Creating my own setting [Star Wars flavored]

[Arith Winterfell]

I've been trying to work on a setting for both my GURPS games and writing material, but I've been drawing a blank and am looking for ideas/suggestions.

I've read over many of Mailanka's articles about his work on the Psi-Wars flavored setting and found them helpful. I've especially focused on and taken to heart the idea of adaptation instead of copying when it comes to building my own setting. I'm especially cautious about this stuff as I'm aiming to use this as material for future novel writing perhaps and want to change things enough that while its still fun, it doesn't stand out terribly as "just a Star Wars clone."

That said, I also know that players need points of reference! In order to make a setting that grabs player interest and allows them to quickly jump into a setting with a general idea of tone and world you need references that players will understand from their own experience. So you could say I'm using Star Wars as a reference point / starting point. But struggle to figure out ways to change it and expand on it in order to make it my own.

So one of the biggest changes the setting has is there are neither Jedi or Sith, there are just people gifted with various psychic abilities (called being "Shroudtouched" instead of "Force-Sensitive"). The Shroud is not like the Force. It's a literal known parallel dimension that interacts in some unclear way with human consciousness allowing humans to manipulate reality in various ways. The setting lacks the mysticism surrounding The Shroud that Star Wars has surrounding the Force.

That said many of the powers are similar to Star Wars / Dune with telepathy and telekinesis being most present, but clairsentience in various ways is present too. However, here is no real tying of powers to emotional drive or serenity. Teleportation powers are unheard of. The presence of such powers are relatively rare, and various governments often desire to control such individuals for the governments benefit.

Also, there is more technology interaction between psychic powers and technology. There are pieces of tech that can help jam psychic powers, drugs to disorient and mess with powers, and even some creepy mix of biology and technology (like experimental vat grown cyborg computer technology) that can produce psychic power effects.

The galaxy lacks any overarching government, be it Republic or Empire. Cultures are so diverse and divergent that things tend to be separated into a variety of governments all local at the planetary or star system level. This is also due to the difficulties in maintaining shared calendars/time measurements, and general order at interstellar distances. Time Dilation, different orbital patterns around different stars, different cultures, all make large scale interstellar organization a major headache for a would be Empire or other government. As a result, you do have grand Republics or dictatorial Empires, just on small scales of maybe a handful of star systems at most. And if you move far enough in space from one you might be able to outrun your past.

In general you have a frontier flavor of the Outer Rim from Star Wars. Despite there being Hyperspace travel, things remain a chaotic frontier in my systems. Many systems are also sparsely populated (relatively speaking) as peoples spread out over countless star systems in a chaotic ungoverned fashion rather than at the command of unified world governments.

The general archetypes of the setting (in my mind) are largely similar to Star Wars (in fact this is where it probably SHOULD most resemble Star Wars as the archetypes are how people guide building their characters) so you have the usual character types, rogue with a heart of gold, predatory space pirates (maybe?), bounty hunters, diplomats, the Shroudtouched (whatever form that takes), nobility, scoundrels, criminals, etc.)

Any further ideas of where to take this setting?

[Refplace]

Sounds good. I recently started publishing some of my notes and ideas for building a Space Opera. As my blog is focused on helping newcomers the thrust of these articles will be on concepts and what things to consider more than worked examples. It might be useful to you.
They are keyed under Star Heist.

[Donny Brook]

A next step could be to go deeper on a specific planet, region, or organization where events might happen.

Bear in mind that creating high level and detail levels will have some feedback and iteration in the early creative phases, which is not only okay and to be expected, but it's where you will find a lot of richness and depth.

[Arith Winterfell]

Thanks for the feedback so far! Thanks Refplace for the info for your setting. It has made me think of things like starship size and design. I have the books (some of them from that line) myself, but I always find myself overwhelmed by options and kind of disinterested in all the ins and outs of starship design.

With your permission in that area, I'd like to run with the ideas you've put together there. Especially the ideas on a handful of sizes of ships at the idea that size 8 or 9 is simply the range for PCs, with smaller ships as shuttles and larger ships as large merchant vessels or military ships.

Though I might ponder the option of going in for Alistair Reynolds "Revelation Space" idea, where starships the size of small towns and spend most of their voyage at near light speed. The result is crews who spend a lot of time in stasis, AND that starship travel results in huge gaps of time jumps. I'm still on the fence with the idea, cause it makes travelling to the next star system equal saying goodbye to everyone permanently essentially. So maybe I'll stick with Hyperspace travel instead.

I also face a similar issue with damage lethality and high-tech sci-fi weapons. I just don't know what weapons to pick from among the overwhelming number of choices for the setting.

A big part of my problem is, my players are all super-new to GURPS! So I find myself with the urge to ultra-simplify things and say "there's laster pistols and laser rifles" and call it a day. It's not that I dislike having a variety of weapons. I like that idea. But I've found my players have no real interest in going through and picking out details like "cool starships" and "cool tech and guns." They often struggle to come up with character ideas, period! So I'm torn as to what to do with weapons and especially how much damage to assign them.

I realize here I'm leaning toward taking from Star Wars and have a general "Blaster" technology. Though I'd probably call them "Energy Pistol" or "Energy Rifle." Ideally, I think I want weapons that are "just dangerous" enough that your average unarmored person takes a couple of hits to go down. I'm thinking of the plucky rebels in Star Wars that never seem to be wearing heavy armor, just plain clothes. Though Storm Troopers seem to just go down when hit, I've always kinda wondered if their armor was more of a "blunts the deadly energy blast, but knocks you unconscious still as a result."

The idea of Grav tech sounds interesting to me though. I also tend toward liking the whole reactionless drive idea. It allows for easy liftoff from planets and landings without all the realistic struggle of the rocket equation limiting things so heavily as they do in real life.

I'm also struggling with the "Force Sword" idea. It's so strongly Star Wars (both in a good flavor way, and in a bad "this is just a rip off of Star Wars" way). STILL, lightsabers and duels have this sort of satisfying appeal. I've always assumed they were build off of Forcefield tech, essentially a thin bar of Forcefield allowing it to block shots. I always assumed Forcefields made easy and quick allowances for popping in and out of Hanger Bays, and allow ship "shields", and even personal shield belts as options. Still unsure of what to do about lightsaber duels though.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

Though I might ponder the option of going in for Alistair Reynolds "Revelation Space" idea, where starships the size of small towns and spend most of their voyage at near light speed. The result is crews who spend a lot of time in stasis, AND that starship travel results in huge gaps of time jumps. I'm still on the fence with the idea, cause it makes travelling to the next star system equal saying goodbye to everyone permanently essentially. So maybe I'll stick with Hyperspace travel instead.

Well large ships can have plenty of interaction too and stable NPCs. If the Players want the freedom to choose destination that is easier with small ships. Large ships tend to steer things more so the players give up some personal choice. How well that works will depend on your players and what they like.

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

I also face a similar issue with damage lethality and high-tech sci-fi weapons. I just don't know what weapons to pick from among the overwhelming number of choices for the setting.

Force Weapons (Grav tech) are a good choice for nonlethal, Neuro and Sonic weapons all can be effective yet not highly lethal.
If you feel your players will prefer limited choices then give them limited choices. Most of my games have been with people who prefer more choices, even when they did not understand the system.
The lethality section I felt was important and useful to most Space Opera settings. I advise 3 to 5 dice of damage for hand weapons for the feel you describe where armor is rarely worn.
Good medical tech will help them recover faster but still consider combat a risky and tension packed option.

And I made the blog for people to use its ideas. I am holding things back I intend to put into future supplements, fiction, or other material I hope to publish.
Star Heist was a campaign idea from last year that failed to get off the ground and I am currently writing a novel for.
I just added another blog post today and have two more in my head for the next week or so.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

at the idea that size 8 or 9 is simply the range for PCs, with smaller ships as shuttles and larger ships as large merchant vessels or military ships.

Though I might ponder the option of going in for Alistair Reynolds "Revelation Space" idea, where starships the size of small towns and spend most of their voyage at near light speed.

I also face a similar issue with damage lethality and high-tech sci-fi weapons. I just don't know what weapons to pick from among the overwhelming number of choices for the setting.

.

This is where I insert my usual warning about ship size. If you want SM+8 to be a "small" PC ship you're using "ship" to refer to ocean-going vessels. SM+7 is a 747. The Millenium Falcon is smaller than a 747 so it's SM+6. An X-wing would be SM+4.

Note that knocking your ships down 2 SM would reduce your "where did the PCs get the money to buy a ship? problem by a factor of 10.

Stick with the hyperspace. Pushing anything to near lightspeed
(much less city-sized vessels) takes energy resources that would break the setting in other ways.

For what you want you can use the bog stadard weapons from UT. Have NPCs use the "regular" pistol sizes instead of the "Heavy" ones for the same reasons cops carry Glock-19s instead of Desert Eagles (which is they don't want to carry all that weight around on their belts).

Those pistols will do 3D6 possibly minus a pt or two of armor after the (5) divisor of the TL11 Blasters. If your PCs just have to have the 4D of the Heavy pistols then I guess they're just gun-bunnies. :)

Omni-blasters have a"stun" setting too for even less potential lethality.

If you go with "vanilla" TL11^ ships will have Force Screens and probably fight with X-ray Lasers (which are not usable for planetary bombardment without another switch or two being thrown). Force screens make a huge difference in survivability compared to ships with armor only.

[Arith Winterfell]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

This is where I insert my usual warning about ship size. If you want SM+8 to be a "small" PC ship you're using "ship" to refer to ocean-going vessels. SM+7 is a 747. The Millenium Falcon is smaller than a 747 so it's SM+6. An X-wing would be SM+4.

Note that knocking your ships down 2 SM would reduce your "where did the PCs get the money to buy a ship? problem by a factor of 10.

I see. Thank you for the heads up about the ship sizes. Truth be told, I think part of my issue is that I have a hard time mentally imagining the size of various SM for spaceships. So saying X-Wing is SM+4, and SM+7 is a 747 plane, gives me a better mental framework to work with. I work better with physical references rather than pure numbers.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Stick with the hyperspace. Pushing anything to near lightspeed
(much less city-sized vessels) takes energy resources that would break the setting in other ways.

With this I was less picturing pushing a ship with tons of power, and more of it gravity falling in one direction, slowly working its way toward the speed of light percent it can get to. Then coasting for most of the trip, followed by slowly decelerating into the system over a long distance likewise. But like I said, this is all years and years of travel time, and I didn't really feel like doing that.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

For what you want you can use the bog stadard weapons from UT. Have NPCs use the "regular" pistol sizes instead of the "Heavy" ones for the same reasons cops carry Glock-19s instead of Desert Eagles (which is they don't want to carry all that weight around on their belts).

Those pistols will do 3D6 possibly minus a pt or two of armor after the (5) divisor of the TL11 Blasters. If your PCs just have to have the 4D of the Heavy pistols then I guess they're just gun-bunnies. :)

Omni-blasters have a"stun" setting too for even less potential lethality.

Okay, I think I'll go have a look over UT again and go with that general idea.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If you go with "vanilla" TL11^ ships will have Force Screens and probably fight with X-ray Lasers (which are not usable for planetary bombardment without another switch or two being thrown). Force screens make a huge difference in survivability compared to ships with armor only.

Yeah, I'm leaning toward ships with force shields then.

Also I was pondering the idea that the "Shroudblade" sword, was when a Shroudtouched draws a filament of extradimensional matter from The Shroud and then uses Forcefield tech to stablize it in this reality (so it doesn't just dissipate back into The Shroud), explaining while its only Shroudtouched who use them, as it requires training in the skill of manipulating Shroud energy/matter into the physical world to manifest these dark shadowy blades that are distortions in space time giving them their cutting properties, while forcefields can block them due to the forcefields used in stabilizing the blade. I thought that was an interesting lore idea.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

I see. Thank you for the heads up about the ship sizes. Truth be told, I think part of my issue is that I have a hard time mentally imagining the size of various SM for spaceships. So saying X-Wing is SM+4, and SM+7 is a 747 plane, gives me a better mental framework to work with. I work better with physical references rather than pure numbers.

On the naval side, SM+8 is a WWI destroyer or submarine, SM+9 is a WWII destroyer, SM+10 is a modern nuclear submarine (roughly), SM+11 is a WWII battleship, SM+12 is a modern supercarrier, SM+13 would be some of the largest container ships afloat.

A reasonable approximation is that an SM+4 or SM+5 vehicle would have a crew of 1, and crew size triples with each SM:

SM  Crew Size
4,5    1
6      3
7      10
8      30
9      100
10    300
11    1000
12    3000

though that's just an approximation and ships might have 1/3rd to 3x as much crew as that. But a ship with a crew of 36,000 is probably around SM+14, based on historical practices.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

On the naval side, SM+8 is a WWI destroyer or submarine, SM+9 is a WWII destroyer, SM+10 is a modern nuclear submarine (roughly), SM+11 is a WWII battleship, SM+12 is a modern supercarrier, SM+13 would be some of the largest container ships afloat.

A reasonable approximation is that an SM+4 or SM+5 vehicle would have a crew of 1, and crew size triples with each SM:

SM  Crew Size
4,5    1
6      3
7      10
8      30
9      100
10    300
11    1000
12    3000

though that's just an approximation and ships might have 1/3rd to 3x as much crew as that. But a ship with a crew of 36,000 is probably around SM+14, based on historical practices.

Where do you arrive at those crew figures for Spaceships?
I used SM+9 as the largest ship not declared a capital ship based primarily on that after that most systems need extra crew but at SM+9 and smaller most can get away with just bridge crew.
It also happened to roughly fit equivalent ship tonnages.

[monstrous engineer]

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

With this I was less picturing pushing a ship with tons of power, and more of it gravity falling in one direction, slowly working its way toward the speed of light percent it can get to. Then coasting for most of the trip, followed by slowly decelerating into the system over a long distance likewise. But like I said, this is all years and years of travel time, and I didn't really feel like doing that.

A good compromise is the system used in Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap" series. The conceit was that FTL travel relied on having a sufficiently high velocity when you flip the switch. The faster you went, the further and more accurate each hop would be. If you turned the drive on when you were stopped, you could end up anywhere. Like Star Wars, gravity from stars and planets was also a problem.

To travel between star systems you first have to get clear of the local star's gravity with conventional engines, make a jump or two, try to figure out where you are (space is big and it all looks the same), get pointed in the right direction (conventional engines again), and repeat until you reach your destination. Making lots of hops in rapid succession safely depends on having a very high initial speed, a very powerful computer to figure out where you are quickly, and very powerful engines to make trajectory adjustments between hops.

I don't think there was any sort of FTL communication like Star Trek's subspace, everything relied on courier drones with FTL drives.

You can stick with your Grav-Tech engine idea and say that is what counts as a "conventional" engine in your setting. If you want to get around the problem of all your ships carrying an energy source equivalent to several thousand nuclear bombs (interstellar travel is energy intensive) you can have the Grav-Drive be something shroud related, equivalent to some kind of sci-fi sail boat. The drive can tap into the shroud energy to move the ship, but the ship can't use the energy for anything else.

The drawback of the magic sailboat approach is that it means you've created a source of unlimited free energy, which has major ramifications for the rest of your universe. Some ways to offset this include:

• Only shroud-touched people can effectively control the drive (e.g. the Dune Space Guild)
• The grav-drive leaves a wake that can cause all sorts of weirdness, so it's only safe to use in deep space (e.g. Deadly pollution).
• The drive relies on some kind of rare and expensive consumable (e.g. Dilithium crystals).
• The energy is free, but making it work is computationally expensive, so you need a massively powerful computer (e.g. it runs off of Bitcoin)
• Some combination of the above.

Space combat is really hard to pull off in any way that makes sense, but having grav-tech helps a lot because you can say that it includes some kind of "inertial dampener" that prevents everyone from turning into goo the first time the ship makes a 50g turn.