[World] Human Destiny setting

[Jon F. Zeigler]

For the last few years, I've been pushing to write science fiction and fantasy for publication. Not much luck yet, but I have a bunch of fan-fiction up at FanFiction.net, a number of original stories out making the rounds of the slush-piles, and a novel in progress. I also keep a writing blog, where I occasionally post world-building notes with GURPS content.

Apropos of which, I'm currently working on a series of posts detailing the setting bible for my "Human Destiny" universe. Have a look if you like, and feel free to let me know if you find it interesting or useful. GURPS-relevant posts on my blog should be showing up in Doug's "GURPS Day" lists too.

The first couple of posts, with more to come:

Part I (General situation, historical background, and technological assumptions)

Part II (Social assumptions)

[thrash]

Welcome back. Good to see what you've been up to these last few years.

I'll be interested to see how your setting develops. For now, it seems to suffer from the problem that good governments tend to make lousy settings for adventures, almost by definition. The ferals and dissidents have some potential, but may run into the "What have the Romans ever done for us?" dilemma from Monty Python's Life of Brian.

[Jon F. Zeigler]

Yeah, that's a fair point. I actually tried writing a story or two set on Earth under the khedai, and just could not get them off the ground - not enough conflict.

Adventures set in space seem more promising, on the unexplored frontier, or in the fracture points created by factional disputes within the empire. Just because the khedai and their more powerful subjects present a unified face to humanity on Earth doesn't mean they don't get into arguments among themselves.

[thrash]

Earth is pretty close to the edge of the khedai territory, so contact with a different ancient star-faring empire is another way to shake things up.

[Jon F. Zeigler]

Yep, that is indeed in the cards.

[ericthered]

eh, I didn't get a huge "Rebellion!" vibe from the setting. In fact, rebels are probably not the most interesting people.

You said you hard a hard time with stories set on earth...

It would appear the only way to amass beyond a given amount of power is via illegal means. I assume crime still exists, in all its myriad forms. As such, Detectives and police also exist. I don't know how corrupt the setting is, but proving malfeasance in a ruler may be an interesting task. Just saying

[Jon F. Zeigler]

A quick post this evening - a character sketch with GURPS stats attached, for a character who's likely to be pivotal to any stories I write in this setting:

Character Sketch: Aminata Ndoye (Revised)