REinventing Barsoom: 3 — relict hard technology

Agemegos · 08-02-2011, 09:37 PM

Spoiler warning: if you are going to play in my campaign Red-Blooded Earth-Men, reading this thread will materially diminish your enjoyment thereof.

If you go ahead anyway, please do not convey spoilers to the other players. If you do, your character will be skinned alive, and I will not give you any cheesecake.

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In September I am going to start running a new campaign inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series (especially Master Mind of Mars), S.M. Stirling's In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, Jack Vance's Tschai (Planet of Adventure) series, and the movie Stargate. The premise is that four Australian soldiers are mysteriously transported from the battlefields in France in December 1917 to the habitable, indeed inhabited, surface of Mars.

In accordance with sci-fi convention from before about 1970, Mars is going to be an older world than Earth, afflicted by desiccation, inhabited by the decadent remnants of a culture that once had a tech level far higher than Earth has. I think I will place the fall of the last (already decadent) régiváros (technological stronghold) to the barbarians at about the time of the rise of civilisation on Earth. I think that about 1917 that was believed to be about 3200 BC. Surviving examples of the highest tech will be five thousand years old, an must be either extremely durable, very carefully preserved, self-repairing, or self-reproducing.

In designing the remaining tech of Mars (or Világ as it in known in the Martian language Szólásmód), I want to achieve the sensawunda of Clarkean magic with minimal strain on players' suspension of disbelief, which means designing the relict technology and legacy biotech in terms that would satisfy the players and then concealing my working to present it as magic to the characters, its mode of operation to be slowly puzzled out. In short, I want the tech to be both plausible and wonderful.

So, I'm going to go through Ultra-Tech and sort out what is available on Világ.

One sorting principle is that the superscience is all out. Everything has to be plausible when looked at closely.
Another is that everything has to be old. TL10 stuff will be 5,000 years old; TL9 stuff will be 4,000 years old; TL8 will be 3,000 years old; TL 7 — 2,000 years old; TL 6 — 1,000 years; TL 5 stuff will be modern, made by techniques in use, but with the benefit of régi lágy termékek: legacy biotech materials. For example we might get muzzle-loading firearms with composite barrels, using a propellant that grows on trees to fire poison darts that grow on bushes.
That means that any hard tech with moving parts is going to have to have been unused for ages to be not worn out. It also means that a lot of stuff is going to be unusable for want of consumables, such as ammunition and power cells.
The third is that stuff that looks too obviously like actual modern tech (computers, cellular radio communications, etc) ought to be derogated. It undermines the fairytale, Wonderland strangeness that I am aiming for.

Has anyone anything to add? Comments? Suggestions? Specifics about what tech should be in and what out?

08-02-2011, 09:37 PM	#1
Agemegos Join Date: May 2005 Location: Oz	REinventing Barsoom: 3 — relict hard technology Spoiler warning: if you are going to play in my campaign Red-Blooded Earth-Men, reading this thread will materially diminish your enjoyment thereof. If you go ahead anyway, please do not convey spoilers to the other players. If you do, your character will be skinned alive, and I will not give you any cheesecake. SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE SPOILER SPACE In September I am going to start running a new campaign inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series (especially Master Mind of Mars), S.M. Stirling's In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, Jack Vance's Tschai (Planet of Adventure) series, and the movie Stargate. The premise is that four Australian soldiers are mysteriously transported from the battlefields in France in December 1917 to the habitable, indeed inhabited, surface of Mars. In accordance with sci-fi convention from before about 1970, Mars is going to be an older world than Earth, afflicted by desiccation, inhabited by the decadent remnants of a culture that once had a tech level far higher than Earth has. I think I will place the fall of the last (already decadent) régiváros (technological stronghold) to the barbarians at about the time of the rise of civilisation on Earth. I think that about 1917 that was believed to be about 3200 BC. Surviving examples of the highest tech will be five thousand years old, an must be either extremely durable, very carefully preserved, self-repairing, or self-reproducing. In designing the remaining tech of Mars (or Világ as it in known in the Martian language Szólásmód), I want to achieve the sensawunda of Clarkean magic with minimal strain on players' suspension of disbelief, which means designing the relict technology and legacy biotech in terms that would satisfy the players and then concealing my working to present it as magic to the characters, its mode of operation to be slowly puzzled out. In short, I want the tech to be both plausible and wonderful. So, I'm going to go through Ultra-Tech and sort out what is available on Világ. One sorting principle is that the superscience is all out. Everything has to be plausible when looked at closely. Another is that everything has to be old. TL10 stuff will be 5,000 years old; TL9 stuff will be 4,000 years old; TL8 will be 3,000 years old; TL 7 — 2,000 years old; TL 6 — 1,000 years; TL 5 stuff will be modern, made by techniques in use, but with the benefit of régi lágy termékek: legacy biotech materials. For example we might get muzzle-loading firearms with composite barrels, using a propellant that grows on trees to fire poison darts that grow on bushes. That means that any hard tech with moving parts is going to have to have been unused for ages to be not worn out. It also means that a lot of stuff is going to be unusable for want of consumables, such as ammunition and power cells. The third is that stuff that looks too obviously like actual modern tech (computers, cellular radio communications, etc) ought to be derogated. It undermines the fairytale, Wonderland strangeness that I am aiming for. Has anyone anything to add? Comments? Suggestions? Specifics about what tech should be in and what out? __________________ Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat.