New Sci Fi Setting Seeds - Page 106

Astromancer · 05-22-2019, 11:50 AM

Try this one...

In 2070 a genius cracks the problem of Psi. Dr. Morira O'Dell not only proved the existence of Psi powers, she introduced the basic ideas that led to the new physics that both explained how they could work, and led to FTL drives as a ramification of her work.

However, where it took a genius like Dr. O'Dell (an individual on a par with Newton, Aristotle, Leonardo, or Confucius) to crack Psi and be the first fully functional Psion, a far wider group of people could learn Psi-Powers from a functional Psion.

It is now the year 2140 (Assume a mildly more advanced version of Transhuman Space with Psi-powers an FTL drives) and psionics have been the rage for years. Psions fall into to two main groups. Those who call themselves Psions and see themselves as lucky people living in an enlightened age a democratic age, and those who call themselves Shamans, Witches, Warlocks, Wizards, and similar names, read way to much Nietzsche (and think he's Pietzsche!) and see themselves as a superior species.

Basically this is a cross between Posthuman Stars and Mage: The Ascension. Although a far more moral and humane Technocracy are the Good Guys. You could replace normal Psi-Powers with Realm Magic ala GURPS: Thaumatology or just use Sphere magic from either the GURPS version or the White Wolf original to represent advanced Psi Powers.

Astromancer · 05-23-2019, 01:56 PM

To go along with the one above It propose a couple of worlds...

Cyrenaica:

Named for the land of the Lotus eaters this planet is busily being terraformed. The simple fact that Cyrenaica is a far better candidate for terraforming than Mars ever was (there was open water when the planet was discovered) combined with the decades of improvements in both biotech and terraforming technology has made astounding progress on this world possible. But the atmosphere isn't breathable yet.

The planet was opened to settlement by people form the shores of the Indian Ocean. The Majority cultures movement is powerful here and obnoxious. Anti-Colonial Theory (Mainly Nietzsche and Adorno relabeled as Marx) dominates the local cultural scene. The local oligarchs tolerate this as a means to bog down any demands for democracy by labeling it "Westtoxification."

Large numbers of locals want to leave ASAP! As this would collapse the economy ruining the plans of both the oligarchs and the literati, both groups oppose such flight. The local colonial authority hates the idea too. They've got nowhere to send the refugees without taking large shares of other people's worlds from them. Meanwhile, smugglers helping people flee are making good money.

Meroë:

Named for an ancient capital of Ethiopia, Meroë is mainly a mining planet. The local gravity is 0.89G. Which is odd in a body about the size of Mars. The sheer density of this high metal planet explains this.

Odder by far than the planet's density is its orbit, which is radically outside of the plane of the eliptic that the other planets of Meroë's system orbit in. Meroë seems to be a captured planet from a star system with a far higher metalic content than the stars in Sol's neighborhood.

There seem to be signs that humans weren't the first to mine this planet. If so, this mining world will attract scholars in droves.

Astromancer · 05-24-2019, 01:35 PM

Try this one...

This is basically an alternate TORG. A powerful otherworld entity is forced by freak circumstance into contact with seven human minds. Each of these minds is deeply neurotic and poor in empathy, but highly intelligent and somewhat compensating for their pains with a fairly rich fantasy life. The entity was perversely amused. It gave each of the seven control over their region of the Earth ( none of these folks was from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, or Antarctica, so these areas where spared). The control was a transformation of the region and the laws of reality in that region. North America lucked out in that their nutcase knew he had little empathy and worked hard to be as empathetic as he could and always tried to be kind. He was severely limited but he made a good faith effort.

The transformations are as follows...

North America: This region is a strange mixture of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Mage: the Ascension. Raygun Gothic blended with Urban Fantasy.

South America: This region is a mixture of Gothic Romance with the horror genre. The place looks like a better developed and richer 19th century South America, just with Vampires, witches, and strange local goblins.

China and East Asia: Wuxia style high-fantasy. Dragons, wizards, alchemists, martial artists, sword saints, and spirit folk.

India and Southeast Asia: Steampunk meets the Mahabharata and then gets weird. Asian mythology ala Verne and Wells.

Southwest Asia and North Africa: A hyperconspiratorial take on the 1960s Spy-Fi genre with Cyberpunk thrown in. Cyborgs and Jinni.

Europe and Russia: Post-apocalyptic with supers! Whether or not they're heroes is a matter of opinion.

Subsaharan Africa: Corporate techno-thrillers and political intrigue in a wealthy and powerful United Africa.

Each area is trying to expand into take over the rest of reality. Each sector has their own ideas and methods of how to force their reality on others. The North American guy is the exception. He will defend himself and his reality and others may freely join. Personally, he'd like that. But he knows forcing people is wrong and regrets not asking people's permission before changing the world's reality. He helps people who want to preserve their preferred realities or fight injustice in any reality to become Reality Weavers so they can defend themselves and their communities.

Prince Charon · 05-24-2019, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astromancer

North America: This region is a strange mixture of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Mage: the Ascension. Raygun Gothic blended with Urban Fantasy.

It's really disturbing how much the North American guy is like me, though I hope I'm not that neurotic.

I really doubt that I'm the only one here thinking something like that, though.

Astromancer · 05-24-2019, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

It's really disturbing how much the North American guy is like me, though I hope I'm not that neurotic.

I really doubt that I'm the only one here thinking something like that, though.

I was making North America guy like me. Accept for the low empathy. I'm socially clueless but I do have empathy. I show it mainly at disastrous times, but I have empathy.

Astromancer · 05-26-2019, 02:10 PM

The Fires of Spring

Try this one...

This is a science fantasy setting magical elements are freely mixed in with Planetary Romance and steampunk elements.

The planet Adocentyn (named after a city in the Picatrix) has a year that is 25,800 earth years long. The last 6,450 years were winter.

The people made it through. Wizards cast powerful charms that allowed crops to grow in spite of the frost and snow, poor crops but regular. The fires of the planet's deep places heated the cities and kept the citizens from freezing to death. The geomancers brought the heat up and the artificers built the machines to pipe the heat around. Far beneath the surface, the under-dwellers built iron roads and burned fires in strange chariots to pull long trains of wagons behind them.

But now the days grow longer and warmer, soon lands long frozen will be open and crops will be raised without wizards, The seas and surface roads will be open, and none need pay the tolls of the under-dwellers. Folk will be able to leave the cities and live outside of the authority of the City Lords and their priests.

How will order be kept? When lands long isolated from each other meet again, will there be celebration? Or war?

Basically, the basic operating assumptions of a whole continent are going down the tubes. War, renaissance, and vast migrations are going to happen. Sea levels will shift as the northern glaciers melt before the southern ones can form. (This is a magical world vast glaciers can form in a mere six millennia.) Some deserts will be flooded and some islands will vanish.

This is a setting were kingdoms and empires rise and fall as the Spring replaces the Winter.

PCs should be mercenary warriors and wizards operating much like Condottieri. If you read The Dying Earth and other works in the same setting by Vance you'll get the right mood and style. Wolf's Book of the New Sun, Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth, and Adliss' Helliconia books (the last of which inspired the basic idea but not the general mood) will give you tons of usable ideas and background bits.

More later...

Astromancer · 05-29-2019, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Fires of Spring

Adocentyn's navies are being rapidly reborn as Spring conditions make sea travel more practical. Sea levels are highest in the Spring and Autumn (the Summer is the Winter in the southern hemisphere). The peak spring and autumn sea levels are 270 feet higher than the winter/summer lows. Which makes sea travel more important as well.

The Bittersand Desert is a vast, but low lying desert, that floods twice each Great Year. During both the winter and the summer coral is mined from the dry reefs. Each spring and autumn they return to life. The city of Caer Sabhaircín is a port in spring and autumn and an oasis town in the summer and winter. Families of Merfolk use the lower city when the waters are high. Ordinary humans when the waters are low.

Apollonian · 05-29-2019, 03:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Fires of Spring

This, I like.

Astromancer · 05-30-2019, 12:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Apollonian

This, I like.

Thank-you.

I plan to do more.

Astromancer · 06-03-2019, 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Fires of Spring

In our "real world" the Birch has a unique adaptation to extremes of cold. It can switch from being a tree to a vine. If an area never has even a month of temperatures averaging above 50F, then no trees can grow there. But vines still can. Thus birches can grow were others trees can't.

On Adocentyn, most plants have similar adaptations in that they can radically alter their appearance and structure in different climatic conditions. Thus certain berry vines are suddenly becoming fruit trees. Many crop plants are becoming very different crops than what they were before. Some common weeds are now valuable plants. Some once valued plants are now noxious weeds. This is causing all sorts of chaos.

Many of Adocentyn's animals have similar adaptations. There is a type of wolf that haunts the Bittersand Desert which adapts to the rising sea levels by becoming a sea lion. This actually takes several generations.

These changes may seem outrageous but it isn't Lamarckism These animals evolved these traits in the normal way (or normal for a magical world) and those animals that can't adjust when the climate changes leave no offspring.

05-22-2019, 11:50 AM	#1051
Astromancer Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: West Virginia	Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds Try this one... In 2070 a genius cracks the problem of Psi. Dr. Morira O'Dell not only proved the existence of Psi powers, she introduced the basic ideas that led to the new physics that both explained how they could work, and led to FTL drives as a ramification of her work. However, where it took a genius like Dr. O'Dell (an individual on a par with Newton, Aristotle, Leonardo, or Confucius) to crack Psi and be the first fully functional Psion, a far wider group of people could learn Psi-Powers from a functional Psion. It is now the year 2140 (Assume a mildly more advanced version of Transhuman Space with Psi-powers an FTL drives) and psionics have been the rage for years. Psions fall into to two main groups. Those who call themselves Psions and see themselves as lucky people living in an enlightened age a democratic age, and those who call themselves Shamans, Witches, Warlocks, Wizards, and similar names, read way to much Nietzsche (and think he's Pietzsche!) and see themselves as a superior species. Basically this is a cross between Posthuman Stars and Mage: The Ascension. Although a far more moral and humane Technocracy are the Good Guys. You could replace normal Psi-Powers with Realm Magic ala GURPS: Thaumatology or just use Sphere magic from either the GURPS version or the White Wolf original to represent advanced Psi Powers. __________________ Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 05-23-2019 at 10:14 AM.

05-23-2019, 01:56 PM	#1052
Astromancer Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: West Virginia	Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds To go along with the one above It propose a couple of worlds... Cyrenaica: Named for the land of the Lotus eaters this planet is busily being terraformed. The simple fact that Cyrenaica is a far better candidate for terraforming than Mars ever was (there was open water when the planet was discovered) combined with the decades of improvements in both biotech and terraforming technology has made astounding progress on this world possible. But the atmosphere isn't breathable yet. The planet was opened to settlement by people form the shores of the Indian Ocean. The Majority cultures movement is powerful here and obnoxious. Anti-Colonial Theory (Mainly Nietzsche and Adorno relabeled as Marx) dominates the local cultural scene. The local oligarchs tolerate this as a means to bog down any demands for democracy by labeling it "Westtoxification." Large numbers of locals want to leave ASAP! As this would collapse the economy ruining the plans of both the oligarchs and the literati, both groups oppose such flight. The local colonial authority hates the idea too. They've got nowhere to send the refugees without taking large shares of other people's worlds from them. Meanwhile, smugglers helping people flee are making good money. Meroë: Named for an ancient capital of Ethiopia, Meroë is mainly a mining planet. The local gravity is 0.89G. Which is odd in a body about the size of Mars. The sheer density of this high metal planet explains this. Odder by far than the planet's density is its orbit, which is radically outside of the plane of the eliptic that the other planets of Meroë's system orbit in. Meroë seems to be a captured planet from a star system with a far higher metalic content than the stars in Sol's neighborhood. There seem to be signs that humans weren't the first to mine this planet. If so, this mining world will attract scholars in droves. __________________ Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 05-24-2019 at 11:08 AM.

05-24-2019, 01:35 PM	#1053
Astromancer Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: West Virginia	Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds Try this one... This is basically an alternate TORG. A powerful otherworld entity is forced by freak circumstance into contact with seven human minds. Each of these minds is deeply neurotic and poor in empathy, but highly intelligent and somewhat compensating for their pains with a fairly rich fantasy life. The entity was perversely amused. It gave each of the seven control over their region of the Earth ( none of these folks was from Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, or Antarctica, so these areas where spared). The control was a transformation of the region and the laws of reality in that region. North America lucked out in that their nutcase knew he had little empathy and worked hard to be as empathetic as he could and always tried to be kind. He was severely limited but he made a good faith effort. The transformations are as follows... North America: This region is a strange mixture of Star Trek, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Mage: the Ascension. Raygun Gothic blended with Urban Fantasy. South America: This region is a mixture of Gothic Romance with the horror genre. The place looks like a better developed and richer 19th century South America, just with Vampires, witches, and strange local goblins. China and East Asia: Wuxia style high-fantasy. Dragons, wizards, alchemists, martial artists, sword saints, and spirit folk. India and Southeast Asia: Steampunk meets the Mahabharata and then gets weird. Asian mythology ala Verne and Wells. Southwest Asia and North Africa: A hyperconspiratorial take on the 1960s Spy-Fi genre with Cyberpunk thrown in. Cyborgs and Jinni. Europe and Russia: Post-apocalyptic with supers! Whether or not they're heroes is a matter of opinion. Subsaharan Africa: Corporate techno-thrillers and political intrigue in a wealthy and powerful United Africa. Each area is trying to expand into take over the rest of reality. Each sector has their own ideas and methods of how to force their reality on others. The North American guy is the exception. He will defend himself and his reality and others may freely join. Personally, he'd like that. But he knows forcing people is wrong and regrets not asking people's permission before changing the world's reality. He helps people who want to preserve their preferred realities or fight injustice in any reality to become Reality Weavers so they can defend themselves and their communities. __________________ Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 05-25-2019 at 06:34 AM.

05-26-2019, 02:10 PM	#1056
Astromancer Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: West Virginia	Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds The Fires of Spring Try this one... This is a science fantasy setting magical elements are freely mixed in with Planetary Romance and steampunk elements. The planet Adocentyn (named after a city in the Picatrix) has a year that is 25,800 earth years long. The last 6,450 years were winter. The people made it through. Wizards cast powerful charms that allowed crops to grow in spite of the frost and snow, poor crops but regular. The fires of the planet's deep places heated the cities and kept the citizens from freezing to death. The geomancers brought the heat up and the artificers built the machines to pipe the heat around. Far beneath the surface, the under-dwellers built iron roads and burned fires in strange chariots to pull long trains of wagons behind them. But now the days grow longer and warmer, soon lands long frozen will be open and crops will be raised without wizards, The seas and surface roads will be open, and none need pay the tolls of the under-dwellers. Folk will be able to leave the cities and live outside of the authority of the City Lords and their priests. How will order be kept? When lands long isolated from each other meet again, will there be celebration? Or war? Basically, the basic operating assumptions of a whole continent are going down the tubes. War, renaissance, and vast migrations are going to happen. Sea levels will shift as the northern glaciers melt before the southern ones can form. (This is a magical world vast glaciers can form in a mere six millennia.) Some deserts will be flooded and some islands will vanish. This is a setting were kingdoms and empires rise and fall as the Spring replaces the Winter. PCs should be mercenary warriors and wizards operating much like Condottieri. If you read The Dying Earth and other works in the same setting by Vance you'll get the right mood and style. Wolf's Book of the New Sun, Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth, and Adliss' Helliconia books (the last of which inspired the basic idea but not the general mood) will give you tons of usable ideas and background bits. More later... __________________ Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 06-14-2019 at 02:05 PM.