New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[PTTG]

It's 2099. Amidst a huge economic slump caused by ecological damage, scientists have perfected a technique for transferring human minds to machines. The process is neither expensive nor risky, and not only is the original brain destroyed, but it is in fact impossible to exactly duplicate an uploaded mind, which is stored on a quantum computing substrate. The substrate is a bland-looking box the size of a mini-fridge, but which operates at a far colder temperature. Generally provided with an extensive power backup, they're honestly a safer place to keep your mind than in three pounds of goop in an eggshell.

Existing cybernetics and robotics already provide everything needed for a perfectly humanoid-seeming robotic body off the shelf. Dumb humanoid robots are practically useless, but a formerly 104 year old billionaire would much rather look like himself at his prime than to be confused for a roomba. Not all uploads are able to afford top-tier robots, however. Many upload as a way to escape terminal diseases or injury, or otherwise to transition to a preferred body. In the economic slump, few can afford top-tier synthetic bodies, and humanoid robotic forms with more clearly mechanical design are more common. Some even prefer the "chrome" aesthetic. Mentally, life is identical as a baseline, but there are many options. The most basic is acceleration, though it's not feasible to be faster than three times real time. More advanced brainmodding can in principle do anything, but the field is in its infancy and most brainmodders experiment on themselves.

Hacking is not a thing. At least not in the highly cinematic cyberpunk form. Players should be able to trust that their bodies are going to function as they should, and shouldn't be able to just turn off enemies. It's just another advantage of quantum technologies. Realistic detective work, social engineering, and the occasionally software sabotage, however, does work. Somewhat related, there have been other technological improvements despite the economic slump. Orbital tethers allow about thirty thousand people to live in space in Earth orbit and on the Moon. Two thousand work in the asteroid belt, and mars has two bases with a hundred people between them. Nuclear fusion exists, but it's far too expensive to use for power, and 90% of Earth's energy comes from solar, wind, geothermal, and tides. The biosphere is in the process of falling apart, but there are several different projects to repair regions and re-establish injured ecosystems.

The technology has been around for fifteen years, but it's only in the past three that the cheap, safe version has been available. Many of the earliest adopters weren't gregarious, preferring to avoid notoriety. But now, more and more of the former humans are actively promoting themselves as uploads, virtuals, or even AIs, while the inevitable reactionaries call them 'bots and toasters. Previously, uploads were either ailing billionaires or trillionaires who are now indistinguishable from humans, or later people with extremely rare chronic genetic diseases -- much less than a percent of the population combined. In the past three years, the easy access and safety have caused the percentage to skyrocket to over 1% of the planet's 9 billion people. Anti-bot crowds bemoan this as the most massive genocide in human history, and consider the products to be just chatbot dopplegangers. Pressure to develop new laws is rising, and it's not clear which way they will fall. Will uploads be considered the people they were when they were human? Something new? Or just a bit of odd quantum software?

Your players are all uploads. However many points they have, basically any advantage is on the table. Sometimes that's due to brainmodding, sometimes it's due to exotic (or even pretty straightforward) technology. It is also assumed that you'll have multiple bodies and be able to get new ones with ease. Getting shot or blown up is not a career-ending injury, or even really a slowdown (unless it's your 'fridge, in which case you're dead). Your mission: Stay alive. Protect other uploads. Figure out who you want to be. Change the world.

This isn't cyberpunk. It's definitely cyber, but punk is from the '80s. This is something newer.

[Astromancer]

Space Opera!

Was traveling with an opera troop ever easy? We have five "divas" (so called) fighting for the title of Prima Donna. They seem to be the only people in the troop who don't know the boss (a Basso Profundo) is sleeping with the lead Tenor. At least they're married.

Getting this troop through customs is hell. Luckily all the over the top costumes and props make smuggling fairly easy. It's the only part of my cover that isn't pure hell.

Basically, this is a comedy espionage campaign. You have the troop, as written Grand Opera with a full Ballet troop as well. However, a classic theater troop specializing in Shakespeare, Greek Theater, Kabuki, Bunraku, Western Puppet troop, or a general Classic repetory company, would work as well. Heck, a Circus might be better.

Assume a Galactic community that resembles the Holy Roman Empire. A group of countries that are defacto independent but nominally acknowledge an imperial authority. Like the Holy Roman Emperor, this authority has real power, but with uncertain limits. Espionage between the players is constant and determined.

The PCs use a double cover. The most public cover is that of members of their performance troop. The secondary cover is as a smuggler exploiting their position with the performance troop. They are of course spies. This gives them three sets of conflicting priorities to deal with.

[dataweaver]

I saw Space Opera and diva, and immediately thought Macross.

[Astromancer]

The Old Tomorrow

My report gives fuller details. Basically, three of the greatest scientists Earth ever knew died in the Spanish Flu epidemic right after WWI. Thus America didn't have either fusion or antigravity during WWII. Bombs based on nuclear fission were used on Japan to get a surrender. These same bombs prevented WWIII. But the "Cold War".I think they called it did other damage.

These people got off Earth on a regular basis about a century after us. There were moon landings in the twentieth century, but real space development was much later. Interstellar colonization was about three centuries after us.

The rivalry between the Soviets and everyone else prevented the economic boom of the 1950s from being as widespread as in our history. Practical fusion was far later too and vastly more expensive, so fossil fuels were used for a longer time, damaging the environment. A sort of permanent "Kulturkampf" was a side effect of this and that did massive damage too.

So we are facing an "Earth" that sees us as monster barbarians.

Basically, the planet Delos is a survivor of a war were an Alien power tried to roll back Earth history to eliminate the Earth. A counter attack by Earth ended up causing the Aliens to blow up their own sun before their species evolved (messing around with Time isn't wise).

The culture of Delos is friendly, kind, respectful, democratic, and egalitarian. Which disgusts the altered Earth they have to deal with. This alternate Earth is ruled by oligarchies of various types and is hierarchical and socially rigid.

The Delians have the advantage in most technologies. They are also fairly imaginative and empathetic. Earth does have numbers and a focus on warfare.

The PCs are Space Opera heroes trying to hold off a corrupt cyberpunk Earth.

[PTTG]

Might as well share this one because I don't think I'm going to run it.

The colony of New Sun was established 211 years ago, when the four surviving ships found a remarkably habitable planet far out in the outer rim of terrestrial space. There, they settled, putting into practice a very nearly ideal set of commonsense political and social policies that are so obvious that there's no need to explain them here, inspired by their long shipboard journey.

The colony flourished in isolation, eventually numbering some five million; 70% lived in the area of a single densely populated region, with the remainder living dispersed over the rest of the continent. The far harsher northern continent included vast regions of deserts, mountains, and forests bristling with razor-sharp silica fibers.

As the colony grew, scientists gradually became aware that some people possessed the ability to sense things at a distance, to even communicate without apparent interaction. It took decades to take the hypothesis seriously, but in time the evidence became clear that something -- you might as well call it psionics -- was arising in the population. With only a population of a few million, it was impossible to do real science with it, but every generation did have a few thousand with curious, minor abilities.

But what was once the bare rim of the colonized portion of the galaxy is growing more crowded. Other tiny settlements are expanding. Among them is a hostile and aggressive hegemony based on domination and a strict adherence to an abominable orthodoxy. Like all rapidly growing colonies, they are starved for labor. After the tragedies of the AI War, no one dares trust an AI brain smart enough to so much as recognize a stop sign, and so that means cloning and subjugation; the second is preferred, since it also gives you more resources and industry.

As rumors spread through the tenuous (very, very tenuous) trade networks between the rim colonies, New Sun's leaders faced the very serious threat of invasion from a force that had already subjugated several other worlds. Having previously faced only a few minor scuffles that varied somewhere between riots and temporary mutinies, they were effectively unarmed. With few options, the colonists scrambled for a hope. Psionics, for many, became that hope.

Now, as the warships of the Hegemony approach in hyperspace, a small team of surveyors, scientists, esoterisists, and other experts are traveling into the virtually unexplored wilderness of the northern continent in search of faint traces -- odd orbital readings, strange chemical compounds, dreams and signs, gravitational disturbances -- hoping to track down some kind of theory as to why psionics is functional here but noplace else.

What they will find will be ancient and perhaps unknowable. An amplifier. A key. A telescope. Whatever it is, the ones at its focal point will be more than mere psions. The increase in psionic sensitivity throughout the planet is just a side-effect, the mist of the waterfall of power and focus that the amplifier provides. Specifically, the users of the amplifier will be able to project their minds into the bodies of individuals throughout the enemy fleet. As perfect spies, they may be able to subvert the enemy armada and invasion. Or they may reveal themselves and give the perfect tool of invasion to the evilest regime imaginable. The clock is ticking.

[Astromancer]

A Town Named Bradbury

Cydonia isn't what they tell you. Some people talk about spiritually. Others talk about wholesome family fun. Still others say they have a system to win at the casinos.

I'm a PI. When people's dreams go south they call me up to deal with dirty secrets. Maybe theirs, maybe the other guy's, but always dirty secrets and old lies

Basically, the Town of Bradbury (named for Ray Bradbury) is a cross between Las Vegas and Orlando, built near the "Face on Mars ."

A rich stream of grifters, hucksters, wannabes, and daydreamers, all gravitate to this town.

PCs could be PIs looking for missing people, information, lost property, whatever. They could also be members of several different demimondes. This is a hard boiled detective setting on the Transhuman Space Mars. Or any other Mars you like.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Basically, the Town of Bradbury (named for Ray Bradbury) is a cross between Las Vegas and Orlando, built near the "Face on Mars."

So is this a pulp Mars where it looks like a face up close or the real Mars where it's just a hill?

[Paulon]

Could be either. Or both. I could see someone doing some landscaping of the realistic hill to make a tourist attraction Face in a major destination gambling town.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Paulon

Could be either. Or both. I could see someone doing some landscaping of the realistic hill to make a tourist attraction Face in a major destination gambling town.

You got it in one. Also picture an amusement park made to look like the city of Oz. It's abandoned the company went bust. But there it is green against the sunset hills of Mars.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

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