New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Inky's idea of bringing in more air is sound. Given the low gravity the main effects on the Tourist site would be making human powered flight easier and sunburn far harder. Which opens up the possibility of peeling off members of the economic development board to fight against each other. Which would be the most effective way to defang such powerful opponents.

And honestly, the engineering staff probably should be fired for not proposing it as part of the project. Lifting all that mass out of a 20 km deep hole has to be ridiculously expensive, if you could've made your pit only 18 or 19 km deep and gotten the same effect by bringing in more air, which couldn't be nearly as expensive to move as all that dirt, you really should have already done that. That extra kilometer you aren't committing yourself to pumping the planet's hydrosphere up every few months for eternity to prevent your pit from flooding would've been a nice maintenance savings too.

Honestly, the energy levels required for this project seem so enormous it might have been cheaper to cleave oxygen out some of the rock to do that. In any case is absolutely would have been [vastly] cheaper to dig a much shallower pit, or build a wall, and put a roof on it held up by a pumped higher air pressure. Whoever proposed this project can't have thought it through very carefully.

"You idiots spend a quadrillion dollars of the company's money digging a giant hole in the ground when you could've built domes enclosing the same volume for only a few hundred billion?"

[Astromancer]

M A Lloyd might have a handle on how to get the economic development board into hot water. The Bureaucrats they represent care little for sophant lifeforms, but being seen wasting money is a scandal.

Did I mention this setting has cyberpunk levels of corruption?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

M A Lloyd might have a handle on how to get the economic development board into hot water. The Bureaucrats they represent care little for sophant lifeforms, but being seen wasting money is a scandal.

We here at FunCo build resorts, capitalizing on the latest entertainment fads. We want our projects to pay off in years, you know, before the fad changes, not [millenia], if ever. You guys want to be terraformers, fine, now that you are unemployed you can go get a job where you can do that on the Federation's dime.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Lifting all that mass out of a 20 km deep hole has to be ridiculously expensive, if you could've made your pit only 18 or 19 km deep and gotten the same effect by bringing in more air, which couldn't be nearly as expensive to move as all that dirt, you really should have already done that.

They had surplus antimatter bombs so they turned their super-weapon lemons into super-resort lemonade and blew a pit open.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by TGLS

They had surplus antimatter bombs so they turned their super-weapon lemons into super-resort lemonade and blew a pit open.

Well that certainly solves the natives problem. Give it a decade for whatever air wasn't blasted off to space to cool back down and the toxic volatiles to precipitate out, and we can start reintroducing a viable biosphere. In a few generations maybe it'll be a lovely resort world.

[Astromancer]

Try this idea. The PCs are aware of the reality of their world being modified. Using the idea of the Tech Surge small random areas of technology are suddenly changed. Roombas go from being automated vacuum cleaners to multi functional cleaners. The new weight-loss drugs go from being 15,000 dollars a month to 15 dollars a month.

As small changes have wider effects more and more small changes accumulate the simple fact that only the PCs notice the changes becomes wilder and more bizarre.

From here you can go many different directions involving mystery and conspiracy.

[Astromancer]

Both the proposed changes have logical reasons. First, turning Roombas into more general cleaning robots fits a Sci Fi stereotype. It automatically alerts the PCs to general strangeness while allowing an easy introduction of the simple fact that they are aware of changes other people aren't. The sudden widespread use of weight loss drugs would also be both subtle (after "robot maids" they'd be looking for starships) and slightly disturbing as people's bodies would be transformed.

The trick to making this kind of setting is to A) slowly alienate the PCs from reality while B) giving then something to do. It would probably be wise to listen carefully to their reactions and take their best ideas as to who is causing the changes. And also their best ideas as to the motivation of the changes.

As with any induced Reality Quake the key logic is that someone wants to return. A Doctor Doom type villain seems like the best choice. Remember Doctor Doom, for all that he is a ruthless villain, has generous motives. Victor Von Doom (and how does the child of a Roma witch get a "von" in his name anyway?) truly wants a better world for all. But any path to his goals would spill oceans of blood over centuries. Thus as soon as the PCs realize who is trying to come, they are massively motivated to prevent it.

[Astromancer]

The planet Bouyan(named for the paradise ruled by the Slavic Sun god) had a social collapse soon after the completion of terraformation. When the colonists fell into civil war a large group, mainly from North America, the Antipodes, the Caribbean Islands, and the Celtic fringe of Europe, went off to settle a series of continental Islands isolated in the Southern oceans. Now centuries later, these islands form a stable nation that has a stable TL9 economy.

Although the Islanders have the records of the TL12 technology that the colonists came with they lack the resources to do TL12 at scale. Truth to tell, most would say that the Islanders lacked the resources to do TL8 at scale but the Islanders found workarounds.

Meanwhile, the mainlanders have had centuries of endemic warfare. Recently the Tech Level has gotten up to six (think early 1930s). However it looks like a new period of endemic warfare is coming. The vast fertile plain were most of the nations of Bouyan are placed may be rich in fine farmland and mineral resources but natural defenses are few and weak. Each nation's hinderlands are in its neighbor's heartlands.

Basically, this is an espionage game. The Islanders are about as good as the early and mid 20th century Brits at espionage. Their equivalents of Q has TL12 techno goodies to pass out. The Islanders may not be able to do TL12 at scale, but quality is high.

[Astromancer]

Strange Horizons and Western Dawns

Don't be to frightened.

Why not? I was doing guard duty in West Berlin and now I'm in a hospital.

You aren't injured, are you?

I'm even more confused. Am I stateside?

No one is. The aliens took us somewhere else.

It was 1947, but when it is now is being debated. Humanity seems to have been rendered unconscious and scooped up. During whatever transit was arranged everyone was healed. Anyone over the age of twenty-five was brought back to that age in perfect health. Children, under the age of five are missing, the aliens seem to have taken them, including embryos, and those who never developed normal brain functions beyond the most severe froms of mental retardation, and raised and/or healed them elsewhere. These are now the Embassaries.

Humanity is on an artificial world. It seems to be a flat ribbon extending completely around a star like the Earth's sun. Earth's nations are all on an archipelago of islands, some as large as Greenland, extending out from the shore of a vast sea. Humanity is to be left to explore this vast world with at least three million times the area of the Earth.

Basically, I have taken elements of THE RIVERWORLD series and THE RINGWORLD series. Humanity is left on a vast artificial object. Humanity will have access to a space port built into the rim wall of this ringworld. They will be allowed to mine asteroids for industrial minerals. They'll be allowed to tap into the ring's power grid as well. The Embassaries will both aide and limit Humanity. Basically, it's a test. Pull together and advance as a species or end up as zoo animals that can't see the edge of their comfortable cages.

The main barriers are the humans themselves. Given the political passions of 1947, even with the incredible new resources available, Humanity is its own worst enemy.

Twenty years after everyone wakes up on the Ring, with vast numbers of young people who don't remember Earth, seems like a prime adventure period.

Note, gravity is less than Earth, 0.9G. Air pressure is 16 psi at sea level. The day is 26 hours long. And the dawn comes from the West.

[johndallman]

This is a variant of the setting of a Charles Stross story, Missile Gap. There's a lot of cool stuff in the story; read it before developing ideas.