man vs. Nature games make for good one-off adventures, but not for lasting campaigns.
  
  So yes, I'm limited. What I have to do is find a set of circumstances that make an exception to how the Utopian selk society normally behaves, even if the goals are unchanged (or better yet, due to the Selk's goals).

• @Stoob: I can see the irony in making the "prophet" crazy, and the prophecy just coincidental. But fundamentally, it wouldn't be... whether she was crazy or not, the prophecy is still true. Trying to force the players to uphold the Irony of the situation just isn't nice... and they'd be unlikely to do so, they would actively look for reasons to believe (after all it *is* true).
  
  I'd much rather let the prophet or cult know something and tie it in to other historical events. For instance, when the Selk did begin to "fight back", the Humans were surprised how quickly they were able to understand and adapt their weapon technology, creating an indusrty for weapons production "overnight". Perhaps it wasn't overnight, it was a stockpile.
  
  There was also a controversy over a newly appeared species of Diatoms that produced extremly powerful neurotoxins that only affected humans. The Diatoms did major damage, caused the humans to retreat from the seas, and had a high death toll. The Selk were accused of engineering the Diatoms as a biological warfare agent, but scientific study proved that they had evolved naturally, and could not have been recently engineered (the PC were part of the analysis, they collected the Diatoms and transported them to a neutral third party)... The selk, given a bit of help from their AI are cpabable of selectively breeding this species... if they had forewarning and an understanding of human biochemistry.

• @Diagoro: The interfaces were implants, and the Selk cremate their dead... so for many reasons, the Interfaces are unaccessible even if not destroyed.

• @Myserious Dark Lord: On this I will have to quibble a point.. the Quote may be true for Humanity, but the Selk are quite Psychologically different. Possessing Sense of Duty (Race), Selflessness (SC 9, Racial -20%) [Sense of Duty means you help when you can, Selflessness means you help even when detremental)], Empathy (Racial -20%), Cultural Adaptation (Own Race, Onset 1 Week -40%), Language (basic Selkie, Accented) and Chummy as Genetic Traits. The society they live in is not an artificial construct, but instead an extension of their own (quite homogenous) personalities. And while there is variation amongst individuals, even an unfriendly and unsocial Selk is still still pleasant by human standards and not by any means anti-social.

Thanks for your feedback, much appreciated!
(and I think I have an idea I'll try fleshing out later, but I'm still open to other ideas...)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Trachmyr

@whswhs: Traditionally I run Man vs. Society games with a side helping of Man vs. man. This is probably the reason I'm scratching my head trying to come up with ideas... the ones I'm most experienced with are pretty much not available.
While I could focus on a Selk vs. Selk game if the conflict is on the individual level, or on a Selk vs. Self game, it's not really possible except in a solo game.
For the Selk spirituality (God) and society are pretty much the same. And in my experience Man vs. Nature games make for good one-off adventures, but not for lasting campaigns.

So yes, I'm limited. What I have to do is find a set of circumstances that make an exception to how the Utopian selk society normally behaves, even if the goals are unchanged (or better yet, due to the Selk's goals).

If that's what you want I suggest a look at Le Guin's The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. The chapters set on Anarres are somewhat along the lines of deconstructed utopia that you seem to want to follow.

Bill Stoddard

[capnq]

Originally Posted by Trachmyr

Mutations are actually quite rare (the AI programmed significant DNA repair and failsafes, as the AI considered them perfected... thus natural evolution was undesirable), and even so cannot spread into the gene pool except through direct decendants... these individuals would likely die unless isolated from all other Selks. The reason is that Selk frequently swap antibodies (using their own lactate in communal foods), these carry antibodies to fight off not only disease, but destroy any cell that does not carry the same DNA.

Perhaps a mutation that increased the DNA's resistance to antibodies, perhaps by chemically "camouflaging" the cell wall?

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

An Orion-drive ship (using current technology) could get up to 10% lightspeed, making the trip to Alpha Centauri in less than 50 years. Fusion tech is not necessary. If anything, a fusion ship might make the trip in less time - possibly fast enough to make time dilation a factor. The time factor might allow a crew to make multiple trips to Alpha Centauri over a couple of centuries of outside time..

Orion's not yet current technology, and not that good even theoretically.

[dcarson]

The AI can't modify its core programming but there could be disagreements between splinters on what it means. Such as are the selks the only priority or are other colonies from Earth part of its duty.

So it has the resources to create and drop one more selk with a interface (the prophet) but the different fragments of the AI disagree on the steps to take so the prophet gets different instructions depend on which part is active at a given time.

[Trachmyr]

Originally Posted by dcarson

The AI can't modify its core programming but there could be disagreements between splinters on what it means. Such as are the selks the only priority or are other colonies from Earth part of its duty.

So it has the resources to create and drop one more selk with a interface (the prophet) but the different fragments of the AI disagree on the steps to take so the prophet gets different instructions depend on which part is active at a given time.

----------------

This is pretty much the plot line I have in mind, but the New Selk (who does not have a clan since she is not decended from the original Selk, a major circumstance in it's own right) is in fact a cybershell housing the AI splinter (The other AI's are know to have destroyed splinter's whose actions diverged from the consensus).

The AI's are under no obligation to help the refugees, only to protect the welfare and growth of the "colonists"... the selk. That doesn't mean the AI won't help, provided it will benefit the Selk (something it does in the future with the so-called "Selk-Sympathizers", eventually elevating them to a position of economic control in the system and helping them found a colony on a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt).

When the Refugee's ship is detected, the AI consensus is that it needs more data, and will wait for the refugees to arrive to determine how best they can be used. The AI's worry that if they help the Selk industrialize too soon, to be able to defend themselves, this would threaten their developing culture. One AI splinter (with a hobby for psychology) sees the damage that can be caused by the refugees to be far greater than the damage that could be caused by small scale industrialization.

Creating the cybershell and drop pod (by canabalizing more segments of the ship, particularly planetary sensors that could be used to detect the location of the cybershell), it leaves. As long as the other AIs do not know it's location, it's unlikely they will risk further cultural contamination to search for it... but it's time is limited, the damage it caused will be repaired not too long after the AI's current dormant period ends.

The hook for the PCs will be when a Selk who had supposedly died while crossing the deep ocean (always a dangerous task, with about 1:3000 resulting in death, but needed to communicate between remote commune clusters), is spotted watching a selk from the commune (the two selk were previously bonded, kind of like a marriage reinforced by biochemistry, high in romance and passion, but usually lasting only a few years).

The PCs will investigate, and discover that this isn't the first spotting of a dead selk (in other communes).

The AI Selk needs help, but wants to keep it's presence and the looming threat a secret from Selk culture. It has been abducting Selk, using a mixture of stockholm syndrome and the selk own desire to protect their sisters and communes to indoctronate them into an illuminati style cult... focused on science and industry, what will be needed to repel the refugees if they attack as the AI fears.

Anyways, that's the capsule plot set-up that I think I'm going to run with. I also think I'm going to break this campaign up over the course of three selk lifetimes (the PCs playing different Selk in each section), and not run them consecutively... the first game will be the PCs encountering the originization once the AI is long gone, and the group has very much taken on a quasi-spirtual illuminati cult feel to them. I expect them to try to fight the group, and just about when they have what they need to expose them, one or more PCs discover that they have a family history in the group 9then switch to that campaign for a while).