New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by ronwit

Sounds like the Grand Fenwick scenario. Attack the Federation, lose, sue for peace, there is no dishonor in losing to a superior foe, get brought in to the Federation, receive "foreign aid."

That scenario would please both the Carrhae and the Garumnians. It would led to nasty diplomatic snarls with the Tazzoult Merchantile Alliance. And the Tazzoult, if not that powerful in themselves, can cause lots of trouble.

[ronwit]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

That scenario would please both the Carrhae and the Garumnians. It would led to nasty diplomatic snarls with the Tazzoult Merchantile Alliance. And the Tazzoult, if not that powerful in themselves, can cause lots of trouble.

This being Star Trek, they would immediately run into Captain Picard. Who would defeat their insidious plan by surrendering.

[doctorevilbrain]

What are you talking about?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain

What are you talking about?

An earlier posting of mine with a Star Trek based scenario. It's number is 2580. It's called "Good Fences."

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Retcon!

Possibly Energy comes in distinct units, distinct but profoundly hard to define.

The average human in this setting has Possibly Energy Units equal to one third of their Will rounded down. Three Possibility Energy Units (hereafter PEU) is normal and, like being Ten in all stats, a Zero-point feature.

If an individual spends a PEU, which only those with Reality! can consciously choose to do, they regenerate at the same rate as hit points. Individuals with Reality! tend to have a pool of PEUs equal to their Will plus Reality! If Suzy the cyborg witch has a Will of 14 and a Reality! of 13, she'll normally have a pool of 27 PEUs.

Having more PEUs than normal is a five point per level advantage. Having fewer PEUs than normal is a ten point per level disadvantage.

Attacking with PEUs uses Reality! Defense from any such attack is based on how many PEUs you have at a given time.

If an individual lacks the Reality! Skill and has PEUs equal to their Will, they automatically get the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage. They get no extra points for this. It's simply aside effect of their high PEU count

Remember, Weirdness Magnet is a social disadvantage caused by the strangeness around the character. The character might be blaise about the whole thing, but others affected by the spill over weirdness won't be.

If someone lacks the Reality! skill and they have more PEUs than they have Will, they must take disadvantages equal in cost to the to the PEUs that exceed the character's Will. These disadvantages must involve luck or arcane phenomena.

More later.

[PTTG]

50,000 years in the future, history is over. Oh, things keep happening, but no new scientific principles have been discovered in longer than the time from humans inventing agriculture to them landing on their moon. The light-speed barrier means that no polity expands beyond a single star system (if that far), simply because any army that might be sent will find its would-be empire long forgotten by the time it gets back home.

Likewise, while it is true that science has stagnated, (at least for humans,) technology is in a strange state. The most advanced technology is so reliant on vast and interconnected social and economic networks that it often is out of reach of local regions; some technologies are entirely beyond human comprehension, and can only be obtained through the bizarre auspices of various hyperintelligences.

Individual lives are important, nonetheless. Even back in classical times, humans fooled themselves if they thought that their ability to shape the structure of the universe was what gave them worth as an individual. Today the population numbers in hundreds of quintillions, (insomuch as 'today' is a meaningful concept when relativistic factors come into play,) but people still matter. They may be cyborgs, uploaded minds, uplifted dolphins, or hive minds of nanomachines -- or all four of those at once -- but people on the baseline of intelligence, and their actions, are apparently still capable, sometimes, of drawing the attention of the gods.

Missions run a huge gauntlet from rescuing stranded AI cores to helping extract the surface of a terraformed planet that's in the way of a hypernova. One mission might see you delivering black market cheese to a subterranian colony on some red dwarf rock, while the next has you running guns to a rebellious faction of the population of a continent-sized spinning habitat.

Mostly, though, it's a matter of dealing with your situation, finding enough hydrogen or antimatter to get through the mission, and crawling back into your nanostasis tube for the long haul to your next stop.

So yes, this is Orion's Arm B/W Isaac Arthur at his most demented, soaked heavily in The Culture or other deep future sci fi (including hints of RimWorld). But critically, all of it has FTL stripped out and replaced with, at best, antimatter-powered (or maybe mysterious archotech-powered) rockets and long-haul relativistic flights. Worst case, you may be riding a fusion rocket in a stasis tube, packed full of nanites that do their best to undo cell damage faster than it occurs while you wait out the decades or centuries.

Also missing are aliens... mostly. Anything you can imagine being an alien species certainly exists, but it's a posthuman splice or cyborg. Wookies and greys count as nearly baseline. About the only thing considered weird in cosmopolitan culture is an actual baseline human who was born recently.

Now, if you can't clearly imagine it, that is more likely to be one of the few semi-sapient aliens humans have encountered. There are countless discovered ecosystems, and a few with tool users, but it seems that the biggest filter is developing not tools, but technology. Fortunately, a small number of those primitive tool using species were eventually uplifted to baseline level, but they remain incredibly unlike humans in personality and worldview. They are probably not PCs, as they often have primary goals like, "find an ideal place to die so that my seeds sprout well," or "eliminate all red things from my residence while ensuring that my neighbors have as many red things as possible."

For all that this sounds like spreadsheet city, it is only themed after hard science. Ships have radiators, but please don't do math about them. You might be holding a laser rifle, a musket, or a poorly-understood item which you were told is, "a weapon," and doesn't seem to do the same thing to your enemies twice, but regardless, you shouldn't be focusing on exactly how much the ammunition weighs.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by PTTG

50,000 years in the future, history is over. Oh, things keep happening, but no new scientific principles have been discovered in longer than the time from humans inventing fire to them landing on their moon.

I'm sorry, I know you're just being poetic, but this threw me way out: The 'invention of fire,' depending on which source you believe and how strictly you define your terms, was some time between 125,000 years ago and 2 million years ago.

[dcarson]

If by humans you mean H. Sapiens we never invented fire. Or stone tools. That was done by a ancestor species and we have always had them.

[PTTG]

Would 'the wheel' be a better choice?

[TGLS]

Options:
The (Potter's) Wheel - ~4500 BCE
Agriculture - ~12000 BCE
Basket Weaving - ~24000 BCE
Behavioral Modernity - ~80000 - 50000 BCE