New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by Willy

I guess that guys have a pretty extended livespan, most trees good enough to build ships, take at least half a century before useful, some more than a century. Add the time to learn how to build ships, some test fails and such, not to mention the time it needs for plants to spread in a former arid area, I would estimate this guy is at leat 200 years "young".

If they're colonists from a high-tech society, then they would have loaded up on the best survival goodies before leaving home. That would include top-flight anti-agathic treatments for long healthy lifespans. So 200 years for generation zero? Yeah, possible.

And are they using trees? Or alien tree-analogues? Maybe they don't need as long to grow to usable size.

Just as likely is that since it's a colonizing expedition, then they could also have brought genetically-engineered one-generation fast-growing plant hybrids to help establish enclaves more suited to terrestrial life. So a decade or two might be enough to grow Earth-trees adequate for shipbuilding.

There's plenty of room to fill in. Which leads to the Earth they left behind, which leads to world-building. Fun all around.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Okay, that was a foul up. But what do you think about inexperienced sailors up a Golden Age Sci Fi/Planetary Romance planet exploring their world?

Exploration and a completely unkown world are always a fresh sheet of paper for great adventures. You can stumble about everything imaginable und unimaginable. Ad a big + to the fact the guys don´t really know how to sail and such, this gives the GM a big lever for further adventures and roleplay. He also can guide the campaign better, here a wind that drives the ship to a certain location, here a little necessary repair... .

It is a really nice scenario.

[Astromancer]

The Junkyard

Not everything can be cheaply replicated. Elements are expensive to copy. Basically, not worth it. That's why we need to do this. A small number of this old stellar Imperium's warships used engines that required stable heavy elements. Those engines have enough heavy elements to set us and a few generations of our descendants up for life.

But salvaging the engines means we risk our lives. "No pain, no gain", they say.

Junkyards exist to both store obsolete and worn out manufactures and to salvage valuable materials from the same. In Science Fiction the junkyard always is a vision of a now long past tomorrow junked and discarded. Dreams either discredited or bypassed.

A junkyard full of decommissioned and obsolete spacecraft makes an excellent Sci Fi haunted house. Old subroutines programed to defend the long discarded ships make dangerous ghosts. Robots still trying to fulfill their functions make nasty zombies.

Basically, the PCs are a salvage crew. Trying to turn long forgotten wrecks into a source of profit. Dungeon Fantasy in Spaaaaaaaaaace!

Optional: Sci Fi variations on the early AD&D classes can be found. Fighters remain fighters. Wizards become Psions. Clerics become techies. And Thieves become Scroungers.

[Astromancer]

Does anyone here think Peter Zeihan's predictions for the next two decades or so gives a gameable setting?

[Flaco76]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Does anyone here think Peter Zeihan's predictions for the next two decades or so gives a gameable setting?

I think so. Take the average Cyberpunk setting and twist the geopolitics. You could even take something like Cyberworld or Terradyne and make the major powers India and North America.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Does anyone here think Peter Zeihan's predictions for the next two decades or so gives a gameable setting?

Sure! According to him we live in interesting times, and that are always good times for adventure.

In a multipolar world full of power struggle close to the end of the world as we know it or, in and after the collapse. lots of possibilitys for good gaming, but mostly of the gritty type - you need to like that scenarios.

By the way, I hope he is completely wrong, because it are good times for adventures, but bad times to live in them.

[PTTG]

Cyberpunk was always about the '80s. About a myth of what conservatives of the '80s thought the 2020s would look like.

Aside from the coincidence of date, it's not really relevant. Punk written today is going to have to face the issues that are relevant today: climate collapse, non-sentient AI, political paralysis, disengagement, and reactionary violence.

The punk of the '80s was directionless violence against a rigged system. The system today is still rigged, but the counterculture is anarchist and anti-corporate while being collectivist. It even rejects excessive violence and sexualization as part of the lowest-common-denominator corporate brainwashing (while endorsing them when they are part of the good fight and a good life).

Lone gunmen are the nightmare that many are trying to escape, not emulate. Collective action, building a network that's off the Network. Having the power to change the status quo, rather than the power to preserve it. That seems to be what people are looking for. Oh, and the opportunity to punch Nazis in the mouth.

You know, there's definitely room for gamifying that last bit...

[Astromancer]

Indiana Jones was always right about the gut reaction to Nazis. But Zeihan's predictions suggest that, outside of a few nations like the USA, India, France, and some of their allies, the next few decades could be anything from continual crisis to civilizational collapse. The USA with excellent farm land, good mineral resources, and internal lines of supply will be unusually stable but inward looking.

He bases this last on the simple fact that every presidential election since 1992 was won by the candidate that rejected internationalism. And neither Biden nor Trump is interested in internationalism at this time. No matter what we think about that, the trend has been there for thirty years.

He certainly sees a more violent world. He also sees a return of state sponsored piracy. He claims the Iranians have already tried it!

[tshiggins]

As I understand it (and I've added his books to the top of my list of things to purchase, once I finish this remodeling project and have my weekends, again...), Zeihan basically postulates a retrenchment to more regional political and economic partnerships.

The U.S. gets tired of patrolling trade routes and spending huge sums to guarantee international stability, just as our dependence on foreign energy sources steadily declines because we shift to power we can simply produce ourselves.

Europe kicks loose from dependence on Russian fossil fuels to become more energy autonomous, also, but really struggles to access other resources, of all sorts -- especially labor in an aging population. Fortunately, it has robust financial sectors and a really good, well-developed internal transportation infrastructure.

So, about the only two regions that manage to survive are North America and Europe; the rest of the world crumbles increasingly quickly.
Hrm. A little ethnocentric, maybe?

Well, at first glance I'm pretty sure I don't buy the guy's thesis (I'd bet he seriously underestimates the potential impact of technological innovation), but I suppose any campaign based on it would have ample conflict to drive plots.
You could probably put together a pretty good spec ops campaign; or act as volunteers who escort humanitarians to bring aid to collapsing areas; or bounty-hunters who go after criminals who have fled to areas where extradition agreements have broken down.

It would be tough to come up with a coherent theme that could drive a long-term campaign, though.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

You could probably put together a pretty good spec ops campaign; or act as volunteers who escort humanitarians to bring aid to collapsing areas; or bounty-hunters who go after criminals who have fled to areas where extradition agreements have broken down.

It would be tough to come up with a coherent theme that could drive a long-term campaign, though.

I'm not really sure how that differs much from, "modern Action setting". If anything, it's only a slightly better excuse to why the military etc. isn't getting involved.