New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Note: The Lans'glutc could be self doomed. It's possible that they aren't objectively doomed at all. They could simply believe themselves doomed. Much like the Modern West, vast numbers of Western Intellectuals proclaim our doom, but the solemn belief in the "Doom of the West" is the greatest threat we face.

Though again, it's not clear how they would then thing making more Lans'glutc would help.

Is there some reason the doom is important to the plot? Maybe they just think being Lans'glutc is terrific and want to share the joy of it with anybody who agrees. Human groups do this all the time, admittedly with educational or other memetic rather than biological transformations, so it's not a particularly unbelievable motive. Aliens aren't required to have selfish motives or hidden plots.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

The Lans'glutc severely limit what technologies they show humanity. They don't even hide the fact that they hide most of their technology. They explain their reluctance in terms of past mistakes. They explain that contacts between alien species can have disastrous consequences. It's best to take things slow in certain areas. When challenged on inconsistencies the Lans'glutc admit that their policies seem inconsistent, but no consistent policy could function, at least in their experience.

<sigh> Ultimately it's another setting that has no potential for actual gaming. The PCs can't fight the superior aliens, who aren't even being aggressive, and they aren't needed to defend the superior aliens because the aliens are too superior to need it. There's nothing for them to do.

[TGLS]

Eh... If I were going to rebuild the Lans'glutc, it would look something like this:

During the Autumn Wars, a band of desperate Lans'glutc commandeered a dropstone to use as an escape vessel. Their intended target: a star about three and a half parsecs away, with three planetary candidates for habitation. For better or worse, they made three errors:
1) They failed to account for fuel to stop their ship and their plan to aerobrake through the large gas giants resulted in massive casualties.
2) Two of the three candidates extremely uninhabitable.
3) The third planet had advanced civilization.

While they had brought technology to adapt local life to their norms, the advanced civilization was problematic. The adaptation technology would most likely destroy the civilization. Moreover, the population of the Lans'glutc was dangerously low. These two factors (combined with the unusually high comparability with local life), led to the decision to adapt the adaptation technology to transform the locals into Lans'glutc.

Fixes the conflict problem:

"Well why don't you just turn yourselves into humans"
"Well we might be able if we had fifty years and tons of infrastructure"
"Hey, you got time. We'll even give you areas to live"
"Look we're being generous by not deploying the adaptation tech, damn the consequences."
"Well we're being generous by not shooting you out of the skies"
etc.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

<sigh> Ultimately it's another setting that has no potential for actual gaming. The PCs can't fight the superior aliens, who aren't even being aggressive, and they aren't needed to defend the superior aliens because the aliens are too superior to need it. There's nothing for them to do.

Though it's not required that the plot be about the distinctive features of the setting. You can run pretty much any campaign you could in the modern world with this as a backdrop and it would probably work OK. I suspect the key feature of this setting is it lets you drop in some transhumanist (and/or interstellar space opera) themes, without given control of them to humanity (and by extension the PCs). You don't need to address how weird and diverse humanity would become if you gave everybody the ability to do radical genetic editing, or what the full range of super advanced technology would do to society, you only need to address reactions to this one modification on offer, or the effects of this small handful of super advanced artifacts.

We all do that anyway - nobody is clever enough to work out all the consequences of even minor changes. I personally don't thing "you can't do that because the super advanced aliens didn't hand out that piece of tech" is any better than "we aren't going there despite how logical it seems with this tech paradigm because that isn't what the campaign is about". But I know there are differing opinions on that, and if you want to try to build your restrictions into the world rather that something as meta as the campaign prospectus; eh, if it works for your group.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Though it's not required that the plot be about the distinctive features of the setting. You can run pretty much any campaign you could in the modern world with this as a backdrop and it would probably work OK. I suspect the key feature of this setting is it lets you drop in some transhumanist (and/or interstellar space opera) themes, without given control of them to humanity (and by extension the PCs). You don't need to address how weird and diverse humanity would become if you gave everybody the ability to do radical genetic editing, or what the full range of super advanced technology would do to society, you only need to address reactions to this one modification on offer, or the effects of this small handful of super advanced artifacts.

This is meant to be a "Twenty Minuets into the Future!" setting with Space Opera and Transhumanism. Malloyd is right. Heck, I wrote up "Genomic Invasion" for Toxic Menes.

We all do that anyway - nobody is clever enough to work out all the consequences of even minor changes. I personally don't thing "you can't do that because the super advanced aliens didn't hand out that piece of tech" is any better than "we aren't going there despite how logical it seems with this tech paradigm because that isn't what the campaign is about". But I know there are differing opinions on that, and if you want to try to build your restrictions into the world rather that something as meta as the campaign prospectus; eh, if it works for your group.

And I try to toss out a few suggestive paragraphs of inspiration and suggestion. A Transhumanist Earth with a thousand or two human species is easy to suggest, but just try to write it up.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Eh... If I were going to rebuild the Lans'glutc, it would look something like this:

During the Autumn Wars, a band of desperate Lans'glutc commandeered a dropstone to use as an escape vessel. Their intended target: a star about three and a half parsecs away, with three planetary candidates for habitation. For better or worse, they made three errors:
1) They failed to account for fuel to stop their ship and their plan to aerobrake through the large gas giants resulted in massive casualties.
2) Two of the three candidates extremely uninhabitable.
3) The third planet had advanced civilization.

While they had brought technology to adapt local life to their norms, the advanced civilization was problematic. The adaptation technology would most likely destroy the civilization. Moreover, the population of the Lans'glutc was dangerously low. These two factors (combined with the unusually high comparability with local life), led to the decision to adapt the adaptation technology to transform the locals into Lans'glutc.

Fixes the conflict problem:

"Well why don't you just turn yourselves into humans"
"Well we might be able if we had fifty years and tons of infrastructure"
"Hey, you got time. We'll even give you areas to live"
"Look we're being generous by not deploying the adaptation tech, damn the consequences."
"Well we're being generous by not shooting you out of the skies"
etc.

Good dialogue, and interesting twists.

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

The Zhiow Uul fled across the stars for ages. The Holy Voices purged the record of the people's sins and vanities. Which seems to leave us with no history at all. Tests suggest the ships are at least 10,000 cycles old. And we don't even know why our cycles are as long as they are. We are diminished in so many ways. We don't even know the principles our devices work on.

Lucky for us there is a habitable planet in the Star System we are now entering.

The Precursors who seeded the world of sin and vanity our ancestors came from seem to have seeded this world too. We will be able to live their as if we were natives. We even captured natives of this world, we are genetically compatible with these people. They will make excellent breeding stock as well as slaves.


The Zhiow Uul are a great deal like baseline humans, interbreeding is possible. It seems likely that the Zhiow Uul are descended of humans or near humans taken from Earth millennia ago. The Zhiow Uul are paler than any human group on present day Earth. They are generally five inches taller than a human of equivalent ST but about the same weight. The Zhiow Uul have ST+2 relative to humans, they come from a higher gravity world and IQ +1 but Low Empathy.

The Zhiow Uul are at TL9 at this time. The ships the Zhiow Uul live in are remnant TL12 technology, The Zhiow Uul have access to many antiques that are TL12, These are fragile and not always repairable.

Humanity will detect the ships of the Zhiow Uul sometime in the next year or so. And the ships of the Zhiow Uul will be in Earth orbit by June of 2022,

[Astromancer]

Try this one...

Those that came to this world from the Earth that was before were divided in many ways. They came from different nations, different faiths, they even were different species because of changes their "Scientists" as they called them made to the very patterns of life.

We were divided and fought among ourselves soon after we came to this world. This fighting was verbal and legal as long as the world wasn't yet terraformed. But once the people could leave the domes, or force others out of the domes without killing them, we made weapons and spilt blood.

We now live in hovels and huts. We barely eke out a living from the Earth. The ancient learning is lost to us. Superstition, ignorance, and bigotry rule.

But we have heard that some of the scientists and scholars that terraformed the world and preserved the ancient learning have survived on islands across the sea. The elders want you to seek them out and arrange to bring us teachers to revive the ancient learning here.


Basically, a Planetary Romance quest narrative. The PCs would be from an impoverished TL4 village travelling through an anarchic landscape. There might be some small towns and cities with TL5 technology, but metal is in short supply and so is fuel.

The GM will have to consider what they find. Note: Re the Transhuman Space books. There are communities and tribal groups of both parahumans and uplifted animals around on this world, hey the PCs could be either. Picture Up-Lifted dogs as the questers or maybe parahuman originally meant to be servants or toys.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this one...

Those that came to this world from the Earth that was before were divided in many ways. They came from different nations, different faiths, they even were different species because of changes their "Scientists" as they called them made to the very patterns of life.

We were divided and fought among ourselves soon after we came to this world. This fighting was verbal and legal as long as the world wasn't yet terraformed. But once the people could leave the domes, or force others out of the domes without killing them, we made weapons and spilt blood.

We now live in hovels and huts. We barely eke out a living from the Earth. The ancient learning is lost to us. Superstition, ignorance, and bigotry rule.

But we have heard that some of the scientists and scholars that terraformed the world and preserved the ancient learning have survived on islands across the sea. The elders want you to seek them out and arrange to bring us teachers to revive the ancient learning here.


Basically, a Planetary Romance quest narrative. The PCs would be from an impoverished TL4 village travelling through an anarchic landscape. There might be some small towns and cities with TL5 technology, but metal is in short supply and so is fuel.

The GM will have to consider what they find. Note: We the Transhuman Space books. There are communities and tribal groups of both parahumans and uplifted animals around on this world, hey the PCs could be either. Picture Up-Lifted dogs as the questers or maybe parahuman originally meant to be servants or toys.

That sounds great. What hazards are you planning on along the way?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

That sounds great. What hazards are you planning on along the way?

Mainly other humans and near humans. Slavers and bandits are good threats, pirates near the coast. Cities have their own predators.