Pyramid #3/88: The End Is Nigh

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Oh, one more thing: I wish Brandon Moore's illustrations for the Car Wars vignettes were made more public. I'm really enjoying his art.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Space Opera has lots a planets. So a Post Apocalypse one makes sense. A crash landing can ensure that the PCs are short on gear as well. When the mae it to the spaceport they go back to normal tech level.

An interstellar society that had a bad war could produce something similar, too. One could imagine a society where most of the planets were nuked badly, or the equivalent, TLs have fallen, but the old ships are still flying, they were so advanced originally that they can self-repair and self-maintain to a point.

But the infrastructure is shot, so the ships are gradually failing, parts are getting scarcer and scarcer, some worlds are barely better than barbarism now, and if things don't turn around the day is on the horizon when the last of the ships will have to land and stay landed.

The patchwork quality of maintenance means that a ship may have FTL capability, but its weapons are gone, and have been replaced with machine guns or the like for local work. The knowledge to make nuclear bombs might remain, but they're rare because the necessary fissionables are too precious and have to be used in the engines, or something.

It could be a viable setting.

Addendum: Here's one scenario that could be played out in the above setting.

The ship has reached the End of the Line. The necessary replacement parts for the primary frembotzer just aren't available, and the ship's self-repair systems can't work around that. They've got just enough juice left to reach a habitable planet, but once they land, they aren't going anywhere, probably ever.

So there are several worlds they could go to, including various home planets for various members of the crew, but they have to choose one. Further, it may have been years since the crewmen have been in contact with home, so they don't know what conditions are like on Delta Theta II. Maybe it's intact, maybe it's a barbarian infested radioactive wasteland. The crew hails from dozens of worlds...

So Where Do We Go? And who decides?

[Kalzazz]

One fun reason that characters might wish to go track down some radioactive waste is that not everything disposed of as radioactive actually is! In nuclear remediation it is not uncommon for harmless things to be disposed of as radioactive because the cost and paperwork of fully certifying them for free release would be more than the worth of the items and the cost of disposal combined!

My prized SteelCase office chair I have had for 16+ years was originally slated for such a fate before I rescued it

[adm]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

One fun reason that characters might wish to go track down some radioactive waste is that not everything disposed of as radioactive actually is! In nuclear remediation it is not uncommon for harmless things to be disposed of as radioactive because the cost and paperwork of fully certifying them for free release would be more than the worth of the items and the cost of disposal combined!

My prized SteelCase office chair I have had for 16+ years was originally slated for such a fate before I rescued it

And he wonders why he has no kids! (I joke)

[adm]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

...So Where Do We Go? And who decides?

In my opinion; the planet that the most crew are from, that everyone else can survive on.

[SolemnGolem]

Originally Posted by GM Joe

I always knew this day would come.

It was good while it lasted.

Don't worry. Right before we destroyed the world, you WOULD NOT BELIEVE how much shareholder value we created!

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

Don't worry. Right before we destroyed the world, you WOULD NOT BELIEVE how much shareholder value we created!

The scarifying thing is that there really are people who really do think like that (fill in the blank for 'shareholder value'), seeing no irony.

[PK]

I'm actually somewhat surprised that no one's caught where we name-dropped a new (upcoming) game mechanic without explanation. I was expecting questions about it, but I guess it was used smoothly enough that it didn't stand out.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by PK

I'm actually somewhat surprised that no one's caught where we name-dropped a new (upcoming) game mechanic without explanation. I was expecting questions about it, but I guess it was used smoothly enough that it didn't stand out.

I saw it but doubt your going to reveal enough here for us to really get a feel for it.
Adds to my desire to buy it though :) I suspect it can be tweaked for other things, similar to Corruption.

[TorgSmith]

Originally Posted by PK

I'm actually somewhat surprised that no one's caught where we name-dropped a new (upcoming) game mechanic without explanation. I was expecting questions about it, but I guess it was used smoothly enough that it didn't stand out.

I figured you did not want to say what it was until it was released.