[Space] Insufficiently Advanced

[Frost]

I have restarted work on a campaign for after my current one runs its course (or my players seemingly unbreakable run of bad luck hands them a TPK) and thought I would post my ideas as I go.

My underlying premise is the sort of 'reverse star trek' vibe I have encountered a number of times in recent books and through online stuff playing with the humans are weird meme. In a nutshell humans are eccentric newcomers moving into the fringes of an established multi-species society.

I figure that I will run the game from the perspective of a group of human freelance trouble shooters employed to identify and head off or contain unfavourable situations. So a mixture of urban exploration, diplomacy and combat.

I will decide on the tone later.

[DemiBenson]

I kinda love this genre. I eagerly await your updates.

[Frost]

The Commonality of All Minds.

The Commonality is the benevolent and somewhat amorphous empire of the Rhee Tul. Now occupying a spherical region some two hundred light years in radius (by human reconning) centered upon the planet Saa of the Revelation (which is most definitely not the Rhee Tul homeworld). The whole edifice is tied together by the pulse gate network which grants the Rhee Tul and their clients true FTL travel.

The basis of the Commonality is the Great Truths a set of spiritual and political rules first discovered approximately two thousand years ago (again by human reconning) at the end of the first Rhee Tul interstellar expansion.

Guided by the Great Truths the Rhee Tul have expanded from a core of half a dozen worlds creating new biospheres by terraforming dead worlds and technologically uplifting and spreading sentient life.

There are at least nine sapient species within the Comonality most of whom can now be encountered in small colonies spread throughout Comonality space. These colonies are encouraged to develop autonomous institutions and to trade or otherwise interact with one another within the framework of a (deliberately loose) system if Interstellar law controlled by the Rhee Tul. Violence is discouraged, although sometimes tolerated, and disruption of the Rhee Tul's terraformed 'world gardens' is usually severely punished.

[doctorevilbrain]

That sounds a bit like the tv series, Star Trek:Enterprise.

[Frost]

Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain

That sounds a bit like the tv series, Star Trek:Enterprise.

I am shooting for a very different tone. And to be honest I like to pretend that that particular series never existed- I am not a big star trek fan and the wasted oportunities and sloppy writing still got to me.

[Frost]

The Commonality of All Minds Continued

The key to the Commonality is the pulse gate network. The technical details of the gates are a carefully guarded secret belonging to the 'void boys' a reclusive Rhee Tul subculture responsible for building and maintaining the gates. However their operation is familiar to most Commonality denizens.

Pulse gates are large free flying structures usually taking the form of a pair of vast segmented rings.

Essentially they provide one way FTL transport to most points within about ten light years (a gate is only needed at the point of origin) and with the aid of a relay drone two way FTL communications. The gates can only maintain a connection for a relatively short time (on the order of a few hours) and require a prolonged reset between activations.

No system possesses more than a single gate, according to the Rhee Tul, multiple gates interfere with one another in a way best described as 'unfortunate'. Because of these limitations the network runs to a timetable with connections to major systems every few days and to lesser systems every month or so.

Frontier systems usually lack gates all together. FTL travel into these systems is possible from local gates but ships leaving the system must manage with AFAL engines typically taking years to reach civilization.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Frost

I am shooting for a very different tone. And to be honest I like to pretend that that particular series never existed- I am not a big star trek fan and the wasted oportunities and sloppy writing still got to me.

How about Babylon 5 then?

[Frost]

Just a quick question. How does everybody think I should go about presenting humans?

The source material I am pilfering from is about equally likely to use near future humans as it is to assume a slightly later date and correspondingly more advanced technology (probably tl9^ in this case).

My first thought was to go with the higher tech level. This was for three reasons:

Humans having their own ships and even colonies makes them harder to manage and increases the opportunity for ignorant, insensitive, or just stupid behaviour on both sides.

Being able to separate my PC's from earth means I can reduce the amount of human politics a bit.

And I usually prefer higher tech settings.

However near future TL 8 types may have more impact.

[weby]

On the TL thingy:

Having run several short scifi near future games, they tend to work much better if there big is a break from current.

Basically if you run a game where as example "5 years from now aliens come", people will try to use too much their current world knowledge and as GM you do not know as much as all players combined. So I spent a lot of time managing that.

If on other hand the scenario was post apocalyptic or not set on Earth, it was always possible to say "That technology is not available"

One special thing causing biggest problems is mobile phones with internet connectivity. Thus the post apocalyptic "There is no cell service" or distant plant "This planet does not have mobile internet with wikipedia like things, you need to go to specific places to research things" type things helped a lot..

[Frost]

Originally Posted by weby

One special thing causing biggest problems is mobile phones with internet connectivity. Thus the post apocalyptic "There is no cell service" or distant plant "This planet does not have mobile internet with wikipedia like things, you need to go to specific places to research things" type things helped a lot..

I have never had a big problem with this. As far as I am concerned 'my character looks it up' is a perfectly valid way of solving a problem. However my players have been taught that unless you are dealing with current news, pop culture trivia or local folklore (and half the time even then) accurate detailed information is going to take time the PC's may not have and proper research skills.

I am also never afraid of giving out incomplete or flat out wrong information even if they have a research skill. Sometimes the only available information is flawed information.

[Edit] Having had a moment to think about this the setting probably contains enough in setting barriers anyway:

PC looks up plot relevant historical character and gets a Wikipedia stub, a conspiracy site that implicates the subject in a conspiracy to introduce androids into human society, two pay walled items, three items hosted in other systems (with FTL comm latencies measured in weeks), and something in an obscure language that requires three layers of low quality online translation before the get to a language they can read. [/Edit]