Themed Space Colonies

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Well, if you want cheesy, you can go for things like a high desert/chaparral region, where a local edible herd animal lives; develop an Old-West-like culture, and their Martial Arts style could be Gun Fu...

The film to watch here is The Good the Bad and the Ugly. Not for gun-fu, but for the idea of a Mythic West. The director said that the story only seems to take place in the American West, it's really a mythic struggle involving the scions of the Gods; the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, of the title.

...a mountainous region where various subalpine city-states have cropped up, like some sort of cross between Shogunate Japan and ancient Greece...

Deadliest Warrior did a rematch between the winners of the first season boats, and put the Samurai up against the Hopolite. The Greeks won!

...grassy plains, and a nomadic culture with a common religion, combining Sioux and Bedouin concepts...

...the mind veritably reels!

Deadliest Warrior did a Comanche Verus Mongol fight. Comananches win! I don't think the Attila/Alexander fight was very predictive. Seige weapons verus combat weapons favors combat weapons heavily in their simulations.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Charleson Mambo

Now, since Astromancer has hit upon the main conceit of the setting I'm building I'll get to a more specific question.

I'm thinking of a planet where a number of different ships have crash landed and the survivors have had to adapt to the local conditions (ie mostly deserts and a need to remain mobile), and where group identity has become a strong social group so each town/territory will have a strong (and easily defined) look.

So I think I will go with the cheesy but succinct form of: "Like (easily recognized society/sub-culture but with X and Y changes."

Any suggestions?

Different groups would have different ideas about how to adapt to a desert. I could see a French Cultural Nationalist group modeling itself on French Algeria and France Outre-Mar generally. They would stay very French and seem to make no adaptations (although they would adapt, they'd just hide the adaptations).

A group of Terraformers might go all "DUNE" and try to reshape the climate and ecology. This could be played as a Utopia/good guy culture or as Fremen-like fanatics, or as a disaster bringing hell in its wake.

I like throwing parahumans into a setting like this. Groups of Desert Adapted Parahumans would thrive and from several different types of society.

Homo Superior Parahumans with long lifespans might form enclaves of remnant technology, they could be the "Wizard/Elves" of the setting. Groups of Parahumans less adapted to the setting might form interesting cultures to survive.

Imagine a Parahuman group created by a decadent Empire to be entertainers, courtesans, and toys. They'd need to sell their talents to live, they could become the settings "Gypsies." The talents and gifts that made them excellent courtesans would make them good at reading people and telling them what they want to know, they very skill a Fortune Teller needs if she or he can't actually read the future.

[jason taylor]

[QUOTE=Irish Wolf;1110107

...a mountainous region where various subalpine city-states have cropped up, like some sort of cross between Shogunate Japan and ancient Greece...

[/QUOTE]

I made up something like that. It wasn't a colony in itself. But it was a mountain people. Not like Japan or Greece though. What it was was a small ethnic group living in the Impossible Walls of Gungnir. They are the Tvethorpsnir(twin-villagers), called so because they are herdsmen practicing transhumance and each band has two villages, one high and one low. Besides herding they hunt and serve as mercenaries, as well as serving as guides and bearers for expeditions in the mountains. Sometimes they also capture birds of prey to be trained to hunt for rich nobles.

Their culture is a sort of generic "ornery mountain man" culture, with aspects of Nepali, Afghans, Croatians and maybe even Appalachians. They have a heroic or barbaric (depending on how you look at ait) outlook with lots of feuding, a hospitality code and so on.

[vicky_molokh]

Where did Agemegos' posts go again?